Gustaf Dalman, Anti-Semitism, and the Language of Jesus Debate

The theory that Jesus of Nazareth spoke and taught exclusively in Aramaic rather than Hebrew achieved its present dominant position just over a century ago due largely to the labour of Gustaf Dalman. His primary motivation was not the recovery of the historical Jesus, however, but to support his deep commitment to the Protestant movement to convert Jews. This movement did not escape the impact of escalating anti-Semitism in society, intensified by rapid progress towards German national unification. One Christian response to anti-Semitism was to "extract" Jesus from Judaism by contrasting him with "Jewish" attitudes and values held by Jewish spiritual authorities. Dalman's contribution was to extract Jesus from the ethnically exclusive Hebrew language by insisting that he spoke only the more widely used lingua franca of the region, Aramaic. By overstating his case and going beyond the evidence, Dalman revealed his indebtedness to the anti-Semitic spirit of his age.     

Some reflections on religion and nationalism

The metamorphosis undergone by Jewish women in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was the result of modernization, secularization, and education. Similarly, the offspring of the new Jewish woman, the “new Hebrew woman” was the embodiment of various schools of thought, in particular the liberal and the socialist, which were prevalent at that time. The new Hebrew woman offered a feminist interpretation of the malaise of the Jewish people in general, and of Jewish women in particular, challenging the roles designated to her by her male peers and offering her own alternative interpretation. She chose Eretz Yisrael and Zionism, to “auto-emancipate” herself rather than waiting passively for her emancipation by others. In this sense, the new Hebrew woman collaborated with and reflected the hegemonic Zionist ideals and priorities. This article aims to analyze the discourse of the new Hebrew woman, as manifested in Palestine-Eretz Yisrael in the first half of the twentieth century in order to shed light on the link between gender and nationalism in the Zionist context. In particular, it considers how men and women envisioned the new Hebrew woman; how class, political affiliation, and gender shaped their interpretation; and how the new Hebrew woman differed from her counterpart, the new Jewish woman.     

Language and nation‐building in Israel: Hebrew and its rivals*

Abstract. The problem of language preceded the founding of Israel. In the nineteenth century, the emergence of political Zionism was accompanied by a revival of Hebrew. In the early years of Jewish resettlement in Palestine, Hebrew slowly emerged as the popular language, a compromise between the Yiddish spoken by Eastern European immigrants and the Arabic or Ladino current among many Middle Eastern Jews. After World War I, as educational institutions proliferated, the challenge of French and German as languages of instruction was blocked by teachers' strikes. With the establishment of the state and the massive influx of Jewish displaced persons, mostly speakers of Yiddish, that language, regarded as a potential threat to the primacy of Hebrew, was systematically fought by the country's political and cultural elite. Today, the position of Hebrew as the national language of Israel is secure. English, however, has been asserting its influence in an increasingly postindustrial and globalised society.     

Biblical beliefs in the shaping of modern nations

The ideology and culture of modern nations and nationalism have been profoundly influenced by two traditions that reach back into the ancient world, the biblical and the classical. Here, the focus is on the particular contribution of the Hebrew Bible to the political ideals of modern nationhood. Modern Western nations, unlike non‐Western and ancient nations, are distinguished by their quest for territorial integrity and sovereignty, citizenship, legal standardisation, cultural homogeneity and secular education, while modern nationalism is a pro‐active, ideological movement that seeks to ‘build’ autonomous, unified, distinctive and ‘authentic’ nations out of ethnic populations deemed by some members to constitute actual or potential ‘nations’. While modern European nations emerged out of the matrix of Christianity, as Adrian Hastings argued, it was the political model and ideals of community found in the Hebrew Bible, which Christianity adopted (while rejecting the Jews) and which the New Testament lacked, that so often provided the dynamic of modern nationalism and the values of modern Western nations. Chief among these were the Pentateuchal and prophetic narratives of Exodus, Covenant, Community of Law (Torah), the holiness of a ‘chosen people’, the messianic role of sacred kingship and the dream of fulfilment in the Promised Land. These ideals did not fully come into their own until the Reformation. In this period, state elites expressed growing national sentiments and biblical texts were being rendered into the vernacular, while a more rigorous biblical form of ‘covenantal nationalism’ emerged in early modern Netherlands, Scotland and England, taking the narrative of the deliverance of the Israelites as its starting point. In the eighteenth‐century Enlightenment, the novel cults of ‘Nature’, ‘Authenticity’ and ‘Human Perfectibility’ secured an opening for neo‐classical political ideas in the formation of nations. But it was the biblical ideals of liberation, Covenant, election and promised land that provided the basic model of the modern nation and nationalism in Europe, from the French Revolution, and German and East European nationalisms to the Hebraic Protestant nationalism of Victorian Britain. To a large extent, the modern age owes to the Jewish Bible its fundamental vision of a world divided into distinctive and sovereign territorial nations.     

Protecting the Jewish throat: Hebrew accent and hygiene in the Yishuv

In 1913 the Hebrew Language Council (Va’ad ha-lashon ha-ivrit) instituted guidelines for the pronunciation of Hebrew, based on the Sephardic accent. Immigrants struggled to master the new sounds, especially the guttural phonemes, and to repress their native accents. Their pronunciation was frequently criticized as ugly and in need of correction. In the 1930s, Yitzhak Epstein (1862–1943) developed a new approach to the problem of standardizing and beautifying the Hebrew accent that drew on medical evidence to argue that the mispronunciation of various phonemes could damage the vocal cords and cause throat ailments. In the 1940s, Epstein’s “hygienic Hebrew” program was endorsed by a special committee of the Hebrew Language Council, chaired by Shlomo Dov Goitein (1900–1985) and included several of Epstein’s associates, that had been formed to address problems of “speech culture” in the Yishuv. Although the committee enjoyed a successful start, its mission was soon interrupted by the events of 1948–49. By claiming a scientific basis for the preferred Sephardic accent, the language hygienists were able to rationalize their desire to purge Hebrew of unpleasant Yiddish phonemes and to curtail the influence of Arabic on Yishuv speech.     

Hebrew Literature and Jewish Nationalism in the Tsarist Empire 1881–1917

Abstract. After 1881, Hebrew literature in the tsarist empire became an integral part of the rise of Jewish nationalism, and it created literary norms which were transplanted to mandatory Palestine. This literature, in contrast to most pre-1881 Hebrew literature, is aesthetically on a very high level. Led by Mendele Mocher Sefarim in prose fiction and by Chaim Nachman Bialik in poetry, it asserted Jewish national feeling even when not overtly nationalistic. In doing so, it subverted tsarist authority and indirectly declared the Jews to be independent of the empire. Yet, in many of its main concerns this literature shows the influence of Russian literature, especially of the Reform Era, but also afterwards (Chekhov, in particular), and itmight even be regarded as an ethnic branch of Russian literature. Both literatures depicted the failings of their society with the aim of achieving social change. However, while Russian literature pointed to revolution, Hebrew literature after 1881 pointed to Palestine where most of the Hebrew writers of that period eventually emigrated.     

The Roman—Jewish Wars and Hebrew Cultural Nationalism

Abstract. The Roman‐Jewish wars of 66–70, 115–17 and 132–35 CE destroyed the territorial, social and political bases of militant Jewish nationalism. Successive defeats brought a Roman ban on Jewish residence in Jerusalem and on proselytisation. Most of the Jewish population of Judaea, in southern Palestine, was annihilated or exiled. The creative heart of Judaism shifted to Galilee, where the study of rabbinic law and homiletics flourished, mostly in Hebrew, and the Mishna ‐ the basis of the Talmud ‐ was edited by the Tannaim (Mishna teachers). This culture was an implicit rejection of Graeco‐Roman civilisation and values in favour of a more exclusivist religious‐cultural nationalism. It is argued in this paper that this form of nationalism, though rare in the ancient world, anticipates more recent national movements of defeated peoples.     

The cloak,the cage and the fog of sanctity: the Zionist mission and the role of religion among Arab Jews*

Abstract. This paper examines the Zionist national mission to mobilise Jewish ethnic communities in Arab countries, in the period preceding the establishment of the state of Israel. It draws on archival texts to trace a phenomenon known in Jewish historiography as ‘Shadarut’; a voluntary religious practice of fundraising which was widespread in the Jewish world for hundreds of years. The paper shows how this pre‐national religious practice (to be labelled ‘the cloak’) was adopted and incorporated into the Zionist national project (‘the cage’), first generating tension between the Jewish religious establishment and the Zionist ‘secular’ movement, and then blurring the distinction between Judaism as a religion and Judaism as a national identity. The paper shows how secular emissaries of European origin arrived in Arab countries as religious emissaries (‘shadarim’) and aspired to discover a strong religious fervour among members of the Jewish communities there. This is because in the eyes of the Zionist (ostensibly secular) movement, being religious Jews in Islamic countries was a criterion that demarcated them from their Arab neighbours. This analysis entails two main conclusions: (a) that contrary to the experience of the European Zionist national movement in which secularism and the revolt against the Jewish religion played a central role, in Islamic countries it was particularly the Jewish religion, and not secular nationalism that was used to mobilise the Jewish community into the Jewish national movement; (b) that the ‘shadarut’ practice refuses to yield to the epistemological imperatives and the common divisions that arise from the binary distinction between ‘religiousness’ and ‘secularity’, particularly in the Middle East. Some implications for contemporary Israeli society are discussed.     

‘Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof!’ Reading Leviticus 25:10 through the centuries

ABSTRACT

This paper follows the text of Leviticus 25:10 in the Hebrew Bible and in selected works of the exegetical tradition of both Rabbinic Judaism and Western Christianity, in order to provide a lens through which to assess the use of a biblical text which was instrumental during the early modern period in formulating ideas about the Republic and its use in the modern liberal state. The main argument of the paper is that over time the meaning of the text shifted from the socio-economic to the salvific to the political, depending on the context in which it was read. Further, all the authors cited here approached the text as an authoritative normative text, and did not look at the text as a textual artefact. While the move to re-introduce Jewish Sources into the debate in political theory is to be welcomed, it is argued that the results would be improved by balanced reading strategies and by interaction with critical academic biblical scholarship.     

Mosaic art in modern Israel and the construction of a sense of place

The article deals with the construction of a narrative and sense of place among the Jewish immigrant‐settler society in 20th century Israel in the context of its efforts to establish a national collective identity on indigenous (i.e. authentic) foundations and with the symbolic struggle with the Palestinian national movement as its backdrop. The case study under discussion is the instalment in public spaces of mosaic decorations inspired by ancient Jewish mosaics unearthed in archaeological excavations. I argue that intentionally or unintentionally, these decorations functioned as agents in the construction of an authentic narrative and a sense of place by producing a link between the current and the ancient Jewish presence in the place. This practice went hand‐in‐hand with the hegemonic national dogma about the link between an ancient, allegedly glorious era of the Jewish people in Palestine, and the modern Zionist project.     

Nationalism,Reform Judaism and the Hebrew Prayer Book

ABSTRACT. The Hebrew prayer book (siddur), the oldest of which dates from the ninth century, frequently expresses Jewish chosenness and hopes for the gathering of the exiles and the return to the Land of Israel. In nineteenth‐century German Reform prayer books, such references to Jewish nationalism were altered or eliminated. In an age of growing European nationalism, this attempt to ‘de‐nationalise’ Jewish identity was virtually unique. Responding to accusations that Jewish citizenship in the modern nation‐state was incompatible with Judaism, Reform rabbis, who were engaged in the struggle for Jewish emancipation, claimed that patriotic loyalty to the German fatherland must supersede Jewish national identity. This article discusses the offending nationalist content of the siddur and the historical context in which it was suppressed. It concludes that the German reformers, by drawing attention to the nationalist potential of traditional Judaism, indirectly prepared the way for the rise of Jewish nationalism in reaction to racial anti‐Semitism in the late nineteenth century.     

A minority looks at the mendicants: Isaac Nathan the Jew and Thomas Connecte the Carmelite

This article focuses on the Thomas Connecte affair: the case of the charismatic friar who swept large areas of western European society along in pietistic and religious enthusiasm, established a reformist movement in several Carmelite convents, preached against the corruption of the priesthood, and was ultimately burned as a heretic in Rome in 1433 by the order of Pope Eugenius IV. The Hebrew testimony by the Jew Isaac Nathan concerning a pietistic movement led by an anonymous friar, which appears as an Exemplum in Nathan’s book, Me’ametz Koach, is identified here as being an account of Connecte, thus shedding new light on the Connecte affair in addition to providing a perspective on the broader question of the cultural relations between Jews and Christians in the 15th century. The analysis contained in the Hebrew Exemplum points to a complicated image of the ‘other’, that is, of Christianity, an image composed of negative aspects—Connecte and his movement—and positive aspects, as represented by the Pope’s response to Connecte. Isaac Nathan’s antagonism towards Thomas Connecte is situated here within the context of his general attitude towards the mendicants, and his simultaneous position within the Jewish community and as a member of the western European high bourgeoisie.     

Nationalism and the Hebrew Bible*

Abstract. The Hebrew Bible, though generally seen mainly as a religious document, has also provided models of secular national identity. A number of biblical motifs have been revived in modern cultural nationalism: for example, the importance of moral regeneration, attacks on internal and external enemies of the nation, and the unification of disparate groups despite geographic dislocation. The Hebrew Bible also anticipates various forms of conflict in modern national identity: between the individual and the group, chosenness and egalitarianism, the narrowly national and the universal. In the two centuries after the invention of printing, the Hebrew Bible in vernacular translation had a decisive influence on the evolution of nationalism, particularly in Britain. The Bible was essential in the culture of empires but also, paradoxically, inspired defeated, suppressed and colonised people to seek freedom. A number of modern national poets, notably Whitman and the Hebrew poets Bialik and Greenberg, adopt a free verse neo‐prophetic mode of expression. The Hebrew Bible can, therefore, be read as the archetypal, and most influential, national document from ancient times to the rise of modern nationalism.     

Imagining the Beloved: Gender and Nation Building in Early Twentieth‐Century Hebrew Literature

This article traces the gender dimensions of Zionist nation building by examining literary texts written in the first three decades of the twentieth century. It offers a gender‐oriented analysis of a range of canonic and marginal literary texts and their historical contexts, and pays special attention to the ways in which literary production in general, and in Hebrew in particular, became an essential component in the effort to create an image of a ‘New Hebrew Man’. This highly gendered image was a central foundation of the Zionist project of nation building in Europe, and in the Jewish community in Palestine. Hebrew poems, stories and novels produced and sustained the symbolic economy of gender of the Zionist cultural project. At the same time, I argue that some Hebrew writers resisted the overt and implicit ideological demands of this project by calling attention to the internal contradictions inherent in the feminine figuration of the nation and the attempts to transform Jewish masculinity.     

Reframing Bi‐nationalism in Palestine‐Israel as a Process of Settler Decolonisation

This paper examines some of the emerging critical civil society debates in relation to the one‐state solution being the most appropriate geo‐political arrangement for the articulation of freedom, justice and equality in Palestine‐Israel. This is done with reference to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions’ 2012 statement in support of a bi‐national state and the ensuing critiques it attracted from Palestinian supporters of the one‐state position. Drawing on these debates which have largely revolved around Jewish Israeli rights to political self‐determination in Palestine‐Israel, this paper proposes that alternative versions of self‐determination as cultural rights for the established Hebrew‐speaking national community represent a more inclusive form of self‐determination in the eventuality of decolonisation.     

Draft town maps for John speed's theatre of the empire of great Britaine

ABSTRACT

A unique Hebrew map of the Exodus and the Holy Land was printed in Mantua, Italy, in the mid-sixteenth century. This map is graphically and artistically different from all other Hebrew maps, both earlier and later. The aim here is to analyze the map and the text that is printed on it, explore the reasons for, and the context of, its printing, and identify its sources within contemporary Jewish scholarship and Christian cartography. The only known exemplar of this map is in the Zentralbibliothek in Zürich, Switzerland.     

Denied ethnicism: on the Walloon movement in Belgium

The Walloon movement is the lesser‐known counterpart to the Flemish movement in Belgium. In contemporary political debate it presents itself, and is usually perceived, as a civic and voluntaristic movement predicated on the values of democracy, freedom, openness and anti‐nationalism. As such it is contrasted against its Flemish counterpart, which accordingly is characterised as tending towards an ethnic exclusivist form of nationalism hinging on descent, culture and language. However, the historical record behind these representations shows that the Walloon movement is rooted in ethno‐cultural as much as social politics, and that it has always contained both civic and ethnic elements to varying degrees. This article highlights the Walloon movement in order to analyse the language and national stereotypes in which national movements are characterised both in political rhetoric and in scholarly analysis. The case is particularly relevant for the problematic usage of the ‘civic–ethnic’ opposition, slipping between the discourses of antagonism and analysis; one type of such slippage is here identified as ‘denied ethnicism’.     

The supreme court of Israel: Formative years, 1948–1955

In seeking to establish a paradigm of a literary “New Jew” for the early twentieth century, we must view the cultural developments of the time on the background of European modernist culture. During this period the European “New Jew” underwent many incarnations, including Max Nordau's muscular hero, Buber's “Renaissance” Jew, Berdyczewski's Nietzschean “new man,” Herzl's “authentic Jew,” and the Hebrew literary talush (rootless person). All the divergent ideas of Jewish renewal propounded in Europe were united in Shaul Tchernichovsky's poetry, either through deliberate reference or as a result of the tenor of the time. This article examines Tchernichovsky's implicit conception of the “New Jew” through two poems: “Lenokhah pesel Apollo” (Before a statue of Apollo, 1899) and “Ani – li misheli ein klum” (I have nothing of my own, 1937).     

Becoming Cleopatra: the forgotten Zionism of Raphael Lemkin

The biography of Raphael Lemkin has emerged of late as a highly contested lieu de memoire in charged political debates in Europe, the United States and the Middle East about the meaning, past and present, of the Holocaust and genocide. At the same time, scholars have attempted to demythologize Lemkin by reinscribing his life into its pre-World War II Polish context. Yet thus far no one has identified the precise political activities and affiliations that shaped Lemkin’s concept of genocide. In this article, I show that Lemkin, far from being a Jewish Bundist, a Polish nationalist or an apolitical cosmopolitan, was an active member of the interwar Polish Zionist movement, from which he drew the ideas that inspired his idea of the crime of genocide. In the first part of this article, I use his published writings from the 1920s and 1930s in Hebrew, Yiddish and Polish to recover a rich Jewish political framework in which his concepts of barbarism and genocide first began to emerge. In the second section, I ask how this crucial dimension of Lemkin’s life and thought vanished from the historical record, and why it has yet to be recovered in spite of the boom in biographical scholarship. Finally, I suggest how the recovery of Lemkin’s Zionism helps to reframe the current political impasse in the historiography of Holocaust and genocide studies.