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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

论钱穆文化民族主义史学思想的形成

在20世纪的中国史学中,钱穆的史学独树一帜,是文化民族主义史学的代表人物。钱穆的文化民族主义思想,发轫于30年代中期,形成于30年代末,以《国史大纲》的完成为其标志。以考据起家的钱穆最终转向对考据学风的批评,是因为他认识到一味埋首考据,不利于民族精神的张扬,所以他站在民族文化的立场上对新考据派作不遗余力的批评,这是他文化民族主义思想产生的内在动因;基于民族危机的刺激而产生的救亡意识是他文化民族主义思想产生的现实动因。自《国史大纲》完成后,钱穆学问研究的重心发生了转变,由历史研究转向文化研究,为中国文化招魂、续命遂成为他一生的志业所在。     

Hebrew Inscriptions

Abstract

In the light of the ceramical evidence it is clear that a small settlement was built here during the Hyksos period. It was abandoned during Late Bronze and Early Iron, but rebuilt and flourished during the period of the Hebrew monarchy. It was again rebuilt during the Persian period, but permanently abandoned afterwards. The neglect of aqueducts and springs probably led to the swamping of the region.

Several facts are interesting in this story. Firstly, that the periods of habitation attested here are just those when security in the country was good, so that it was possible to live in an unfenced village sited in undefended ground in the lowland. Secondly, in the conditions obtaining prior to the reclamation work undertaken by the Jewish settlers, the site, situated in swamp ground, could hardly have been inhabited. Yet the archaeological evidence indicates occupation here up to the Persian period. The changes in environment leading to the present state of things could thus, at the earliest, have begun after that time. The site thus furnishes dated evidence about geographical changes in the country of which it seems worth while taking cognizance.     

Hebrew Prose and Poetry

Book reviewed in this article: Agnon vehatzimhonut (Agnon and Vegetarianism), Rena Lee Jardin D'Eden Jardins D'Espagne, Masha Itzhaki and Michel Gare     

Cultural History,Nationalism and the Dignity of the Individual: The Work of George L. Mosse

Abstract. The recently deceased George Mosse was one of the leading cultural and intellectual historians of modern Germany and Europe. His important contributions to our understanding of modern culture were his historical analyses of racism, fascism, and nationalism as cultural phenomena of our times. This article concentrates on Mosse's analysis of nationalism.     

Cultural Nationalism,Anti-Americanism,and the Federal Defense of the Canadian Football League

ABSTRACT

During the 1960s nationalism flourished in Canada as did American influence, both cultural and economically, as well as separatist sentiment in Quebec. The Canadian federal government became more interventionist to combat threats to Canadian sovereignty: internal threats from Quebec and external threats from the United States. The federal government used sport as a nation-building tool and eventually acted to protect the Canadian Football League (CFL) as a display of resistance to Americanization and in an attempt to unite French and English. Canadian football had become a symbol of the nation and therefore could be used by the government in a symbolic way to resist cultural imperialism and promote national unity. On two occasions the federal government acted to ensure the CFL preserved its Canadian identity; first, to prevent Canadian-based football teams from joining an American professional football league, and second, to prevent American-based teams from joining the CFL. John Munro was the key Canadian politician who formulated policy to protect Canadian football.     

The messiah epithet in the Hebrew Bible

Rather than a reference ''to a present, political and religious leader who is appointed by God, applied predominantly to a king, but also to a priest and occasionally a prophet'' as proposed in 1985 by the first Princeton Symposium of Judaism and Christian origins, the term 'MSH' in the Hebrew Bible is an epithet or title which functions within a literary and mythic but not an historical context. The role of the messiah as played in the Hebrew Bible is not uniquely Jewish, but functions within the symbol system of ancient Near Eastern royal ideology and functions within a theology of divine transcendence and immanence. The coherence of the mythic role of the messiah is identified in relation to concepts of messianic time, as in the functions of expiating and mediating transcendence, of maintaining creation through war against the powers of chaos and the establishment of eternal peace. David's role as messiah in the Psalter is described in his role as ideal representative of piety, and as ruler over destiny bringing the good news expressed in various forms of ''the poor man's song.'' Finally, the role of the messiah myth is integrated with utopian concepts of a new Israel.