The Zionist Ideas: Visions for the Jewish Homeland―Then, Now, Tomorrow

JPS Anthologies of Jewish Thought

by Gil Troy (Editor), Natan Sharansky (Foreword)

The most comprehensive Zionist collection ever published, The Zionist Visions for the Jewish Homeland—Then, Now, Tomorrow sheds light on the surprisingly diverse and shared visions for realizing Israel as a democratic Jewish state. Building on Arthur Hertzberg’s classic, The Zionist Idea, Gil Troy explores the backstories, dreams, and legacies of more than 170 passionate Jewish visionaries—quadruple Hertzberg’s original number, and now including women, mizrachim , and others—from the 1800s to today.

Troy divides the thinkers into six Zionist schools of thought—Political, Revisionist, Labor, Religious, Cultural, and Diaspora Zionism—and reveals the breadth of the debate and surprising syntheses. He also presents the visionaries within three major stages of Zionist development, demonstrating the length and evolution of the conversation. Part 1 (pre-1948) introduces the pioneers who founded the Jewish state, such as Herzl, Gordon, Jabotinsky, Kook, Ha’am, and Szold. Part 2 (1948 to 2000) features builders who actualized and modernized the Zionist blueprints, such as Ben-Gurion, Berlin, Meir, Begin, Soloveitchik, Uris, and Kaplan. Part 3 showcases today’s torchbearers, including Barak, Grossman, Shaked, Lau, Yehoshua, and Sacks.

This mosaic of voices will engage equally diverse readers in reinvigorating the Zionist conversation—weighing and developing the moral, social, and political character of the Jewish state of today and tomorrow.
 

Genres: Israel, Jewish, History, Nonfiction, Judaica, Judaism, Adult

608 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2018

About the author

Gil Troy is the author of "The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s" to be published October 6 by Thomas Dunne Books of St. Martin's Press. An American presidential historian and a regular columnist for the Daily Beast, this will be his eleventh book. He is Professor of History at McGill University and will be in Washington DC this fall as a Visting Scholar at the Brookings Institution. Troy wrote The Age of Clinton on a tight deadline, speculating that Hillary Clinton just might run for President in 2016 and that Americans would be ready this fall to rethink what happened in the 1990s. He worked until 5 AM most nights, woke up at 7 (he is married with four children), jogged for an hour, then worked. He met the deadline and lost 30 pounds.

Reviews

[Alan Zwiren · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must read for anyone who wants to understand Zionism yesterday, today and tomorrow. I had always been aware that Zionism is not myopic and uniform, there are many different threads including Herzl's original approach, Labot, Revisionist, Religious and Cultural. However, Gil Troy has shined a new light onto this very important topic not only to the founding of the Jewish State, but to it's future now that it is 70 years old. Building on the tremendous work of Arthur Herzberg's original, "The Zionist Idea" compiled on the tenth anniversary of the State of Israel, Gil Troy has gone back and selected the best from that volume while supplementing some of the over looked voices of the era including Women and Mizrachim. He then combined it with new voices that have offered their views and beliefs of Zionism.

The structure of the book is brilliant. He divides the book into The Founders, The Builders, and The Torchbearers. He further divides each of these sections into 6 schools of thought; Political, Labor, Revisionist, Religious, Cultural and Diaspora. He fully recognizes and admits in the Introduction that many do not neatly fit into one school of thought; however, he has done his best to try to place the particular passage he has selected in the appropriate school. There were many authors and selections that I had already read. And yet, there were so many more that I was not aware of included in the book.

One of the features that makes the passages in this book so accessible is Gil Troy's astute introductions to each section, each school of thought within the section, and each author. The introduction places the author into historic perspective along with providing a brief background on each author's journey and perspective. This especially helped in understanding the perspective of authors who were not familiar to me.

Gil Troy's biggest accomplishment of this instant classic tome is the fact he was able to challenge the reader to see the Zionism from diverse perspectives. He included some people who at first I would have never believed had written so passionately about their Zionism. His genius was making us see that Zionism is not the domain of any one group, but a belief that can be shared by all. He expanded my perspective on the world of Zionism.

I once read an article that asked today's authors and other leaders to name the 5 Jewish books every Jew should read. When I thought about it and selected my 5, Theodore Herzl's "The Jewish State" was the one I selected. If I were to go back again today and answer the same question, I would replace it with "The Zionist Ideas."

[Darlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many people use the word Zionism or talk about Zionists without understanding the history and current thought of the movement to re-establish and maintain the Jewish homeland. This updated collection of essays clarifies the thinking of Zionism's founders, the movers during the 20th century and early leaders of the State of Israel, and the thinkers of the 21st century helping to put the established nation in perspective.

[Jean Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A clear and interesting summary in detail of the various persons with various Zionist ideas - political, cultural, etc. The author both summarizes the lives and also uses direct quotes of their works to provide and history of the Zionist movement and it's current trends.

[Ivri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really cool book. The author does something interesting, where he takes different Zionist thinkers and divides them by time period. Then he further splits them into genres of sorts, grouping the religious Zionists together, cultural Zionists, political Zionists, revisionists, Labor Zionists, and Diaspora Zionists, and collates the best snippets from the greatest thinkers in each category. Then he precedes each snippet, usually a 1.5-2 pages with a 1/2-1 page introduction where he describes the context of each thinker and gives a brief overview. It was fascinating to read the different thoughts and to watch as the thought process of various groups changed over time, and to try and match someones ideas and trace it to the context and time period of when they lived. It was also fascinating to read the outliers in each group, for example, Troy included several thinkers in the last religious Zionist section who definitely did not toe the religious Zionist party line, and it was cool to have them included. Perhaps the best part was the bibliography at the end, which made it very easy to do more research if you were interested in a certain thinker. It was truly amazing to see how much variety can be produced by the simple idea that Jews are a people and have a right and requirement for their own state in Israel.

[Arnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gil Troy, one of today's most articulate voices for Zionism and its importance today, has taken Herzberg's The Zionist Idea and written a new and expanded version of it. He breaks down the thinking of those whose writings influence/d the development of Zionism by their approaches to Israel and by historical periods. He thoughtfully introduces each thinker and gives a sample of his/her writings. I was left with an appreciation of how the diversity of the Zionist movement is its greatest strength.

[Ben Pashkoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

A vast undertaking, and specially stepping into the shoes of the earlier work, but well-organized and well thought out. . There may need to be yet another update in 5 years.

[Georgia Leatherdale Gilholy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jacob Klatzkin was a meme