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" At the Crossroads: "
Beckert, Jacob
Zadoff, Noam
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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1106906
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| Doc. No
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TLpq2420201293
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| Main Entry
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Beckert, Jacob
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Zadoff, Noam
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| Title & Author
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At the Crossroads:\ Beckert, JacobZadoff, Noam
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| College
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Indiana University
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| Date
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2020
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| student score
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2020
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| Degree
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M.A.
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| Page No
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60
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| Abstract
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If one was to ask any high school student in Israel to list the members of the early Zionist Pantheon it is almost a guaranty that Asher Ginsberg (better known as Ahad Ha'am) would be included. If, however, one was to ask that same student about the lasting legacy of spiritual Zionism (sometimes referred to as cultural Zionism), the ideology espoused by Ahad Ha'am, one would more than likely be met by silence. This reality is in many ways a reflection of the scholarly works on spiritual Zionism. While many academics acknowledge the important impact of Ahad Ha'am on Hovevei Tzion, the Zionist Congress, and even the Jewish Conservative movement's pre-state position on Zionism, it is seen to these same scholars as almost a forgone conclusion that spiritual Zionism's impact was fleeting, and almost completely disappeared before the creation of the State of Israel. The reasons for this assumption are understandable. Unlike other forms of Zionism, no lasting institutions were created in Israel that explicitly claim the legacy of Ahad Ha'am, no major political party ever branded itself the party of spiritual Zionism, and post 1948 no high profile individual seemed to make it their mission to carry on Ahad Ha'am's legacy. This lack of explicit manifestations has masked the reality that in fact, Ahad Ha'am's spiritual Zionism has had a significant impact, though in a perhaps unexpected location. Since the June 1967 War spiritual Zionism has been a resurgent force in Jewish communities outside of Israel-in particular the United states- with several major American Jewish institutions being shaped in the model of Ahad Ha'am's spiritual Zionism. In addition, these institutions are often not coincidentally recreating Ahad Ha'am's ideals, in particular the concept of a Jewish center sustaining the diaspora, but are in fact directly influenced by Ahad Ha'am's writings. My thesis profiles three such institutions: Kibbutz volunteering, Hebrew Union College's campus in Israel, and Birthright Israel, and examine how each of these institutions was formed according to the model of Ahad Ha'am's spiritual Zionism. These three case studies are not simply discreet incidents, but rather serve as evidence of a much larger phenomenon, that since 1967 Ahad Ha'am's spiritual Zionism has been a major, yet often unnamed, force shaping the nature of American Zionism.
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| Subject
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Judaic studies
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Middle Eastern history
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Middle Eastern studies
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