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GESCHICHTE - ERINNERUNG – POLITIK
STUDIES IN HISTORY, MEMORY AND POLITICS
Herausgegeben von / Edited by Anna Wolff-Powęska & Piotr Forecki
Bd./Vol . 32
Jacek Surzyn
Return to the Promised Land
The Birth and Philosophical Foundations of Zionism
Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.
This publication has been financially supported by Jesuit University Ignatianum in Kraków (Poland)
Cover illustration courtesy of Benjamin Ben Chaim.
Printed by CPI books GmbH, Leck
ISSN 2191-3528
ISBN 978-3-631-81295-2 (Print)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-81893-0 (E-PDF)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-81894-7 (EPUB)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-81895-4 (MOBI)
DOI 10.3726/b16828
© Peter Lang GmbH
Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Berlin 2020
All rights reserved.
Peter Lang –Berlin ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙ Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien
All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.
This publication has been peer reviewed.
About the author
Jacek Surzyn is a Polish philosopher, author, translator and professor at Jesuit University Ignatianum in Kraków (Poland). He researches the ontology, theology and political philosophy of Judaism and Zionism. He also translates philosophical and political texts. As a publicist, he is engaged in the issues of Palestinian-Israeli conflict and modern anti-Semitism.
About the book
The book analyses the ideological and philosophical basis of Zionism, i.e. how Zionism solved the most important problems of Jews in the last decades of the 19th century: the problem of assimilation, the philosophical principles of national identity, the idea of self-liberation and the conception of the Jewish state. Another problem discussed in this book is how the religious idea of “Return to Zion” became both philosophical and political goals. All considerations are based on the analysis of the source texts of the protagonists and founders of Zionism (Hess, Pinsker, Herzl and Nordau). Zionism is also shown in the perspective of its strength and weakness, as well as its importance for Jewishness in general.
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Table of Contents
Chapter I. Moses Hess and the Shabbat of History
I. 3 Jews as Revivers of the Nations
I. 4 Judaism: Religion of the Future
I. 5 The Basis of the Jewish Reform
I. 7 The Project of the Jewish State
Chapter II. Leo Pinsker and the Jewish Self-Emancipation
II. 1 Pinsker’s Path to Emancipation
II. 2 The Issue of the “Jewish Question”
II. 3 Jews as a Nation
II. 4 Anti-Semitism and Its Philosophical Basis
II. 5 The Project of Self-Emancipation
Chapter III. Theodor Herzl: We want to have our state!
III. 1 New Jewish Politics and Philosophy
III. 2 The Zionist Idea: A Philosophical Utopia?
III. 3 The “Jewish Question”
III. 4 Solution to the “Jewish Question”
III. 5 New Anti-Semitism
III. 6 The Jewish State: The Plan
Chapter IV. Max Nordau: We, the Jewish Nation
IV. 1 The Jewish People
IV. 2 The Jewish Patriotism
IV. 3 Anti-Semitism Against the Jews
IV. 4 Zionism: New Jewish Philosophy
IV. 5 The Final Solution to the “Jewish Question”
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index of names
Index of subjects
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The Promised Land …where at last
we can live as free men on our own soil
and die in peace in our own homeland
– Theodor Herzl
The Zionist movement brought into existence by Theodor Herzl was not only a political movement for the realization of the idea of Jewish state. Zionism also contains deep philosophical assumptions that contribute to shaping a new vision of the role of Jews in the world and in relation to human history. Herzl already formulated a postulate