Zionism and Revolution in European-Jewish Literature examines twentieth-century Jewish writing that challenges imperialist ventures and calls for solidarity with the colonized, most notably the Arabs of Palestine and Africans in the Americas. Since Edward Said defined orientalism in 1978 as a Western image of the Islamic world that has justified domination, critics have considered the Jewish people to be complicit with orientalism because of the Zionist movement. However, the Jews of Europe have themselves been caught between East and West —both marginalized as the "Orientals" of Europe and connected to the Middle East through their own political and cultural ties. As a result, European-Jewish writers have had to negotiate the problematic confluence of antisemitic and orientalist discourse. Laurel Plapp traces this trend in utopic visions of Jewish-Muslim relations that criticized the early Zionist movement; in post-Holocaust depictions of coalition between Jews and African slaves in the Caribbean revolutions; and finally, in explorations of diasporic, transnational Jewish identity after the founding of Israel. Above all, Plapp proposes that Jewish studies and postcolonial studies have much in common by identifying ways in which Jewish writers have allied themselves with colonized and exilic peoples throughout the world.

Originating in the collaboration of the international Research Network “Gender in Antisemitism, Orientalism and Occidentalism” (RENGOO), this collection of essays proposes to intervene in current debates about historical constructions of Jewish identity in relation to colonialism and Orientalism. The network‌’s collaborative research addresses imaginative and aesthetic rather than sociological questions with particular focus on the function of gender and sexuality in literary, scholarly and artistic transformations of Orientalist images. RENGOO’s first publication explores the ways in which stereotypes of the external and internal Other intertwine. With its interrogation of the roles assumed in this interplay by gender, processes of sexualization, and aesthetic formations, the volume suggests new directions to the interdisciplinary study of gender, antisemitism, and Orientalism.

The concept of transnationalism has been widely used for many years to describe mobility and cross-border relations in the modern, globalized world. Most uses of the concept of transnationalism neglect its historical trajectory and largely ignore the networks that constructed its meaning and normativity. Transnationalism and the Jews directly relates ideas about transnationalism and cultural pluralism to Jewish historical experience. It shows how the Jews and ‘Jewishness’ has been a problematic issue for cultural thought since the Enlightenment, and how this problem produced the alternative ideas of culture and identity that are widely accepted today. It argues that Jewish experience and ‘Jewishness’ helped produced the modern concept of transnationalism and cultural pluralism.

Zionism and Revolution in European-Jewish Literature examines twentieth-century Jewish writing that challenges imperialist ventures and calls for solidarity with the colonized, most notably the Arabs of Palestine and Africans in the Americas. Since Edward Said defined orientalism in 1978 as a Western image of the Islamic world that has justified domination, critics have considered the Jewish people to be complicit with orientalism because of the Zionist movement. However, the Jews of Europe have themselves been caught between East and West —both marginalized as the "Orientals" of Europe and connected to the Middle East through their own political and cultural ties. As a result, European-Jewish writers have had to negotiate the problematic confluence of antisemitic and orientalist discourse. Laurel Plapp traces this trend in utopic visions of Jewish-Muslim relations that criticized the early Zionist movement; in post-Holocaust depictions of coalition between Jews and African slaves in the Caribbean revolutions; and finally, in explorations of diasporic, transnational Jewish identity after the founding of Israel. Above all, Plapp proposes that Jewish studies and postcolonial studies have much in common by identifying ways in which Jewish writers have allied themselves with colonized and exilic peoples throughout the world.

Everyday Zionism examines Zionist activism in East-Central Europe during the years of war, occupation, revolution, the collapse of empires, and the formation of nation states in the years 1914 to 1920. Against the backdrop of the Great War—its brutal aftermath and consequent violence—the day-to-day encounters between Zionist activists and the Jewish communities in the region gave the movement credibility, allowed it to win support and to establish itself as a leading force in Jewish political and social life for decades to come. Through activists' efforts, Zionism came to mean something new: Rather than being concerned with debates over Jewish nationhood and pioneering efforts in Palestine, it came to be about aiding starving populations, organizing soup-kitchens, establishing orphanages, schools, kindergartens, and hospitals, negotiating with the authorities, and leading self-defence against pogroms. Through this engagement Zionism evolved into a mass movement that attracted and inspired tens of thousands of Jews throughout the region. Everyday Zionism approaches the major European events of the period from the dual perspectives of Jewish communities and the Zionist activists on the ground, demonstrating how war, revolution, empire, and nation held very different meanings for people, depending on their local circumstances. Based on extensive archival research, the study shows how during the war and its aftermath East-Central Europe saw a large-scale nation-building project by Zionist activists who fought for and led their communities to shape for them a national future.

Projecting the Nation: History and Ideology on the Israeli Screen is a wide-ranging history of over seven decades of Israeli cinema. The only book in English to offer this type of historical scope was Ella Shohat’s Israeli Cinema: East West and the Politics of Representation from 1989. Since 1989, however, Israeli cinema and Israeli society have undergone some crucial transformations and, moreover, Shohat’s book offered a single framework through which to judge Israeli cinema: a critique of orientalism. Projecting the Nation contends that Israeli cinema offers much richer historical and ideological perspectives that expose the complexity of the Israeli project. By analyzing Israeli films which address such issues as the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Ashkenazi-Mizrahi divide, the kibbutz and urban life, the rise of religion in Israeli public life and more, the book explores the way cinema has represented and also shaped our understanding of the history of modern Israel as it evolved from a collectivist society to a society where individualism and adherence to local identities is the dominant ideology.

Throughout the history of European imperialism the grand narratives of the Bible have been used to justify settler-colonialism. "The Zionist Bible" explores the ways in which modern political Zionism and Israeli militarism have used the Bible - notably the Book of Joshua and its description of the entry of the Israelites into the Promised Land - as an agent of oppression and to support settler-colonialism in Palestine. The rise of messianic Zionism in the late 1960s saw the beginnings of a Jewish theology of zealotocracy, based on the militant land traditions of the Bible and justifying the destruction of the previous inhabitants. "The Zionist Bible" examines how the birth and growth of the State of Israel has been shaped by this Zionist reading of the Bible, how it has refashioned Israeli-Jewish collective memory, erased and renamed Palestinian topography, and how critical responses to this reading have challenged both Jewish and Palestinian nationalism.

Part of Palgrave's Modernism and ... series, Modernism and Zionism explores the relationship between modernism and the Jewish national ideology, the Zionist movement, which was operative in all areas of Jewish art and culture.

"Examining the entire span of Jewish history through the lens of thirty pivotal moments in the Jewish people's experience from biblical times through the present, Turning Points in Jewish History provides "the big picture": both a broad and a deep understanding of the Jewish historical experience"--