The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel's Soul Paperback – May 8, 2001 by Yoram Hazony (Basic Books)

The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel's Soul is a powerful assessment of "post-Zionist" Israeli culture--the Jewish movement that seeks to overturn traditional notions of Israel as a Jewish state. Author Yoram Hazony, who has been a participant in some of the most significant stages of the Middle East peace process, investigates the cultural and political history of post-Zionism, the extent of its current influence, and its potential effects in the future. The Jewish State includes a previously unknown story about some of this century's most important Jewish intellectuals--including Hannah Arendt, Martin Buber, and Gershom Scholem--who opposed the establishment of Israel, and later leveraged the power of Hebrew University to depose David Ben-Gurion and defame the Labor Zionism that helped give birth to Israel. Ironically, Hazony takes succor from this story, because he says that it offers "the lesson of how a small fellowship of intellectuals, without the benefit of exceptionally sensible ideas or especially cogent means of expressing them, nonetheless succeeded in changing the life of a nation, against all odds." So, Hazony imagines that a few individuals with more sensible ideas, better attuned to the desires of Israel's people, might be able to reestablish that nation "as a guardian of the Jews and a source of strength to them." Hazony is a sturdy thinker and a persuasive polemicist, and The Jewish State may prove to be a very influential book. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Hazony, president of the Shalem Center, an institute for social thought and public policy (and a onetime adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu), asserts that "the idea of the Jewish state"--and the future of the state--is under fervent attack from its own intellectual and cultural establishment. These "post-Zionists" advocate, for example, the dejudaization of the public school curriculum and the repeal the Law of Return (which grants automatic citizenship to any Jew who immigrates to Israel) in order to create a more secular and equitable "post-Jewish" state. Hazony's reading of Israeli history leads him to conclude that the post-Zionists are paving the way to ruin everything the early Zionist and Israeli leaders sought to achieve--an alarming and painful prospect for Hazony; those who share his view will welcome this account. The work, however, presents more than Hazony's polemic. The bulk of it consists of an enlightening and thorough analysis of the evolution of the idea of the Jewish state, starting quite naturally with Theodor Herzl. Hazony does a masterful job of situating the cardinal figures in their historical context and of demonstrating the division of the Jewish community right up until the establishment of Israel in 1948. In this regard, Hazony focuses specifically on the philosopher Martin Buber, whose work at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem he sees as the root of the current intellectual disdain for the state. Hazony claims that, with the exception of the state's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, leading Israeli politicians have not concerned themselves with cultural transmission or the transmission of ideas and therefore have given the intellectuals a monopoly on the cultural agenda. His book, though at times wearyingly political, is an impressive overview of the intellectual history of Israel