Retail Price: $23.00 CenturyOne Price: $13.80 You Save: $9.20 (40%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours. Only 4 left. Format: Hardcover, 277pp. ISBN: 9780029023525 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: December 1994 Book Information: Description Reader's Index About the Author Table of Contents Customer Reviews Find Similar Books Average Customer Review:

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Nationalism is widely thought to have been a highly destructive and dangerous force in modern politics; most people view it as synonymous with facism. Zionism in particular, an ethnic and religious form of national identity, has been branded by its enemies as a racist ideology. While Zionism has had many defenders, Avi Elrich shows that even its friends have failed to grasp its essence. Zionism is not primarily a form of ethnic or religious ideology. Rather it is — in the original form that is was presented in the Bible by its anonymous redactors — an ingenious poetic conception.

The ancient Hebrews, Erlich argues, invented a unique basis for social unity by forging an imaginatve link between religion (or law), literary culture, and the specific land of Israel. In this conception, the land, the law, and the people of Israel are on, a living metaphor expressed in the idea of Zion.

This poetic idea is explored and set forth in the Bible, which Erlich now interprets from a totally unprecendented angle. Through supple and provocative rereadings of familiar stories like those of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the covenant of Abraham, the sacrifice of Isaac, and many others, Erlich shows how the Bible's editors arranged the Hebrew folklore to develop this new national idea.

The unity of land, law and literature created by the Hebrews has been one of the most potent historical metaphors ever devised, strong enough to maintain a sense of national identity among Jews for over two thousand years. Without this Jewish literary culture, Erlich argues, there could have been no state of Israel, no matter what efforts were made by modern Zionist ideologues.

This book reads the ancient text with ancient eyes that make it startling and fresh for those conditioned to the "modern" view of national identity as based on either race or ideology. Modern Zionism, like modern nationalism generally, is a drastically impoverished descendant of this original Jewish nationalism, and Erlich concludes that many problems not only of Israel but of all modern nations struggling to define themselves in a changing world really stem from the loss of this vigorous ancient alternative.

History
The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism