Judaism Does Not Equal Israel

Judaism Does Not Equal Israel
Author: Marc H. Ellis
Publisher: The New Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2009
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1595584250

While many non-Jews from Desmond Tutu to Jimmy Carter have advocated a single state of Israel, and Israel itself continues to aggressively defend its borders, very few practising Jews have publicly supported this position. Marc Ellis, director of the Jewish Studies Center at Baylor University, here offers a courageous argument for progressive Jews to reconcile their religious beliefs with a progressive political stance and makes a convincing case for a secular, one-state solution in which Israelis and Palestinians can live together peacefully.

Parting Ways

Parting Ways
Author: Judith Butler
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 403
Release: 2012-07-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0231517955

Judith Butler follows Edward Said's late suggestion that through a consideration of Palestinian dispossession in relation to Jewish diasporic traditions a new ethos can be forged for a one-state solution. Butler engages Jewish philosophical positions to articulate a critique of political Zionism and its practices of illegitimate state violence, nationalism, and state-sponsored racism. At the same time, she moves beyond communitarian frameworks, including Jewish ones, that fail to arrive at a radical democratic notion of political cohabitation. Butler engages thinkers such as Edward Said, Emmanuel Levinas, Hannah Arendt, Primo Levi, Martin Buber, Walter Benjamin, and Mahmoud Darwish as she articulates a new political ethic. In her view, it is as important to dispute Israel's claim to represent the Jewish people as it is to show that a narrowly Jewish framework cannot suffice as a basis for an ultimate critique of Zionism. She promotes an ethical position in which the obligations of cohabitation do not derive from cultural sameness but from the unchosen character of social plurality. Recovering the arguments of Jewish thinkers who offered criticisms of Zionism or whose work could be used for such a purpose, Butler disputes the specific charge of anti-Semitic self-hatred often leveled against Jewish critiques of Israel. Her political ethic relies on a vision of cohabitation that thinks anew about binationalism and exposes the limits of a communitarian framework to overcome the colonial legacy of Zionism. Her own engagements with Edward Said and Mahmoud Darwish form an important point of departure and conclusion for her engagement with some key forms of thought derived in part from Jewish resources, but always in relation to the non-Jew. Butler considers the rights of the dispossessed, the necessity of plural cohabitation, and the dangers of arbitrary state violence, showing how they can be extended to a critique of Zionism, even when that is not their explicit aim. She revisits and affirms Edward Said's late proposals for a one-state solution within the ethos of binationalism. Butler's startling suggestion: Jewish ethics not only demand a critique of Zionism, but must transcend its exclusive Jewishness in order to realize the ethical and political ideals of living together in radical democracy.

How I Stopped Being a Jew

How I Stopped Being a Jew
Author: Shlomo Sand
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 113
Release: 2014-10-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1781686149

Shlomo Sand was born in 1946, in a displaced person’s camp in Austria, to Jewish parents; the family later migrated to Palestine. As a young man, Sand came to question his Jewish identity, even that of a “secular Jew.” With this meditative and thoughtful mixture of essay and personal recollection, he articulates the problems at the center of modern Jewish identity. How I Stopped Being a Jew discusses the negative effects of the Israeli exploitation of the “chosen people” myth and its “holocaust industry.” Sand criticizes the fact that, in the current context, what “Jewish” means is, above all, not being Arab and reflects on the possibility of a secular, non-exclusive Israeli identity, beyond the legends of Zionism.

Deconstructing Zionism

Deconstructing Zionism
Author: Gianni Vattimo
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2013-11-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1441115560

This volume in the Political Theory and Contemporary Philosophy series provides a political and philosophical critique of Zionism. While other nationalisms seem to have adapted to twenty-first century realities and shifting notions of state and nation, Zionism has largely remained tethered to a nineteenth century mentality, including the glorification of the state as the only means of expressing the spirit of the people. These essays, contributed by eminent international thinkers including Slavoj Zizek, Luce Irigaray, Judith Butler, Gianni Vattimo, Walter Mignolo, Marc Ellis, and others, deconstruct the political-metaphysical myths that are the framework for the existence of Israel.Collectively, they offer a multifaceted critique of the metaphysical, theological, and onto-political grounds of the Zionist project and the economic, geopolitical, and cultural outcomes of these foundations. A significant contribution to the debates surrounding the state of Israel today, this groundbreaking work will appeal to anyone interested in political theory, philosophy, Jewish thought, and the Middle East conflict.

The Invention of the Jewish People

The Invention of the Jewish People
Author: Shlomo Sand
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2010-06-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 178168362X

A historical tour de force, The Invention of the Jewish People offers a groundbreaking account of Jewish and Israeli history. Exploding the myth that there was a forced Jewish exile in the first century at the hands of the Romans, Israeli historian Shlomo Sand argues that most modern Jews descend from converts, whose native lands were scattered across the Middle East and Eastern Europe. In this iconoclastic work, which spent nineteen weeks on the Israeli bestseller list and won the coveted Aujourd'hui Award in France, Sand provides the intellectual foundations for a new vision of Israel's future.

How to Fight Anti-Semitism

How to Fight Anti-Semitism
Author: Bari Weiss
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2019-09-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0593136055

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD • The prescient founder of The Free Press delivers an urgent wake-up call to all Americans exposing the alarming rise of anti-Semitism in this country—and explains what we can do to defeat it. “A praiseworthy and concise brief against modern-day anti-Semitism.”—The New York Times On October 27, 2018, eleven Jews were gunned down as they prayed at their synagogue in Pittsburgh. It was the deadliest attack on Jews in American history. For most Americans, the massacre at Tree of Life, the synagogue where Bari Weiss became a bat mitzvah, came as a shock. But anti-Semitism is the oldest hatred, commonplace across the Middle East and on the rise for years in Europe. So that terrible morning in Pittsburgh, as well as the continued surge of hate crimes against Jews in cities and towns across the country, raise a question Americans cannot avoid: Could it happen here? This book is Weiss’s answer. Like many, Weiss long believed this country could escape the rising tide of anti-Semitism. With its promise of free speech and religion, its insistence that all people are created equal, its tolerance for difference, and its emphasis on shared ideals rather than bloodlines, America has been, even with all its flaws, a new Jerusalem for the Jewish people. But now the luckiest Jews in history are beginning to face a three-headed dragon known all too well to Jews of other times and places: the physical fear of violent assault, the moral fear of ideological vilification, and the political fear of resurgent fascism and populism. No longer the exclusive province of the far right, the far left, and assorted religious bigots, anti-Semitism now finds a home in identity politics as well as the reaction against identity politics, in the renewal of America First isolationism and the rise of one-world socialism, and in the spread of Islamist ideas into unlikely places. A hatred that was, until recently, reliably taboo is migrating toward the mainstream, amplified by social media and a culture of conspiracy that threatens us all. Weiss is one of our most provocative writers, and her cri de coeur makes a powerful case for renewing Jewish and American values in this uncertain moment. Not just for the sake of America’s Jews, but for the sake of America.

Chronicles of Dissent

Chronicles of Dissent
Author: Noam Chomsky
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Total Pages: 918
Release: 2022-02-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 164259671X

Conducted from 1984 to 1996, these interviews first appeared in the books Chronicles of Dissent, Keeping the Rabble in Line, and Class Warfare, all published by the independent publisher Common Courage Press in Monroe, Maine. This omnibus collection includes a new introduction by David Barsamian, looking back on conversations and engagement with Chomsky’s ideas that now spans decades, as well as a classic essay by Alexander Cockburn on Chomsky that served as the introduction to one of the original volumes.

Israel and Palestine - Out of the Ashes

Israel and Palestine - Out of the Ashes
Author: Marc H. Ellis
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2002-10-20
Genre: History
ISBN:

New expanded edition of a classic anthropology title that examines ethnicity as a dynamic and shifting aspect of social relations.

The Wicked Son

The Wicked Son
Author: David Mamet
Publisher: Schocken
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2009-09-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0805211578

David Mamet's interest in anti-Semitism is not limited to the modern face of an ancient hatred but encompasses as well the ways in which many Jews have internalized that hatred. Using the metaphor of the Wicked Son at the Passover seder (the child who asks, "What does this story mean to you?") Mamet confronts what he sees as an insidious predilection among some Jews to exclude themselves from the equation and to seek truth and meaning anywhere--in other religions, political movements, mindless entertainment--but in Judaism itself. He also explores the ways in which the Jewish tradition has long been and still remains the Wicked Son in the eyes of the world. Written with the searing honesty and verbal brilliance that is the hallmark of Mamet's work, The Wicked Son is a powerfully thought-provoking look at one of the most destructive and tenacious forces in contemporary life.