Land and Desire in Early Zionism

by Boaz Neumann

Overview

This innovative study examines the responses of early-twentieth-century pioneers to “the Land” of Palestine. Early Zionist historiography portrayed these young settlers as heroic; later, more critical studies by the “new” historians and sociologists focused on their failures and shortcomings. Neumann argues for something else that historians have yet to identify—desire. Desire for the Land and a visceral identification with it begin to explain the pioneer experience and its impact on Israeli history and collective memory, as well as on Israelis’ abiding connection to the Land of Israel. His close readings of archival documents, memoirs, diaries, poetry, and prose of the period develop new understandings—many of them utterly surprising—of the Zionist enterprise. For Neumann, the Zionist revolution was an existential revolution: for the pioneers, to be in the Land of Israel was to be!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611680157
Publisher:	Brandeis University Press
Publication date:	05/10/2011
Series:	The Schusterman Series in Israel Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	250
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

AMY NEUSTEIN, Ph.D., is a sociologist, researcher, lecturer, and author of many scholarly articles on child sexual abuse, sociology of religion, and speech technology. She is the co-author of From Madness to Mutiny (NUP, 2005), and is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Speech Technology. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse.

Table of Contents

Preface • Acknowledgments • Pioneers and Pioneerism • Desire and Rebirth • Dissolving Boundaries • Articulating the Physical Territory of the Land • Articulating the Pioneer Body • Pioneer Language: The Conquest of Hebrew • Bibliography • Notes • Index

Editorial Reviews

Neumann takes seriously all the earnest paeans to the land in the diaries and literary works of Zionist pioneers, understanding their passion for territory, both symbolic and concrete, as foundational to the Israeli enterprise.”—Tablet Magazine

From the Publisher