This volume engages diverse topics such as art, music, and radio broadcasting in the development of modern Jewish nationalism by leading scholars in their respective fields. It contains richly detailed studies that challenge existing historiography--from personal struggles with nationalism, to the lesser-known origins of the Balfour Declaration, from boisterous demonstrations on the streets of pre-World War I Galicia, to skirmishes between Jews in present-day Jerusalem. It examines how nationalism has worked in theory and practice for Jews and at times been fiercely resisted. Beginning with the memory of Theodor Herzl and his cohort at the London Zionist Congress of 1900, this book revisits the wider scene of Zionism's emergence, as we explore the imagination of, and the attempted national mobilization of Jewry throughout the twentieth century.
Contributors include: Delphine Bechtel; Nachman Ben-Yehuda; Michael Berkowitz; Inka Bertz; Philip Bohlman; John M. Efron; Richard A. Freund; Francois Guesnet; Michael Löwy; Barbara Mann; Derek Penslar; James Renton; Aviel Roshwald; Joshua Shanes.