A provocative meditation on the exercise of power by Jews
throughout their history, Biale argues that Jews imitated and
accommodated to survive but never retreated from politics. Most
particularly, Biale shows that Jews had power in their dispersion,
more power than memories of the Holocaust would have contemporary
analysts believe, and they didn't always have genuine independent
power, mostly because Jewish sovereignty has often had to exist in
a political world overshadowed by a powerful empire. To make this
point, Biale chronologically traces Jewish history, discussing
revolts against Roman authority, rabbinical notions of power, the
particular corporate nature of power in the Middle Ages, and the
ways Jews have reacted to the strains of modernity. Finally, Biale
uses his excursion to discuss what he sees as an ideological
crisis. Most significantly, he discusses the challenges facing
Zionism. He calls for a sharpening of ideological debates to
determine, for instance, if Israel wants to be a normal state or a
messianic one. Biale makes readers face Jewish history more
realistically, and, in doing so, he raises questions that deepen
historical understanding. (Kirkus Reviews)
WINNER OF THE 1987 JWB NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FOR HISTORY
In this radical reinterpretation of Jewish history, David Biale
tackles the myth of Jewish political passivity between the fall of
an independent Jewish Commonwealth in 70 C.E. and the rebirth of
the state of Israel in 1948. He argues that Jews throughout history
demonstrated a savvy understanding of political life; they were
neither as powerless as the memory of the Holocaust years would
suggest nor as powerful as the as the contemporary state of Israel
would imply.
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