Zionism and Judaism

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, Mar 9, 2015 - History - 254 pages
Why should anyone be a Zionist, a supporter of a Jewish state in the land of Israel? Why should there be a Jewish state in the land of Israel? This book seeks to provide a philosophical answer to these questions. Although a Zionist need not be Jewish, nonetheless this book argues that Zionism is only a coherent political stance when it is intelligently rooted in Judaism, especially in the classical Jewish doctrine of God's election of the people of Israel and the commandment to them to settle the land of Israel. The religious Zionism advocated here is contrasted with secular versions of Zionism that take Zionism to be a replacement of Judaism. It is also contrasted with versions of religious Zionism that ascribe messianic significance to the State of Israel, or which see the main task of religious Zionism to be the establishment of an Israeli theocracy.
 

Contents

Why Zionism?
1
Was Spinoza the First Zionist?
23
Political or Cultural?
48
Should Israel Be a Theocracy?
86
Why the Jews and Why the Land of Israel?
119
Can the State of Israel Be Both Jewish
153
What Could Be the Status of NonJews in
197
What Is the Connection Between the Holocaust
225
Index
251
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2015)

David Novak holds the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair in Jewish Studies as Professor of Religion and Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the American Academy for Jewish Research. He is President of the Union for Traditional Judaism, and Vice President of the Institute on Religion and Public Life. Novak also serves as a Consulting Scholar for the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, New Jersey and as a Project Scholar for the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University, Washington DC.

Bibliographic information