Zionism and the Creation of the ‘New Jew’
Max Nordau, Arthur Ruppin and Ephraim Lilien
Zionism and the Creation of the ‘New Jew’
Max Nordau, Arthur Ruppin and Ephraim Lilien
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Description
In what ways did the European racist and racial thinking affect the development of Zionism? This book critically investigates three important figures in the history of Zionism to trace how the rise of eugenics, racism and European and German colonialism and antisemitism influenced Zionist ideology and its proponents in Europe and Palestine.
The book argues that while dismayed by the failure of Jewish assimilation and the persecution of Jews inherent in Europe's embrace of racial hierarchies in the 19th century, Zionism as a counterforce to such oppression reflected elements of these racial ideas in its project to transform Judaism from a religion into a secular national identity. It first provides background on the contradictions and tensions of this intellectual environment, including division between western and central European Jewish thinkers and Eastern European Jews. The book then provides detailed case studies of philosopher and critic Max Nordau's embrace of Zionism and the project of 'muscular Judaism' in response to antisemitism, Arthur Ruppin's racial thinking and its relation to his activities organising Jewish immigration to Palestine, and the life of Ephraim Lilien whose artistic representations of the 'New Jew' the author argues reflects Nordau and Ruppin's respective concepts of the 'regenerated Jewish body' and 'return to the land'.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Zionism's emergence from Germany's Jewish experiences.
–Jews in German culture and Bildung
–Rising German antisemitism
–The German–Jewish identity crisis
–German colonisation as a model for Zionists
Chapter 2: Race science in Germany and Zionism
–The Jewish divide: East and West
–Racial muscles: German and Jewish youth movements.
–Racial thinking in Germany
–The racial imagination of German Jews
- Jews against racial thinking
–Zionist racial nationalism
The Wandervogel ideology
Chapter 3: Max Nordau: Muscular Judaism Against Degeneration
–Max Nordau: A biographical sketch
–Nordau's Pre–Zionist period and the discourse of degeneration.
–Nordau and Zionism: Herzl's most significant convert.
–Crafting the public image of Zionism.
–Max Nordau: prophet of racial Zionism
–Muscular Judaism
–Max Nordau: Bedrock at Zionist congresses.
Chapter 4: Arthur Ruppin: 'A Return to the Soil'
–Ruppin's early life and self-image
–Ruppin the racialist and eugenicist
–On the road to Zionism.
–From Posen to Palestine: Ruppin and the Palestine Office (Palästinaamt) 1908
–Father of Jewish settlement in Palestine: German colonialism and Palestine settlement strategies.
Ruppin's land purchasing strategy/Arab policy
Chapter 5: Ephraim Lilien and the Iconography of Zionism: 'Propaganda in Great Style'
–Martin Buber's influence: Cultural Zionism and a programme for 'rebirth' and' regeneration.'
The mission of Ost und West (1901–1922)
The birth of Zionist art at the Fifth Zionist Congress (1901)
–Ephraim Lilien, Jugendstil and Palestine.
–Establishing the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem (1903)
– Art and propaganda
The Jewish National Fund as a vehicle for the new Zionist art
Exposition and pavilion iconography: representing “Jewish” Palestine
–From Muskleljude to Sabra
Product details
| Published | Oct 29 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (PDF) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 224 |
| ISBN | 9780755658015 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Illustrations | 30 bw illus |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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