Skip to content

Booksellers & Trade Customers: Sign up for online bulk buying at trade.atlanticbooks.com for wholesale discounts

Booksellers: Create Account on our B2B Portal for wholesale discounts

Becoming Hebrew: The Creation of a Jewish National Culture in Ottoman Palestine

by Arieh Bruce Saposnik
Save 17% Save 17%
Current price ₹14,020.00
Original price ₹16,824.00
Original price ₹16,824.00
Original price ₹16,824.00
(-17%)
₹14,020.00
Current price ₹14,020.00

Imported Edition - Ships in 18-21 Days

Free Shipping in India on orders above Rs. 500

Request Bulk Quantity Quote
+91
Book cover type: Hardcover
  • ISBN13: 9780195331219
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • Subject: N/A
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press
  • Publisher Imprint: Oxford University Press
  • Publication Date:
  • Pages: 328
  • Original Price: GBP 98.0
  • Language: English
  • Edition: N/A
  • Item Weight: 613 grams
  • BISAC Subject(s): Middle East / Israel & Palestine

"If the Jews wish to become a nation of 'Jewish Culture, '" Eliezer Ben-Yehuda wrote in 1904, "they must first become truly a nation." Throughout the subsequent decade, Ben-Yehuda and other Zionist activists in Palestine attempted to transform the small, divided, economically depressed, and demographically declining Yishuv -- the pre-state Jewish community -- into the foundation of a modern nation. In this book, Arieh Bruce Saposnik tells the story of this transformation.

As Saposnik shows, these activists did not attempt to rewrite Jewish culture simply by uprooting and transplanting themselves, but sought to affect a dramatic revolution in all aspects of Jewish life. They endeavored not only to revise Judaism, but to revise the very definition of culture, and the expanse with which they viewed the word was, in part, what made this group so revolutionary. The new "Hebrew" culture they sought to create encompassed everything from the way in which Yishuv Zionists dressed to the art they created and the literature they read, to the holidays they celebrated, to the language they spoke and the accent with which they spoke it. Politics, economics, and even medicine were mobilized to become dynamic parts of a new Jewish identity.

Saposnik attempts to recapture their comprehensive view of culture and to show how these activists translated images and ideas into concrete cultural institutions, new art, rituals, and language. But, he also argues that this new culture, while expansive, was highly precarious and intensely contested. The Zionists struggled to maintain a complex relationship with traditional Jewish discourses, practices, and liturgy and to forge a delicate balance between the traditional and the novel, "occident" and "orient," and shifting national centers and peripheries. Through his examination of the Zionist cultural project, Saposnik sheds new light on the origins of Israel and Israeli culture, and on the fundamental building blocks from which modern nations and nationalisms are erected.

Arieh B. Saposnik is Professor of Hebrew Culture at Arizona State University.

Trusted for over 49 years

Family Owned Company

Secure Payment

All Major Credit Cards/Debit Cards/UPI & More Accepted

New & Authentic Products

India's Largest Distributor

Need Support?

Whatsapp Us