A Voice4Israel board member is reading The Zionist Ideas: Visions for the Jewish Homeland―Then, Now, Tomorrow by Gil Troy. She would like to share this quote from the introduction:
“Sadly, the most frequent question non-Israeli Jews have asked me about this book is ‘Will you include anti-Zionists, too?’ When feminist anthologies include sexists, LGBT anthologies include homophobes, and civil rights anthologies include racists, I will consider anti-Zionists. This Jewish need to include our enemies when telling our own story tells its own story.”
Jewish Journal Review
In the Jewish Journal, Jonathan Kirsch writes:
“Today, as we celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, it is all too easy to forget how long the Jewish people longed for a homeland and how unattainable it seemed, even on the eve of statehood in 1948. To put it another way, the history of modern Israel is measured in decades, but the idea of Zionism is measured in millennia.” Read Kirsch’s full review here.
‘The Zionist Ideas’ Reclaims Women’s Voices
Writing in Hadassah Magazine, Troy shares:
“When the scholar-activist Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg published The Zionist Idea in 1959, it quickly became the Zionist Bible for English speakers. For generations now, that anthology of great Zionist writings has introduced Jews and non-Jews to one of the most extraordinary mass conversations in world history. Starting in the 1880s, marginalized Jewish intellectuals in Eastern Europe, simultaneously entranced by nationalism and traumatized by anti-Semitism, debated their future. By 1948, their words, ideas and debates had produced the State of Israel, which today is home to the world’s largest Jewish community.” Read Troy’s full article here.
The Zionist Ideas’: A Zionist Revival to Reclaim Zionism
In the Jerusalem Post, Troy shares:
“At the JCC Association of North America’s biennial in Memphis, after I pitched the sundaes as sweet launching pads to more substantive Zionist conversations throughout this 70th-anniversary year, one JCC director confessed: ‘I had dreaded this session on Israel.’ She thanked me for reminding her that there’s more to Israel than Netanyahu and Trump, the Western Wall and Palestinians – while showing how to frame the conversation about the deeper meaning of Israel, Jewish peoplehood and Identity Zionism – with texts and without.” Read the full article here.
Have you read Gil Troy’s book The Zionist Ideas? Contact us to let us know what you think.