Review by Choice Review
A scholar of Jewish studies, Novak (Univ. of Toronto) approaches his subject--the original Zionist vision to reconstruct the state of the Jews from social pariah to independent state without relinquishing its particularity or uniqueness--with a proviso. From his philosophical and theological point of view, the many expressions of the Zionist idea (political, spiritual, synthetic, religious, revisionist) are baseless without the credo of Judaism: God-Torah-Israel (people and land). In ten well-developed chapters, the author pays close attention to the claim that Zionism is ethnic nationalism. He examines the Zionist take on events past and present, Zionist intellectual history's immeasurable contribution to the establishment of Israel, and the Zionist concern among all disparate parts of the Jewish people to live and preserve Jewish life whenever and wherever it is threatened. Fin de siècle Zionism confronted the perils of enlightenment and emancipation and worked for the restoration of the Jewish state. Novak opines that not physical survival alone but also the transcending election and covenantal theology justified the return of the Jewish people to their ancestral land. The author's "new theory" (better "old-new") embraces the tenets of democratic religious Zionism without ideological extremism (Israeli theocracy, messianic nationalism). Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers. --Zev Garber, Los Angeles Valley College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
