Jewish Statesmanship


Book Description

Declaring that Israel is disintegrating, the author argues that the fundamental cause of the disintegration is "a normless or irrational conception of democracy that clashes with Judaism and renders it impossible for Israel to achieve the national unity required for survival in a hostile Arab-Islamic environment." Recognizing the fundamental tension between conceptions of Israel as a democratic state versus a Jewish state, he opts for moving in the direction of the latter, rejecting such democratic concepts as a state made up of citizens, pluralistic government that listens to the voices of the Arab or the secular Jew, and other such dangers to the Jewish state. Only when Israel is based solely on the religious laws of Judaism, he argues, can it effectively deal with the populations around it that are destined to remain hostile and ruled by dictatorships. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.




Jewish Statesmanship


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Walther Rathenau


Book Description

This deeply informed biography of Walther Rathenau (1867-1922) tells of a man who—both thoroughly German and unabashedly Jewish—rose to leadership in the German War-Ministry Department during the First World War, and later to the exalted position of foreign minister in the early days of the Weimar Republic. His achievement was unprecedented—no Jew in Germany had ever attained such high political rank. But Rathenau's success was marked by tragedy: within months he was assassinated by right-wing extremists seeking to destroy the newly formed Republic. Drawing on Rathenau's papers and on a depth of knowledge of both modern German and German-Jewish history, Shulamit Volkov creates a finely drawn portrait of this complex man who struggled with his Jewish identity yet treasured his “otherness.” Volkov also places Rathenau in the dual context of Imperial and Weimar Germany and of Berlin's financial and intellectual elite. Above all, she illuminates the complex social and psychological milieu of German Jewry in the period before Hitler's rise to power.




Ben-Gurion


Book Description

A revelatory portrait of Israel's first prime minister, written by its current president, includes coverage of his support of the United Nations 1947 Partition Plan for Palestine, his granting of first exemptions to Orthodox military servicepeople and his peaceful overtures toward post-Holocaust Germany.




The Jewish Forum


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Torah and Western Thought


Book Description

Intellectual Portraits of Orthodoxy and Modernity.




Don Isaac Abravanel, Statesman & Philosopher


Book Description

Don Isaac Abravanel (1437-1508) was a major historical figure during the waning of the Middle Ages. Statesman, diplomat, courtier, and financier, he was, at the same time, a scholar of encyclopedic learning, a philosopher, an exegete, a prolific author, a mystic, and an apocalyptist. In Abravanel, B. Netanyahu suggests, two long lines of tradition met and concluded: that of medieval Jewish statesmen and that of medieval Jewish philosophers. In what is both a biography and an exploration of Abravanel's thought and influence, Netanyahu describes how Abravanel illuminated the grave crisis and profound transformation experienced by the Jewish people after the Spanish expulsion. First published in 1953, Don Isaac Abravanel has been out of print for several years. This new edition includes revisions in the text, notes, and bibliography.