Introduction to a Book About Israel by Professor Harshav

In What is Modern Israel? (University of Chicago/Pluto Press, 2016), Yakov Rabkin, a professor of history at the University of Montreal, discusses some of the most fundamental issues pertaining to the history and socio-politics of Israel. He does not shy away from dealing with some of the most sensitive and controversial issues, such as the Christian roots of Zionist ideology, the commemoration and political uses of the Holocaust in Israel, and the problematic stance of Zionist ideology towards Jewish tradition. Rabkin’s earlier work has charted some of the main streams of Jewish opposition to Zionism. In this book, he offers a coherent Jewish critique of his own.

Yaacov Yadgar is the Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies at the University of Oxford. His most recent book is Sovereign Jews: Israel, Zionism and Judaism (SUNY Press, 2017). You can read more of Yadgar’s work here.

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