Description
Book SynopsisFinalist for National Jewish Book Award for Writing Based on Archival Material 2022.
Jewish political and cultural behaviour during the first half of the twentieth century comes to the fore in this portrayal of a forgotten movement with contemporary relevance. Commencing with the Zionist rejection of the Uganda proposal in 1905, the Jewish Territorialist Movement searched for areas outside Palestine in which to create settlements of Jews. This study analyses the Territorialists’ ideology and activities in the Jewish context of the time, but their thought and discourse also reflect geopolitical concerns that still have resonance today in debates about colonialist attitudes to peoplehood, territory, and space. As the colonial world order rapidly changed after 1945, the Territorialists did not abandon their aspirations in overseas lands. Instead, in their attempts to find settlement solutions for Europe’s ‘surplus’ Jews, they moved from negotiating predominantly with the European colonizers to negotiating also with the ever more powerful non-Western leaders of decolonizing nations.
This book reconstructs the rich history of the activities and changing ideologies of Jewish Territorialism, represented by Israel Zangwill’s Jewish Territorial Organisation (the ITO) and, later, by the Freeland League for Jewish Colonization under the leadership of Isaac Steinberg. Via Uganda, Angola, Madagascar, Australia, and Suriname, this story eventually leads us to questions about yidishkeyt, and to forgotten early twentieth-century ideas of how to be Jewish.
Trade Review"
Beyond Zion...shows that Jewish politics in the pre-War and immediate post-War years were more complex and diverse than we might think."
Simon Rocker,
The Jewish ChronicleTable of ContentsIntroduction
1. Israel Zangwill and the Jewish Territorial Organization
2. Recovering Atlantis: The Freeland League and Jewish Politics
3. Freeland versus Zion
4. Fitting the Zeitgeist: Territorialism and Geopolitics
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
