Abstract:
‘How do you say modernism in Hebrew?’
In a recent study published in Israel, the history and achievements of Israeli-or Hebrew-modernist art, music, architecture and literature were documented and discussed under the title ‘How Do You Say Modernism in Hebrew?’ Clearly, the authors felt that despite the rich modernist artistic heritage of modern Hebrew culture, the status of modernism in Israeli culture is under-appreciated or misunderstood and its rehabilitation an important intellectual task. However, they did not explicitly raise any political considerations in that book. I wish to address this question and argue that the modernist history of the Zionist movement needs to be re-examined in order to rehabilitate the universalist aspects of the project of Jewish nationalism that lie dormant in its intellectual heritage. Raising some more general philosophical questions about the ideological heritage of Zionist thought, I am aware, may fall on deaf ears or even provoke hostile reactions due to the sensitivity of the topic, so I will try to be as clear as possible.
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