This Very Short Introduction discloses a history of Zionism from the origins of modern Jewish nationalism in the 1870's to the present.

This is the first full-length biography of Judah Leib Gordon (1830-92), the most important Hebrew poet of the 19th century, and one of the pivotal intellectual and cultural figures in Russian Jewry.

Vividly recreating the dramatic story of the murder, the trial that followed, and the political and religious fallout of both, Stanislawski tries to answer these questions and others.

Showing how cosmopolitanism turned to nationalism in the lives and work of these crucial early Zionists, this story is a fascinating chapter in European and Russian, as well as Jewish, cultural and political history.

"Stanislawski shows that each of these three [Nordau, Lilien, and Jabotinsky] came to Zionism out of engagement with the larger issues that preoccupied intellectuals and artists at the turn of the century and that the adoption of Jewish ...

The challenge is to attempt to unravel the conscious from the unconscious distortions in these texts and to regard them as artifacts of individuals’ quests to make sense of their lives, first and foremost for themselves and then, if ...