Israel, the Impossible Land(Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture)
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What has the land of Israel meant for the Jewish imagination? This book provides a lively and readable answer, covering Biblical times to the present. Its aim is to pierce the mystery of the images of Israel, to grasp their meaning and function, to trace their origins and history, and to resituate in historical terms the fertile mythology that has peopled and continues to people the Jewish imagination, interposing a screen between a people and their land. Describing the real, however, is not sufficient to disqualify the myths. The authors believe, with the famous French historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet, that: “Things are not so simple. Myth is not opposed to the real as the false to the true; myth accompanies the real.” Today, Israel is an undeniable fact and no longer has to legitimize its existence. It is in the midst of living through the crises of adulthood. The authors simply want to reconstitute and trace the genealogies of these contemporary crises. Only upon a clear understanding of this present and this past can a future be constructed.
AcknowledgmentsTranslator's NoteIntroduction11The Promised Land7"In the Beginning," Ambiguity9A Heritage Deferred12Exile and the Desert16The Memory of an Initial Expropriation20A Dismembered Land24Sedentary People, Nomadic God27If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem...302The Holy Land34New Horizons34A Partial Reappropriation37The Center and the Periphery41Living Without the Temple46A "Deterritorialized" Judaism?50The Legal Land52Holy Land, Holy People563The Land of Dreams60Other Times: The Land's Middle Ages?60Stars and Climates65The Heart of the World69Divine Land71The Land as Metaphor75A Taste of Paradise79Nearby Lands, Distant Lands824The Exiled Land87Land and Liturgy88The Land and the Law: Rabbinic Hermeneutical Exercises94The Duty of Alwah or the Duty of Exile?98The Forbidden Land102Encounters with Palestine107Voyagers and "Geographers"110Nostalgia1165The Rediscovered Land121"Here" and "There"121The Christian Rediscovery of Palestine131Palestine Revisited by the Jews137Ancient Land, New Land(s)1426The Recreated Land152To Whom Does the Land Belong?152The Cult of the Land157The Symbolism of Pioneering160The Myths to the Rescue of the Land168The Land of Historians179Negation of Exile, Negation of Self1877The Impossible Land195A Culture of Rootedness195Interminable Exile199The Return of the Promised Land208The Coming of Post-Zionism212The Wandering Israeli224Epilogue231Afterword237Chronology241Notes250Select Bibliography270The Authors287Index of Names of Persons and Organizations288Index of Place-Names292
