Public Libraries of Suffolk County, New York

Israel is real, Rich Cohen

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages [355]-360) and index

maps

index present

non fiction

Israel is real

electronic resource eBook

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Rich Cohen

In AD 70, when the Second Temple was destroyed, a handful of visionaries saved Judaism by reinventing it--by taking what had been a national religion and turning it into an idea. Jews no longer needed Jerusalem to be Jews. Whenever a Jew studied--wherever he was--he would be in the holy city. But in our own time, Zionists have turned the book back into a temple. In Rich Cohen's new history of the Zionist idea and the Jewish state--the history of a nation chronicled as if it were the biography of a person--he brings to life dozens of figures, each driven by the same impulse: to reach Jerusalem. From false messiahs to the early Zionists, to the iconic figures of David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir Cohen shows how all these lives together form a single story. He examines the myth of the wandering Jew, the paradox of Jewish power, and the triumph and tragedy of the Jewish state.--From publisher description

The fire -- The vineyard -- The son of the star -- A city in a mirror -- Messiahs: true or false -- The ghetto Jew -- House hunting -- The flâneur -- The night squads -- Killing Adolph again -- First good war in a long time -- The new Jew -- God made the world in six days -- Jerusalem syndrome -- The surprise -- Israel is too real -- Ninth of Av