Jewish State or Israeli Nation? | Boas Evron

... a lucid formulation of a post-Zionist ideology for the generation of the 1980s and 1990s. NInternational Journal of Middle East Studies "... an extremely erudite, brilliant and powerful book with a novel approach: a sober secular conception of Judaism. " NMaariv "... a timely re-affirmation of the secular nature of the Israeli national enterprise. " NJames Diamond oThis compelling book conveys the reader straight to the frontline of the battle raging in Israel over the proper boundaries of the national identity. Evron's radical post-Zionist critique of Israel's conceptual foundations calls in question the core link between Israel and Judaism and between Israel and the Jewish diaspora. His penetrating analysis challenges the muddled ideological bearings of Israel's public self-images and points the way toward a more realistic adaptation to its Middle Eastern environment. Since American Jewry is itself so closely bound up with Israel's being, this work speaks directly also to the troubled American quest for a lucid transmissible Jewish identity. ONNoah Lucas, Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies Boas Evron traces the violent fissures in Israeli society to a basic incompatibility between the concept of a democratic, secular state, on the one hand, and an integral nation defined on a religious basis, on the other. Surveying the full sweep of Jewish history, Evron argues that the Jews were never a territorial nation. Judaism is instead a religious civilization for which the diaspora was not a historical coincidence but a necessary condition of its existence. He concludes that Israel should become a territorial state that would accommodate its sizeable non-Jewish minority in a truly democratic way.