Israel in Search of Identity

The author examines the conflict that has plagued Israel - both with its neighbours and within its own borders - since its inception, placing the situation in historical perspective and tracing the roots of the conflict to the way in which the founding fathers of the Jewish state conceived of the world and of their situation. Israel's founders, hailing overwhelmingly from Russia and Russian Poland, subscribed to ethnic-nationalist doctrines current in 19th-century Eastern and Central Europe in their day - doctrines which Rejwan argues are alien not only to Judaism as a faith but also to the religious cultures of the Middle East as a whole. Rejwan analyzes the ways in which modern concepts of ethnic nationality - Arab as well as Jewish - have affected both Zionist Jew and Pan-Arab nationalist, and how Israeli statehood is changing the basic concept of Jewish identity in israel and in the diaspora.