A People Apart: A Political History of the Jews in Europe 1789–1939
David Vital
Abstract
The twentieth century has seen both the greatest triumph of Jewish history and its greatest tragedy: the birth of the nation of Israel and the state-sponsored genocide of the Holocaust. This book attempts to examine the role played by the Jews themselves, across the whole of Europe, during the century and a half leading up to these events. It explores the Jews' troubled relationship with Europe, documenting the struggles of this ‘nation without a territory’ to establish a place for itself within an increasingly polarized and nationalist continent. The book examines the clash within the Jewish ... More
The twentieth century has seen both the greatest triumph of Jewish history and its greatest tragedy: the birth of the nation of Israel and the state-sponsored genocide of the Holocaust. This book attempts to examine the role played by the Jews themselves, across the whole of Europe, during the century and a half leading up to these events. It explores the Jews' troubled relationship with Europe, documenting the struggles of this ‘nation without a territory’ to establish a place for itself within an increasingly polarized and nationalist continent. The book examines the clash within the Jewish community between politically neutral traditionalists and a new group of activists, whose unprecedented demands for national and political self-determination were stimulated both by increasing civil emancipation and the mounting effort to drive the Jews out of Europe altogether.
Keywords:
Jews,
Israel,
genocide,
Holocaust,
self-determination,
activists,
Europe
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2001 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199246816 |
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2012 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199246816.001.0001 |