Abstract

The radical transformation of the Jews during the last century has not ceased to arouse curiosity. Once a widely scattered, mostly isolated and rather backward, and often despised minority-group, Jews have risen in the world. Today they are an advanced and outgoing sector of western society, which having established themselves as a sovereign nation in their ancient homeland. What is the difference between Jewry and Judaism? Are Jews an ethnic minority, a religious community, a political entity? This book faces such issues by depicting their historical background and analyzing their intellectual underpinnings. Thus Zionism at the turn of the century is presented as a thorough-going renaissance movement that changed Jewish life from within, and transformed the relations between the Jews and the outside world.