Monday, July 30, 2007

Get This Book

The Jewish Revolution
Jewish Statehood

Israel Eldad
ISBN: 978-9652294142
Format: Hardback 168 pages
Publish date: 07/2007
Publisher: Gefen Publishing House
Price: $21.95

Description:

With The Jewish Revolution classical Zionism has found its true interpretation. In the highest tradition of the soldier-statesman, Dr. Israel Eldad advocates a form of Zionism that is unpopular in conventional society. He condemns
“establishmentarian,” “social-club” Zionism as a belittling of Jewish history and a threat to Jewish lives. In its
place, he calls for a revolutionary creed – one that dares assert its right to the Jewish homeland; not as defined by diplomats, politicians and Security Council Resolutions, but in biblical, historical terms.

He boldly declares that Jewish “diplomacy” failed to save millions of European Jews, and he accuses world leaders of
inviting new Holocausts by denying history’s lessons and ignoring its imperatives. He warns the Jewish people that it can rely only on its own forces, and he offers a solution to the Arab problem in the Middle East.

The Jewish Revolution combines the passion of the patriot, the logic of the scholar and the sweep of the historian.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Scholar, writer and active Zionist revolutionary Israel Eldad was born in Galicia in 1910. After graduating from the Rabbinical Seminary in Vienna and obtaining his doctorate in philosophy, he returned to Poland to teach Jewish Studies at the Vilna Teachers’ Seminary. Invited by Menachem Begin, he joined the Warsaw leadership of B’rit Trumpeldor – “Betar” – the youth section of Jabotinsky’s Revisionist Zionist Party. In 1938 he first met Avraham Stern, founder of the underground Zionist movement Lohamei Heirut Israel, “The Fighters for the Freedom of Israel – Lehi” (the Stern Group).

Arriving in Palestine in 1941, he joined the underground as a member of Lehi Headquarters Staff. During the crucial years of World War II, when the British Mandatory Government was attempting to appease the Arabs by conducting a policy of repression against Palestine’s Jewish community, Eldad made secret broadcasts, wrote articles for underground publications and edited the Wall Newspaper – “illegal” bulletins pasted on the walls at night – since compiled in book form as Let the Walls Speak.

While attempting to escape arrest by the British police, Eldad suffered a serious back injury. For two years he
remained in British prisons, his entire body encased in a cast. Dramatically freed from his military guards by Lehi
comrades in 1946, he resumed his work in the underground movement until the establishment of the State of Israel.
For many years he was editor of Sulam, a political and literary monthly recognized as the leading journal of its
kind. He wrote Ma’aser Rishon (The First Tithe), which deals with the Hebrew underground movement and his part in it. He is the author of Hegyonot Mikrah, a highly original, challenging commentary on the Bible. For four years he edited the unique historical paper Chronicles – News of the Past. He translated from German into Hebrew the complete writings of Friedrich
Nietzsche, published four volumes of selected papers and with his son Arieh wrote Jerusalem: The Challenge (1976).

Dr. Eldad was a Professor in Humanistic Studies at the Haifa Technion and at Ben-Gurion University of the
Negev in Beer-Sheva. He died in 1996 and was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.


Table of Contents
*Introduction
*An Existence of Nonconformity
*The Fall of the Bastille
*Sources of Zionism — Two Old and One New
*New Zionism vs. the New Left, or the Joseph Complex
*Zionism as Liberation, Revolution and Renaissance
*Right, Necessary and Possible
*The Zionist Front in Soviet Russia
*Intermezzo, Rhapsody, Caesura
*Eretz Yisrael or Palestine
*The Arab-Jewish Conflict
*Before Any Court of Justice
*Jordan Is a River Not a State
*Israel and Ishmael
*Three Points of No Return and Three Stages of Salvation
*Israel
*Afterword by Arieh Eldad

1 comment:

mnuez said...

Medad still stands by Eldad, ey? ;-)

Anyway, I have Maaser Rishon (not to mention Chronicles) and I've read some of Eldad's other stuff and he is indeed fantastic.

The old Lechiniks from his chevra are an extraordinary bunch. (I hope that Yakhin, Barmatz and Ben-Dov are still well.)

If only there were more than a dozen or two of us who still feel the old Beitari principles... but alas...

Today's great zionists are almost all religious zionists and while i do love them support them and stand by them I'm less than convinced in the magic of which they speak and I wish that there were some old-time Jabotinskyesque zionists still around. (and by "around" I mean in places other than nursing homes)