Yitzhak Conforti
Prof. Yitzhak Conforti is Associate Professor in the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Department of Jewish History at Bar Ilan University in Israel. Yitzhak, is a scholar of modern Jewish history, Jewish nationalism and Zionism. He is the author of: Past Tense – Zionist Historiography and the Shaping of the Zionist Memory (Hebrew; Jerusalem: Yad Itzhak Ben-Zvi, 2006); ---, Shaping A Nation – The Cultural Origins of Zionism, 1882-1948, (Hebrew; Yad Itzhak Ben Zvi, 2019 Jerusalem); Zionism and Jewish Culture: A Study of a National Movement (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2024).He was a visiting scholar in the Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies at Oxford University, summer of 2005. He was a Visiting Scholar in the Tauber Center at NYU and a fellow at the Center for Jewish History, New York (2014, 2022-23). In 2015 he was a fellow in the Katz Center for Judaic studies at U-Penn, Philadelphia, and a visiting research scholar at Brandeis University (2024). He has published extensively on modern Jewish historiography, Zionist historiography, Jewish Nationalism, Zionism, and anti-Semitism.
Phone: 972-3-5318353
Address: The department of Jewish History
Bar Ilan University
Ramat Gan, Israel 5290002
Phone: 972-3-5318353
Address: The department of Jewish History
Bar Ilan University
Ramat Gan, Israel 5290002
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Books by Yitzhak Conforti
Jews from around the world established the Zionist movement as a ramified organization that cannot be described only from the political aspect – from the top down. This book demonstrates that the system of values, myths and beliefs of Zionism were drawn from pre-modern Jewish culture. This culture often dictated the political agenda of Zionism, and the book examines its influence on the formation of the nation.
Israeli society today is still occupied with the basic questions that engaged Zionism at its inception. What is the appropriate relationship between Zionism and the State of Israel, the past, and Jewish tradition? What is the ideal balance between the good of the Jewish people, the Land of Israel, and its entirety? What is the proper character of Zionism: western or eastern, ethnic or civil? And what is the utopian vision of the future of the Jewish state? This book focuses on these questions and offers a fresh perspective on these issues.
Papers by Yitzhak Conforti
approach assert that in order to achieve a complete understanding of nationalism, we must address its cultural pre-modern dimension. I argue that in the case study of Jewish nationalism presented here, this approach offers us a more nuanced understanding of early Zionism. First, the article explores the formation of the Zionist conception of the Jewish past and shows that this developed in the second half of the nineteenth century before the inception of political Zionism. Second, the article demonstrates that political Zionism was deeply connected with cultural issues. Two key issues that generated much internal debate and conflict during the early years of the Zionist movement are presented as examples: the schism between ‘East’ and ‘West’, and the debate over ‘the people versus the land’. Exploring these political conflicts from a cultural perspective highlights the strong connection between the Zionist movement and the pre-modern Jewish past.
Jews from around the world established the Zionist movement as a ramified organization that cannot be described only from the political aspect – from the top down. This book demonstrates that the system of values, myths and beliefs of Zionism were drawn from pre-modern Jewish culture. This culture often dictated the political agenda of Zionism, and the book examines its influence on the formation of the nation.
Israeli society today is still occupied with the basic questions that engaged Zionism at its inception. What is the appropriate relationship between Zionism and the State of Israel, the past, and Jewish tradition? What is the ideal balance between the good of the Jewish people, the Land of Israel, and its entirety? What is the proper character of Zionism: western or eastern, ethnic or civil? And what is the utopian vision of the future of the Jewish state? This book focuses on these questions and offers a fresh perspective on these issues.
approach assert that in order to achieve a complete understanding of nationalism, we must address its cultural pre-modern dimension. I argue that in the case study of Jewish nationalism presented here, this approach offers us a more nuanced understanding of early Zionism. First, the article explores the formation of the Zionist conception of the Jewish past and shows that this developed in the second half of the nineteenth century before the inception of political Zionism. Second, the article demonstrates that political Zionism was deeply connected with cultural issues. Two key issues that generated much internal debate and conflict during the early years of the Zionist movement are presented as examples: the schism between ‘East’ and ‘West’, and the debate over ‘the people versus the land’. Exploring these political conflicts from a cultural perspective highlights the strong connection between the Zionist movement and the pre-modern Jewish past.