Sovereign Jews: Israel, Zionism, and Judaism

Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: A Jewish Sovereignty? -- A Traditionist Stance -- A Plurality of Judaism(s) -- Structure of the Book -- Part One: Religion, Judaism, Tradition -- Chapter 1 Religion-The History and Politics of an Ahistorical Concept -- A Few Chapters in the History of Religion -- A Political Conception of Apolitical Religion -- Religion and Colonialism -- Religion, Nationalism -- Chapter 2 Are Jewish Traditions a Religion? -- Judaism in a Protestant Straightjacket -- Apolitical Jewish Religion -- Mendelssohn: De-Politicizing Judaism -- Jewish Religion and the Sovereign State -- Religion and Law -- Law, Tradition, and Science -- Jewish "Religion" and the Denominationalization of Jewish Identity -- Chapter 3 Tradition as Language and Narrative -- Tradition as Antimony to Liberty? -- An Alternative Epistemology -- Tradition as Language -- Tradition as Narrative -- So, What Do These Analogies Point At? -- Part Two: Zionism and Jewish Traditions -- Chapter 4 Zionism, Jewish "Religion," and Secularism -- Religion, Secularization, and the Nation-State: The Zionist Narrative -- A Zionist Revision: Modern but Not Exactly "Secular" -- The Persistence of the Secularization Narrative -- Zionist Ideology and the Invention of Jewish "Religion" -- Chapter 5 Zionism and Jewish Traditions -- "Judaism as Culture" versus a Nietzschean Rebellion Against Tradition -- Aḥad Ha'am: "Secularization" or a "National Theology"? -- A Universal Secularization in a Jewish Guise -- Secularization, Ethics, and Myth -- A National Theology -- Aḥad Ha'am's Conception of Religion and Tradition -- The Meaning of Secularity -- Judaism as Culture -- Religious and Secular People -- Secularism as a Rebellion Against Tradition: Micha Yosef Berdyczewski -- Is a Rebellion Against Nature Possible? -- Tradition and Liberty -- Past and Present -- Body and Spirit