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ChaeRan Y. Freeze, Sylvia Fuks Fried, and Eugene R. Sheppard, eds., The Individual in History: Essays in Honor of Jehuda Reinharz

2016; Oxford University Press; Volume: 36; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/mj/kjw016

1086-3273

Deborah Dash Moore,

Religion and Society Interactions

This mammoth festschrift , honoring modern Jewish historian and former president of Brandeis University, Jehuda Reinharz, includes thirty-one essays and covers over five hundred pages. No review can do justice to such a volume’s many virtues, except in a most general way. The scholars invited to participate hail largely from the United States and Israel. Most of them work in the field of Zionist history, some in modern Jewish history and the history of the Middle East, and a few in American Jewish history. The thematic focus on individuals in history, reflecting concerns of Reinharz’s scholarship, especially his magisterial biography of Chaim Weizmann, slants the volume toward “great men.” Three essays examine women. In fact, only twenty percent of the contributors are women. Most articles focus on various Zionist leaders. The volume is organized into five sections: Ideology and Politics (13–164), the longest section with ten essays; Statecraft (165–268); Intellectual, Social and Cultural Spheres (269–364); Witnessing History (365–446); and In the Academy (447–532), the shortest section with only three essays. Ideology and Politics examines major Zionist figures, such as Herzl, Ahad Ha’am, Louis Brandeis, and Stephen Wise, alongside less well-known Zionists such as Jessie Sampter and Me’ir Ya’ari. Many of the essays present synoptic overviews, drawing upon previously published scholarship. However, Aviva Halamish’s article on Ya’ari and Hashomer Hatza’ir and Meir Chazan’s essay on Jessie Sampter and Givat Brenner derive from original research. Both Halamish and Chazan reclaim individuals whose actions and opinions complicate and enrich Zionist narratives. David Ben-Gurion understandably dominates the section on Statecraft, although Asher Susser devotes his contribution to Wasfi al-Tall. Tall was an important leader of Jordan and an architect of “Black September” until his assassination by Palestinian gunmen in 1971. The material in the third section ranges broadly, from a discussion of a Talmudic statement by Moshe Halbertal to a consideration of spatial coherence in relation to sovereignty by Arnold Band. The fourth section on Witnessing History starts off with a fascinating article by Steven Zipperstein on the Kishinev pogrom, comparing the simultaneous reportage by two very different men sent to cover the violence: the Hebrew poet Haim Nachman Bialik and the Irish Republican leader and journalist, Michael Davitt.