Here are 100 books that The Seventh Million fans have personally recommended if you like
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I grew up in the Soviet Union, where being Jewish had no intellectual or religious substance. My discovery of Judaism and Jewish history happened after my emigration, when I was already an adult. This helps me to relate to audiences and readers who are not Jewish. For example, a Japanese translation of my book on Jewish opposition to Zionism earned a place on a bestseller list in Japan, where hardly any Jews live. In the course of my university career, I have explained events in Israel in electronic and printed media on the five continents where I also have taught as a visiting professor.
When I first started reading this book, I could not put it aside. I read it again recently, in the wake of the October 2023 Hamas attack, and found it as relevant as when it was first published.
Scholarly and accessible at the same time, it showed me why Israel’s overwhelming military power has failed to bring peace to the Holy Land. While much of the literature on this controversial subject looks like militant propaganda, I like the tone of Shlaim’s book: serene, compassionate, and not at all polemical.
Avi Shlaim's The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World is the outstanding book on Israeli foreign policy, now thoroughly updated with a new preface and chapters on Israel's most recent leaders
In the 1920s, hard-line Zionists developed the doctrine of the 'Iron Wall': negotiations with the Arabs must always be from a position of military strength, and only when sufficiently strong Israel would be able to make peace with her Arab neighbours.
This doctrine, argues Avi Shlaim, became central to Israeli policy; dissenters were marginalized and many opportunities to reconcile with Palestinian Arabs were lost. Drawing on a great…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I grew up in the Soviet Union, where being Jewish had no intellectual or religious substance. My discovery of Judaism and Jewish history happened after my emigration, when I was already an adult. This helps me to relate to audiences and readers who are not Jewish. For example, a Japanese translation of my book on Jewish opposition to Zionism earned a place on a bestseller list in Japan, where hardly any Jews live. In the course of my university career, I have explained events in Israel in electronic and printed media on the five continents where I also have taught as a visiting professor.
It always intrigued me how Zionism as a political movement and Israel as its embodiment can claim to act on behalf of the Jewish people. Sand brilliantly explains that the specific conditions of Jews in Eastern and Central Europe, particularly discrimination and violent outbursts (pogroms), produced a sense of nationhood.
As a historian, I am fascinated by Sand’s account of Zionist ideologues from that part of the world manufacturing powerful myths, which have buttressed the new Israeli identity even among Jews transplanted to Israel from Asia and Africa, where this kind of Jewish nationalism had been virtually unknown.
A historical tour de force, The Invention of the Jewish People offers a groundbreaking account of Jewish and Israeli history. Exploding the myth that there was a forced Jewish exile in the first century at the hands of the Romans, Israeli historian Shlomo Sand argues that most modern Jews descend from converts, whose native lands were scattered across the Middle East and Eastern Europe. In this iconoclastic work, which spent nineteen weeks on the Israeli bestseller list and won the coveted Aujourd'hui Award in France, Sand provides the intellectual foundations for a new vision of Israel's future.
I grew up in the Soviet Union, where being Jewish had no intellectual or religious substance. My discovery of Judaism and Jewish history happened after my emigration, when I was already an adult. This helps me to relate to audiences and readers who are not Jewish. For example, a Japanese translation of my book on Jewish opposition to Zionism earned a place on a bestseller list in Japan, where hardly any Jews live. In the course of my university career, I have explained events in Israel in electronic and printed media on the five continents where I also have taught as a visiting professor.
My earlier work on Jewish opposition to Zionism focused mostly on ultra-orthodox Jews. This book introduced me to a different kind of religious Jews affiliated with the Reform movement.
These communities and their spiritual leaders, including Elmer Berger, opposed Zionism for different reasons. They embraced the United States as their homeland and no longer considered themselves in exile. They also found Zionist ideas akin to those of the antisemites, who consider the Jews a separate nation.
Dramatic changes have taken place in the last decade with respect to the views of the American Jewish community toward Israel and Zionism. Since the beginning of the Second Intifada in 2000, the involvement of the Israel lobby in precipitating the Iraq War and promoting war on Iran, and Israel's widely condemned wars in Lebanon and Gaza, large swaths of the American Jewish community have been disenchanted with Israel and Zionism as at no other time since the founding of the State of Israel.
However, anti-Zionism in America has a long history. Elmer Berger was undoubtedly the best-known Jewish anti-Zionist…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I grew up in the Soviet Union, where being Jewish had no intellectual or religious substance. My discovery of Judaism and Jewish history happened after my emigration, when I was already an adult. This helps me to relate to audiences and readers who are not Jewish. For example, a Japanese translation of my book on Jewish opposition to Zionism earned a place on a bestseller list in Japan, where hardly any Jews live. In the course of my university career, I have explained events in Israel in electronic and printed media on the five continents where I also have taught as a visiting professor.
As a scholar of contemporary Jewish history and a practicing Jew, I used to deal mostly with books written by Jews. This book is one of the first I read that would be written by a Palestinian. Albeit born and bred in New York City, the author has a strong connection with Palestine, and one of his ancestors, the mayor of Jerusalem, wrote to Theodor Herzl as early as 1899 that the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine would encounter opposition from local population.
Khalidi leaves behind the often-confusing narrative of a conflict between two nations in favor of a history of colonial settlement and indigenous resistance to it.
At a time when a lasting peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis seems virtually unattainable, understanding the roots of their conflict is an essential step in restoring hope to the region. In The Iron Cage, Rashid Khalidi, one of the most respected historians and political observers of the Middle East, homes in on Palestinian politics and history. By drawing on a wealth of experience and scholarship, Khalidi provides a lucid context for the realities on the ground today, a context that has been, until now, notably lacking in our discourse.
The story of the Palestinian search to establish a…
I started studying Judaism as an adult in 1982, and in the 40 or so years that have passed since then I’ve read voraciously on the subject and have discussed it at length with Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform rabbis from Boston to Tampa. I’ve come to see over that time that Judaism’s objective is to shape conscientious, caring human beings who will bring light and compassion to the earth in spite of all the forces that want to keep trouble and insensitivity there. The books that I’ve listed are among the best in communicating the Jewish vision for the planet. I think you’ll learn much from them.
Anyone wishing to understand the history of modern Israel will find all questions answered in this beautifully written account beginning in the 19th century and continuing to the end of the 20th.
Sachar’s eloquence is stunning, and his attention to detail means that nothing is left undefined or ambiguous. There are quite a few histories of Israel on bookshelves, but none of them comes near Sachar’s work in perceptiveness or reach.
First published in 1976, Howard M. Sachar’s A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time was regarded one of the most valuable works available detailing the history of this still relatively young country. Decades later, readers can again be immersed in this monumental work.
The second edition of this volume covers topics such as the first of the Aliyahs in the 1880s; the rise of Jewish nationalism; the beginning of the political Zionist movement and, later, how the movement changed after Theodor Herzl; the Balfour Declaration; the factors that led to the Arab-Jewish confrontation; Palestine and…
I grew up in Israel but left it as a young man to study abroad, where I have lived ever since. I took up graduate studies in modern Hebrew literature because I wanted to stay connected, intellectually and emotionally, to the place of my birth, while living far away from it. I ended up liking the greater angle that distance gave me and I tried to use the more remote perspective I gained in all of my work on Israel over the years.
I loved how the book looks at Zionism from a totally different angle, not just as history or ideology, but as a bold and thoughtful belief in human action. By going back to European ideas and exploring key Jewish and Hebrew thinkers from the 19th and 20th centuries, I gained a fresh way of understanding the roots of Zionism.
It also helped me see current Israeli politics in a new light. Instead of the usual political analysis, it made me think more deeply about the ideas and values that still shape things today.
Zionism emerged at the end of the nineteenth century in response to a rise in anti-Semitism in Europe and to the crisis of modern Jewish identity. This novel, national revolution aimed to unite a scattered community, defined mainly by shared texts and literary tradition, into a vibrant political entity destined for the Holy Land. However, Zionism was about much more than a national political ideology and practice. By tracing its origins in the context of a European history of ideas and by considering the writings of key Jewish and Hebrew writers and thinkers from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I completed my Ph.D. in history at Georgetown University in 1989 and have taught courses on the modern Middle East at the American University in Cairo since 1990. Since the early 2000s, I’ve been teaching a popular course on the history of Zionism. In developing the curriculum for my students, I searched for an English translation of the proceedings of the First Zionist Congress, held in Basel in 1897, a crucial moment in Jewish/Zionist history. When I discovered no such translation existed, I decided to do one myself. It was fascinating work, and the translation was published in 2019.
I was assigned this book in the first class I took that dealt with the Arab-Israeli conflict, and I found it to be a thought-provoking anthology of writings produced by Zionists, going back to rabbis and intellectuals of the mid-1800s and forward to Zionist activists, like David Ben-Gurion, in the 1950s. (One should perhaps be aware that Hertzberg published the original edition of this volume in 1959; it was reissued by JPS in 1997 with all the original source texts but with the addition of a reflective afterword by Hertzberg, who died in 2006.)
As a teacher, I appreciate that Hertzberg offers representative sections of longer texts, like those by Pinsker and Herzl. My personal favorites are Ahad Ha’am, the “agnostic rabbi” and critic of Herzl, and Judah Magnes, an American rabbi seeking to reconcile Zionism with Judaism's spiritual and ethical heritage.
A classic since its initial publication in 1959, The Zionist Idea is an anthology of writings by the leading thinkers of the Zionist movement, including Theodor Herzl, Ahad Ha-Am, Martin Buber, Louis Brandeis, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Judah Magnes, Max Nordau, Mordecai Kaplan, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Chaim Weizmann, and David Ben-Gurion.
I grew up in Israel but left it as a young man to study abroad, where I have lived ever since. I took up graduate studies in modern Hebrew literature because I wanted to stay connected, intellectually and emotionally, to the place of my birth, while living far away from it. I ended up liking the greater angle that distance gave me and I tried to use the more remote perspective I gained in all of my work on Israel over the years.
I liked the way the book explains the passion about Zionism, how it’s so personal for so many people, both for and against, and how these emotions are driven by hope, fear, pride, and longing.
I liked how the book breaks down different types of Zionism and rethinks its ties to colonialism. It explains Jewish identity in a personal and human way that left a strong impression on me.
Emotion lies at the heart of all national movements, and Zionism is no exception. For those who identify as Zionist, the word connotes liberation and redemption, uniqueness and vulnerability. Yet for many, Zionism is a source of distaste if not disgust, and those who reject it are no less passionate than those who embrace it. The power of such emotions helps explain why a word originally associated with territorial aspiration has survived so many years after the establishment of the Israeli state.
Zionism: An Emotional State expertly demonstrates how the energy propelling the Zionist project originates from bundles of feeling…
I am a journalist, think-tanker, and analyst based in Tel Aviv and formerly in Washington and London. I have a BA in History from the University of Toronto and an MA in Diplomacy and Conflict Studies from Reichman University in Israel, and I was previously deputy director for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. My first book, Palestine 1936, was named one of the Top Ten Books of 2023 by the Wall Street Journal. Throughout my whole life, I’ve written about the Middle East, the Israeli-Arab conflict, and so on and so forth. I love to travel and to read. And to write.
Koestler is famous for Darkness at Noon, his 1940 novel of Stalinist totalitarianism. But in 1949, he wrote this remarkably perceptive history of the British Mandate, from its inception to the birth of the State of Israel.
This is not a traditional history backed by myriad footnotes. But it is, to borrow a phrase usually reserved for journalism, the “first draft of history,” as it was written in real-time just as the Jewish state rose to life. Koestler was closely tied to Zionism from the ‘20s on, having spent several years in Palestine as a manual laborer and then a journalist. Later he was even deputy of the right-wing Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky in Berlin, labored intensively on behalf of Israel’s establishment, and reported from the country in its first weeks of existence.
This is a hugely illuminating book from a gifted and insightful observer.
This book consists of three parts, "Background", "Close-up" and "Perspective". The first part is a survey of the developments which led to the foundation of the State of Israel. It lays no claim to historical completeness and is written from a specific angle which stresses the part played by irrational forces and emotive bias in history. I am not sure whether this emphasis has not occasionally resulted in over-emphasis-as is almost inevitable when one tries to redress a balance by spot-lighting aspects which are currently neglected. But it was certainly not my intention, by underlining the psychological factor, to deny…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I completed my Ph.D. in history at Georgetown University in 1989 and have taught courses on the modern Middle East at the American University in Cairo since 1990. Since the early 2000s, I’ve been teaching a popular course on the history of Zionism. In developing the curriculum for my students, I searched for an English translation of the proceedings of the First Zionist Congress, held in Basel in 1897, a crucial moment in Jewish/Zionist history. When I discovered no such translation existed, I decided to do one myself. It was fascinating work, and the translation was published in 2019.
I was excited to discover this book after teaching the history of Zionism for several years. What makes this anthology unusual is the inclusion of sources that illustrate the social and cultural history of the new Yishuv, the modern Jewish community of Palestine.
Of special interest are letters and diaries of women in the new Yishuv; these writings show the striking differences between the earliest, rather conservative colonists, and the young radicals of the Second Aliya (1904-1914). Other texts I have found most useful as an instructor analyze Zionist relations with the native Arab population, anticipating and explicating the impossibility of making Zionism acceptable to the Palestinian people.
In 1880 the Jewish community in Palestine encompassed some 20,000 Orthodox Jews; within sixty-five years it was transformed into a secular proto-state with well-developed political, military, and economic institutions, a vigorous Hebrew-language culture, and some 600,000 inhabitants. The Origins of Israel, 1882-1948: A Documentary History chronicles the making of modern Israel before statehood, providing in English the texts of original sources (many translated from Hebrew and other languages) accompanied by extensive introductions and commentaries from the volume editors.
This sourcebook assembles a diverse array of 62 documents, many of them unabridged, to convey the ferment, dissent, energy, and anxiety that…
