Zionism
Emotions, Language and Experience

This Element establishes the history of emotions as a methodology that can overcome the limitations of cultural history.

Ofer Idels (Author)

9781009517423, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 December 2024

56 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 0.6 cm, 0.25 kg

Is the history of emotions a methodology or a subject? What is the relationship between emotions and culture? What role does the body play in the human experience? Addressing these questions and more, this element emphasizes the often-overlooked role of emotional and sensory experiences when examining the Zionist experience in the early twentieth century. Focusing on the visceral and embodied historical aspects of the linguistic modernization of Hebrew, it argues that recent cultural studies on Jewish daily life in Palestine have reached an impasse, which the history of emotions could help us overcome. Interpreting Zionist texts not solely as symbolic myths but as a historical, lived experience, this element advocates for the significance of the history of emotions and experience as an innovative methodology with profound ethical implications for our polarized era.

Introduction
1. Experience: emotions, culture and the history of Zionism
2. Hebrew revival: cultural history and the experience of language
3. Eating the grain: reading sources, ethics and receptiveness
4. A brief epilogue on the emotions of past and present
References.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX]