Sovereign Jews : Israel, Zionism, and Judaism / Yaacov Yadgar.

Includes bibliographies and index.

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 ScienceJewish "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 PresentBody and Spirit; Between Rebellion and National Duty; A Rebellion Born from Intimate Familiarity; Chapter 6 Main Zionist Streams and Jewish Traditions; Socialist-Zionism: "Crypto-Religious," "Crypto-Secular," or Otherwise?; Naḥman Syrkin: A New Religion; Yitzḥak El'azari-Volcani: Anti-Theology?; Blood, Identity, and Tradition; Nationalist Theology; Brenner and "Radical Secularism"; Tradition, the Sovereignty of the Individual, and "National Consciousness"; "Jews" and "Jewishness"; Secularist Radicalism and Jewish "Ambivalence"; Assimilation and "Religion"

Secularism, Hebrewism, Exile, and the Negation of the OtherJacob Klatzkin: Secularist Radicalism and Statist Sovereignty; Socialist-Zionism in Palestine and Jewish Traditions; Radically Secularist, Yet Not Absolutely Secular; Not a Paradox, but a Misguided Conceptual Framework; "Confrontation" with Tradition, Form, and Content; Religious-Zionism: A National Movement; Religion, Fundamentalism, and Nationalism: A Delicate Balance?; Religious-Zionism Beyond the Secularist Dichotomies; Revisionist-Zionism: The Nationalization of Jewish Traditions.

The question of Jewish sovereignty shapes Jewish identity in Israel, the status of non-Jews, and relations between Israeli and Diaspora Jews, yet its consequences remain enigmatic. Yaacov Yadgar highlights the shortcomings of mainstream discourse and offers a novel explanation of Zionist ideology and the Israeli polity. Yadgar argues that secularism's presumed binary pitting religion against politics is illusory. He shows that the key to understanding this alleged dichotomy is Israel's interest in maintaining its sovereignty as the nation-state of Jews. This creates a need to mark a majority of the population as Jews and to distinguish them from non-Jews. Coupled with the failure to formulate a viable alternative national identity (either "Hebrew" or "Israeli"), it leads the ostensibly secular state to apply a narrow interpretation of Jewish religion as a political tool for maintaining a Jewish majority.

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