Diaspora Nationalism and Jewish Identity in Habsburg Galicia

The triumph of Zionism has clouded recollection of competing forms of Jewish nationalism vying for power a century ago. This study explores alternative ways to construct the modern Jewish nation. Jewish nationalism emerges from this book as a Diaspora phenomenon much broader than the Zionist movement. Like its non-Jewish counterparts, Jewish nationalism was first and foremost a movement to nationalize Jews, to construct a modern Jewish nation while simultaneously masking its very modernity. Diaspora Nationalism and Jewish Identity in Habsburg Galicia traces this process in what was the second largest Jewish community in Europe, Galicia. The history of this vital but very much understudied community of Jews fills a critical lacuna in existing scholarship while revisiting the broader question of how Jewish nationalism - or indeed any modern nationalism - was born. Based on a wide variety of sources, many newly uncovered, this study challenges the still-dominant Zionist narrative by demonstrating that Jewish nationalism was a part of the rising nationalist movements in Europe.

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'This book succeeds in setting Jewish nationalism in Galicia firmly in the context of the European national movements gaining adherents in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. This very fine study will prove of interest to scholars and students of Habsburg Central and Eastern Europe, Jewish history, and nationalism.' Daniel Unowsky, Austrian History Yearbook

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Product details

• Date Published: July 2014
• format: Paperback
• isbn: 9781107674899
• length: 336 pages

• dimensions: 229 x 152 x 22 mm
• weight: 0.54kg
• contains: 18 b/w illus. 1 map 8 tables
• availability: Available