The Lions' Den

The Lions' Den

2019 • 400 pages

A lively intellectual history that explores how prominent midcentury public intellectuals approached Zionism and then the State of Israel itself and its conflicts with the Arab world In this lively intellectual history of the political Left, cultural critic Susie Linfield investigates how eight prominent twentieth-century intellectuals struggled with the philosophy of Zionism, and then with Israel and its conflicts with the Arab world. Constructed as a series of interrelated portraits that combine the personal and the political, the book includes philosophers, historians, journalists, and activists such as Hannah Arendt, Arthur Koestler, I. F. Stone, and Noam Chomsky. In their engagement with Zionism, these influential thinkers also wrestled with the twentieth century’s most crucial political dilemmas: socialism, nationalism, democracy, colonialism, terrorism, and anti-Semitism. In other words, in probing Zionism, they confronted the very nature of modernity and the often catastrophic histories of our time. By examining these leftist intellectuals, Linfield also seeks to understand how the contemporary Left has become focused on anti-Zionism and how Israel itself has moved rightward.


Become a Librarian

Reviews

Popular Reviews

Reviews with the most likes.

There are no reviews for this book. Add yours and it'll show up right here!


Top Lists

See all (0)

List

60 books

Judaism

The Five Books of Miriam: A Woman's Commentary on the Torah
Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne
The Women's Torah Commentary: New Insights from Women Rabbis on the 54 Weekly Torah Portions
Judaism for the World: Reflections on God, Life, and Love
The Sabbath
The Jewish Book of Why
To Life

List

24 books

Zionism

The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance
Judenfetisch
The Lions' Den
The Crisis of Zionism
Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism
A Land With a People
Except for Palestine