http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/810425743

From Babel and Uganda to the Promised Land the creation of a national Hebrew culture in the Jewish Yishuv in Palestine, 1903-1914

Between the years 1903 and 1914, nationalist activists inside and outside the Jewish Yishuv (pre-state community) of Palestine devoted considerable resources to the creation of a new Jewish national culture. The very first foundations for this culture had been laid in the two preceding decades, but 1903 served as a watershed which significantly accelerated these processes. A year of deep economic, moral, social, demographic and ideological crisis, the year 1903 witnessed a number of key initiatives which would lead, within little more than a decade, to the infrastructure for the national culture and community which Palestine's Zionists sought to establish. This culture sought to incorporate all aspects of the Yishuv's residents' lives--from the way in which they dressed and spoke to the art they created, and the holidays they celebrated. A broad range of new cultural institutions was established, new holidays inaugurated, along with new modes of celebration for traditional Jewish holidays, while a new spoken language struggled to establish itself. These cultural undertakings took place in a dynamic atmosphere, riddled with political and economic crises and ideological struggle, all of which served to influence the cultural developments, and were in turn influenced by them. By the outbreak of the First World War, and in the wake of bitter struggle between Zionists and non-Zionists in Palestine, the infrastructure had been firmly laid for a new Jewish culture and national liturgy.

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