ABSTRACT
The writing of Israeli history starts with the personal accounts of the founders of the State of Israel and those who experienced the formation of the state. Aviezer Ravitzky's 1996 book, Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism, was a profound work that provided serious analysis of Orthodox Judaism's response to Zionism, ranging from a deep-seated rejection of the national movement to embrace of it. Personal diaries, letters of correspondence, and intellectual and political prose of individuals involved in the building of the nation-state comprised the first historical narratives for the State of Israel. Israeli historiography remained a cottage industry during the first generation of historical scholarship, receiving little historical examination or critical evaluation from non-Israeli academicians. The "New Historians" emerged in the mid-1980s, pushing the boundaries that they believed had limited their predecessors. Like the first generation of historians, they were raised on the narratives and myths of the state.
