ABSTRACT
Liberal friends of the Jews expected that their emancipation would put an end to Jewish collective existence. Count Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnerre, the French revolutionary, told the French National Assembly in 1789 that “the Jews should be denied everything as a nation, but granted everything as individuals.” George Eliot came to cherish the idea of “restoration of a Jewish State planted on the old ground,” not only because it would afford the Jews a center of national feeling and a source of dignifying protection. The relation among liberalism, democracy, and the Jewish nation is directly addressed in two ambitious new books by liberals on Zionism and Israel. Avishai’s anecdotes, by contrast, serve mainly to cast a warm glow over his debating skills marshaled in combat against illiberal, supposedly paranoiac Jews. In Israel, Bernard Avishai vanquished a taxi driver whose experiences in Lebanon had embittered him toward Palestinian Arabs.
