ABSTRACT
Jewish-Israeli nationality is a modern construct. In this it merely conforms to a general pattern of the “construction” and “invention” of nationality in modern history. This chapter deals with the role of historiography in the invention of modern Jewish (later turned into Jewish-Israeli) nationhood, and it demonstrates the extent to which nationhood is indeed a constructed-and hence also a contestededifice, even in what is ostensibly a plain case of the supposed “revival” of an “ancient nation.” The next chapter (Chapter 2) addresses the ways in which in postmodern times the constructed and invented narrative of linear, homogeneous, and essentialist notions of Jewish nationhood is challenged and deconstructed by “other” historical narratives, of dominated and marginalized groups. Moreover, the problematic ties between this notion of Jewish nationhood and Israeli nationalism are investigated. Jewish national ideologues faced a serious problem of weaving different epi-
sodes, experienced by different groups in distinct periods and distant locations, into a single collective biography. That such dispersed episodes do converge to the “collective biography” of a single historical subject was far from being obvious. The resolution of this fundamental quandary became the major purpose of the invented modern Jewish national historical narrative. To meet this challenge the narrative was constructed around the twin themes of
the unity and continuity of the supposed nation. Two historiographical principles were thus employed to “invent” the nation: the organic principle of collective wholeness and the teleological principle of historical linear progression. In this chapter we investigate two facets of the narrative-its composition and its
propagation, that is history-writing and history-teaching. As a vantage point from which to scrutinize these two complex practices we focus on the contribution to them of one scholar: historian and educator Ben Zion Dinur. This serves as vignette to the broader theoretical and historical issues under discussion. The first subheading addresses the issue of the cultural construction of nationalism; the second sub-heading addresses the historians’ debate of the nineteenth century over Jewish nationalism and outlines the fundamental tenets of the Zionist historiosophical paradigm; and the third sub-heading addresses the dissemination through education of the Zionist historical narrative. Finally, at the end of the chapter we ponder the congruence between historical and political categories. We highlight the affinity
between traditional Zionist historiography and the primordial-conventional notion of Israeli collective identity; and in contrast, the affinity between the nascent postZionist historiography and a civic-post-conventional multicultural notion of Israeli collective identity.
