This talk will explore what Jewish nationalism meant for many of the early thinkers and activists of modern Jewish nationalism. Based on some historical textual sources that we will read together, the talk will emphasize the important role of ideas of class and status in the formative years of Jewish nationalism and the implications of this role.
Dr. Rhona Burns is a Postdoctoral Fulbright Fellow at the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University. She received her B.A and M.A in Hebrew Literature from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she also taught. She then spent some years as an editor, writer and journalist before continuing to write her dissertation at the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at Bar-Ilan University, as a Ph.D. Presidential Fellow. She also spent a year as a high school teacher. Her forthcoming Hebrew-language book is tentatively titled “Respectable Utopias: Class Imagination and the Formation of Early Jewish Nationalism” (Forthcoming, Ben Gurion University Press). Rhona has also published two poetry books (Hebrew) and many short stories and opinion articles (mainly in Hebrew, but in English as well) and is an associate editor and founder of the Hebrew literary review and publication, Eyruvin. She is currently working on her first academic English-language book that will present key ideas from her doctoral dissertation.
Her academic publications include: “The Centrality of Class Imagination in Early Jewish Nationalism” (Forthcoming, June 2024, Iyunim 40, Hebrew) “Politics as Invention: On Theodor Herzl’s Ideal Elites.” AJS Review: The Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies 46, no. 2 (2022): 223-242. Doi: 10.1353/ajs.2022.0041. “On the construction of national symbol in S.Y. Abramovitch’s ‘Susati’”, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 41, no. 1 (2023): 1-20. Doi: 10.1353/sho.2023.a903279
Dr. Rhona Burns – From Herzl to Ben-Yehuda: Fantasies of Power and Class in Early Jewish Nationalism – May 25 After Services
