Introduction

Summary

Zionists wanted to reshape Jewish culture in the spirit of modern nationalism. They based their national vision on Jewish history and Jewish tradition but gave both a thoroughly modern interpretation. Instead of hiding their difference to ease their assimilation into the greater, non-Jewish society, they emphasized Jewish difference by giving it a distinct cultural character. They began by writing modern literature in Hebrew, their ancient language, and eventually turned Hebrew into a spoken language, the vernacular of their emerging national community. They organized the land they bought and settled in Palestine in new ways that expressed their revolutionary social and communal values and built new kinds of houses on it. Their new occupations as farmers, builders, and then soldiers reshaped their bodies, the clothes they wore, and the way the carried themselves. They renewed their festival calendar to celebrate and commemorate their innovations, and they developed new aesthetic sensibilities in visual art and music that expressed their cultural revolution in more abstract ways.