“Sadly, what the Netanyahu era has utterly eclipsed is a rival Zionist tradition, the century of ‘cultural Zionism’ from the cultural and political critic Achad Ha’am to the poet Yehuda Amichai,” writes Avishai, a visiting professor of government. “This Zionism would have marched more comfortably in Paris, anticipating a democratic Hebrew republic that reached emancipated Jewish hearts by transforming historic Jewish civilization into something modern and beautiful, poetic and individual—not by turning anti-Semitism into an excuse for Jewish exceptionalism.”
Read the full opinion piece, published 1/15/15 by The New York Times.
