Herzl Reloaded

Herzl Reloaded. Doron Rabinovici and Natan Sznaider receive e-mails from none other than Theodor Herzl, the founding father of Zionism. Herzl, Rabinovici and Sznaider enter into a dialogue about Judaism, present-day Israel and the Jewish Diaspora.

What does Herzl have to say to us today? About the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for instance? How closely is his work The Jewish State aligned with today’s Israel? Whither the dream of the Viennese coffeehouse in the Orient, of European modernity in the Biblical Zion, of a Europe in the Middle East? Rabinovici and Sznaider put Herzl to the test. Is there such a thing as a Jewish society? How do tradition and startup modernity mix in Israel? How important is the memory of the Holocaust? Through an engagement with Theodor Herzl, two contemporary thinkers look for answers from the past and the present for the future. In this way, they cast the new biography of Theodor Herzl, which is published simultaneously, in a new light.

»[The] blunt presentation of the situation in the area between the Mediterranean and Jordan and Sznaider’s unorthodox handling of the history of Zionism, his renouncing of the debate forever oscillating between a one-state and a two-state solution, guarantee a moving read that is far reaching without ever becoming entangled. Breaking off from the circular discussion on Israel/Palestine, and with its unexpected, inspiring approaches, the book makes a contribution to the Middle East conflict as well as Jewish history that’s highly worth reading.« Günter Kaindlstorfer, WDR5

»It’s a congenial pair that has entered an exchange about Herzl, his ideas and the condition of the state of Israel: Sznaider, a scientist living in Israel, whose keen analyses are impressive and disillusioning at the same time, and the Viennese writer Rabinovici, who is not only able to express his position convincingly, but whose virtuosic play with language and words lends ease to the complicated topic.« Romina Wiegemann, Aviva

»And so this book is literature in the sense that it generates a space of possibilities out of a game of language and thus makes a continued conversation possible – or shows how one could make it possible … and that one should make it possible -; but at the same time [it is] political in the sense that the literary itself is capable of being a lively contemplation of reality: a wonderful crossover text of the humanities, sociology and fiction« Martin A. Hainz, fixpoetry.de