Michael Selzer

Israel: Negating the Diaspora: Aryanization of the Jewish State: A Polemic. New, enlarged, edition Michael Selzer

The central thesis of this book is that the Zionist movement sought, not only the establishment of a Jewish state, but also the eradication of all the characteristic features of Jewish life in the Diaspora - a goal called shlilat ha-galut, the negation of the Diaspora. The negation of the Diaspora, in turn, required the creation of a new Jewish type which in many respects would imitate the identity of anti-Semites, whose perception of Jews was all too often accepted as valid by their victims.
Michael Selzer, at one time liaison officer of the Council of the Sephardi Community in Jerusalem, and winner of a National Jewish Book Award, finds that many of the elements that have led to the bitter confrontation in Israel between Jews from the Western world and those from Islamic countries stem from the goal of shlilat ha-galut. Important but often overlooked aspects of the Arab-Israeli confrontation, he argues, as well as of the often-tense encounter of religious and secular Jews in Israel, can also be traced to it.
Selzer wrote this book, now considered by some to be a classic, when he was 24. More than half a century later, he has appended new material to this edition, including a brief essay about how he came to be engaged in the issues he addresses here; as well as an appraisal of the critical reception of the book when it was first published in 1967.