RASHID KHALIDI, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). Pp. 325. $42.00 cloth, $16.50 paper.

2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 306-307
Author(s):  
Joseph Massad

Rashid Khalidi sets out to study the emergence of Palestinian nationalism at the dawn of the 20th century. He explores the early cultural beginnings of Palestinian identity, which precede the encounter with Zionism, and studies the different developments of Palestinian identity in light of that encounter. Whereas a large number of accounts stress that Palestinian identity developed exclusively as a result of the encounter with colonial Zionism, Khalidi sets the record straight. In line with predominant theories of nationalism, Khalidi demonstrates that national identities are defined in relation to an other. Palestine identity, which as early as 1701 manifested itself against a hostile European Christianity, remained Jerusalem-centered until the beginning of the 20th century. That is when a modern Palestinian nationalism was emerging, before the encounter with British colonialism and Zionist settler colonialism changed the configuration of both the Palestinian self and its other. Khalidi charts the changes in the forms of knowledge that the Palestinian intelligentsia was acquiring in the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries, noting the shift from Islamic studies to modern social science and the humanities. Through an inventory of Palestinian libraries, Khalidi carefully chronicles these changes in forms of knowledge, correlating them with the new and emerging political ideas in the country.

Author(s):  
Ewa Morawska

This chapter examines David Berger's The Legacy of Jewish Migration: 1881 and Its Impact (1983). The wave of pogroms in Russia in 1881–2 forcefully brought to the surface a complex of demographic, ideological, and cultural developments that had been working their way through the Jewish communities of the Pale since the mid-19th century and which were to affect profoundly modern Jewish history. Commemorating the centennial of those catalytic years and their aftermath, especially the mass emigration and resettlement of Russian Jews during the three decades that followed, the book under review re-examines the impact of these events on different areas of life of 20th-century Jewry. The volume consists of fourteen short essays presented originally as papers at the 9th Annual Conference on Society in Change held at Brooklyn College in March of 1981. The Legacy of Jewish Migration reads well, and the variety of topics treated in the book successfully holds the reader's attention; also, bibliographies appended to each selection are useful and up to date.


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