Columbia University
Orthodoxy in the Age of Nationalism: Agudat Yisrael and the Mizrahi Movement in Germany, Poland and Palestine 1912-1948
During the first half of the twentieth century, nationalizing processes in Europe and Palestine reshaped observant Jewry into two distinct societies, ultra-Orthodoxy and national-religious Judaism. Tracing the dynamics between the two most influential Orthodox political movements of the period, from their early years through the founding of the State of Israel, Daniel Mahla examines the crucial role that religio-political entrepreneurs played in these developments. He frames the contest between non-Zionist Agudat Yisrael and religious-Zionist Mizrahi as the product of wide-ranging social and cultural struggles within Orthodox Judaism and demonstrates that at the core of their conflict lay deep tensions between rabbinic authority and political activism. While Orthodoxy’s encounter with modern Jewish nationalism is often cast as a confrontation between religious and secular forces, this book highlights the significance of intra-religious competition for observant Jewry’s transition to the age of the nation state and beyond.
Daniel Mahla is a Ph.D. candidate in Jewish history at the Department of History at Columbia University. He is currently in the process of finishing his doctoral thesis entitled “Orthodoxy in the Age of Nationalism: Agudat Yisrael and the Mizrahi Movement in Germany, Poland and Palestine 1912-1948” under the supervision of Michael Stanislawski. Before coming to Columbia, Daniel did a master’s degree (Magister) in History, Political Science, and Jewish Studies at Humboldt and Freie Universities in Berlin. He was a visiting graduate at Hebrew University in Jerusalem from 2003-2005 and studied the Polish language in the summer semester of 2006 at the Catholic University in Lublin.
Publications:
1. “Between Socialism and Jewish Tradition. Bundist Holiday Culture in Interwar Poland,” Studies in Contemporary Jewry 24 (2010), 177-189.
2. Review of Bjork, James, Neither German Nor Pole: Catholicism and National Indifference in a Central European Borderland. H-Soz-u-Kult, H-Net Reviews. February, 2009. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24091.