Promised lands: Jews, Poland, and the land of Israel

"This volume investigates two important and interrelated subjects : the influence of Polish Jews, Polish Zionism, and Polish culture on the development of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) and the State of Israel and the impact of the Yishuv and the State of Israel on the developments in Poland. The main goal of the Zionist project was to create a 'New Jew' who would be the builder of a Jewish state, preferably in the historic homeland of the Jewish people. This state would be free of the negative characteristics which, in the view of the ideologues of Zionism and other political movements which mobilized the eastern European Jewish communities, the Jews had developed in their long sojourn in the diaspora. Yet, inevitably, those who settled in Palestine brought with them considerable cultural baggage. A substantial proportion of them came from the territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and this Polish Jewish presence significantly affected the political and cultural life of Jews in the Yishuv and the State of Israel. In this volume leading experts in Israel, Poland, Europe, and North America seek to investigate different aspects of this influence, as well as the continuing relationship between Israel and Poland, up to the present day"-- Page 2 of cover.