The History of Emotions in Zionist and Israeli Historiography

The historical study of Zionist and Israel in notoriously over-concentrated on political and ideological questions. Gradually turning to social and cultural issues since the late 1990s, the history of emotions - rapidly gaining ground in other areas since the 1980s - remained by and beyond its scope. In the recent decade or so, however, “the affective turn in modern Jewish history” has begun to make some inroads into the study of Zionism, the Yishuv, and Israel. Several studies presented the history of emotions as a new theoretical prism that can be combined with local, intellectual/political, legal, social and cultural history. Studies thus far have examined the role of emotions in early decades of Zionist rural settlement (Seltenreich 2015); emotions as markers of gender roles and generational divisions in the family (Boord 2016); “emotional regimes” and “emotional communities” in Israeli frontier settlements (Rozin 2016; 2019); expressions of the love of Zion in ealry Zionist writings (Penslar 2020); and the role of anger, fear, shame and honor in Mandate Palestine’s legal system ( Alyagon Darr 2020; Katvan and Shnoor 2020). These studies are ground-breaking steps in employing the history of emotions to analyze interconnections between individuals and groups in the making of the Zionist project. Together, they pose a new perspective with which to interpret key issues in Israeli and Zionist history. Based on a survey of this historiographical development, its contribution and its shortcomings, the paper presents an agenda for the future study of the history of emotions in Zionist and Israeli history.









Powered by Eventact EMS