Disraeli: or, The Two Lives

the very notion of a Ḥasidic rebbe must be understood as a composite figure, a corporate entity, if you will, a man whose identity is configured by his followers and perhaps also by his opponents. In

WHILE THESE NEW COMMUNITIES in the Yishuv could probably not have survived without Rothschild’s beneficence, Rothschild and the pioneers were often at odds. The young, idealistic immigrants felt that making use of his abundant wealth was compromising the socialist utopia they had hoped to create. Rothschild, in turn, was dismayed by what struck him

After the publication of Herzl’s Altneuland in 1902, the battle between Herzl and Ahad Ha’am (who was by then Herzl’s most vociferous critic) grew even uglier. But just a year later, the pogrom in Kishinev led even the apolitical Ahad Ha’am to back off—everyone understood that the Jewish people needed to set aside differences and to prepare a way t