In the Shadow of Zion: Promised Lands Before Israel - Hardcover

by Adam L. Rovner (Author)

From the late nineteenth century through the post-Holocaust
era, the world was divided between countries that tried to expel their Jewish
populations and those that refused to let them in. The plight of these
traumatized refugees inspired numerous proposals for Jewish states. Jews and
Christians, authors and adventurers, politicians and playwrights, and rabbis
and revolutionaries all worked to carve out autonomous Jewish territories in
remote and often hostile locations across the globe. The would-be founding
fathers of these imaginary Zions dispatched scientific expeditions to far-flung
regions and filed reports on the dream states they planned to create. But only
Israel emerged from dream to reality. Israel's successful foundation has long
obscured the fact that eminent Jewish figures, including Zionism's prophet,
Theodor Herzl, seriously considered establishing enclaves beyond the Middle
East.

Author Biography

Adam Rovner is Associate Professor of English and Jewish Literature at the University of Denver. He holds an M.A. from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Ph.D. from Indiana University-Bloomington. His articles, essays, translations and interviews have appeared in numerous scholarly journals and general interest publications. An accomplished public speaker, Rovner has addressed a variety of audiences in Canada, England, Israel, and the U.S. His short documentary on Jewish territorialism,"No Land Without Heaven," has been screened at exhibitions in New York, Paris, and Tel Aviv. Further information available at www.adamrovner.com.