Category: History

Igår i Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church i Brooklyn, arrangerad av reformjudiska American Council for Judaism, Penguin Random House och tidskriften Jewish Currents tillsammans med kyrkan:

“Join us for the book release event, in partnership with Jewish Currents, McNally-Jackson, and Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, of Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History by Benjamin Moser, in conversation with activist and writer Jasper Nathaniel. The two will discuss the history of Jewish Anti-Zionism, its current iterations, and what it means to actively involve yourself in this tradition today.”

Benjamin Moser: Anti-Zionism

A Jewish History

Doubleday, 2026

Amazon.com

Publisher’s Description:

A sweeping and revelatory history of the hidden tradition of Jewish thinkers who opposed Zionism, from Pulitzer Prize winner Benjamin Moser.

In Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History, Benjamin Moser uncovers a suppressed tradition that has shaped Jewish thought for generations. Through a cast of artists, rabbis, poets, lawyers, activists, journalists, and politicians – from Europe and Africa and Asia and Latin America – Moser traces a lineage of Jewish dissenters who confronted Zionism’s moral and political stakes – often at devastating personal cost, including censorship, exile, and death.

Their lives form a sweeping, global narrative that dismantles a powerful myth: that anti-Zionism is synonymous with antisemitism. Spanning continents and centuries, these voices – people from the right and the left, Reform and Orthodox, Ashkenazic and Sephardic, men and women, gay and straight – differ sharply in belief and background, yet converge on a shared warning about the consequences of a nationalist project built on exclusion. What emerges is not only a rediscovered tradition of Jewish moral thought, but a startling reappraisal of Zionism itself.

Moser’s work restores the full scale and depth of Jewish ethical imagination, affirming that Judaism is older and larger than any single political project. Lucid, unsparing, and deeply humane, Anti-Zionism cements Moser’s place as one of our foremost Jewish writers and presents a framework through which this history – and its meanings – will be understood for years to come.

Reviews:

“An affirming text for anyone who has gone through the painful process of deconstructing their Zionism … [It] reinforced my sense of pride in my ancestors who fought against the supremacist project in the name of what is right, and what is truly Jewish … Benjamin Moser makes them all proud.”

Hannah Einbinder, Emmy Award winner and Golden Globe nominee for HBO’s Hacks

“With meticulous research, wit, and a searching moral candor, Benjamin Moser takes on decades of propaganda in these portraits of Jewish intellectuals and public figures in the shadow of Zionism’s grand narratives … A lovingly-written historical primer for the free-thinkers of the West today, to whom this book says: You are in good company.”

Isabella Hammad, author of Enter Ghost

“Moser has written such an expansive, moving text. Sensitive, rigorous, and deeply personal.”

Raven Leilani, author of the New York Times bestseller Luster

“Riveting … [Moser] has profoundly changed my understanding of history – the world’s, my people’s, my family’s, and my own.”

Ayelet Waldman, New York Times bestseller and author of A Perfect Hand

“A book of extraordinary moral clarity, with razor-sharp prose.”

Nathan Thrall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama

“Urgently necessary … I hope it will be widely read.”

Peter Singer, author of The Life You Can Save

“A rare book that induces a simultaneous expansion of the mind and soul.”

Pankaj Mishra, author of The World After Gaza

“Anti-Zionism … is a kind of literary resurrection, a personal search through lost Jewish choices, following paths long overgrown and figures that history thought best forgotten … The stories … tell of struggle, of deep conviction, of the desire for justice. To give voice to these stories is an act of fidelity to those who suffered at the hands of an emerging national project in a time of trauma.”

Los Angeles Review of Books

“A trenchant history of Jewish opposition to Zionism … Moser explores each [Jewish anti-Zionist] figure’s life with a keen biographer’s eye … These illuminating profiles in courage challenge the myth of Zionism’s unilateral consensus.”

Publishers Weekly

“A principled case against a powerfully entrenched doctrine.”

Kirkus Reviews

“The book’s diverse, impressionistic portraits of individuals … suggest that anti-Zionism has been, and will continue to be, a big tent.”

The Paris Review

“[Anti-Zionism] restores a moral genealogy, the knowledge that Jewish opposition to Zionism was possible.”

+972 Magazine

“This landmark book will jolt many readers out of a fabricated narrative, especially as it reflects an entirely Jewish perspective. It is well researched, rich in fact, and extremely pleasant to read.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan and Antifragile

About the Author:

Benjamin Moser is the author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book of 2009. For his work bringing Clarice Lispector to international prominence, he received Brazil’s first State Prize for Cultural Diplomacy. Sontag: Her Life and Work won the Pulitzer Prize in 2020, and The Upside-Down World: Meetings with the Dutch Masters appeared in 2023. He completed the present book at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

A Personal History

Other Press, 2025

Amazon.com

Publisher’s Description:

Combining poignant memoir and historical research, a son of Holocaust survivors grapples with the dream of Zionism and its consequences.

Israel: A Personal History takes off where Göran Rosenberg’s internationally acclaimed and award-winning childhood memoir, A Brief Stop on the Road from Auschwitz, ends. After his father’s suicide in 1960 in a small industrial town in Sweden, the remainder of the family, a single mother with two children, emigrates to Israel. At first fully absorbed into the world of pioneer Zionism, enchanted by its visions, formed by its ethos, Rosenberg would eventually embark on a journey of discovery among betrayed ideals, buried stories, false promises, and erased villages.

The result is a deeply personal, painstakingly researched, and beautifully written exploration of the contradictory visions that went into the Zionist project, as well as of the ethnic violence, oppression, discrimination, and dispossession caused by its realization. This book is both an exciting history of ideas and the political autobiography of a Jewish European intellectual, a child of dreams and disillusionments, an astute observer of our times.

Reviews:

“[Rosenberg] takes us from his initial sense of the ‘all-captivating promises’ of the Zionist project to a deep disillusionment with it.”

Washington Post

“A profound reckoning.”

Publishers Weekly

“Fearlessly straightforward … a singularly compelling memoir … Rosenberg is not a household name, although he may become one on the strength of this brilliant appraisal of Israel’s political path.”

Manhattan Book Review

“In a powerful account of his growing disenchantment … Rosenberg presents Zionism as a flawed vision with a tragic aspect: Far from being inevitable, the modern state of Israel, as he recounts its history, evolved in brutal policies that belied the utopian hopes on which the new nation had been founded … his retrospection illuminates the present.”

Public Seminar

“Göran Rosenberg’s book Israel is a brilliant combination of an authoritative, reliable, and critical account of the history of Zionism and the State of Israel, and a sensitive, personal, and humane account that examines with equal scrutiny the author’s own deep and complex entanglement in that history. As the son of a Holocaust survivor from Łódź who emigrated to Sweden after the war, Rosenberg was captivated by the idea of Israel and emigrated there in his youth – only to later become disillusioned with that vision and come to understand the destructive foundations upon which the state is built, and the violent future to which it is leading. This English edition of the book, published two years after October 7, 2023, and amidst the brutal genocide in Gaza, stands as a model of honest, critical, and uncompromising self-scrutiny – something we will all be obliged to undertake, in the wake of the genocide in Gaza, regarding Jewish history, Israeli history, and our own personal histories.”

Amos Goldberg, author of Trauma in First Person: Diary Writing During the Holocaust and coeditor with Bashir Bashir of The Holocaust and the Nakba: A New Grammar of Trauma and History

About the Author:

Göran Rosenberg was born in 1948 in Sweden, the son of Auschwitz survivors. He is the author of several books, including the highly acclaimed Det förlorade landet (the original Swedish edition of Israel: A Personal History), A Brief Stop on the Road from Auschwitz (Other Press, 2015), and Another Zionism, Another Judaism (Other Press, 2025).

JOB’s Comment:

Also available in German (1998), French (2002), and Polish (2011) translations.

Göran Rosenberg: Det förlorade landet

1946

Baksida:

Svensk och ryss är en gammal kombination, som oftast har mött som motsättning: i krig och misstro, från svensk sida i den månghundraåriga s.k. rysskräcken. Det fredliga umgänget mellan de två folken, framför allt i inbördes handel, har däremot varit mycket litet beaktat. Då nu Sverige genom ett mycket ingripande handelsavtal står i begrepp att komma sin stora östra granne närmare, har Sverigs folk intresse at lära känna bakgrunden: den svensk-ryska handeln genom tiderna. Ture Nerman, som i flera skrifter framträtt som populär historisk författare, har på grundval av utförliga studier i Svensk och ryss givit en saklig och samtidigt underhållande skildring av de svensk-ryska handelsrelationerna från urminnes tid till i dag. Han ger handelsumgängets politiska ram, berättar om fredsslut och handelsvatal genom tiderna, vilka varor som bytts, vilka vägar handeln har gått, hur köpmännen haft det, om Ryssgården i Stockholm och motsvarande svenskgårdar i Ryssland, men också pikanta umgängesdetaljer som Johan III:s och Ivan IV:s s.k. skällebrev, Gustav IV Adolfs inställda förmälning med en tsardotter m.m.

Framställningen illustreras med svenska resenärers rapporter från Rysslands handel och folkliv genom tiderna, varvid också hittills otryckta dokument framdragits ur arkiven. En särskild avedelning Svensk och ryss betraktar varann ger det väsentliga av vad rysk litteratur säger om Sverige och svensk om Ryssland; utförligt får man rysskräcken i svensk dikt, press och folkpsykologi. Intressanta bilagor meddelar in extenso det mystiska dokumentet Tsar Peters testamente, de två ländernas diplomater hos varann genom seklerna och den svensk-ryska handeln i siffror och procent av hela vår utrikeshandel sedan 1831. Ett hundratal bilder, delvis mycket sällsynta, ger ytterligare liv åt historiken.

När Nermans tidning Trots allt! beslagtogs och belades med transportförbud under kriget kunde man fortfarande få tag på det senaste numret på Ester Nordhammars Vete-Katten, som också skickade många bakelser till honom när han avtjänade tre månaders fängelsestraff på Långholmen för en särskilt skarpt antinazistisk artikel. Att förstå vikten av det därmed historiskt intressanta Vete-Katten. Inte minst tidiga frukostar där.

The World Socialist and Communist Movements from 1848 to the Present

Av CPUSA:s kände ledare under partiets storhetstid, William Z. Foster. 1955.

Independently published, 2025

Amazon.com

Publisher’s Description:

Dive into the gripping true history of the American radical labor movement through the life of William Z. Foster – the militant organizer who helped build the CIO, fought fascism, challenged racism, defied corporate America, and stood firm through McCarthyist terror. This powerful narrative follows Foster and the Communist Party USA from underground meetings and epic sit-down strikes to FBI infiltration, international betrayals, and the bitter ideological split of 1956.

In roughly 100 pages, Caleb Maupin gives you all kinds of important information, telling you everything you need to know about the Communist Party’s influential years and William Z. Foster, the man who lead it.

Skrivna på Höckertsvägen under första hälften av 50-talet:

Kilbom var liksom den yngre Henrikson en av dem som flyttade till Södra Ängby när det var nybyggt vid mitten av 30-talet och bodde där resten av sitt liv. Moster Maggan skickade för inte länge sedan ett nummer av Södra Ängby villaförenings “infoblad” med en kort artikel om ‘Karl Kilbom – Revolutionären på Höckertsvägen’.

Hinduism and India’s Road to Modernity

Harper Collins India, 2019

Amazon.com

Publisher’s Description:

Arguably, the greatest achievement of Swami Vivekananda, one of the most celebrated icons of modern India, was the reconstruction of Hinduism. This he accomplished by reforming the religion in India and changing its image in the West.

Indeed, the Hinduism that Vivekananda expounded at the Parliament of World’s Religions in Chicago was a new, progressive version of an ancient tradition, devoid of the superstitions and distortions with which it had come to be associated. He revolutionized Hindu faith traditions by turning them into a repository of rational, universal philosophy.

This book tries to get to the heart of Swami Vivekananda’s legacy and his relevance in the contemporary world. It examines hitherto lesser-known aspects of Swamiji’s life and work including his contributions to practical Vedanta, universal religion, science-spirituality and inter-religious dialogue, dharmic secularism, educational philosophy, poetry, and, above all, to the problem of Indian modernity.

Despite the abundance of literature available on him, Swami Vivekananda is still not understood adequately, remaining somewhat of an enigma. A fresh reading of the life and times of the Swami by someone who has studied him closely, Makarand R. Paranjape’s detailed, thought-provoking account shows that in Vivekananda’s visionary thoughts lay the seeds of the creation of a modern India. This book reclaims Swami Vivekananda’s stature as a pioneer of contemporary Hindu thought and nationalism.

About the Author:

Makarand Paranjape is currently Director, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. He has been professor of English at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, since 1999. He also taught at the University of Hyderabad and Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. His recent books include Debating the ‘Post’ Condition in India, Cultural Politics in Modern India, The Death and Afterlife of Mahatma Gandhi and Transit Passenger/Passageiro em Transito, an Indo-Brazilian book of poems. Makarand is currently a columnist for The Print and Mail Today.