Berl: The Biography of a Socialist Zionist: Berl Katznelson 1887-1944

by Anita Shapira

For almost fifty years, the Zionist labour movement led the Jewish community in Palestine and later, in the State of Israel. Among the close-knit group of its founding fathers, Berl Katznelson was a unique figure. He was an intellectual, a politician, a man of letters, a statesman and the initiator of many of the social and economic institutions THAT shaped the face of the movement and in its wake, the character of the country as a whole. The biography of Berl is more than the biography of an individual: it is the story of a movement. The book traces Berl from a young Russian socialist and romantic pioneer on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, into the propounder of a work ethic and the founder of the central political current of the Israeli labour movement. The development of this movement is depicted against the background of the major political events of the period: Jewish-Arab relations, the European crisis of the thirties as it affected the Jewish people and the successes and failures of Zionist policy. It is required reading for anyone who wants to understand in depth the complexity of Israeli society today.

424 pages, Paperback

First published December 20, 1984

About the author

Anita Shapira (Hebrew: אניטה שפירא‎‎, born 1940) is an Israeli historian. She is the founder of the Yitzhak Rabin Center for Israel Studies, Emerita Professor of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University and former head of the Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism at Tel Aviv University. She received the Israel Prize for History in 2008.

אניטה שפירא (נולדה ב-1940) היא פרופסור אמריטה להיסטוריה של עם ישראל באוניברסיטת תל אביב, עמדה בראש המכון לחקר הציונות וישראל שם וכלת פרס ישראל לשנת תשס"ח 2008 בחקר ההיסטוריה של עם ישראל.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding biography of a fascinating character who distanced himself from political appointments and positions yet was deeply influential in the attempt to build a Hebrew workers society. Shapira clearly identifies with her subject but if full of impressive analysis that shows keen awareness of Berl's weaknesses, not only his strengths. she spends considerable time examing the arguments within the ?Labour movement, particularly its agricultural base that sadly exhausted considerable time and energy on what today seems like hair-splitting ideological differences, as well as human squabbles, the latter acknowledged by the author. A great read, even if today it might smack of a certain degree of nostalgia.

[Blue · Rating 4 out of 5]

A life worth telling. I could only wish for him to have wrote his story on his own words, reason why I couldn't give the book a higher calification; Powerful thinker, extremely political by nature, and innovative in his perception on socialism. He was the true epitope for influence.

Even thought the writer focus a lot of her analyzes on parties and ideologies, I feel like there's more on his asceticism, ethical nationalism, and permeable "Schillerism" that could have been deepened…To me, he seemed like if Tolstoi and Dostoevsky had a son.

I was deeply grateful for his life and contribution to culture. He was the architect and the molder of Israeli's sociaty. And for all that, he deserve a seat along side many great intellectuals. He genuinelly embodied Davar

תודה רבה, Berl🩵