With Eyes Toward Zion - III

A narrative complement to Eyes Toward Zion, Volume II (Praeger, 1986), this important new volume presents a comparative analysis of the influence of the Holy Land on Western Societies. Researched and written by a distinguished team of international scholars, Eyes III illuminates both parallelisms and unique elements in the idea of the Holy Land in the United States, Canada, Iberoamerica, Great Britain, France, and Germany. The pervasive Holy Land influence in these countries and the unique elements inherent in each culture are perceived through four constructs: diplomatic policy, Christian devotion, Jewish attachments, and cultural ties. The editors and contributors provide a detailed examination of the political and economic interests of the Western societies in the Holy Land, the role of Zion in Christian denominations, the Land of Israel in Jewish tradition and communal life, and the effect of the Holy Land on Western literature, art, and pilgrimage.

Part I analyzes North America's early involvement with Palestine, focusing particularly on the writings of early Christian travellers from the U.S. and the role these visitors played in forming America's concept of the Holy Land. A separate chapter compares and contrasts the U.S. and Canadian experience. Parts II and III examine the Iberoamerican and European experience. The long, wide ranging, and significant relationships between the Holy Land and France, Germany, and the Latin American Republics are fully explored. Focusing primarily on the nineteenth century, Part IV documents the sturdy Biblical-Holy Land-British bond. The chapters in this volume are replete with references to the writings of archaeologists, historians, scientists, biblical scholars, novelists, consuls, missionaries, tourists and, above all, settlers and builders of the Land - all attesting to the intrinsic place of the Holy Land in the world imagination.

MOSHE DAVIS is Chairman, Governing Council of the International Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization under the aegis of the Israeli Presidency, and Founding Head of the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is also Stephen S. Wise Professor (Emeritus) in American Jewish History and Institutions. His publications include: The Emergence of Conservative Judaism, Jewish Religious Life and Institutions in America, The Shaping of American Judaism (in Hebrew), and From Dependence to Mutuality: the American Jewish Community and World Jewry (Hebrew).

YEHOSHUA BEN-ARIEH is Professor of Geography at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He currently is Head of the Center for the Study of the History of Eretz Israel, at Yad Yizhak Ben-Zvi, Jerusalem, and of the Center for the Study of Zionism and the Yishuv, at the Hebrew University. Among his books are The Changing Landscape of the Central Jordan Valley, The Rediscovery of the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century, and Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century: The Emergence of the New City.