Israel Bartal
Israel Bartal is Avraham Harman Professor Emeritus of Jewish History and the former dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2006–2010). He served as the chair of the Historical Society of Israel (2007–2015). Professor Bartal taught at Harvard, McGill, Johns Hopkins, University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers, and Moscow State University. He was on the faculty of the Open University of Tel Aviv (1982–1993) and developed several courses in modern Jewish history. Bartal is one of the founders of Cathedra, a leading scholarly journal on the history of the land of Israel, and served as its coeditor for over twenty years. Since 1998, he has been the editor of Vestnik, a scholarly Russian-language journal of Jewish studies. Among his numerous publications are Poles and Jews: A Failed Brotherhood (with Magdalena Opalski, 1992); The Jews of Eastern Europe: 1772–1881 (2005, 2006; also published in Hebrew, Russian, and German); Cossack and Bedouin: Land and People in Jewish Nationalism (2007) [Hebrew]; The History of Jerusalem: The Late Ottoman Period (1800–1917), coedited with Haim Goren (2010); To Redeem a People: Enlightenment and Nationalism in Eastern Europe (2013) [Hebrew]; and Tangled Roots: The Emergence of Israeli Culture (2020). He has been a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences since 2016. He is the coeditor, with Kenneth B. Moss, of The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 7: National Renaissance and International Horizons, 1880–1918.
Content by Israel Bartal
Guide
Jewish Intellectual Inquiry at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
1880–1918From 1880 to 1918, Jews made major contributions to history, social sciences, psychology, and philosophy.
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Jewish Visual and Material Culture at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
1880–1918Increasingly culturally integrated, Jewish fine artists, designers, and photographers produced dazzling works of art and considered cultivating a distinctive national art.
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Politics, Culture, and Religion at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
1880–1918Jewish politics became more ideological, driving cultural change and defining nationalism. Tensions arose between secular movements and religious traditionalism.
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Preserving Tradition in the Modern Age: The Jewish Anthological Impulse
1880–1918Turn-of-the-century Jews considered what to include in a new Jewish canon, producing anthologies and musical collections of Jewish culture.
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The Birth of Modern Secular Writing at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
1880–1918As a generation of Jewish novelists, poets, and dramatists came of age, modern Jewish secular texts and journalism flourished in Jewish and European languages.
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The Expansion of Jewish Performance Art: Theater, Dance, and the Birth of Cinema
1880–1918Jewish creativity in theater, dance, and early cinema expanded dramatically around the world, taking on nationalist significance for a Jewish cultural renaissance.
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The Rise of Popular Culture: From Folk Traditions to Mass Media
1880–1918Jewish popular culture evolved from following folk traditions to creating new forms of mass media, strengthening ethnic identity while depleting cultural heterogeneity.