The Scourge of Jewish Nationalism

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The Scourge of Jewish Nationalism is the first book-length study of the theopolitical writings of Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum of Satmar (1887–1979). A towering figure in twentieth-century Judaism, Teitelbaum was the founder and spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Satmar Hasidic sect, today the largest Hasidic sect in the world. He emerged in the post-Holocaust years as one of the most provocative thinkers in traditional Judaism. The book situates Teitelbaum’s dense rabbinic writing in the larger context of contemporary political thought and theology on questions of nationalism, messianism, and Jewish covenantal theology. Introducing readers to Teitelbaum’s anti-Zionist writings, Shaul Magid argues that Teitelbaum’s anti-Zionist ideas were among the most significant Jewish theological interventions of the twentieth century. Putting his work into dialogue with important philosophers, theologians, and theorists inside and outside of Judaism, The Scourge of Jewish Nationalism closely examines Teitelbaum’s work as an illustration of how the Jewish tradition challenges, and is challenged by, the modern nationalist project and its Jewish articulation in Zionism.