A Volcano of Our Own Making

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In A Volcano of Our Own Making, Avi-ram Tzoreff explores the biography, writings, and activism of Yehoshua Radler-Feldman (1880–1957), a prominent figure in the history of modern Jewish thought and in the movements for binationalism in Palestine. Known to his readers as Rabbi Binyamin, Radler-Feldman continued to demand the return of Palestinian refugees following the Nakba, the establishment of the state of Israel, and the abolition of Israeli military rule. In this book, Tzoreff introduces the complex and sometimes contradictory nature of R. Binyamin’s theoretical reflections on Jewish tradition, Hebrew literature, governance, civilization, and ethnicity. More than an intellectual biography, this book uses R. Binyamin as a lens for a comprehensive, critical understanding of the Zionist settler-colonial project, and sheds light on patterns of resistance to it from the perspective of an oppositionist from within the Zionist movement itself. In doing so, Tzoreff examines larger questions about pre-WWI multinational empires, global anticolonial movements, and the intersections between religion, secularism, and nationalism.