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A Volcano of Our Own Making 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, he demanded the return of Palestinian refugees and the abolition of Israeli military rule following the Nakba and the establishment of the state of Israel. Avi-ram Tzoreff uses R. Binyamin’s writings as a lens for a comprehensive critical understanding of the Zionist settler-colonial project and sheds light on patterns of resistance from the perspective of an oppositionist within the Zionist movement itself. More than an intellectual biography, this book examines larger questions about pre–World War I multinational empires, global anticolonial movements, and the intersections between religion, secularism, and nationalism.
Avi-ram Tzoreff is a historian focusing on the history of Jewish-Arab relations in Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine, and the political and cultural history of Jews in Ottoman Iraq and Habsburg Galicia.
"A pioneering book that highlights the transnational and transregional nature of modern Jewish thought. Impressively interdisciplinary, A Volcano of Our Own Making will make us think differently about Judaism, Zionism, and the relationships between the two."—Orit Bashkin, author of Impossible Exodus: Iraqi Jews in Israel
"Yehoshua Radler-Feldman (R. Binyamin) is one of the most important early Zionist ideologues most Jews have never heard of. Avi-ram Tzoreff’s A Volcano of Our Own Making offers a searing and deeply researched analysis of the Zionist debates in the early Yishuv and R. Binyamin’s belief that eschewing the Arab population, the Arabic language, and Islam would corrode the moral fiber of the Zionist project and undermine its future. A must-read for anyone truly interested in early Zionism in the Land."—Shaul Magid, author of The Scourge of Jewish Nationalism: Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum's Anti-Zionist Thought