Abstract
While Zionist ideology has long been part of the rubric of Jewish history, the study of its realization through the social, cultural, and political history of the Yishuv and Israel has been relatively neglected. The Jews of Eretz Israel (‘the Land of Israel’) numbered less than half of 1% of world Jewry at the beginning of the twentieth century. Israel now accounts for about 40% and is approaching parity with the United States. Israeli history and society has only recently become a discrete topic or field of study within the humanities and social sciences, and included in university curricula, even in Israel. Change began in Israel in the early 1990s, when various collections of courses under the title of ‘Israel Studies’ were organized as a modest subset within the BA degree.