Anita Shapira
Encyclopedia
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i historian. She is the founder of the Yitzhak Rabin
Yitzhak Rabin
' was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995....
Center for Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
Studies, a Ruben Merenfeld Professor of the Study of Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
and head of the Weizmann
Chaim Weizmann
Chaim Azriel Weizmann, , was a Zionist leader, President of the Zionist Organization, and the first President of the State of Israel. He was elected on 1 February 1949, and served until his death in 1952....
Institute for the Study of Zionism at Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University is a public university located in Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel. With nearly 30,000 students, TAU is Israel's largest university.-History:...
. She received the Israel Prize
Israel Prize
The Israel Prize is an award handed out by the State of Israel and is largely regarded as the state's highest honor. It is presented annually, on Israeli Independence Day, in a state ceremony in Jerusalem, in the presence of the President, the Prime Minister, the Knesset chairperson, and the...
in 2008.
Biography
Shapira was born in WarsawWarsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
in 1940, immigrated
Aliyah
Aliyah is the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel . It is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology. The opposite action, emigration from Israel, is referred to as yerida . The return to the Holy Land has been a Jewish aspiration since the Babylonian exile...
to Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
in 1947 and grew up in Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
. The family lived on Yavneh Street sharing a kitchen and bathroom with other families. Later, they moved to Yad Eliahu.
She studied general and Jewish history
Jewish history
Jewish history is the history of the Jews, their religion and culture, as it developed and interacted with other peoples, religions and cultures. Since Jewish history is over 4000 years long and includes hundreds of different populations, any treatment can only be provided in broad strokes...
at Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University is a public university located in Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel. With nearly 30,000 students, TAU is Israel's largest university.-History:...
, completing her Ph.D in 1974 under Professor Daniel Carpi. Her dissertation, "The Struggle for Hebrew Labor
Hebrew labor
Hebrew labor refers to the concept of hiring Jewish workers in Ottoman and Mandate Palestine.-Ottoman era:During the Second Aliyah period many Jewish immigrants to Palestine sought year round jobs on the agricultural tracts and plantations of their co-religionists who had arrived during the First...
, 1929-1939," indicated her interest in the history of the Labor Zionist
Labor Zionism
Labor Zionism can be described as the major stream of the left wing of the Zionist movement. It was, for many years, the most significant tendency among Zionists and Zionist organizational structure...
movement, which was to be a continuing focus of her research. Since 1985 she has been a full professor at Tel Aviv University, serving in 1990-95 as dean of the Faculty of Humanities. Since 1995 she has held the Ruben Merenfeld Chair for the Study of Zionism. In 2000, she was appointed head of the Chaim Weizmann
Chaim Weizmann
Chaim Azriel Weizmann, , was a Zionist leader, President of the Zionist Organization, and the first President of the State of Israel. He was elected on 1 February 1949, and served until his death in 1952....
Institute for the Study of Zionism and Israel at Tel Aviv University. Since 2008, she has been the director of the Israel Democracy Institute
Israel Democracy Institute
The Israel Democracy Institute , established in 1991, is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank in Jerusalem, Israel. -History and goals:...
.
From 1985 to 1989, she was a member of the Planning and Budgeting Commission of the Council for Higher Education in Israel; in 1987-90 she was chair of the board of Am Oved
Am Oved
-History:Am Oved was founded in 1942 by Berl Katznelson, who was its first Editor in Chief.It was created as an organ of the Histadrut, Israel's federation of Labor, with a goal of publishing books that would "meet the spiritual needs of the working public." Its most well-known series is "Sifriyah...
publishing house; since 1988 she has been a board member of the Zalman Shazar
Zalman Shazar
Zalman Shazar was an Israeli politician, author. and poet. Shazar served as the third President of Israel from 1963 to 1973.-Biography:...
Institute. In 2002-2008, she was president of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. She founded the Yitzhak Rabin
Yitzhak Rabin
' was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995....
Center for Israel Studies and its first director in 1996-99. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Jewish Review of Books
Jewish Review of Books
The Jewish Review of Books is a quarterly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs from a Jewish perspective. It is published in New York City....
.
Awards
- In 1977, she was awarded a prize from the Ben-ZviYitzhak Ben-ZviYitzhak Ben-Zvi was a historian, Labor Zionist leader, the second and longest-serving President of Israel.-Biography:...
Institute for her book Hama’avak Hanihzav (The Futile Struggle). - In 1992, the Am OvedAm Oved-History:Am Oved was founded in 1942 by Berl Katznelson, who was its first Editor in Chief.It was created as an organ of the Histadrut, Israel's federation of Labor, with a goal of publishing books that would "meet the spiritual needs of the working public." Its most well-known series is "Sifriyah...
publishing house awarded her a prize, on the occasion of its 50th anniversary, for the best non-fiction book, Herev Hayona (Land and Power), the English version of which won the National Jewish Book Award in 1993 in the category "IsraelIsraelThe State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
". - In 2004, she was awarded the Zalman ShazarZalman ShazarZalman Shazar was an Israeli politician, author. and poet. Shazar served as the third President of Israel from 1963 to 1973.-Biography:...
prize in Jewish History, for her biography of Yigal AllonYigal AllonYigal Allon was an Israeli politician, a commander of the Palmach, and a general in the IDF. He served as one of the leaders of Ahdut HaAvoda party and the Israeli Labor party, and acting Prime Minister of Israel, and was a member of the Knesset and government minister from the 10th through the...
. - In 2005, she won the Herzl Prize for her excellence in Zionist research from the city of HerzliyaHerzliyaHerzliya is a city in the central coast of Israel, at the western part of the Tel Aviv District. It has a population of 87,000 residents. Named after Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, Herzliya covers an area of 26 km²...
. - In 2008, she was awarded the Israel PrizeIsrael PrizeThe Israel Prize is an award handed out by the State of Israel and is largely regarded as the state's highest honor. It is presented annually, on Israeli Independence Day, in a state ceremony in Jerusalem, in the presence of the President, the Prime Minister, the Knesset chairperson, and the...
in Jewish historyJewish historyJewish history is the history of the Jews, their religion and culture, as it developed and interacted with other peoples, religions and cultures. Since Jewish history is over 4000 years long and includes hundreds of different populations, any treatment can only be provided in broad strokes...
.
Research
Shapira’s research focuses on the politicalPolitical history
Political history is the narrative and analysis of political events, ideas, movements, and leaders. It is distinct from, but related to, other fields of history such as Diplomatic history, social history, economic history, and military history, as well as constitutional history and public...
, cultural
Cultural history
The term cultural history refers both to an academic discipline and to its subject matter.Cultural history, as a discipline, at least in its common definition since the 1970s, often combines the approaches of anthropology and history to look at popular cultural traditions and cultural...
, social
Social history
Social history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments...
, intellectual
Intellectual history
Note: this article concerns the discipline of intellectual history, and not its object, the whole span of human thought since the invention of writing. For clarifications about the latter topic, please consult the writings of the intellectual historians listed here and entries on individual...
and military history
Military history
Military history is a humanities discipline within the scope of general historical recording of armed conflict in the history of humanity, and its impact on the societies, their cultures, economies and changing intra and international relationships....
of the Jewish community in Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
(the Yishuv) and Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
.
Her first book, based on her doctoral dissertation, Hama’avak Hanihzav: Avoda Ivrit 1929-1939 (The Futile Struggle: Hebrew Work 1929-1939), deals with the social and political history of the Yishuv
Yishuv
The Yishuv or Ha-Yishuv is the term referring to the body of Jewish residents in Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel...
in the 1920s and 1930s, including the controversies on policy towards the Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
population and the conflicts between left and right on the means for achieving Zionist goals.
Her second book, Berl: The Biography of a Socialist Zionist, Berl Katznelson
Berl Katznelson
Berl Katznelson was one the intellectual founders of Labor Zionism, instrumental to the establishment of the modern State of Israel, and the editor of Davar, the first daily newspaper of the workers' movement.-Biography:...
, 1887-1944, was widely acclaimed by the general reading public as well as in academia and was published in Hebrew in eight editions. Focusing on a major figure in the Labor Zionist
Labor Zionism
Labor Zionism can be described as the major stream of the left wing of the Zionist movement. It was, for many years, the most significant tendency among Zionists and Zionist organizational structure...
movement, this book portrays the history, society and culture of the Yishuv
Yishuv
The Yishuv or Ha-Yishuv is the term referring to the body of Jewish residents in Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel...
from the Second Aliyah
Second Aliyah
The Second Aliyah was an important and highly influential aliyah that took place between 1904 and 1914, during which approximately 40,000 Jews immigrated into Ottoman Palestine, mostly from the Russian Empire, some from Yemen....
to the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
During work on a biography of Yigal Allon, Shapira became interested in the role of force in the Zionist
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
movement, initially inspired by an article by Menachem Begin
Menachem Begin
' was a politician, founder of Likud and the sixth Prime Minister of the State of Israel. Before independence, he was the leader of the Zionist militant group Irgun, the Revisionist breakaway from the larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah. He proclaimed a revolt, on 1 February 1944,...
during the 1982 Lebanon War
1982 Lebanon War
The 1982 Lebanon War , , called Operation Peace for Galilee by Israel, and later known in Israel as the Lebanon War and First Lebanon War, began on 6 June 1982, when the Israel Defense Forces invaded southern Lebanon...
on “A War of Choice.” This resulted in a book, Herev Hayona: Hatziyonut vehakoah, 1881-1948 (Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948). In her biography of Yigal Allon
Yigal Allon
Yigal Allon was an Israeli politician, a commander of the Palmach, and a general in the IDF. He served as one of the leaders of Ahdut HaAvoda party and the Israeli Labor party, and acting Prime Minister of Israel, and was a member of the Knesset and government minister from the 10th through the...
, Yigal Allon, Native Son: A Biography, Shapira in fact portrays the development of the entire Palmach
Palmach
The Palmach was the elite fighting force of the Haganah, the underground army of the Yishuv during the period of the British Mandate of Palestine. The Palmach was established on May 15, 1941...
generation in Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
, the first native-born Sabra
Sabra
Sabra may refer to:*Sabra and Shatila massacre, a 1982 massacre in Lebanon**Sabra refugee camp, former Palestinian refugee camp, part of the scene of the above massacre*Sabra , a native-born Israeli JewSABRA...
generation.
In this period she also started investigating issues connected to culture and collective memory, as in articles on Latrun
Latrun
Latrun is a strategic hilltop in the Ayalon Valley in Israel overlooking the road to Jerusalem. It is located 25 kilometers west of Jerusalem and 14 kilometers southeast of Ramla.-Etymology:...
and S. Yizhar
S. Yizhar
Yizhar Smilansky , better known by his pen name S. Yizhar , was an Israeli writer and a great innovator in modern Hebrew literature.His pen name was given to him by the poet and editor Yitzhak Lamdan, when in 1938 he published Yizhar's first story Ephraim Goes Back to Alfalfa in his literary...
’s short story “Hirbet Hize,” and on the attitudes of Israeli society to the Holocaust and Holocaust survivors
Sh'erit ha-Pletah
Sh'erit ha-Pletah is a biblical term used by Jewish survivors of the Nazi Holocaust to refer to themselves and the communities they formed following their liberation in the spring of 1945....
. Her book Hatanakh vehazehut hayisraelit (The Bible and Israeli identity) seeks to explain why the status of the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
has declined in Israeli identity. Issues of identity, culture and memory are also the focus of two collection of essays, Yehudim Hadashim, Yehudim Yeshanim (New Jews, Old Jews), and Yehudim, Tziyonim Umah shebeinehem (Jews, Zionists and Between).
Many of her books have been translated into English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
.
Published works
- Berl: The Biography of a Socialist Zionist, Berl Katznelson, 1887-1944/ Anita Shapira , translated by Haya Galai. Cambridge University PressCambridge University PressCambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
, 1984, ISBN 0-521-25618-6 - Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948 (Studies in Jewish History)/ Anita Shapira ; translated by William Templer. Oxford University PressOxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
, 1992, ISBN 0-19-506104-7) - Essential papers on Zionism / edited by Jehuda ReinharzJehuda ReinharzJehuda Reinharz is the former President of Brandeis University, where he is Richard Koret Professor of Modern Jewish History and Director of the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry. On September 25, 2009 he announced his resignation as president; at the request of trustees he stayed...
and Anita Shapira. New York: New York University Press, 1996. - Zionism and religion / Shmuel Almog, Jehuda Reinharz and Anita Shapira, editors. Hanover: Brandeis UniversityBrandeis UniversityBrandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
Press in association with the Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 1998. - Israeli historical revisionism: from left to right / edited by Anita Shapira and Derek PenslarDerek PenslarDerek Jonathan Penslar is a Canadian historian. He was raised in Los Angeles, attended Stanford University for his first degree, and then took his graduate degrees at the University of California at Berkeley, where his advisors were Richard Webster, Amos Funkenstein and Gerald Feldman...
. Portland, Ore.: Frank Cass, 2003. - Israeli identity in transition / edited by Anita Shapira. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004.
- Yigal Allon, Native Son: A Biography/ Anita Shapira, translated by Evelyn Abel. University of Pennsylvania PressUniversity of Pennsylvania PressThe University of Pennsylvania Press is a university press affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....
, 2008, ISBN 978-0-8122-4028-3 - Brenner: Sippur hayim ("Yosef Haim BrennerYosef Haim BrennerYosef Haim Brenner was a Russian-born Hebrew-language author, one of the pioneers of modern Hebrew literature.-Biography:Brenner was born to a poor Jewish family in Novi Mlini, Russian Empire...
: A Biography"), Am Oved, 2008