Yossi Goldstein

Joseph (Yossi) Goldstein was born in Haifa. He served in the career army as a parachutist, and in 1974 completed his Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Russian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Working on a master's degree at the Hebrew University, Goldstein wrote his thesis on “Israel’s Relations with the PLO, 1964-1969.” In 1982, he received his doctoral degree at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, based on his research of the Zionist Movement in Russia in 1897-1904.[10] In 1984-1999, Goldstein taught at Haifa University. In 1977-1992, he taught at the Open University of Israel. Goldstein is a professor at the Faculty of the Social Sciences and the Humanities at Ariel University Center.[1]

Goldstein is married to psychologist Orah Tamar née Foa. Goldstein has five children, one of them, journalist Tani Goldstein, from his first wife, the artist Sarah Sapan, and four from Orah: dancer Avigail Ilan; artist Anat Berman; Uri Goldstein, a student; and musician Yonatan Goldstein.

Goldstein distinguishes among five developments essential to modern Jewish history. All are interwoven and had a crucial impact on the Jews’ predicament since the second half of the 18th century: emigration, emancipation, cultural revolution, anti-Semitism, and Zionism. Each one of these developments had a dramatic influence on later events in Jewish history. In Goldstein's book "Jewish History in Modern Times",[11] the five developments are considered in detail. Emigration altered the geographic spread of the Jewish diaspora, in the course of the last two centuries pushing the chief center of the Jews out of Eastern Europe – out of Russia and Poland – into the United States and the State of Israel. Goldstein claims emigration was spurred by financial considerations, equal rights, anti-Semitism, the Zionist movement and the birth of the State of Israel.

Goldstein also investigates the growth and development of the Jewish community in the US, the beginnings of Zionism, anti-Semitism, and the mutual blending of religion and nationalism in Jewish society. Emancipation or equal rights which the Jews were granted in European countries during the decades following the French Revolution, along with the cultural revolution which they experienced in the wake of these changes, advanced their integration in European and American society. The primary outgrowth of these processes was the secularization of Jewish society, whose beginnings date as far back as the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) period in the first half of the 18th century. This became the heart of Jewish existence both culturally and socially in the course of the twentieth century, as the Orthodox community within Jewish society dwindled, becoming more and more of a minority. Modern Anti-Semitism is explained by Goldstein as a development bound up with three processes:

I. the Jews’ historical past, their dispersion in the diaspora, and their economic activities, along with the encounter between the Christian and the Jewish religion;

II. modernization of European society, and especially some of the developments attendant upon this, which became more and more pronounced beginning in the 1870s, such as the intensification of secularizing processes, the progress of modern science, and the democratization of European society;

III. dramatic changes within Jewish society, which had to do with the Jews’ economic activities and growing secularization. All these together comprised the basis for modern anti-Semitism, which reached its apogee in the Holocaust of European Jewry during World War II.

Goldstein explains the rise of Zionism and its success as a part of the development of European nationalism and the founding of modern national movements during the period following the French Revolution, alongside the economic development of the Jews and the growth of modern anti-Semitism. These developments led to the establishment of “Hovevei Zion,” the first Jewish national movement, and to that of the Zionist movement founded by Theodor Herzl. The emergence of the Zionist movement, side by side with emigration, secularization, and anti-Semitism, accelerated the implementation in practice of the Zionist idea and the creation of the State of Israel.

A different corpus of Goldstein's research works deals with the history of Zionism in its initial period, with emphasis on the Zionist movement which developed in Eastern Europe. As per Goldstein's claim, the basis for the Jewish national movement emerged specifically in Czarist Russia and nowhere else. True enough, it was Herzl, brought up in the bosom of the German-Central European-Jewish culture, by means of the steps he took to establish the Zionist Organization, was the one to found the movement which eventually formed the basis for the growth of Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel.

Yet most of the movement's members came from Russia, and Russia was the setting where the most important of the movement's activities unfolded. Ever since Herzl's time, the movement's leaders, from Chaim Weizmann to David Ben-Gurion, were born and raised in the Czarist Empire. The culture of the Pale of Settlement was deeply rooted in their being. In the nine books and the dozens of articles which he has published, Goldstein considers from different angles how the growth of Zionism in Russia transformed the movement into one which ultimately led to the founding of the State of Israel.

In his published doctoral dissertation on the early years of the Zionist movement in Russia [12] and in dozens of articles,[13] Goldstein describes the reasons for the growth of Zionism in Russia after the initial founding of the movement, the ideology adopted by the movement's members, and especially their contribution to the Zionist Organization. The heart of the argument Goldstein unfurls derives from the view that the development of the movement specifically within the Pale of Jewish Settlement rather than anywhere else was dictated by the particular social and economic processes which affected the Jews living there at the time. This combined with the special attitude of the Czarist authorities toward the Jews, which Goldstein addresses in his book The Lopukhin Memorandum.[14]

Goldstein demonstrates that an ideology peculiar to the Zionists of Russia evolved in the wake of the founding of the Zionist movement. This was “practical Zionism,” as distinguished from the “political Zionism” of Herzl. This Eastern European ideology, an outgrowth of the predicament of the Jewish community of the Pale, had an impact both socially and culturally, and affected leadership, as well. The biography of Menachem Ussishkin,[15] a prominent Russian Zionist leader at the time, and numerous articles, all authored by Goldstein, elucidate the differences between the two ideologies, as well as detail the practical and political activities engaged in by the “practical Zionists.” As part of the same discussion, in the biography he has written of Ahad Ha-Am,[16] in his book on Ahad Ha-Am and Herzl,[17] and in numerous articles, Goldstein finds that the cultural differences which crystallized between the movement's Russian members (the Ost-Juden) and the Zionists of Central Europe, headed by Herzl (the West-Juden), created a far-reaching cultural barrier between the two groups. This came to the fore clearly in the profound political crisis stirred up in connection with the “Uganda Proposal.”[18]

The third block of research is devoted to the history of the State of Israel in its early period. Goldstein has written the biographies of seven important figures from the early days of the State: three Prime Ministers – Levi Eshkol,[19] Golda Meir,[20] and Yitzhak Rabin[21] – in office at various times during the years 1963-1995; and four additional biographies of prominent figures in politics, economics, industry, and science in the State of Israel.[22]

Goldstein has written textbooks for different ages and levels, beginning with junior high school students, moving on to high school levels, and, finally, addressing college students’ needs.

• List of Publications in National Library of Israel