| Summary: | Cover -- Contents -- Preface and Acknowledgements -- Introduction. What Are Jews For?: History and the Purpose Question -- Covenant, Chosenness and Divine Purpose: The Biblical Prooftexts -- Jewish Purpose in History: An Outline -- 1. Religion, Sovereignty, Messianism: Jews and Political Purpose -- Special and Subordinate: Jewish Significance in the Early Islamic and Medieval Christian Worlds -- Protestant Identity and Hebraic Political Theology -- Two Jewish Messiahs: Sabbatai Zevi and Baruch Spinoza -- 2. Reason, Toleration, Emancipation: Jews and Philosophical Purpose -- Judaism versus Reason: Pierre Bayle and Voltaire -- Toleration and Cosmopolitanism: Lessing, Mendelssohn and the Jew as Enlightenment Ideal -- Regeneration and Emancipation: Jewish Transformation as Enlightenment Fulfilment -- 3. Teachers and Traders: Jews and Social Purpose -- From the Spirit of Judaism to the Mission of Israel: Jews as Universal Teachers -- The Virtues of Hebraism -- The Jewish Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism -- 4. Light unto the Nations: Jews and National Purpose -- Jewish Purpose and the Emergence of the Zionist Idea -- Messianism, Normalization and the Contest of Zionisms -- Nationhood and Jewish Exemplarity -- 5. Normalization and Its Discontents: Jews and Cultural Purpose -- Integration and Jewish Purpose in Britain and America -- Cultural Distinctiveness and Cultural Critique in Austria and Germany -- The Holocaust and the Lessons of Jewish Suffering -- Jews, the Left and the Politics of Hope -- Conclusion. So What Are Jews For?: Jews and Contemporary Purpose -- Jewish Purpose in Theory and Practice -- Zionism, Antisemitism and the Contemporary Politics of Jewish Purpose -- Notes -- Index.
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