Ofer Idels
JEWISH HISTORY • ZIONISM • MODERN ISRAELHistorian and Belzberg Postdoctoral Fellow in Israel Studies at the University of Calgary. Author of two books and father of two daughters, not necessarily in that order.
Historian and Belzberg Postdoctoral Fellow in Israel Studies at the University of Calgary. Author of two books and father of two daughters, not necessarily in that order.
Informed by extensive archival sources and contemporary theory, Embodying the Revolution situates the Hebrew experience squarely within the broader, global history of modern sports, offering a groundbreaking new reading on the essence of Zionism.
Order from Rutgers Press
"The first historically grounded and philosophically argued answer to exceptional marginal position of sports in contemporary Israeli culture. An incisive threshold both for readers with a scholarly agenda and with a broader typological interest."
"With forceful originality, Embodying the Revolution challenges us to rethink the connections between physical experience and ideology, Zionist history and the world. Idels's passion for the historian's craft makes the book an excellent read."
"This absorbing book situates Zionist debates about sports in Interwar Palestine within their global context. physical cultivation proclaimed a larger collective purpose."
Focusing on the visceral and embodied historical aspects of the linguistic modernization of Hebrew, this book advocates for the significance of the history of emotions and experience as an innovative methodology with profound ethical implications for our polarized era.
Order from Cambridge Press
"To say Ofer Idels’s analysis is daring diminishes its force. It cuts against the grain of both the conventional work on Israel and what has been celebrated as its most pioneering."
“Idels’ book makes an important contribution to the field of the history of Zionism…it opens a challenging conversation regarding the ways in which we historians need to think about the past.”