The "new Jew" -- a dream that Zionism realized, or an outmoded idea?

Mosaic Magazine presents a video conversation with Daniel Gordis and Asael Abelman

An Israeli woman on guard duty at kibbutz Givat Hashlosha, 1936. Via Wikipedia Commons.

Before the state of Israel was founded, some early Zionists argued not only for the recovery of Jewish political sovereignty, but also for the emergence of a new type of Jew. This “New Jew,” as they called it, would be free of Judaism’s bookish habits and the weight o…