In January 2005 my friend Josef Joffe published a cover story in Foreign Policy magazine that produced quite a curfuffle. Titled “A World Without Israel”, the article used a hypothetical, historical “what if?” to show that if Israel had never existed the free world would still face many of the same problems it currently confronts in the Middle East, since these problems are first and foremost the result of pathologies existing within and between Arab states – rather than those between the Arabs and Israel. So far, so good. But in seeking to maximize the circulation of their magazine, the publishers of Foreign Policy had chosen what many (myself included) felt was an ill advised title made worse by ill advised graphics. The front cover featured a blue and white Israeli flag torn violently in half, and presumably flapping into oblivion. Several months later, I saw Joe at Stanford and asked him how the article was received. “The Israel-haters loved the cover, but hated the content”, he said, “and the Israel-lovers hated the cover, but loved the content”. Needless to say, I fell firmly into the latter camp.

I mention this episode only because first impressions matter, and because I experienced the same, slightly uncomfortable sensation of cover-content incongruity in reading Jonathan Adelman’s substantively excellent new book – The Rise of Israel: A history of a revolutionary state. One is not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but sometimes one cannot ignore it entirely either. Against a black background, the cover features the silhouette of an M-16 assault rife (the older, long model Israelis refer to as “Matate” – “broomstick” – in case you were wondering) painted in the colors of the Israeli flag, with fragments of a blue and white Magen David. What an odd choice of imagery for a book that is otherwise a thoughtful celebration of the rise and flourishing of the Jewish homeland?

Thankfully, the cover design of the first edition is the book’s only glaring drawback. Both professors and students will find a wealth of well researched, well presented, honest information and analysis in The Rise of Israel. The book is logically structured and tightly argued; detailed and comprehensively sourced, yet eminently readable.

Adelman takes on a fundamental question that has been woefully neglected by Israel scholars (both hostile and sympathetic), as well as broader academic communities of political comparativists and development economists. And that question is “How?” How, in Adelman’s own words “could the Jews, who were expelled from their homeland over 1,800 years ago and lacked military experience or traditions, achieve statehood, and flourish in a hostile environment?” (pg. 8) How, did the small and fragmented Zionist movement achieve sovereign statehood when so many other, far larger and better resourced modern national movements (the Kurds for example) fail? How did Israelis – at first impoverished, repeatedly spurned by hegemonic powers, and always outnumbered – fight six wars and two intifadas successfully, absorb millions of immigrants (mostly from poor, non-democratic countries), endure a crippling economic boycott – and still, within less than two generations, create a vibrant democracy and a roaring Jewish Tiger economy?

No single volume could hope to tackle these questions conclusively, or even comprehensively. But The Rise of Israel performs an invaluable service in identifying the gap in knowledge and taking what amounts to more than a decent stab at beginning to address it.

Adelman approaches the task using two analytical frameworks. The first – and more promising of the two – is his focus on the need for comparative historical research; placing the domestic and international conditions of the Jews (and later the State of Israel) against a background of several comparable contexts. This discussion is covered in seven highly informative chapters (chapters 3 to 9).

The second, and arguably more problematic, approach (developed in chapters 10 to 13), is an alleged “need” to study Israel as a social revolutionary movement. A respected expert on Russian and Chinese politics, Adelman is comfortable and erudite in his discussion of the historical roots and organizational building blocks of nineteenth and twentieth century social revolutionary movements. He divides Zionism into two revolutionary periods, separated not by the momentous event of independence (i.e. before and after 1948), but by a “socialist revolution” (which he dates to the period 1880-1977) and a “second, incomplete, semi-capitalist, globalizing revolution (1977-2007)” (pg. 131).

There is nothing controversial – or original for that matter – in the proposition that Zionism revolutionized Jewish existence. Yet Adelman’s schema suggests greater intellectual and political discontinuity than probably existed, especially around 1977. His assertion that: “From 1880 to 1977 Israel represented a cultural fragment of Russian revolutionary thought implanted in the Old/New Land” (p. 37), for instance, overstates the hegemony of Socialist, revolutionary political thought in early, Yeshuv and post-independence Zionism. (On the great heterogeneity, and resulting divisions, in Israeli political thought, see Sasson Sofer: Zionism and the Foundations of Israeli Diplomacy, 2007). It is no coincidence, moreover, that Israelis refer to Likud’s May 1977 electoral victory as a “Mahapach” (turnaround), rather than a system-changing “Mahapecha” (revolution”). In fact, the victor of the Mahapach, Menachem Begin, appointed none other than the poster-child of 1960s Labor Zionism – Moshe Dayan – to be his Foreign Minister in the immediate aftermath of the 1977 elections (pg. 139-40). By Adelman’s own admission, the liberalization of the Israeli economy began before 1977, and to this day substantial portions of the old economic system persist – prominent examples include a bloated public sector, high taxes, and trade unions that occasionally paralyze the country.

But these are relatively minor quibbles, which do not detract from The Rise of Israel’s considerable overall strengths. Professors conducting research and teaching classes – not only on Israel, but on modern history, the broader Middle East, comparative democratization, civil-military relations, and development economics – will find a rich reserve of ideas and information in the book with which to stimulate their own work, as well as that of their graduate and undergraduate students.

In addition to being an achievement in scholarship, finally, the book is a “must read” for anyone concerned to prepare her kids or students (at high school and college levels) to confidently expose and disprove Anti-Israel lies on university campuses in North America, Europe and, yes, inside Israel itself. Chapter 2, in particular, does an exemplary job in synthesizing the litany of contemporary ideological assaults on Israel – that it is a racist, colonialist state; a Western stooge alien to the Middle East; the dispossessor of a native population; the illegitimate stepchild of the Holocaust and Jewish Diaspora; an intransigent aggressor opposed to peace – and then debunking them, one by one. If for no other reason – and there are plenty of other reasons – I have asked a local sponsor to buy a dozen copies for my local Chabad and Hillel chapters so that students also get this information into their hand directly. For Hanukkah this year, my best SPME colleagues and student activists are getting a copy of The Rise of Israel: A history of a revolutionary state, but only if they promise not to judge the book by its cover.