Deep culture: The hebrew bible and israeli political speech

The cultural origins of political speech are usually analyzed over decades or a few centuries. This chapter-through examples of Zionist/Israeli political speech-illustrates how the cradle of a nation's culture source, the Hebrew Bible (Torah), can still be highly influential after thousands of years, i.e., Deep Culture. The two main elements constituting Judaic culture generally, and Jewish political culture specifically, are: (1) Collective "historical memory": e.g., weekly reading of the Bible; holidays commemorating persecution, e.g., Hanukkah, Purim, 9th of Av; family Passover Haggadah reading/retelling of the escape from Egyptian slavery. (2) Victimization: "The world is against us, " e.g., Amalek's attack in the desert; centuries of almost incessant foreign attacks and warfare-later morphing into a defensive "Galut" (Diaspora) mentality. A wide range of quotes over the last 120 years, from leading early Zionist and contemporary Israeli politicians, are presented and analyzed. These political oratory quotations show how Israeli political speech continues to be influenced by the "deep culture" of the Jews' most revered religio-national source many eons ago.