I agree with Lee that JWA's new online encyclopedia is a great contribution to Jewish studies.
My stand regarding the use of Palestine as country is more from a Jewish/Historical point of view rather than a political one. We Jews have ways of expressing Jewish concepts in Jewish terms. For example, we obviously use the civil calendar to run our lives in society, but we use the Hebrew calendar to run our Jewish lives. I see Eretz Yisrael (The Land of Israel) as part of the Jewish People, thus we should try not to call this region by the name imposed upon it by the Greeks and the Romans for the purpose of disassociating it from the Jewish People. The Ottoman empire, which ruled the region for 500 years, did not recognize "Palestine" or "Syria" as separate unitary entities. Rather, it arbitrary divided the lands of the Levant into Provinces, governorates districts (Sanjak) and sub-districts (Kaza). The British brought back the official use of Palestine when they came in 1918. Even the Arab population didn't call themselves Palestinians until the British arrived. Henrietta Szold and her contemporaries used the term Palestine since that was how most of the general public called the region for convenience only. Regardless, this does not mean we have to continue doing so since we have alternative terms which the general public can understand like pre-state Israel or the British Mandate of Palestine which was internationally recognized. In fact the goal of these Zionists was to establish a Jewish State not to be called "Palestine". The bottom line is that "Palestine" was never an independent country and should not be listed in a list of countries. David --- Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) =========================================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: [email protected] SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: Listproc @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: galron.1 @ osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html History: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/history.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org
