Abstract

Unlike other new nations, Israel is a new society. It was erected by Jewish immigrants who arrived since the 1880s and aspired to develop a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Building a new society (separate from the local Palestinian society) required a vision of what this society would be like, and the new immigrants relied upon the liberal and socialist ideas brought by them from Europe. Most immigrants came from Eastern Europe, and their academic training was either acquired in Central Europe or in Eastern Europe in universities under German influence. The encounter with new conditions and unscripted challenges in Palestine obliged the leaders of the political forces in the emerging Jewish community to adjust their visions and invent new solutions. In this chapter we present the history of economic ideas of the new Jewish community, first as a settler’s society in Ottoman and British Palestine, and later as an independent state. Our aim is to trace the evolution of economic ideas in the context of changing economic conditions and challenges, the reception of economic ideas originating in other countries, and the ensuing economic policy-making discourse.