A dozen essays document the evolution of national myths in Israel as the heroic figures and events of independence and survival transmute into blind fanaticism, great-power manipulation, and traditional colonialism and genocide.

Chapter 1 Theodor Herzl: Zionist Icon, Myth-Maker and Social Utopian, Robert S. Wistrich; Chapter 2 Zarathustra in Jerusalem: Nietzsche and the "New Hebrews", David Ohana; Chapter 3 Ben-Gurion's Mythopoetics, Ze'ev Tzahor; Chapter 4 The Zionist Right and National Liberation: From Jabotinsky to Avraham Stern, Joseph Heller; Chapter 5 The Multivocality of a National Myth: Memory and Counter-Memories of Masada, Yael Zerubavel; Chapter 6 Political Dimensions of Holocaust Memory in Israel During the 1950s, Yechiam Weitz; Chapter 7 "In Everlasting Memory": Individual and Communal Holocaust Commemoration in Israel, Judith Tydor Baumel; Chapter 8 Paradigms Sometimes Fit: The Haredi Response to the Yom Kippur War, Charles S. Liebman; Chapter 9 Isaac Rebound: The Aqedah as a Paradigm in Modern Israeli Poetry, Ruth Kartun-Blum; Chapter 10 Israel as a Post-Zionist Society, Erik Cohen; Chapter 11 The Jewish-Arab Conflict In Recent Israeli Literature, Leon I. Yudkin; Chapter 12 Modernity and Charisma in Contemporary Israel: The Case of Baba Sali and Baba Baruch, Yoram Bilu, Eyal Ben-Ari;