Zionism
ZIONISM
This article is arranged according to the following outline:
the word and its meaningforerunners
Ḥibbat zion
roots of Ḥibbat zion
background to the emergence of the movement
the beginnings of the movement
pinsker's "autoemancipation"
settlement activities
the organization
the spiritual center
ideological evolution
the shock of the 1880's; political zionism
cultural and "synthetic" zionism
legion and self-defense
post-war consensus and differentiation
between pogroms and holocaust
relation to the arabs
after the holocaust: "catastrophic" zionism revived
zionism and the state of israel
tensions in the u.s. and the u.s.s.r.
ideological problems in israel
non-zionist and anti-zionist trends
autonomists and yiddishists
religious and secular anti-nationalism
territorialism and agricultural settlement
soviet jewish culture
zionist policy
the herzl period
the transition period
the young turks
the arab problem
the struggle for the future
words and deeds
war and holocaust
years of decision
the united nations investigates
the un decision
zionist organization
history
structure
governing bodies
the zionist congress
the general council
the executive
the president
the judicial organs
the comptroller
zionist organization and the jewish agency
zionist organization and the state of israel
local development through the six-day war
In Australia and New Zealand
In Austria
In Bulgaria
In Canada
In Czechoslovakia
In France
In Germany
In Great Britain
In Holland
In Hungary
In Italy
In Latin America
In North African and Asian Countries
In Poland
In Romania
In Russia
In South Africa
In the United States
In Yugoslavia
retrospect and prospect
zionist utopias
christian zionism
introduction to zionist bibliography
the word and its meaning
The root of the term "Zionism" is the word "Zion," which very early in Jewish history became a synonym for Jerusalem. It had a special meaning as far back as after the destruction of the First Temple in expressing the yearning of the Jewish people for its homeland. Thus "Zion" is found in the Psalms, "By the rivers of Babylon,/There we sat down, yea, we wept,/When we remembered Zion" (Ps. 137:1); in the prayer, "And let our eyes behold Thy return in mercy to Zion"; in the poem, "Zion! Wilt thou not ask if peace be with thy captives/That seek thy peace – that are the remnant of thy flocks" (Judah Halevi); and frequently elsewhere in religious and secular literature.
The modern term Zionism first appeared at the end of the 19th century, denoting the movement whose goal was the return of the Jewish people to Ereẓ Israel. It was coined by Nathan *Birnbaum in his journal Selbstemanzipation (April 1, 1890). Birnbaum himself explained the term (in a letter of Nov. 6, 1891) as the "establishment of an organization of the national-political Zionist party in juxtaposition to the practically oriented party that existed until now." The term was thus intended to express a political orientation toward Ereẓ Israel in place of the prevailing philanthropic approach. The extent to which the new word filled a need in the young movement can be gauged from the plethora of subtitles of Selbstemanzipation from its first appearance until the May 18, 1893 issue, when the definition "Organ der Zionisten" ("Organ of the Zionists") was adopted. However, despite the precise meaning which Birnbaum intended to convey by it, the terms "Zionism" and "Ḥibbat Zion" (see below) were still used interchangeably, and it was only gradually that the meaning of political Zionism, as distinguished from its "practical," almost wholly philanthropic aspect, gained acceptance. This happened finally and unequivocally with the appearance of *Herzl.
Herzl, who knew nothing of the semantic developments of the word Zionism, first used it to denote philanthropic-supported small-scale settlement. It was only when preparations for the First Zionist Congress had commenced and when, at the last moment, two of the speakers at the Congress – R. Hirsch *Hildesheimer and Willy *Bambus, leading members of the *Esra Society – withdrew their participation, due to Herzl's explicit political orientation, that Herzl began to stress the importance of the "Zionist" Congress, to be distinguished from the Ḥibbat Zion movement. The Basle program adopted at the First Zionist Congress explicitly endorsed Herzl's political conception of Zionism. From then on, Zionist history was viewed as being divided into two epochs; Ḥibbat Zion up to the First Congress, and from then on "Zionism," i.e., political Zionism. This did not, however, put an end to the prolonged struggle between the two concepts inside the Zionist movement, between the "political" and the "practical" Zionists, each of whom regarded their approach to the realization of the Zionist aim as the genuine meaning of the term "Zionism." It was at the Eighth Zionist Congress (1907) that Chaim *Weizmann coined a new term, "synthetic" Zionism, which stipulated that the two approaches supplement each other and are in reality two sides of the same coin: political activity is meaningless unless it is based upon practical settlement in Ereẓ Israel, and settlement alone could not develop into desirable proportions without the support of political efforts.
[Gideon Kouts]
forerunners
On the threshold of modern times, as far as ethnic and historical consciousness is concerned, the Jews were better prepared for a national movement than any other ethnic group in Europe. Before this consciousness could become an ingredient of modern nationalism, it first had to undergo certain transformations. By the same token, however, all peoples had to undergo important changes in their attitudes before they could be caught up by a national movement; they had to elevate the attributes of their ethnic group to ultimate values. Jewish society achieved its nationalist transformation with the appearance of a modern idea, later called Zionism, which purged, so to speak, Jewish messianic belief of its miraculous eschatological elements and retained only its political, social, and some of its spiritual objectives. Even in this phase of development, however, Zionism leaned heavily on the old messianism and derived from it much of its ideological and even more of its emotional appeal (see *Messianic Movements). Yet all this was accomplished only at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Thus, in spite of the fact that the Jews preceded other nations in possessing the potentialities of nationalism, the development of the Jewish national movement in its Zionist form lagged behind that of most of the European nations.
The shattering of the traditional existence of European Jewry, as separate religious-ethnic entities somehow connected with the surrounding estate-structured, prenationalistic society, was followed by a transitional period that partly preceded and partly coincided with that of the forerunners of Zionism. This period was basically rationalistic, aiming principally at the integration of the Jews in the new, rapidly changing European society, but it simultaneously evolved certain features (particularly pronounced in the *Haskalah period), which were later absorbed into the stream of Zionist ideology. One of them was the revitalization and modernization of the Hebrew language, which eventually culminated in the historical achievement of Eliezer *Ben-Yehuda; another, the striving for economic "productivization." An additional trait of this period was the emergence of the politically minded Jewish leader who appraised the world around him realistically, in the light of a defined political activity.
One cannot, however, properly speak of "forerunners" of Zionism such as Rabbi Judah *Alkalai, Rabbi Ẓevi Hirsch *Kalischer, Chaim *Lorje, Rabbi Elijah *Guttmacher, Moses *Hess, and others, before the end of the 1850s or the beginning of the 1860s. Only then could they succeed in uniting the widely scattered adherents of their idea through mutual contact. The factor common to all, their faith that the future existence of the Jewish nation is conditioned by its return to the historical homeland, became a basis of social unity. The difference between the earlier period and the 1860s is not difficult to explain. The 1860s saw the completion of emancipation in most West European countries, and where it was not yet wholly accomplished, it was thought to be just round the corner. As long as the struggle for political equality of the Jews was going on, the idea of Jewish nationalism could not be tolerated, for the argument that the Jews are a separate national entity was one of the main weapons of the gentile enemies of emancipation. From the 1860s on, when the emancipation seemed all but completed, the idea of Jewish nationalism could be propagated as the next phase. Kalischer even suggested that Jewish nationalism was the natural continuation of the emancipation itself.
The old messianic idea, however, did not disappear completely under the impact of rationalism; it remained alive in the Jewish masses. As late as 1840, there was a widespread rumor in the Balkans and in Eastern Europe that the messianic year, which was destined to bring about the great turning point in Jewish history, had arrived. Many held this belief genuinely and were waiting in a state of mental agitation. For one of these believers, Rabbi Judah Alkalai (1798–1878), his messianic expectation became a point of departure for the transition from the traditional, miraculous messianism to a realistic one. This change of conception was caused by the coincidence of the messianic expectation with the rescue of the Jewish community in Damascus, which had been charged with ritual murder, by the two leading figures of French and English Jewry, Adolphe *Crémieux and Sir Moses *Montefiore. As the miraculous events of the redemption failed to appear, Alkalai inferred that the rescue of this one community was a model for the messianic procedure. The future stages of redemption were to be achieved through similar activities of outstanding Jews. Alkalai was an undistinguished preacher of a little Sephardi community in Semlin, near Belgrade. Until the year of his newly found conviction, he was hardly known outside his limited circle, nor did he wish to be known. However, after he became convinced that the era of the Messiah had arrived and that the redemption would have to be achieved by human action, he felt compelled to convey this message to his fellow Jews. In the remaining 37 years of his life, not only did Alkalai publish numerous pamphlets and articles to spread his ideas, but he traveled on two occasions to Western Europe and later settled in Ereẓ Israel in order to convince Jews and non-Jews of the truth of his mission. He tried to induce people to join an organized resettlement of Jewry, or some part thereof, in their homeland and to equip themselves with the attributes of a modern nation. Although Alkalai began as a preacher imbued with the traditional, and especially kabbalistic, sources, he gradually acquired the elements of a modern national conception. He propagated the idea of Jewish national unity through an overall organization of world Jewry, with modernized Hebrew as its common language. Religion would also play its part in the new national life, but as the controversy between Orthodoxy and Reform grew, Alkalai sought a remedy to this in the idea of national unity.
Ẓevi Hirsch Kalischer (1795–1874) developed his ideas on similar lines. A German rabbinic scholar of Polish origin, he refused to accept any position in communal life. The great experience of his youth was the emancipation of the Jews in France and in the German countries at the time of Napoleon. He explained these events in terms derived from Jewish tradition. The emancipation, and even more the ascendance of Jewish individuals (e.g., the *Rothschilds) to unheard-of economic and political influence, appeared to him to be the fulfillment of the old prophecy of liberation which, according to Jewish tradition, was to terminate the exile. It is true that the prophecy was not yet realized, for it entailed the ingathering of the Jews to their homeland. Therefore, as early as 1836, Kalischer appealed to Meyer Anschel Rothschild to buy from Muhammad Ali the whole of Ereẓ Israel, or at least Jerusalem or the Temple area, so as to initiate the miraculous redemption "from below," and later he addressed the same request to Moses Montefiore. By interpreting the events of emancipation in terms of messianism, Kalischer simultaneously transformed these very terms. From the first stage of deliverance, which was brought about by human activity, he inferred the nature of the next stages, which were also to be achieved by human agency. Thus his interpretation of the emancipation led to the demand for the ingathering of at least some part of Jewry in Ereẓ Israel.
In order to place these theories in the correct perspective, one must bear in mind the underlying motives of their promoters. These theories of redemption were derived from a reinterpretation of the messianic tradition in the light of recent historic experiences. In view of later developments, it is important to note that modern antisemitism was not among these experiences. The activities of Alkalai and Kalischer took place during the flourishing period of Middle European liberalism, e.g., between 1840 and 1875, when optimism about the possible integration of Jews into the life of European nations was almost universal. Certain obstacles to achieving full civil rights, as well as some signs of reservation in social rapprochement, were interpreted as residues of waning prejudices. Alkalai and Kalischer were among the optimists. Until the 1870s they never advanced the argument that Jews needed a country to secure their physical existence, which was later to become one of the main planks of Zionism.
The same can be stated about the motives of the socialist Moses Hess. Hess was not an Orthodox Jew but a social revolutionary and philosopher with a Hegelian tinge. His conversion to Jewish nationalism in the 1860s can be understood as the result of the unmaterialized social revolution. Hess based his Zionist ideas on the concept of a national spirit which permeated the life of the Jewish people. Since the dispersion, the "spirit" was embodied in the Jewish religious institutions, but as these institutions were rapidly disintegrating, the gradual disappearance of the Jewish spirit was the most probable – and the most lamentable – prospect. In order to rescue this spirit, the only solution was the reconstruction of national life in the ancient homeland. Hess's argument is phrased in terms of social philosophy, while the emotional climate was provided by resentment against the non-Jewish society which had frustrated the Jews' expectation of being treated as equals. In any event, any diagnosis excluding emancipation as a possible solution to the "Jewish problem" is absent from the theory of Hess, as it is absent from those of Alkalai and Kalischer. More obvious than in the theories of Alkalai and Kalischer is Hess's dependence on the general trend of nationalism in Europe. The use of such terms as "nationality," "national renaissance," and "creative genius of the nation" indicate the source of influence, i.e., romanticism, which provided all the national movements with their respective ideological tools. Hess's Rome and Jerusalem, as its title indicates, was written under the impact of events which had led to the unification of Italy in 1859. Hess expressly refers to this fact, calling the Jewish cause "the last national problem," after Italy had solved its own. However, impulses from non-Jewish sources can also be traced in the cases of Alkalai and Kalischer, as both use one characteristic argument in their appeal: Jews, who are the descendants of a holy and ancient nation, should not lag behind the newly created nations of the Balkans.
The real difference between Alkalai and Kalischer on the one hand and Hess on the other, is the spiritual background from which their respective drives stemmed. While the first two were originally steeped in the sources of Jewish tradition, including the Bible, Talmud, and Kabbalah, the last had only a faint idea of these sources from his childhood. He was influenced in his knowledge of Jewish history and its evaluation by the contemporary historian Heinrich *Graetz. However, the fabric of Hess's outlook was woven out of strands which were of modern European, primarily Hegelian, origin. He was far from being a religious Jew, in any traditional sense, and, judging by his earlier activities and writings, he must be counted as one of those Jews who were absorbed by European movements and systems of thought.
Hess was the first figure in Zionist history who did not grow out of Jewish tradition. His Jewishness returned to him after a period of estrangement. Thus, Hess and his two contemporaries, Alkalai and Kalischer, prefigure the two main types of Zionism: one had to overcome the miraculous elements of traditional messianism; and the other, after having forsaken the tradition altogether, had to recover its cultural and political implications.
Attributing the emergence of the Zionist idea to the revitalization and modernization of the messianic utopia does not mean that the mere suggestion of regathering the Jews in their homeland was sufficient for initiating the movement. The historical connection between the Jews and their ancient homeland was indeed a conspicuous feature in Jewish, as well as Christian, tradition. The idea of the restoration of the Jews gained currency, especially in England, where the awakened interest in the Old Testament in the wake of the Puritan revolution strongly stimulated interest in the history of the Jewish nation (see Christian Zionism, below). Imaginative Jewish writers and social projectors also readvanced the idea of establishing a Jewish commonwealth, either in Palestine or elsewhere, with a view to solving the "Jewish problem." A case in point was the efforts of Mordecai M. *Noah, one-time consul of the United States in Tunis, who in 1825 issued an appeal to European Jewry to establish a Jewish state named "Ararat" on the Grand Island of the Niagara River. Noah later fostered the idea of the restoration of Palestine.
At first the general Jewish public either took almost no cognizance of these ideas and their promoters or reacted to them with mockery and derision. Alkalai, who had begun his activities 20 years earlier, succeeded in finding any substantial and lasting support only in the 1860s. From this time on, a connection can be perceived in the activities of the various early Zionists. The three great figures described here not only knew of each other, but also supported each other. They succeeded in founding a more-or-less interconnected society among themselves, together with other, less conspicuous personalities who were influenced by them or who had reached the same conclusions independently. Moreover, from the 1860s onward there is an uninterrupted development, and one may speak of historical causation as the ideas and activities of these early Zionists led the way to the full-fledged Ḥibbat Zion movement, founded in the 1880s under the impact of the Russian pogroms and the rise of modern antisemitism in Germany.
By and large, it cannot be said that the forerunners had succeeded in realizing something of their aim, i.e., the ingathering of Jews in their homeland. Until the 1870s, when anti-Jewish troubles began in Romania, there had been no Jewish exodus from any country in Europe. Instead of producing an idea in order to satisfy a need, the early Zionists were searching for a need which would correspond to their ideas. Kalischer seized any rumor of Jews wishing to emigrate as a God-sent opportunity to prove that people who were ready to go to Ereẓ Israel could be found. Thus he tried to refute the argument that his theory had no hold on reality, but he never tried to prove the social necessity or inevitability of his idea. The first real objectives of Zionism were realized only in the 1880s, when persecutions and defamation in Romania and bloody pogroms and civil disqualifications in Russia set many European Jews into motion.
[Jacob Katz]
Ḥibbat zion
*Ḥibbat Zion (Heb. "Love of Zion") was the ideology and movement whose aim was the national renascence of the Jews and their return to Ereẓ Israel. The movement in the 19th century flourished mainly in the large Jewish communities of Eastern Europe (Russia-Poland, Romania). The Ḥibbat Zion societies merged with the Zionist Organization upon its establishment by Theodor Herzl, although some of them continued their formal existence until World War i.
roots of Ḥibbat zion
The Ḥibbat Zion movement derived most of its ideas from the basic values of Jewish tradition: the sense of exile, the longing for redemption, and the religious and spiritual attachment to Ereẓ Israel. Most of the Jews of Eastern Europe, however, were distant from organized political and social activity, and their religious leaders – with a few exceptions – were even opposed to it on the grounds that the coming of the Messiah should not be urged by human endeavor (dehikat ha-keẓ) and that it constituted human interference in the ways of providence. The problems of the Jewish national renascence and the settlement of Ereẓ Israel were mainly discussed by individuals who were motivated to action by messianic visions or by the influence of the national awakening of European peoples. Ẓevi Kalischer and Judah Alkalai (see above) had propagated the idea of settling Ereẓ Israel as early as the 1840s and 1850s, and the former had initiated a consultation of several rabbis and representatives of the communities of Germany in 1860 in order to found a company for this purpose. Shortly after this conference Chaim Lorje of Frankfurt on the Oder founded the Jewish Company for the Settlement of the Holy Land. Neither propaganda nor these activities had any substantial effect on the public, however, just as scant attention was paid to Moses Hess's Rome and Jerusalem and David *Gordon's articles in Ha-Maggid, which supported the settlement of Ereẓ Israel. When the Ḥibbat Zion movement was founded, however, its religious sector was influenced by the ideas and the example of these first rabbis.
The public debate on the question of Jewish nationalism began at the end of the 1860s with the renewed strength of the movement for religious reform in Germany and Hungary. This movement called for the national and cultural assimilation of the Jews and for a break with the national tradition by removing references to Zion and Jerusalem from the prayer book and basing the Jewish religion on its "eternal truths" alone. Peretz *Smolenskin was among those bitterly opposed to these trends, denouncing them in the monthly Ha-Shaḥar which he began publishing in 1868. He placed the Jews firmly among the peoples aspiring to national liberation. Eliezer *Ben-Yehuda's important articles "She'elah Nikhbadah" ("An Important Question") and "Od Musar lo Lakaḥnu" ("We Have Not Learned Our Lesson") in Ha-Shaḥhar (1879), relating the national renascence in Ereẓ Israel to the revival of the Hebrew language as a spoken tongue, were an essential contribution to the crystallization of Ḥibbat Zion as an ideological trend.
background to the emergence of the movement
The Ḥibbat Zion movement arose at a time when developments in Eastern European states were pressing large numbers of Jews to emigrate or engage in intensified social and political activity. At the same time leading advocates of the Enlightenment (*Haskalah) became disillusioned with their faith in the possibility of Jewish assimilation among the nations and were disappointed in their hopes to attain equal rights for Jews. A decisive force in this direction was the series of pogroms in *Russia after the assassination of Czar Alexander ii (1881). The fact that the sincere aspiration of the maskilim and the Jewish youth to grow closer to the Russian people had been met with a wave of hatred and that the government had been quick to declare the pogroms as the "reaction of the people" to "Jewish exploitation" and had begun to impose severe restrictions on the sources of income, government posts, and admission to institutes of learning available to the Jews caused a severe ideological crisis among the maskilim. Many of those who had grown distant from their people began to return to it (visiting the synagogue, participating in fasts, etc.). Others who had previously pinned their hopes on the struggle to change the social system began to realize that this would not automatically answer the "Jewish question." Among those who advocated a national renascence, the realization became apparent that a spiritual and linguistic revival was not sufficient, and that they must set their sights on a real homeland, in which the Jews would not be regarded as aliens. The example of Germany, where a widespread antisemitic movement arose at the end of the 1870s, served as a warning and proof that neither Enlightenment nor emancipation was sufficient to guarantee the status of Jews in their countries of residence. Jewish writers and maskilim embarked on a penetrating discussion of antisemitism and its causes. The times, however, were unsuited to ideological discussions alone. The panic-stricken flight of thousands across the borders and the suffering of the refugees in the places where they were concentrated emphasized the need for a speedy and urgent "national solution."
the beginnings of the movement
The majority of the active Jewish public felt that the only solution was to leave Russia; only a small minority, mainly the wealthy and their relatives, opposed emigration. Many societies, especially among the youth, were formed for this purpose, and there were many arguments between those who supported Ereẓ Israel as a "place of refuge" and those who favored the United States. Foremost among the Ḥovevei Zion – those in favor of going to "the land of our fathers," "to which we have historical rights" – was Moses Leib *Lilienblum, who was soon joined by Smolenskin, Leo *Levanda, and others. The journals Ha-Shaḥar, Ha-Maggid, Ha-Meliẓ, and Razsvet (in Russian) became the disseminators of the ideas of Ḥibbat Zion. Most of the Ḥovevei Zion societies, especially those of the young maskilim, advocated radical national programs. The students' society Aḥavat Zion, founded in 1881 in St. Petersburg, declared that "every son of Israel who admits that there is no salvation for Israel unless they establish a government of their own in the Land of Israel can be considered a member of the society." The charter of the *Bilu society stated: "The goal of the society is the politico-economic and national-spiritual revival of the Jewish people in Syria and Ereẓ Israel." Some of the societies regarded their aim as imminent aliyah to Ereẓ Israel, while others emphasized preparation and the propagation of the concept of the settlement of Ereẓ Israel among the people. All of them, however, agreed upon the means toward settlement as the acquisition of land (either granted by the Turkish government or purchased) and the creation of a class of Jewish farmers and artisans in the country.
Romanian Jewry was aroused by the idea of settling Ereẓ Israel. The Romanian government's devious disavowal of its explicit obligation – according to the decisions of the Congress of Berlin, 1878 – to grant equal rights to all its citizens and the dispossession of growing numbers of Jews from their sources of income had made the true value of those legal guarantees clear to many Romanian Jews and brought them face to face with emigration as the sole solution. At the end of 1881 there were over 30 societies for the settlement of Ereẓ Israel in Romania, and on Jan. 11–12, 1882, a conference of Ḥovevei Zion took place in Focsani and elected a central committee, with its headquarters in Galati. (See also below, Zionist Organization in Romania.)
pinsker'S "autoemancipation"
The new movement was provided with a systematic ideological basis by Leon *Pinsker in his Autoemancipation, which appeared in September 1882. Although initially he did not contemplate Ereẓ Israel as the most suitable territory for the Jewish state, he eventually joined the Ḥibbat Zion movement. He came into contact with societies in different localities, and after consultation with Lilienblum, Hermann *Schapira, Max *Mandelstamm, and others (in September 1883) a memorandum was sent out calling for the establishment of a central executive committee to be elected by a congress of delegates from all the Societies for the Settlement of Ereẓ Israel. Shortly afterward the Zerubavel society (with Pinsker as chairman and Lilienblum as secretary) was founded in Odessa and immediately became the central society of the movement; it was followed by the Warsaw society, which was headed by Saul Pinḥas *Rabbinowitz and Isidor *Jasinowski.
settlement activities
Many of the Ḥovevei Zion pinned their hopes on the support of the *Alliance Israélite Universelle and on other Jewish organizations. However, when these organizations searched for a haven for the refugees from Russia who were concentrated in Brody, they did not direct their migration to Ereẓ Israel at all: some were sent to the United States and some were returned to Russia. At the conference of delegates from various Jewish groups that met in Berlin in April 1882 to discuss the question of emigration, only Azriel *Hildesheimer came out in favor of settling the refugees in Ereẓ Israel, and his proposal was not met with sympathy. Representatives of the societies nonetheless went ahead, and in the spring of 1882 a considerable number of settlers began to reach Ereẓ Israel, prompting the Turkish authorities immediately to publish orders to forbid further entry. The Ḥovevei Zion turned for aid to their British sympathizer Laurence *Oliphant, and asked him to intervene with the Turkish government, but he had no influence in Constantinople. Among those who succeeded in reaching Ereẓ Israel in July 1882 were 14 members of the Bilu Society who had gone, without any property, to work as agricultural laborers.
Despite the Turkish ban on immigration, the foundations of Jewish agricultural settlement in Ereẓ Israel were laid in that year. In July 1882 Zalman *Levontin and his companions established Rishon le-Zion, and shortly afterward members of the Moinesti society from Romania settled in Rosh Pinnah (which had previously been settled and then abandoned by Jews from Safed). At the same time, the settlement in Petah Tikvah, which had been founded by Jerusalem Jews in 1878 but had later been abandoned, was revived. At the end of 1882, a group of Romanian Jews settled in Zammārīn (later Zikhron Ya'akov). However, the meager resources of the new settlers, their lack of preparation, and the difficulty of local conditions worked against them, and soon after the establishment of the new settlements they were in need of help. It soon became apparent that the various societies in Russia and Romania were in no position to provide the required assistance, and Baron Edmond de *Rothschild was persuaded by Samuel *Mohilever and Joseph Feinberg (of Rishon le-Zion) to assist a group of Jewish farmers from Russia to settle in Ereẓ Israel (they later founded Ekron) and to take the settlement of Rishon le-Zion under his protection. In the course of time most of the settlements became sponsored by Baron de Rothschild; the exception was Gederah, which was founded by the Bilu'im in 1884. The regime of strict supervision of the settlers through the agency of Rothschild's officials was a constant source of friction and rebelliousness. Meanwhile, settlements continued to be founded until the end of the 1880s.
the organization
Although it was clear to all the active members of Ḥibbat Zion that the movement had to be unified and organized, opinions differed on the form of organization. Younger and more radical elements demanded emphasis on the ultimate national aspirations and open opposition to the philanthropic organizations, while more bourgeois elements advocated moderation and supportive activities. The 100th birthday of Moses Montefiore provided the movement with a suitable occasion for convening all its active members, and the first conference of Ḥibbat Zion took place on Nov. 6, 1884, at Kattowitz (see *Kattowitz Conference). Thirty-five delegates participated in the conference; most of them were from Russian societies, and the rest were from Romania, Germany, England, and France. An account of the movement's achievements proved rather unimpressive. The great tide of Jewish emigration had been stemmed, and even the large Jewish organizations had abandoned hope of guiding and directing it; the Turkish government had closed the gates of Ereẓ Israel, and those few who had succeeded in reaching the country were considered infiltrators. It is therefore not surprising that the main value of the conference was its demonstration of the unity of Ḥibbat Zion and of the Jewish people as a whole. Pinsker hoped to attract Jewish personalities and organizations from the West into the movement. It was decided to call the organization Mazkeret Moshe be-Ereẓ ha-Kodesh and to establish a central committee with headquarters in Berlin, since conditions in Russia made legal activities on behalf of the movement impossible there; until the establishment of this committee, it was decided to set up a temporary committee in Odessa and a subcommittee in Warsaw. The resolutions accepted at the conference concerned mainly practical matters – organizational methods and ways of supporting the settlements. There was no mention, either in the debates or in the resolutions, of the major questions of national revival or the great national goal.
These concessions, however, were in vain. In Germany, not a single Jewish personality of any stature was found to head the proposed committee, and the resolution to establish a Berlin center was cancelled. Neither did other societies of Ḥibbat Zion that were founded in German and English towns succeed in achieving importance. Even the society in Kattowitz, which in 1883 had published the German-language movement organ, Der Kolonist, lost its importance. Only the student organization *Kadimah in Vienna, which published Selbstemanzipation from 1885 on, survived. The movement in Romania stagnated until the beginning of the 1890s, and the Russian societies were involved with minor affairs. The organization consolidated itself, however; there were almost 100 societies with a membership of approximately 14,000, which collected about 30,000 rubles a year from donations and another 20,000 rubles from various enterprises. Propaganda among the masses was emphasized; preachers (e.g., Ẓevi Hirsch *Masliansky and Judah Leib Yevzerow) and entertainers (e.g., Eliakum *Zunser) did much to spread the ideas of Ḥibbat Zion. Nonetheless, there was friction between the different societies, and opposition to the existing leadership emerged.
In June 1887 the Second Conference, this time of Ḥovevei Zion in Russia, met in Druskininki and resolved to call the movement Ḥovevei Zion. Mohilever attempted to impose an Orthodox authority over the movement, but was foiled by younger representatives, such as Menaḥem *Ussishkin from Moscow, Ze'ev Berman from St. Petersburg, and Meir *Dizengoff from Kishinev. Pinsker was finally reelected to lead the movement, with six advisers, three of whom were famous rabbis: Mohilever, Naphtali Ẓevi Yehudah *Berlin, and Mordecai *Eliasberg. It was also decided to renew efforts to gain permission from the Russian government to organize the movement. In 1890 Alexander *Zederbaum, editor of Ha-Meliẓ, succeeded in obtaining government sanction for the Society for the Support of Jewish Farmers and Artisans in Syria and Palestine, which became known as the *Odessa Committee. The founding conference, which took place legally – for the first time – that year in Odessa, was attended by numerous delegates from all over Russia. Increased contributions enabled the establishment of the settlements of Reḥovot and Haderah (1890–91), the consolidation of Mishmar ha-Yarden, and provided support for the veteran settlements. An executive committee was set up in Jaffa under Vladimir *Tiomkin to supervise the distribution of support and the acquisition of land. The Esra Society in Berlin and other societies in Frankfurt, Paris, and London intensified their activities. The second "Russian Exodus," which took place after the expulsion of Jews from Moscow in 1891, led to increased aliyah and to speculation in land, and the Turkish authorities renewed their ban on immigration and settlement.
the spiritual center
The "practical" activities of Ḥibbat Zion gave rise to harsh criticism, especially on the part of *Aḥad Ha-Am. This criticism was partially inspired by Aḥad Ha-Am's view that Ereẓ Israel could not provide a solution for the masses of emigrants, but should rather serve as a "spiritual center" to unite all parts of the disintegrating nation. It was in this spirit that the *Benei Moshe society was founded. The crisis in settlement activities after the short-lived increase in aliyah at the beginning of the 1890s sowed fresh disillusionment in the ranks of Ḥibbat Zion and strengthened the influence of Aḥad Ha-Am, who had several supporters among the members of the Odessa Committee. Emphasis on the need for spiritual preparation brought about an intensification of the ideological and cultural activities of Ḥibbat Zion, especially after the founding of the Ahi'asaf publishing house. Despite the importance of Aḥad Ha-Am's criticism, however, his approach could not serve as a basis for the activities of the movement. It is not surprising, therefore, that upon the appearance of Herzl and political Zionism, the vast majority of the Ḥovevei Zion societies joined the new Zionist Organization.
[Shmuel Ettinger]
ideological evolution
the shock of the 1880s; political zionism
Modern Zionism began with need and in disillusion. The new thinking was a reaction to dramatic and tragic events in Russia. Czar Alexander ii was assassinated early in 1881 by revolutionaries, among whom there was one young Jewess in a minor role. Immediately thereafter a wave of pogroms spread all over the country. The physical results of the murder and pillage were dire, but the moral impact of these outrages was even more devastating. It was commonly believed that the perpetrators of these attacks were encouraged and even organized by governmental circles; it was certainly beyond doubt that the authorities did little to defend the Jews against the pillagers and murderers. What was perhaps even more upsetting, at least to elements of the advanced Jewish intelligentsia, was that many liberal and revolutionary circles did not defend the Jews but preferred to see in these outbreaks the first stirrings of social change, in which the Jews were being attacked for their supposed exploitation of the Russian peasants and laborers. The whole system of anti-Jewish restrictions had locked the Jews of Russia into a few miserable middleman occupations, in which they could not help but be "unproductive"; the Jews were as much victims as those whom they were supposedly victimizing. Yet all this was ignored by so advanced a group as the leaders of the populist (Narodnik) movement, even though there were some Jews among them, as they hailed the pogroms as the first necessary revolutionary convulsion.
The conclusion drawn on all sides from this shock was that there was no future for Jews in Russia in the existing regime. A segment of the Jewish intelligentsia turned to revolution and lost all hope in the possibilities of reform in the land. Great masses followed in the path of the substantial trickle of emigration that had begun in the 1870s, and, despairing of any economic future in Russia, they moved westward, chiefly to the United States. In the years between 1881 and 1914 some 2,600,000 Jews from Russia and its immediate neighbors immigrated to the "new land." Some contemporary figures, chiefly Leon Pinsker and Moshe Leib Lilienblum, drew other conclusions. They did not believe that hatred of Jews was limited to Russia alone, or that the problem was ultimately to be solved by emigration to friendlier countries or even by the achievement of emancipation in legal theory. The young Lilienblum was in Odessa in 1881 as an "enlightener," a maskil, completing his own secular education, in the certainty that the road to freedom for Jews required their westernization, which would then make them acceptable to "benevolent Russia." He was then also mildly socialist in his political outlook. But cowering before the pogrom mob, it became clear to him, as he was soon to write, that the revolution might take place and yet not bring freedom to the Jews; that they might still be excluded and hated even in a new order; and that the future of Jews lay in the restoration of Jewish nationhood. The more important, and more famous, immediate reaction to the pogroms and to the failure of hope which attended them, was that of an even more committed "enlightener," Leon Pinsker. He left Russia for Central Europe in those months to search for allies for his new views, which he published in German in a pamphlet called Autoemancipation. The simple assertion of this essay was that antisemitism, which he called Judophobia, was a permanent psychopathological phenomenon, not only a social one, so long as the Jews were a "ghost nation" – everywhere a minority and nowhere a normal national majority, everywhere "guests" and nowhere "hosts." Antisemitism was "xenophobia," the hatred of the stranger, but it differed from all the usual varieties of such tensions, if not in kind then in degree, as it was the longest lasting and most pervasive form of this malaise. In the light of pogroms Pinsker finally rejected the notion that any amount of change by Jews to make themselves over into the image of their gentile neighbors could finally gain them acceptance in the majority society. He thus agreed with the antisemites that by their ill-will they had proved their case, that the Jews were irretrievably and forever alien, and that the dream of assimilation was not possible, not because the Jews could not assimilate but because the majority would not let them. It followed rationally from these premises that the way to solve the Jewish problem was to remove the Jews from the places of their dwelling, from the situation of abnormality surrounded by hatred, to a territory of their own where they would become a normal nation. Such a place was not necessarily the land of the ancestors in Ereẓ Israel, though Pinsker was aware that there were historic and emotional ties to the land, but rather the most readily available land that was suitable for settlement, preferably on the American continent, where Jews could develop their own autonomy. For all of his disbelief in the promise of the era of the emancipation that Jews would be personally accepted as equals in Europe, Pinsker's outlook was still emancipatory, still rooted in the desire to engineer the acceptance of the Jews as equals in the modern world. What was new was that Pinsker saw this world as consisting of nations which disliked foreigners, so Jews had to cease being foreign by becoming a proper nation. He was in the first stage of awareness that such national equality was not granted as a gift from on high, because the peoples were not generous, but rather as a result of the national effort of those who desired their national dignity.
Those to whom Pinsker turned in Western Europe showed sympathy for him, but thought that he had been totally unnerved by the sight of the pogroms in his country. In Russia itself the few who organized the Ḥibbat Zion movement in 1882 were motivated also by other impulses than the national theorizing of Pinsker. Their concerns were, like those of Alkalai and Kalischer of the previous generation, a blend of the older, religious longing for the messianic restoration of Zion and the new language of modern nationalism, allied to the notion that gradual settlement in Ereẓ Israel was at least a step in the direction of the ultimate consummation. Pinsker reluctantly found in these groups the only possible adherents and he consented to become their leader. Aḥad Ha-Am, his younger contemporary who was to become the major ideologist of this strand of Zionism, insisted after Pinsker's death, and in contrast with Theodor Herzl, that Pinsker's major concerns had been "the revival of the spirit," i.e., the renaissance of the Hebraic culture in a modern key, and that he had never wavered from his commitment to Zion as the only possible land for the endeavor of a Jewish renaissance – and, for that matter, that Pinsker had never dreamt of more than an elite, representative Jewish community in the Land. All this was fairly adequate as a statement of Aḥad Ha'am's own premises, but Theodor Herzl was thoroughly right in his assertion that, had he known of the existence of Pinsker's Autoemancipation, he would not have written Der Judenstaat. Herzl's views were indeed almost exactly those of his Russian predecessor.
It is now no longer believed that Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat in immediate reaction to the beginnings of the Dreyfus Affair, which he witnessed and on which he reported as the correspondent in Paris of the leading daily paper of Vienna. Herzl's shift from a fashionable journalist who believed in the assimilation of Jews into the majority culture had begun earlier, in reaction to renewed antisemitic agitation of the German-speaking world in the 1880s culminating in Karl *Lueger's appointment as mayor of Vienna on an antisemitic platform. Kaiser Franz Joseph had vetoed his election three times, but that such a party could prevail in cosmopolitan Vienna was a major shock. The beginnings of anti-Jewish agitation in the very home of the emancipation, Paris, where the French Revolution had first given equality to some European Jews in 1791, could only confirm that the trouble was real, and pervasive. Herzl was, if anything, even less involved in Jewish cultural concerns than Pinsker, who had been a leader of the "enlighteners" before his conversion to Jewish nationalism and had even so labored among his people in that period. What gave particular bite to Herzl's views was that he made no distinction, explicit or implicit, between "Eastern" and "Western" Jews. This (and not some intellectual belief in the indivisibility of the Jewish spirit) was the meaning, in the context of his thinking and writing in 1896, of his oft-quoted sentence, "We are a people – one people." What he saw was one Jewish situation all over the world, that of a national group which was an anomaly. His first thought had been that of total assimilation and at first he even fantasized about the possibility of leading all Jews to the great cathedral of St. Stephan in Vienna, where their baptism would make an end of antisemitism. He turned away from this "solution" (in which he had been preceded by such figures as David Friedlaender and Napoleon a century earlier, at the dawn of the era of emancipation) because he knew that it would not work, that antisemites hated Jews even after they were totally assimilated. Herzl therefore proceeded to argue in Der Judenstaat, exactly like Pinsker, that the essence of the Jewish problem was not individual but national and that the Jews could gain acceptance in the world only if they ceased being a national anomaly. He too spoke of the creation of a commission which would survey the possible territories on which the Jewish State would be founded, and he left open the question as to whether it would be better to opt for Palestine with its historic associations or for some vacant land in Argentina. Intellectually, what was original in Herzl's analysis was his dialectic use of the conception of antisemitism as a "reasonable" form of hatred of the unlike. Herzl argued, on the basis of his bold assertion that he alone understood this phenomenon correctly, that even antisemites
could and would be enlisted in laboring for a Jewish State, for it would help them solve problems that they had with Jews, who were "unnecessary" in the host societies and whose very existence disturbed social peace. Since he accepted without question that men were reasonable and not demonic (Herzl went so far as to say that the emancipation was basically irreversible), he could only presume that history would inevitably move forward and produce the only possible solution to the tension between the Jews and the majority society, a Jewish State.
The very nobility of his person, the appearance of a man who suggested the ancient prophet and seemed the equal of great statesmen of his own day, lent resonance to Herzl's words, and he was particularly moving to masses of Jews in Eastern Europe precisely because he was a "Westerner" come back to his people. His tactics were perhaps even more important as an original contribution to the formation of the Zionist movement. Into the teeth of the antisemites who had made the word "Jew" into an insult, and of the assimilationists who used such circumlocution as "Hebrew" and "Israelite," he spoke boldly of the Judenstaat, which means not "The Jewish State" but, literally, "The Jew State." He saw the Jewish question as an international political question to be attacked in the forum of international politics. He therefore organized the Zionist movement at the First Zionist Congress in 1897 in such fashion that the gathering had about it the aura of a Jewish parliament in session, and he made of his presidency of the movement something reminiscent of the role of a head of state or a prime minister. All of the new instruments that were created – the Zionist Congress as a political forum, the buying of the shekel as an act of allegiance to the national movement, a bank (The *Jewish Colonial Trust) to be financed by the buying of shares, and an official press in several languages to inform the adherents of the political activities of the central body and its principal leader – these did indeed constitute the adumbration of Herzl's bold assertion in his diary at the First Zionist Congress in 1897, "Here I have created the Jewish State."
In the few years that were given him at the head of Zionism, he held consistently, until near the very end of his days, to the line that only the attainment of a charter, of a political document granting Jews near-sovereign rights in the territory that they were to settle, was the first objective of Zionism. He therefore fought against turning the Zionist movement into an instrument of piecemeal settlement, and the aid that was given the early settlements in his lifetime, little though it was, was a concession that he made to his opponents in the movement, the "practical" Zionists.
Herzl bitterly opposed the turning of Zionism toward cultural endeavors either by linking it with the secular Hebrew revival or by coupling Zionism with the national religious orthodoxy of the Mizrachi faction which was arising near the end of his days. For that matter, even though he was himself a certain kind of aristocratic social reformer (he dreamt of a seven-hour day in the Jewish State and even wanted its flag to contain seven stars to mark this social advance), Herzl opposed the setting up of the Socialist faction within Zionism. For him the movement that he had created existed for one purpose: the translation of "a people without a land" to some "land without a people." He did indeed turn his first and major ongoing efforts toward negotiating with the sultan of Turkey for a charter for Jews in Palestine or in its immediate vicinity, but those who opposed him in 1903, when he wanted to accept the proposal of the British Government for a Jewish settlement in East Africa (see *Uganda Scheme), were not entirely wrong in remembering that Herzl's commitment to Zion was unlike theirs, and that on theoretical grounds he had always remained a Zionist created by the "plight of the Jews" (Judennot), and not by cultural commitment.
Nonetheless, the bulk of Herzl's followers, even though all assented to his political vision of a national movement treated as an equal among the powers of the world, came to his Zionism with less clear-cut, more complicated motivations. It was not only that individual parties and factions arose, each of which wanted the future Jewish State to take a certain shape and to be constructed consciously in such a direction. More fundamentally, the needs that Zionism served among the mass of its East European believers were not always identical with those which had moved Pinsker and Herzl.
cultural and "synthetic" zionism
The basic distinction in contemporary polemics was made around the turn of the century by Aḥad Ha-Am: he refused to believe that it was humanly possible, even under the most favorable conditions, in the light of the Jewish birthrate, for the majority or even any substantial fraction of the Jews of the world to emigrate to their national homeland and thus significantly reduce the population in the Jewish Diaspora. He thus saw the "Jewish plight" as intrinsically insoluble by purely Zionist means, and the Jews could only do what they had already done in the Exile in bad times: either emigrate to more favorable countries, such as America, or temporize with the conditions in Russia. Aḥad Ha-Am himself did a bit of both, eventually emigrating to London, where he practically stopped writing but served in an important way as spiritual guide to the young Chaim Weizmann and a coterie of others. The fundamental problem of the modern age, and the one to which Zionism could indeed address itself, was the crisis not of the Jews but of Judaism, i.e., the rapid and radical disintegration of Jewish faith and identity that was going on everywhere. A secularist and positivist himself, Aḥad Ha-Am did not believe that the process of loss of religious faith was reversible. The function that revealed religion had performed in talmudic and medieval Judaism, that of guaranteeing the survival of the Jews as a separate entity because of their belief in the divinely ordained importance of the Jewish religion and people, it was no longer performing and could not be expected to perform. The crucial task facing Jews in the modern era was to devise new structures to contain the separate individuality of the Jews and to keep them loyal to their own tradition. This analysis of the situation implied, in its very first assertions, a view of Jewish history which Aḥad Ha-Am produced as undoubted and which has since become the common coin of secular Zionist and Israeli historiography: that the Jews in all ages were essentially a nation, and that all other factors profoundly important to the life of this people, even religion, were mainly instrumental values.
A thousand years earlier Saadiah Gaon (d. 942 c.e.) gave expression to the raison d'être of the Jew in the pre-modern era when he pronounced that "the Jewish people is a people only for the sake of its Torah," i.e., that Jews exist as the instrument of Judaism. To accept this definition in the modern age of disbelief would mean that contemporary Jews have broken radically with their past, that continuity no longer existed in Jewish history, and that whatever solution could be found for the present situation would address itself to masses of individuals who still bore the name "Jew," in varieties of suffering or quiet desperation and on various levels of pride or self-hatred, to help them make the best of their situation. Such an understanding of Jewish modernity could lead to an assimilationist conclusion, as it had throughout the 19th century. It could also support the basic thesis of Herzl that the Jews existed as a community in his day only because they shared a negative situation, antisemitism, and that this was the one problem which they could, in the here and now, solve together. Those who chose to deal with that problem only by national and
political means would then be free to evolve whatever culture might suit them. This view of modern Jewish culture was maintained by Hebrew writers and ideologists, such as M.J. Berdyczewski, J.Ḥ. Brenner, and Jacob Klatzkin. They could accept neither Aḥad Ha-Am's notion of ongoing continuity in Jewish history nor, more fundamentally, his description of the "national spirit" as an authoritative guide and standard to which he attributed a majesty comparable to that which the religious had once ascribed to the God of revelation. Brenner regarded the national past and most of the Jewish heritage as weak, desiccated, cringing, and unworthy. There was thus created at the beginning of the 20th century, in part under the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche, a school of thought which wanted to create a Jewish state not only because there had already been a radical break with the Jewish past but in order to realize such a change. These writers wanted to establish a bold and earthy people, whose hands would not be tied by the rules of the rabbis or even by the self-doubts of the prophets. (This trend toward a total break was never attractive to more than a small minority among the Zionists, but it eventually evolved into a heresy to be represented by those few Israel writers and intellectuals who opposed the very notion and term of Jewish peoplehood and Zionism – and were called *"Canaanites."
Of all the schools of thought that were arising within the Zionist movement in its very first few years, Socialist Zionism was, at least in practice, the most important. In the work of its founding father, Nachman Syrkin, and a few years later, of the younger, Marxist, Ber Borochov, a socialist explanation of the "plight of the Jews" was constructed. In this view, the Jews were everywhere rejected aliens because their economic pursuits were "unproductive" or peripheral. For their masses were locked in the Pale of Settlement without any outlet into the modern development of the general society and its economy. They were middlemen, small craftsmen or luftmenschen who were not integrally bound to the roots and basic aspects of production and especially not to farming, modern industry, and other forms of primary economic activity. Socialist Zionists did not, of course, blame the Jews for this unhealthy economic situation, for they knew that it was not only a result of many centuries of persecution and discrimination but also of the "judophobia" of the gentile peasants and workers who regarded the Jews as alien "exploiters" and unwanted competitors; the antisemitism which attacked Jews because of their marginal economic role was the source of the very phenomenon that it attacked. This vicious circle produced the "inverted pyramid" of the Jewish economy in the Diaspora, the phenomenon that Jews were fewest in production and became more numerous the further away one went from farms and factories. That was the cause of an inevitable process of mass flight from Russia, Romania, and other countries, which would, in the view of Borochov, eventually propel Jews toward the land within which a proper kind of national economy, a "normal" pyramid, would be created. However, the non-Marxist Labor Zionists, particularly those in Ereẓ Israel, such as A.D. Gordon, who was influenced by Tolstoy, affirmed neither such a historical inevitability of a mass emigration to Ereẓ Israel nor its socialist future, nor did they theorize about the need to create a Jewish national community as a necessary precondition for "healthy class straggle," which could not take place in the Diaspora where both Jewish workers and their employers were trapped by unhealthy circumstances. For Gordon and his pioneering disciples Zionism was an act of will, an affirmation about the dignity of physical labor and the rootedness of man in his own soil, of the desperate necessity to create a new Jewish man in the Land of Israel to replace the disfigured human being who had been shaped by his misery and alienation from nature in the Diaspora. The men of the Second Aliyah, the young pioneers who went to Ereẓ Israel in the first decade of the 20th century, adhered in their majority to some version of the socialist Zionist faith and especially to the notion that the "new man" whom they were creating and exemplifying through themselves was the essential positive feature of Jewish history in the modern era. This group was eventually to become the dominant element among the founders of the State of Israel. It had no doubt from the beginning of its career that it was the creative center of the Jewish world and that, most immediately, the Zionist movement was important insofar as it made their image of the Jewish settlement in Ereẓ Israel possible.
The major thrust of Zionism in the era immediately after Herzl was neither toward his purely political activity for the achievement of the "charter," nor toward small-scale settlement combined with cultural evolution; it was toward "synthetic Zionism." This term was coined by Chaim Weizmann, who had been a young opponent of Herzl in his lifetime and who succeeded to the acknowledged leadership of the movement by 1917, when the Balfour Declaration was obtained from the British Government as the result of prolonged negotiations during which he had been the central figure. Weizmann was, however, not alone in this shifting of the Zionist outlook and policy. Even Herzl's immediate heir in the presidency of the movement, David Wolffsohn, and most of those with whom he surrounded himself, especially Nahum Sokolow, were committed or at least inclined to the cultural, Hebraic renaissance and to the gradual upbuilding of Jewish settlement efforts in Palestine as the ongoing immediate tasks of the movement, while continuing diplomatic efforts and hoping that the time would come when major political arrangements would be possible. Moreover, the very struggle for these achievements, the labor of securing, step after step, "one cow, one dunam" in the Land of Israel, or the laying of the foundations for an educational system in Hebrew culminating in the creation of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, were the routine ongoing life of Zionism, while those who engaged in these daily endeavors continued to dream of the eventual Jewish commonwealth, to be achieved at some political turning point in history. The handful who were taking the lead in the early years of the century by going to Palestine were moved by visionary considerations, and they regarded themselves, and were regarded within the Zionist hinterland, as a kind of secular priesthood preparing the way for those who would follow. Even in the United States, where the Zionist movement consisted almost entirely of recent immigrants of the same origins as the pioneers in Palestine (so that these American Zionists were then not themselves candidates for joining the pioneer vanguard), the labor for Zion became a quasi-religious experience. Even those "Western" Jews in America who had become Zionists, because they said they wanted to extend philanthropic help to Jewish refugees who chose to go to Palestine, belonged to a generation in American life which was dominated, among both Jews and gentiles, by the "social gospel," the teaching that the meaning of religion is not in metaphysical faith or theology but in the work of social reform in this world. "Synthetic" Zionism thus provided those who adhered to it, everywhere, with such daily commandments as the collecting of money to help the Jewish National Fund purchase dunams for new settlers; with tales of courage and suffering by the pioneers in Palestine; with spiritual uplift at the sight of a cultural renaissance; and with the ultimate hope, sustained even in the decade between 1904 and 1914, that some great political event would come to pass.
The cultural and "synthetic" Zionists emphasized more than the purely "political" Zionists the activity called in Zionist debates Gegenwartsarbeit, i.e., "work in the present," in the Diaspora. They included in it not only the task to "conquer" the Jewish community councils, proclaimed by Herzl himself, but also the need for modernized Hebrew education, in new-type ḥadarim (called "ḥeder metukkan") and in secular-type schools; the establishment of Jewish athletic and sports clubs for the young (Bar Kokhba, later Maccabi, etc.); and, most important of all, the active participation, on separate Jewish tickets, in parliamentary and local elections, particularly in the Austrian Empire, in order to emphasize the existence of specific Jewish national interests in multinational states, crystallize the Jewish public around them and thus erect a barrier against political assimilationism.
Zionism was transformed into a mass movement and into a major political force by World War i. At the outbreak of hostilities the seat of the Zionist executive was in the capital of one of the major warring powers – Berlin; and even though an office was soon established in neutral Copenhagen, there was no possibility of effective central direction in a situation in which major Jewish communities were on both sides of the line. The situation was all the more complicated by two facts: that Palestine was under the control of Turkey, which joined the Central Powers in 1915; and that the largest Jewish community in the world, and the one most disaffected from its own oppressive government, was in Czarist Russia, which was allied to the Western powers. The situation created complex interplays of political forces which resulted in such events as the partial expulsion and total harassment by the Turks in 1917 of the Jewish population of Palestine; the protection of Jews in Palestine by German influence in Turkey in order not to lose support of Jewish opinion in the world as a whole and especially in then neutral America; and, above all, the long deliberations which resulted in the publication by the British government on November 2, 1917, of the Balfour Declaration, in which it declared itself to be in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish national home, provided that the civil and religious rights of the non-Jews were not impaired. This act resulted from the desire of the British to appeal to U.S. Jewish opinion, whose support for the Allies was questionable until the U.S. entered the war at a very late stage in the British deliberations on Zionist aspirations, and to keep Russia in the war despite its revolutionary upheavals in 1917. Beyond these immediate purposes there was, however, a new atmosphere compounded out of markedly increased Jewish fervor for Zionism. This was a corollary to the rising nationalism among all peoples in Europe, including the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which the Allies were exploiting by promising such subject nations as the Czechs and the Poles their national freedom after the war. The self-determination of subject peoples was made into a central war aim by President Wilson when he announced his Fourteen Points.
legion and self-defense
It was clear early in the war that this convulsion involving all the major European powers would inevitably lead to new political arrangements and thus give room for Jewish aspirations. Some of the Zionists, especially Joseph Trumpeldor, the Russian Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky, and later also such young labor pioneers from Ereẓ Israel as David Ben-Gurion and Izhak Ben-Zvi, believed that one way of making sure that Jews would be taken seriously at the peace table was to organize Jewish military units to fight on the side of the Allies. As a practical matter this was the way to enlist Russian Jews in the West, particularly in England, for while they would not return to their native land to fight for Russia, even if that had been possible, many were eager to enlist as Jews in the Allied cause. The British government was at first not overly enthusiastic or cooperative, but these efforts did result in the establishment of the Jewish Legion – the Zion Mule Corps, which fought at Gallipoli in 1915 and in the Jewish battalions which took the field in 1917. As military formations they were of some importance, but their main significance was in the creation of the modern Jewish military tradition as a conscious national act. In the preparation of the claim for normal Jewish nationhood at the end of the war, something more than a symbolic army had fought beside the ultimate victors. Even earlier, with the very beginnings of Zionist settlement, Jewish armed guards (see *Ha-Shomer) had increasingly protected settlements against thieves and armed robbers. Both of these military traditions coalesced after World War i, when difficulties soon developed in Palestine between Jews and Arabs, into the creation of a semisecret Jewish self-defense organization, the Haganah. There was never sufficiently prolonged quiet in Palestine between the two world wars for Jews ever to be able to imagine that they would be safe without their own self-defense. By the late 1930s there was continuing open warfare between the Jewish and Arab communities, in which the British played an ambiguous role, at best, and in which the Jews could largely depend for their safety only on themselves. By this time *"illegal" immigration in the teeth of British restrictions had become a life-and-death matter for those Jews who could escape Europe. The Zionist movement as a whole, in all its factions, and not only the Revisionists, who had left the Zionist Organization because of its lack of militancy, was in a military struggle with both the Arabs and the British. There had thus evolved a new element which had been implicit
in the Zionist ideological vision of a normal nation: an increasingly independent military force, which, however small by international standards, was almost from its beginning a substantial power in the immediate region. The existence of armed strength added further "sovereign" dimensions of Jewish self-liberation to the vision of Zionism.
post-war consensus and differentiation
As World War i ended, the major arena of Zionist activity was, however, not in Ereẓ Israel but in Paris, where the victors were meeting in 1919 to define the terms of peace. A variety of Jewish groups were officially in the lobbies of this conference. The most assimilated elements from France, England, and the United States would, for the most part, have preferred that the Jewish position at the Peace Conference be simply the demand for full individual liberty in all the states that were then being created in Central and Eastern Europe. The "Western" Jews were projecting the image of what they hoped was and would remain their own status, that of Frenchmen, Englishmen, or Americans who differed from others only in their private adherence to a differing religious faith. The Zionists, headed by Weizmann and Sokolow, came to Versailles to make sure that the intent of the Balfour Declaration (as they hopefully understood it to mean: an act pointing to the creation in measurable time of Jewish political independence in Palestine) would be incorporated in the peace arrangements. The delegates from Eastern Europe were mostly interested in insisting that such new states as Poland and Lithuania, and all the rest, be made to pledge the most solemn guarantees for the rights of national minorities within their borders. For Jews this meant self-definition as a national minority, parallel, for example, to the Ukrainians in Poland, with the right to conduct educational institutions with public money in their own national language, be it Yiddish or Hebrew; the right to self-governing community councils with status before the law; and, most sensitively, the right to appeal to the international community, which was seen to be represented by the League of Nations, over the head of the national government, if minority rights were violated.
There was internal struggle among these various parties in Paris. Out of their interaction there, and largely through the leadership of Louis Marshall, a kind of consensus was achieved which became the actual premise for all Jewish political life in the next decades, the interwar years. It was agreed that all would stand together for the minority rights of Jews in those countries in which the local Jewish population desired such a formulation of its identity. In practice this meant that the Jews of Eastern and Central Europe were publicly defined in new international arrangements as a separate people; for the Zionists this definition meant the possibility of struggling effectively within these Jewish national institutions to orient educational endeavors toward the new Hebraic culture and to prepare the hearts of the people to realize that only in complete national concentration in Ereẓ Israel could there be a Jewish future. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s various other factions were in combat with the Zionists within these new structures of the Jewish community. There was ongoing friction with assimilationist opinion, but this trend never achieved importance in the inner life of the East European Jewish communities outside the Soviet Union. The more serious battles were with the religiously orthodox, who were by then organized to a great degree around *Agudat Israel; this party found Zionism to be too secular. As a counterforce to these views the Orthodox wing of the Zionist movement itself, the Mizrachi, achieved particular importance during these years; it represented the possibility of a synthesis between the new national ideal of self-realization in Ereẓ Israel, through cooperation even with nonbelievers who were laboring in the Zionist cause, and preserving and even refreshing traditional Judaism. The enemies of Zionism on the left were even more serious, because both the Jewish Socialist Bund and the Jewish elements within the mostly illegal Communist Party, in Poland and in several other adjacent countries, had substantial followings. The Zionists countered these visions of a new, revolutionary era by insisting, especially through their own socialist wing, that the new socialist society would have to be formed by the remaking of individual national societies and that, at least in the case of the Jews, rampant antisemitism, which had culminated in the mass slaughter of the Ukrainian pogroms in the post-revolutionary period and became a bitter reality in independent Poland, required that, whatever be the nature of the internal life of a Jewish independent society, the solution to the Jewish problem had to take a Zionist form. Several varieties of Zionist Socialism had been defined in the 1920s, ranging from moderate social democracy to the ultimately Marxist pro-communism of Ha-Shomer ha-Ẓa'ir.
Almost every one of these versions of Zionism, except for the most radical communist option, had existed as a school of thought and even as an organization, in some form, before World War i. However, these parties came to serious maturity in their encounter with the postwar realities: the internal struggles of East European Jewry and, of growing and soon of predominant importance, the battle for the definition of the life and character of the yishuv, the Zionist settlement in Palestine, as it increased tenfold, from roughly 60,000 in 1919 to 600,000, in the 1940s. In the interwar period a fully developed form of Jewish communal autonomy and self-government existed there, legally, in the *Keneset Yisrael with its executive body, the Va'ad Le'ummi, which was confirmed by the British Mandate Government and, extra-legally, in the internal discipline and cohesiveness of the Jews in the country. An even more important political process involved these very forces, both in the yishuv and among the Jewish masses of Eastern Europe, in their interaction in the World Zionist Organization. The League of Nations' Mandate for Palestine stipulated that an appropriate "*Jewish Agency" cooperate by right with the British authorities in the upbuilding of the Jewish national home, and the Zionist Organization, though obliged to seek the cooperation of non-Zionist Jews as well, was recognized as such an "agency." The most poignant problem during most of those years was the question of Jewish immigration, which was always strictly limited by the British in reaction to Arab opposition and violent outbursts. The World Zionist Organization exercised effective control over the distribution of "certificates," that is, entry permits for new immigrants, up to the number permitted in any one year by the British. How these permits were divided in the Diaspora became a cause for impassioned struggle, both among the various Zionist factions which accepted the discipline of the world body and especially with the Revisionists, who regarded themselves as discriminated against. (This militant group eventually broke away, mainly for political reasons, and declared its Zionist independence in 1935.) The basic solution was an agreement to operate by the "party key," which meant that "certificates" were distributed on the basis of the respective strengths of the various parties in the world Zionist movement and especially in the nascent yishuv. The result was that the political composition of the Jewish community in Palestine remained remarkably stable despite the growth of its proportions. This party influence on immigration was part of a picture in which many of those who came, especially after 1933 in flight from Hitler – even though they were admitted as individuals and not as the holders of certificates – had also to find their way within a community which was dominated by parties. Kibbutzim, banks, educational facilities from university down to elementary school, jobs in the administration, and many other things besides were controlled or influenced by parties, which tended to be complete Jewish societies living side by side, each one involving most of the elements of human life, almost from the cradle to the grave. There were parties even before 1914, but in the 1920s the internal life of the Jewish community in Ereẓ Israel had crystallized into the political parties, which largely exist to the present day. The forces which were contending over the nature of the new society were divided into three broad groups. The most powerful were the several kinds of Socialist Zionists, with their roots in the Second Aliyah, in the kibbutz movement, and in the labor unions, which had together formed the overarching organization of all the Jewish workers in Israel (later including Arabs also), known as the Histadrut. These forces strove for a socialist, economically egalitarian, secularist Jewish society. The central sector of the developing Jewish community consisted of middle-class elements. In part, and especially in the case of the first refugees to come from Germany after 1933, these forces consisted of people who arrived with some property. Not all those who came from Eastern Europe wanted to be pioneers in kibbutzim. Some had been accustomed to a middle-class, urban way of life and they wanted to live that way in the new environment. This middle-class group contained many General Zionists allied to the anti-Socialist Revisionists. On doctrinaire grounds they insisted with vehemence that the very future of the Jewish settlement depended on the releasing of the energies of free enterprise. There was one wing of General Zionists who refused to identify, both in Ereẓ Israel and outside it, with any specific middle-class program in the country and who followed the lead of Chaim Weizmann, in particular, in accepting economic and cultural support for the labor sector as well as for private enterprise. But another wing of the General Zionists clung to a more partisan view, so that a continuing battle was fought between Socialist Zionism and the middle-class groups. The tension was often sufficiently great for bitter accusations to be hurled. Such leaders as David Ben-Gurion, in his role as secretary general of the Histadrut, spoke for the Socialists in accusing the Revisionists of being "Fascists"; the partisans of Jabotinsky replied by charging that the Socialist Zionists were using their power not for the good of all but to increase their own political and organizational dominance.
Parallel with this quarrel there was continuing tension over the issue of religion. There had been Orthodox Jews of the old yishuv in some numbers in Ereẓ Israel before the new Zionist immigration began, but the earliest arrivals after 1900 were in their overwhelming majority Socialist and secularist, and many of them were anti-religious in a doctrinaire way. The religious Zionist movement, Mizrachi, had indeed been founded in the early years of the century and it had existed as a trend even before, but its direct presence and influence on the life of the new Jewish community in Ereẓ Israel began to be felt only after World War i. By then a labor wing of the religious party, the Ha-Po'el ha-Mizrachi, had arisen, and it proceeded to create its own kibbutz movement. Many of the middle-class immigrants who were arriving in the 1920s and 1930s were personally Orthodox, and they could not imagine a Jewish presence in the land which did not exemplify the values and practices of the religious tradition. Religious Jewry was led by the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, Abraham Isaac *Kook, until his death in 1935, who, though he was himself beyond party, was regarded as the spiritual voice and teacher of all religious Jews who accepted a Zionist vision. For Kook the new settlement in the Land of Israel was the "beginning of the redemption." Both his temperament and outlook were broad enough to embrace even the most partisan secularist as an instrument of the divine purpose. Those who followed him could accept such a notion in theory. In practice they were dedicated to the building of an institutional power base for religious Jews, so that they could compete as equals with the other groups and provide equal opportunity in the new country for those who shared the Orthodox religious faith. This body of opinion was deeply concerned that the total temper of the Jewish community should not be secularized. They did not want to become a religious ghetto in a non-religious Jewish society, and they believed that it was their duty to bring religion even to those who opposed it. Orthodox Jews in Palestine joined the battle, immediately after the beginning of the British Mandate government, for the ever wider influence of traditional Jewish practice on the life and the law of the yishuv. The struggle between the Socialist and the middle-class elements in Israel's society has been muted in the generation of statehood, for a mixed economy now prevails. The conflict over religion and its relationship to public life has, if anything, become sharper within the sovereign parliamentary life of the Jewish state.
between pogroms and holocaust
Ideological stamps were thus deeply impressed on the Jewish community in Palestine. Great numbers of those who came in the 1920s and even in the 1930s chose their paths because they believed in some version of the Zionist vision and found in it their path toward national and personal realization. Nonetheless, the dominant element in creating many more candidates for immigration to Palestine than were ever permitted to arrive was not Zionist ideology, at least not in its cultural, "synthetic" form, but the growing horror of antisemitism, at a time when other doors to safety were closing or were entirely closed to Jews. The sense of disaster was already deeply embedded in the consciousness of European Jews by the events which followed right after the end of World War i. The far greater horrors of the Nazi Holocaust have by now half obscured the murder of about one hundred thousand Jews, including women and children, in the Russian-Polish borderland, where Ukrainian and counter-revolutionary Russian army units systematically engaged in killing Jews in the years 1919–21. These pogroms had a profound effect on the Jewish delegation in Paris, which agreed to plead unanimously for national minority rights because the hatred of Jews as Jews was so rabid in Eastern Europe. Moreover, major figures among Western Jewry increasingly became less doctrinaire. Men such as Louis Marshall could not accept the Zionist notion that all Jews everywhere belonged to a national entity other than that of the majority of the people in the political state into which they were born, and they could not therefore agree that Jews ought to be working for their ingathering in Zion. Nonetheless, such figures responded to the dire need of East European Jews both by trying to alleviate the immediate situation and by accepting that, on purely humanitarian grounds, those who wished to go to Palestine should be helped to do so. Even after the pogroms ended and a certain amount of surface stability was created in Eastern Europe, the largest community outside the United States, that of Poland, was increasingly harassed by a regime of economic exclusion and of numerus clausus at the universities and in the professions. Year by year the life of these Jews was becoming more unbearable, and there were occasional pogroms in Poland in the 1930s to underline their misery. The situation was only relatively better in some of the other countries in the area. The "non-Zionists," who were persuaded by Chaim Weizmann in 1929 to join with the Zionists on the basis of parity in creating the "enlarged" Jewish Agency, were moved by a sense of the direst Jewish needs and a growing undercurrent of fear of worse things to come. This, rather than Zionist ideology of any variety, was the dominant note in the development of Zionism itself even before Hitler appeared on the scene, and certainly after 1933.
The sense of need and foreboding had come to formal expression in Zionist thought immediately after World War i. Louis Brandeis, by then a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States, who had served as the leader of American Zionism during the war years, believed that, with the achievement of the Balfour Declaration, the political struggle of Zionism was over and that, henceforth, the Jewish settlement in Palestine should be fostered through the orderly processes of investment, on the highest principles of business accountability. This soon led to a shattering struggle with Weizmann, who continued to believe in the need for a movement of Zionist national consciousness. He wanted the Zionist movement to work toward a yishuv which would be a left-wing liberal, in part moderately Socialist, Hebrew-speaking society and he saw its embodiment mainly in the collective and cooperative enterprise of the labor pioneers who needed non-profitable funds, such as the *Keren Hayesod, to create their network of settlements and institutions. In short, Weizmann intended to realize the "synthetic" Zionism which he had defined in the days of his youthful opposition to Herzl. Both Brandeis and Weizmann, despite their differences, wanted to create the Jewish community in Palestine step by step, according to plan, with the presumption that there was time aplenty to do it. Right after World War i Max Nordau, the still-living colleague of Herzl, and later also Vladimir Jabotinsky, arose against such views. Nordau and Jabotinsky did not believe that the Jews of Eastern Europe would find safety in any years of seeming quiet that might follow after the Russian-Polish upheavals, and they were equally convinced that the British government, the holder of the Mandate, would find reasons of its own for making the large-scale immigration of Jews into Palestine an ever more difficult enterprise. Nordau proposed, melodramatically, that without any meticulous planning or preparation, or even arrangement for solid housing, Jews, mainly from the pogrom-afflicted areas, should be led in their hundreds of thousands simply to appear in Palestine. He agreed that many might suffer extreme hardship, but that it was better for that to happen than to wait for the slower horrors in Europe and the hardening of the anti-Zionist policy of the British. At least, this mass movement would immediately achieve majority status for Jews in Palestine and would assure possibilities for the future. This then wild idea of "catastrophic" Zionism was rejected but it remained dormant, and even in the quieter years of the 1920s it was the countertheme to the then dominant notion of "building step by step," according to plan. By the 1930s Jabotinsky and the Revisionists called for the implementation of the "Nordau plan" and for an orderly mass "evacuation" of East European Jewry. Though this call evoked bitter internal controversies among Zionists, Jewish need, and the growing foreboding of worse horrors to come, were ever more the driving force attracting support to Zionism as a solution all over the Jewish world, and beyond its confines.
relation to the arabs
Until the immediate aftermath of the Balfour Declaration the Zionist movement had given little serious thought to the question of the Arabs residents in Palestine. Moses Hess in 1861, a generation before Herzl, had imagined that a highly Westernized element such as the Jews would be welcomed by the Arabs because of the leadership that Jews would provide in creating in the entire region an advanced economy and an advancing society. Chaim Weizmann took a comparable tack in 1919 in his encounters with the Arab leader of the time, the Emir Feisal, with whom he signed an agreement in this spirit. The theme was that Jews and Arabs proposed to be good neighbors. However, such figures as Feisal, who was from the *Hejaz, were alien to the immediate Palestinian Arab scene. The politically active elements in the local population were much more hostile and resentful. Despite large Jewish efforts toward conciliation, and the positive effect that such attempts did have on certain Arab circles, the dominant motif in Arab policy was to declare the Balfour Declaration to be an infringement on Arab rights and to insist that, at best, a limited Jewish minority could in the future live on Arab sufferance in the land. At every point in the interwar years at which Jewish immigration became of some consequence, there were Arab riots which invariably caused the British to issue further restrictions against the Jews. This became particularly marked in the decade after 1929, when there were major riots by Arabs. Zionism had thus, perforce, to define itself in much more complicated terms than those of a "people without a land on the way to a land without a people." The very example of its own energies and national purpose was helping to evoke some comparable national emotion among the Arabs in Palestine. In theory, throughout this period the bulk of the Zionist movement never surrendered the ultimate vision of a Jewish state, but the only wing of the movement which made of this the essence of its public position was the Revisionists. All the others concentrated on two immediate objectives: immigration, while trying not to displace Arabs in the process and to compensate generously the few displaced ones, feasible by constantly increasing the "absorptive capacity" of the land through new endeavors; and the devising of formulas for ongoing life together with the Arabs in which no absolute minority ceiling would be placed on the Jews. Among one group on the extreme left, the Marxist Ha-Shomer ha-Ẓa'ir, a bi-national state of absolute parity between Jews and Arabs was defined as its version of the political purpose of Zionism as a whole. A handful of Jewish pacifists of high station, led by such figures as Judah L. Magnes and Martin Buber, formed the *Berit Shalom program in the 1930s; they were willing to go even further than Ha-Shomer ha-Ẓa'ir in placating Arab fears for the sake of peace, but even they, like all the other Jewish groups or leaders (including Ben-Gurion), could find no Arab representatives of rank and power with whom to come to terms. Jewish misery was growing constantly in Europe and the need for mass immigration was ever greater. No Zionist group (and, for that matter, after the appearance of Hitler, no responsible non-Zionist body) could accept the halting of the growth of the yishuv even if it meant open hostility with the Arabs, and that is what it indeed meant by the mid-1930s and for the rest of the decade. Jews required freedom of immigration; Arabs demanded its absolute end. The British floundered in the middle, issuing "white papers" and setting draconian quotas on future Jewish arrivals. The situation could not last for all the positions were irreconcilable.
Throughout the years of the British Mandate of Palestine the government in London appointed a whole series of commissions, whenever conflict between Jews and Arabs broke out into open violence, in the vain quest of finding some acceptable compromise. Such efforts became more frequent in the 1930s, when the basic Jewish demand was, as it had to be, mass immigration which could not ever be restricted by Arab veto.
The logic of events, compounded out of the first years of Hitler and the increasing clashes in Palestine between Jews and Arabs, evoked the single most serious study of the Palestine question which was ever undertaken, that by the Royal Commission of 1936, chaired by Lord Peel. In its many hearings, some of them in no less impressive a place than the House of Lords in London, and others in Palestine itself, the major spokesmen of all varieties of Arab and Jewish opinion were heard. There was little essential difference among the views of the Zionist representatives, for even such old antagonists as Weizmann and Jabotinsky spoke in the same terms. Both emphasized the spiritual and cultural elements in Zionism, the vision of the movement of a "new Jew" who would be born in freedom to achieve his own proper dignity. However, the main theme, in the testimony of both, was the misery of Jewish life at that moment. Before the Peel Commission and later, at the Zionist Congress of 1937, when Weizmann proposed that the movement accept, in principle, the Commission's proposal to partition Palestine, he looked especially closely at the life of the Jews in Poland. He said openly that this community was doomed. A third of it, the old people, would no doubt die in Poland; for another third he had no hope; but it was the responsibility of all who could help to make it possible for the last third, the young people, to come to Palestine and start a new and decent life.
In this atmosphere the Peel Commission proposed the division of Palestine into three geographical entities: an Arab state, a Jewish one, and a large enclave, including Jerusalem, to be governed by the British. The proposed map was very nearly impossible, though, for it presumed the kind of goodwill between Jews and Arabs which, had it existed, would have made partition unnecessary. What the proposal did achieve, from the perspective of the Zionist movement, was the first formal suggestion by the ruling power that a Jewish state in at least part of Palestine was a realistic necessity; secondly, the proposal was based on the premise that Jews had a right, because of their need, to large new immigration into the land and that they could achieve this only if they were in political control of their own national destiny. The Zionist movement, after heated debate, which reflected the objections that the proposed state was unviable and that to accept it meant to give up the claim on the whole of the land, reluctantly accepted the partition proposal as a basis for discussion. The negotiations soon died, however, because the Arabs rejected the idea and the British, in the era of appeasement of Hitler, had no stomach for forcing any radical solution. On the eve of World War ii, Zionism had, however, defined itself as charged with the responsibility of creating or exercising, whether legally or illegally, as much independence as was necessary to do everything that was possible for the saving of Jews. This had become the dominant motif, and it had a directness and moral urgency which ever wider circles of Jewish and world opinion could not help but accept. The contrast between Jewish farmers in Palestine and their native-born sons, farming their fields and shooting back if necessary at Arab raiders, and the Jews being spat upon in Warsaw or sent to concentration camps, or worse, in Germany was, even before 1939, clear and unmistakable.
after the holocaust: "catastrophic" zionism revived
On the very eve of World War ii the British government issued a White Paper in which, in effect, Jewish immigration was limited to a final 75,000. This meant that the Jews of Europe were being left to their destiny; the clear intent was to condemn the Jews in Palestine to be a permanent minority. The whole of the Jewish world was well nigh unanimous in its opposition, in declaring this act to be not only wrong but utterly devoid of moral or legal validity. Soon the war broke out and the Zionist movement, indeed the entire Jewish community everywhere, was inevitably on the side of the Allies. The Jews in Palestine soon tried to organize a volunteer force to fight with the British in the critical Middle Eastern arena, but, on the grounds of "parity," because no such volunteers were forthcoming from the Arabs, the offers were initially rebuffed. The Jewish Brigade eventually came into being. It played a military role especially in the campaign in Italy, but its most important achievement was that here, directly, much of the immediate foundation of the future army of Israel was laid. "Illegal" immigration had been going on straight through the war, for the Zionist movement as a whole had accepted the slogan of David Ben-Gurion: "To fight Hitler as if there were no White Paper and to fight the White Paper as if there were no Hitler." Some of the brutalities that the Nazis had perpetrated were to be seen in Italy, as the Jewish Brigade advanced within the Allied army; and as the war was ending, the men of the Brigade began the work of finding friendly out-of-the-way ports and cooperative officials elsewhere to make it possible to transport to Palestine those Jews who had survived. The armies on the eastern and the western fronts, and especially the Jews among them, were concurrently discovering the unspeakable crimes of Buchenwald and Auschwitz. Perhaps a million Jewish refugees were alive in camps in Europe in May 1945. All those who saw them were overwhelmed by one conviction – that they must be given the kind of new life where they could never again be the object of the horrors that had been done to them. The survivors themselves were most vocal everywhere that they had to be allowed to go to Ereẓ Israel, to take their place in an independent Jewish state.
During the war years the Zionist movement itself had almost completely stripped away all tentativeness or vagueness from its ultimate aims and it had abandoned, at least for the moment, any public concern with the nature of the new Jewish society. That did not mean that within Palestine itself, and within the world Zionist movement, the various parties did not continue to jockey for control of whatever they could regarding resources and position, but from the mid-1930s onward these issues became ever more internal to the immediate scene in the yishuv. As a world movement Zionism spoke of "a home for the homeless," and the more bitter and obvious the homelessness was, the greater was the support for all the actions that this slogan required. By 1942 a Zionist conference, the most representative possible under the circumstances, met in New York at the Biltmore Hotel. It announced in the "Biltmore Program" that the "establishment of Palestine as a Jewish Commonwealth" was the war aim of the Jewish people. This program was tacitly adopted by non-Zionists as well. The many years when such words were not spoken even by most Zionists, for fear of complicating the immediate situation among Jews, Arabs and the British, had thus been ended. Within the next year or so, after a bitter battle within the ranks of American Zionism between those who were willing to wait for the end of the war and trust President Roosevelt, and those who believed that American public opinion needed to be enlisted on the widest possible basis, Abba Hillel *Silver emerged the victor over Stephen S. *Wise and, in 1943, Zionism in America entered a militant phase which continued until the State of Israel was achieved. Here, too, it was the growing knowledge and then the absolute certainty of what Hitler had been doing to Jews that made the Zionist demand for freedom, dignity, and independence a great force in American public life.
At the end of the war the Jews were indeed, as the anti-Zionist British foreign minister Ernest *Bevin said, "pushing to the head of the queue." No doors, not even those of the United States, were wide open to the refugees of the greatest single disaster that had ever befallen a people, and it was therefore inevitable that Palestine would have to provide the major part of the immediate solution. The British, weakened greatly by the war, were even less affected and less resolute than they had been in the 1930s; the Arabs were at least as intransigent; the Jews, both in Palestine and elsewhere, were at the highest point of outrage and self-assertion in their entire history. Many intricate maneuvers in Europe, Palestine, and the diplomatic centers of the world resulted finally in the great debate before the United Nations in November 1947 on the future of Palestine. The Jewish Agency, even though it was not a government, was admitted to the debate as the representative of the Jewish people; it stood solidly for the legal and moral right of those to whom promises had been made in the Balfour Declaration and who had suffered so greatly in the recent past to a state of their own in the land which had belonged to their ancestors and in which they had already created much in the 20th century. The end result was a decision reminiscent of the proposals of the Peel Commission a decade before – partition of the land in an unworkable map. This time, however, nothing prevented the formal declaration by the Jews of their own state on the appointed day, May 14, 1948 – neither the ambiguous attitude of the United States in the decisive stage nor the war against this new state which was begun by the Arabs both in Palestine and on its borders even before the formal declaration.
zionism and the state of israel
After the costly battles ended and the state was secure, and even as the war was still going on, refugees by the tens of thousands were brought into Israel. There was little surface difficulty in the immediate years after the achievement of statehood in defining the purpose of Zionism. The state was young, weak, and threatened; the refugees were many and in direst need. The purpose of Zionism, and of the Jewish world which it was by then leading, was to help root the state in secure ground, defend and explain it before world opinion, and either raise funds directly or provide inspiration for such endeavors. Almost immediately, however, the question of Zionist purpose and definition began to be a critical issue, first in isolated instances and then in prolonged debate which raged through the 1950s and into the 1960s. As early as 1949 there was a public break between David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, and Abba Hillel Silver, then the major Zionist figure in the Diaspora. The essence of the quarrel was the unwillingness of the government of the new state to accept any presumption of tutelage from the Zionist movement. Now that a state existed, Zionism could clearly no longer engage in the kind of international politics to which it had been accustomed. The fund-raising had increasingly been engaging Jews of all shades of opinion, and many of the richest and most generous were not Zionists, at least in the formal sense. The bodies which raised funds for Israel were not everywhere, and especially not in the United States, really under Zionist leadership. There were a number of attempts made by post-state Zionism in the Diaspora to define the ongoing purpose of the movement as the cultivation of Jewish national consciousness, the fostering of Hebraic education and the creation of a Jewish life which had as its emotional and spiritual center the life in Israel. Against this there stood, implacably, the figure of David Ben-Gurion, and the majority opinion in Israel which he led. He held that fund-raising and other forms of aid extended by Jews to Israel were an endeavor which was, and quite properly, common to the entire Jewish people. This entitled those involved to be considered "friends of Israel." A Zionist, in the proper sense of the term, could be only one who was preparing himself and his family, no matter how comfortable the society in which he was living, to come in measurable time as an immigrant to the new Jewish state. This outlook finally prevailed in international Zionist councils in the 1960s, and the seal was set on it with a proclamation in 1968 of the Jerusalem Program by the Zionist Congress (see below). In this document the acceptance of aliyah, of personal migration as the ultimate ideal, became a sine qua non of belonging to any recognized Zionist group.
It took two decades, however, for Zionists in the Western countries to be willing to reach such a conclusion. In the early years after the establishment of the State of Israel American Zionists in particular had argued that "America is different," that there is a distinction between a Diaspora where Jews were persecuted and the Diaspora of the free countries, where antisemitism was not a major factor and was not likely to increase, because of the rooted democratic tradition of a country such as America, which had no medieval past of hatred of Jews. The unwillingness to accept aliyah even as an ideal was ended in part by ongoing pressure from Israel opinion and in part by changing loyalties within American society as a whole, which was becoming less nationalist in the 1960s. The most important cause was, however, internal. During most of this era the president of the World Zionist Organization was Nahum Goldmann, and he became aware, soon after the heady days of the creation of the State of Israel, that intermarriage and spiritual and cultural evaporation were becoming a major threat to the survival of Jewish life in the free world. He argued that the task of the time was to prevent in the very age of Zionist achievement the rapid assimilation of world Jewry. Ever wider circles in the Jewish communities in the Western countries began looking to Israel, to various educational and work programs in the country, especially for young people from all communities of the Jewish world, to provide the occasion and the source for Jewish commitment. In such an atmosphere of growing concern for the Jewish continuity of hundreds of thousands of Jewish families all over the world, the notion that those who chose to live in Israel would certainly remain Jewish in a creative way conquered many previous reservations about aliyah as the ultimate personal ideal of a Zionist.
In the 1970s the world Zionist movement retained substantial functions in the upbuilding of Israel's society, both in the bringing of new immigrants, especially from lands where Jews are being persecuted, and in all other areas in which public funds from the Diaspora are properly spent. It continued to conduct and even to expand its endeavors in the strengthening of ties between Jews all over the world and those in Israel. Its governing body, still called the Jewish Agency, formally expanded again, in 1971, under the leadership of its chairman Louis Pincus, after the pattern of an earlier, practically abortive expansion in 1929, to include on the basis of parity representatives of the major Jewish pro-Israel fund-raising organizations everywhere in the world. In these new arrangements the World Zionist Organization and its Executive divested themselves, in favor of the new body, of direct responsibility for the financing and directing of aliyah from places of need and of the tasks which flow from this responsibility. Regardless of the formal changes, and even the increase in activities, the question of Zionist definition remains, however.
A major turning point was the Six-Day War in 1967. The days that led up to that event were filled with fear that a small state surrounded by enemies might become the object of a new holocaust. The swift and total victory evoked joy that Jews were now masters of their own destiny and recognized as such throughout the world. The Jewish Diaspora in all countries did not know how deeply it identified both with the fears and the triumphs of Israel until it was in the midst of the actual events. There then came an outpouring of money, political support of the most public kind, and volunteers, the equal of which had not been seen except briefly during the months of Israel's War of Independence. The years between 1948 and 1967, of continued integration of Jews into U.S. society, and into several West European countries, had not affected the strong emotions of self-identification and of identification with Israel which had clearly existed two decades before. Nowhere, during those days, did Jews hesitate to exert pressure on the governments of their countries of residence to support Israel. In France, where de Gaulle had reversed his previous policy and stood against Israel when war came, Jewish demonstrations in Paris evoked from him a remark about the Jews as an "elite people, sure of itself, and domineering." After the initial outrage over the negative rhetoric in which de Gaulle's opinion was couched, the Jews of the world were by 1967 willing to accept the proposition that Jews were indeed a community with opinions, ties, and characteristics which were distinct, and that the major contemporary affirmation of this Jewish distinctiveness was the whole set of relationships which involved all Jews in Israel. Zionism had thus finally succeeded in having the Jewish world accept the idea – and, what is more, feel deeply – that in the 20th century the Jews were a people and not only an international religious community, and that this people found its central expression in the renascent life in Israel.
tensions in the u.s. and the u.s.s.r.
In the last years of the 1960s two other events deeply affected the contemporary understanding of Zionism. In the United States this was the era of major social tension and Jews were not far from the center of all the problems. Race relations deteriorated by the latter years of the decade to physical confrontation and even armed clashes between blacks and whites. In all of the largest cities of the United States Jews had, for historical reasons (they were usually the last occupants of the neighborhoods into which blacks then moved), a substantial stake in the economy of the black ghetto, as storekeepers and landlords. They were often the most visible white men in the life of blacks in the north. In another dimension, younger, politically radical Jewish elements had been among the founders of the most activist movements of black protest, but, as black consciousness became ever more exclusivist, Jews and all other whites were systematically excluded from these movements. Certain administrations, such as that of the public school teachers in New York City, were dominated by Jews, and blacks began to fight hard to occupy their places. On a variety of levels the dream of peaceful integration was thus replaced by confrontation in the name of group identity and group interests. Within such an atmosphere many Jews were pushed toward identification with the specific interests of the Jewish community and its own peculiar destiny. The alternative for some of the young who had cut their teeth politically in the black movement, was to come to Israel.
There was no such direct correlation between the rising tempers over the war in Vietnam and Jewish consciousness. Young Jews were very prominent among the makers of the political protests which rocked the American campus in the late 1960s; but only a very few of those who chose not to fight in the war in Vietnam came to Israel. What was more fundamental was the growing disillusionment in all circles, not only Jewish ones, with the "American dream." For a person to emigrate from America to some less problematic, more satisfying place was now thinkable, and indeed some were even doing so. At such a moment the problem of "dual loyalty" which had troubled the past generation of Jews in America, their need to prove that it was not anti-American to care about Israel, or even to want to go and live there, was no longer of consequence. Fear for their future as Jews was not major, but some element of reaction to antisemitism was widespread. Aliyah from America, which neared 10,000 for the first time in the year 1970, was mostly, however, propelled not by the "push" of disappointment in American life, but by the "pull" of the attraction of Israel to Jews who wanted to live its kind of life, as the realization of their own Jewish identity.
In the late 1960s the Jews of the Soviet Union, who had remained inert on the surface under Stalinist persecution, began to assert their Jewishness and their identification with Israel in the most overt ways. The underlying factors here were the classic ones of bitter resentment that Russian Jews felt at the antisemitism which still existed in Soviet society and its administration after half a century of Bolshevik rule, coupled with a surprising amount of deep Jewish feelings, and especially of proud identification with Israel, which still persisted despite the absence for at least a generation of any Jewish schools or communal organizations – for even the communist schools and press in Yiddish had been destroyed under Stalin. In the Soviet Union, too, the Six-Day War had been a turning point. The government was on the Arab side and remained the chief protector and supplier of Egypt and of the most anti-Israel of the other Arab states. Official propaganda was violently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist with strong antisemitic overtones. The Jews of the U.S.S.R., through their most vocal elements, had, however, lost their fear of repression and proceeded to demand the right to leave and to go to Israel. A trickle of such immigration had been permitted by the Soviet authorities earlier and, spasmodically, it was renewed in 1968, even during the years of the most bitter vituperation of Israel by Soviet diplomacy and propaganda. The numbers of those who were permitted to leave reached relatively considerable proportions and the requests that were submitted by Jews were in the tens of thousands. Hebrew was being studied in semi-underground conditions and in many ways connection was maintained, amidst difficulty and some danger, with the Jews beyond the "iron curtain." The right of Soviet Jews to emigrate had become by the end of the decade an international issue of considerable magnitude. The activity on their behalf was widespread throughout the Jewish world, and it acted to recall many Jews who were themselves otherwise alienated, to a sense of their own Jewish identity. In the Soviet Union itself this reassertion of Jewishness was clearly the harbinger of a new era of rebellious national consciousness after the two generations when cultural and linguistic de-Judaization was forced upon the Jews while the doors of gentile society to complete equality and assimilation were not opened to them. For Zionism the Jews coming out of the U.S.S.R. represented an element that had been aggrieved and had so strongly asserted itself as to be a classic fundamental assertion of Zionist theory: the assertion that in any social system the Jew would ultimately find himself in a situation different from that of the majority and discriminated against and that he would have to make his life in terms of that reality.
ideological problems in israel
In Israel itself, the first generation of statehood produced essentially two sets of internal cultural problems. Both were not new; both were deeply embedded in tensions inherent in Zionism almost from the beginning. Religious and secular forces fought each other over the role that Jewish religion was to play in the life of the total community. For the religious such questions as whom one married, or whether public transport and all public services were to function on the Sabbath, were not matters of private conscience. They went to the very roots of the issue of why a Jewish state had to be created in Zion in the first place. It was to be something more than a refugee camp, or a large-scale attempt to create a "Jewish Albania." The purpose of this effort was to make it possible for a characteristic Jewish life in line with tradition to be lived in contemporary settings of one's own. Amid the secular forces the imposition by the State of the Orthodox religious rules on personal status, so that, for example, one was not free to marry out of the faith if one chose, or the legal definition of "who is a Jew" only by the norms of rabbinic law (so that children of gentile mothers born and raised in Israel as Jews were not so registered by secular law until 1970), raised great anger. In the view of the secular thinkers a modern state and society required an absolute separation between religion and public order. Another continuing battle was that between those who preferred to regard themselves as Israelis, with little concern or identification either with the Jewish past in the Exile or with the present-day Jewish majority in the Diaspora, and those who kept insisting that Jews in the new state were still primarily Jews and not Israelis. The events of 1967 and the rise of Jewish passion in Soviet Jewry effectively made an end to this latter debate. It became clear to almost everyone that Israel and the Jews of the world stood together in crisis; that even the Jews of the U.S., the richest of Diasporas, did not feel themselves as living on a different plane from the Jews in Israel; and that everywhere the rescue of the Soviet Jews was regarded as a prime purpose. The seal was thus set on a development which had begun with the very foundation of the State in one of its earliest constitutional acts, "the Law of Return," under which any Jew anywhere has the right to claim Israel citizenship upon arrival in the country and his right to immigrate into Israel is inalienable. The government of Israel had made it its duty to intervene diplomatically on behalf of Jewish communities in trouble, from the very beginning of its existence. Israel had never allowed any doubts to persist that the defense of Jewish interests all over the world was an integral element of its foreign policy. It had certainly presumed that world Jewry would stand with Israel and that its policies on all matters of major concern would parallel those of the State. In June 1967 these presumptions of world-wide Jewish support for Israel were fully realized. Soon thereafter there was another demonstration of the principle that defense of Jews all over the world was central to Israel's policy. It took the leading role in the battle which soon broke into the open for the rights of Soviet Jews.
Perhaps the most difficult, in the long run, of the problems of Jewish self-definition in Israel was its relationship to the Arabs. On the one hand there was lasting tension; on the other there was increased contact after 1967 and an ever greater straining to recognize and encounter Arabs as equal human beings. Here, too, the new generation was heir to a moral concern as old as the very beginnings of Zionism. At the beginning of the 20th century Aẓad Ha-Am had expressed the fear that the new Jewish settlement in Ereẓ Israel might be so constructed as to harm the Arabs and he had pleaded for sensitivity to this possibility. In actual day-to-day life throughout the years of Zionist immigration there were not only riots and battles but also friendships and accommodations between the two communities. Eventually every Zionist theory had had to face the question of the Arabs. The newest note after the Six-Day War was sounded by those intellectuals and politicians in Israel who saw the main road to peace in active consent and even cooperation by Israel in the establishment of Palestinian Arab independence in a part of the previous area of Palestine (including Transjordan).
Looking toward the last third of the 20th century, Zionism as an organized movement was weaker than it had been a generation before, but the result of its labors, the State of Israel, was strongly established. As an organization the world Zionist movement inevitably no longer occupied the central place in the Jewish world, for it had been replaced by the government of Israel, but Zionist sentiment now pervaded the whole of Jewish organized endeavor. The possibilities of substantial new immigration were again in view and the Zionist movement continued to assert that the encouragement of such processes was its most characteristic task. But the basic question that Zionism had posed when it first appeared, even before Theodor Herzl, still remained open – and embattled: What would be the nature of the new Jews and of the new Jewish society? To what degree would it be conventionally modern and Western and to what degree would it be connected with the classic Jewish past – or, for that matter, to what degree would the Jews in Israel "de-Westernize" in order, hopefully, to come to terms with the Middle Eastern world within which they were living? If, at the very least, there would be major Jewish communities in the Diaspora for a long time to come, and perhaps permanently, what was to be the continuing relationship between the Jewish national community in Israel and that Diaspora? How, for that matter, was the continuity of Jewish loyalty in the far-off communities to be fostered and preserved? What, in short, was the new Jew, the Zionist and Israel successor to his ghetto ancestors, to be? In 1971 there were as yet no answers – but it was equally clear that these questions would continue to be wrestled with and lived through for many years to come.
non-zionist and anti-zionist trends
Zionism, though initially a minority movement, became so central in Jewish thought that eventually the other Jewish ideological trends had to define themselves largely in terms of their attitude to the Zionist idea or to certain essential elements of it, as, e.g., the revival of Hebrew language and culture, the "fixation" on Ereẓ Israel as the only territory for in-gathering the Jewish mass migration, the national unity of Orthodox and secular Jews, etc.
autonomists and yiddishists
Before World War i the bulk of the Jews of the world were living in two multi-national empires, Russia and Austria-Hungary. In both of these regimes minority peoples were conducting struggles for their respective national autonomies. The situation of the Jews was different from that of all other minorities, for they were nowhere a majority in any particular piece of territory that was historically associated with their national identity. Nonetheless, Jews in these regions continued to speak a language of their own, Yiddish, and they were bound together by ties of history and culture and by a network of communal institutions. Zionism was not the only possible national movement among Jews. A variety of other ideologies and movements arose, which refused to accept the idea that Jews were in any sense alien to the places of their dwelling in Europe, or to believe that antisemitism could be ended only by mass emigration. These movements argued that Jews were one of the historic tribes of Eastern Europe, with as much right in the region as the Poles or the Ukrainians. The discrimination against Jews could, and should, be ended by a more vigorous battle for a just social order and by the achievement of national equality for all the national communities in the region. "To do battle at one's positions" was the slogan directed against the Zionists by such schools of thought. Most such non-Zionist nationalists regarded the Hebrew revival as a piece of romanticism and as disguised clericalism. In their view the spoken language of the people, Yiddish, was its natural contemporary speech. A healthy national life could be built only by strengthening that language and its literature and raising it in public esteem from the level of a dialect to that of a respected language.
The most important theoretician of Diaspora nationalism was the historian S. *Dubnow. He himself did not deny the importance of Hebrew, or of Russian, for he wrote all his life in both these languages as well as, of course, in Yiddish; nor did Dubnow deny that there was significance in the developing Jewish community in Palestine. In his historiography Jewish life had always found its leadership in some new emerging center of energies as an older community was declining. In his own day he saw Eastern Europe as the lead community, then erecting tributary centers in Palestine and the United States. He envisaged that Jews everywhere would labor to achieve nationally cultural autonomous institutions, including especially an educational system of their own in their own language. His spiritual disciples organized a party which labored for a system of "Sejms," Jewish "parliaments" or "diets," which should direct the affairs of the various Jewish communities and of the Jewish people as a whole. This principle of "autonomism" was adopted also by the Russian Zionists at their conference in Helsingfors (1906), when czarist Russia seemed to be on the threshold of genuine parliamentary democracy. They, however, regarded it not as an end in itself, but as an element of Zionist Gegenwartsarbeit: an instrument for Jewish social and educational activity with the clearly defined aim of ultimate migration and settlement in Ereẓ Israel. Dubnow faced squarely the question that the national situation of the Jews in the Diaspora, in the minority everywhere, was an anomaly, but he did not arrive at the conclusion that this situation should be rectified by the creation of a Jewish commonwealth in Ereẓ Israel. At the core of his outlook was the vision of a future for all humanity in which all of the historic nations would rise to a higher stage of existence in which they would be freed of their dependence on any particular land and would exist as communities on the basis of historic and cultural ties. The paradigm for such communities was what the Jews had become in the Diaspora after the beginning of the Exile; they had persisted in this new and higher form; and so Dubnow saw his vision of Diaspora Jewish national autonomism, or a formulation of the modalities of human association, to be the newest and most profound teaching by Jews for mankind.
There were other, more mundane versions of Diaspora nationalism. Several schools of thought, chiefly under the influence of Chaim *Zhitlowsky, were in favor of the centrality of Yiddish in the national Jewish experience and labored toward the recognition of that language, and of those who lived out their lives in it, as one of the several cultural linguistic communities of Eastern Europe, and of the Western world as a whole. This ideology was crystallized formally at a conference of Yiddishists in 1908 in *Czernowitz. Right after World War i this ideology was expressed by the foundation in Vilna, with branches in other parts of the Jewish world, of the Yidisher Visenshaftlekher Institut (*yivo-Institute for Jewish Research), which survived World War ii and now continues its scholarly and educational endeavors in New York.
The most important single movement to arise in Eastern Europe in the 1890s, in the very months when Herzl was appearing on the Jewish scene, was the Jewish Socialist Bund. This organization was created not primarily in reaction to Zionist stirrings but through tensions within the Russian revolutionary movement. Most of the young Jewish revolutionaries of the day were joining and taking prominent part in the various underground factions, but some began to feel that the Jewish workers could not be approached and made active in the Jewish revolutionary cause except through Yiddish. The announced purpose of the founders of the Bund was thus not a Jewish national one, for initially they proposed only the temporary use of Yiddish as a means to the end of bringing the Jewish workers into the mainstream of the Russian revolution. Yet the gibe by no less a figure than Plekhanov, the father of Russian Marxism, that Bundists are "Zionists who are afraid of seasickness," soon acquired a measure of truth. A Yiddish-speaking party representing the revolutionary will of Jewish workers could not help but become aware that these workers had problems not only with their employers but also with gentile workers. Under the pressure of Zionists, and especially of socialist Zionists, the Bund moved in the direction of accepting the separate culture of Jews as a lasting value worth preserving through "personal cultural autonomy," i.e., the right of every individual to enjoy national, educational, and linguistic life in the framework of a legal minority organization. It clashed on this issue with its fellow social democrats, Jewish and non-Jewish, Menshevik and Bolshevik.
religious and secular anti-nationalism
There were also anti-nationalist reactions to Zionism, and these were much more clearly occasioned by the fact that an organized Zionist movement had arisen. The First Zionist Congress had been intended for Munich and it did not take place there because most of the rabbinate of Germany made a public declaration against the movement, for it would, in their view, call into question the absolute loyalty and integration of Jews as a purely religious community in the European nations. Some 20 years later, in the debates within the British war cabinet which preceded the announcements of the Balfour Declaration, the only Jewish member of the cabinet, Edwin Montagu, argued along the same line, that the recognition of the Jews as a nationality with its homeland in Palestine would call into question his political identity as a British subject who was a Jew only by religion. In 1929 when a group of distinguished non-Zionists joined a reorganized and "enlarged" Jewish Agency for Palestine, on a plane of parity with the representatives of the World Zionist Organization, the non-Zionists maintained that their interest in the Jewish settlement in Palestine was philanthropic and not political, and they indeed remained opposed to any talks of an eventual Jewish state. In the 1940s in the United States anti-Zionist sentiment was represented at its most extreme by the *American Council for Judaism, which maintained not only that its members were Jews by religion alone but that their religion made it incumbent upon them to take only a universalist position, which meant in practice a pro-Arab and anti-Jewish nationalist view of their responsibilities. "Dual loyalty" worried wide circles of Jews, especially in the Western countries, in varying degrees into the 1950s. By then it had become generally accepted, as Nahum Goldmann maintained, that all men have many "loyalties" which live in some tension with each other. The purpose of at least the most extreme of these anti-Zionists was the rapid assimilation of Jews into the total population, and they opposed Zionism because they saw it as a stumbling block to this end.
Zionism was attacked from another side by schools of thought which found it too secular, too modern, and thus too destructive, in their view, of the traditional Jewish values. The religious forces which joined Ḥibbat Zion in the 1880s and which later formed the religious Zionist organization, the Mizrachi, during the first few years of the modern Zionist movement, were a small minority among the Orthodox. The overwhelming majority, especially in ḥasidic circles, saw in such human efforts for the restoration of Jewish nationhood an affront to the command to wait patiently for the Messiah. More seriously, they understood that the definition of Jewry as a modern nation, which meant in immediate Zionist practice that religious believers were to accept equality within Jewry with nonbelievers, portended the eventual end of the supremacy of the Orthodox faith within Jewry. On this point older believers in Eastern Europe found allies in some circles of Westernized Jewry, especially in Germany. Together these groups formed in 1912 the *Agudat Israel, which maintained a consistent involvement in the Jewish community in Ereẓ Israel but was opposed to Zionism as too secular. Its main emphasis was on the defense of the Orthodox Jewish faith everywhere in the world.
territorialism and agricultural settlement
The movement that was closest to Zionism, *Territorialism, arose out of a split within the Zionist movement itself. In 1903 Herzl brought before the Zionist Congress the proposal of the British that the Jews be given land in East Africa for the development of their own autonomous community. The occasion for this proposal was the dire need of Russian Jewry, in the light of renewed pogroms, and the despair of quickly achieving from the Turks rights for settling Palestine. Thus it seemed that Herzl himself had "moved away from Zion" toward immediate, practical mass settlement to alleviate Jewish need. The proposal to examine the feasibility of the British offer won a bare majority at the last Zionist Congress presided over by Herzl, but it was overwhelmingly defeated after his death. Israel Zangwill, the writer who had been one of Herzl's first followers in England, left the Zionist Organization and founded the Jewish Territorialist Organization (ito) in 1905. This and similar territorialist bodies continued into the 1930s and 1940s to search for a territory in some part of the world sufficiently empty and available to give the Jews room for the creation of their own national polity. These efforts never succeeded, but something very like what they intended was indeed realized by a non-ideological body, the *Jewish Colonization Association (ica) which was founded in 1891 by Baron de Hirsch, one of the Jewish magnates to whom Herzl had turned and who had refused to join the Zionist endeavor. Agricultural colonies were created by this trust in several places in the United States and, especially, in Argentina. Though on the local level a kind of autonomous "all-Jewish" life did develop in some places on the American continent for one generation, they never coalesced into full-fledged "territorial" communities. Nowhere did these settlements survive the attraction for their young of higher education in the dominant language and the economic and professional opportunities of the cities.
soviet jewish culture
In the first two decades after 1917, a kind of Jewish Communist nationalism arose and flourished in the Soviet Union and it was attractive to many Jews outside the borders of the U.S.S.R. But it was short-lived and took a tragic end. In reaction to the Jewish Socialist Bund and to the Zionists the young Stalin had declared in 1913 that there was no such thing as a united Jewish nation, for it lacked a land of its own. Only separate ethnic Jewish groups did exist and were doomed to disappear by assimilation. Nonetheless, during his early years in power he continued the policy of Lenin, to permit the Jews to organize a system of cultural life in Yiddish, provided the Jewish nationality, like all the others in the Soviet Union, made Communism the central political purpose of its cultural activity. Schools on all levels and even college courses in Yiddish were created in the 1920s. Hundreds of books were published and a press and theaters were encouraged. Additionally, with the help of such Western Jews as the Chicago millionaire, Lessing Rosenwald, who was opposed to Zionism, there was some settlement of Jews on the land in southern Russia and the Crimea. An even more grandiose attempt was made to create an autonomous Jewish region on a stretch of land in Siberia, *Birobidzhan. In the later 1930s and particularly after 1948 all of this, including Jewish cultural life in Birobidzhan, was brutally ended. But into the 1930s the reality of Jewish autonomy and the vision of state-sponsored Yiddish creativity in the Soviet Union, allied with its official outlawing of antisemitism, seemed to some Jews in the west, not only of the extreme political Left, an option to be preferred to Zionism. There is no longer any such ideology because repression in the Soviet Union has ended every genuine expression of Jewish life in that country. What existed there in the early 1970s was conducted as an act of semi-clandestine resistance to an unfriendly repressive regime.
[Arthur Hertzberg]
zionist policy
Throughout the 19th century, and with increasing potency during the 20th century, nationalism emerged as probably the most powerful political force in Europe, the Americas, and later in Asia and Africa as well. It led to the dismemberment of established empires and to the unification of nations (Italy and Germany); it released creative forces hitherto often suppressed by foreign rule; but it also had other consequences: the identification of state and nation left little room for free and equal development of "minorities." Unlike the Greeks or Romanians, who lived on their own land, the Jews could not attain national self-determination by merely throwing off a foreign yoke. That these developments could not but affect Jewish thought was only natural.
Nineteenth-century Jewry carried very little political weight. Its strivings and efforts could only be of a religious, spiritual, or philanthropic nature. There was no lack of literary expression: countless pamphlets, memoranda, petitions, and sermons were bequeathed by men of renown and by anonymous writers in that century, as well as in earlier times. The general upheaval kindled new hopes. Not only Jewish names, such as Montefiore the magnate, Hess the socialist, and *Disraeli the statesman, are connected with that period, but also many gentile names, such as Lord Palmerston, Lord Shaftesbury, Ernest Laharanne, J.H. Dunant (father of the International Red Cross), and George Eliot. Gentile support for the idea of the Return to Zion reflected the realization that emancipation of the Jews was not enough, and that in addition to recognition of their civil rights, Jews were also entitled to the recognition of their rights as a nation. The sympathy of the few, however, was far outweighed by the hostility of the many. The old antisemitism had been reinforced by "scientific" racial teachings. The last two decades of the century saw the outburst of violent persecutions and pogroms in Eastern Europe, particularly in Russia. These were followed by a mass flight westward, especially to the U.S. The little that Ḥibbat Zion could do in the circumstances was totally inadequate. While hundreds of thousands surged through the gates of the New World, only hundreds succeeded in infiltrating through the more than half-closed doors of the ancient homeland. That these few would in time lay the cornerstone of the Jewish state could only be foreseen by dreamers and visionaries.
the herzl period
If Ḥovevei Zion had sought to reach their goal by quiet and modest labor, Herzl's aim was to achieve a dramatic coup, to secure vast funds in order to obtain a guaranteed political basis ("Charter") for a large-scale settlement of Jews. Securing the cooperation of Baron Hirsch or Baron de Rothschild and the consent of the sultan and the German kaiser looked like a shortcut to the goal. He believed that with "millions" it would be possible to obtain a charter or, with a charter, to obtain the millions. Hirsch and Rothschild had already been involved in assistance to Jews in the East in cooperation with the Alliance Israélite Universelle, which had established, inter alia, the first Jewish agricultural school near Jaffa in 1870. Rothschild extended a helping hand to the early settlements in Ereẓ Israel, and Hirsch had set up the Jewish Colonization Association (ica) with an endowment hitherto unheard of in Jewish affairs. Herzl was received by Hirsch in June 1895 and the result was nil. It was after that interview that Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat.
The publication of this clarion call had several consequences. The Jewish national idea, hitherto discussed in small and uninfluential groups, became the subject of heated debate in wider circles. The excited support that came from various quarters – as well as criticism and derision – confirmed Herzl's instinctive feeling that the idea was viable. The territorial aspect also became clearer in his mind: it was to be the ancient homeland and not Argentina or some other place. The keys to Palestine were to be found in Berlin and Constantinople. A man of action, Herzl took his first political steps. He began by seeking a way to approach William ii, and the initial results were not discouraging. Anxious to make rapid progress, however, he went to Constantinople (June 1896) in an attempt to see Abdul Hamid ii. This proved to be impossible, but Herzl spoke to a number of high officials and a minor order was conferred upon him in the sultan's name.
After further visits to London and Paris in search of political and financial backing, Herzl saw no alternative to organizing a mass movement. Support of a growing number of Zionist groups, especially of students and youth, and encouragement from some Jewish notables enabled him to brush aside the opposition of the assimilated and of rabbinical circles (even Ḥibbat Zion remained cool, fearing Baron de Roth-schild's displeasure). The First Zionist Congress met in Basle, Switzerland, in August 1897 and, amid scenes of great enthusiasm, adopted the following formulation of its aim: "Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law." The Congress also created the instrument for the implementation of its plan: the World Zionist Organization. Herzl wrote in his diary the prophetic words: "In Basle I founded the Jewish State." And he added a forecast as to the date when the state will become a reality: "…maybe in another five years, at the utmost fifty years." It was 50 years later – almost to the day – that the highest international body, the United Nations, gave its stamp of approval.
One of Herzl's immediate aims – turning the Jewish problems into a "world political problem" – had been achieved in part by the discussions that took place at the Congress itself, in the press, and in the public. Herzl could not have known, for instance, that the German embassy in Berne sent to Berlin a not unsympathetic account of the proceedings, or that this account reached the kaiser's desk and evoked William's remarking that he is all for the Jews moving to Palestine, "the sooner the better." On the other hand, the German consul in Jerusalem made light of the Congress and characterized Zionist aims as utopian. There was to be a change in the kaiser's approach, however. Urged by the grand duke of Baden, one of the more liberal and influential princes in Germany, he reconsidered his previous attitude. On the eve of his visit to Constantinople and Jerusalem in 1898, the kaiser wrote to the grand duke that "the basic idea has interested me, indeed, moved me," and he had come to the conclusion that they were dealing with a "problem of far-reaching significance." Great importance was attached to Jews turning to Germany with gratitude, and he was ready to receive Herzl during his visit to Turkey.
Anxious to have the kaiser put in a good word for Zionism in his talks with Abdul Hamid, Herzl obtained a preliminary audience with William in Constantinople (Oct. 18, 1898) and it seemed that the kaiser had received in a positive spirit both his views and his plea. Von Buelow, the German foreign minister, showed little enthusiasm. It was decided that a Zionist delegation would be officially received by the monarch later, during his visit to Jerusalem. The second audience took place as planned (Nov. 2, 1898), but the spirit was almost totally different. It seemed that the kaiser mentioned the matter in his talks with the sultan, and the latter did not react. The final outcome of Herzl's tremendous effort had been deeply disappointing even though, on the credit side, the whole chapter added somewhat to Zionism's political weight in the eyes of the world, Jewish and non-Jewish.
In search of new approaches, Herzl sought contacts with England and even with Russia; nor was Constantinople written off as yet. Indeed, a new mediator – the Orientalist Armin *Vambery – succeeded in obtaining the decisive audience with Abdul Hamid himself (May 17, 1901); but it proved fruitless. Coupled with the disheartening difficulties on the way to establishing the financial instruments of the movement, which were intended to help in obtaining the charter (the Jewish Colonial Trust), it brought Herzl to the realization that the old road led nowhere and the search would have to turn to other areas, closer to Ereẓ Israel or further away.
England was the first to be approached, and the territory in question was around *El Arish, on the southern border of Ereẓ Israel. London was interested, as it sought to secure the eastern approaches to the Suez Canal. A commission of experts went out to explore the area, which, not unexpectedly, proved to be poor in agricultural land and water resources and could at best absorb a limited number of settlers. Herzl himself visited Cairo (in the spring of 1903) to negotiate with the British representative there, Lord Cromer, and with the Egyptian authorities, but he could not secure the main precondition for any attempt in El Arish – supplies of water from the Nile.
This episode did not sever the first links with London. The second, and more serious suggestion, to come from there related to Uganda. The name Uganda stood then for a number of tribal areas in East Africa where British penetration – first missionary, then commercial and military – went on through the 1870s and 1880s and originally did not prosper. In 1892 the British government decided to abandon the territory, but reversed itself under pressure of missionary and trade interests. Sleeping sickness killed about 250,000 people among the local tribes between 1901 and 1909. Herzl did not know those details when British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain first spoke to him about the place. Before the matter came up officially, he made another attempt to tackle the Palestine issue by trying to obtain Russian support. In August 1903, several months after the *Kishinev pogrom, he traveled to St. Petersburg and interviewed the notorious minister of interior Plehve (who was assassinated within less than a year) and the minister of finance Count Witte. Once again, the Russian government would not or could not help. On his return journey, he received official news of the new British proposal.
Uganda was not Zion, Herzl knew that and said so at the Sixth Zionist Congress, which met immediately after his visit to Russia. As long as Ereẓ Israel was not obtainable, however, the persecuted people needed a temporary asylum. Opposition from the old, "pre-Herzlian" Zionists was to be expected, but it was sharper and more widespread than foreseen. In fact, it revealed an accumulation of old dissatisfactions in considerable sections of the movement, especially among the young. The affairs of Zionism were conducted in a way that was far from democratic. Had it produced results, the rank and file would have acquiesced; but all those comings and goings in spheres of "high diplomacy" led away from the main goal, which was Zion. The basic difference between the approach of the leadership and that of the critics became increasingly apparent. The "political Zionists" believed that immigration and settlement could only follow the grant of a "Charter," which would secure the rights of the Jewish people to the land; anything else would be "infiltration" doomed to fail. The "practical Zionists" believed that Jewish rights to Ereẓ Israel were self-evident; immigration and settlement there could not be called "infiltration" and had to proceed under all circumstances. Both sides, however, were conscious of the political significance of the British proposal: at last a mighty world power had recognized the national aspirations of the Jews and was willing to extend a helping hand.
The Uganda Scheme became the Uganda crisis. The Sixth Zionist Congress did not reject the idea outright; with 295 delegates voting for, 178 against, and 132 abstentions, the movement formally accepted the leadership's proposal that a commission be elected to act in an advisory capacity when the Executive sent a mission to the area proposed by England. But the storm that broke loose came as a shock, and it was realized that it would be virtually impossible to proceed with the plan. There were also reports of strong opposition on the part of the British settlers in East Africa and criticism in England itself. Thus, the first debate on Zionism took place in the House of Commons in June 1904, with the participation of the prime minister, A.J. *Balfour and one of the opposition leaders, David Lloyd *George.
In the closing stages of the Zionist Congress, Herzl sought to conciliate the opposition and stressed his continued devotion to what he called "the only country where our people can find rest." But he felt that the breach could hardly be healed. After eight years of superhuman effort and tremendous personal sacrifices, he saw the end approaching. In a final spurt of energy he turned to Rome, where he was received at the beginning of 1904 by King Victor Emmanuel iii and by Pope Pius x. The king displayed a warm interest, but there was not much that Italy could do. The pope was ice cold: "If you come to Palestine and settle your people there, we shall prepare churches and priests to convert them." Within a few months after these interviews, Herzl died.
the transition period
That the political activities of the movement could, after the leader's death, no longer be conducted in the same centralized, personal way had been clear to all concerned. After the "natural" successor, Max Nordau, refused to take over, the task fell to another close friend, David Wolffsohn. But he was hardly a political leader, and if the inevitable change came but gradually, it was because the desire to remain faithful to "Herzlian Zionism" dominated the heirs to the leadership and because the main problem inherited by them, Uganda, called for immediate decisions. By then, neither side, the Zionists nor the British, were interested in proceeding with the project. A group of experts went to East Africa in December 1904 and reported in April 1905: the proposed area was not suitable for mass settlement. Meanwhile, practical work in Ereẓ Israel gained priority even before any official change took place in the policy of the movement. One of the first visits paid by Wolffsohn was to Edmond de Rothschild, who promised to aid in practical undertakings in the country. Wolffsohn also visited Vambery, who was not optimistic. In his view, the best way for Zionists was to settle Palestine through quiet work within the existing laws. It was in this direction that the Zionist movement gradually veered after Herzl's death, though it never gave up the political element of its philosophy. The turning point came at the Seventh Zionist Congress (1905) which witnessed the first split in the movement when supporters of Uganda refused to concede defeat. They saw themselves as "territorialists," and with the gates of Ereẓ Israel virtually closed, the "Ugandists" refused to reject a proposal made by a great power at a time when the need to find a refuge for the victims of persecution was at its highest.
The departure of the Ugandists, who established the Jewish Territorial Organization under the leadership of Israel Zangwill, was bound to weaken the movement. But it strengthened the "practical" wing in Zionism (led by M.M. *Ussishkin), which, for the first time, obtained representation on the Zionist Executive. The latter was now composed of three "political" Zionists, three "practical," and Wolffsohn as the balancing force. The controversy did not end at that, and difficulties arose when the territorialists sought to negotiate with governments. Tensions relaxed somewhat when the two organizations found themselves cooperating at a conference called by the Zionists (Brussels, January 1906) in order to discuss assistance to Russian Jews. This also produced meager results.
Wolffsohn and his advisers looked for new political initiatives, though this time – in accordance with an explicit ruling of the Seventh Zionist Congress – not beyond Ereẓ Israel and "adjacent areas." El Arish and Sinai drew renewed attention; Syria and Mesopotamia were considered. Sinai was then causing difficulties between Constantinople and London, which wanted the Turkish-Egyptian border to be fixed as far away from the Suez Canal as possible. A suggestion that the establishment of a Jewish settlement in Sinai may serve as a "compromise" found no support. France displayed no interest at all; when Nordau sought its help on behalf of persecuted Jews in Russia, he was told that France cannot add to the many difficulties of an allied government.
There were other attempts, among them discussions with the foreign minister of the Netherlands about raising the problem of Jewish migration during the second Peace Conference at The Hague. Another proposal spoke of calling a special international conference to deal with the subject. The Dutch thought that it would be appropriate for the initiative to come from England; London felt that a Dutch initiative would be better. A German official promised to take it up with his foreign minister, but no more was heard of it. In the meantime, a fleeting hope arose that it might be possible to renew some of the contacts with Turkey. The sultan's financial troubles were greater than ever, and his officials were looking for help. Twice during the year 1907 Wolffsohn visited Constantinople, and there were moments when he felt that "substantial" progress had been achieved. He no longer spoke of a "Charter" and concentrated on immigration and land acquisition. But the Turks needed vast sums of money, which were, as before, far above the financial ability of the Zionists. The results were therefore the same as during Herzl's desperate journeys. On the credit side, a start had been made for the opening of a bank in Constantinople (The Anglo-Levantine Banking Co.) in which the controlling interest was to be in the hands of the Jewish Colonial Trust (enabling it to appoint the bank's deputy director, who would represent Zionist interests, both financial and political).
the young turks
When Wolffsohn next visited Constantinople, it was after the situation there had undergone a dramatic change. The revolution of the Young Turks (July 1908) brought to the fore new rulers and widespread hopes. It also restored a relatively liberal constitution; abolished the rule of corrupt palace cliques, of spying, and censorship; and established a parliament. Abdul Harold survived for another eight months and – after a briefly successful counter coup – was replaced by Muhammed v. The years that followed were turbulent and saw almost constant warfare, beginning with the Italian campaign in Tripolitania (1911–12) and through two Balkan wars (1912–13) to World War i and beyond. It was hardly a time for gaining sympathy for Zionism. Whatever progressive ideas the Young Turks may have had initially, chauvinistic tendencies soon prevailed among them. They rejected suggestions for a less centralized regime and for a degree of freedom for the minorities. As far as Palestine was concerned, they proved as inflexible as the rulers they displaced. Nevertheless, conditions of political work in Constantinople itself underwent a slight change.
The Zionist leadership sought to avail itself of the few opportunities that were now to be found on the Bosphorus, mostly for the purpose of explaining the aims and purposes of Jewish settlement in Ereẓ Israel. With the opening of the Anglo-Levantine Banking Co., the post of deputy director was entrusted to Victor *Jacobson, a Russian Zionist with some experience in the Near East. Since the main task had been the proliferation of authoritative information, he was joined by another Russian Zionist, the journalist Vladimir Jabotinsky. A small Turkish publication in French was turned into a well-edited daily, Le Jeune Turc. Apart from propaganda, however, there was little that could be done in the political sphere. A visit by Nordau, who had friendly ties with some of the Turkish leaders, produced no change. He was told that the Jews would be allowed to take part in the development of Turkey but would not be allowed to concentrate in any particular area, such as Palestine. Wolffsohn revisited Constantinople (June 1909) to review the situation. This was to be his last visit there. In 1911 he retired from the Executive and was replaced by Otto *Warburg, a "practical" Zionist, as chairman. This time Wolffsohn paid special attention to the attitude of Turkish Jews, of whom only a few showed interest in Zionism; others were indifferent or unfriendly. The community saw much infighting: between Sephardi and Ashkenazi leaders, between those influenced by the French-oriented Alliance Israélite Universelle and the adherents of the German-Jewish *Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden. Prominent among the opponents were Chief Rabbi Haim *Nahoum (later chief rabbi of Egypt) and a Jewish member of parliament from Baghdad.
the arab problem
The Arabs themselves had become a significant political factor. As one of the subject peoples, they had little direct say in the past. In Palestine difficulties arose, from time to time, between Jewish settlers and the local population in connection with land purchases, commercial competition, labor disputes, or robberies. Labor troubles multiplied after the Second Aliyah brought young pioneers who sought to "conquer" labor opportunities in all Jewish settlements. But there, as elsewhere in the empire, Arabs were dominated and roughly treated by Turkish officials. The Arab national movement was in its infancy. One of the few who thought of it was Ahad Ha-Am, who wrote as far back as 1891, in a famous article "Truth from Ereẓ Israel":
"We abroad are accustomed to believe that Ereẓ Israel is almost totally desolate at present… but in reality it is not so… Arabs, especially those in towns, see and understand our activities and aims in the country but keep quiet and pretend as if they did not know, and that because they don't see any danger to their future in our activities at present, and they try to exploit us, too, and profit from the new guests while laughing at us in their hearts. But if the time comes and our people make such progress as to displace the people of the country… they will not lightly surrender the place."
The situation began to change after the revolution of the Young Turks. There were some 60 Arabs and a couple of Jews in the parliament, which counted less than 300 members. The Arabs influenced policy (mostly through personal contacts), introduced interpellations, and, in 1911, initiated two full-fledged debates on the dangers involved in Jewish immigration and land acquisition. In one of these debates, the only speaker to refute their accusations was a Bulgarian Socialist member. Government spokesmen more than once made hostile statements stressing Zionist separatist aims. Zionist representatives sought to counteract the assaults by denying separatist intentions. Jacobson also sought to establish contact with Arab members of parliament. The latter feared that government leaders belonging to the Committee of Union and Progress might be unduly influenced by Jews who were among the earliest supporters of the Committee. The Turkish authorities, on their part, chose to make promises to all and fulfilled very few of them.
Not many realized at the time that the struggles in which Turkey had been involved, in the Balkans and elsewhere, were but the opening skirmishes in an approaching world war. Though talk of "partition" of the Ottoman Empire was heard long before and early Zionism itself had been influenced by it, the Zionist movement had to base its day-to-day work on repeated assurances that it did not seek to harm the unity of that empire. When Turkey found itself at war with Italy in *Tripoli, Nordau supported a proposal that a unit of Jewish volunteers be organized to fight side by side with the Ottoman forces. Another Zionist suggestion later spoke of organizing a medical unit to help the Turks in the Balkans. When the veteran Zionist leader Jacobus *Kann of The Hague published a book about a visit to Ereẓ Israel in which he openly stated that the ultimate aim of Zionism is the establishment of a Jewish state there, Jabotinsky, then in charge of Zionist press activities in Constantinople, vigorously protested to Wolffsohn and demanded the suppression of Kann's book.
This attitude did not seem too convincing to the Young Turks, while it made Zionism further suspect in the eyes of Arab nationalists. On the other hand, Zionist tactics were almost inevitably the outcome of the contradiction between the movement's immediate needs and its long-range goals. The immediate necessity was to preserve the existing yishuv and to increase, however slowly, the number of new immigrants and settlements. The hopes engendered by the changes in Turkey were soon reflected in growing Jewish activity: the number of settlements established in the years 1908–14 reached almost a dozen and a half. The same period also saw the opening in Jaffa of the Palestine Office of the Zionist Organization under Arthur *Ruppin, the foundation of Tel Aviv, and the formation of organized public bodies of the new yishuv. All these naturally strengthened Arab opposition and coincided with the formation of local Arab nationalist groups and the appearance of their first newspapers in the country. Though the stirrings among the Arabs found little reflection in the Jewish press, some Zionist leaders soon realized their importance, and as far back as 1908 Wolffsohn used an expression which was later to be repeated by others: Governments change, but the people remain.
During the last year before the outbreak of World War i the first Arab-Jewish contacts that could be seen as politically significant, were introduced. When the Young Turks started taking stringent measures for the "Ottomanization" of their empire, some of the active Arab nationalists were in search of allies. A few turned to the Jews, who, they hoped, could help them with the press and public opinion in Europe. A director of Le Jeune Turc, S. Hochberg, received an invitation to visit Beirut and Cairo in order to meet Arab nationalists. He went there, with Jacobson's consent and with the knowledge of the Young Turks, and, according to reports to his superiors, established a measure of accord. The support of Le Jeune Turc had been promised for Arab aspirations, without prejudice to the unity of the empire, as well as help in the European press, while the Arabs undertook to drop their opposition to Jewish immigration and to support Arab-Jewish understanding. Some of this spirit was also reportedly felt at a conference called by the same Arab activists in Paris in July 1913. This time, Jacobson joined Hochberg in the talks but these were inconclusive, though only muted opposition to Jewish immigration was voiced at the conference.
Another attempt at Arab-Jewish understanding was made in 1914. Arab politicians were again in need of propaganda assistance and, in conversations with Zionists in Constantinople, concentrated on Jewish financial aid for the expansion of Arab education, large-scale public works in Arab regions, and preventing the dispossession of Arab fellahin. The latter point was met by suggestions that agriculture be intensified, thus making room for new settlers as well as for the existing farmers. Parallel with these conversations, other talks were conducted by Nahum Sokolow, member of the Zionist Executive, who visited Beirut and Damascus in May 1914. Arab participants in these talks suggested a joint conference to be convened later in the summer and attended by members of the Zionist Executive like Sokolow himself, and not by representatives unauthorized to take decisions. Some of the Arabs called for the assimilation of the Jewish settlers among the local majority through the establishment of mixed villages and mixed schools. In the meantime, heavy clouds covered the international horizon. The joint conference which was to meet at the beginning of July was postponed for a few weeks. But on July 28 the first shots of World War i rang out in the Balkans, and on November 5 Turkey became involved in the war on the side of Germany and Austria.
the struggle for the future
That the vast conflict was bound tragically to affect a people whose masses lived on both sides of the frontiers in regions which turned into battlefields soon became all too obvious. The Zionist movement, national in spirit but international in structure, was also bound to find itself in a precarious position. Its headquarters were in Berlin, but the majority of its followers lived in countries at war with Germany or neutral. There were suggestions that the central office should move to Scandinavia. British and U.S. Zionists wanted it transferred to the United States and placed under the leadership of Louis D. Brandeis. Russian Zionists feared that such a step would cause affront to Germany and further antagonize Turkey; they wanted a coordinating bureau in neutral Copenhagen. Thus the old central office remained in Berlin and its representatives stayed in Constantinople, their task more vital than ever: to see to it that the young yishuv weathers the storm. Two members of the Executive (Sokolow and *Tschlenow) were sent to London to take charge of political activities there, while another member, Shemaryahu *Levin, went to the United States. Nonetheless, one of the results of the fact that the Zionist headquarters never left Central Europe was the widespread and persistent impression that the movement was under German influence.
Whether Germany itself took it for granted was far less certain. Berlin never took Zionism seriously. Its international character had always been suspect. The recent struggle of the yishuv (1913) against German as the language of instruction in the German-Jewish Hilfsverein schools, including the newly founded Haifa Technological Institute, caused considerable irritation. Having achieved the huge political success of involving Turkey in the war as an ally, Berlin would do nothing to place any strain on the friendship. Repeated Zionist initiatives directed at obtaining Turkish – or at least German – expressions of sympathy for Jewish aims in Ereẓ Israel were repeatedly rebuffed. Even where the proposals concerned the rights of Jews in Russian Poland, which was occupied by German troops (Count Bernstorff, German ambassador in Washington, urged his government to promise them equality of rights in the future), Berlin responded negatively, ostensibly because such a step could make it more difficult to achieve a separate peace with Russia at some later date.
Nonetheless, in the military and political vacillations that were to follow, the Germans sought to preserve the precarious status quo in and around Palestine, but even that proved difficult. Soon after the outbreak of hostilities, one of the most ruthless members of the Turkish ruling group, Jamal Pasha, assumed command in Syria and Palestine and began a series of expulsions, some of them explained as military measures, others as the result of the fact that many of the Jews in the country were foreign (mostly Russian), citizens. The grave danger to the very existence of the yishuv (which numbered about 85,000) alarmed not only the Zionists but Jewry as a whole. The largest Jewish community (Russia) could do little; its political influence was nil and it had been overwhelmed by its own huge refugee problem, created by the mass expulsion of Jews from the war zones by the Russian army command. There remained only one large section of the Jewish people not directly involved in the war. U.S. Jewry immediately offered a helping hand both to the Jewish victims of the fighting in Eastern Europe and to the yishuv. Furthermore, U.S. Jewry had political weight, and the United States was at the time represented in Constantinople by Henry *Morgenthau, who was willing to help. Coming on top of the Turkish atrocities, of which the Armenians were the main victims, reports of harassment in Ereẓ Israel created an atmosphere that was harmful not only to Turkey but to its allies as well. One of the main aims of the Central Powers had been to keep the U.S. neutral. The unpopularity of czarist Russia in wide circles of the United States public played into their hands. There were also great economic interests involved in the struggle for U.S. sympathies. This helped to make the rulers of Turkey realize that turning Jewish Palestine into another Armenia by large-scale massacres may be too costly, and, although Jamal Pasha often acted on his own, the worst fears that were felt in the first months of the war only partly materialized. Before the end of 1915 the German ambassador in Constantinople, Count Metternich, sent a confidential circular letter to his consulates in Turkey explaining their government's "friendly attitude" toward Jewry's aspirations concerning the raising of the spiritual and economic standards of the Jews living in the Ottoman Empire and furthering Jewish immigration and settlement there (Palestine was not mentioned); all this, of course, provided no harm was done to Turkish or German interests.
In the meantime, a Zionist political campaign was slowly gaining ground in Britain. It centered around a younger leader who had become prominent as one of the critics of Herzl's policies – Chaim Weizmann. One of his closest advisers was a much better known critic of Herzl – Aḥad Ha-Am. The political climate in England was unlike that of Germany. For a long time Britain guarded the integrity of the Ottoman Empire until the latter's misgovernment; the steady penetration of German interests into Turkey and the expansion of Britain' own interests in the Near East made that policy no longer tenable. The future partition of the vast Ottoman domains raised great problems and offered great opportunities, including some for the non-Turkish elements in the empire and for the Jews in Palestine. Weizmann was one of those who soon grasped the suddenly unfolding prospects. The history of his efforts is the history of the Balfour Declaration. It was a dramatic struggle in which the chief participants were outstanding leaders of the British government, foremost among them Balfour and Lloyd George, leaders of the Jewish community, split in their attitude to the very idea of a Jewish center in Palestine, and numerous other personalities. An early advocate of the idea was a member of the government, Herbert *Samuel. The search for an acceptable policy formulation proved to be a most complicated task, mainly because other Entente partners, above all France, were also involved.
When the first tentative approaches were made, the Zionists knew nothing of the secret negotiations between Britain and France, which resulted in the *Sykes-Picot Agreement of February 1916, that had already settled the future of Palestine. With the exception of a small enclave including Haifa, in which Britain had a long-standing interest, the country was to be placed under an international administration. Later, Russia was also promised large areas of Turkish territory. These undertakings tied Britain's hands when the discussions on Zionist proposals began making headway. But they also spurred interest. The creators of British policy in the Near East had always viewed France as an undesirable neighbor in the vicinity of Suez. An opportunity to reopen the question, especially as far as Palestine was concerned, increased that interest. The potential propaganda value in America and even in Russia, with their millions of Jews, was not overlooked. The Jews, on their part, were becoming more active in giving expression to their wishes and expectations. The British government consulted the government of the U.S., and obtained the support of Wilson and his administration for the pro-Zionist attitude of the British government. L. Brandeis and S. Wise played an important role in securing the U.S. support. As early as the first days of the war, before Turkey joined the Central Powers, proposals were made that Jewish battalions be raised to fight for the liberation of Ereẓ Israel. In August 1914 London was visited by a well-known figure in the Russian revolutionary movement, Pinḥas *Rutenberg, who sought to obtain the support of Weizmann and others for this idea. In the meantime, young Jews expelled from Ereẓ Israel to Egypt began volunteering for service with the British forces, and the Zion Mule Corps was established in 1915 under British command with a former officer of the Russian army, Joseph Trumpeldor, playing a central role when the unit went to Gallipoli later in the year. This was but the beginning of the prolonged campaigning for the establishment of the Jewish Legion that was stubbornly pursued by Jabotinsky in London and took another two years to obtain its goal. Rutenberg, who went to the United States in 1915 for the same purpose, had been persuaded to postpone it because of the threat of Turkish retaliations in Palestine, and those who influenced him most were two labor leaders from Ereẓ Israel, David Ben-Gurion and Izhak Ben-Zvi, who later, however, in 1917, themselves promoted the idea of the Jewish Legion and joined its "American" battalion. Much of this activity, including Weizmann's political initiative, had not been authorized by the official supreme organs of the Zionist movement; a meeting of its General Council held in Copenhagen in 1916 resolved that the Executive may not negotiate with any country at war with Turkey.
The turning point on almost all the fronts came in 1917. The beginning of March brought the Russian Revolution which overthrew the czar and led, eight months later, to the overthrow of the revolutionary government itself and the establishment of the Soviet regime. April brought the American declaration of war on the Central Powers (but not against Turkey). Soon afterward permission was granted in London for enlistment in Jewish battalions. At the beginning of the same year, the British government, now led by Lloyd George, started "unofficial discussions" with the Zionists. One of the first obstacles that had to be removed was the previous commitment under the Anglo-French Sykes-Picot Agreement. Indeed, it was Sir Mark Sykes himself who conducted the discussions with representative Jews, and with his assistance important moves were made in Paris and Rome. On behalf of the Zionists, Sokolow conducted the negotiations there. This time, even the Vatican was less unbending. Benedict xv told Sokolow: "We shall be good neighbors." A short time later, Sokolow received from the French government assurances of "sympathy for your cause, the triumph of which is bound up with that of the Allies." It may have been a reluctant concession, but it opened the way for a decision by the British cabinet. Significantly, the most persistent opposition there came from Edwin Montagu, the Jewish secretary of state for India, but it could not overcome the equally great persistence of the prime minister and of the secretary of state for foreign affairs. Montagu succeeded, however, in delaying the approval of his government's pronouncement and in watering it down. On Nov. 2, 1917, the Balfour Declaration was issued.
words and deeds
The impact of the Balfour Declaration on Jewish public opinion was immediate, and enthusiasm spontaneous. In many lands there were huge demonstrations and processions displaying the Union Jack side by side with the Zionist flag. But the Jews in Germany and Austria could only celebrate between four walls, and in Russia there were by then large areas under Bolshevik rule or in a state of flux where open identification with an "imperialist power" became imprudent. If one of the purposes of the declaration had been to influence developments in Russia, it came too late, even assuming that Jewish opinion could have had any significant influence amid the political storms that were raging there. On the other side of the trenches, in Germany and Turkey, the semi-official reactions were unexpectedly mild. The German Foreign Ministry was unmoved; Zionist efforts in Berlin to obtain a similar declaration were rebuffed. But in December 1917, Talaat Pasha, one of the Turkish ruling triumvirate, told a Zionist correspondent of a prominent German newspaper that Turkey was favorably disposed to Jewish settlement in Palestine, that existing restrictions would be removed, and immigration would be free within the "limits of the country's absorptive capacity," and that Jews will have the right to free economic and cultural development and to local self-government in the framework of Turkish laws. After the publication of the interview, Jewish and Zionist representatives were called to the Foreign Office in Berlin and an undersecretary told them that his government welcomed Talaat's statement.
The general military situation at the time had not yet been viewed by the Central Powers as hopeless. Even Turkey was far from giving up the struggle, in spite of the British advance in Palestine, which caused, inter alia, the removal of Jamal Pasha (September 1917), but not before he hanged a number of Arab nationalists in Damascus. Turkey was pinning its hopes on a Russian withdrawal from the war, chances of a separate peace, or, at least, a relatively lenient treatment at a future peace conference. But 1918 brought the series of events that left no more illusions. Bulgaria collapsed at the end of September. A few days later came the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Turkey capitulated on October 20, and Germany herself, her power broken on the western front and her people rebelling, deposed the kaiser and signed an armistice on November 11.
Months before this denouement, the new Zionist leadership headed by Weizmann took the first steps toward the implementation of the Balfour Declaration. A *Zionist Commission for Palestine had been formed, including representatives from Britain, America, France, and Italy, and started out for Ereẓ Israel. Two representatives from Russia were elected, but their departure had been postponed. Before leaving, Weizmann was received by King George v. There were high hopes but few illusions. It had been difficult to obtain the international promise; turning it into a reality was bound to be much more difficult. The Turks were out; the Arabs felt immeasurably stronger; the British military administration was totally indifferent and often openly hostile. The Jewish people as a whole had been greatly weakened by the war. Russian Jews were among the chief victims of the internal chaos that followed the October Revolution and of the civil war that was beginning to engulf most of Russia. Polish Jewry was in dire need of help. American Jews saw their most urgent task in rushing aid to Eastern Europe.
The arrival of the Zionist Commission in Ereẓ Israel in April 1918 opened three decades of incessant struggle. The commission's immediate task was to help in restoring the impoverished yishuv and preparing the conditions for future immigration. The almost totally negative attitude of the military authorities was a major obstacle, and it also impeded understanding with the Arabs. Contacts were established with Emir Feisal, about to become king of Syria. Weizmann's talks with him, first in Akaba and later in London and Paris, led to the signing of an agreement in January 1919 with Colonel T.E. *Lawrence acting as intermediary. But Feisal's hopes to remain in Syria had been frustrated. The French forced him to flee Damascus in 1920, and though he was compensated by the British, who secured his election as king of Iraq, his understanding with the Zionists remained a dead letter. The stormy events in the Arab world were bound to involve Palestine, to where they were soon directed – partly made to be directed – against the Jews. For the first time attacks were organized on a large scale. In the spring of 1920, Trumpeldor and seven others fell while defending Tel Ḥai in Upper Galilee. Within a few weeks Arab rioting in Jerusalem claimed further victims. Some of the organizers were sentenced to years of hard labor. For the sake of evenhandedness, Jabotinsky and members of the Jewish self-defense received similar treatment. Moreover, official explanations published by the British authorities made the Balfour Declaration look like a scrap of paper. The political pattern then established was to last until the end of British rule in the country.
Elsewhere on the political front things looked somewhat less dismal. Zionist leaders had been given an opportunity personally to present their case at the Paris Peace Conference. They also had a say in the lengthy process of drafting the League of Nations' Mandate for Palestine, even if many of their proposals had not been accepted. The Mandate itself had been entrusted to Britain at San Remo in 1920, although some British leaders wanted it to be taken on by a more than reluctant America. On June 30, 1920, Sir Herbert Samuel arrived in Palestine as its first high commissioner, with every goodwill to serve the people of Palestine as a whole, the Jewish National Home, and British interests. While he was taking the initial steps in establishing a civilian administration, Zionist leaders met in London for their first postwar conference, and the internal difficulties which dogged the movement from its early days again came to the surface. Instead of "political" and "practical" Zionists, it was "east" and "west" this time, symbolized to a great extent by two names: Weizmann and Brandeis. The former wanted a comprehensive program of action embracing political, economic, and cultural matters. His opponents viewed the political chapter as closed with the attainment of international recognition and approval of the Mandate; henceforth efforts were to be concentrated on economics, and particularly on fostering private enterprise. Those in Weizmann's camp proposed the establishment of a large foundation fund – Keren Hayesod – for the upbuilding of the National Home and for the encouragement of private initiative. The "Brandeisists" opposed it. There was a widespread feeling that unless Jewry put to good use the opportunities created by the wartime achievements, they might be irretrievably lost. But the general situation did not work in Zionism's favor, regardless of trend. The strongest appeals addressed to world Jewry evoked only a faint echo. The funds raised were miserably inadequate. Even the limited number of immigrants could not find immediate employment, and crisis chased crisis.
These difficulties opened new opportunities before the opposing side. Samuel's efforts to placate the Arabs were rebuffed. Winston *Churchill's efforts as head of the Colonial Office to do the same by making Feisal king of Iraq and Abdullah emir of eastern Palestine (called Transjordan) where the "Jewish clauses" of the Mandate were not to be applied, fared no better. Less than a year after Samuel's arrival, the country was shaken by the worst outbreak of Arab rioting yet seen there. Its political repercussions led to the publication (in June 1922) of the first of the series of *White Papers which undermined the foundations of what was intended to be the Jewish National Home. No concession, however, satisfied the Arab political leadership, which sought to stop all Jewish immigration and take over the government of the country through institutions with an Arab majority or by other means. This general erosion gave rise to great discontent within the Zionist movement. Weizmann was accused of not being strong enough in his dealings with the Mandatory government since he constantly insisted on Jewish-British relations based on mutual trust. Others accused him of extending too much support to the Zionist labor movement and to unsound economic policies. One of the opposition groups was led by Jabotinsky, who had been brought into the Executive in 1921 but resigned in 1923. Moreover, Brandeis laid down his post as honorary president of the Zionist Organization (June 1921), thus bringing U.S. Zionists into disarray for a number of years. For different reasons, Ussishkin was also soon to leave the chairmanship of the Zionist Executive in Jerusalem (which replaced the Zionist Commission). Even before that, there were changes in its Political Department whose first chief, Commander *Levi-Bianchini (Italian Jewry's representative on the commission) had been killed by Bedouin in an attack on a train near the Syrian border. His successor, M.D. *Eder (a former territorialist) returned to London in 1922, and Weizmann sent to Jerusalem a career officer with diplomatic experience, Lt. Col. F.H. *Kisch, who was to remain at his post for nine difficult years.
Seeking to break the vicious circle of economic predicaments and political setbacks, Weizmann and his colleagues decided to open a new page by bringing into the national effort important non-Zionist elements in Jewry. The idea encountered strong opposition, mainly among those already opposed to Weizmann. However, after lengthy preparatory work, the first conference of the "enlarged" Jewish Agency met in Zurich in 1929 in the presence of a number of outstanding Jews of the generation, among them Albert Einstein, Leon Blum, Ḥ.N. Bialik, Shalom Asch, Louis Marshall, and others. The impression produced by this remarkable gathering had been powerful, and the hopes it reawakened were great. But the reaction in Palestine came almost immediately. After months of Arab incitement motivated by the most potent of weapons – Muslim religious hatred aimed at depriving the Jews of their traditional rights at the Western Wall – there came a wave of murderous attacks. The outbreak was followed by two inquiries. An international commission studied and reported on rights of access to the Western Wall, and a British commission reviewed the political aspects of the situation. The resultant White Paper (1930) issued by the colonial secretary, Lord Passfield (the Labour leader Sidney Webb), led to Weizmann's resignation as president of the Jewish Agency as a protest and a sign that the government can no longer expect his cooperation. A storm followed in the press and in the British Parliament. Official explanations were published by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, but they could but slightly reduce the damage done. Weizmann's own position became untenable, and at the 1931 Zionist Congress Sokolow was elected president in his place. No essential change in the policy of the movement, however, followed. Indeed, Chaim *Arlosoroff, who took over the Jewish Agency's Political Department in Jerusalem from Kisch (who resigned before the Congress), had been Weizmann's devoted disciple. It was also the first time that a representative of Zionist Labour had been entrusted with the political portfolio, which was to remain in Labour hands. Furthermore, with Weizmann away from his old office in London, the center of Zionist policy-making gradually moved to Jerusalem, and this shift was virtually completed after Ben-Gurion joined the Executive in 1933.
Kisch was the model civil servant; Arlosoroff was the statesman-philosopher. Realizing that no change in the situation could be expected unless there was some progress toward a modus vivendi with the Arabs, Arlosoroff was determined to concentrate much of his work in this field. Consequently, he appointed Moshe Shertok (*Sharett) as secretary of the department for his knowledge of Arabic and his strong ties with the country. Arlosoroff's brief term, less than two years (he was murdered on the Tel Aviv seashore in June 1933), coincided with the first years of service of the British high commissioner, Sir Arthur Wauchope. The two established a sincere mutual understanding, and this played a part in government actions when, at the beginning of the Hitler regime, it became imperative that Palestine be opened to a large number of immigrants from Germany. Nonetheless, Arlosoroff also came to the conclusion that although there was no immediate alternative to the former political course of the movement, future alternatives had to be explored. He considered Revisionist demands for a complete change of the system of government in Palestine as unrealistic. But the road hitherto followed, without greater political assistance from Britain and vast sums from the Jewish people, would clearly not bring Zionism nearer to its goal. The world situation also militated against it. In 1932 Arlosoroff foresaw a new international conflagration "in five to ten years." It was imperative to elaborate alternative, even "revolutionary," plans, while continuing to "muddle through." The ideas discussed in those days included plans for the division of the country into "cantons" on Swiss lines. This was an old suggestion made by Jacobson, then head of the Zionist Office at the seat of the League of Nations in Geneva. More radical proposals spoke of establishing a Jewish state in a part of the country where Jews formed a large section of the population (by then the yishuv counted about 180,000).
In spite of their vital importance, long-range issues had to give way to urgent current problems, and even these could not be adequately handled when the budget of the Political Department in Jerusalem amounted to $20,000 a year. The latest White Paper (1931) brought in its wake additional inquiries into the problems of land and absorptive capacity – or lack of it, according to British experts. The Jewish Agency tried to reopen the question of settlement in Transjordan; a group of influential sheikhs entered into negotiations with the Jewish Agency on the subject, presumably not without Emir Abdullah's knowledge. The British were adamant: Transjordan was to remain closed to Jewish settlement. Such policies could only weaken the position of the few Arab leaders who were inclined to some sort of understanding with the Jews. Desultory attempts to open discussions with them were made during those years by prominent yishuv personalities (J.L. Magnes, Rutenberg, Moshe *Smilansky) and, less important, by a small group called Berit Shalom, which was seeking a bi-national solution. They found, however, no one in the Arab camp able to enter into binding agreements. The mufti of Jerusalem, Hājj Amin al-*Husseini, intended to turn the Palestine problem into a general Muslim problem by calling a Muslim Conference in Jerusalem. Tension and agitation were also fostered by inciting broadcasts from Fascist Italy. In Egypt the beginning of the 1930s witnessed violent disturbances and a general strike in 1933. In the year 1937 independent Egypt was admitted to the League of Nations. The year 1936 saw a general strike in Syria, too, but French consent to grant Syria independence was later repudiated by Paris. Iraq, which joined the League of Nations in 1932, experienced a military coup in 1936. The examples proved infectious. In order to force the British to stop Jewish immigration and place Palestine under an Arab government, and also in order to subdue the moderates within the Arab camp itself, al-Husseini and his followers proclaimed an Arab national strike in 1936. It did not take long for what was supposed to be passive resistance to turn into open rebellion. An Arab Higher Committee was formed to conduct the struggle.
The inquiry instituted by the British this time was the most authoritative ever. A Royal Commission headed by Lord Peel had been appointed, and before it left for its destination, unusually stringent measures were taken in Ereẓ Israel to restore a semblance of order, with the aid of almost 20,000 British troops. Formally, the Arab leaders only stopped the strike when called upon to do so by the rulers of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Transjordan (Egypt was not among them), but later decided to boycott the commission because the government approved new immigration permits. The commission stayed in the country from November 1936 until the end of January 1937, and toward the conclusion of its hearings Arab representatives testified before it in compliance with another call from the same rulers. The Jewish Agency appeared before the commission in full force, headed by Weizmann who was again its president (reelected in 1935). Sittings were held abroad as well, and statements were heard from Jabotinsky and Samuel, among others. Politically, the results were more dramatic than after any previous inquiry. The commission concluded that the Mandate proved to be unworkable because it was impossible to secure even the minimum of mutual understanding between the two sections of the population necessary for its implementation. After analyzing the various proposals for finding a way out of the impasse, the commission chose partition: dividing the country into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and a mandated zone which was to include Jerusalem. The establishment of a Jewish state had thus become for the first time a proposal from a formal British body. What could not have been foreseen was that at least three other commissions would have to go into the matter and a second world war and the holocaust of European Jewry would be witnessed before the plan – largely modified – would be implemented.
The approaching war was casting ominous shadows. Britain could not face increased complications in a vital strategic region. Parliamentary reactions to the partition plan were unfavorable. Emir Abdullah stood to gain a great deal, for he could do in 1938 what he did in 1948 – take over the area allocated to the proposed Arab state. Abdullah's supporters were secretly with him, but for public consumption their attitude was negative. The Husseini camp was totally uncompromising and ready to renew the fight. Soon the government was compelled to take drastic steps, including the suppression of the Arab Higher Committee and the deportation of extremist leaders; some of them, including al-Husseini, had fled the country earlier. The riots continued, however, and to a large degree became an internecine Arab struggle, claiming numerous victims, mostly among the moderates. The fact that the Jews were also split in their attitude to the partition plan made Britain's retreat from the plan much easier. In spite of Weizmann and Ben-Gurion's pleading in its favor, only a vague compromise resolution could be forced through the Zionist Congress in 1937. By 299 votes to 160 it was agreed that the Executive should "ascertain" in discussions with the British "the precise terms for the proposed establishment of a Jewish State." The non-Zionist partners in the Jewish Agency were far more negative. They did not want a Jewish state; their decisions, including a request to the government to convene a conference of Jews and Arabs, made progress even more difficult.
In 1938 another commission visited Palestine. Though it was called the Partition Commission, there had been a widespread feeling even before it reached Jerusalem that its real purpose was to bury the plan. In the autumn it presented its report, which was negative. It was welcomed not only by Arabs, but also by anti-partition Zionists. But even before that happened, Hitler made his first decisive steps toward war: the annexation of Austria in April and the beginning of the destruction of Czechoslovakia in November. The same month also brought the *Kristallnacht in Germany. By then the propaganda offensive of the Axis in the Near East had heightened. Anxiety among Jews abroad mounted and led, inter alia, to the presentation of a memorandum on the subject to President Roosevelt by 245 members of both Houses of Congress and 30 governors. In Poland a Jewish Emigration Committee was established under government pressure to seek new "territories"; a study mission went to Madagascar and returned with empty hands. Other territories were mentioned with little hope. By then, an air of inevitability began enveloping Europe and the world. No conditions could be less propitious for an attempt to achieve in 1939 what proved to be elusive before: a fair settlement.
Britain nonetheless considered that the urgent needs of the hour precluded further postponement. Taking up the suggestion that an Arab-Jewish conference be called, the British broadened the scope and invited, in addition to the parties to the conflict, representatives of Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Transjordan, and Yemen. Inevitably, the inclusion of the Arab states almost led to a boycott of the conference by the Jews, but the situation was far too grave for that. The Jewish delegation was large and weighty; it included Zionists, non-Zionists, and Agudat Israel. With regard to the leadership of the Palestine Arab delegation, London began by declaring Amin al-Husseini persona non grata and ended by accepting his representative and kinsman, Jamāl al-Husseini, over the opposition of moderate Palestine Arabs. The augury was plain: no agreed proposal could come from such a gathering. The Arabs insisted on their full program: abolishment of the Jewish National Home, an end to Jewish immigration, and Arab self-government. There was no room for give and take. The government of Neville Chamberlain saw itself facing one overriding task: to prepare for the coming war with Hitler. The Arabs could be a menace; the Jews had no choice. Thus, a new White Paper was issued in May 1939. A Palestine state was to be established and the population was to be prepared for self-government over a ten-year period. The future constitution was to include safeguards for the holy places, for the special position of the Jewish National Home, and for British interests. Full independence was made conditional on the creation of good relations between Arabs and Jews. As to immigration, 75,000 Jews were to be admitted in the next five years, after which the continuation of immigration would depend on Arab consent. The regulation of land sales, or their banning in certain areas, was left in the hands of the government.
The White Paper was rejected outright by Jews and Arabs alike. There was sharp criticism in the British Parliament, and only the grave international situation gave the government the needed majority; Labour and some 20 Conservatives (including Churchill) voted against it. The strongest words came from the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations, which stated unanimously that the policy "was not in accordance with the interpretation which… the Commission had placed upon the Palestine Mandate." The matter was to come up before the Council of the League of Nations, due to meet in September, since a change in the terms of the Mandate called for the council's consent. The war started before it met, and the British government considered itself free to act. In the meantime, the extremist Arabs found themselves leaderless as al-Husseini and some of his associates were not allowed to return. This was used by the Arab moderates who saw a chance to gain both the leadership and a compromise that would give the Arabs most of what they wanted. The Jewish leaders in Palestine and abroad refused to cooperate with the British administration, and some extremist elements, mainly the underground *Irgun Ẓeva'i Le'ummi (iẒl), soon turned to the use of force. The Zionist Congress which met in Geneva on the very eve of World War ii avoided taking dramatic decisions. With armies massing all over Europe and with the signature of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, it was realized that both valor and wisdom would be needed in the coming struggle.
war and holocaust
Even before the initial Axis successes brought a direct military threat to Palestine in 1940, tragedy befell European Jewry (see *Holocaust). Its unbelievable dimensions did not become known until later, but there were already large numbers of Jews fleeing from death and trying to reach Palestine. The immediate task was to help in their escape. Next to it was the need to mobilize the yishuv for the war. As had been the case a quarter of a century earlier, the British were reluctant to accept Jewish volunteers. Only the early defeats in North Africa weakened this reluctance, and by 1940 many thousands of Palestinian Jews enlisted. The yishuv's economic potential also gradually became a factor of considerable value. The British did not forget their White Paper, however, and in February 1940 introduced crippling regulations concerning land transactions, which caused another bitter outburst on the part of the Jews. The immigration problem had taken on a different character. The British aim was to spread out the use of the 75,000 "certificates" over five years and – if possible – until the end of the war (although nobody could know when that would be). In any case, regular immigration was unlikely to continue under war conditions. Indeed, less than 20,000 immigrants – authorized and unauthorized – entered during the years 1940–42. Furthermore, the fact that the Chamberlain government fell in May 1940 and another administration took over, headed by Churchill and including a number of other friendly ministers, was bound to influence the general political climate.
As to the Arabs, the initial military successes of the Axis made them stake their future on its victory, and many were ready merely to wait for it. Hence the failure of Al-Husseini's call for an open rebellion. The fall of France in 1940 turned Syria and Lebanon into bases of subversion and February 1941 brought about a pro-German putsch in Iraq. Allied countermeasures prevented further deterioration. Al-Husseini turned up in Rome and Berlin in the autumn of 1941, and some Egyptian sympathizers of the Axis (including the future president of the uar, Anwar Sadat) plotted with Axis men in North Africa. A slight change took place after Rommel's defeat in 1942. British efforts were largely directed at exploiting the improved situation, and in due course a policy of unifying the Arabs evolved, which led to the organization of the Arab League in 1945. Palestine Arabs were granted a voice in the league itself when it was organized, their cause having been included in its charter.
Among the Jews there was a feeling that somewhat friendlier winds were imperceptibly blowing in London. The immediate peril to the yishuv had receded, but the dimensions of the tragedy that befell European Jewry were gradually emerging. The need for immigration, and immigration itself, were again coming to the fore. Internal pressures were building up; the wartime "truce" between the British authorities and extremist elements was coming to an end; and violence erupted again in Palestine, this time initiated by the iẒl. The Zionist leadership found it necessary to clarify its own position and seek clarification of the position likely to be taken up by the Churchill government. Much of the thinking harked back to the Royal Commission's proposals, but the formulation adopted at a conference called by American Zionists at the Biltmore Hotel in New York in May 1942 claimed "that Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth." This was later approved by the appropriate Zionist bodies in Jerusalem over the opposition of some of the former anti-partitionists. Outbursts of terror from Jewish extreme underground organizations, including the murder in Cairo of the British minister for the Near East, Lord Moyne, by members of *Loḥamei Ḥerut Israel (Leḥi), again increased the feeling of impending crisis.
years of decision
The end of the war in Europe in May 1945 was followed by the fall of Churchill. Labour, which replaced him, had in the past displayed great sympathy for Zionism, and its party conference had just confirmed its promise to help the development of the National Home by making room for it through "extending the present Palestinian boundaries, by agreement with Egypt, Syria, or Transjordan." The urgent need for action soon became clear with the disclosure that it was necessary to aid in the rehabilitation of hundreds of thousands of survivors of Nazi camps. This could only be done through Anglo-American cooperation. The United States had already become a factor in Middle Eastern affairs, militarily and economically. Now, because of its friendly ties with both Jews and Arabs, it was beginning to become involved politically as well.
In the days immediately following World War ii, the voice of the American Jewish community on its own government carried much weight in Washington. This was the culminating point of a generation of sporadic political endeavor by the Zionist movement in America, which had resulted in 1924 in the U.S. government's formally approving the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and its guarantee of Jewish national rights. Every president of the United States after Woodrow Wilson had made declarations favorable to Zionist aspirations, and the majority of Congress was moved several times to declare its pro-Zionist views, both officially in joint resolutions and informally. With the rise of Nazism, Zionist membership in the United States grew rapidly and the Zionist organizations became a prevailing influence in the community while also widening the circle of friends and supporters in the general community. During World War ii there was lively and even bitter disagreement between those Zionists who followed Stephen S. Wise in being ready to rely on the goodwill of President Roosevelt and were therefore willing to remain relatively quiescent, and those led by Abba Hillel Silver, whose orientation was toward the opposition Republican Party and who believed public opinion had to be organized against the government in order to both save Jewish lives in Europe and realize Zionist aims after the war. These forces paved the road to the adoption of the Biltmore platform in 1942, which postulated Jewish independence as the Zionist war aim. Distrust in the goodwill of others and the desire for independence deepened while the news of the Holocaust continued to seep out of Europe. By the winter of 1943 Abba Hillel Silver replaced Stephen Wise as the head of Zionist political affairs and public relations in the United States. With the help of Emanuel *Neumann and a number of others, the American Zionist Emergency Committee, which Silver led, mounted a political offensive throughout the United States and prepared the ground both in the public mind and in political circles for U.S. support of Zionism against the continuing White Paper policy of the British government and for the establishment of a Jewish state. The Zionist forces had a substantial impact on the White House and on Congress, which were responsive to public protest and pressure mounted within the democratic process, and they thus managed (1947–48) to influence the policy of the U.S. government, despite the continuing opposition of the State Department.
The United States also had to shoulder most of the burden of aid to the vast numbers of *Displaced Persons in Europe. The Jewish Agency asked for an immediate grant of 100,000 immigration permits, but Britain, embroiled in a fierce election campaign, was incapable of acting. Two months earlier, a change of leadership had also taken place in the U.S. Roosevelt's successor, President Truman, was anxious to help, and one of his first steps was the dispatch of an envoy to dp camps. The latter recommended resettlement of 100,000 stateless Jews found in the western zone of occupied Germany, and pointed out that "Palestine is definitely… the first choice." This recommendation, with Truman's backing, was sent to London, but the new prime minister, Attlee, could not see his way to accepting it, proposing instead a joint Anglo-American investigation of the entire problem. This was agreed upon in October 1945.
Uncertainty and conflicting pressures had their most damaging effect in the Middle East itself. The Arabs saw new danger to their hopes, raised high by the 1939 White Paper. A reorganized Arab Higher Committee was soon established. The Arab states' position as founding members of the new United Nations gave them a feeling of being able to sway political developments. Now they were incensed by America, even more than by Britain. There were violent demonstrations and attacks on Jews and foreigners. On the other hand, the yishuv also found new strength in its very despair. Some 20,000 Jewish troops were beginning to return, well trained, many with war experience, having seen with their own eyes what happened to their brethren in Europe. They, and others in the yishuv, vowed "never again!" Acts of violence were becoming widespread. The Haganah, which in the past had concentrated on defense and on preparations for the day of decision, undertook action of its own. Soon the government, with all the forces at its disposal, found itself at war with the yishuv. The only respite came during the work of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, whose prospects, however, were prejudiced in advance by the new British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin, who from the outset left little doubt of his hostility. The Labour government inherited a crushing burden of problems of which the Middle East was only one. Britain became unable to continue its imperial role. It was necessary to cut losses and safeguard only the most vital interests. Soon India was to be independent, after being split into two states, and other parts of the empire were to follow. So was Palestine, but at the end of 1945 and beginning of 1946 a way was still being sought to keep Britain in control. Under pressure of immigration needs, a provisional monthly "schedule" of 1,500 permits had been decided upon for the duration of the discussions and it was stated, for the first time, that any proposed settlement would be brought before the United Nations.
The work of the Anglo-American Committee, which started in Washington in January 1946, continued in London and in other places in Europe, then in Jerusalem, Cairo, and a number of other Arab capitals, and ended in Lausanne in March. It was conducted in a highly charged atmosphere. Large numbers of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust were being intercepted on the high seas by the British navy as "illegal" immigrants. Acts of violence in Palestine became a daily occurrence. So did Arab threats, especially after Husseini escaped from Germany on the eve of its surrender and appeared in Cairo. The Palestine Arabs mainly relied on the influence of the Arab states, whose willingness to assist them was proclaimed daily. It was inevitable that the inquiry should seek a compromise, and the final report turned not to partition but to its alternative: a bi-national Palestine state based on parity and under a United Nations trusteeship. To help in meeting pressing needs, 100,000 immigration permits were to be issued, if possible in 1946, and future immigration was to be based on compromise.
With the exception of Washington, no interested party approved the recommendations. Britain's equivocations found expression in official statements and, even more, in Bevin's speeches. The Arabs saw their hopes for Arab rule in Palestine dashed. The Jews, though pleased by the opportunity of rapidly bringing in a large number of Displaced Persons, feared the prospect of unending strife with the Arabs and with the "Trustee," which they expected would be Britain. The breaking point was reached in June 1946, when, in a retaliatory action *Palmah units destroyed a number of rail and road bridges in sensitive points, and the British government hit back by imposing a virtual siege on the yishuv: mass searches for arms and incriminating documents were carried out in hundreds of buildings, including the offices of the Jewish Agency; over 2,000 people, among them the members of the Jewish Agency and Va'ad Le'ummi executives, were arrested. The life of the yishuv had been dislocated. In time, some of the detainees were freed, but over 700, including Agency and Va'ad Le'ummi leaders, were interned. A short time later, iẒl blew up a wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, housing offices of the government secretariat. The casualties, belonging to all communities, were heavy. The yishuv was shocked, and the Jewish Agency condemned the deed. Meanwhile attempts were made in Washington and London to proceed with discussions about the results of their joint inquiry. Another committee, headed by Henry F. Grady (U.S.) and Herbert Morrison (Britain) found it more advisable to go back to the principles of territorial division. It suggested the establishment of a Jewish sector, an Arab sector, and a British sector, including Jerusalem and the Negev, as an intermediary stage that could eventually lead either to a unitary state, to a bi-national one, or outright partition. Administration of common interests such as defense, foreign relations, communications, etc., was to remain in the hands of a British high commissioner. During the initial five years, he was also to appoint presidents of the legislatures of the Jewish and Arab sectors, and his approval would be needed for new legislation. Immigration would also remain under his control after the agreed 100,000 were brought in with American help. The implementation of the scheme as a whole was made conditional on American participation and Arab-Jewish consent.
There was little to recommend this latest compromise, which contained most of the drawbacks of earlier suggestions. Washington withdrew from it almost immediately, and there was much criticism in London. The Arabs insisted on all their original demands, and the Jews refused to accept the plan. Again, London proposed a conference. The Jewish Agency was ready for it but not on the basis of the Morrison-Grady plan. The Arab Executive refused because its conditions (including the participation of Amin al-Husseini) were rejected. Thus, when the conference convened in September 1946, the main parties to the dispute were absent and only the British and Arab governments were represented. No progress could be made, and Britain suggested that the discussions be temporarily suspended for a further attempt to bring in the parties concerned. This was to take place at the beginning of 1947 in order to enable the Jewish Agency to bring the matter before the forthcoming Zionist Congress. To make things easier, the interned Zionist and yishuv leaders and a number of other internees were released. By then the Jewish Agency had again disassociated itself from the acts of violence, which were continued, however, by iẒl and Leḥi. Simultaneously, a number of Husseini's men were allowed to return to the country.
When the Zionist Congress met in December 1946 in Basle, it revealed a significant change in the internal situation. The Labour wing of the movement lost some ground, and within its ranks the activist elements had the upper hand. The American Zionists were led by Abba Hillel Silver, a supporter of a more determined policy. Furthermore, the Revisionists rejoined the Zionist Organization. As a result, the Congress refused to participate in the London talks, albeit leaving the door slightly ajar for later reconsideration. The idea of partition had enough support, but no initiative was to come from the Jewish Agency. Finally, the post of president had been left vacant, thus demonstrating the rejection of the Weizmann line. It was the absence of the Zionists that helped the Arab League persuade the Palestine Arab leaders to take their seats at the second round of the London talks in January 1947. An amended version of the Morrison-Grady scheme was put forward by Bevin, designed to meet some of the earlier criticism: cantonal self-government, for instance, in place of provincial authority; a shortened period of trusteeship; 100,000 immigrants in two years instead of one; and no partition. The Arab reply, however, was nevertheless a resounding no. This left things in a worse state than ever because it became obvious that the 1939 White Paper was also dead, a victim of the Holocaust, determined Jewish opposition, Arab conduct during the war and, finally, United States intervention. Left without an official policy, London turned to the United Nations on April 2, 1947. The purpose of this step was made clear in a statement before the House of Commons: "We are not going to the United Nations to surrender the Mandate. We are going to the United Nations setting out the problem and asking their advice as to how the Mandate can be administered. If the Mandate cannot be administered in its present form, we are asking how it can be amended."
the united nations investigates
Though this was the first time that the United Nations was to deal with the Palestine problem, the latter was not unknown to it. Preliminary skirmishes on the subject took place at the San Francisco Conference in 1945 and at the first session of the General Assembly in 1946, when Arab representatives attempted in vain to obtain decisions prejudicial to the Jewish position. The first special session of the General Assembly met between April 28 and May 15, 1947, with the purpose of "constituting and instructing a Special Committee to prepare for the consideration of the Question of Palestine at the second Regular Session" (scheduled to open September 16). The five Arab delegations tried to alter the very purpose of the deliberations on the eve of the session by requesting to amend the subject of discussions by adding to the agenda an item entitled: "Termination of the Mandate over Palestine and declaration of its independence." As before, the Assembly rejected their request; it also refused to exclude from its discussions the problems of displaced Jews in Europe.
For the first time, representatives of the Jews and of Palestine Arabs were heard by the United Nations. When the question arose whether their spokesmen should be heard at a plenary meeting or at a meeting of the Assembly's political committee, Czechoslovakia and Poland, backed by the U.S.S.R., urged for a hearing in the plenary, while Britain and America viewed the committee as the appropriate place for statements by delegations that did not represent member states. The latter view prevailed. The Jewish Agency spokesmen were Ben-Gurion, Silver, and Shertok (Sharett). The Arab Higher Committee was represented by E. Ghouri and H. Kattan.
The burden of the Jewish case was summarized by Ben-Gurion, who told the committee: "… in Palestine you are faced not merely with a large and growing number of Jews, but with a distinct Jewish nation. There are Jews and Jewish communities in many countries, but in Palestine there is a new and unique phenomenon – a Jewish nation, with all the attributes and aspirations of nationhood." The Arab case was presented not only by the spokesmen of the Higher Committee but also by the five Arab member-states, and it was summarized by Ghouri: "We only request the application to us of the principles of the democracies. We are only asking for our national rights. It is… the determined and unequivocal will of the Arabs to refuse to consider any solution which entails or even implies the loss of the sovereignty to the whole or to any part of the country, or the diminution of such sovereignty in any form whatever."
Much of the discussion was procedural, and the great majority of the delegates avoided anything that could be seen as clear commitment to one side or the other. The representative of India (a Muslim) was one of those who did not conceal his leaning to the Arab side, nor did the representative of Turkey. The delegate of China spoke with feeling of "the tragedy of the Jewish people" which contributed so much to the world and which "deserves a national home of some sort, deserves a place it can call its own, in which it can live in happiness, free from social and political discrimination and free from the eternal fear of persecution." Sympathy for Jewish aspirations were expressed by Czechoslovakia and Poland, but the chief surprise came when the Soviet delegate explained the stand of his government. The Soviet regime had long been known for its extreme hostility to Zionism, but the opportunity to hasten the removal of Britain from an area of special interest to the U.S.S.R. was far too important to let that stand in the way. While supporting the Jewish Agency's request for a hearing, Andrei Gromyko spoke of the sufferings of the Jewish people in Europe and said that it was "beyond description." "The fact that not a single Western European state" came to the help of the Jews "explains the aspirations of the Jews for the creation of a state of their own… It is impossible to justify a denial of this right of the Jewish people." The Mandate failed, and both Jews and Arabs call for its liquidation. The best solution would be "the establishment of an independent, dual, democratic, homogeneous Arab-Jewish state," but if that proved impossible "in view of the deterioration in the relations between the Jews and the Arabs," it would be necessary to consider "the partition of Palestine into two independent autonomous states, one Jewish and one Arab."
The divergent views led to dissensions concerning the composition of the proposed un mission and its terms of reference. Talk of "neutrality" and "impartiality" was found to be of little help, But it was agreed that the un Special Committee on Palestine (unscop) was to have "the widest powers to ascertain and record facts, and to investigate all questions and issues relevant to the problem of Palestine" and it was to conduct "investigations in Palestine and wherever it may deem useful." It was asked to "give most careful considerations to the religious interests in Palestine of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity" and present its report by Sept. 1, 1947. The only votes against the decision were those of the Muslim states. As to the composition of unscop, it was agreed to make it fully representative of all regions of the world, and to exclude the permanent members of the Security Council and the Arab countries. Two Muslims (from India and Iran) were included, as well as delegates from Australia, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, the Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, Uruguay, and Yugoslavia.
Arab dissatisfaction with these decisions found its immediate expression in a boycott by the Arab Higher Committee. The Arab League left the question of its cooperation open in the hope of persuading the mission not to visit refugee camps in Europe. The investigators did, indeed, postpone their decision on the subject until after the hearings in the Middle East. The latter started in the middle of June in an unusually tense atmosphere caused by numerous acts of violence, hangings, and retaliations. It also coincided with the dramatic developments concerning the fate of the refugee ship Exodus 1947 with over 4,500 men, women, and children who sailed in it to Palestine only to be returned to Germany after a bloody encounter with British forces in Haifa harbor. Nevertheless unscop (presided over by Swedish Chief Justice Emile Sandström) heard Jewish and British representatives, official and unofficial, and visited Arab areas of the country, as well as Jewish ones, spending over five weeks in Palestine. The Arabs who met the un envoys privately repeated the demands already heard in New York. The Jewish Agency efforts were now clearly directed at achieving partition on fair terms. On its way back, unscop members visited Lebanon, Syria, and Transjordan and heard representatives of the Arab states, who warned against any solution but the one proposed by them. Upon arriving in Geneva, unscop decided to have a subcommittee visit Jewish refugee camps in Germany and Austria, and by the end of August it completed its work.
The unscop report contained 12 general recommendations (11 of them adopted unanimously), a majority plan, and a minority plan. The majority plan, presented by Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, the Netherlands, Peru, Sweden and Uruguay, called for the partition of Palestine into an Arab state, a Jewish state, and an internationalized Jerusalem, the three to be linked in an economic union. The Jewish state was to include eastern Galilee, the Coastal Plain from a point south of Acre to north of Ashdod, and the Negev. The Arab state was to include western Galilee, central Palestine, and the Coastal Plain from Ashdod to the Egyptian border. The Jerusalem-Bethlehem area was to be administered by the United Nations under a permanent trusteeship. The Mandate was to come to an end, and from Sept. 1, 1947, Palestine was to be administered by Britain for another two years, alone or with the participation of one or more un members, under un auspices. The political regimes in the new states were to be "basically democratic." The holy places and access to them were to be safeguarded according to existing rights. Furthermore, the un was to make speedy arrangements to solve the problem of a quarter of a million Jewish refugees in Europe. With two dissenting votes, unscop also expressed its view that "any solution for Palestine cannot be considered as a solution of the Jewish problem as a whole." The argument of the minority report, concurred in by India, Iran, and Yugoslavia, with Australia abstaining in the vote on both plans, was based on the assumption that "the well-being of the country and its peoples as a whole" outweighed "the aspirations of the Jews." It suggested a federal regime comprising an Arab state and a Jewish state with Jerusalem as capital of a central government in charge of defense, foreign relations, and immigration. There was to be a bicameral legislature based on parity in one house and on proportional representation in the other, and all legislation would require majority support of both. Jewish immigration into the Jewish state was to be allowed for three years within its absorptive capacity. Arbitration was to help in overcoming any deadlock between the states. These proposals were made by less than one-third of unscop and the division of views between the majority and the minority reflected the division within the un itself, as was to be confirmed three months later.
the un decision
The unscop report occupied the center of the stage when the regular General Assembly met in New York on Sept. 16, 1947, although there were other important items on the agenda as well. The preliminary discussion on the report took place at an Ad Hoc Committee representing all member states, whose number had increased in the meantime: Yemen and Pakistan had been admitted to the United Nations, thus strengthening the Arab and Muslim front. Apart from that, no new alignments of forces were to be seen during the opening stages of the debate that lasted for over three weeks and was characterized by confusion. The main shift that soon became noticeable was in the tactics of the British delegation, which openly and actively canvassed for the rejection of partition. Arab delegations also increased their pressure. They were outspoken in their threats to Western, and particularly American, interests in their lands, and there were powerful economic and military factors in the United States, Britain, and France which could be – and were – activated in order to defeat the unscop proposals. Indeed, initial American remarks on the subject were reserved and hesitant. On the other hand, threats voiced by the Arab Higher Committee to the effect that what will happen to the Jews in Palestine if the unscop proposals were adopted would "exceed the horrors of Genghis Khan" had the opposite effect. It became clear to a growing number of un members, and to great sectors of the general public opinion, that decisions must be taken which would prevent these threats being carried out. The Jewish Agency announced acceptance of the majority plan early in the debate. Weizmann's speech before the committee left a profound impression. His role in realizing the ultimate decision of the United Nations in favor of partition and the creation of a Jewish state was of prime importance. Though out of office, for the Zionist Congress in 1946 did not reelect him as president, thus symbolizing its commitment to a more activist policy, Weizmann continued to work both in London and in New York for the creation of a Jewish state. He was particularly successful in moving and impressing President Harry Truman, from whom he secured the binding promise to support the partition proposal, including an outlet on the Red Sea for the proposed Jewish state.
As the discussions progressed, attitudes began to crystallize. The United States and the Soviet Union came out openly for partition. After that, the prospects of the majority plan gaining the necessary two-thirds of the votes grew. More attempts were made to find a compromise, in subcommittees and in the corridors, but the persistent Arab demands for the establishment of what could only be an Arab state with a Jewish minority at the mercy of its adversaries led to the failure of all such efforts. An ominous warning also came from Britain: while accepting unscop's unanimous opinion that the Mandate be terminated, it would take no implementation of a decision that was not acceptable to the parties. This meant noncooperation. The question of implementation became of utmost importance, especially after the British refused to extend their stay in Palestine even for a few weeks beyond May 15, 1948, or to help in the transfer of power to the authorities that were to be established in the Jewish and Arab states. The readiness of the Mandatory power to act in a way that was tantamount to sabotaging an international design for relieving it of a responsibility that had become too great to bear also had an opposite effect. It stiffened resistance to those who refused to accept the majority view. A vote in the Ad Hoc Committee on November 24 rejected an Arab proposal for a unitary state by 29 to 12. On November 25 a vote was taken on the partition plan, somewhat amended by a subcommittee, and it was approved by 25 to 13. This was not yet the two-thirds majority needed in the plenary. Both sides were by now making exerted efforts to gain their objectives. After one or two postponements, which further increased the tension, the decisive vote came on November 29, and it was 33 for, 13 against, and 10 abstentions.
The wave of emotion which followed gave abundant evidence that not only the Jewish people saw the un verdict as truly historic, but many other nations found in it an expression of the wish to right some of the wrongs of which Jews were victims, particularly the Nazi Holocaust. There were also grave warning signs. Arabs of Palestine reacted by widespread attacks on Jews; large numbers of armed men were coming in from across the borders to participate in those attacks; and Arab governments made no secret of their preparations for large-scale military action on the day of Britain's withdrawal. The un appointed a small Palestine Commission to help in an organized transfer of power to provisional councils of government in the two proposed states, but the British refused to cooperate with it or even allow it to enter Palestine before the month of May. The commission also reported that while Arab and Jewish police supernumeraries were being organized in towns and villages, only the Arabs were getting arms from the British. Furthermore, while the British continued to supply arms to Arab governments, the United States imposed an embargo on all such supplies to the area, thus forcing the Jews to seek other sources, mainly in Eastern Europe.
A sense of frustration and helplessness was gradually enveloping the un, which saw the danger that its first major decision might end in failure. While the un machinery was going through the motions (the Trusteeship Council, for instance, prepared a draft statute for an international administration of Jerusalem), reports from Palestine spoke of mounting disorder, of fighting and casualties, and of British preparations to leave in an atmosphere of what was then called "planned chaos." The implementation commission made partial progress in one sector only: in cooperation with the Jewish Agency for the establishment of the necessary authorities in the future Jewish State. The situation was repeatedly discussed in the Security Council, which had been told by the commission (February 1948) that it would not be able to fulfill its task without armed assistance. A debate started within the Council concerning its own authority: while it was agreed that it may use force for the preservation of peace, there was less agreement about the same right in respect to the enforcement of un decisions. U.S. views were negative, and they were strongly criticized by the Soviet Union. On March 19 the United States proposed that the work of the Palestine Commission be suspended and a temporary un trusteeship over the country be established. The proposal had been made by the State Department in Washington without the knowledge of President Truman, as he later explained. The State Department had also been strongly urging Zionist leaders to postpone action on the establishment of the Jewish state for at least a few months, a suggestion that was turned down by the majority of the Jewish Agency members. Furthermore, the U.S. proposed to call another special session of the Assembly to discuss the trusteeship idea.
The new session met on April 16, 1948, and was immediately bogged down in a procedural debate. The United States presented a working paper outlining details of a temporary trusteeship, providing for a government and essential public services in Palestine pending further negotiations. At the same time, the Trusteeship Council was asked by the General Assembly to study measures for the protection of Jerusalem, where fighting was then going on almost without interruption. On April 28 the Council came to an understanding with the parties concerned about a truce in the city, but reports from Jerusalem spoke of continued firing. On May 5 the Council recommended that before the Mandate expired on May 15, a special municipal commissioner for Jerusalem should be appointed by the Mandatory power with Jewish and Arab consent. The candidate for the post never went to Jerusalem, as the Arabs refused to cooperate with him and there was no truce. On May 14, the last day of the Mandate, a Franco-American proposal to establish a temporary international regime in Jerusalem failed to get the necessary support. It had also become clear that the idea of a trusteeship over the whole of Palestine stood no chance. The only outcome of the discussions on that day had been the disbanding of the Palestine Commission and the decision to appoint a mediator, for which task Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden was later chosen. With the hands of the clock moving toward 6 p.m. in New York (midnight in Palestine and the end of the Mandate), the struggle was still on. But even before the hour came, the United Nations was informed that the establishment of the State of Israel had already been proclaimed in Tel Aviv. A few minutes after 6 p.m. it was announced by the White House that President Truman recognized its provisional government as the de facto government of the new state. Soviet de jure recognition followed a few days later. On May 15, regular forces of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, including Saudi Arabian contingents, and the Arab Legion of Transjordan with its British officers, invaded Israel, and its newborn defense forces took the field against them.
[Moshe Medzini]
zionist organization
history
The Zionist Organization was founded at the First Zionist Congress (convened by Theodor Herzl in Basle, 1897) as the structural framework of the organized Zionist movement, "comprising all Jews who accept the Zionist program and pay the shekel." The biblical name *shekel was given to the membership fee of the Zionist Organization.
Though a rudimentary framework of a popular movement had been established by the Ḥibbat Zion, it was only through the foundation of the Zionist Organization that Zionism became a modern, democratic, mass movement, based on a worldwide interterritorial organization and equipped with instruments for political, settlement, and educational activities on a large scale. The most important of these instruments were created during Herzl's presidency (1897–1904): the Jewish Colonial Trust, to serve as the Zionist bank (1899); the Jewish National Fund (1901), for the acquisition of land as the inalienable property of the Jewish people; and Die Welt (1897), as the official organ of the organization.
Herzl died in 1904 before attaining his primary political aim, the Charter, i.e., the grant by the Ottoman authorities of political autonomy in, and the right of settlement of, Ereẓ Israel. The conflict over the Uganda Scheme at the Sixth Zionist Congress (1903) led to a split in the Zionist Organization. When the Seventh Congress (1905) rejected any settlement activities outside the Land of Israel, the Territorialists seceded from the Zionist Organization and founded the Jewish Territorial Organization, which, however, failed to play a significant part in Jewish life and, after the Balfour Declaration, disappeared from the public scene.
The growth of the Zionist Organization is best illustrated by the increase in the total number of shekels distributed: in the two-year period ending with the Eighth Zionist Congress (1907; for the former period, only the sums of the shekel revenues are available) there were 164,333; at the 11th Congress (1913) the number of shekels was 217,231; it steeply rose to 855,590 at the next Congress in 1921, the first to be held after World War i and the Balfour Declaration (although at that time most of Russian Jewry, the mainstay of Zionism, had already been cut off from the main body of the movement); at the 21st Congress, on the eve of World War ii (1939), the number of shekel holders exceeded 1,000,000; and at the first postwar and last pre-state gathering, the 22nd Congress in 1946, the shekel figures indicated that 2,159,840 Jews were organized in the Zionist Organization. After Herzl's death, the seat of the organization was transferred from Vienna to Cologne, the residence of Herzl's successor, David Wolffsohn (1905–11). When Otto Warburg headed the organization (1911–20), Berlin became the Zionist capital, but World War i isolated it from the Zionists in the Allied countries, whose activities were centered in London. The purpose of the Zionist Liaison Office set up in 1915 in neutral Copenhagen was to facilitate the contact across the war fronts between the two sections of the organization. London was the capital of the Zionist world during the presidencies of Chaim Weizmann (1920–31 and 1935–46) and of Nahum Sokolow (1931–35), but in 1936 the center was transferred to Jerusalem, although London remained the seat of its president and of some members of the Executive.
When the 18th Congress (1933) had resolved that "in all Zionist matters the duty of discipline in regard of the Zionist Organization must take precedence over the discipline to any other body," the majority of the Zionist Revisionists, led by Vladimir Jabotinsky, seceded from the Zionist Organization and set up the New Zionist Organization, while a minority of Revisionists, under Meir *Grossman, remained in the ranks as the *Jewish State Party. The split lasted until 1946, when the Revisionists returned to the parent body and renewed their participation in the Zionist Congresses.
The First Congress laid down only a rough outline of a few organizational rules. It was the Third Congress (1899) that adopted the first complete constitution (Organisations-Statut) which, substituted by a more elaborated text adopted by the Fifth (1907) and the Tenth Congresses (1911), remained in force until 1921, when a thorough revision of the text and its adaptation to the changed conditions was effected by the 12th Congress. Minor amendments were adopted by each of the subsequent Congresses. In 1960 an entirely new Constitution came into force and thoroughly changed its structure (see below). The 25th and 26th Congresses (1960, 1964) made efforts to broaden the basis of the Zionist Organization by the admission of associate members, i.e., Jewish bodies which endorse the Zionist program without obliging their members to be organized Zionists. These efforts were initiated and supported by the fifth president of the Zionist Organization, Nahum Goldmann (1956–68), who assumed the presidency after the office had been vacant for ten years.
The 27th Congress (1968) adopted the greater part of the recommendations submitted by the Commission on Reorganization, which had been set up by the preceding Congress, and resolved to amend the Constitution accordingly. These amendments, however, affected details like Congress elections or the participation of youth in Zionist territorial organizations, rather than the general pattern and basic provisions of the Constitution.
structure
Before the Zionist Organization was divided into parties, it had been organized on a purely territorial basis. According to its early Constitution, the members were organized in local societies that were grouped into regional units, which were in turn subordinated to territorial committees in charge of Zionist affairs in the country concerned. With the emergence of ideological trends and groupings, a type of dualism became characteristic of the structure of the Zionist Organization. According to the Constitution of 1921, the Zionist Organization was structured both horizontally and vertically: on the one hand, there were countrywide organizations comprising all Zionists without regard to their views on special issues – Zionist territorial unions with local branches; on the other, Zionists subscribing to a certain ideology, or, as the Constitution put it, "representing a special point of view," were, under certain conditions, given the privilege of forming a separate union (Sonderverband) which set up territorial branches. The first separate union was the Mizrachi (1902); the *Po'alei Zion followed in 1907; Ha-Shomer ha-Ẓa'ir and the Jewish State Party were founded as separate unions after World War i. The *Ancient Order of Maccabeans, established in Britain at an early stage of the movement, soon became defunct.
During the first decades of activity, the separate unions represented only a small minority of the membership. At the 12th Congress (1921) the delegates affiliated with the territorial unions numbered 376, while those of all separate unions totaled only 136. The membership and strength of the separate unions steadily grew, however, and at the last Congress before World War ii (1939) the proportion was reversed: the delegates of the territorial unions numbered 171 and those of the separate unions 386. Furthermore, at the beginning the members of the Zionist territorial unions were called *General Zionists, simply denoting all those who did not belong to any separate union; but a tendency rose and finally prevailed within the General Zionists to adopt an ideology of their own and to transform themselves into a party like the others. Furthermore, this group often split into two wings, at first called Groups A and B, and since the 24th Congress (1956) known as the Union and the Confederation of General Zionists, respectively. On the other hand, the difference between the separate unions and parties not registered as such became blurred and, apart from a few purely formal privileges of the former, ceased to exist for all practical purposes. Because of this differentiation between territorial and separate unions, the Zionist movement in some countries almost disintegrated into several independent parties without common framework, apart from joint committees established for special purposes like the shekel and election boards. As a reaction to this "atomization," several Congresses declared that a United Zionist Federation, based on individual membership and comprising all parties and groups, be compulsory in every country. These and later resolutions, which again made the establishment of a joint territorial framework obligatory, but were content with the collective membership of parties in so-called Zionist Federations, largely remained unimplemented.
The structure of the Zionist Organization underwent a profound change with the promulgation of a new Constitution in 1960. It introduced a new official name, the World Zionist Organization (although the traditional one, Zionist Organization, is still more frequently used); the shekel remained in existence as a token of Zionist allegiance and voting card, but members of the Zionist Organization were no longer individual shekel-payers but collective bodies only, namely Zionist territorial organizations and Zionist territorial and interterritorial associations. The former are either Zionist unions based on the membership of individual Zionists (like that of the Netherlands), or Zionist federations based on the collective membership of Zionist bodies (like that of Belgium), or mixed Zionist federations based on the membership both of bodies and individuals (like that of France). Examples of Zionist territorial and interterritorial associations are *Hadassah and *wizo (incidentally, the two largest Zionist bodies in the world).
The Constitution of 1960 introduced a far-reaching reform of decentralization. According to the legal construction underlying the Constitution, the Zionist Organization is the "body authorized by its members to act for and on behalf of the movement and all the members for the implementation of the Zionist program." Emphasis is placed on the autonomy of the members: "Every member shall determine the conduct of his affairs, the form of his organization and procedure." Bodies that were affiliated with the Zionist Organization when the new Constitution came into force were considered members under its provisions. New members may be admitted by the Congress or General Council, provided they comply with a number of conditions laid down in the Constitution. One of these provisions is that the body "has regard to the protection of the requirements of all its members and to the fundamental principles of justice." (On the membership of national and international Jewish bodies, see above.)
governing bodies
The pattern of internal organization very much resembles that of a sovereign state: the shekel payers are comparable to citizens, the Congress elected by them – and to a certain degree also the General Council – is similar to a parliament, the Executive resembles the government or administration of a country, and the Congress Tribunal and the attorney of the Zionist Organization are its "judicial branch." On the other hand, the Zionist Organization differs from a state in two important respects: it is an interterritorial body and not limited by national frontiers; and it is built on a purely voluntary basis, with no means of enforcing its decisions. The ultimate and gravest sanction it may impose is expulsion from its ranks.
the zionist congress
The Congress is the supreme organ of the Zionist Organization. It legislates, receives and considers reports from other organs, determines the financial policy, and elects the president, Executive, General Council, Congress Tribunal, attorney, and comptroller. Until the 26th Congress (1964) the shekel payers chose the Congress either by direct elections or by "unopposed elections," by means of a "united slate" arrived at through interparty agreements. The 27th Congress (1968) was not based on elections but, in accordance with special regulations enacted after the Six-Day War (1967), had the same composition as its predecessor. It decided that future Congresses should not be elected according to a uniform election system, but that each country should itself determine the method of elections of its Congress delegates, provided it does not conflict with generally accepted democratic principles. Until the 24th Congress (1956) the number of delegates allotted to an election area (country) was in direct proportion to the number of shekels sold there. Under the Constitution of 1960, however, the size of the representation is fixed by a special commission "having regard to the size of the Jewish population and the totality of the conditions and activities of the Zionist movement in the country concerned."
In Herzl's time the Congress met every year (apart from 1902); until 1939 it convened once every two years (with the exception of World War i). The Constitution of 1960 legalized the practice of a four-year inter-Congress period.
the general council
The longer the intervals between Congresses, the greater the importance attaching to the Zionist General Council, also known by its original name of Herzl's times as the Actions Committee. During the inter-Congress period, it has not only legislative functions, but "shall consider and decide upon all matters relating to the Zionist Organization and its institutions." The number of Council members with voting rights in 1968 was 129, compared with 25 in 1921. The Council meets at least once a year no later than March, since the budgetary year of the Zionist Organization terminates on March 31 and one of the Council's prerogatives is to decide on the budget in years when no Congress is held. It discharges this function either itself or through its Permanent Budget and Finance Committee. It has become general practice that the Congress or the Council fixes the framework of the budget, while the details are determined by the committee acting upon the proposals of the Executive. Over the course of years the importance of the Council has grown because "delegated legislation" has become increasingly frequent, i.e., the Congress has authorized the Council to make decisions or take steps within the jurisdiction of the Congress. Thus, even the Constitution of 1960 was adopted by the Council and not by the Congress. The Council's membership exactly reflects the composition of the Congress, each grouping being represented by a number of members equal to one-fifth of its Congress delegation. Apart from these members with full rights, the Constitution provides for members in an advisory capacity who are entitled to speak but not to vote in the Council's sessions, such as the members of the Executive or Zionist personalities who have been granted seats as "virilists" (i.e., veteran Zionists who are given a seat for their personal merits).
During World War ii and up to the 22nd Congress (1946), an Inner General Council in Jerusalem composed of 31 members exercised all functions of the full Council, which could not meet. The presidium of the General Council, consisting of its chairman and 18 members, conducts the meetings of the Council, represents it in external and internal matters, and discharges various duties "imposed by law or referred to by Congress or Council."
the executive
According to the Constitution of 1960, the Executive, elected by the Congress, is "its executive organ charged with the implementation of the decisions of Congress and Council and responsible to these bodies." Its seat and head office is in Jerusalem, but the Executive may "establish one or more divisions abroad." The branch in London was abolished shortly after the proclamation of the State of Israel (1948), but there is a New York section whose members join their Jerusalem colleagues several times a year for plenary sessions at which general policy is formulated. Day-to-day matters are handled in the almost weekly meetings of the Jerusalem Executive. The Executive acts through its departments, generally headed by one or more of its members. In 1970 the following main departments were in existence: Immigration and Absorption, Youth Aliyah, Youth and He-Ḥalutz, Settlement, Organization, Information, External Relations, Education and Culture – and Torah Education and Culture – in the Diaspora, Treasury, and Administration. Over the years no other governing body of the Zionist Organization has grown in size as much as the Executive, which, originally called the Small Actions Committee, initially numbered five and after Herzl's death seven members. The Executive elected at the first post-World War i Congress (1921) had only 15 members, but that appointed by the 23rd Congress (1951) numbered 19 members and two deputies, while that elected in 1966 included 26 regular members (one without voting rights – wizo) and one deputy. The 27th Congress (1968) reversed this trend, reducing the number of the Executive members to 14 (among them one representative each of the wizo and the Sephardim) and empowering the General Council to co-opt up to 5 nonparty Zionist personalities.
the president
The president elected by the Congress is "the head and chief representative" of the Zionist Organization. He has the full rights of an Executive member. The actual standing of the president is determined less by his constitutional status than by his personality and activities. No president was elected at the 22nd Congress (1946), and until 1956 Nahum Goldmann and Berl *Locker co-chaired the Executive. In 1956 Goldmann was elected president of the Zionist Organization until 1968, when, at the 27th Congress, no president was elected, but Louis Aryeh *Pincus was chairman of the Executive from 1965.
the judicial organs
The judicial organs of the Zionist Organization are the Congress Tribunal and the attorney. According to the Constitution of 1960, the Congress Tribunal combines the functions of the former Congress Court and Court of Honor. It consists of a maximum of 25 members including the chairman and up to five deputy chairmen. The Congress Tribunal had jurisdiction to interpret the Constitution; to examine the legality of decisions of central Zionist bodies; to determine disputes between one central Zionist body and another or an individual – except in financial matters; to deal with objections to a postponement of the Congress or a Council session; to verify Congress elections; to deal with appeals from territorial judicial bodies and against decisions of the committees determining the number of Congress delegates and the system of Congress elections; to deal with complaints that the Constitution was infringed or that the interest and prestige of the Zionist Organization damaged. The attorney of the Zionist Organization (formerly Congress Attorney) is charged with representing the interests of the organization before the Congress Tribunal and advising central Zionist bodies in legal matters.
the comptroller
The comptroller and his office are a counterpart to the state comptroller of Israel or the comptroller and auditor general of Great Britain. The comptroller's task is to "inspect the financial and economic activities of the Zionist Organization and its institutions and officers of every kind."
zionist organization and the jewish agency
The term Jewish Agency for Palestine was coined by the Mandate for Palestine promulgated by the League of Nations in 1922, whose article 4 made provision for "the recognition of an appropriate Jewish Agency as a public body for the purpose of advising and cooperating with the Administration of Palestine in such economic, social, and other matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish National Home and the interests of the Jewish population of Palestine." The Mandate designated the Zionist Organization as the Jewish Agency it envisioned, and until 1929 it functioned in that capacity, i.e., the Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency were one and the same body. The position changed when at Weizmann's initiative the enlarged Jewish Agency was established at the 26th Zionist Congress (1929) "for discharging the functions of the Jewish Agency as set forth in the Mandate," on the principle of parity between Zionists and "non-Zionists," i.e., Jewish persons and bodies supporting the building of the National Home, without identifying themselves with the political aspirations of Zionism. Thereafter the Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency were two different bodies, though headed by the same president. When the last "non-Zionist" member of the Jewish Agency Executive, Werner *Senator, resigned in 1947, the complete identity between the Executives of the two institutions was reestablished. This identity existed until 1971. It was confirmed and stressed in the Israel Law on the Status (see below). In that period the difference between the two bodies was one of terminology rather than substance. In practice the name Zionist Organization indicated the activities and functions in respect to the Diaspora, while the designation Jewish Agency was mostly used in connection with work in and for Israel.
After the Six-Day War, when formerly uncommitted sections of the Jewish people identified themselves with the State of Israel to an unprecedented extent, the proposition to enlarge the Jewish Agency and reinstate its separation from the Zionist Organization was again put forward. The 27th Zionist Congress in 1968 authorized the Executive to initiate negotiations with "fund-raising instruments for Israel" with a view to "establishing a direct relationship between the Jewish Agency and such bodies." A year later the General Council approved the principles of the enlargement; in August 1970 the "agreement on the reconstitution of the Jewish Agency" was initialed, and on June 21, 1971, it was signed. Since then the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency have again been two independent and separate bodies, although – similar to the pattern of 1929 – 50% of the members of the governing bodies of the Jewish Agency are designated by the World Zionist Organization. The chairman of the Zionist Executive is chairman of the Assembly and of the Executive of the Jewish Agency, and they have in common a treasurer and comptroller. The agreement included a division of functions between the Jewish Agency and the Zionist Organization, according to which the latter will "continue as the organ of the Zionist movement for the fulfillment of Zionist programs and ideals." Its main field of activity is the Diaspora, and it deals with Zionist organization, information, youth and He-Ḥalutz (pioneering movements), education and culture, external relations, and the activities of the Jewish National Fund, and also encourages and promotes aliyah from free countries.
zionist organization and the state of israel
In April 1948, one month before the proclamation of the State of Israel, the Zionist General Council resolved that after the establishment of the Provisional Government of Israel, "the jurisdiction of the Zionist Executive should comprise settlement, immigration, and all related matters including Youth Aliyah, Zionist information, organization, propaganda and culture, education in the Diaspora, youth and He-Ḥalutz, the development of Jerusalem and the National Funds." This principle of separation of functions was confirmed in a somewhat modified form by the resolution of the subsequent session of the General Council in August/September 1948 and of the 23rd Congress in 1951. Accordingly, while some functions previously exercised by the Zionist Organization have naturally devolved on the government, other functions remained the sole responsibility of the Zionist Organization-Jewish Agency. In Israeli law the mutual relations between the State of Israel and the Zionist Organization-Jewish Agency were put on a firm legal basis by the Law on the Status of the World Zionist Organization – The Jewish Agency – 5713 (1952), article 4 of which declares: "The State of Israel recognizes the World Zionist Organization as the authorized agency which will continue to operate in the State of Israel for the development and settlement of the country, the absorption of immigrants from the Diaspora and the coordination of activities in Israel of Jewish institutions and organizations active in those fields." The details of this status and the forms of collaboration between the Zionist Organization-Jewish Agency Executive and the government of Israel were, as foreseen in article 7 of the law, determined by a "covenant" entered into by them in 1954. A special committee consisting of an equal number of government ministers and Zionist Executive members was set up to coordinate activities, but in practice the delineation of the functions of the Zionist Organization-Jewish Agency has remained in a state of flux. After the Six-Day War proposals were made to increase the government's responsibility for the integration of the immigrants and were widely discussed in Israel and the Diaspora. In June 1968 the government decided to create a special Ministry for Absorption, with the understanding that even after its establishment, certain aspects of absorption of immigrants would remain in the domain of the Executive of the Zionist Organization-Jewish Agency.
[Aharon Zwergbaum]
local development through the six-day war
In Australia and New Zealand
Zionism developed more slowly in Australia than in other British dominions. An attempt by Leon Jona to establish a Zionist society in Adelaide after the First Zionist Congress (1897) failed. The first Zionist bodies in the Commonwealth of Australia were the Victorian Zionist League in Melbourne (founded 1907) and the Sydney Zionist Society (1908); from 1913 a West Australian Zionist Society (Perth) was also in existence. In Australia's sister dominion, New Zealand, there were Zionist associations at the time in Auckland and Wellington; the former had developed from a Ḥovevei Zion society founded as early as 1903. Nonetheless, as the Sydney Zionist Society, the most active of these bodies, wrote in a report to Zionist headquarters at Cologne in 1911, "there were comparatively few enthusiastic Zionists in Australia" and the attitude of the great majority of the Jewish community toward the movement was "apathy, though not hostility." In 1911 the first delegate from Australia, Salomon Pechter of Sydney, made his appearance at the Tenth Zionist Congress in Basle. During the so-called language conflict in Ereẓ Israel in 1914, the Zionist societies in Australia came out strongly in favor of Hebrew and against German as the language of instruction at the newly founded Technion of Haifa.
Efforts to bring all Zionist bodies in the various cities into the common framework of an Australian Federation had begun in 1908. Some bodies, like the Victorian Zionist Association, were directly affiliated with the Zionist Federation of Great Britain. It was only after World War i and the Balfour Declaration that the first all-Australian Zionist Conference took place in Melbourne (1927) and that the Zionist Federation of Australia and New Zealand was established, on the initiative of Alexander *Goldstein. Although its name continued to include New Zealand, the Zionist Council of New Zealand has virtually become an independent organization (close cooperation with the Australian Federation notwithstanding) and has been represented by its own delegates at the Zionist Congresses.
Sir John *Monash, who had been commander in chief of the Australian army in World War i, was elected honorary president of the Zionist Federation. However, the other most distinguished personality of Australian Jewry, Sir Isaac *Isaacs, who had been chief justice and governor general of the Commonwealth, was an anti-Zionist, and during World War ii he conducted a press campaign against the Zionists, charging them with disloyalty to Britain and denying the existence of a Jewish people. Rabbi Israel *Brodie, later chief rabbi of the British Empire, served as president of the federation from its foundation until he left Australia in 1937.
During the economic depression at the beginning of the 1930s, the federation declined and its very existence was called in question, but it recovered again toward the end of that decade. During World War ii its importance and prestige considerably rose as a result of its political and public relations work. The atmosphere for such activities was favorable because general public opinion in Australia was rather friendly to Zionism. Some strongly pro-Zionist Christian sects, like the Christadelphians, were active there. They even raised funds for Zionist causes. The pro-Zionist sentiment in the Commonwealth was also partly due to the excellent relations between the yishuv in Palestine and the Australian troops stationed there during both world wars. Australian statesmen Robert Menzies, Ben Chifley, and John Curtin (prime minister during World War ii) were supporters of the Zionist cause. Particularly important was the role of Herbert Evatt, a personal friend of some Zionist leaders and an advocate of the idea of a Jewish state, who as foreign minister was elected chairman of the un Palestine Ad Hoc Committee (1947). In this capacity he thwarted delaying maneuvers, and firmly directed the proceedings of the committee which culminated in the positive vote for the partition of Palestine in the General Assembly on Nov. 29, 1947.
Characteristic of Zionist life in Australia has been a certain competition, even to the point of rivalry, between the main Jewish centers: Sydney in New South Wales and Melbourne in Victoria. It has become traditional for the federation to transfer its seat periodically from one city to the other. Thus the 24th Australian Zionist Conference held in Melbourne in 1970 decided that the headquarters of the federation should be in Sydney for the next four years. Like the Commonwealth of Australia, the Australian Zionist Federation is organized on federative lines in state Zionist councils (New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, West Australia, and South Australia) to which all Zionist societies, bodies, and groups of the state are affiliated. There was a total of 60 such bodies in 1970. A distinctive feature of the Australian Zionist Federation is that it embraces all organizations and institutions which are in any way connected with the work for, and support of, Israel. The Jewish National Fund had remained very strong and popular, and Zionist influence is predominant in the Australian Jewish communal institutions.
While the beginnings of Zionism in Australia were slow and precarious, from the late 1960s this community was one of the most Zionist-oriented in the Diaspora. During the Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab states (1967), several hundred young Australian Jews registered as volunteers for Israel, but only a few managed to arrive there in time to aid the war effort. The Zionist Membership Drive 1970/71 resulted in about 13,000 members, i.e., almost 20% of the total Jewish population in the Commonwealth of Australia.
[Aharon Zwergbaum]
In Austria
Austria, as referred to in this article, is understood as the territory of the Austrian Federal Republic as it existed from 1918 to 1938 and again from 1945. The history of Austrian Zionism, in this territorial sense, is almost identical with that of Vienna, where more than 90% of Austrian Jews were concentrated.
Vienna, then the capital of the Hapsburg monarchy with a Jewish population of about two million, had been one of the centers of the nascent Jewish national movement even before Herzl's appearance on the stage of history. Several Jewish national student associations existed, the most notable being Kadimah (founded in 1883). Even the name Zionism was coined in Vienna by Nathan Birnbaum, the most prominent ideologist of these early Zionists. When Herzl published Der Judenstaat, he found enthusiastic followers among these forerunners of political Zionism and many other young Jews, particularly students, but met stiff opposition in the Jewish liberal bourgeoisie and the Jewish community establishment. Since Herzl was a resident of Vienna, that city was during his lifetime the capital of Zionism, i.e., the seat of the Zionist Executive (the Inner Actions Committee), the central Zionist organ Die Welt, and the Jewish National Fund. Viennese Zionists like Johann *Kremenetzky, M. Schnirer, Alexander *Marmorek, and Oser Kokesch occupied key positions in the Inner Actions Committee. It was also in Vienna that the first Zionist-Socialist movement, Ahva, emerged in 1898, upon the initiative of Saul Raphael *Landau.
After Herzl's death, Vienna lost its central position in the Zionist world movement, the central institutions having been transferred to Cologne, but Zionism remained a vibrant movement in Austria, albeit with a change of emphasis and leadership. The trend was now on practical Zionism, both in respect to settlement work in Ereẓ Israel and in Jewish national politics in the Diaspora ("Work in the present"), greatly invigorated after the introduction of universal suffrage in 1907. The leaders of the movement in the period prior to World War i were Adolf *Boehm, Robert *Stricker, and Jacob Ehrlich. In 1909, 25 Zionist societies existed in Austria, mostly in Vienna, organized in the Zionistischer Landesverband. The 11th Zionist Congress (1913) was held in Vienna. The great influx of refugees from Galicia during World War i and the obvious victory of the principle of national self-determination at the end of the war further strengthened the Zionist movement.
After the dismemberment of the multi-national Hapsburg monarchy and the establishment of the Austrian Republic, a Jewish National Council was established on Zionist initiative. In the first elections Robert Stricker was elected on a Zionist ticket to parliament and three Zionists to the city council of Vienna. But after some time there was a sharp decline in the Zionist following, mainly due to the attraction of the Social-Democratic Party, which had many Jewish leaders, almost all of them assimilationists and opponents of Zionism. Even in that period of decline there was, however, a bustling and very diversified Zionist activity going on. There were scores of Zionist associations, parties, youth movements, cultural clubs, sports associations, etc. Vienna was the most important transit place for immigrants to Palestine and, therefore, an important meeting place. Upon the initiative of Rabbi Ẓevi Pereẓ *Chajes, who had been appointed chief rabbi of Vienna in 1918, a Hebrew teachers' seminary was established, as well as a secondary school, bearing (after Chajes' death) his name.
From 1918 until 1927 a Zionist daily, the Wiener Morgenzeitung, appeared, as well as several weeklies. In 1925 the 14th Zionist Congress assembled in Vienna. In 1932 the Zionists succeeded in realizing Herzl's slogan of the "conquest of the communities," gaining 20 out of 36 seats in the Jewish community council. Desider *Friedmann was elected president of the community. Zionists stood, therefore, at the helm of Austrian Jewry when the catastrophe befell them in 1938. From the Nazi conquest in March 1938 until the outbreak of World War ii in September 1939, about one-half of Austrian Jewry succeeded in leaving the country, many of them for Palestine, mostly by "illegal" routes. Almost all of the remaining Jews fell victim of the Holocaust; among them were prominent leaders of Austrian Zionists, like Desider Friedmann, Robert Stricker, and many others.
After World War ii Austria was the scene of great Zionist activity, being located on the main route of the *Beriḥah and harboring in its confines many camps of Jewish DPs. In the small reconstituted Jewish community of Vienna a diversified Zionist activity started, all Zionist parties reemerged, but for most of the postwar period the Zionists constituted a minority of the community, while the majority supported the non-Zionist, albeit not anti-Israel, Social-Democratic Bund werktaetiger Juden.
[Aharon Zwergbaum /
Chaim Yahil]
In Bulgaria
A large part of the predominantly Sephardi and Ladinospeaking Jewish community of Bulgaria was always strongly attached to Zionism, although enjoying full civic rights since the establishment of independent Bulgaria (1878). They were not under pressure to emigrate and suffered little from antisemitism. Even before Herzl's appearance, there were Zionist societies like Ezrat Aḥim in Sofia, Carmel in Plovdiv (Philippopolis), and Dorshei Zion in Khaskovo. Bulgarian Jews founded the settlement Hartuv in Ereẓ Israel as early as 1896, the same year in which Herzl was surprised and moved by the enthusiastic welcome accorded to him by masses of Jews when his train stopped at the Sofia railway station en route to Constantinople.
Bulgaria was represented at the First Zionist Congress (1897) by Ẓevi Belkovsky, Yehoshua Caleb, and Carl Herbst. Marcus *Ehrenpreis, who became chief rabbi of Bulgaria, had taken a very active part in preparing the Congress and also attended it. The first Bulgarian Zionist Conference took place in 1898 in Plovdiv, which was the Zionist center before Sofia. The leader of political Zionism in Bulgaria during its first stage was, until his tragic death (1899), Josef Marcou *Baruch.
The rapid spread of Zionist societies encountered some opposition on the part of the assimilationists influenced by the French education in the Alliance Israélite Universelle schools, but they were less strong than in other countries. However, the Zionists quickly "conquered the communities," in accordance with Herzl's demand. In 1900 they initiated the convocation of the First National Congress of Bulgarian Jewry, which adopted statutes transforming synagogue groups into veritable communities. The second Congress in 1920 already had a Zionist majority and proclaimed the religious and national solidarity of all Jewish inhabitants of the country, regardless of origin, language, or citizenship. Another Congress took place in 1932. The publication of the central Zionist organ Ha-Shofar was started in 1901. Due to Zionist influence, in the 1920s Hebrew became the language of instruction (apart from subjects like Bulgarian history and literature) at all schools maintained by the Consistory, the central Jewish community organization, which were attended by the great majority of Jewish children.
Between the two world wars Alberto Romano, for many years chairman of the Zionist Federation of Bulgaria, and
Ḥayyim Aaron Farḥi, chairman of the Consistory and member of the Bulgarian parliament, were among the most important figures in Zionist life. The movement became diversified, and parties and youth movements were set up. The Bulgarian wizo was founded in 1923; in 1930 Maccabi had more than 3,300 members in 24 clubs; the number of shekel holders reached 8,000, a much higher percentage of the population than in most countries; He-Ḥalutz was training its members for aliyah in training farms, such as that near Pazardzhik. After the Revisionist secession from the World Zionist Organization (1935), the New Zionist Organizations set up branches of the Betar movement. They issued their own weekly Razsvet. One of their leaders, Benjamin Arditti, was afterward a member of the Israel Knesset from the Ḥerut list.
Hundreds of Bulgarian Jews settled in Palestine during the Mandate period. Some of them established their own settlements, like the moshavim Kefar Ḥittin near Tiberias and Bet Ḥanan south of Tel Aviv. Members of Ha-Shomer ha-Ẓa'ir who settled in Palestine before 1935 founded five kibbutzim.
The Zionists of Bulgaria were active in organizing "illegal" immigration to Palestine before and immediately after World War ii. They also assisted Jews from other countries, who fled the Nazis or pro-Nazi regimes, to embark on "illegal" transports from Bulgarian ports to Palestine. All Zionist activities had to cease under the Fascist regime during World War ii, but immediately after the country's liberation a Zionist Conference was convened (1944) and a Zionist organ Zionisticheska Tribuna was published. In 1946 a United Zionist Organization was set up. In the same year more than 14,000 shekels were distributed and almost 9,000 voters took part in the elections to the 22nd Zionist Congress, at which Bulgaria was represented by four delegates.
The Communist regime, under Georgi Dimitrov, at first displayed sympathy for the newborn State of Israel and permitted all Bulgarian Jews who wished to go to Israel to do so without placing any obstacles in their way. Thus, in the years 1944–49, a real exodus of Bulgarian Jews took place, when 40,000 of them settled in Israel. However, in accordance with the policy of the Soviet bloc, this attitude changed, and in 1949 all Zionist bodies had to disband "voluntarily" and all Zionist activities ceased.
[Aharon Zwergbaum]
In Canada
In 1898, one year after the First Zionist Congress, a Zionist society, Agudat Zion, was formed in Montreal. One year later, five more societies came into existence in Quebec and Ontario and formed the Federation of Zionist Societies, electing Clarence I. De Sola as its first president. The number of Zionist societies increased gradually and conventions were held annually. With the outbreak of World War i, all Zionist work practically came to a standstill, as contact with the yishuv was severed; however, the Balfour Declaration revitalized the Zionist activities.
The year 1919 was a turning point in the affairs of the Zionist Federation; De Sola stepped down from the presidency and was succeeded by A.J. *Freiman of Ottawa, and Lilian *Freiman organized the Canadian Hadassah Organization. One year later, Keren Hayesod began its activities. Within the next four years the Labor Zionist Organization was formed. It sponsored a program for Palestine based on a synthesis of socialism and Jewish nationalism. During the same period the Mizrachi Organization was organized by religious Zionists. All these groups participated actively in the Keren Hayesod-United Palestine (Israel) Appeal and the Jewish National Fund (jnf). In 1924 the Labor Zionists added their own annual campaign, which was called the Geverkshaften (later Histadrut) Campaign; M. Dickstein played an important role in this activity. Each of the organizations also organized national women's branches – Hadassah (affiliated with wizo), Mizrachi Women, Pioneer Women – each conducting active programs and substantial campaigns for institutions in Palestine and later also for Youth Aliyah. The parent bodies also organized youth movements: Young Judea was begun in 1916 by Bernard Joseph (who later, as Dov *Joseph, was military governor of Jerusalem during the siege of 1948 and occupied important cabinet positions in subsequent Israel governments); the *Habonim Labor Zionist organization and Junior Hadassah were formed later.
Organization
In 1966 the Federated Zionist Organization of Canada (fzoc) was established to unify all the existing Zionist organizations into a single framework. It includes the following bodies:
(1) The Zionist Organization of Canada, the oldest and largest of the Zionist organizations, which has branches in most of the sizable communities, as well as fraternal orders in the larger cities. It holds regional conferences regularly, and together with the women's organization, Hadassah (wizo), and the other Zionist movements, influences the Canadian Jewish community in a large measure.
(2) The Labor Zionist Movement, a federative structure of autonomous Labor Zionist bodies which embraces the United Labor Zionist Party (Po'alei Zion), now united with Ahdut ha-Avodah; the Farband Labor Zionist Order; and the Pioneer Women of Canada; as well as Habonim Labor Zionist Youth; and the Israel Histadrut Campaign.
(3) The Mizrachi-Ha-Po'el ha-Mizrachi Organization of Canada, which has three offices (in Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg) and a Mishmeret Ẓe'irah of young couples in these centers, as well as its youth movement and a women's division.
(4) The Zionist Revisionist Movement of Canada, with its youth movement, Betar, and women's organization.
(5) The Friends of Pioneering Israel, which is closely affiliated with Mapam in Israel.
The Federated Zionist Organization publishes a monthly entitled The Canadian Zionist. The United Labor Zionist Party (Labor Zionist Party and Aḥdut ha-Avodah-Po'alei Zion, affiliated in 1970) publishes Dos Vort in Yiddish and English, and a quarterly, Viewpoints. Hadassah publishes Orah, Campaigns and Projects. The United Israel Campaigns, which have been carried on annually, averaged $3,000,000–3,500,000 (Canadian) a year between 1960 and 1967. In the latter year a special Emergency Campaign brought in an additional $30,000,000. In addition, since 1953 there has been an annual sale of State of Israel bonds, initiated under the leadership of Samuel *Bronfman and E.E. *Gelber. In the first year there were over 10,000 subscribers, with a net sale of $4,500,000. Subsequently there was an annual sale of $3,000,000–3,500,000 up to 1967, and between 1967 and 1970 $4,000,000–5,000,000 annually. The Jewish National Fund has been functioning since the beginning of Zionist activities in Canada. It has concentrated on "Traditional Funds," which link the fund with special occasions in Jewish family life, such as barmitzvahs and weddings. In addition, it has initiated and sponsored special projects, such as the "Negev Dinners," for acquiring funds to plant forests and develop new land projects in Israel. These projects have brought in considerable sums of money over the years.
In 1927 Canadian Zionists bought a tract of 30,000 dunams on the shores of the Mediterranean for $1,000,000, and it was developed as Emek Hefer. In 1952 a convention of Canadian Zionists undertook to redeem an area of 50,000 dunams in the western Negev. In 1955 the jnf of Canada began a project to plant 500,000 trees at Ein Kerem in the Judean Hills, to be known as the Canadian Forest. Canadian Hadassah has sponsored such projects as the Agricultural School for Girls at Nahalal, the Hadassim Children's Village; a hydrotherapy pool for crippled children at Sarafand; a child guidance clinic in Jerusalem; baby crèches; and "Canada Hall" at Hebrew University. Over the years the Histadrut Campaign has sponsored a number of special Canadian projects in Israel, particularly the Amal vocational schools. The Pioneer Women have established Omna, a children's home in Haifa, and a community center at Migdal ha-Emek and have helped maintain the many institutions of the Mo'eẓet ha-Po'alot (Working Women's Council in Israel). In 1955, the Mizrachi Organization began to raise funds for the new Bar Ilan University, and the Mizrachi Women have sponsored a number of their own projects. The Zionist Revisionist group and their women's organization, Jordania, also have special projects. In addition, the Friends of the Hebrew University was organized in 1944 under the national chairmanship of Allan Bronfman. There is also a Canadian Technion Society, under the leadership of D. Lou Harris, as well as a group interested in the Weizmann Institute at Rehovot, in which Samuel J. Zacks, a past president of the Zionist Organization of Canada, was very active during his lifetime.
The various Zionist organizations have summer camps for young people. In 1970 the Zionist Organization of Canada operated eight youth camps between Halifax and Vancouver, with an enrollment of 1,700 youngsters. The Mizrachi-Ha-Po'el ha-Mizrachi ran a Hebrew camp for over 500 youngsters. The Labor Zionist Movement operated a youth camp near Montreal and Camp Miriam at Vancouver. The Keren ha-Tarbut, Hebrew department of the Zionist Organization of Canada, is active in the larger cities (Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver). It carries on special programs, such as Hebrew courses, "Hebrew-on-the-air," and ulpanim, particularly for those planning to settle in Israel. The Labor Zionist Movement was influential in helping to establish the Canadian Jewish Congress and has been active in that organization throughout the years. The Zionist organizations also assist indirectly in Jewish education. The Labor Zionist Movement is directly affiliated with the Folk Shule and Peretz schools in Montreal and the Bialik Hebrew Day School in Toronto. The public relations department of the Zionist Organization of Canada operates an ongoing program, supplies speakers for the Jewish and non-Jewish service clubs, and assists in the work of the Canadian Israel Association, a non-Jewish organization which has been in existence and active since 1947. Together with the Canadian Jewish Congress and B'nai B'rith, the Zionist Organization of Canada operates a Canadian-Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Aliyah and Settlement in Israel
The first Canadian ḥalutz, Ya'akov Pruzhansky, who later changed his name to Aḥvah, arrived and settled in Ereẓ Israel in 1913. During World War i more than 200 Canadians volunteered as members of the Jewish Legion and fought under General Allenby; a fairly large number remained in Palestine. In 1948, during Israel's War of Independence, about 250 young men volunteered their services in *Maḥal, and a certain number remained after the state came into being. The Six-Day War of 1967 evoked an unparalleled response of identification with Israel. Financial contributions were made freely and spontaneously; demonstrations for Israel took place throughout the country; delegations of prominent Canadian Jews visited the prime minister and urged that the Canadian government take a positive stand in favor of Israel's position; blood and plasma were volunteered for shipment to Israel. Over 10,000 volunteers offered themselves and, in spite of traveling difficulties at the time, about 400 left Canada and by devious means reached Israel. Of these, 228 went with the direct aid of the Zionist Organization of Canada and many of them remained and settled permanently.
Even before 1967, but particularly from then on, there has been a steady flow of tourists, students, temporary settlers and many who have made their permanent home in Israel, among them prominent Zionist leaders. It was estimated that in 1971 there were about 3,500 former Canadians residing in Israel.
[Samuel B. Hurwich]
In Czechoslovakia
before the establishment of the czechoslovak republic (1918)
The growing tension between Czechs and Germans in Bohemia and Moravia aroused the sensitivity of the Jews to the nationality problem and a positive disposition toward the Zionist idea. Several Jewish nationalist societies were established even before the appearance of Theodor Herzl, especially in Czech provincial cities. The first Zionist society was established in 1893 in the town of Horaždovice in Bohemia. The appearance of Herzl aroused a strong response, especially in the communities of Moravia, due partly to the fact that many of the youth of these communities had come into contact with Herzl and Zionism while studying in Vienna. In 1900 the first Zionist weekly, the Juedische Volksstimme, was founded in Brno (Bruenn). Berthold Feiwel and Robert Stricker, among the first Zionist students from Moravia, rose later to leading positions in the world movement. Zionist societies were also established in Prague and the cities of the Sudeten. In the final decade before World War i, the Zionist student association *Bar Kochba, led by Shemuel Hugo Bergman, was outstanding for its high intellectual level. This group adopted not only the political program of Zionism but aimed also at a return to the sources of Jewish spiritual creativity and found contacts with the Jewish cultural and social way of life in Eastern Europe. Their goals blended into the great educational task designed to "renew the image of Jewish man." On the whole this group supported the outlook of the Democratic Faction within the Zionist Organization and cultural Zionism; later on it leaned toward the ideas of A.D. *Gordon. Its initiative led to the publication of the Zionist weekly *Selbstwehr (1907) and the anthology Vom Judentum (1913). From Bar Kochba emerged many Zionist leaders in Czechoslovakia and beyond, S.H. Bergman, Hugo Hermann, and Robert Weltsch. With the expansion of the movement among Czech-speaking students, another, parallel group was founded under the name Theodor Herzl (1909). The student Zionist society Barissia, founded in 1903, supported militant political Zionism. In the last two years before the outbreak of World War i, the first youth movement, *Blau-Weiss, was established. Maccabi and other sports organizations were also established in many communities, as were women's organizations.
In Slovakia, then part of Hungary, Zionism penetrated only into communities in the western areas, which maintained closer contact with Jewry in Vienna and Moravia. The founding world convention of Mizrachi was held in Pressburg (Bratislava) in 1904. Although World War i interrupted the organizational work of the Zionist Organization, it also widened and deepened the national feelings by bringing Jewish soldiers from the West to centers of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, on the one hand, and many thousands of Jewish refugees from Galicia to communities in Moravia and Bohemia, on the other.
In the Republic of Czechoslovakia (1918–39)
The establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic signified a victory for the principle of national self-determination, which was also supported by the Zionist movement. The establishment of the new, democratic republic also appeared to be the great hour of the Zionist movement, as the leader of the new state, the philosopher and humanist T.G. Masaryk, had fought against anti-Jewish blood libels, was a great admirer of Aḥad Ha-Am, and was supported in his struggle for national independence by Zionist leaders in the United States and Great Britain. The Jewish National Council was founded on the initiative of Zionists and was headed by the leader of the Prague Zionists, L. Singer, aided by Max Brod, Emil Margulies, chief rabbi Chaim Brody, and others. The council's program aimed toward achieving national, political, and cultural autonomy, built upon the communities as autonomous cells. The movement achieved recognition for the Jewish nationality in the constitution of the republic and protection for the rights of a national minority and also succeeded in building a network of Hebrew and Jewish schools – especially in the eastern areas of the republic, but it never achieved the full realization of Jewish cultural autonomy.
The stress on Diaspora work met with opposition in the Zionist movement, and at the second national conference, held in Brno in 1921, a new leadership was chosen for the Zionist movement. It was headed by Joseph *Rufeisen, who advanced practical activities toward the upbuilding of Ereẓ Israel as the central platform of the Zionist program. The center of the Zionist movement was set up in Ostrava and remained there until 1938. The Zionist Organization in Czechoslovakia, headed by Rufeisen, was outstanding in its efforts for settlement work in Ereẓ Israel, Hebrew and Jewish education, and training of ḥalutzim, while the Jewish National Council and the Jewish Party (*Židovská Strana) handled local political matters. On Zionist policy, the majority supported Weizmann's line and based itself on the close cooperation between the General Zionists, headed by Rufeisen, and the Labor Zionists; the Revisionists and Mizrachi also developed substantially.
The Zionists had decisive influence in the communities in Slovakia and Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia. Their opponents were the Czech assimilationist movement, and most fiercely the Communists on one end of the spectrum and the ultra-Orthodox on the other. A pioneering He-Ḥalutz movement had existed since the establishment of the republic and succeeded in founding a number of collective settlements and moshavim in Palestine. Various youth movements were active in the spirit of pioneering and aliyah. Zionist influence was also decisive in the sphere of education and in the 1930s in the area of social welfare, especially for the Jews of Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia and the refugees of Nazi persecution. Three Zionist Congresses were held on Czechoslovak territory: the 12th Zionist Congress (1921) and 13th Zionist Congress (1923) in Carlsbad and the 18th Zionist Congress (1933) in Prague.
The Holocaust and After
The destruction of the Czechoslovak Republic, after the annexation of Austria, came in several quick stages: the annexation of the Sudetenland to Germany (October 1938), giving over certain areas to Hungary and Poland (November 1938), the establishment of "independent" Slovakia (March 14, 1939), the conquest of Bohemia and Moravia by the German army turning them into the "Protectorate" (March 15, 1939), and the annexation of the remainder of Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia by Hungary (March 16, 1939). These were also the stages of the destruction of Czechoslovak Jewry, while the Zionists played central roles in attempts to save it. They increased their efforts toward facilitating aliyah and emigration. About 15,000 Jews from Czechoslovakia succeeded in reaching Palestine between the autumn of 1938 and the end of 1939, the overwhelming majority by means of "illegal" immigration. Zionists remained in most positions of community leadership both in the "Protectorate" and Slovakia. Under the leadership of the Zionists Jacob Edelstein, Franz Kahn, Otto Zucker and Hannah Steiner, together with the leaders of the pioneering movement, the Zionists preserved their sense of cooperation, national loyalty, and Jewish values in the Theresienstadt concentration camp and even in Auschwitz. They organized means of escape from Slovakia, where the head of wizo, Gisi *Fleischmann, initiated the *Europa Plan to save European Jewry, and many Zionist youths took part in the partisan uprising in Slovakia in the summer of 1944.
The few who survived the Holocaust tried to reestablish the Zionist movement after the war and save the survivors through aliyah and settlement in Ereẓ Israel. Zionist activity was renewed in all parts of the republic. Czechoslovakia was a major transit country for the flow of the Beriḥah from Poland. During the Israeli War of Independence (1948), Czechoslovakia was a major source of arms' supply to the new state. Emigration to Israel was permitted, and more than 20,000 Jews, about 40% of the Jewish community, settled there. After a short while, however, the sympathy of the new Communist government in Czechoslovakia for Israel evaporated. Zionist activity was forbidden, and after a time emigration was also halted. In 1952 the Communist government staged a show trial against "Zionism" (see *Slánsky Trial). During the short period of the "Prague Spring" in 1968, under the leadership of Alexander Dubček, expression of sympathy for the State of Israel was again permitted and even aliyah was renewed, but organized Zionist activity did not resume and the invasion of the Warsaw Pact armies in August 1968 ended this period of relative improvement.
[Chaim Yahil]
In France
Early History
The Jewish community of France occupies an important place in the early history of Jewish settlement in Ereẓ Israel, due to the initiative of the Alliance Israelite Universelle and of Baron Edmond de Rothschild. The Alliance set up a network of elementary and vocational schools there, the first of which was the Mikveh Israel agricultural school, founded in 1870. Although these activities were similar to Alliance projects in other parts of the Ottoman Empire, this interest in Ereẓ Israel was undoubtedly influenced by the discussions of Joseph *Natonek and Moses Hess with Alliance directors in Paris in 1866. Rabbi Samuel Mohilewer, accompanied by young settlers from Rishon le-Zion, paid a visit to Edmond de Rothschild that served to move him to increase financial, technical, and administrative assistance to new Jewish agricultural enterprises in Ereẓ Israel. Rothschild's intervention was crucial in saving the struggling villages from ruin and in facilitating the development of budding Jewish agriculture. Despite the philanthropic character of Rothschild's undertakings, his paternal attitude, and outbursts of indignation against political Zionism, his contribution was substantial and at a certain stage decisive for the continuation of settlement work.
Paris can also be considered the cradle of political Zionism. It was while in Paris as a correspondent for the Neue Freie Presse that Theodor Herzl conceived his Zionist idea and wrote Der Judenstaat, and it was in Paris that Max Nordau lived from 1880 to the outbreak of World War i. Among the early Zionists in France were Alexander Marmorek and his brothers Oscar and Isidore, the writer Bernard *Lazare, Miriam Schach, and the sculptor S.F. *Beer. Zadoc *Kahn, France's chief rabbi, supported Zionism and Herzl, but abstained from publicly expressing his support. The Fédération Sioniste de France was established in 1901 and its president until his death in 1923 was Alexander Marmorek. In 1899 he founded the journal L'Echo Sioniste which appeared from 1899 to 1905 and again from 1912 to 1914. In 1916 it reappeared under the title Le Peuple Juif and remained in existence to 1921. In 1914 the federation had five groups in Paris, one in Nice, and two in Tunis. The great majority of native-born Jews and the official communal bodies, however, were indifferent, if not hostile, to the Zionist program, fearing that their status acquired in the great Emancipation would be placed in jeopardy. This hostility to Zionism did not subside with the Balfour Declaration, although the French minister for foreign affairs, Stephen Pichon, afforded French assent to the declaration. During the Peace Conference at Versailles (1919), two French representatives, the poet André *Spire and Professor Sylvain *Lévi, were members of the committee established by Chaim Weizmann together with N. Sokolow and M. Ussishkin, to present the Zionist views to the conference delegations. Lévi however, who was president of the Alliance, clashed with the committee, since, in his view, the Zionist objectives conflicted with French interests in the Middle East.
Zionism in France appealed mainly to Jewish immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe who arrived there beginning in the 1880s. Thus, the successive leaders of French Zionism were Israel *Yefroykin, Marc *Jarblum, and Joseph Fischer (Ariel). Fischer founded a bimonthly journal, originally as the organ of the Jewish National Fund, La Terre Retrouvée (published from 1928). Jarblum, a leader of Labor Zionism, was its spokesman in the Socialist movement of France and Belgium. He had influence with such men as Léon Blum, Emil Vandervelde, and Camille Huysmans. However, a small number of leading French-born Jews also supported Zionism, among them the poets Edmond Fleg and André Spire. The latter's Zionist writings caused him to split with Charles Péguy and his circle of Cahiers de la Quinzaine. In 1915 a group of Jewish and non-Jewish intellectuals established the Ligue Franco-Sioniste, and in 1917 André Spire published Les Juifs et la guerre, which dealt with the problem how to present the idea of the Jewish state to the future peace conference. In the same year he established the Ligue des Amis du Sionisme, of which he was the secretary general, and its organ La Palestine Nouvelle.
1917–1939
In 1917 a Zionist youth movement was established in Strasbourg, from which the bulk of French immigrants went to Palestine prior to World War ii. In 1920 a Zionist students' club was founded in Paris, and in 1921 a Mizrachi group was established with its center in Strasbourg. In 1925 the Union Régionale des Sionistes de L'Est de la France was founded by Léon Metzger and Robert Lévy-Dreyfus. This union was the strongest Zionist organization in France before World War ii, and up to the conquest of France by the Nazis in 1941 it retained a separate identity. In 1923 a women's group was founded by Mrs. Richard Gottheil; it later merged with the Women's International Zionist Organization (wizo). In 1929 French Jews accepted Weizmann's invitation to join the "enlarged" Jewish Agency, and Léon Blum, Leo Zadoc-Kahn, and Henri Lévi represented French non-Zionists in the founding meeting in Zurich in August 1929. In the 1930s the following Zionist organizations existed: Po'alei Zion (Left), founded in 1922; the Union of Zionist Revisionists, founded in Paris in 1925 and becoming the center of its world movement; Po'alei Zion-Hitaḥadut, which included a League for Labor Palestine and the Jewish People's League; Organisation Sioniste de France, founded in 1933, an organization of General Zionists; and the Jewish State Party, founded in 1936. Mizrachi also had a certain following in France, including a group called Yavne and a Yiddish-language journal. In the same period branches of many Zionist youth movements were formed: Bleu-Blanc (General Zionists), Betar (Revisionists), Berit ha-Kannaim (Jewish State Party), Deror (Po'alei Zion-Hitaḥadut), Ha-Shomer ha-Ẓa'ir, Ẓe'irei ha-Mizrachi, Ha-Po'el ha-Mizrachi, and Ha-No'ar ha-Ẓiyyoni. In 1937 the Fédération de la Jeunesse Sioniste et Pro-Palestinienne was founded as a result of the merger between the Jewish scouting movement and a few Zionist youth groups, with a total membership of 5,000.
World War ii
From the German occupation in 1940, Zionist activities were centered in the southern area known as Vichy France. In 1941, at a secret conference in Lyons, initiated by J. Fischer (Ariel), a new Zionist leadership embracing all groups was established under the chairmanship of Leonce Bernheim, former chairman of the Zionist coordination committee. At another meeting in Vichy in the same year, the Mouvement de la Jeunesse Sioniste, embracing all youth organizations, was created under the direction of Simon Lévitte and Jules Jefroykin. Both frameworks engaged in educational work, such as the teaching of Hebrew, Jewish history, etc., but devoted their energies mainly to smuggling Jewish refugees into Switzerland and Spain. Young Zionists also played a leading part in organizing Jewish armed resistance to the Nazis (see *France, Holocaust Period).
After World War ii
Immediately after World War ii, leading French Jews, such as André Blumel, were active in aiding the "illegal" immigration and the Beriḥah movement to Palestine though French ports. With the establishment of the State of Israel, Jewish community officials in France adopted an attitude of sympathy, putting an end to their previous hostility. In 1947 the Union Sioniste Française was founded, uniting all Zionists in France and North Africa, led for some time by André Blumel. The transformation of French Jewry by the influx of North African, particularly Algerian Jews, also influenced the Zionist movement there. Migration to Israel increased steadily. French Jewry demonstrated its solidarity with Israel before and after the Six-Day War (1967), and Chief Rabbi Jacob *Kaplan voiced Jewish disapproval of De Gaulle's anti-Israel policies. All traditional Jewish bodies began openly to support Israel, and a Comité de Coordination des Organisations Juives en France, headed by Guy de *Rothschild, was specially created in 1967 for financial aid and information services for Israel. Groups for aliyah to Israel were formed, among them Oded, comprising young intellectuals from North Africa. All Zionist parties and most world organizations collecting funds and selling bonds for Israel have branches in France, many of them publishing their own journals, such as the French Amitiés France-Israel (since 1953) and the Yiddish daily Unzer Vort (since 1945) and Tsionistishe Shtime.
[Lucien Lazare]
In Germany
The First Zionist Congress (1897) was attended by more than 40 delegates from Germany, not all of them natives of that country. (The delegation included four representatives from Ereẓ Israel, one of whom, Heinrich *Loewe, was a founder of a Zionist group in Germany even before the appearance of Theodor Herzl.) There were, however, a few bodies in Germany that could be regarded as forerunners of modern Zionism; the Esra society in Berlin (founded 1883) tended to the Ḥibbat Zion; the Russian Jewish Scientific Society in Berlin (1889) which was composed almost exclusively of "Eastern Jews"; the Association for the Promotion of Agriculture and Crafts in Palestine, founded in Cologne in 1892 by Max *Bodenheimer and David Wolffsohn, was in 1897 transformed into the Nationaljuedische Vereinigung and demanded, before the Basle Program, nothing less than a Jewish state. As early as October 1897 the Zionistische Vereinigung in Deutschland (zvd), a roof organization of all Zionist societies, was set up. The Zionist movement in Germany was distinguished by quality – especially excellent organization and harmonious internal relations – rather than by quantity, since, to quote Richard *Lichtheim: "nowhere was the opposition of Jews to the new movement so widespread, principled, and fierce as in Germany." Herzl's original plan to convoke the First Congress in Munich failed because of the hostility of the German rabbis; the board of the Union of German Rabbis issued a proclamation against the Congress and Zionism (hence *Protestrabbiner).
The slow but steady growth of the zvd is reflected by the following figures: in 1912 it had 8,400 members and in 1927 some 20,000, 2,000 of whom were members (or "old boys") of the Zionist students' associations organized in the Kartell juedischer Verbindungen; in the same years the number of local branches doubled from 100 to 200. The year 1902 saw the establishment of two Zionist institutions whose influence reached far beyond the borders of Germany: the Zionist weekly *Juedische Rundschau and the publishing house *Juedischer Verlag. Special importance is attached to the Zionist territorial conference of 1912 because it adopted a resolution obliging every Zionist "to include aliyah in the program of his life" or at least to connect his personal fate with that of the national home by means of economic interests.
The influence of the Zionist Federation of Germany was particularly strong during the 15 years in which the headquarters of the World Zionist Organization were in Germany: in Cologne during the presidency of David Wolffsohn (1905–11) and in Berlin during that of Otto Warburg (1911–20), all the more so as one of the chairmen of the zvd, Arthur *Hantke, was a leading member of the Zionist Executive. It was largely due to the fact that the Zionist headquarters remained in Berlin during World War i, although some Executive members went abroad, and that German Zionists continued to hold key positions in the world movement, that German representatives in Turkey exerted their influence in favor of the yishuv and helped to mitigate its persecution. Leaders of German Zionism like Felix Rosenblueth (later Pinhas *Rosen, Israel's first minister of justice), Richard Lichtheim, and Kurt *Blumenfeld held highest office in the world movement even after its seat had been transferred to London.
During the Weimar Republic (1918–1933) the Zionists in Germany continued to be an elite rather than a mass movement. Shekel figures moved round 20,000, and it was only after the Nazis had seized power that the Zionistische Vereinigung in Deutschland reached its maximum membership of 35,000. It always embraced all Zionist parties – with the exception of the Revisionists, who seceded in 1932. When the ascent of the Nazis had conclusively proved the bankruptcy of assimilation, Zionism became the dominant force in German Jewry. The courageous and dignified article of the Juedische Rundschau, "Wear the Yellow Badge with Pride," by its editor Robert Weltsch, which was the Zionist reply to the anti-Jewish boycott of April 1, 1933, made Jewish history. The main efforts of the zvd were now directed at the preparation and promotion of aliyah and hakhsharah (youth training). Through the *Haavarah, the transfer of Jewish assets to Palestine, some £6,000,000 were saved and infused into the economy of Ereẓ Israel to its great benefit. After the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 the zvd was subjected to increasing restrictions and in 1938 was dissolved by the authorities.
Immediately after World War ii a United Zionist Federation was established by the Displaced Persons. It was very active, but after most of the dps had left, mainly for Israel, it was dissolved. In 1954 the Zionist Organization in Germany was established, against considerable opposition in the world movement, but when two delegates from Germany were admitted to the 24th Congress (1956), this federation, with its seat in Frankfurt, gained official recognition. Due to the small number of Jews in Germany and to other factors, the scope and quality of its activities fall necessarily short of those of the former zvd, but it is doing useful work in particular in the fields of fundraising and public relations.
[Aharon Zwergbaum]
In Great Britain
There were many Jewish and non-Jewish forerunners of the Zionist idea and supporters of Jewish settlement in Palestine, as well as an active group of Ḥovevei Zion (see *Ḥibbat Zion), in Great Britain. Thus, political Zionism appeared on the British scene very early. It was in London that Theodor Herzl made his first Zionist speech (at the Maccabean Club in November 1895) and outlined his program in an article in the Jewish Chronicle, in January 1896, before the publication of Der Judenstaat. He was received with great reservations not only by the Jewish establishment, but even by some of the Ḥovevei Zion. On his next visit, in July 1896, he addressed a mass meeting in the East End and received an enthusiastic response. Among his first supporters and followers were the Sephardi Haham Moses *Gaster, the Hebrew teacher Ephraim Ish-Kishor, the already famous writer Israel Zangwill, and Jacob de *Haas, followed soon after by Joseph *Cowen, Leopold *Greenberg, and Leopold *Kessler. In March 1898 Ḥovevei Zion in Britain joined the Zionist movement mainly under the influence of Herbert *Bentwich and Albert *Goldsmid. As a consequence, the Second Zionist Congress (1898) was attended by 15 delegates from Britain, compared to eight at the First Congress. In January 1899 the English Zionist Federation was founded, with Sir Francis Abraham Montefiore, a grand-nephew of Sir Moses Montefiore, elected the first president of the Federation. Herzl, who from the beginning believed in British support for Zionism, registered the Jewish Colonial Trust as a British corporation (1899), and in 1900 convoked the Fourth Zionist Congress in London, the only Congress during his lifetime not held in Basle. "From here the Zionist idea will soon soar higher and higher," Herzl declared in his opening speech. Most British Zionists supported Herzl in the controversy over the Uganda Scheme, while Jacob K.*Goldbloom, one of Herzl's first followers, led the opposition. The Zionist movement in Britain suffered a severe blow when Zangwill seceded, in 1905, and founded the Jewish Territorial Organization.
In 1904 Chaim Weizmann settled in England, having received a position at the University of Manchester, and soon gathered around him a group of devoted Zionists who later distinguished themselves in the British and world movement, notably Simon *Marks, Israel *Sieff, Harry *Sacher, and Leon *Simon. In 1914 Weizmann became vice president of the Zionist Federation (under Joseph Cowen as president). World War i opened new political perspectives. An advisory committee on Zionist political activity was formed, composed of Nahum Sokolow and Yeḥiel Tschlenow (members of the world Executive who had moved to London), Cowen, Weizmann, Gaster, and Bentwich. The Zionist Federation became an important factor in these activities. In 1915 it organized a petition demanding "the establishment of a publicly recognized and legally secured Home for the Jewish people in Palestine, as formulated by the Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897." The petition was signed by 77,000 adults out of a total Jewish population of about 300,000. In January 1917 Cowen resigned from the presidency of the Zionist Federation to make way for Weizmann.
In their struggle for British support for the Zionist goals, the leaders of the movement were enthusiastically supported by the federation and advised and supported by Zionists from abroad who spent the war years in London, like Aḥad Ha-Am and Vladimir Jabotinsky, as well as by some British Jews of high social standing, most notably Herbert Samuel and Lord Rothschild. Chief Rabbi Joseph Herman *Hertz came out as a supporter of Zionism, in remarkable contrast to his predecessor Herman Adler, who had denounced Zionism as a fantasy. Still, anti-Zionist sentiments were so strong in the Jewish establishment that the presidents of the Board of Deputies and of the Anglo-Jewish Association, D.L. Alexander and Claude Montefiore, respectively, publicly repudiated Zionist aims in the name of their organizations. The sharp protest by the followers and sympathizers of Zionism forced Alexander to resign. Lord Rothschild accepted the honorary presidency of the Zionist Federation and so became the addressee of the Balfour Declaration. At the first Zionist World Conference after the war, held in London in 1920, Weizmann was elected president of the World Zionist Organization and the seat of the Executive and of the main instruments of the movement were formally established in London, which thus became the capital of world Zionism.
During the 30 years of British administration in Palestine, the activities of the Zionist movement in Great Britain were of utmost importance for the work and struggle of the Zionist Executive, by providing mass support in the political, financial, and cultural fields. Zionist influence within British Jewry increased. In 1929 the Board of Deputies joined the enlarged Jewish Agency for Palestine as a constituent body. In 1939 Selig *Brodetsky, a member of the Zionist Federation, was elected president of the Board of Deputies, and since then only Zionists or staunch supporters of Israel have served in that capacity. Zionist youth movements developed, and there was a significant aliyah from Britain. At the 21st Congress (in 1939) Great Britain was represented by 15 delegates, eight representing the Federation (General Zionists), three Po'alei Zion, three Mizrachi, and one the Jewish State Party. The Revisionists, who at that time had already seceded from the World Zionist Organization, also moved their headquarters to London, which was the seat of the Zionist-led European Executive of the World Jewish Congress, as well. In 1944 the Board of Deputies embraced the Biltmore Program by adopting a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish state in undivided Palestine, hopefully within the framework of the British Commonwealth. During the years of the struggle and resistance of the yishuv after World War ii, preceding the independence of Israel, British Zionists took a courageous stand against their government.
After the establishment of the State of Israel, Great Britain naturally lost its central position in the Zionist world, but British Zionists – under the direction of Lavy Bakstansky – continued to distinguish themselves by their generous support of Israel and their increasing influence within the Jewish community of Great Britain. The achievement of raising £11,000,000 in the Emergency Campaign of 1967 (as compared with £2,600,000 raised the year before), as well as the fact that within a few days about 10,000 volunteers for Israel enlisted, about 2,000 of whom actually arrived in Israel, is worthy of note. The most impressive achievement within the framework of the community is the establishment of a network of Zionist day schools since 1953. In 1969 ten schools were operating with an enrollment of over 5,000 pupils.
[Aharon Zwergbaum]
In Holland
The Zionist Federation was established in Holland in 1899 under the name of Nederlandse Zionistenbond. Among its founders was the young banker Jacobus H. Kann, who was a close collaborator of Theodor Herzl. The members of the organization were mainly middle-class intellectuals, and for about 30 years the Zionist movement of Holland was unsuccessful in attracting a wider following among the Jewish proletariat. The movement also encountered violent opposition from Orthodox circles. The chief rabbi of Amsterdam, J.Z. *Duenner, supported the Zionist movement from the start, and some of his close friends founded the Mizrachi movement, led by S. Ph. de Vries. But his colleagues and almost all of his disciples rejected Zionism, and in 1904 the Council of Chief Rabbis (which Duenner refused to join) forbade the Jews to join the Zionist movement. The Eighth Zionist Congress, which was held in The Hague, led to an awakening of the movement. An attempt to establish a Zionist youth movement during that period ended in failure, but the official Zionist organ. De Joodse Wachter, founded in 1905, which in time became a weekly, stood its ground.
In 1912 Nehemiah de *Lieme was elected president of the Nederlandse Zionistenbond, and S.A. van Vriesland (who was later to become treasurer of the World Zionist Organization) was elected its secretary. De Lieme consolidated the organization's special character by establishing several principles: the negation of any Zionist work for Diaspora Jewry ("Gegenwartsarbeit"); sound economic management in the upbuilding of Ereẓ Israel; the exemplary organization of the Zionist movement in the Diaspora. In Holland, the organization made the following demands: prohibition of the sale of the shekel for obtaining the right to vote at elections to the Zionist Congresses (therefore Holland's representation at all the Congresses fell below the organization's actual strength); membership to be registered personally (not through Zionist parties); insistence on Zionist principles in propaganda as well as fundraising for Ereẓ Israel. De Lieme exerted tremendous influence on his friends and followers, among them S. *Hoofien, later director of the Anglo-Palestine Bank in Palestine, Abel Herzberg, author and politician, and others. In 1914 the world headquarters of the Jewish National Fund were transferred to The Hague, and de Lieme headed the fund for seven years and formulated its principles. In 1920 he was elected to the Executive of the World Zionist Organization, but resigned when his principles were not accepted. After de Lieme's resignation, he returned to the leadership of the Nederlandse Zionistenbond and developed a stance of opposition to the Executive of the World Zionist Organization. Pereẓ (Fritz) *Bernstein also extended this opposition to the political line of Chaim Weizmann, and in his capacity of editor of De Joodse Wachter and later as president of the organization, he left his imprint on the movement. Only a small group of Dutch Zionists countered the de Lieme-Bernstein line, among them David Cohen and the Po'alei Zion, founded in 1933 by S. de Wolff. There was also a small Revisionist group, which would not gain much influence because of the anti-Weizmann stance of the whole Zionist Federation.
During World War i the arrival of refugees from Belgium (all of whom were Jews of East European origin) added an important element to the movement. The study of modern Hebrew developed and several newspapers included a Hebrew supplement. In 1917 an organization of Zionist youth groups, Joodse Jeugdfederatie, was established with the moral support of the Zionist leadership and under its aegis. The Jeugdfederatie encompassed many groups throughout the country and held independent activities (publications, lectures, conventions). After about ten years, it was headed by young people, mostly students, who had emerged from its own ranks.
The rise of antisemitism in Germany was a cause for much agitation in Holland, and the 30,000 German Jewish refugees who arrived in the country highlighted the problem. The influence of the Zionist movement increased, and although it had no more than 4,000 registered members, many beyond its ranks accepted the Zionist ideology. Anti-Jewish trends then began to grow in Holland and the local Zionist leadership was inclined to conceal the Jewish national character of Zionism. In opposition to this tendency, a trend calling itself "Radical Zionism," greatly influenced by Lion Nordheim, developed within the youth movements and among the students. It clashed sharply with the Zionist leadership, especially over the following points: the Joodse Jeugdfederatie demanded of its members complete identification with the Jewish people and public detachment from the Dutch nation; it stood for the safeguarding of Jewish national values and traditions and for Jewish education, thus opposing the prohibition of "Gegenwartsarbeit"; it propagated the ideal of halutziyyut (pioneering) among its members. The rift between the youth movement (which also encompassed religious and labor groups and commanded a membership of 2,000 in 40 branches) reached its climax in 1940. With the German invasion, however, it was decided to establish a joint leadership of all the Zionist organizations in Holland, and this body administered the affairs of the Nederlandse Zionistenbond until its dissolution.
Immediately after World War i, many ḥalutzim from Eastern Europe had arrived in Holland to complete their agricultural training with Dutch farmers. During the 1930s ḥalutzim also emerged from the ranks of the Joodse Jeugdfederatie. They established three organizations: ḥevrat Olim (the adherents of Bernstein), Berit Ḥalutzim Datiyyim (religious) and He-Ḥalutz (composed mainly of ḥalutzim from other countries, including German refugees). As Holland was not considered to be a danger zone, not even by the World Zionist Organization, over 800 ḥalutzim were trapped there for many years. Many of them perished during the war, but 444 were saved, mainly due to the activity of the *Westerweel group. After World War ii the Dutch Zionist movement was dominated mainly by the radical trend. Its slogan, which called for massive aliyah, led to considerable success. Out of the 25,000 Jews who survived in Holland, some 4,000 settled in Israel between 1948 and 1969, a higher percentage than from any other Western country. During this period most of the Zionist leadership itself migrated to Israel, and the Nederlandse Zionistenbond lost its central position within the remnant of Dutch Jewry. Zionist periodicals in Holland included, apart from De Joodse Wachter, Tikvath Jisrael (from 1917), monthly of the youth movement; Mizrachie (from 1932), monthly of the Mizrachi movement; and Jaarboek van de Nederlandse Zionistische Studentenorganisatie (since 1909).
[Jozeph Michman (Melkman)]
In Hungary
Two strong and opposing forces were influential among Hungarian Jewry from the 1840s: on the one hand a desire to assimilate linguistically and culturally into the Magyar nation, and on the other extreme religious conservatism. In addition, Ḥasidism exerted a substantial influence, particularly in the northern part of the country. These three phenomena were an obstacle to the proliferation of the Zionist idea at the end of the 19th century. Nonetheless, the difficult and extended struggle of the Zionists succeeded in spreading the Zionist idea among relatively small groups throughout the country. During the period of the Ḥovevei Zion a number of enthusiastic supporters of this movement in Hungary maintained ties with other Ḥovevei Zion beyond the borders. However, even the fact that Theodor Herzl was a native of Budapest and was bound to Hungarian Jewry through familial ties did not facilitate the development of the Zionist movement in Hungary. On a number of occasions Herzl himself declared that Zionism would reach Hungary, but only later on.
In spite of strong opposition to Zionism in religious circles, some Orthodox Jews from Hungary participated in the founding of the world religious Zionist movement. Some Hungarian Jews also settled in Ereẓ Israel during the 19th century and became an important element in the old yishuv, but as a rule they bore no ties to Zionism. Representatives from Hungary participated in the First Zionist Congress (1897). One of them, János *Rónai, delivered a speech at the Congress and pointed to the normal condition of life of Hungarian Jewry, but he expressed the fear that this situation would deteriorate and predicted that Hungarian Jewry would then join the Zionist movement. Immediately after the Congress, Rónai, an attorney from Transylvania, began to engage in varied organizational activities, establishing branches of the Zionist movement, heading the national efforts at organizations, and being elected first chairman of the Hungarian Zionist Organization. In preparation for his appearance at the Congress, he wrote an ideological pamphlet in German entitled Zionismus in Ungarn (1897), in which he engaged the arguments of both the assimilationist and religious opposition. Another central figure was Samu Bettelheim, who was active in Bratislava. Bettelheim was a religious Zionist, and upon his initiative the first world conference of Mizrachi was convened in his city in 1904. The number of local Zionist groups began to increase, and at the Second Zionist Congress (1898) 32 branches of the Hungarian Zionist Federation were in existence.
In 1908 the Hungarian authorities became aware of the movement and prohibited collecting money for the Zionist funds. Local Zionists alerted the president of the World Zionist Organization, David Wolffsohn. He visited Budapest and was received by the minister of interior, Count Gyula Andrássy, who displayed understanding and even friendship toward the Zionist movement but explained to Wolffsohn that the problem of minorities was very disturbing in Hungary and he could not afford to allow the creation of yet another national minority, the Jewish nation. This approach continued to characterize the position of the Hungarian authorities vis-à-vis Zionism.
At the beginning of the 20th century, some of the students at the University of Budapest became Zionists. In 1903 they founded a society called Makkabea, which played a central role in the propagation of the Zionist idea in the capital and the provinces until World War ii. The Zionist press was also established by the initiative of this society. The first Zionist organ was Zsidó Néplap, which was published from 1905 to 1907. In 1911 another organ, Zsidó Szemle, began to appear under the editorship of József Schőnfeld. These papers, however, did not succeed in penetrating into wider Jewish circles. A Jewish quarterly called Múlt és Jövő began appearing in 1911 under the editorship of Joseph *Patai. Although this literary and artistic periodical was not an official organ of Zionism, it clearly identified with the Jewish nationalist and Zionist trend and achieved great popularity (publication ceased during the Holocaust). Zionists were also active in the establishment of Jewish sports organizations that maintained ties with similar groups in Austria.
Feeble attempts were made at the beginning of the century to establish Po'alei Zion in Hungary, but the Jews among Hungarian Social Democrats opposed this idea. The Jewish Territorial Organization (ito) also set up a branch in Hungary in 1912. Local Zionists became involved in a difficult struggle with the ito, which was also supported by the non-Zionist Jewish press. In spite of all these difficulties, however, on the eve of World War i there were branches of the Hungarian Zionist Organization in many cities throughout Hungary, and 20 delegates from Hungary participated in the 11th Zionist Congress (1913).
During World War i many active Zionists were mobilized into the army, and some who were captured came into contact with Russian Jews and Zionists. These contacts proved to be very fruitful. During the last months of World War i and the period of the Russian Revolution, Zionists, and especially demobilized officers, organized into self-defense units and in a number of places overcame mob attacks on the Jews. The first short-lived Communist regime in Hungary (1919) displayed open hostility to Zionism, prohibited organizational activities, and forced the Zionist organ to close down for a period.
In the peace treaty that ended World War i, Hungary was divided up, and the Zionist activity in areas annexed to Romania, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Yugoslavia began to develop independently of the Hungarian Zionist Organization, whose headquarters were in Budapest. Zionist activities continued in the limited area of Hungary, where one of the central problems was the extended struggle to acquire government authorization for the Zionist Organization. The leaders of the Neolog Jewish community also opposed the granting of such authorization, since they regarded Zionism as a breach of Hungarian patriotism. Legalization was finally achieved in 1927, with the Hungarian Zionists receiving strong political support from the Zionist Executive in London. The Pro-Palestine Association exerted influence among those Jews who did not formally join the Zionist Organization.
By the 16th Zionist Congress (1929) many youth movements had already been formed in Hungary, including He-Ḥalutz. A great step forward was the enlargement of the Jewish Agency and the seating of the Hungarian Zionist Joseph Patai, and the chief rabbi of Szeged, Immanuel Löw, who was considered a non-Zionist, on its General Council. In 1937, 17 local branches of the Zionist Organization and 3,600 members existed in Hungary. The number of youth movement members was also substantial. The year 1937 was the last before the cancellation of equal rights for Hungarian Jews (the Hungarian parliament had already begun deliberating the law to reduce their rights, which was passed in 1938). The first anti-Jewish law, the restrictions on Jewish economic activities, and the proximity of German Nazism – after Germany had annexed Austria – increased the interest of Hungarian Jewry in the Zionist movement. Zionist cultural activities expanded, especially those of the youth movements. The number of Jews who wished to go to Palestine, as well as the number of those who realized their desire, was on the rise.
Jewish refugees from Austria, Poland, and other places began arriving in Hungary, and aid was extended to them principally through the framework of the Zionist movement. Efforts to move refugees to Palestine through "illegal" channels were made under Zionist auspices, particularly through the youth movements. With the annexation of northern Transylvania to Hungary in 1940, a group of Transylvanian Zionist leaders experienced in public and political life arrived in Budapest. Among them were Rezsnő Rudolf *Kasztner and the newspaper editor Ernő *Marton. The Zionist Socialist movement was further strengthened during this period, and Béla Dános, its leader, also took upon himself varied activities. Youth leaders arrived from Slovakia and other parts of former Czechoslovakia, bringing with them strong Zionist views. The movement in Hungary was then headed by Ottó *Komoly. Those who came from the annexed provinces, as well as active Zionists who had fled from other countries, were aided by, and extended aid to, the rescue activities of the Zionist movement and to some degree the Aid and Rescue Committee set up for that purpose. The Aid and Rescue Committee established contact with Adolf *Eichmann to discuss rescue plans and sent Joel *Brand, one of the active Zionist Socialists, on his tragic mission. During World War ii Hungarian Zionists were active mainly in rescue activities.
After World War ii, in 1945, the Zionist Organization in Hungary was reconstituted. Zionist youth movements directed many young people to Ereẓ Israel. The new government displayed hostility toward the Zionist activities from the very start and tried gradually to liquidate the movement. In 1949 the Zionist Organization and all Zionist activities were formally prohibited. A number of trials, directed specifically against Zionists, were later held by the government, and in other trials, including that of László Rajk, some of the defendants were accused of "conspiring with Zionists." The 50-year history of the Zionist movement in Hungary thus came to an end.
In Italy
Because of the small number of Jews in Italy and the fact that they were largely assimilated, Zionism could penetrate only slowly and with difficulty and for years retained an exclusive character. Among the Jewish periodicals, the first to express Zionist ideas at the end of the 19th century was Il Corriere Israelitico, which was published in Italian but appeared in Trieste (then under Austrian rule). No Italian delegates were present at the First Zionist Congress in 1897. The Second Congress (1898) was attended by the rabbi of Naples, Joseph Sonnino, who was chosen as delegate without formal elections. He represented the first Zionist groups that had been formed in Italy in Ancona, Rome, Leghorn, Florence, and Naples. Also present at the Second Congress was Felice Ravenna, who was to become the head of Italian Zionism and was to remain its leader for many years, representing it at the Third Congress in 1899, together with two other delegates. It was only in 1901 that the Italian Zionist Federation was formed. Its conventions originally took place every two years in various towns. In 1901 the first Zionist periodical, L'Idea Sionista, was founded and survived for ten years; in 1908 the more penetrating L'Eco Sionista d'Italia appeared.
At that time Italian Zionism had no important political scope and was troubled by various controversies; its nature was mainly philanthropic. Due to the intervention of some of its exponents, however, Theodor Herzl was received in January 1904 by King Victor Emmanuel iii and by Pope Pius x. On that occasion, Herzl had an interview with the Italian minister for foreign affairs and later sent him a written statement. From the beginning, the most active and penetrating Zionist writer and journalist was Dante *Lattes. After Herzl's death the movement experienced a period of decline, and the center of its activities was transferred to Florence, under the leadership of Alfonso *Pacifici. In 1916 the weekly Israel was founded there and remained the center of Zionist activity, although it carried no Zionist label.
Immediately after World War i an Italian Jew, naval captain Angelo Levi-Bianchini, was sent by the government as Italian military attaché to General Allenby's General Staff. Under the influence of Chaim Weizmann, he became an ardent Zionist. He was killed in a Bedouin ambush in Syria in 1920. In 1922 Weizmann went to Italy and made his first close contact with Italian Jewry, defining it in his autobiography as follows: "The Italian Jewish community seemed to be a community of sujets d'élite. And the élite of that community were turning their eyes to Palestine." During the early years of Fascist rule, the relations between the Italian government and the Zionist Organization were so good that in 1928 the Comitato Italia-Palestina was formed to facilitate the contact between Italy and Palestine. Personalities of high standing in politics and literature were among the members of this committee. There had even been talk in 1931 of holding the 19th Zionist Congress at Abbazia (now Opatija, Croatia). The Zionist Revisionist movement was also in touch with the Italian government. Its leader, Leone *Carpi in Milan, published the periodical L'Idea Sionistica. The Revisionists founded a naval school at Civitavecchia for the world Betar movement that was several times visited by Vladimir Jabotinsky.
Although the attitude of Mussolini's government became increasingly pro-Arab, Zionism remained active for some years. It maintained agricultural training centers (hakhsharot); encouraged contributions to the Zionist funds, which showed increases; replied firmly to controversies in newspapers; and regularly sent delegates to the Zionist Congresses. Following the introduction of the racial laws in 1938, the position of Italian Jewry rapidly deteriorated. The existing Jewish periodicals were ordered to stop publication, the Zionist organizations were dissolved, and Jewish life, with the exception of religious and charitable functions, had to be carried on in secret. This period marked the beginning of a considerable aliyah from Italy, whose first pioneers and standard-bearers had been Enzo and Ada *Sereni.
After the interval of World War ii, marked by deportations and ruin, particularly during the German occupation, Jewish and Zionist life slowly revived in Italy. Immediately after World War ii Italy became a center of widespread and feverish underground activities in the organization of "illegal" immigration of Jewish survivors from Central and Eastern Europe to Palestine (directed by Ada Sereni) and also of secret arms transports for the Haganah. Italian Zionist and communal leaders, among them Raffaele *Cantoni, played a major role in these operations. These facts, as well as the presence of the soldiers of the Jewish Brigade Group from Palestine, created a climate of deep identification of Italian Jewry with the struggle for Jewish independence in Palestine.
Numerous Zionist conventions took place in Italy from 1947 onward and aliyah increased considerably. Jewish education, e.g., the great Jewish school in Milan, became Hebrew and Israel-oriented. Italian Zionism, which is numerically still very small because of the limited size of the Jewish community, is now more politically conscious and has more cultural and personal ties with Israel than ever before.
[Giorgio Romano]
In Latin America
The Zionist movement in Latin America grew with the development of the continent's Jewish communities. In most countries Jewish communal and Zionist institutions collaborated from the start, and from the time of the struggle for independence and the establishment of the State of Israel the activities of the Zionist movement have expanded to continental proportions. The movement has sponsored such major continental gatherings as the first Zionist congress in Montevideo (1945); the second Zionist congress in Buenos Aires (1950); the first Jewish Latin American youth convention (Montevideo 1961); a conference convened after the Six-Day War that brought together 527 delegates from Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay, and Peru (Nov. 1967); and a South American encounter for the new Zionist generations (Buenos Aires, April 1970).
Argentina
Zionist groups arose in Buenos Aires and in the interior simultaneously with the organization of the First Zionist Congress in Basle. The oldest group (established 1897) was Sion. The Dr. Theodor Herzl League was also influential for several years. As the movement grew, its activities were coordinated by a Federación (established 1904), a central institution which was an extension of the Herzl League. In 1908 it was replaced by Tifereth Zion. The movement's leadership developed within the framework of the Federación Sionista Argentina (established 1913), whose first leaders were Jacobo Joselevich, Nathan Gezang, and Solomon Liebeshutz.
During the early stages of its development, the movement did not tend toward internal political polarization. There were, however, lesser organizations which espoused particular ideological trends: Ḥerut, Socialist Territorialists (established 1905); ss, Socialist Zionists (established 1906); and a Borochovist group, Po'alei Zion (est. 1909), and Ẓe'irei Zion (1918). The two last groups united in 1932 to form Po'alei Zion Ẓe'irei Zion and its periodical Di Naye Tzait, established 1918, still exists. The other major local party is the General Zionists, whose official publication is El Estado Judío. Ha-Shomer ha-Ẓa'ir, particularly active after World War ii, publishes the Nueva Sion (established 1947). The Revisionist party (established 1930), which increased its organizational cadres during the struggle of the yishuv against the British administration in Palestine, puts out La idea Sionista. Mizrachi was established in 1940 on the foundations of previously organized smaller groups.
These parties have sponsored the creation of youth movements which have made significant contributions in the areas of Jewish education and aliyah. Women's organizations of each party, as well as wizo, are also active. The Consejo Central Sionista (established 1948), in which all local Zionist institutions are represented, arose from the reorganization of the Zionist parties and the creation of a Comisión Coordinadora (established 1940). As of 1951 it has undertaken functions previously carried out by the Jewish Agency (established 1937, for Argentina and Latin America). Delegates from Argentina have attended Zionist Congresses since 1925; their presence in previous years had been sporadic. The Zionist Organization of Argentina became one of the central organizations of Argentine Jewry.
Brazil
The first Zionist organizations, Tifereth Zion and Ahavath Zion (1916–17) sprang up in São Paolo and Rio de Janeiro. Smaller centers were also established in the northern provinces. With the founding of the Zionist Organization (1921), a degree of coordination was attained, including collaboration between Ashkenazim and Sephardim. During World War ii, when Brazil imposed legislation restricting the internal development of national minorities, the Zionist movement was officially closed down (1938), but it nevertheless continued its activities on a limited scale until 1945, when its legal status was renewed. The reorganized Zionist political parties coordinated into the United Zionist Organization (established 1945). The most influential of these parties were Mapai (organized in the 1920s), General Zionists (since 1947), and the Revisionists. The Keren Hayesod was reorganized in 1946.
The movement encountered difficulties which derived from the complex internal organization of the Jewish community; local autonomous trends and a division according to countries of origin interfered with its collaboration with a centralized communal organization. Nevertheless, communal institutions in the state of São Paolo consolidated their activities with the Zionist Organization in support of the Jewish state and to aid European Jewry. The assimilation of Jewish sectors into Brazilian society, a growing manifestation during and subsequent to World War ii, was a contributing factor to the limited influence of the movement during those years. There has been an upswing in the local Zionist movement since the 1950s, particularly after the Six-Day War (1967).
Colombia
The communal life of this small Jewish community, composed of Sephardim who emigrated from Palestine during the crisis years of the 1920s, German-speaking Ashkenazi immigrants arriving since World War i, and refugees from Nazi persecution, was organized with difficulty. The Zionist movement also had a slow beginning due to the restrictive measures adopted by the authorities to prevent the formation of "ethnic islands." The Federación Sionista, together with the Comité Central (established 1936), adopted measures against antisemitism and racial discrimination.
Ecuador and Paraguay
The respective organizations of Ecuador and Paraguay enjoy a limited membership, and they work together with communal institutions. Paraguay, whose minute Jewish population is preponderantly pro-Zionist, has seen an increase in activities in the wake of the Six-Day War.
Chile
Chile's flourishing Jewish community has attained a strong internal organization in which the Zionist movement wields authority and influence. The earliest Zionist initiatives were sporadic. The first stable group was formed in 1911 by members maintaining contact with the Argentinean Zionist movement. An influential figure during this early period was Mauricio Baltiansky. From the first Zionist convention in 1919, the movement became more firmly established. The major blocs were Po'alei Zion (established 1916) and the General Zionist Party (1947). Since the 1930s all Zionist parties and factions have increasingly polarized within the local movement. These include the Pro-Palestine Labor League (1931), the Revisionists (1932), and Mizrachi. Smaller groups such as the Folksfarband and the Grupo Hebraista formed the opposition. Active pioneer organizations are Ivriah (1930), Betar (1933), Bnei Akiva (1940), Kadimah (1944) – from which Ha-Shomer ha-Ẓa'ir grew – Deror-He-Ḥalutz, and Iḥud ha-No'ar ha-Ḥalutzi (1950) of the Po'alei Zion Hitaḥadut. Zionist women's organizations are wizo (1926) and Pioneer Women (1949).
The firmly organized Zionist Federation of Chile (established 1919) incorporates all political and Zionist organizations, the United Jewish Appeal, and every institution which, if not specifically Zionist, nonetheless identifies with the movement's objectives. Together with the Jewish representative body, the Comité Representativo, it engages in nationwide Jewish education, is involved with cultural activities, and participates in the Central Committee for Jewish Education (established 1946). It sponsors the Instituto Chileno-Israelita de Cultura (established 1950), which is associated with the Comisión de Cooperación Intelectual of the University of Chile. It has also carried out an intensive campaign of political explanation within non-Jewish circles, particularly since World War ii and the creation of the State of Israel.
Peru
The Zionist movement in Peru, established at the end of World War i, encountered initial resistance on the part of the Bund and other left-wing groups in the communal institutions and in the Jewish press. After its establishment (1925), the Zionist Federation collaborated closely with the Unión Israelita del Peru, an Ashkenazi community functioning since 1924, and with the Sociedad de Sociedades (1942), representative of the community. Together with the latter, the Zionist Federation sponsors the León Pinelo school (inaugurated 1946). Jewish public opinion in Peru today is preponderantly pro-Zionist. Jewish university students are organized in the Centro Universitario Peruano-Israelita (established 1960–61), which was reorganized in 1969 as the Movimiento Universitario Peruano Israelita. An independent youth group, Kinneret (est. 1962), sponsors immigration to Israel and local communal activities. The Zionist Federation has collaborated with the Comité Pro-Palestina (1945) and works with the Instituto Cultural Peru-Israel.
Mexico
Despite the divergences between Zionists and sectors identified with the non-Zionist left, the Zionist movement exerted increasing influence from the 1920s onward. Both blocs collaborated in certain communal activities, particularly those pertaining to education. Prior to institutional Zionist organization, activities were sporadic (i.e., on behalf of the Balfour Declaration (1917), a Keren Hayesod campaign (1923), etc.). The first organized group was the Po'alei Zion (1923), which published the first Yiddish publication, Unzer Vort. Groups with divergent leanings and bereft of specific partisan character collaborated in the Federación Sionista (1925), which later became affiliated with General Zionism. Fragmentation into specific parties and Zionist institutions – according to countries of origin or youth and women's sectors – began during the years immediately preceding World War ii: Liga Pro-Palestina Obrera (1934), Pioneras (1935), Revisionists (end of the decade), Organización Sionista Sefardí (1936, functioning jointly with the Sephardi community), wizo (1938), Ha-Shomer ha-Ẓa'ir – the first pioneer organization (1940) – Mizrachi (1942), Betar (1946), Bnei Akiva (1946), Ha-No'ar ha-Ẓioni (1948), Habonim (1948), Mapam (1948). The youth organizations centralized their activities in the Federación Juvenil Sionista (1943). Each of the trends had its own publication: Dos Wort (1947, Po'alei Zion), Ha-Shomer ha-Ẓa'ir (1942), La Voz Sionista (1948, General Zionists), Unidad Juvenil (Po'alei Zion youth), Avangard (1948, Mapam), Unzer Tribune and El Heraldo (Revisionists), Mizrachi Leben (religious). The overall organized movement formed the Federación Sionista de Méjico (established 1950), which has since undertaken central leadership tasks, including those of a local communal nature. An index of the movement's scope are the following figures: approximately 400 organized institutions cooperated in the Emergency Palestine Committee of 1946; in 1954 90% of the Jewish population considered itself Zionist, 8% non-Zionist, and 2% anti-Zionist. The Federación collaborates with the Comité Central Israelita, a representative communal institution, and with the Instituto de Relaciones Culturales Méjico-Israel.
Uruguay
This community of strong Zionist leanings had evolved from groups which have collaborated since the earliest stages of their development. In the first group, Agudath Zion, Israel Tschlenow (1914) brought together Zionists of no particular political leanings. The Sephardim founded the "Dr. Herzl" group in 1918; Po'alei Zion was established in 1917. Various trends took shape during the 1930s, and the movement expanded. All the Zionist parties and their pioneer movements and women's institutions are locally represented. The Organización Sionista Territorial, which encompasses the Federación Juvenil Sionista, cooperates closely with the Comité Central Israelita, a representative communal institution. It also collaborated with the Comité Uruguayo Pro-Palestina (1940) and later with the Comité Cultural Uruguay-Israel.
Venezuela
The Zionist Organization has been the most active and influential institution of this small community since its reorganization in 1949. It works together with the Ashkenazi and Sephardi sectors, as well as with B'nai B'rith and the Jewish National Fund. Despite their limited number, the following youth movements also operate: Ha-Shomer ha-Ẓa'ir, Bnei Akiva, Unión de Jovenes Hebreos (est. 1955), which form the Federación Universitaria Sionista Sudamericana. wizo maintains branches in the capital and in the interior of the country. Affiliation with the Federación can also be individual. It collaborates with the Instituto Cultural Venezuela-Israel.
Central America
Despite their small size, the Jewish communities of Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Panama have organized Zionist institutions. In El Salvador they have functioned since 1946 and enjoy the cooperation of non-Jewish intellectuals and government figures. In Panama and Costa Rica, Zionist activities have found support among the political non-Jewish personalities who have also sponsored relations with the State of Israel. The Zionist movement in the region has increased its activities since 1965 in the wake of the formation of the Federación de Comunidades de America Central, in which the Zionist Organization is also represented.
[Rosa Perla Raicher]
In North African and Asian Countries
The attachment of Oriental Jewry to Ereẓ Israel was a messianic-religious one, expressed in prayers and aspirations and at times in going to Ereẓ Israel to die and be buried there. Until the 1880s migration to Ereẓ Israel was an individual matter and was not undertaken by organized groups.
Organizations
In the late 19th century the European Zionist movement attracted followers and sympathizers in all the Oriental countries, with the exception of remote *Yemen. The first African and Asian countries in which Zionist movements were founded were *Algeria, *Tunisia, and *Egypt. As early as 1898 communities from these three countries sent two delegates to the Second Zionist Congress, convened at Basle. Later on, Zionist organizations were established in *Iraq, China (Shanghai), Turkey, and *Morocco and afterward in *Libya, *Syria, *India, and Singapore. At first groups were set up to read Zionist journals and literature from Europe. Later on, organizations were founded, sometimes several in the same city. Most of these groups were not registered officially, either because registration was not required by law or because Zionist organizations were not permitted, such as in the Ottoman Empire. From the late 19th century to the 1930s these organizations had a limited membership. The few active members devoted most of their time to Zionist fundraising, and not enough attention was given to strengthening Hebrew and Zionist education.
After World War i, though in some places only after the 1930s, an important change took place in the development of Zionist organizations in Oriental countries. Zionist youth movements were established and directed by sheliḥim (emissaries) from Ereẓ Israel, for the most part independent of the adult Zionist organizations. The youth movements were generally more successful than the adult organizations for several reasons; they were organized and run by young people who were sent especially for this task and devoted all their time to it; the emissaries were not interested in collecting funds, but engaged in Hebrew and Zionist education; and they even dared to establish underground organizations when Zionist activities were prohibited. When necessary (in Iraq, Egypt, and Libya), the emissaries also established paramilitary underground self-defense organizations in which hundreds of young Jews were trained in the use of weapons in case of anti-Jewish outbursts.
In 1970 when most of the African and Asian Jewish communities had ceased to exist, Zionist organizations survived only in *Iran and in Turkey, where young people are active in Hebrew and Zionist education.
Financial Contributions
Large sums were contributed to the Jewish National Fund by Iraqi and Shanghai Jewry only in the early 1920s. However, most of the money contributed to the jnf between 1920 and 1923 (£36,500 out of a total of £38,470) was given by a Jew who wished to commemorate his brother, and his contribution enabled the establishment of the moshav Kefar Yeḥezkel in the Jezreel Valley. The rest of Iraqi Jewry contributed only £1,970 during that time. Shanghai Jewry contributed over £21,000 from 1911 to 1926, a rather large sum for a Jewish community in that area.
The contributions to the Keren Hayesod were not large, and the number of shekels (i.e., the dues paid for membership in the World Zionist Organization) acquired by the members of these communities was small. During the 1940s a relatively large number of shekels were acquired in the North African
1922–33 | 1946 | 1949–50 | |
Tunisia | 7,857 | 13,296 | 32,202 |
Morocco | 5,602 | 11,982 | 58,339 |
Algeria | 8,100 | 26,652 | |
Syria, Turkey, Iran | 4,302 | 4,536 | 20,613 |
Iraq | 4,557 | ||
Egypt | 6,724 | 7,541 | – |
Libya | ? | 1,963 | 7,000 |
Other Asiatic countries | ? | 4,325 | 2,574 |
Total | 30,000 | 51,743 | 147,380 |
and non-Arabic countries in Asia, as shown in Table 1: Shekels in Muslim and Asiatic Countries, 1922–50.
From 1951 fewer shekels were acquired by Jews in the Eastern countries in the wake of the mass aliyah. The weakness of Zionist activity in these countries may be explained by the lack of strong communal organizations. The wealthy and the notables in the community were not attracted to Zionism. As the authorities in several Arab countries prohibited Zionist activity, there was no choice but to establish underground organizations. Indeed, it was impossible to conduct either oral or written Zionist education and propaganda. Therefore, the fundraising campaigns also suffered.
Aliyah
Jewish migration to Israel was always large. There are no data, however, as to the number of immigrants prior to World War i. They may be estimated according to those who remained in Palestine and were counted in the census conducted in the State of Israel in November 1948. In that census 462,567 Jews were registered as born abroad. They are divided according to periods of immigration in Table 2: Jews in Israel Born Abroad.
The number of immigrants is actually larger, as Table: Jews in Israel Born Abroad does not include those who died or left prior to 1948. One may assume that the First and Second Aliyah from Asia and North Africa numbered about 6,000; from 1919 to 1938, about 38,000; from 1939 to May 1948, about 25,000. About 33% of Yemenite Jewry, 27% of Turkish Jewry, and 6–8% of Egyptian, Iraqi, and Persian Jewry migrated to Palestine in 1919–48.
By 1971 only several thousand Jews remained in North Africa, out of a community of 500,000. The immigration to Israel from Libya was minimal until the anti-Jewish riots in Tripoli between 1945 and 1948. Immediately after the State of Israel was established, most of Libyan Jewry migrated there, anticipating more disturbances and fearing life in independent Libya. The rich and the educated, who at first remained in Libya, left the country gradually, so that by June 1967 there were virtually no Jews left in Libya.
In 1971 there were only several thousand Jews in Syria. After 1950, however, only half of the Turkish Jews who emigrated went to Israel, the rest settling in other countries. Some of the Jews in Iran, mostly the poor, left for Israel. Persian Jews enjoyed full political and religious freedom until early 1979. In March 1950 the Iraqi authorities permitted Jews who wished to leave to do so, and 124,000 Jews migrated to Israel within two years. In late 1951 there remained only about 6,000 Jews, some of whom migrated later on.
After the establishment of the State of Israel, there was a relatively large emigration of Egyptian Jews (it seems that a substantial part of these Jews were born in Ereẓ Israel and were expelled by the Turks to Egypt during World War i). In 1956–57 the Egyptian authorities expelled thousands of Jews. Some came to Israel, but the majority, particularly the wealthy, emigrated to Europe and America.
Aliyah from Yemen was proportionately larger than that
Countries | Until 1918 | 1918–38 | 1939–47 | 1948 and unknown date | Total no. of Immigrants |
Yemen and Aden | 1,800 | 8,510 | 5,676 | 316 | 16,302 |
Syria and Lebanon | 459 | 4,243 | 5,850 | 237 | 10,789 |
Turkey | 399 | 4,897 | 4,042 | 1,214 | 10,552 |
Iraq | 470 | 5,272 | 2,983 | 277 | 9,002 |
Iran | 563 | 2,833 | 423 | 97 | 3,916 |
The rest of Asia | 38 | 1,451 | 645 | 717 | 2,851 |
Egypt | 152 | 2,061 | 2,165 | 251 | 4,629 |
Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria | 468 | 506 | 534 | 3,823 | 5,331 |
Libya | 7 | 297 | 439 | 507 | 1,250 |
Asia and North Africa | 4,356 | 30,070 | 22,757 | 7,439 | 64,622 |
Rest of Africa excluding South Africa | 10 | 170 | 164 | 67 | 411 |
Soviet Asia | 428 | 3,025 | 378 | 261 | 4,092 |
Europe, America, South Africa, and Oceania | 7,478 | 211,424 | 96,334 | 76,347 | 391,583 |
Unknown | 56 | 576 | 362 | 665 | 1,659 |
Total | 12,328 | 245,265 | 119,995 | 84,779 | 462,367 |
of other Oriental communities. In the 70 years from 1881 to 1951, Yemenite Jewry exploited every opportunity to settle in Ereẓ Israel.
[Haim J. Cohen]
In Poland
1897–1918
Prior to the restoration of Polish statehood, Poland's territory remained divided into three sections: one under the administration of Germany, the second of czarist Russia, and the third of the Austrian monarchy. In the German part of former Poland, the very limited Jewish population (no more than around 50,000 at the beginning of the century) was thoroughly assimilated into German culture and displayed little interest in Jewish affairs in general and in Zionism in particular. However, two prominent forerunners of Zionism, Ẓevi Hirsch Kalischer and Elijah Gutmacher, both lived in that part of Poland and published their pamphlets calling for redemption of Zion, but their appeal had no influence upon the community; neither did the first conference of the Ḥovevei Zion movement, which took place in 1884 in the German part of Poland.
The development of Zionism was also slow among the great masses of the Jewish population in the Polish territories of czarist Russia, around 2,000,000 people at that time. A distinction should be drawn between the province of Congress Poland and other parts of the territory. In Congress Poland, which was one of the richest and economically most developed parts of the Russian Empire, the local Jewish population was somewhat influenced by the Polish assimilationist ideology and, on the other hand, the anti-Zionist Orthodoxy. It therefore had to be won over to Zionism with considerable effort. The standard-bearers of Zionism in that part of the country were the so-called "Litvaks," i.e., immigrants who came from Lithuania and the neighboring provinces, who were strongly imbued with Jewish nationalism and ideology and influenced other groups of the Jewish population. Quite different was the situation in other provinces, whose Jewish population was deeply rooted in Judaism, which was much nearer to the idea of Jewish nationalism and adopted the Zionist program with enthusiasm.
These initial differences disappeared in the course of time, however, as the movement conquered growing parts of the Jewish population. It was not particularly disturbed by the authorities, who were inclined to see in Zionism a means of reducing the danger of revolutionary propaganda among the Jews, or by the Polish population, which initially favored the idea of a movement likely to enlarge the scope of Jewish emigration. This situation changed considerably, however, when the Zionist movement proclaimed as a part of its immediate aims the struggle for civic and national rights for the Jewish population, as formulated in the *Helsingfors Program of 1906. The reaction of the authorities was a marked reduction in tolerance toward Zionist activities and antisemitism spread among the Polish population, leading even to an economic boycott of the Jews, which continued until the outbreak of World War i.
The number of adherents of the Zionist movement and the scope of its influence nevertheless grew from year to year. At the beginning the membership was limited mainly to people from the middle class, but the movement subsequently won many adherents among the workers. Although a few groups broke away and joined the territorialist *Zionist Socialist Workers' Party (ss) or the party supporting Jewish autonomism (the "Sejmists," see *Jewish Socialist Workers' Party), the others remained concentrated around the Po'alei Zion Party and tried to combine their socialist ideology with the Zionist program. On the other hand, many groups of Orthodox Jewry had already supported the Ḥovevei Zion, joined the Zionist movement, and decided to establish a special faction of religious Zionists, the Mizrachi. The various groups cooperated closely, although the Po'alei Zion, influenced by the Russian branch with its strong proletarian class character, soon tended to proclaim its organizational independence, stressing the special interests of the Jewish workers.
The situation differed in many respects in Galicia, the Polish part of the Austrian monarchy. The roots of Jewish nationalism and Zionism were much deeper there than in Congress Poland. Not only did the movement of Enlightenment, which considered Jewish nationalism self-evident and whose most prominent representatives lived in Galicia, leave its deep impression on the area, but the organized Zionist movement appeared there years before the First Zionist Congress (1897). The Zionist movement drew its supporters mainly from among the university students and the large groups of the Jewish intelligentsia. It is not surprising, therefore, that Herzl's call was responded to by the masses of the Jewish population, despite the opposition of rather small, if vociferous, groups of assimilationists, the extreme adherents of Ḥasidism, and the unfriendly attitude of the authorities, who were opposed to Jewish nationalism. This opposition grew much stronger when the Galician Zionists conducted a vigorous and relatively successful struggle for civic and national rights for the Jews, whose platform was formulated at the Cracow Conference (1906). In the first election to the Austrian parliament, after universal suffrage had been granted (1907), the Zionists acquired three seats in Galicia. One after another, various groups of the population joined the movement: members of the middle class, considerable groups of wage earners (especially the commercial employees), university and high school students, etc. It was an authentic popular movement, trying simultaneously to satisfy both the cultural needs of the population, through a network of Hebrew schools, and the economic needs, especially by establishment of credit unions in the poor and neglected province of the Hapsburg monarchy. Adolf *Stand and Osias *Thon were the prominent leaders of Galician Zionism in that period.
In Independent Poland
The Zionist movement suffered strongly during World War i, especially in the province of Galicia, which was occupied for almost a year by the Russian army. After the war it was faced with a new situation and new tasks in the reconstituted Polish republic. It emerged as the strongest force in Jewish public life, challenged only by the anti-Zionist Orthodoxy, the Socialist Bund, and for a certain period also the movement of "Folkists" (see *Folkspartei). At the same time, it was faced with the task of merging into one the movement throughout the various parts of the country now united within the borders of the reconstituted Polish state. This task, however, could be accomplished only to a very limited degree. The religious and socialist factions within the Zionist movement developed into full-fledged parties, independent of the parent body, which thus became one party among several others. The religious Mizrachi party consolidated quickly and established its countrywide organization irrespective of the former territorial division. The labor movement, on the other hand, suffered for years from extreme differentiation and many splits, until at the beginning of the 1930s the main groups united in the Po'alei Zion Hitaḥadut. The Left Po'alei Zion remained aloof and outside the World Zionist Organization, which it joined only shortly before World War ii. At the other extreme, the Revisionist Party developed, from the second half of the 1920s, to considerable strength. When the Revisionists broke away from the World Zionist Organization in 1935, a minority group split away from them, constituting the Jewish State Party, which remained within the ranks of the World Zionist Organization. Some of these parties were organized on a national basis, comprising the whole of Poland, whereas others, although ideologically united, stuck to the previous territorial division. Only the center party of General Zionists was divided both on territorial and ideological grounds. In Congress Poland they split into the progressive, pro-labor Al ha-Mishmar faction, left by Yiẓḥak *Gruenbaum, and the outspokenly middle-class Et Livnot faction, led by Leon Levite; in Galicia they were divided in the West Galician Federation, under the leadership of Osias Thon and later of Ignacy *Schwarzbart, and the East Galician Federation led by Leon *Reich, Fischel *Rotenstreich, and Emil Schmorak.
The process of internal disintegration and dissent frequently weakened the influence of the Zionist movement. This was especially felt in the field of national and local politics, the main bone of contention between the rival factions. Activities in this field were very pronounced, frequently taking first place in the program of various parties. The Zionist representation in the Polish Sejm grew considerably, especially in the first three parliaments, reaching its climax in the second Sejm with 32 Zionist deputies out of a total of 47 Jewish deputies. It fell considerably, however, in the following parliaments, with the progressing degeneration of democracy in the life of the country, but it still continued to lead the struggle against the ever-growing wave of antisemitism. In the municipalities and the administration of the Jewish communities, however, Zionist influence was overshadowed by that of other political groups, especially the Bund and various Orthodox groups on the right.
In spite of external difficulties and internal frictions, Zionist activities continued with increasing intensity throughout the entire period, securing for Polish Zionism the first place within the world movement, especially in the field of aliyah to Ereẓ Israel, and strongly influenced all facets of Jewish life in the country. Polish Jewry was strongly represented in the waves of migration to Palestine between the two world wars, both by worker pioneers and the middle class. The membership of the various pioneering youth movements exceeded 100,000 in the 1930s, with 20,000 in active training (hakhsharah) for future life in Ereẓ Israel. Not all of them succeeded in emigrating, as the number of immigration certificates was severely limited by the Mandatory government of Palestine. As a consequence, Polish Jewish youth was also strongly represented in the "illegal" immigration, especially in the later 1930s. Jewish life in Poland during that period can hardly be imagined without aliyah as its focal point.
No less felt was the influence of Zionism on cultural life in all its forms. Jewish literature, press, and artistic life all remained under the strongest influence of Zionist ideology. One of the most outstanding fields of activity was education. Of the 250,000 students in Jewish educational institutions in Poland in the 1930s, those in institutions under predominant Zionist influence took first place. This was especially true for the network of the *Tarbut schools (around 40,000 students), with Hebrew as language of instruction, but other networks, such as those under the influence of the Mizrachi and of the Po'alei Zion, as well as the officially nonpartisan organization of Jewish secondary schools in Poland, also actually remained under the overwhelming influence of Zionism, despite assimilationist pressures from the Polish authorities. Zionist influence was also dominant in the press. In the period before World War i special importance may be attributed to the Hebrew daily *Ha-Ẓefirah, the Yiddish periodicals Dos Yidishe Vort and Tagblat, and the Polish periodical Wschód. In the period between the two world wars virtually all Jewish dailies and periodicals, with the exception of those published by Bund or by Agudat Israel, were either openly Zionist or influenced by Zionist ideology, including the leading Yiddish dailies Haynt and Moment, the dailies in Polish Nasz Przegląd, Nowy Dziennik, and Chwila, and many weeklies and other periodicals, issued by various Zionist parties and youth movements.
There was hardly any other Jewish community in the world before World War ii, with the possible exception of the relatively small communities of the Baltic countries and Bessarabia, in which the influence of Zionism was so strongly felt. All this broke down with the destruction of Jewish life in Poland during World War ii. Various Zionist groups, especially groups of Zionist youth, tried for a period to continue their activities underground. They took the lead in the clandestine struggle against the Nazi occupation and in the ghetto uprisings. Zionists who succeeded in escaping from Poland established centers for rescue beyond the border, the most important of them in Vilna until its annexation to the Soviet Union and later the German invasion of the U.S.S.R. in 1941. Zionist refugees participated actively in the political and rescue activities of various Jewish bodies, notably the World Jewish Congress. Ignacy Schwarzbart in his capacity as member of the Polish parliament in exile represented the Jewish minority before the Polish government in London. The second representative was a non-Zionist, member of the Socialist "Bund" party. Emil Sommerstein in his capacity as chairman of the Jewish Central Committee represented the Jews before the Polish authorities established in the Soviet Union. But all these efforts could not arrest the course of events: the extermination of the great Jewish community of Poland. After the war, surviving Zionists, and especially Zionist youth movements, established escape routes to and from Poland (see *Beriḥah), assembled children who had been hidden in monasteries and in gentiles' homes, and reorganized Jewish education. But after a short period of transition all Zionist activity within Poland was finally liquidated by the Communist regime.
[Aryeh Tartakower]
In Romania
The Jews from the principalities of Moldavia and Walachia had rooted religious ties with Ereẓ Israel. In Jerusalem, Tiberias, Safed, and Hebron there were groups of Jews who had emigrated from these two Romanian principalities, whence they received aid. In the middle of the 19th century the first modern pre-Zionist ideas arose in Romania. Israel Benjamin, known as Benjamin the Second, a native of Fălticeni (Moldavia), advocated Jewish agricultural settlement in Ereẓ Israel in his travel memoirs, which were published in 1856.
The first pre-Zionist groups were established starting in 1873, with the trend for the participants to emigrate to Ereẓ Israel and dedicate themselves to agriculture. The initiative began that year from Nicoresti with a group of 100 families, joined by other families from Tecuci, Ivesti, Galati, Piatra Neamt, Bacau, and Jassy. In 1875 a group from Moinesti sent a delegate, David Schub, to Ereẓ Israel to study the possibilities of settlement. The war between Russia and Turkey in 1877 hindered the continuation of that movement.
The Yishuv Ereẓ Israel Movement
In 1880 Eleazar Rokeaḥ arrived in Romania from Ereẓ Israel to collect funds for an agricultural settlement, Gei Oni, near Safed. He also unexpectedly found candidates for aliyah partly because of the difficult living conditions of the Jewish population after the Congress of Berlin (1878). One year after Rokeaḥ's mission, groups that called themselves Ḥevrat Yishuv Ereẓ Israel al yedei Avodat Adamah (Society to Settle Ereẓ Israel by Working the Land) existed in 30 Romanian towns. The members of these groups decided to emigrate with their families. The publisher and editor in chief of Ha-Maggid, David Gordon, suggested the creation of a central committee, and on Jan. 11–12, 1882, the first meeting of 32 branches from throughout the country took place in Focsani. The president of the meeting was Samuel *Pineles. It was decided that the first group of 100 families was to leave for Ereẓ Israel before Passover, and resolutions were adopted in order to subsidize the settlement. Among the leaders of the movement were R. Avner Kasvan, Karpel Lippe, the Hebrew writer Israel Teller, and others. The central committee was in Galati, and Pineles was secretary.
In February 1882 the Romanian parliament discussed the "creation of the Palestinian Kingdom," and Prime Minister I.C. Bratianu declared that the Romanian government would give its wholehearted support to this plan. In May 1882 the second meeting with delegates from 28 localities took place in Jassy, with the visit of Laurence Oliphant. The English gentile spoke at the meeting and promised financial aid from non-Jews. Meanwhile Pineles negotiated with the Turkish consul in Galati and, with the approval of the Turkish ambassador in Bucharest, obtained the assurance that Romanian Jews would be able to settle in Ereẓ Israel, except for the Jerusalem region, in groups of 50 to 100 families. At the same time a delegation sent from Bucharest to Constantinople was received by the sultan, the vizier, and the minister of the interior. As a result of these audiences, a decision favorable to the settlement of Romanian Jews was adopted at the meeting of the Turkish cabinet. The sultan, however, refrained from giving his own approval because of the events in Egypt.
The Beginnings of Settlement
While negotiations were taking place, from the spring of 1882, delegates left Romania for Ereẓ Israel in order to buy land there, and, from towns such as Moineşti, Bărlad, Bacău, Bucharest, Tulcea, dozens of families had already emigrated. The group from Moineşti had sent their own delegate, David Schub, who in the summer of that year had bought the lands at Gei Oni, where a previous settlement of Jews from Safed had failed. In August 1882 the first organized 39 families (228 persons), emigrated; the nucleus of this group was formed by those from Moineşti who founded the village of Rosh Pinnah. The central committee also purchased another 6,000 dunams, and Zikhron Ya'akov was founded with 386 settlers. The creation of these two colonies gave an impetus to the aliyah, and until the end of 1882 a total of 1,322 settlers had left Romania. In the summer of the same year a movement for agricultural training was started on estates leased by Jews. At the same time, a number of youth organizations held a joint meeting at Galați in December 1882 with delegates from 12 towns and founded Aẓilei Benei Israel. In April 1883 a second meeting of the youth organizations took place at which the integration with the Yishuv Ereẓ Israel movement was decided upon. On Sept. 17, 1883, the third meeting of the Yishuv Ereẓ Israel movement took place in Galați, and it was decided that the administration of Zikhron Ya'akov would be handed over to Baron Edmond de Rothschild, since the central committee in Romania could not provide sufficiently for the economic needs of the village. In November 1883 Rosh Pinnah, which was in the same situation, also passed to Rothschild's administration. The 60 branches of the movement were dissolved one by one. The central committee ceased its activity in 1884. The pre-Zionist movement was resurrected again in Romania under the influence of the movement in Russia. Between 1890 and 1892, branches of Ḥovevei Zion were formed in some towns. By 1895 such branches existed in 31 towns and two conferences had been held. A central committee was elected under the management of Pineles, and once again groups of potential settlers organized. A plot of 11,000 dunams was acquired in Brustras and a group of 80 families from Jassy, together with another 16 families from Bulgaria, acquired another 18,000 dunams on the east side of the Jordan. Herzl's Der Judenstaat was published in 1896, and by the end of that year the first Romanian translation appeared in Botoşani. Pineles started to collect the signatures of those who wished to settle in Ereẓ Israel. Some 50,000 Romanian Jews signed the petition. Shortly before the First Zionist Congress in Basle (1897), the third meeting of Ḥovevei Zion took place in Galați, expressing support for Herzl's political Zionism. The First Zionist Congress was opened by a speech of the oldest delegate Karpel Lippe. Pineles was elected vice president of the Congress. During the fourth conference of Ḥovevei Zion in 1898, the Basle Program was unanimously accepted. The number of Zionist groups increased from 26 in 1897 to 136 in 1899.
The deadlock in which the World Zionist Movement found itself caused the number of active Romanian Zionist groups to decrease from 136 in 1899 to 56 in 1911. An additional reason for the decline was the creation of the Union of Native Jews (uep) in 1910. The Union, which dedicated itself to the fight for local Jewish emancipation, attracted the active participation of many Zionist leaders. But the younger generation of Zionists wanted a Jewish national emphasis within the movement for political emancipation. A group of young scholars, directed by Jacob Nacht, fought against the trend toward assimilation in the uep by encouraging Jewish cultural activities, e.g., Romanian translations of Hebrew and Yiddish literature and the introduction of Hebrew as a living language in schools. In this spirit the weekly paper Ha-Tikvah, edited by Leon Gold, was published in Galați in 1914. It had a great influence on Jewish life in Romania and included among its contributors A.L. *Zissu, Mattathias Friedman, and J. Nacht, as well as almost all the more important Jewish writers of Romania.
Between the Two World Wars
In March 1919 the Zionist leadership of Galati published a program of Jewish demands to be presented at the Versailles peace negotiations. It demanded complete political, cultural, and religious autonomy for Jews as a national minority. Under the influence of the young Zionist leaders, the uep rejected the attempts of the Romanian government to evade again the problem of Jewish citizenship by involved juridical proceedings, as was the case after the Congress of Berlin in 1878. The Jewish population followed the instructions of the uep leaders and boycotted the government's equivocal laws on Jewish citizenship. Romanian Zionists, together with delegates from the uep, were included in the Comité des Délégations Juives at the Versailles Peace Conference. After the Jews finally obtained collective naturalization in 1920 as a result of the Versailles peace treaty, there remained the problem of Jewish participation in elections and in the political life of the country. The uep supported the idea of Jewish candidates. Therefore, in the next year, the uep joined the Zionists in presenting a separate Jewish list. Because of fraudulent election procedures, not one Jewish deputy was elected. It was only in 1926 that the first Jewish national deputies entered parliament, but they were representatives of territories annexed by Romania after the war: Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transylvania.
The Zionist Organization in the rest of Romania went on with its policy of neutrality in internal politics. In 1919, at a Zionist conference in Bucharest, it was decided to transfer the central headquarters from Galați to Bucharest and to draw the leadership more and more from the younger generation. In the new era after the Balfour Declaration, Zionism became a mass movement whose principal activity was the collection of funds. In 1924 the Zionist group Renaşterea Noastrã ("Our Revival") was created, many of whose members had belonged to the student association Hasmonaea. Later, Renaşterea became affiliated with the radical Zionist faction. In 1930, as a result of Renaşterea's initiative, the Jewish Party was created in Muntenia and Moldavia; it included Zionists, especially from the intellectual younger generation. Along with the Jewish-national deputies elected from the annexed territories, such as Michael Landau from Bessarabia, S. Singer and Mişu Weissman were elected to parliament from Muntenia and Moldavia in 1931 and 1932, respectively. At the same time such Zionist groups as Ẓe'irei Zion, Po'alei Zion, Mizrachi, and the Revisionists were formed. Zionist leadership had been drawn from the ranks of the General Zionists until 1930, when the first coalition of radicals and Ẓe'irei Zion was elected to the leadership. The Zionist youth movements remained organized along the traditional lines existing in the World Zionist Organization.
In 1920 Romania's Zionist Organization tried to create a school for teachers of Hebrew at Jassy, but it only functioned one year because the Romanian authorities refused to authorize it. In 1925 a hakhsharah farm to train ḥalutzim (pioneers for Palestine) was created in Jassy. Between the two world wars Zionist organizations functioned in 71 Romanian towns, and a central Zionist Council was established in Bucharest. wizo, which had 5,000 members in its branches in 33 towns, set up 17 kindergartens in which the language of instruction was Hebrew. It also established the agricultural and housekeeping school Ayanot at Nes Ẓiyyonah in Palestine. On Mt. Carmel between 1922 and 1925, 3,500 dunams (875 acres) of land were acquired by a Romanian group and given the name Aḥuzah (actually Aḥuzat Herbert Samuel), on which some of its 1,000 members settled. Another Romanian society bought land in the Haifa Bay area.
The Zionist Press
During the interwar period, many Zionist magazines were issued in Romanian. Among the more important publications were: Ştiri din lumea Evreiascaˇ ("News from the Jewish World"), the official organ of the Zionist Organization; Renaşterea Noastrã ("Our Revival"), the organ of the radical group, which also expressed the point of view of the Jewish Party; Drumuri Noi ("New Roads"), first the Revisionist organ, then the organ of the Jewish State party; and Tribuna Evreiascaˇ ("The Jewish Platform"; Jassy). In addition, the monthly magazine Hasmonaea, organ of the Zionist students, was published regularly.
World War ii Period
After the invasion of Poland in 1939, Romania became a transit route for aliyah from Eastern Europe. Britain, however, pressured the Romanian government to stop the flow of aliyah from and through the country. At the beginning of 1940 the collection of Zionist funds was forbidden, but it was authorized again on Feb. 26, 1940, under the condition that the Zionist leadership would not encourage emigration. In September 1940, however, the government of Ion *Antonescu, which approved of Jewish emigration, came to power and negotiations were held between Zionists and the government on emigration plans. The Zionist Organization continued to work even after December 1941, when all other Jewish organizations were dissolved. The Zionist Organization was dissolved only in August 1942, by the order of Gustav Richter, Eichmann's agent in Romania. However, the Zionist leadership and youth movements clandestinely continued their activities, while the semi-official organ of the German legation, Bukarester Tageblatt, carried on a defamatory campaign against the Zionists. The Romanian government continued to negotiate with the Zionists about emigration, and at the same time a Jewish underground, in which Zionist leaders also participated, was formed. From the beginning of 1939 until the very capitulation of Romania in August 1944, 31 ships with more than 13,000 emigrants, some of whom were refugees from Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, left from Romanian harbors. The Palestine Office of the Zionist Organization in Bucharest succeeded in continuing its activity in the guise of a travel agency. Detecting these underground activities, the Germans initiated the imprisonment of the leaders of the Zionist Organization and the youth movements in January and February of 1944. Diplomatic intervention, especially by the International Red Cross, obtained their release, however. Imminent German defeat and the approach of the Allies allowed A.L. Zissu, a Zionist leader, to obtain from Romanian ministers in June 1944 the authorization to create an emigration office which was to serve as a cover for the underground Zionist Executive. In order to report on the situation of Jews in Romania, the Zionist leaders maintained contact secretly with the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem during the whole period of underground activity.
Post-World War ii Period
Soon after the cessation of hostilities in Romania in August 1944, the Zionist Organization resumed its legal activity and attracted many members because of the desire of most Jews to emigrate. The Zionist parties and youth organizations were reestablished, and Zionist weekly magazines began to appear. From 1944 to 1948 a Zionist publishing house, Bicurim, published about 80 volumes of translations from Hebrew literature and works of Zionist history and ideology. Although Britain continued to restrict Jewish migration to Palestine according to the White Paper of 1939, 30,000 Romanian Jews entered Palestine "illegally" before 1948. After World War ii the Jewish Communists founded the Jewish Democratic Committee, in which at first the Zionist Socialists also participated. But the latter were eliminated after the creation of the State of Israel as the Jewish Democratic Committee started an anti-Zionist campaign. As a result of the pressure exerted by the Jewish Democratic Committee, the Zionist Organization and its constituent parties were forced to dissolve at the end of 1948. During the summer of 1950 the leaders of the Zionists and the Zionist youth movements were arrested, tried, and condemned to prison. Some were accused of spying and others of inciting against the Communist regime. Finally, in 1955, under a general political amnesty, the leaders were liberated. (Three of them died in prison and some others soon after their arrival in Israel.) From the end of 1949 until the end of 1952 112,652 Romanian Jews left for Israel. Then, for a period of ten years, emigration was effectively stopped, only to start again at various times since 1962. The Jewish Democratic Committee was dissolved in 1953. All in all, about three-quarters of the Romanian Jews who survived the Nazi terror went to Israel.
[Theodor Lavi]
In Russia
Theodor Herzl's activities engendered a revival among the Ḥovevei Zion movement in Russia, and large new groups joined the movement, which soon encompassed masses of people. The number of Zionist societies in Russia increased from 23 to 373 in 1897, the year of the First Zionist Congress. There were 877 societies by May 1899; 1,034 in 1900; and 1,572 in 1903–04. At the First Zionist Congress the Russian delegation accounted for one-third of all the delegates (66 out of 197), among them L. Motzkin, H. Schapira, M. Mandelstamm, V. Tiomkin, and M.M. Ussishkin, and four delegates from Russia were elected there to the Zionist General Council, each of them with a specific function. Y. *Bernstein-Cohen of Kishinev headed the Zionist center of correspondence in Russia (the so-called "Post Bureau"), Mandelstamm was responsible for financial matters. Rabbi S. Mohilever of Bialystok headed the center for cultural activities, and I. Jasinowski of Warsaw headed the center for Zionist literature. For all practical purposes the "Post Bureau" became the organizational center of the Zionist movement in Russia until before the Fifth Zionist Congress (Basle, 1901), when it was replaced by the office of information headed by V. Jacobson. The delegates divided the country into districts and held district conferences. In 1898, prior to the Second Zionist Congress (Basle, 1898), the majority of the first Russian Zionists convened in Warsaw consisting of 160 delegates from 93 cities and towns, among them 14 Orthodox rabbis, supported the demand that the practical settlement activity in Ereẓ Israel continue, as against the position of the "political" Zionists, who supported Herzl's concept that small-scale "infiltration" into the country might harm the prospects of achieving the Charter. Eventually a compromise decision was formulated. The demand of the rabbis at the Zionist Congress to create a rabbinic committee to supervise Zionist cultural work was rejected. Rabbi E.A. Rabinowich of Poltava and other rabbis left the movement, became its opponents, and later organized in Kovno, together with other ultra-Orthodox rabbis, Ha-Lishkah ha-Sheḥorah ("The Black Bureau"), which published books and pamphlets against the Zionist movement.
Among the Russian delegates at the Second Zionist Congress were Chaim Weizmann, Nahum Sokolow, and Shemaryahu Levin, who played increasingly dominant roles in the Zionist movement. At the Fourth Zionist Congress (London,
1900) Russian Zionists were represented by more than 200 delegates, and at the Fifth Congress (Basle, 1901) the *Democratic Faction, headed by Weizmann, M. Buber, Motzkin, and B. Feiwel, was established. It demanded a much greater emphasis on Jewish education and culture on the part of the Zionist Organization. They were opposed by J.J. *Reines and the Orthodox wing forming the Mizrachi movement, which opposed the anticipated secular character of Zionist cultural activity.
The second All-Russian Zionist Conference was held in 1902 in Minsk (see *Minsk Conference) with the participation of 500 delegates, representing some 75,000 shekel holders. It was the only legal Zionist conference in czarist Russia and aroused much public interest. About 160 delegates represented Mizrachi and about 60 represented the Democratic Faction. After a long and stormy debate on education, a compromise was reached recognizing both educational trends, the secular and the religious.
In 1903 the Russian delegation to the Sixth Zionist Congress (Basle) were the prime movers of the opposition to the Uganda Scheme, which was finally rejected (after Herzl's death) at the Seventh Congress (Basle, 1905), where a minority group seceded and created the Jewish Territorial Organization (see *Territorialism). While territorialism did not gain much ground among most Zionists in Russia, its influence grew in the budding Zionist labor movement. The Zionist Socialists (called ss according to their Russian name Sionisty Sotsialisty) repudiated the solution of the Jewish problem in Ereẓ Israel, devoting their main attention to Jewish migration, which they believed would eventually lead to settlement on a specific territory and thus solve the Jewish problem. Another group in Russian Jewry, known as the "Sejmists," rejected both Zionist and territorialist solutions and advocated instead the struggle for officially recognized Jewish national autonomy in the Diaspora countries. The Zionist Socialist movement Po'alei Zion, under the leadership of B. *Borochov, emerged in 1905–06. Another movement of Socialist-oriented moderate Zionists was Ẓe'irei Zion, which eventually became linked to Ha-Po'el ha-Ẓa'ir in Ereẓ Israel. These movements, which represented Labor Zionism in Russia, soon became popular among the younger generation and the intelligentsia. The main force opposing Zionism in Russian Jewry was also a social democratic party, the Bund, which regarded Yiddish as the sole national language of the Jews and fought against the Zionists and against the cultivation of modern Hebrew.
Prior to the 1905 Revolution, the Zionist movement in Russia abstained from any participation in Russian politics. This abstention was based on the original Zionist concept of "negation of the Diaspora" and rejection of the possibility of Jewish national existence in Russia. The 1905 Revolution brought a radical change in this position. An All-Russian Zionist Conference, known as the Helsingfors Conference (1906) formulated a new Zionist program, that of "synthetic Zionism," which combined the basic negation of Jewish future in exile with the struggle not only for equal rights in the existing Diaspora, but also for the right of self-determination as a national minority group (see *Helsingfors Program). Consequently the Zionists nominated their own candidates in the election to the First Duma, and five out of 12 elected Jewish deputies were Zionists. In the Second Duma one of six Jewish delegates elected was a Zionist. When the czarist government renewed its political repression in 1907, the Zionist movement, like other political trends in Russia, became practically paralyzed.
The Legal Status
Russian Zionists did not request official permission to organize because they did not expect to receive such legitimation for a movement whose world center was located abroad. At first, although the authorities knew of the Zionist activities, on the whole they did not interfere. Later a change for the worse took place in the official attitude toward the Zionist movement and to Jews in general, which culminated in the spring of 1903 in the Kishinev pogrom. In June 1903 the czarist minister of the interior, Plehve, issued a directive prohibiting any Zionist activity in Russia. Herzl then traveled to Russia in order to influence the Russian government in favor of Zionism and to abolish the anti-Zionist decree. Plehve promised Herzl that the government would not interfere, provided that the Zionists did not engage in the organization of Russian Jewry on a national scale, but rather encouraged emigration.
The attitude of the authorities, however, did not improve substantially. The holding of public meetings was prohibited. The Zionists were able, however, to continue their educational and cultural activities, the collection of shekels, and the sale of shares of the Jewish Colonial Trust. Though in November 1904 a Zionist delegation learned from the liberal minister of the interior, Sviatopolsk-Mirsky, that the movement would not be persecuted, a turn for the worse took place again. The resolutions of the Helsingfors Conference increased the government's suspicions. The Zionist Organization was declared illegal. Licenses for local groups named "Palestine" were revoked, and activities on behalf of the Jewish National Fund (jnf) were prohibited (1907). Then David Wolffsohn, president of the World Zionist Organization, went to St. Petersburg (1908) and was promised that activity for the jnf and the Jewish Colonial Trust would be facilitated but the Zionist Organization would not be legalized. In 1910 the persecutions increased, and when the Zionist central committee of Russia met in Moscow with the Russian members of the Zionist General Council, some of them, including the editor of Haolam, A. *Druyanow, were brought to trial. The central committee was then transferred to St. Petersburg and the editorial board of Haolam to Odessa (1912). The police did not harm the editorial board of the Zionist weekly Razsvet and Zionist leaders in St. Petersburg.
The Second and Third Aliyah
The pogroms in Kishinev and Gomel and other forms of oppression, together with the deep disappointment caused by the failure of the 1905 Revolution, stimulated a renewed movement of migration and settlement in Ereẓ Israel. Israel *Belkind went from Ereẓ Israel to Russia seeking support to establish an agricultural school there for the orphans of the Kishinev pogrom. M. Ussishkin, in his pamphlet Our Program, and Josef *Vitkin's call from Ereẓ Israel to Jewish youth in the Diaspora for aliyah and settlement, contributed to a new wave of pioneering migration. Thus the Second Aliyah started, and it included members of different trends, such as Ẓe'irei Zion, Po'alei Zion, Bilu he-Ḥadash, etc. Among the pioneers were men like Berl *Katznelson, David Ben-Gurion, Izhak Ben-Zvi, Joseph *Sprinzak, and others who later became leaders of the yishuv and the Zionist movement during the Mandatory period and during Israel's independence. Middle-class settlers from Russia participated in founding a residential neighborhood near Jaffa, Aḥuzat Bayit, which became Tel Aviv. Settlement societies were founded in various cities in Russia. After World War i the Third Aliyah started as a movement of survivors of the pogroms in the Ukraine and of pioneers who followed Joseph *Trumpeldor.
The Russian Revolution of February 1917 removed all the official obstacles from the Zionist movement, which immediately grew tremendously. An All-Russian Zionist Conference met in Petrograd on May 24, 1917, and its 552 delegates represented 140,000 shekel holders (in 1913 there were only 26,000 shekel holders). The conference reaffirmed the Helsingfors Program and succeeded in drafting a unified program of all Zionist groups for the forthcoming elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly. The newly elected central committee was instructed to take the initiative in convening an All-Russian Jewish Congress. This conference, the first after 1902, was attended by Trumpeldor, who spread his idea about creating a Jewish army to march through the Caucasus to Ereẓ Israel. About 20 delegates supported Jabotinsky's pro-British activity in establishing the Jewish Legion, but the overwhelming majority adhered to the official Zionist neutralism in the World War. The Balfour Declaration of Nov. 2, 1917, which put an end to this neutralist position, made Zionism the dominant trend in Russian Jewry, and in the elections to the All-Russian Jewish Congress the Zionists received the majority of votes. Wartime conditions made the meeting of the Congress impossible, but a Jewish National Council was established in which the various Jewish parties were represented in proportion to the number of seats they had won in the elections to the congress. The Zionists also maintained the Tarbut organization with a network of more than 250 Hebrew-language schools and other educational institutions.
The October (Bolshevik) Revolution of 1917 did not, at first, affect Zionist activities. A Palestine Week, proclaimed in spring 1918, was successfully conducted in hundreds of Jewish communities. Palestine Offices were established in various cities, among them Petrograd and Minsk. Efforts were made to mobilize private capital for investment in Palestine, and various companies were established for the construction of residential and business premises, an oil refinery in Haifa, etc. Trumpeldor founded the *He-Ḥalutz movement. A conference of 149 delegates from 40 Jewish communities in central Russia, which took place in Moscow in July 1918, had a Zionist majority. In the Ukraine, where the Soviet regime was finally established in February 1919, the Zionist movement was in 1918 the dominant force in Ukrainian Jewry. In the elections to Jewish community councils (kehillot) there, the Zionists received 54.5% of the vote, and in the elections to the provisional Jewish National Council of the Ukraine in November 1918, about 54% voted for Zionist candidates.
Liquidation and Resurrection in the U.S.S.R.
Under Soviet rule Zionism soon became the object of repression and persecution. Zionist parties and organizations were outlawed, their clandestine meetings and regional conferences dispersed by force, and their participants and delegates arrested. The Hebrew language itself was gradually proscribed. Some underground Zionist activity continued, however, in the first decade of the Soviet regime, including the emergence of the pioneering youth movement Ha-Shomer ha-Ẓa'ir as an important factor among young Zionists striving to reach Palestine. In the forefront of the anti-Zionist campaign stood the "Jewish section" (*Yevsektsiya) of the ruling Bolshevik party, whose task it was to eradicate "clericalism" and "bourgeois nationalism" from Jewish life. Various attempts made in the 1920s to achieve a permissive, or at least tolerant, attitude to some aspects of Zionist activity, mainly in the cultural field and emigration to Palestine (such as the semi-official negotiations of the member of the Zionist Executive, M.D. Eder, during his visit to Moscow in 1921 or the exchanges of a Moscow Zionist, Isaac Rabinovich, with high-ranking Soviet personalities in 1926) proved futile. However, until the late 1920s a number of Jews convicted for Zionist activities were allowed to leave for Palestine.
From 1949, and particularly in 1952–53, "Zionism" became an odious catchword in Stalin's anti-Jewish campaigns (see *Slánsky Trials, *Doctors' Plot). After Stalin's death this trend was dormant for several years, until it emerged again under Khrushchev in the 1960s and with particular virulence after the Six-Day War of 1967, when the almost daily attacks against "World Zionism" in the Soviet mass media and "political-education" system achieved an intensity similar to the antisemitic propaganda of czarist times. Meanwhile, from 1948 Soviet Jews showed more and more signs of interest in, and attachment to, the State of Israel, demonstrating their sympathy for it and often their desire to migrate and settle there. These demonstrations took various forms, from many thousands of Jews attending synagogues when members of the Israeli diplomatic mission came to pray or many young Jews who came to greet Israeli delegations to international youth festivals, Israeli sports teams, or folk singers visiting the U.S.S.R., to the famous mass gatherings of Jewish youth singing Hebrew songs and openly declaring their attachment to the Jewish nation and to Israel on Simhat Torah in and around synagogues of Moscow, Leningrad, and other cities.
This movement became more and more pronounced and daring from 1969, when an increasing number of Jews from various Soviet regions addressed fully signed petitions and protests to the Soviet authorities, the government of Israel, the United Nations, and even to Communist parties in the West, demanding their right – under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights signed by the U.S.S.R., and a convention including a clause that every person has the right to leave any country, including his own, recently ratified by the Supreme Soviet – to leave the Soviet Union for "repatriation to the Jewish ancestral homeland in Israel." There is evidence that this spontaneous movement – which can be defined as "neo-Zionist" – also encompassed private groups of young Jews studying Hebrew, Jewish history, about the State of Israel, etc. The Soviet authorities, particularly the security services, attempted to deter them by arrests, show trials, and other measures of intimidation, but the Jews maintained their campaign for the right to settle in Israel. For further details see *Russia.
[Israel Klausner]
In South Africa
The Zionist Organization found enthusiastic support in South Africa among the new immigrants, mostly from Lithuania, rather than among the Anglicized minority of the "old-timers." The first Zionist associations were established in Cape Town (1897) and Johannesburg (1898). By the end of 1898, a dozen Zionist societies with some 5,000 members were already in existence. A year later the first women's Zionist association was set up in Pretoria. As early as December 1898, 12 years before the Union of South Africa came into being as a political entity, the South African Zionist Federation, including Zionist bodies on the whole South African subcontinent, was established. It was represented at the Third Zionist Congress in Basle (1899) by two delegates. After the Boer War, which impeded the growth of the movement, the Zionist Federation was recognized by the authorities as representative of South African Jewry and entrusted with official tasks, such as the repatriation of Jewish war refugees. Later, this official recognition was transferred to the general communal organization, the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, which, in the course of years, sometimes experienced competition and friction with the federation, but mostly worked in friendly cooperation with it.
In 1908 the Zionist Record was founded in Johannesburg as the official organ of the federation; it became the most important South African Jewish newspaper. The sympathies of the leaders of the Afrikaans community, like the generals Louis Botha and J.B.M. Hertzog, were conducive to the progress of Zionism and to its high standing in the country. Field Marshall Jan Christiaan *Smuts was an avowed friend of Zionism and one of the architects of the Balfour Declaration. In later years the Zionist Federation secured his powerful support whenever a major crisis threatened the Zionist cause.
The financial contributions of South African Jewry to the Zionist funds have been outstanding. From 1926 South Africa occupied the second place in the world (after the U.S.) in fundraising for the Keren Hayesod; its per capita contribution – £1.16 in the 1920s – was by far the largest. The federation's growth is also reflected by the following figures: in 1921 there were 177 bodies affiliated with it, in 1930 about 200, and in 1949 no fewer than 350. Also the Rhodesias, Kenya, and even Belgian Congo then belonged to its jurisdiction. In 1932 the South African Women's Zionist Council was established to coordinate women's work for all Zionist purposes. It became affiliated with wizo and in 1967 numbered some 16,000 members. The South African Zionist Federation also has a notably strong following among youth. A census taken shortly before the 30th South African Zionist Conference in 1967 showed that four youth movements affiliated with the federation numbered 6,800 active members, divided into 297 units throughout the country, and led by 556 youth group workers.
South African Zionists distinguished themselves as a highly efficient movement that succeeded in assuming and retaining leadership of the Jewish community at large. They have attained outstanding achievements in the fields of organization, financial support of Israel, the building up of an impressive network of schools, and in aliyah. About 6,000 Jews from South Africa settled in Israel, including members of collective settlements, men of private initiative, scientists, and public servants.
The South African Zionist Federation has been headed by able leaders, from S. Goldreich (first chairman) to H. Morris and N. Kirschner to B. Gering and I.A. Maisels. Under the successive direction of Jack Alexander, Zvi Infeld, and Sidney Berg, it gained a reputation for its organizational structure and efficiency. Divided geographically into provincial councils and functionally into some 20 departments, it covers a variety of Zionist activities, including fundraising, and embraces all the Zionists of the country, both party members and independents. Up to the early 1930s parties played no significant role in the federation; later the Zionist Revisionists and the Zionist Socialists became especially prominent. It was not until 1946 that the Executive of the federation was elected on a party basis, but it continued to include nonparty members. The number of shekel holders was exceptionally high; it sometimes approached and even exceeded 50% of the adult Jewish population (43,605 shekels in 1946 and 42,949 in 1960).
During World War ii the federation also aided refugees passing through South Africa and accorded valuable material and moral support to the "illegal immigrants" who had been deported from Palestine and detained in Mauritius. In 1943 the federation arranged a "plebiscite," and its three points – to open the gates of Palestine to Jewish immigration, to set up a Jewish army, and to establish Palestine as a Jewish Commonwealth – were endorsed by 37,000 Jews. No fewer than 3,000 volunteers offered their services in the War of Independence (1948), and 700 were accepted and fought in Israel. During the period of the Six-Day War, 782 volunteers arrived in Israel from South Africa, but several times this number had registered.
[Aharon Zwergbaum]
In the United States
Jewish immigrants who came to the United States from Eastern Europe in the early 1880s brought the ideas of the Ḥibbat Zion movement with them, and by 1890. Ḥovevei Zion organizations existed in the large Jewish communities of New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Boston, Philadelphia, and Cleveland. At the same time, newspapers propagating Ḥibbat Zion ideas appeared, two of which were Shulamit, edited by J.I. *Bluestone in Yiddish, and Ha-Pisgah ("The Summit," 1888–89), a Hebrew paper edited by W. Schur. Following a mass meeting in New York on May 4, 1898, supporters of Zionism established an organization which Die Welt called the Zentralverein der amerikanischen Zionisten. Other Zionist organizations appeared in the months before the First Zionist Congress at Basle (1897). Opposition was expressed by upper-class Jews and Reform rabbis. The *Central Conference of American Rabbis passed a resolution in July 1897 denouncing Zionism in sharp terms:
Resolved that we totally disapprove of any attempt for the establishment of a Jewish state. Such attempts show a misunderstanding of Israel's mission which, from the narrow political and national field, has been expanded to the promotion among the whole human race of the broad and universalistic religion first proclaimed by the Jewish prophets.
By 1898 two major Zionist organizations developed in New York City: the Federation of Zionist Societies of Greater New York, under the leadership of Richard *Gottheil, and the League of Zionist Societies of the United States of North America, under Rabbi Philip *Klein and Michael Singer. They united in February 1898 into the Federation of Zionists of Greater New York and Vicinity. Consolidation at the national level in July 1898 resulted in the establishment of the Federation of American Zionists (faz), under the presidency of Gottheil, with Stephen S. Wise as first secretary.
Despite initial progress, the faz encountered great organizational difficulties. Many Zionist organizations did not recognize its authority. The most recalcitrant were the scores of independent Zionist organizations in New York based on *landsmannschaften and in Chicago on the Knights of Zion, who organized in October 1898 under the leadership of Leon Zolotkoff. Only in 1913 did the Knights accept the authority of the faz. Another obstacle to the growth of the faz was the opposition to Zionism from the left, i.e., from East European immigrants who adhered to Socialist organizations and regarded socialism and trade unionism as the solution to Jewish problems as well. Difficulties were increased by the reluctance of the membership, which was primarily from Eastern Europe, to accept the leadership of "Germans," who differed from them in their way of life as well as social class.
In 1902 Jacob de *Haas moved to the U.S. as editor of the faz's official paper, The Maccabean, and secretary of the organization. He tried to cope with the various organizational and administrative difficulties and to include more organizations under Richard Gottheil's leadership. De Haas instituted the "Shekel Day" and developed elaborate Zionist propaganda. Nevertheless, the faz was plagued by financial difficulties. In 1904 Gottheil resigned and Harry *Friedenwald became president. In early 1905 de Haas also resigned and was replaced by Judah Magnes as secretary. With the two new leaders, the Zionist orientation of the faz changed. Gottheil and de Haas were "political Zionists" who supported Herzl on the Uganda issue, whereas Friedenwald and Magnes were "cultural Zionists" who tried to adapt Zionism to the American scene. Other important cultural Zionists were Solomon Schechter, president of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Israel *Friedlaender, also of the Seminary, a Bible scholar and communal leader. These "cultural Zionists" saw Zionism as a renaissance of traditional Jewish values and check on assimilation. Although Ereẓ Israel was for them a cultural center, they did not negate the Diaspora, which they viewed as equal in importance.
The first Labor Zionist (Po'alei Zion) organization was founded in New York City in March 1903. Its ancillary Jewish National Workers Alliance (Farband) was established as a benevolent organization in 1910, in part to attract members who might join the Socialist, anti-Zionist Workmen's Circle. In its initial stages, Po'alei Zion was rejected by the Socialists and regarded with suspicion by the Zionists. Labor Zionism combined Jewish national aspirations with a social philosophy dedicated to the establishment of a new political and economic order both in Ereẓ Israel and the Diaspora. During its first decade, the platform included as priorities: the furthering of Jewish settlement in Palestine, the struggle against assimilation, aid to Jewish workers, and the building of Yiddish folk schools. Its organs, Der Yidisher Kemfer (1905, with interruptions) and The Jewish Frontier (1934), exerted wide influence, especially in liberal and progressive circles outside Zionist ranks (the latter under the editorship of Ḥayyim *Greenberg).
In 1911 a new faz administration whose members were mostly East European was elected. Friedenwald remained honorary president, but the affairs of the organization were handed to the chairman of the executive, Louis *Lipsky. He shared the burden with his associates Abraham Goldberg, Bernard *Rosenblatt, and Senior Abel, who founded the Yiddish organ of the movement, Dos Yidishe Folk (1909). Until World War i attempts were made to improve administration, notably by Henrietta *Szold, who functioned as secretary between 1910 and 1911. Newly founded organizations gradually established ties with the faz: Po'alei Zion, Hadassah Women's Organization, founded by Henrietta Szold (1912), and the Mizrachi Organization of America (1914). The latter was established in 1911 by Meir Berlin (*Bar-Ilan). In time it became the backbone of the World Mizrachi Organization by virtue of its numbers and resources.
World War i and After
Early in 1914 the Federation of American Zionists, and American Zionism, was small and weak; its membership was static and it was suffering from financial stress. It did enjoy the support of the Day and Morning Journal, two leading Yiddish dailies. The Forward, however, was sharply anti-Zionist out of socialist conviction until it became more sympathetic during the 1920s. With the outbreak of World War i, international Zionist activity became largely centered in the U.S., where the Provisional Committee for General Zionist Affairs (pzc) was established. Louis D. Brandeis, who had his first contact with Zionism through Jacob de Haas, Nahum Sokolow, and Bernard *Richards, accepted its chairmanship. He took up his role with great energy and drew to the Zionist movement Felix *Frankfurter, Louis Kirstein, and Bernard *Flexner, all of whom were also attracted by its democratic and progressive ideas. Under Brandeis' able leadership, the financial situation of the faz improved, and membership and political influence increased. Brandeis and his associates were influenced through Horace *Kallen and others by the idea of cultural pluralism, the essence of which is that America is a nation of nations in which different cultures are blended. This theory served to reconcile "Americanism" with Zionism.
After Brandeis' elevation to the Supreme Court in June 1916, he resigned as active chairman but continued to lead the faz through his associates, notably de Haas. In 1916 the Po'alei Zion and Mizrachi organizations withdrew from the Provisional Zionist Committee, and in 1917 the federation reorganized all its branches into the *Zionist Organization of America (zoa), which was based on territorial districts. Brandeis became honorary president, Judge Julian W. *Mack president, Stephen S. Wise and Harry Friedenwald vice presidents.
After the war Brandeis visited Palestine and formed plans to build its future on the basis of large-scale investment and centrally controlled public corporations. He wanted the zoa to collect funds for specific economic projects. At the London Conference of 1920 his views clashed with those of Weizmann, who wanted to found the Keren Hayesod as a general fund to improve the economy and settlement methods of Palestine, as well as to establish educational institutions. The Brandeis group refused to accept the decisions of the World Zionist Organization, represented by Weizmann. At the Cleveland convention of the zoa in 1921, in which the issues were debated, a majority rejected Brandeis' views, and as a result he and his close associates seceded from the mainstream of Zionist activity in the U.S. and concentrated their efforts on fostering the economic development of Palestine, as, e.g., through the Palestine Economic Corporation. Louis Lipsky, who led the opposition to Brandeis, became president, with Abraham Goldberg, Emanuel Neumann, Morris *Rothenberg, and others as his collaborators. The Lipsky administration remained in office until 1930. During this period the zoa concentrated on fundraising but was not very successful. It established the Keren Hayesod in the United States.
Article 4 of the League of Nations Mandate had made specific provision for the recognition of a "Jewish agency" to advise and cooperate with the administration of Palestine as representative of the Jewish people U.S. Jewry, by reason of its tremendous numbers and resources, was a decisive factor in "enlarging" the Jewish Agency. Louis Marshall, the leading American "non-Zionist," convened two nonpartisan conferences to consider Palestine problems in 1924 and 1925. These meetings resulted in proposals to include non-Zionist representation in an enlarged Jewish Agency. The proposal to enlarge the Agency by the co-option of non-Zionists was also approved in principle by the Zionist Congress in 1927, and in that year, following publication of a preliminary agreement between Weizmann and Marshall, a Joint Palestine Survey Commission was appointed. It made recommendations for practical work in Palestine upon which both Zionists and non-Zionists could agree. In August 1929 the constitution of the enlarged Agency was approved and the Americans received the largest number of the 112 seats allotted to non-Zionists (44). However, due to the death of Marshall, the onset of the economic depression, the subsequent political events, and the disorganization of the American section of the Jewish Agency, the Zionists continued to control all activities and policies of the Agency.
The riots in Palestine in 1929, coupled with the U.S. economic crisis, further lowered the morale of the zoa, whose membership declined to 8,000. There was a general clamor for Brandeis' return. At the convention in 1930, an executive committee of 18, composed mainly of Brandeis' circle, was elected with Robert *Szold its chairman from 1930 to 1932. From 1932 to 1936 Morris Rothenberg functioned as president; Stephen S. Wise succeeded him from 1936 to 1938, followed by Solomon *Goldman in 1938, Edmund Kaufmann in 1940 and Judge Louis E. *Levinthal in 1941.
World War ii
With the outbreak of World War ii, the zoa formed the American Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs, which later became the American Zionist Emergency Council, presided over by Stephen Wise and Abba Hillel Silver. On May 9–11, 1942, at New York's Biltmore Hotel, a Zionist Convention consisting of delegates of the zoa, Hadassah, Mizrachi, and Po'alei Zion enacted the Biltmore Program which defined the postwar Zionist aim as the establishment of Palestine as a Jewish Commonwealth. From 1945 the Zionist Emergency Council directed the energies and propaganda of the movement to influence the entire Jewish community, the U.S. government, and public opinion to support its demands in Palestine. Through these efforts American Zionists contributed decisively to the political prerequisites for the establishment of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948.
During and after the war, a dissident group, called at first Committee for a Jewish Army and later the Hebrew Committee for National Liberation, agitated in the U.S., mainly through newspaper advertisements, by expounding and supporting the ideas and acts of the Irgun Ẓeva'i Le'ummi (iẒl) in Palestine. The group was headed by an iẒl leader, Hillel Kook (who appeared in America under the name of Peter Bergson), and enlisted the support of several prominent Jews and non-Jews. The style and tactics of the "Bergson group" were the subject of sharp controversies in Zionist circles, particularly among Revisionists and their sympathizers.
In addition to their efforts in the political field, American Zionists were among the most active participants in practical aid to the yishuv in its struggle after 1945; they helped with "illegal" immigration, the Beriḥah, secret shipment of arms to the Haganah, and great sums of money. The greatest number of volunteers to the yishuv's fighting forces, which were called Mitnaddevei Ḥuẓ la-Areẓ (*Maḥal), came from the United States. However, only after World War ii, under the impact of the Nazi Holocaust in Europe and, later, the establishment of the State of Israel, did Zionism become accepted by the bulk of the Jewish community in America.
Opposition to Zionism
From the beginning Zionism had encountered great opposition, especially from Reform Judaism. Among the staunchest, most influential opponents were rabbis Emil G. *Hirsch and Kaufmann *Kohler. Other prominent Reform rabbis, however, such as Gustav *Gottheil, Jacob *Raisin, Bernard *Felsenthal, and Maximilian *Heller supported the movement. In 1907 professors Max *Margolis, Henry *Malter, and Max Schloessinger, all strong sympathizers with Zionism, resigned from the *Hebrew Union College faculty, while the Zionists charged that they were forced to resign by the College's anti-Zionist president Kohler. Among the younger generation, Stephen S. Wise, Judah L. Magnes, and Abba Hillel Silver were notable exceptions to the anti-Zionism of the Reform rabbinate. The main body of the Central Conference of American Rabbis was anti-Zionist and delivered pronouncements against Zionism until 1920. After the Balfour Declaration (1917) and the San Remo decision on Palestine (1920), the Reform movement adopted, although unofficially, a position of non-Zionism which allowed cooperation with Zionists in philanthropic enterprises. In 1935 they revised their collective negative stand on Zionism in favor of individual choice, and further conciliation occurred after the "Columbus Platform" of 1937. A small minority group, however, continued with its opposition to Zionism.
In November 1942 the *American Council for Judaism was formed, composed of Reform rabbis and influential lay leaders, such as Lessing *Rosenwald, with Rabbi Elmer Berger as its head. The Central Conference of American Rabbis tried to halt this split within its ranks, but to no avail. Whereas the Reform movement as a whole tended to pro-Zionism, the Council continued its anti-Zionist activities and upon the establishment of the State of Israel it stated:
The State of Israel is not the state or homeland of the Jewish people: to Americans of Jewish faith it is a foreign state. Our single exclusive national identity is to the United States.
Jewish Orthodox circles were divided nearly from the beginning on the Zionist issue. While the Zionist Mizrachi and the Ha-Po'el ha-Mizrachi found many adherents among the East European Jews, Agudat Israel, a smaller but articulate group, was anti-Zionist out of conviction that Zionism was secularist and incompatible with Orthodox Judaism. Only during World War ii did these groups abate their anti-Zionism, and in 1945, with some internal opposition, Agudat Israel declared its willingness to cooperate with the Zionists. On the fringe of Orthodoxy, extremist opposition to Zionism was continued by the Satmar Rebbe Joel *Teitelbaum, who condemned the Zionists for trying to hasten the redemption by establishing a "heretical" state.
Within the lay leadership of American Jewry, Zionism at first found its strongest opponent in the *American Jewish Committee, whose leadership included at various times, among others, Mayer *Sulzberger, Cyrus *Adler, Irving *Lehman, Louis Marshall, Jacob *Schiff, Felix *Warburg, Oscar *Straus, Cyrus *Sulzberger, and Julius *Rosenwald, all wealthy, of German background, and non or anti-Zionists. After the Balfour Declaration, however, the Committee tacitly recognized the zoa as the representative of those Jews directly concerned with the welfare of Palestine, although within the American context the ajc, which was an unelected elite, opposed the "Congress Movement" during World War i, which was advanced by Zionists and based on mass support. During the 1920s the leaders of the ajc were approached by Weizmann in order to establish the enlarged Jewish Agency. Zionist "Diaspora nationalism," however, which the ajc saw as a threat to their position and patriotism, remained an issue of contention between them. Thus, opposition to the Zionists continued in various forms until January 1948, when Judge *Proskauer, under the pressure of the pro-Zionist Jewish consensus in the U.S., declared the committee's acceptance of the Jewish state recommended by the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (unscop). However, the ajc remained apprehensive about the status of American Jews in the light of a Jewish state. It was willing to support Israel while remaining independent of direct Israel interference in its affairs. In 1950 David Ben-Gurion, as prime minister, exchanged letters on the subject with Jacob *Blaustein, president of the ajc. Ben-Gurion stated that Israel represented only its own citizens and had no claim to speak in the name of the Jews in the Diaspora. The Jews of the United States, as a community and as individuals, owed political loyalty only to the United States, and the Jews in Israel had no intention of interfering in the affairs of Jewish communities abroad. The effect of these letters was the cooperation of the ajc with Israel within defined areas of agreement.
Mass Support and Fundraising
Dedicated supporters of the Zionist movement came from the ranks of Conservative Judaism. Solomon Schechter and his faculty at the Jewish Theological Seminary supported Zionism despite the objection of the Reform-oriented board of directors of the Seminary. The meetings of the Rabbinical Assembly of America were consistently characterized by expressions of sympathy for Zionism. The Reconstructionist movement, under the leadership of Rabbi Mordecai M. *Kaplan, also was always pro-Zionist. It viewed its endeavor in Palestine as a means to achieve a renaissance in Jewish life in America as well. Guided by Rabbi Kaplan's concept of "Jewish Peoplehood," Reconstructionist rabbis worked within the Zionist movement in order to achieve their twofold aim.
From the 1930s on, the zoa devoted more and more attention to fundraising, mainly in the United Palestine Appeal. There was considerable rivalry with non-Zionist overseas agencies, especially the *American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (jdc), for the allocation of funds raised in local communities. In 1939–40 the upa and jdc combined into the *United Jewish Appeal (uja). The frequent consequence of such cooperation was a lack of emphasis on Zionist ideology in Zionist circles. The situation changed from the 1940s when fund raising and political ideology became indistinguishable. Zionist fundraising became the almost universal expression of Jewish identification and communal participation. In April 1960, following criticism from a U.S. Senate committee and other sources of the practice of returning a small proportion of funds raised for Israel for educational activities in the U.S., an agreement was reached between the Jewish Agency and the leadership of the uja to establish an entirely American body, the Jewish Agency for Israel, Inc., to budget and allocate funds raised in the United States for immigrant needs in Israel. This body was charged with authorizing the expenditure in Israel of funds contributed in America, thus giving American Jewry a direct say and responsibility in administering its funds in Israel. Aid to Israel by Jews in the U.S. was channeled through the uja and other overseas agencies, and through the Israel Bond Organization. From 1948 through 1968, the uja provided over $1,100,000,000. In times of crisis for Israel, the sums collected reached unprecedented proportions, as evidenced at the time of the Six-Day War: in 1966 the sale of Israel Bonds totaled $11,000,000; in 1967, $175,000,000. In 1970–71, in the face of threats to Israel's security, the goal was the largest ever, $1,000,000,000. In addition to fundraising, private investment was fostered by bodies such as the Palestine Economic Corporation (pec). American contributors and investors were not only declared Zionists, but Jews who felt a sense of identification with the Jewish people. As a consequence, American Jewish philanthropy shifted its main priority from support of American Jewish causes to the support of Israel, and the distinction between philanthropic humanitarianism and political Zionism lost its practical significance.
Aliyah and Youth Movements
Aside from the increase in funds, there was also evidence of greater American immigration to Israel, the ultimate expression of commitment to Zionism. In the first three and a half years of the state's existence (May 1948–December 1951), out of a total of 684,201 immigrants to Israel, only 1,909 were Americans. Until 1961 immigration from the United States was less than 1.1% of the total number of immigrants. Between 1960 and 1967 immigration to Israel from the U.S. was 2,000 per year; immediately after the Six-Day War this figure rose to 5,000 per year. After 1967 a "grass roots" immigration movement started independent of the Jewish Agency, which in 1968 formed the Association of Americans and Canadians for Aliyah. The resolutions of the 27th Zionist Congress (Jerusalem, 1968) stated that all necessary help be extended to this and all other organizations seriously contemplating immigration. Immigration in 1970 and 1971 was approximately 7,000 annually. The Zionist movement in America financially assisted established educational institutions and youth movements (Iḥud Habonim, Young Judea, Bnei Akiva, etc.), summer camps, and also organized tours to Israel. In the 1950s and 1960s membership in these movements declined mostly as a result of the growing Jewish affiliation to the various religious movements and their youth groups.
Organizational and Cultural Impact
After World War ii, as a continuation of the framework created by the American Zionist Emergency Council, an American section of the Jewish Agency Executive was established in New York, consisting of leading members of the zoa, Hadassah, the Labor Zionists, and Mizrachi. They participated regularly in plenary sessions of the Executive, whose main center remained in Jerusalem.
In 1957 Mizrachi and Ha-Po'el ha-Mizrachi (founded in 1925) united into the Religious Zionists of America. The women's organizations of both groups, as well as their respective youth groups, Mizrachi ha-Ẓa'ir and Bnei Akiva, remained separate organizations. In 1923 Labor Zionism formed the Histadrut Campaign, which raised funds for the various institutions of the Histadrut in Israel. *Pioneer Women, founded in 1926, made its main function raising funds for the women's division of the Histadrut (Mo'eẓet ha-Po'alot). The youth affiliated to Labor Zionism, Habonim, administer summer camps and year-round social and cultural programs in North America.
In the late 1960s Zionists became concerned with increasing their propaganda activities through new tactics and approaches, especially on the American campuses where the New Left and black nationalists developed an explicit anti-Zionist ideology which denied Israel's right to exist and supported Arab aims to destroy Israel – an ideology which even attracted a number of Jewish students. Independent radical campus groups (e.g., the Radical Zionist Alliance; see below) emerged throughout the U.S. to counter this ideology from a Jewish point of view.
Partly under the impact of this Zionist revival in the new generation, an important reform took place in the structure of American Zionism. Instead of the relatively weak coordinating body called the American Zionist Council, in which the main parties and organizations were represented, the Zionist Federation of America was established in 1970. Zionist affiliation of individuals became henceforth possible without the intermediary of a particular party or organization.
The voluminous literature and extensive ideological debates on the relationship between American Jewry and Israel indicated the impact made on the Diaspora by the State of Israel. American Jews showed themselves more willing and ready to be identified as Jews, to affiliate with Jewish organizations and institutions, and to send their children to Jewish schools as a result of their ties to Israel. Israel occupies an important place in synagogue activities, sermons, and various religious celebrations, and Israel's Independence Day assumes an important place in the American Jewish calendar. The Israel flag is frequently displayed in synagogues and community centers. In many synagogues prayers for the welfare of the State of Israel and world Jewry are recited on Sabbaths and holidays following that for the welfare of the United States. Both the Conservative and Reform branches attempt to establish themselves in Israel through rabbinical schools and various educational programs.
Another impact of Israel has been the use of the Hebrew language in contrast to the decline of Yiddish. Hebrew songs and Israeli folk dances have become American Jewish popular culture: at weddings, bar mitzvot, and on many college campuses. Jewish art, which traditionally concentrated on East European themes, expanded to include Israeli symbols; Israeli crafts find a wide market among American Jews. Fiction on Israeli life increases rapidly and an extensive periodical literature is directed from Israeli institutions toward American Jewry.
Israel had a profound impact on the ideologies of American Jews. The anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism was the only American Jewish organization which claimed that any suggestions of an ethnic bond among Jews, especially the ideas of Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel, harmed the position of the Jews in America because it placed in question their loyalty to the United States. With the progress of the State of Israel and particularly after the Six-Day War, many of its members and supporters shifted to a more pro-Israel stance, and the Council's influence dwindled considerably. Agudat Israel, on the other hand, which before the establishment of the state held that any state not governed by halakhah would be illegitimate, accepted the State of Israel, as did almost all other Orthodox Jewish groups in America.
Jewish religious and welfare institutions in America, such as the National Council of Jewish Women, B'nai B'rith, and the Jewish War Veterans, as well as civic organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League and the National Communal Relations Advisory Council, all adopted an official stand of "non-Zionism." In practice, however, they supported the State of Israel and demands for an American policy of friendship toward Israel. As a consequence, they rejected the suggestion that Jewish ethnic traditions about Zionism and the existence of the State of Israel created conflicts of dual loyalty.
Religious and Ideological Issues
There were, however, issues of concern to some of these organizations. Orthodox Jewry in America felt itself intimately involved in the course of religious affairs in Israel and pressed the state to pursue official religious policies in accord with its own religious beliefs. Similarly, Israeli rabbis commanded influence and respect among similar circles in the United States. The Conservative and Reform movements, on the other hand, were concerned that the legal establishment of religious Orthodoxy in Israel involved discrimination against non-Orthodox Jews there. Some demanded the separation of state and religion or the adoption of forms of religious practice closer to their own points of view. The concern of the American religious groups implies that the religious forms practiced in Israel are of direct relevance to American Jews.
After the establishment of the State of Israel, controversies also arose between Israelis and American Zionists over their relationships in the future. The Americans demanded a separation of the activities of the state from those of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization, whereas the Israelis wanted Jerusalem to be the center of all the Zionist activities. In addition, there was a great controversy about the meaning of the Diaspora and the obligation to immigrate to Israel. The Americans claimed that America was not galut because Jews were secure and not oppressed there (Rose *Halprin) and that the Zionist Organization should not submit to the authority of Israel (Abba Hillel Silver). American Zionists wanted to be recognized as the liaison for all activities between American Jews and Israel. They demanded that, through legislation, Israel recognize their leading position in fundraising and practical work, a demand practically achieved in 1952 through the passage of the Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency Law in the Knesset and the covenant signed subsequently between the Israel government and the Jewish Agency.
American Zionists maintained that the most important issue for the Jews was their survival as a people. Since Jews will continue to live in the Diaspora, only a Zionism that recognized the essential ethnic elements of the Jewish people could keep them from cultural disintegration. For this reason a strong emphasis on cultural continuity, Hebrew, and a strong bond with Israel are the tasks of American Zionism (Ben *Halpern), although since 1967 the furtherance of aliyah from the U.S. also became a legitimate part of Zionist activity in America. In essence this is a neo-Aḥad Ha-Am position which sees Israel as the cultural center of the Jewish people but simultaneously dependent on the moral, political, and financial assistance of the Diaspora.
[Jehuda Reinharz]
jewish radical zionists in the u.s.
The First Generation of the American Jewish Student Movement, 1968–72.
We see ourselves as your children, the children of Jews who with great dedication concern themselves with the needs of the community, the children of Jews who bring comfort to the afflicted, give aid to the poor, who have built mammoth philanthropic organizations, who have aided the remnants of the Holocaust, who have given unfalteringly to the building of Israel, who give more per capita to charity than any other group in America. We are your children and affirm this, but, to paraphrase the Rabbinic aphorism, we want to be not only children – banim – but also builders – bonim. We want to participate with you in the building of a vision of a great Jewish community. It is when we think of this that we become dismayed with the reality of American Jewish life which we cannot reconcile with what you have taught us to cherish.
It took us several years to realize our confusion of form and essence and to recognize that there was more to Judaism than its poor expressions in the American Jewish community. For some it was a trip to Israel, for others it was the reading of Buber's I and Thou, for others an encounter with Ḥasidim, for others it was a traditional Jewish education redirected to confront existential problems, for others the exploration of self could not overlook the Jewish component. The Six Day War forced us to reassess our attachment in deciding to risk our lives if necessary on Israel's behalf. The black awakening reminded us that the melting pot dream was a fool's fantasy and that differences were legitimate. We woke up from the American dream and tried to discover who we really were. For many of us this now means turning our concerns inward into the Jewish community because we are disenchanted with the crass materialism of the larger society. Yet where can we find inspiration in the multi-million-dollar Jewish presences of suburbia? (from a speech by Hillel Levine, Nov. 1969)
Greening and Ethnicity
The Jewish Student Movement, born in the late 1960s, developed out of the American radical tradition and a groping for an authentic Jewish ethnicity that would permit both a highly visible Jewish commitment and an active concern for the social-political milieu.
The tolerant, permissive environment in which the American post-World War ii babies were brought up, in a world which knew both the threat of atom bombs and the ease of wealthy America, made for what has been called the "greening of America." "Greening" is the turning inward in search of roots, of community, and toward a celebration of self; it is a rejection of much of what super-industrialized, technologized America, with its overwhelming belief in progress, had brought, without shunning the blessings of that culture, the cheap transportation and mass communication that make possible the ferreting out of like minds.
By the mid-1960s, emerging black self-confidence, which was to become a paradigm of ethnicity and the engulfing anti-Vietnam war spirit were voiced by young voices – at a time when more and more students were shedding the powerless, lethargic modes of the 1950s for an aggressive, assertive mode of demanding. They demanded the right of self-expression, rather than the duties of an apprenticeship to adulthood. In the early 1960s a high proportion of the activists were Jewish, but what can be termed "low-profile Jewish." Their "high profile" applied to their activism. Some, however, influenced by spreading ethnicity ("work within your own community"), sought to identify themselves more consciously as Jews, i.e., to raise their Jewish profile – in greatly varying measures, of course, but clearly to raise it.
American youth, by then a subculture, asserted the right to play the socio-political games of life according to rules of their own. These rules, no doubt, had an ancestry in the collective memories to which these youths were the heirs; but they wished to choose, order, and stack the rules themselves. A tolerant America seemed to allow for this; the "greening of America" appeared to allow for the "greening of Judaism." It is in this "greening of Judaism," a radicalism precipitated in an ethnic mode, in which Jewish students after 1967, searching for their spiritual and/or primeval, and/or national, and/or cultural roots, began to make bids for power – the power necessary for the assertion of their will. To gain some perspective on their bids, we turn to some seasoned high-profile activists.
Low-Profile Jews, High-Profile Activists
Of the high-profile activists, low-profile Jews who exerted a shaping influence on the Left of the 1960s, Saul Alinsky and Paul Jacobs (both of them influential in the 1930s), Noam Chomsky and Herbert Marcuse (both of them leaving their mark on the 1960s) are of note.
Saul Alinsky, already in the 1930s, stressed the similarities between "democrat" and "radical." He saw his attitude as rooted in the Jeffersonian tradition, and urged would-be radicals to know the "rules of the game" so as to be able to manipulate them to their own ends.
In his essay "Repressive Tolerance," Herbert Marcuse, of similar profile as regards Activism/Judaism, diagnosed the very acquiescence to the primary rules governing a game (situation) as serving to maintain the system, and as not permitting a really radical change. Marcuse's influence on the emerging "New Left" was particularly widespread, especially as regards his notion of repressive tolerance and his objections to the "one-dimensional" man. His notion of tolerance further discredited an already declining regard for the liberal tradition (a decline that Alinsky had presaged in his writings).
The breakdown of the liberal tradition was also a time of emerging influence of the "beyond-the-nation-state" proponents, of whom Noam Chomsky is of particular note. By 1968, speaking from what he termed an Aḥad Ha-Am perspective, he put forth a theory of the desirability of "kibbutzinization" of the Middle East. He proposed that Israel be in the vanguard of those states which would abandon the apparatus of statehood. The ensuing dialectic, in which he had an important role, picked up momentum and lasted for several years thereafter. It was vital to the articulation of the radical Zionist position on the one hand, and the renewed advocacy of the bi-nationalist state, on the other.
Marcuse and Chomsky had a profound influence on the theoretical superstructure of the planning of radical social action in the 1960s.
Paul Jacobs, active as early as Alinsky, and like Alinsky involved at least as much in doing as in theorizing, represents the low-profile Jew, high-profile activist which the new ethnically conscious Jews of the late 1960s rejected. Writing of himself in Is Curly Jewish?, Jacobs portrays his "back-drop" Jewishness as it was worked out in the 1930s. By the 1930s assimilation (passing) and denominational Judaism had been added to the paths opened to Jews in the late 19th century: Torah (religious Judaism, self-consciously ideological, given its exposed, defensive posture); Zionism; Socialism (both in its Diaspora-centered and its internationalist varieties). Jacobs chose "socialism" and worked from within a class-consciousness perspective.
He explains his pull to radicalism as a push from Judaism:
I have a hunch, too, that for me one of the unconscious pressures toward radicalism was that the movement provided an atmosphere in which I could reject being Jewish without any feeling of guilt. One of the first rituals in the radical movement was the adoption of a party name by which one was to be known in the organization…. Even granting the legitimate need we felt to change our names in order to escape possible consequences, why was it that so many of the Jewish radicals took as their cover names ones that were conspicuously non-Jewish? No Comrade Cohen ever adopted Ginsburg as a party name; instead he became Green or Smith or Martin, or something equally bland.
Speaking of encounters between members of the Young People's Socialist League (ypsl) and the Zionist Ha-Shomer ha-Ẓair, Jacobs observes:
… the ypslers (and Hashomer) were very close… politically. They hated the Communists almost as much as we did, primarily because the Soviet Union had set up the remote province of Birobidzhan as its own Jewish state, touting its virtues over Palestine…. They (Hashomer) were convinced that the only salvation for the Jews was in their own land, and because they were socialists, they were committed to making Palestine into a socialist country…. I sat with them for hours… arguing heatedly that Zionism was only another form of petty bourgeois nationalism. But those arguments had none of the rancor and bitterness that were so characteristic of the fight all of us had with the Stalinists.
In 1947 Jacobs joined the staff of the American Jewish Committee:
… the emphasis… was not heavily Jewish in those of its operations which related to the non-Jewish world…. My own department, for example, was officially named the "National Labor Service of the American Jewish Committee," but only the name "National Labor Service" appeared on its publications, on the theory that an organization without an open Jewish identification could operate more effectively with non-Jewish groups than one, say, like our rival, the Jewish Labor Committee.
He clearly states that, for himself and many other members of the ajc staff, this arrangement was ideal: "it provided us with a base from which we could fight prejudice and discrimination without any need to be Jewish."
Moving Toward High-Profile Jewishness
The Jewish revolutionary who strives for the liberation of mankind and views Jewish nationalism as merely tribalistic and a retreat from internationalist ideals is of course not a new phenomenon. It was just this perspective of the "steady patriot of the world alone, the friend of every country but his own" that was unanimously rejected by the high-profile Jewish activists of the Jewish Student Movement (jsm). They wished to combine a high-profile activism with a self-consciously assertive high-profile Judaism. The base of jsm is ethnic, and if concerned with "passing" (being assimilated into, accommodated by) the American culture, it is a minimal passing – that of not being rejected by the host society because of displayed ethnic characteristics.
For jsm, as it grew in the black-is-beautiful hothouse of the American 1960s, the do-it-yourself metaphor, so much a part of American culture, involved a return to classic Jewish texts, a return to lehrhaus. Its approach was of the de-schooling sort, which emphasized the student and his personal and intellectual growth, rather than some formal school curriculum. This reflected the general anti-establishment attitude of the times. In this regard, the cultural heroes included men such as Herbert Marcuse and Noam Chomsky, who goaded American youth to that radical perspective known as "New Left."
By 1968 the New Left had moved from a tacit to an explicit anti-Israel stance, and consequently Jews who were moving to a higher ethnic profile were experiencing greater difficulties staying within the fold. At a 1969 meeting, for instance, Students for a Democratic Society (sds), participating in a teach-in in Washington, d.c., were arguing vehemently against the validity of a separate Jewish group operating in radical politics. Others argued back and by dawn one of the SDS members started quoting verbatim from Mao's little red book. His opponents responded by chanting the morning prayers, the Shaḥarit, in Hebrew. This polarization between the mainstream sds and the more Jewishly conscious activists illustrates the tightrope along which Jews drawn towards the evolving Jewish Student Movement chose to walk.
The earlier American ethic of rugged individualism was being replaced by that of group activity; instead of "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps," there was "work in your community" and "we shall overcome." A dominant mode of behavior had been radicalized in its idiom, and a young Jew faced with existential quandaries and problems of group identities could easily come to think of his search for roots as radical.
Toward Crystallized Stands
Alinsky and Jacobs suggest the tone of the (Jewish) American radical tradition, and Chomsky and Marcuse its intellectual goadings to radical social action. The Students for a Democratic Society served as the paradigm of a radical group and symbol of the New Left of the 1960s.
The aims of the SDS were described by Straughton Lynd in "The New Radicals and Participatory Democracy" (Dissent, Summer 1965): "… that the individual share in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of his life; that society be organized to encourage independence in man and provide the media for their common participation."
This was to become characteristic of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and the "greening of America." The participatory democracy of SDS, with its parallelistic approach – working within the community, i.e., grass-roots as the locus of power; community schools; local papers; a diversity of mini-institutions; free universities – served structurally as the model for much of the behavior of the Jewish Student Movement. By the early 1970s there would be Jewish "free universities" and Jewish studies departments. Even Jewish Community Centers would have "Jewish culture personnel."
M.J. Rosenberg's "To Uncle Tom and Other Such Jews" (Village Voice, February 13, 1969) has become a document of its age. It spread among Jews across American campuses like wildfire. It gave voice to the feelings of many young Jews who would "work within your community"; "stand up and be counted as a Jew"; "work on the grass roots level" and who would reconcile, perhaps even subordinate, their politics to their ethnic affiliation. M.J. Rosenberg suggests the spirit of the Jewish Student Movement – both in what allowed it to pass into the American scene and in its insistence on the right to assertion of Jewish power. These are, of course, at least incompatible, and the JSM was ill put to contain both trends for long.
Rosenberg speaks for those of his generation of post-Holocaust, Third Jewish Commonwealth Jews who had begun to opt for grappling with their Jewish heritage and the incorporation of the realities of Jewish existence (perhaps, especially the death trauma of Auschwitz and the birth trauma of Israel) into their daily living.
The self-hating Jew should have died with the creation of Israel. If the drama enacted in Cyprus, Europe, and Palestine between 1945 and 1948 did not convince him of the blood and guts of his own people then I am not sure anything would.
The Young American Jew… craves assimilation; the very idea of "Jewishness" embarrasses him. If you tell him that he doesn't "look Jewish," he will invariably take it as a compliment. The concept of Jewish nationalism, Israel notwithstanding, he finds laughable. The leftist Jewish student… is today's "Uncle Tom." He scrapes along ashamed of his identity and yet is obsessed with it. He goes so far as to join black nationalist organizations, not as a Jew, but as a white…. His destiny is that of the Jews but he denies what is apparent to the rest of us; he wants to be an "American," a leftist American talking liberation and an aspiring wasp.
The miracle of 1948 was that the Jew did it alone, with the guns he could smuggle and the iron will that is the legacy of Auschwitz…. This makes it so imperative that we ensure that which was won by Jewish heroes on the fields of Palestine will not be lost with the aid and connivance of Jewish moral cowards…. "
The issue is one of Jewish pride. The Jewish professor who makes a point of teaching on Yom Kippur with subtle mockery of those students who stay home,… the Jewish radicals who are prepared to fight for the Czechs, the Greeks, and the Biafrans and yet reject Israel; these are our Uncle Toms and our shame. The Jew must accept his identity … the burden of proof is on you. You who mockingly reject every lesson of your people's history…. In the aftermath of the crematoriums, you are flippant. In the wake of Auschwitz, you are embarrassed. Thirty years after the Holocaust you have learned nothing and forgotten everything. Ghetto Jew, you'd better do some fast thinking.
Rosenberg criticized what he called the "bagels-and-lox society" Hillel Houses. He rejected both their insularity and their programs. The first "generation" of the movement (1968–72) shared this evaluation and engaged the Hillel people in a dialectic which led to a move away from a somewhat hollow home-away-from-home in which one could be quietly, safely Jewish on campus, and toward a Hillel which promoted active Jewish involvement and study.
There was a shift in the reality tests of Judaism – from the edifice temple to the community prayer room, from the classroom to the open lehrhaus, from the bagels-and-lox brunch to the communal sukkah. The call was to a more public Jewish witnessing and the slogan was: Israel is real; Diaspora is real. A de facto Judaism as labeled by others would not suffice, nor would old patterns of expression be adequate. The goal became to rejuvenate and reauthenticate a living Judaism.
This call and others were heeded by Jews who formed the various groups which make up the jsm. From the Jewish Defense League on the right, to the Radical Zionist Alliance on the left (which so significantly shifted its emphasis from "Jewish radicals" to "Radical Jews") and the communitarian ḥavurot located at some apolitical point in between, young Jews stood up to be counted. They demanded some of the access, the means, the space of the American Jewish community. In the ethnic mode of the late 1960s, the relatively Protestant frame of the Reform movement with its over-arching "grand issue" concerns could not satisfy the young Jew seeking expression of his Jewishness; nor did he feel comfortable in other of the traditional denominational Jewish sub-groups. He wanted a nondenominational Jewishness, an ethnically binding frame. He wanted to be part of a group, of a movement. Indeed, by being ethnically bound, by achieving a subculture particularism, he would be able to pass in the new America, to demand power for his group. The new "greened" Jew could be at home as a Jew in the new "greened" America, or so it seemed in 1968–69.
Aliveness of Israel and Diaspora
The greened Jews' move was away from the "Jewishness of survival" which they perceived as the over-mortgaged heritage of their parents. Israel as a safety deposit box for their Jewish identity would not suffice. They wanted a growing, developing Diaspora Jewishness, and adopted the more au courant ecological metaphor of "greening," of "return to roots."
A major confrontation developed between the emerging demands of Jewish students and their fathers, i.e., within the Jewish community. Hillel Levine, on behalf of a loosely knit ad hoc group, Concerned Jewish Students (cjs) of Boston, presented a set of demands to the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds in November, 1969. This confrontation was the first of numerous head-on encounters between "radical" (root-searching) young Jews and the established Jewish communities on a local, regional, and national level. It marked the insistence that they, the young Jews, have a say in determining what was happening in the Jewish community. It was a bid for power. The cjs asserted:
In affirmation of our Jewishness and our concern for Jewish Survival we feel we can no longer be silent. Distortions in the budget priorities of Jewish Federations have long been decried…. We demand that, while maintaining the generous level of support for Israel, all local federations undertake a drastic and immediate reordering of domestic priorities in their local communities, in order to improve the quality of Jewish cultural life on campus and in the community.
Bill Novak, then of Response, a magazine founded by Jewish undergraduates at Columbia, which has operated as "the unofficial intellectual and artistic voice of the new Jewish counter-culture" sounded the call:
You have a culture, so dig it
You have a people, work with it
You have a history and a body of literature,
Study it!
Meanwhile, Jewish students elsewhere were also responding to the times. 1968 was a year of student demands and new ethnicities. The World Union of Jewish Students (wujs) is an international federation of Jewish student unions from over 30 countries. In the late 1960s the importance of strengthening wujs on the North American continent, given the higher-profile Jewish activism, the new ethnicity and the sense of the growing importance of North American Student Jewry, became apparent to both wujs and its Jewish Agency sponsors.
Certain of the leaders of the Youth and He-Ḥalutz Department of the Jewish Agency, alert to the need for new forms of pat Zionist yea-saying, given changes in fashions and the times, were, in the mid and late 1960s, eager to encourage the formation of Jewish groups, journals, etc., which could serve as vehicles for propagating a concerned Jewish involvement. They accurately sensed the potential usefulness of the campus as medium.
In 1969, at Brewster, n.y., the assembled representatives of the older national student organizations and the new independent "Jewish Student Movement" decided to create "Network" in order to keep one another informed and to ferment activities.
"Network" stated that its aspirations were grounded in "belief in the unity of the Jewish people. Like most Jews we agree on very little else. Even in our common commitment to the Soviet Jewish struggle and to the flourishing of Israel we differ in our visions and tactics…. We want to share with each other in the rejuvenation of the Jewish people, each of us in his own way…."
Network's aim to "provide Jewish youth organizations with the opportunity to relate to each other without the intervention of the establishment organizations" was a Jewish counter-culture move, toward the grass-roots expression of needs and away from mediating, remote "representation."
wujs
Particularly dramatic is the history of wujs's relationship to the World Zionist Organization, to which it was accepted in 1968 (26th Zionist Congress) and within which it was so bitterly attacked over its Arad Program, 1972 (27th Zionist Congress).
In Arad (xv wujs Triennial Congress) the new "ethnic" Jews who, although committed to Israel and its survival, were critical of the policies of the State of Israel and of Zionist ideology, found that their analyses were not well received by the very authorities who had recently sent them out to struggle with the New Left.
The Zionist establishment had been disturbed at the snowballing anti-Zionism of the "New Left" and correctly realized that a left Zionist force could be an effective response. Thus, at the Brewster conference, where the wujs appeared on the American scene, and at others which would follow, the Youth and He-Ḥalutz Department under the leadership of Mordekhai Bar-On, lent its weight, experience, and financial backing.
The financial backing did not bring a line-towing to any of the standard acceptable versions of secular Zionism. It is interesting that, given the asserted Jewishness of these new young Zionists, the Department itself underwent a renewed concern with non-secular Zionism. The very polarity, so unfortunately entrenched in Israel life, between the secular and the religious, was challenged. Unlike the Zionist left of an earlier generation, the "Radical Jews" are not programmatically secularist. The "Judaizing" they brought about was part of the dialectic between the Jews of the "movement" and the controllers of the Jewish community. This dialectic took place with the Agency, and within local Jewish communities, and among the supporters of the Jerusalem program of the wzo and the Arad program of wujs, et al.
It did not always entail a neat adherence to the "rules of the game." wujs barely survived the 1972 wzo backlash response to its Arad program. The Jerusalem Program/Arad Program entanglement is a high point in Jewish Student Movement/Establishment Jewry relations.
Arad Program
1. Zionism is the national and also, by virtue of its territorialistic aspect, the social liberation and emancipation movement of the Jewish people; it is to be realized in Israel. The universalistic task of the Jewish people, as expressed in its prophetic tradition, must arise out of the necessary concentration of the Jewish people in Israel, so that out of this framework, it can devote its energies to the social emancipation of Mankind.
2. A condition for this realization is: The recognition of the national rights of the Palestinian Arabs, not only as a political step, but as a consequence of Zionist ideology.
3. The aims of Zionism are (a) the preservation of the existence of the Jewish people, united by their common identity, through the fostering of the Jewish values and strengthening the identity that will bring to a fulfillment in Israel. (b) the abolition of the abnormal situation of the Jewish people living in the Diaspora, by its territorial concentration in the State of Israel. (c) the realization in the State of Israel of a democratic society, just, equalitarian, and peace loving that recognizes the right of self-determination of all peoples. (d) the encouragement of the Jews to become conscious of, and identify with, the liberation struggle of other peoples. (e) the protection of the rights of Jews everywhere.
Contrast this with the resolution of the 27th Zionist Congress, a resolution known as the 1968 Jerusalem Program:
The aims of Zionism are: The unity of the Jewish People and the centrality of Israel in Jewish life; The ingathering of the Jewish People in its historical homeland, Eretz Israel, through Aliya from all countries; The strengthening of the State of Israel which is based on the prophetic vision of justice and peace; The preservation of the identity of the Jewish People through the fostering of Jewish and Hebrew education and of Jewish spiritual and cultural values; The protection of Jewish rights everywhere.
The contrast between the Arad and the Jerusalem Programs is obvious. In light of the backstage treatment dealt with the wujs people in overreaction to their program, it is difficult to concede that the disillusionment that followed the ugly rejection could call forth anything but angry tantrums, "children" to "parents." The would-be "bonim" received naughty "banim" treatment.
Radical Zionist Alliance
In 1969, in Palmer, Mass., the North American Radical Zionist Alliance (rza) came to life. Child of radical enthusiasms, dreams of Zion, and calculated analyses of power-options, it was to serve as an umbrella organization for Jews working in small groups, united by their concerted search for their Jewish selves, a shared concern for effecting social change, and their differing concerns for the Jewish polity.
"Radical Zionist Alliance" was a name, a category, fashioned to drape around a coalition of voices expressing consonant concerns at a time when to group in America was to group ad hoc – For Women; For Peace; Veterans against Vietnam; American Committee for Peace and Justice; et al. Such was the social metaphor.
The rza groups were largely campus-based. They had begun to establish newspapers, push for Jewish studies on campus (not unlike their co-students who were demanding Black Studies), and to challenge the American Jewish establishment on its priorities in funding and on the quality of their Jewish education.
The newspaper established by rza, Nitzotz, was short-lived. rza, like its member group, the Jewish Liberation Project in New York, had a complicated relationship to Mapam, marked by ambivalence and problems of controlling the "young people." Involvement with Israeli political parties is a characteristic shared with the Jewish Defense League.
The formalizing of rza seems to have been more a watershed in the institutionalizing of the new radical mode than a commitment to joint programs of action. The numerous conventions (Brewster, Madison, Philadelphia, etc.) and retreats and scrambled get-togethers among different participants in, and adherents to, the idea of the Jewish Student Movement from 1968 to 1972 suggest a pattern of ritualistic confirmation of the invisible community they formed and an occasion for recharging the commitments of the members.
In the general mood of political impotence that followed the May 1970 invasion of Cambodia, many activist Jews began to lose interest in politics or to transform their activism into a super-particularistic Jewish nationalist identity – Jewish Defense League or Soviet Jewry work or a turning to Jewish nondenominational religious movements. The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, founded in 1964 by people who later became leaders of various of the other groups, was a rallying point of Jewish involvement for activist Jews of all political persuasions. Those who stressed their rza commitments toyed with the idea of city-kibbutzim (Urbutz); while on campus they did pro-Israel information work, protested awards to reactionary politicians by Zionist organizations, and confronted the Jewish Defense League.
The demise of rza by 1972 reflects their disposability to the Jewish establishments (especially to the Zionist establishment for whom they had worked on the campuses); a conformity to the general shift on campuses from political and outer-oriented to spiritual and inner-oriented concerns; and their members' inability to cope with the realities of contemporary Israel life.
In late 1972, the Washington Jewish Student Organization (Seattle) could advertise in "Network" its sponsorship of a conference "of all those interested in detailed discussion of the theoretical and strategic questions now facing the broadly defined socialist-Zionist movement in North America…. This conference will be political and will not include seminars on Jewish identity, creative Shabbatot, Jewish media, innovative Halakhah, Krishna-Mishna or Neo-Hassidism…."
The "spiritual" interests struck from the rza agenda became the critical interests of the Jewish Student Movement. The "spiritual revolution" which had taken root in the American campuses at the turn of the decade now flourished among the second generation of the Jewish Student Movement.
[Chava Alkon Katz]
In Yugoslavia
Zionism in the countries that united on Dec. 1, 1918, to form the kingdom of the Serbs, Croatians, and Slovenes sprang from three main sources: the traditional national-religious aspirations of Sephardi Jewry, which was permeated with messianic yearnings; the youth of these countries who had studied in Vienna; and the influence of the Ḥovevei Zion movement, which penetrated into these regions from Galicia, especially after the conquest of Bosnia by the Austrian army in 1878. Among the forerunners of Zionism were two rabbis in Croatia, although their activities had no reverberations in their immediate surroundings. Jekuthiel Hirschenstein, the rabbi of Varaždin, gave advice to Moshe Zaks, a Jerusalemite, who tried to engage in a kind of Zionist diplomacy in Vienna and Germany, as shown through their correspondence during the years 1835–38. Judah Hai *Alkalai actively engaged in the revival of Jewish nationhood, both philosophically and in practice, and tried in vain to bring the Jews of the Serbian city of Šabac to Ereẓ Israel after the pogroms of 1865. Viennese Zionism influenced the southern Slavic countries even before the advent of Herzl. David M. Alkalai, a relative of Judah Alkalai, was a member of the Viennese Zionist student group Kadimah, founded by Nathan Birnbaum. He and his wife, Rachel, Alkalai's granddaughter, were among the few representatives from the southern Slavic countries at the First Zionist Congress (1897). The others were Marcus (Mordecai) *Ehrenpreis from Djakovo and Armand *Kaminka from Osijek. Immediately after the Congress, Alkalai founded an association named Zion in Belgrade and, in 1937, he became the second chairman of the Zionist Organization of Yugoslavia. At the turn of the century, Sephardi students from the southern Slavic countries, including Bulgaria, established the Zionist Esperanza Society in Vienna. A student Zionist association, Bar Giora, uniting Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jewish students from the southern Slavic countries, was organized. In 1904 the two societies held meetings together and thus laid the foundation for cooperation between the southern Slavic Zionists. Judeja, a Zionist student organization from Zagreb, joined them in 1908.
Through the initiative of the Osijek Zionists (pioneers of Herzl's political Zionism in Croatia), led by Hugo Spitzer, the Yugoslav Zionist Federation was founded in 1909 within the borders of the Hapsburg monarchy. It united the Zionist groups that had been established in the cities and towns. The first Zionist local group of this kind was founded in 1897 by Nathan Landau, a teacher in the town of Brčko in Bosnia. Other active Zionists of the early period were Gustav Seidemann, Yoḥanan Thau, Raphael Poljokan, and A.D. Levi. Under the influence of the youth who had studied in Vienna, in 1898 a group of high school students in Zagreb formed an organization that produced a generation of leaders. Led by Alexander Licht, they transformed Zagreb from a center of assimilationism into the center of Yugoslav Zionism and the seat of most of its institutions. Licht's brother Herman organized the Jewish working youth. In Belgrade, David Albala, a member of Bar Giora, founded the youth organization Gideon, which also raised a group of active Zionists. Between the Balkan War and World War i there was a discernible emigration of Jews from Bitolj (Monastir), Macedonia, some of whom reached Jerusalem. Active, organized Zionism actually began in Macedonia between the two world wars in close contact with the center in Zagreb. Leon Kamhi was the leader in Bitolj and Josef Behar in Skoplje. In Vojvodina, which belonged to Hungary, assimilationist trends prevailed until the end of World War i.
World War i brought a temporary halt to all Zionist activities in the region, due to the government's prohibition, as well as the drafting of active Zionists into the army. Before the end of the war, however, the movement came to life in Croatia, Bosnia, and also in Vojvodina, partly because of the presence of a few Russian Jewish prisoners of war and Galician Jewish soldiers in the Austrian army garrisoned there. The leader of the Zagreb Zionists then was Lav Stern. The first conference of the Yugoslav Zionist Organization assembled in Zagreb in January 1919, immediately after the establishment of the independent kingdom of Yugoslavia, with representatives from every part of the new monarchy. It served to renew the tradition of undefined unity and cooperation in the Zionist movement that had been prevalent before World War i and carried on in this role during the years between the two world wars. In 1919 a union of Jewish youth associations was established, uniting most of the students and working youth who had ties with various world Zionist youth movements. The union organized youth assemblies and summer camps. In 1920 the first hakhshara and Palestine Office were founded under the chairmanship of Abraham Werber (Avishur), as a result of the influence of pioneers of the Third Aliyah who passed through Zagreb in 1919–20 and the conference of Ha-Po'el ha-Ẓa'ir in Prague (1920). Hakhsharot existed until the Nazi occupation, training ḥalutzim from Central Europe. The first pioneers from Yugoslavia went to Palestine in 1921, and their aliyah continued until the Holocaust, with the numbers depending upon the Mandatory entry permits ("certificates") allocated to Yugoslavia.
Under the leadership of Julius Dohany, in 1929 the Revisionists broke away from the Yugoslav Zionist Organization and set up Betar; the Zionist Organization, however, preserved its encompassing influence under the leadership of Licht, covering the General Zionists and adherents of Labor Zionism, and youth movements from the left Ha-Shomer ha-Ẓa'ir and Tekhelet-Lavan (Neẓaḥ) to General Zionists. The number of religious Zionists was small and their influence minimal.
Although there was full cooperation between the Ashkenazi and Sephardi elements of the community from the end of the 19th century onward, part of the Sephardi community tended to oppose the Zionist Organization because of complaints voiced by the World Sephardi Organization about discrimination against Sephardim in Palestine. Already with the founding of independent Yugoslavia, the frictions between the majority in the movement and the Sephardi separatists deepened because of Yugoslav political issues. The Zionist movement produced women's wizo groups, the Maccabi movement, and Jewish choirs, orchestras, and amateur theaters. It reinvigorated the existing elementary schools, founded Hebrew kindergartens (the first in Zagreb under the direction of Miriam Weiller), and invited teachers from Palestine. Jewish poets, writers, and researchers consciously devoted their efforts to Jewish topics and thus developed a rich Jewish literature in the Serbo-Croatian language. A monthly Zionist publication Židovska Smotra ("Jewish Review") appeared from 1906 to 1914. In September 1917, before the publication of the Balfour Declaration, copies of the Zionist central weekly Židov ("The Jew") began to appear, and it was printed up to the Nazi invasion. Židovska Svijest ("Jewish Consciousness") and Jevrejski Život ("Jewish Life"), a separatist Sephardi publication, were initiated in Sarajevo in 1918 and united in 1928 as Jevrejski Glas ("Jewish Voice"). Gideon and other youth publications appeared from 1919. A monthly children's publication, Ha-Aviv, was published from 1922 until 1941. The monthly publication Ommanut, under the editorship of H. Gottlieb, appeared from 1937 until March 1941. In Novi Sad, Vojvodina, various Zionist publications appeared in German, among them Juedisches Volksblatt. Books and pamphlets were also published by the periodicals Židov and Jevrejski Narodni Kalendar.
The Zionists of Yugoslavia worked to win control over the Jewish community councils. Almost all the Jewish communities (with the exception of the small, separate Orthodox communities) came into the hands of a stable Zionist majority until the mid-1930s. This majority was instrumental in the founding of the Federation of Jewish Communities in 1919, led by Spitzer and afterward by Fridrich Pops. The Federation of Jewish Communities was an active force behind national Jewish education, the results of which were evident even after the Holocaust: most of the survivors settled in Israel during 1944–52, and those who remained in Socialist Yugoslavia tried to retain their Judaism by keeping in close contact with the Jewish people and the State of Israel.
[Yakir Eventov /
Cvi Rotem]
For later developments, see entries on the individual countries.
RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT
The Twenty-Seventh Zionist Congress which met in Jerusalem on June 19, 1968, outlined the aims of the Zionist Movement thus:
1) To promote the unity of the Jewish people and the centrality of the State of Israel in Jewish Life.
2) To assist the ingathering of the Jewish people in the historical homeland, which is based on the vision of justice and peace of the Hebrew prophets.
3) To preserve the identity of the Jewish people through fostering Jewish, Hebrew, and Zionist education with emphasis on spiritual and cultural values.
The document is known as the Jerusalem Program 1968. It reiterated the resolution which had been adopted by the Twenty-Third Zionist Congress (Jerusalem, August 30, 1951). It proposed that the Zionist organization undertake the following tasks:
1) To encourage immigration and assist in the absorption and integration of the immigrants in Israel.
2) To assist in agricultural settlement in the land and in economic development; to stimulate the pioneering spirit (ḥalutziyyut) among the settlers; and to acquire new tracts of land as the property of the Jewish people.
3) To raise funds and encourage investment of private capital.
4) To foster Jewish consciousness by propagating the Zionist idea by means of education and enlightenment.
5) To engage in a political campaign in defense of Israel and of Jewish rights.
immigration (aliyah)
Since the inception of the movement, aliyah had been a sacred precept of Zionist ideology and constituted the highest expression of Zionist fulfillment. As Ben-Gurion affirmed, the one and only hope for creative Jewish survival lay in immigration to the Jewish state. It contributes to the national strength and serves as an antidote to the demographic problem. It fortifies the physical bond between Israel and the Diaspora.
Jews have been immigrating to Ereẓ Israel for generations. They were motivated by sentimental and religious reasons. It was only from 1882 that the driving force was nationalism and the aspiration to lay the foundations of a national home, and eventually a state. Each wave of immigration was called aliyah, meaning ascent. Between 1882 and 1948 some 550,000 Jews made aliyah.
Jews immigrated in spite of the restrictions instituted first by the Ottoman government and subsequently by the British authorities imposed. In the eyes of the Turks and the British this kind of immigration was illegal, but the Zionist Organization considered the prohibition itself as illegal. It is estimated that the total number of *"illegal" immigrants (aliyah bet) was 120,000, which constituted about 15 to 20 percent of the Jewish population in Palestine in May 1948 (around 640,000). The figure of 120,000 does not include the Cyprus internees. Even during the hazardous years of World War ii (1939–45) immigration did not stop and reached the total figure of both legal and "illegal" immigrants of 62,530. During the period between the end of World War ii and May 15, 1948, the total number of immigrants, both legal and "illegal," amounted to 56,480, the infamous 1939 restrictions notwithstanding.
With the establishment of the State of Israel the gates of immigration opened wide. However, as the centers of Jewish communities in Eastern and Central Europe were tragically decimated, the State of Israel and the Jewish Agency turned to other centers. Between May 1948 and the late 1950s entire Jewish communities were transplanted to Israel. Among these communities were, in round numbers: Yemen (42,000), Iraq (125,000), Iran (30,000), Bulgaria (40,000), Yugoslavia (68,000), Czechoslovakia (20,000), Poland (120,000), Romania (125,000), Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria (60,000), Libya (32,000), China (2,250), and Aden (3,500). In addition to the sea route, the Jewish Agency organized accelerated immigration from Yemen, Iraq, and elsewhere (Operation Ezra and Nehemia, Operation Magic Carpet). Immigrants arrived in Israel from 70 countries speaking different languages and reared in different cultures and traditions. The newborn State and the Jewish Agency were confronted with the Herculean task of absorbing them and molding them into one nation.
During the first three years of Israel's existence its population more than doubled. During the 1950s and 1960s, Middle Eastern countries constituted a major source of immigration, while the 1970s saw a renewed wave from the West and the U.S.S.R. In the early 1990s there was a new wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union, as well as from other countries, notably Ethiopia and Argentina. In sum, from 1882 to 2005 more than 3,000,000 Jews immigrated to Israel, an unprecedented figure by world standards. By the end of the 20th century there were almost 100 times as many Jews in Ereẓ Israel as at the beginning of the century (50,000).
A word must be said about the two extraordinary Aliyot from the former Soviet Union as well as from Ethiopia. Isolated from the rest of world Jewry and living under a despotic government, Soviet Jewry was almost written off. However, the ecstatic reception accorded to Golda Meir at Moscow's Great Synagogue demonstrated that Soviet Jewry remained far from moribund in their ethnic loyalties. The emergence of a vibrant human rights movement among Soviet intellectuals was a powerful catalyst that contributed to the emergence of newfound nationalism and self-assertion. The remarkable military victory of the Israel Defense Forces in the Six-Day War was an inspiring source of pride. In consequence, the desire to immigrate to Israel became more powerful. The Soviet government was intransigent and hostile but the Jews did not give in. Their struggle could justly be termed heroic. Some were prepared to face imprisonment, to sacrifice their livelihoods and even life itself. The phenomenon of the "refusnik" fired the imagination of many far beyond the borders of Russia. Demonstrations were held in most of the Western capitals under the banner of "Let My People Go." Jews and gentiles took part in the campaign. It was a remarkable demonstration of solidarity in a cause.
American pressure too made its mark. On January 3, 1975, following resolutions overwhelmingly adopted by the House of Representatives and the Senate, President Gerald Ford signed the Trade Reform Act which incorporated the Jackson-Vanik-Hills Amendment. It made trade with the Soviet Union conditional on relaxation of emigration quotas for Jews wishing to go to Israel. It brought a reluctant Soviet Union to terms. For the Jewish lobby it was a remarkable victory.
During the 1970s, 160,000 Soviet Jews made aliyah to Israel, constituting approximately half the number of olim who arrived in the country. In February 1985 the best-known Prisoner of Zion, Nathan (Antoly) *Sharansky, was freed from a Soviet prison after a long international campaign for his release. On his arrival in Israel he was accorded a national welcome.
After Mikhail Gorbachev came to power a liberal and open policy was initiated, so that during the first part of 1990 aliyah reached a high point – 100,000 olim were registered – a number that would have been considered completely improbable a few years earlier.
The Israelis observed all this with amazement and admiration. It was nothing short of miraculous. It presented the government of Israel as well as the Jewish Agency with an unprecedented challenge. The absorption of hundreds of thousands of new immigrants within a short period of time in terms of housing, employment, and integration into Israeli society was a task that seemed beyond the ability of the young state. There were indeed a great many problems. But then a second miracle occurred. Not only did the Russian immigrants adjust to the new conditions with relative ease but within a short period they began to contribute to Israeli life, in economics, culture, science, and medical services. For this was an aliyah rich in talent, enterprising and determined. No previous aliyah had included so many academics, engineers, technicians, musicians, and scientists. Coming from a country which had been anything but democratic, they showed acute political awareness and their representation in the Knesset (eight seats) in a party called Yisrael be-Aliyah was a testimony to their civic maturity. In short, this was one of the greatest gifts that Israel and the Zionist enterprise had received since its foundation.
The Israelis were spellbound also by immigration of Jews from Ethiopia. They were of an entirely different background. Black-skinned, they lived in the highlands of Gondar province. Considered by their neighbors as falashas (strangers), they identified themselves as *Beta Israel. Their origin was uncertain but it seems that they were Africans who in the early Middle Ages had been converted to Judaism. Although cut off from world Jewry they had preserved Jewish customs and traditions with remarkable tenacity in the face of merciless persecutions at the hands of Christian governments. Nor did their yearning to return to Zion abate at any time. By the 19th century their numbers had dwindled to less than 30,000. In 1948, when the news of the foundation of the Jewish State reached them, they became possessed of a feverish desire to depart to the Land of Promise.
In March 1979, with President Carter's assistance, the government of Israel discreetly transferred funds to Sudan's President Ja'afar Numeiri, who for his part agreed to grant Ethiopian Jews temporary asylum in Sudan. Yet their initial migration of over 9,000 people was a trying ordeal. They went on foot, encountering incredible difficulties – disease, starvation, robbery, rape – until they reached a prearranged base, from which 2,000 were transported to the Red Sea coast and then taken to Israel by the Israeli navy. Five years later, in 1984, Operation Moses was carried out, during which another 7,000 Ethiopian Jews were taken out of Sudan. This time they were flown to Europe and from there to Israel. The Israeli government, jointly with the Jewish Agency, the World Zionist Organization, and other bodies, had done a magnificent job. Operation Moses was followed by Operation Solomon, during which, in May 1991, 15,000 Ethiopian Jews were air-lifted to Israel in 36 planes. About 4,000 remained behind in the Gondar highlands; these too, in due course, were quietly, though less dramatically, transported in small groups to Israel.
The absorption of the Ethiopian Jews and their integration into the Israeli society has proven to be far more difficult than that of olim from the former Soviet Union. But at least their physical existence is assured. Their aliyah could be truly termed as a heroic implementation of the Zionist ideal without prior education in Zionism.
settlement on the land
Like aliyah, settlement on the land constitutes a principal tenet of Zionism. The back to the land movement symbolized the transformation of the Jew's image from that of a "luftmentsh" in the Diaspora to that of a healthy and productive individual rooted in the land. This was palpable evidence of normalization. It showed the world that the Zionist experiment was not a passing phenomenon but a durable entity.
In addition to the social, economic, and political importance of settlement on the land, it had also a strategic value. It defined the borders of the Yishuv and subsequently of the State. Thus Kefar Giladi, Metulla and Tel Ḥai ensured that the Galilee panhandle would become part of the Jewish National Home. The pioneers of the 11 settlements that were established in the Negev on the eve of the proclamation of the State ensured that the Negev would not be cut off from the rest of the country.
Since the beginning in 1882, 1,221 rural settlements have been founded in all parts of the country (944 since statehood), changing its superstructure and landscape beyond recognition. It was the World Zionist Organization that played the major role in implementing this huge enterprise. The Jewish National Fund (the Keren Kayemet le-Israel) was also engaged in agricultural development, acquisition of land, building new roads, and afforestation. The land purchased by the kkl became the property of the Jewish people. It could not be sold and was therefore formally leased by the settlers.
education
Education has traditionally been the Jewish forte. It is the asset that Jews throughout the generations have valued the most. A learned man was esteemed as a model to be emulated. Education fortified the Jewish ability to survive in hostile environments. Although emancipation brought its obvious blessings, it was sometimes at the expense of Jewish identity and culture. Acculturation and the consequent assimilation, not to mention intermarriage, have become the greatest threats to Jewish survival. In the United States the number of mixed marriages has already passed the 50% mark. In France, in England, and in Western Europe in general the situation is not much better. This is the price the Jewish people are paying for the enjoyment of life in open societies.
The World Zionist Organization could not remain indifferent to this dangerous trend. The answer lies in education. It should be borne in mind that in the Diaspora 50 percent of Jewish youth do not receive any Jewish education at all, and that only 25 per cent attend Jewish schools. First it should be emphasized that education begins at home. The home and family life play an important part in designing the educational process. It is the parents who provide the initial framework and lifestyle that will prepare the child for Jewish life in a gentile environment. But if the parents themselves are subject to the identity crisis so characteristic of life in the Diaspora, the future of their offspring as Jews does not seem bright.
The school system is meant to ameliorate the situation, and it is here that the Zionist Organization plays its part by inspiring and assisting the local Jewish communities to cultivate Jewish education. In concrete terms teacher-sheliḥim from Israel are sent to reinforce the existing staffs of local schools and give them particular direction. They focus on teaching Hebrew, Jewish history, and Zionism and on inculcating greater familiarity with the State of Israel. Their overriding purpose is to strengthen Jewish identity, to induce pride in the Jewish heritage, and to equip the students with the tools to counter anti-Zionist and antisemitic propaganda.
There are two kinds of schools: Jewish day schools and complementary systems of education. Most day schools are on the elementary level. After completion, studies are continued in general schools. The complementary educational system is meant for those parents who for a variety of reasons do not have the option of a full day school. In most cases it is housed on the synagogue premises or in the community cultural center. It has classes on Sundays and thus the system became known as "Sunday School." The program of study at complementary schools focuses on fundamental Jewish concepts, Hebrew, the teaching of prayer, preparation for Jewish festivals, and reinforcing the bond with the State of Israel. The educational effect of this system is limited but still the seeds are being sown. In the United States about 24 percent of young Jews participate in this framework.
In addition to the formal educational system, youth and children enjoy an informal educational experience. In most Jewish communities in the Diaspora there are frameworks which facilitate encounters aimed at the consolidation of Jewish national identity and ideas. These are provided by the Zionist youth movements, which operate practically on parallel lines with the youth movements in Israel. In North America about seven percent of children and youth participate in informal youth movement activities, in the former Soviet Union about 20 percent, and in Latin America 30 percent. Most of the youth organizations maintain strong connections with Israel and Zionism though with different ideological orientations. Moreover, an integral part of their programs are visits to Israel.
Visits to Israel have proved highly effective in the educational process. They have existed since the 1950s and expanded significantly after the Six-Day War. They last for several weeks during the summer vacation and include tours of historical sites of national significance and an introduction to contemporary Israeli society and culture. Since the 1990s these trips have been called named the "Israel Experience." Jewish leaders throughout the world recognized the importance of this particular experiment in stemming assimilation by forging Jewish identity and in educating future leaders. In 2000 a new venture was launched: "The Birthright Israel Project." It is sponsored by Jewish philanthropists, the government of Israel, the Jewish Agency, and Jewish communities throughout the world. The project also enables university students to take courses at institutions of higher learning in Israel free of charge through scholarships. Nearly 40,000 young Jews have visited Israel so far within the framework of the Birthright Israel Project.
Also of importance are summer camps for children and youth financed by communities In the Diaspora. They are popular particularly in North America, where there are over 200 such camps. In some cases camps are active all year round. The participants range from age 8 to 16. The Zionist Organization plays a major role in all the above-mentioned activities. Early in 1981 the World Zionist Organization launched the Jerusalem Fellows program, which aims to recruit young men and women and train them in Israel for leadership positions in the field of education and organization.
In the area of adult education in 2000 the Jewish Agency initiated a program of "People to People" which aims to stimulate intercourse between professional groups and individuals in Israel and the Diaspora. Partnerships between cities in Israel and Jewish communities in the Diaspora in various parts of the world ("Partnership 2000") is yet another example of cooperation and the demonstration of mutual responsibility. Thus, the city of Netanyah is linked to the Jewish community in Cincinnati; Ramleh and the Gezer regional council to Kansas City; Ashkelon to Mexico; Nahariyyah to Belgium, etc. Public lectures, conferences, and seminars add another dimension to adult education. A powerful factor in galvanizing Jewry and enhancing solidarity with Israel are extraordinary events like the Yom Kippur War and the struggle for the rights of Soviet Jews ("Let My People Go") and against all manifestations of antisemitism and the vilification of Israel.
organization
At the outset of the 21st century the supreme body of the World Zionist Organization remained the Zionist Congress – an elected parliament of sorts. It constitutes the organizational arm of the Zionist movement. Its main roles are: to stimulate aliyah; to strengthen the State of Israel; to promote Jewish and Hebrew education and cultivate Jewish values; to counter the trends of assimilation and defend Jewish rights. The Congress meets every four or five years and the seats (more than 500) are allocated geographically in the following proportions; 38% for Israel, 29% for the United States; and 33% for all other countries. In Israel delegates are allocated to the Zionist political parties proportionately to their representation in the Knesset.
The Congress elects the Zionist executive, on which major ideological movements and international bodies are represented, as well as the Zionist General Council. The latter body meets once a year between congresses. The chairman of the Zionist executive serves also as chairman of the Jewish Agency and the Executive. Similarly, the treasurer of the World Zionist Organization serves as the treasurer of the Jewish Agency. In 1952 an agreement was reached between the government of Israel on the one hand, and the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency on the other, on a functional distribution. Accordingly, the Zionist institutions took upon themselves all matters relating to aliyah, absorption of immigrants, and settlement on the land, while security, finances, trade, employment, etc. are the prerogatives of the government. The agreement was confirmed in a covenant two years later. In 1980 a coordinating commission of these two constituent bodies approved the establishment of a national authority for aliyah and absorption.
Between the years 1973 and 2000 the following leaders served as chairmen of the Zionist Executive: Aryeh Dulzin, Pinḥas Sapir, Joseph Almogi, Simcha Dinitz, Yehiel Leket, Avraham Burg, and Salai Meridor. Since the Twenty-Seventh Zionist Congress, no president had been elected.
There is a body of opinion that maintains that with the establishment of the State of Israel the Zionist Movement had fulfilled its historical task and outlived its usefulness. This is a misconception. The state, as Herzl proclaimed, is not an end in itself but only a means to implement high ideals such as the ingathering of exiles; redemption of land; building of a model society, and serving as a beacon to Jewry and the world at large. So long as these objectives have not been fulfilled, Zionism still has a role to play in Jewish history. Zionism is the embodiment of Jewish nationalism and as long as the Jewish people exist, Zionism will endure as well.
[Isaiah Friedman (2nd ed.)]
zionist utopias
In the initial stages of the Zionist movement, the borderline between programmatic and utopian writing was blurred. Moreover, Zionist authors and publicists often consciously made use of the utopian form in order to visualize the end product and thereby prove the feasibility of Zionism. Herzl's Der Judenstaat is a classic example of a book in which Zionist ideology and utopian visions are present. In a letter to Moritz *Guedemann (August 22, 1895), Herzl writes of the book: "I can now say why it is no Utopia… There have been plenty of Utopias before and after Thomas More, but no rational person ever thought of putting them into practice. They are entertaining, but not stirring" (Complete Diaries i, 235–6). Herzl's novel Altneuland, which was the most famous Zionist utopia, had a great deal in common with the program presented in Der Judenstaat. Altneuland sought to indicate the way in which Herzl visualized the realization of Zionism – a Jewish state in which technology would be developed to the highest degree and in which the Jewish intelligentsia would find unlimited opportunities. The new culture, however, would be essentially a European culture, based on a medley of languages and devoid of distinctive Jewish character. It is thus not surprising that Aḥad Ha-Am, to whom the continuity of Jewish culture was the essence of Zionism, was outraged by the book. Herzl envisaged that the Jewish state would become a reality by 1923, 20 years after the publication of Altneuland.
Another Zionist utopia, Massa le-Ereẓ Yisrael bi-Shenat Tat ("A Journey to Ereẓ Israel in the Year 5800 (2040)," 1893), by the Hebrew writer Elhanan Leib *Lewinsky, which preceded Altneuland by ten years, reflects the Zionist dream of East European Jewry, rooted as it was in Hebrew culture. The Hebrew language and the fostering of Hebrew culture occupy a central place in the book, and Aẓad Ha-Am's vision of Ereẓ Israel becoming the spiritual center of the Jewish people reaches fulfillment. In Ein Zukunftsblick by Edmund *Eisler (written in 1882 and published anonymously in 1885) both the political and cultural visions of the Jewish state are found. The novel describes the Jewish exodus from Europe and the creation of the state of "Judah" in Ereẓ Israel, which has Hebrew as its official language; the fledgling state is attacked by its neighbors, but vanquishes them all. Eisler even had a nightmare vision of Germany. He exchanged correspondence with Herzl on the subject of his book. In the main, the book reflected the background of European antisemitism and the pogroms in Russia.
Edward Bellamy's book Looking Backward, 1887 – 2000 had a profound influence on Zionist utopias. One example was a utopia of political Zionism by Max Austerberg-Verakoff, Das Reich Judaea im Jahre 6000 (2241), published in 1893. The author, a non-Jew (although possibly of Jewish origin), envisaged a mass exodus of Jews from Europe, their settlement in Ereẓ Israel, and the founding there of a Jewish state with Hebrew as its official language. He discusses the attitude of the Jewish state toward the European power that had been guilty of persecuting the Jews (Russia) and the relations between the citizens of the Jewish state and the Jews who stayed behind in the Diaspora. Austerberg-Verakoff also established contact with Herzl. Another Zionist utopia inspired by Bellamy was Looking Ahead (1899) by Henry Pereira *Mendes. A native of England, Mendes settled in the United States and for several decades played an important role in the cultural life of American Jewry. He was one of the first American Jews to respond to Herzl's call, and his book expresses the essence of the Zionist vision: the Jewish state and Jerusalem, its capital, would be the center of world peace, and by the creation of the state, the nations of the world would redress the wrongs they had perpetrated against the Jews throughout the ages. There is also a description of the mass exodus of Jews to Ereẓ Israel; those who stay behind are enjoined to be loyal citizens of their countries, without losing awareness of the temporary nature of their residence outside of Ereẓ Israel.
At the height of the *Dreyfus trial (1898), a utopian extravaganza, "Anti-Goyism in Zion," was published in Siècle, a Parisian journal, in March 1898; it later appeared in Die Welt in German translation (April 1898) and was also published in Hebrew (1954). Its author was Jacques Bahar, who represented Algerian Jewry at the First Zionist Congress. His work, written under the impact of manifestations of French antisemitism (which also had its repercussions in Algeria), describes a "Dreyfus trial" taking place in the Jewish state, with "Anti-Goyism" playing the role of European antisemitism. He makes the point that in the Jewish state tolerance would prevail and a phenomenon such as the antisemitism that dominated the Paris scene of 1898 would be unthinkable.
Two utopias describe a Jewish state bearing the name "Israel." One, written by the Hebrew author Isaac *Fernhof, describes the ascent of the poor and downtrodden Jews to Ereẓ Israel, where they create an independent state to which they give the name the State of Israel. The book is called Shenei Dimyonot ("Two Ideas") – one being the reality as experienced by the author, the other his vision of the Jewish state. The second utopia that refers to the Jewish state as the State of Israel was the work of the Hebrew-Yiddish writer Hillel *Zeitlin. Written in 1919 under the name In der Medinas Yisrael in Yor 2000 ("In the State of Israel in the year 2000"), it reflects the tremendous impact of the Balfour Declaration upon the Jewish masses. The author foresees the establishment of the state and its growth and development. The work appeared in serial form in Der Moment, the Warsaw Yiddish daily, but was never completed. The Balfour Declaration also inspired Komemiyyut ("Upright"), a comprehensive work written in Russia in 1920–21 by the Hebrew author Shalom Ben-Avram and published shortly thereafter in the quarterly Ha-Tekufah. This utopia contains an astounding accurate vision of mass aliyah, the founding of the Jewish state, and the Jew at last straightening his back in the young and vibrant state.
During the British Mandatory period (1918–48), a number of utopias were published in Hebrew (as Yerushalayim ha-Benuyah by Boris *Schatz, 1924). They often reflect the contemporary situation – the struggle for Jewish labor and the opposition to the Mandatory regime. When the Jewish state is founded, the problems are foreseen as solved and all unjust decrees abolished.
[Getzel Kressel]
christian zionism
As Zionism is understood to mean a modern Jewish movement aiming at resettlement in the Land of Israel and the revival of an independent Jewish nation, "Christian Zionism," i.e., the active support of Christians for such a movement, could not have preceded the Jewish forerunners of Zionism in the second half of the 19th century. However, Christian Zionism had a long prehistory, deeply rooted in theological thought and messianic expectations. Only gradually, with the emergence of Jewish political and settlement activities in Palestine, did Christian Zionism become more and more secular, pragmatic, and political, though it often still bore the imprint of its religious tradition and motivations. Thus, even in the historic breakthrough of the Balfour Declaration, issued by the British government in 1917, when political expediency was apparently the main factor, religious motives were certainly not absent from the thoughts of men like Lloyd George and Balfour. The importance of the Christian and biblical traditions also became apparent in the attitude toward the State of Israel in the 1950s and 1960s. The Afro-Asian world (including Muslim countries), insofar as it had no biblical traditions – particularly in Central and Eastern Asia – could only gradually "discover" and evaluate the ancient roots of the Jewish renaissance in the Land of Israel, and this realization developed mostly after these states had developed formal relations with Israel on a purely utilitarian basis. The attitude of the Christian world, however, remained clearly influenced by an undercurrent of intimacy derived from the biblical tradition.
The Theological Background
From the time of the Reformation, the belief that Jews should return to the Holy Land, in accordance with the biblical prophecies, became popular mainly among pietistic Protestants and certain groups of English Puritans. It was based on the millenarian concept which held, on the basis of a literal interpretation of apocalyptic prophecies, that the second coming of Jesus was at hand and that he would rule from Jerusalem for 1,000 years (the millennium). The millenarians anticipated not only the return of the Jews to their land but also their conversion to Christianity as important conditions and "signs of the time" prior to the second coming (Advent).
The Restoration movement spread from 16th-century England to other European countries and became particularly strong in the United States from the 18th century. It flooded the Protestant world with publications. Sometimes the Restorationists requested heads of state to take political measures in order to obtain rights for the Jews to settle in the Holy Land. Their activity remained without any practical results, however, until the 19th century, when essential changes took place in the character of the movement and in the motivations of Christians who supported the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel.
Some of the new sects which arose placed this belief at the center of their theology as the fulfillment of the eschatological prophecies which would bring on the end of days and the millennium. In 1830 the Plymouth Brethren were founded in England by John N. Darby (1800–82), whose doctrine of dispensationalist premillennialism asserted that all the biblical prophecies relate to the return of the Jewish people to its homeland prior to the Advent. Before the second coming, however, the Jews and all the other nations will be judged during a period of tribulation, after which Jesus and the Jewish remnant will rule over all the nations from Jerusalem. Many Protestant Fundamentalist churches adopted this outlook and continue to promote it to this day.
In 1844 the Christadelphians were established in England by John Thomas, author of Elpis Israel. From the outset, this sect supported the return of Jews to the Land of Israel. Later it offered practical assistance to Jews, such as the support of the Ḥibbat Zion movement, and even the attempt to rescue Jews during the Nazi Holocaust. The Mormons, founded by Joseph Smith in the United States in 1830, held that Jews would return to their land as "a sign of the time" of the second coming. In 1841 the Mormon missionary Orson Hyde was sent to Jerusalem, where he recited a "Zionist" prayer and dedicated the land to the Jews from the top of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. The Adventist movement, which emerged in the United States in 1830, split into many sects. A few of these sects view the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel as a fulfillment of their eschatological beliefs, and some of them have moved their center to Israel.
In the 19th century millenarian sects, mostly American, engaged in experiments in settlement in the Holy Land in order to await the approaching Advent of Jesus. All these attempts failed, including the 1851 agricultural settlement at Monthope, near Jaffa, of the American Clorinda S. Minor and the settlement near Jaffa of Reverend G. Adams and a group of Americans from the Church of the Messiah in 1866.
The Emergence of Political Motives
During the 19th century, Christian politicians in various countries attempted to act on behalf of the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel, adding to their religious beliefs the political interests of their countries in the Near East. An outstanding example was Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury (1801–85), who drew up detailed projects for the settlement of Jews in Palestine under British auspices, which he presented to the government and circulated among Protestant heads of state in Europe and in the United States. The beginning of practical Jewish settlement on the land in Ereẓ Israel, and especially the establishment of the Ḥibbat Zion movement and later Theodor Herzl's political Zionism, contributed to an increase in millenarian assistance to the realization of Zionist aspirations. The Canadian theologian Henry Wentworth Monk visited Palestine and assisted in the foundation of the first Jewish settlements. The English mystic Laurence Oliphant, who eventually settled in Palestine, lent aid to the first Jewish pioneers from Russia, tried to intercede on their behalf in Constantinople, and founded an influential Christian group in London to assist the Ḥibbat Zion movement. The Zionist activities of Herzl's friend William H. *Hechler also derived from a deeply religious outlook.
The most famous of the Zionist millenarians in the United States was William Blackstone (1841–1933) of Chicago, the author of Jesus is Coming, in which he expounded his belief in the future of the Jews in the Land of Israel according to the dispensationalist conception. He attempted a political realization of his ideas through memoranda to the president of the United States, in 1891 and in 1916, which demanded American intervention for the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel as a solution to the czarist anti-Jewish persecutions. Hundreds of eminent Americans signed these petitions, which stimulated various reactions in the general and the Jewish press. Blackstone participated in several Zionist conventions in the United States and remained a supporter of the Zionist movement until his death.
Archaeologists, Scholars, and Politicians
In the second half of the 19th century some Christians supported the return of the Jews to their homeland out of exclusively humanitarian or political motivations, distinct from theological views. In 1852 Colonel George Gawler (1796–1869) established the Association for Promoting Jewish Settlement in Palestine, which assisted the British consul in Jerusalem in the training of local Jews for agricultural work. He also published practical suggestions for Jewish settlement in Ereẓ Israel as a guarantee for establishing British influence in Syria. The Palestine Exploration Fund, established in England in 1865, was a center for energetic supporters of Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel. Among its members were the archaeologist Charles Warren, who conducted excavations in Jerusalem and foretold Jewish rule in the country, and Claude Reignier Conder (1849–1910), a cartographer and scholar of Palestinian studies who preached and wrote on the realization of the Zionist idea. The Italian philosopher and politician Benedetto Musolino (1809–85) preached Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel as a means of bringing European culture into the Middle East in La Gerusalemme e il Popolo Ebreo (1851). Jean Henri Dunant (1820–1910), founder of the International Red Cross, displayed a great interest in a humane solution to the Jewish problem. From 1863 to 1876 he attempted (in vain) to rouse the Jewish organizations in Western Europe to act on behalf of Jewish settlement of Palestine, and he founded the Palestine Colonization Society in London in 1875.
In 1887 the question of Jewish settlement in Ereẓ Israel reached the British parliament. Edward *Cazalet, a well-known industrialist and economist, demanded the return of the Jews to Palestine under British auspices both in his book and in his campaign speeches for parliament. He was the first Christian who regarded Ereẓ Israel as the spiritual and scientific center for Jewry, and he foresaw the idea of a Hebrew university in Jerusalem.
After the Balfour Declaration
In the 20th century, mainly after the Balfour Declaration (1917), another change occurred in Christian activity on behalf of Zionism and the establishment of a Jewish state. The British Palestine Society was established and was active from 1916 to 1924 and from 1930 to 1946 in advancing common interests of British policy and Zionism. Similar Christian organizations were founded in other countries. However, the most vigorous assistance and open support of Zionist aspirations were given by several Christian groups in the United States. In 1930 the Rev. Edward Russell founded the Pro-Palestine Federation, which was joined mostly by clergy. In 1932 the American Palestine Committee was founded. Its members included prominent public figures, statesmen, and officials. The Christian Council of Palestine was founded in 1942 and had a membership of 3,000 clergymen in 1946, mostly from liberal churches. The latter two organizations merged in 1946 as the American Christian Palestine Committee, which had a very influential membership of 15,000. This organization published books and pamphlets on the justice of Zionist aspirations and later to strengthen sympathy toward the State of Israel. After the establishment of the state, gentile friends of Israel founded organizational frameworks for their activities in the form of friendship leagues.
[Yona Malachy]
introduction to zionist bibliography
Zionist literature developed in many languages: German (Rome and Jerusalem by Moses Hess), Hebrew (Derishat Ẓiyyon by Ẓevi Hirsch Kalischer and the articles of D. *Gordon), and gradually in many other languages, not only in countries with large Jewish populations. It also appeared in many forms, from thick volumes to leaflets and periodicals issued at various intervals (dailies, weeklies, monthlies, yearbooks, collections commemorating special occasions, etc.). The variety of form is reflected in the variety of genre: feature writing, essays, chronicles, belles lettres in all its forms (fiction, plays, poetry, etc.), historical research and documentation, and so forth. Zionist literature covers the period from the 1860s to the present and, including all the books, leaflets, articles, and so on, encompasses millions of items.
A difficulty in cataloging this wealth of material is that in the early days of Ḥibbat Zion, the border between "Zionist" material and works on Ereẓ Israel in general was very vague, and this lack of a clear distinction between the two categories was not overcome in later years. Even after the establishment of the State of Israel it was difficult to draw a distinct line between literature on the state and writings on the Zionist movement. Throughout the existence of Zionist literature, therefore, the terms, "Ḥibbat Zion," "Zionist movement," "Ereẓ Israel," and the "State of Israel," have been viewed as loosely synonymous, although the special scope of each concept was clear. Thus it is difficult to differentiate bibliographically between the history of the yishuv from the beginning of the 1880s and the history of the movement and political Zionism.
This overlapping in concepts is inevitably reflected in the majority of the works cited below. Characteristic is the subtitle of a recent platform for research, which is entitled Ha-Ẓiyyonut: Me'assef le-Toledot ha-Tenu'ah ha-Ẓiyyonit veha-Yishuv ha-Yehudi be-Ereẓ Yisrael ("Zionism: Journal of the History of the Zionist Movement and the Yishuv in Ereẓ Israel," vol. 1, 1970). The same problem of exact definition exists in the bibliography Esrim Shenot Medinat Yisrael ("Twenty Years of the State of Israel," 1970) by A. Neuberg, in which much Zionist material is found, and the index volumes titled Palestine and Zionism (all these items are discussed below).
Bibliographies
As a rule, the bibliographies dealing with Zionism are listed in Shunami's Bibliography of Jewish Bibliographies (19652), but not all the material on this subject is found under the headings "Zionism" or "Zionist" in the index (p. 990), and a considerable amount of relevant material is found in other divisions. Bibliographical attention was first paid to the subject of Zionism at the end of the 19th century, even before the advent of Theodor Herzl. Practical efforts intensified with the advent of political Zionism, especially when newspapers throughout the world began to display an interest in Zionism. At a meeting of Russian members of the "Actions Committee" in Minsk, following the Minsk Conference (1902), it was decided to charge G. Belkowsky with the task of publishing a comprehensive bibliography on Zionism. The book came out in Russia under the title Ukazatel literatury o sionizme (St. Petersberg, 1903). It did not cite the names of the editors of the bibliography, which Belkowsky revealed after many years in a detailed article on this project (Haolam, Sept. 10, 1942, p. 425). The work listed over 4,000 entries in a variety of languages, in three categories: (1) Jewish nationalism; (2) Zionism: Theory and Practice; and (3) Ereẓ Israel.
The second of the three parts, which was to appear later and include literature in Hebrew and Yiddish, was not published because of the conditions in czarist Russia at the time. Hebrew works on Zionism were recorded afterward by William *Zeitlin in his bibliography Bibliotheca Sionistica (Frankfurt, 1909; reprint from zhb, vols. 12–13, 1908–09; includes works from 1852 to 1905).
At the same time a bibliographical project of vast dimensions on Palestine, entitled Die Palaestina Literatur, began to be carried out under the editorship of Peter Thomsen. Up to 1971, six volumes had been published, covering the literature from 1895 to 1939 (although the title page of the sixth volume states that it goes down to 1944). This series was published in Germany from 1908 to 1956 (the beginning of the sixth volume includes a biography of Thomsen). Material on Zionism is found only in the first four volumes and in the section on contemporary Palestine; a vast amount of material is listed in several languages (inter alia, bibliographies other than those recorded by S. Shunami).
Since 1944 many bibliographies have appeared, some of a general nature and some devoted to various bodies and institutions of the Zionist movement and Zionist Organization. Among the latest general and detailed bibliographies that include Zionist literature in various languages is Bibliografiah Ẓiyyonit (1943), by Abraham Levinson (with the cooperation of N.M. Gelber), which lists 2,400 entries in 17 languages. Bibliographical notations have been added to each section of Yizhak Gruenbaum's work Ha-Tenu'ah ha-Ẓiyyonit (vols. 1–4, 1942–54) by G. Kressel (1–2) and Israel Klausner (3–4). With the establishment of the State of Israel, Sophie A. Udin published an important bibliographical listing in English entitled "A List of References Leading to the Establishment of the State of Israel" (in The Journal of Educational Sociology, 22:3 (Nov. 1948), 239–47). Finally, The State of Israel (1948–68), by Assia Neuberg, contains much material on Zionism in a variety of languages (1970).
Any bibliography, no matter how complete, is by its nature unable to be entirely up-to-date in recording the continuous publication of works each year. Therefore annual bibliographical listings are included in various yearbooks: the American Jewish Yearbook, the Palestine Yearbook, the Zionist Yearbook, the Jewish Book Annual, etc. The most complete and correct ongoing bibliographical listing, however, is that published in each edition of the bibliographical quarterly of the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem, Kirjath Sepher, in the section on "Zionism, Ereẓ Israel, the State of Israel," which covers material published in Israel and abroad. The Zionist Archives in Jerusalem have published a bibliographical bulletin in various forms and at irregular intervals since 1936 (mimeographed). A vast amount of material on Zionism can also be found in the many bibliographies on personalities active in the field; these are listed in the section "Personal Bibliographies" in Shunami. The same is true of bibliographies on institutions and organizations within the Zionist movement, e.g., Madrikh Bibliografi le-Sifrut Ẓiyyonit-Datit ("A Bibliographical Guide to Literature on Religious Zionism," 19602), by Yiẓḥak Raphael, which goes beyond the field defined in its title and also includes articles in periodicals and the press, and Ha-Po'el ha-Mizrachi be-Ereẓ Yisrael (1968), by Yosef Salmon, which also includes articles.
Press and Periodicals
The press and periodicals, Jewish and non-Jewish, in all languages, contain much important material on the history of the Ḥibbat Zion movement, political Zionism, and everything pertaining to Ereẓ Israel over the past generations, from first-hand documentation (statements, press releases) to news items, commentary, reaction, essays, and research. Periodicals of all sorts, issued at varying intervals, whether published by official institutions of the Zionist Organization or its sympathizers or by those opposed or openly hostile to Zionism, reach into the thousands; and recent research has led to the conclusion that periodical literature attacking Zionism – whether published by Jews or non-Jews – is no less important for the study of Zionism than the publications of official Zionist organs or Zionist sympathizers.
In the beginning the scope of the Zionist press was limited, in direct relation to the size of the movement itself. In the 1860s and 1870s, the Jewish press, in all languages, was generally hostile, or at least apathetic, to the Jewish nationalist movement, with the exception of the Jewish Chronicle in England, Der Israelit and Die Juedische Presse in Germany, The Occident in the United States, and the Hebrew Ha-Maggid (Prussia). A pioneer of Zionist journalism in Germany was Selbstemanzipation, edited by N. Birnbaum, and its successor Zion, edited by H. Loewe and Willy Bambus (until Bambus came into conflict with Herzl before the First Zionist Congress). Then Herzl began to publish the weekly Die Welt (in German), which later became the first official organ of the Zionist Organization. Afterward organs of the Zionist organizations in various countries began to appear in a number of languages. Over the years Zionist newspapers have been established wherever a Zionist organization functioned, and some non-Zionist newspapers became pro-Zionist or tempered their opposition. At the same time, however (and until World War i), the Jewish press that was not particularly sympathetic toward Zionism – from the Orthodox and Reform movements to the leftist parties in Eastern Europe – was also a substantial force. The change in their attitude came about gradually, as the achievements of the Zionist movement and the yishuv became more noticeable and, by the outbreak of World War ii, the future of the Jews in Europe grew darker and darker. Finally, a radical change in attitude came about during and after the Holocaust, which practically reversed the situation that had existed during the 1860s and 1870s: a very small minority of the press remained opposed to the Zionist movement and the State of Israel and the majority were devoted to them to one degree or another. Because of this change in attitude, it was practically unnecessary for the Zionist movement to maintain its own organs, although such a press does continue to exist in many countries.
The Hebrew press holds a unique position. Even when it was employed to preach the doctrines of the Haskalah and indifference toward Jewish nationalism and Zionism, the Hebrew language was, by its very nature, a kind of living bridge to Ereẓ Israel. After the illusions of the Haskalah in Eastern Europe had been destroyed, therefore, the Hebrew press was the most loyal instrument of the Ḥibbat Zion movement and afterward of political Zionism, each paper expressing a difference in orientation. Sharp opposition to Jewish nationalism and Zionism in the Hebrew press was inconsequential compared to the overwhelming majority of pro-Zionist publications. The opposition began with Ha-Emet, a socialist-oriented paper edited by A.S. Liebermann, and after a number of years it was also expressed in extreme Orthodox circles, thus appearing at opposite poles of the spectrum. Over the years this opposition has taken various forms (today as the pro-Arab Israel Communists, Rakah, and the *Neturei Karta, respectively). An impressive symbol of the developments discussed above was the development of the Zionist leadership and its expression in the press and Hebrew literature through such personalities as Lilienblum, Aḥad-Ha-Am, Sokolow, and many others.
Lists of Newspapers and Indexes to their Contents
These two instruments of aid never kept up with the developments in the field of Jewish and Zionist journalism. For decades lists of Jewish newspapers have appeared, both in various lexicons and separately. Comprehensive listings are the Tentative List of Jewish Periodicals in Axis-Occupied Countries (1947), covering the period between the two world wars, and Joseph Fraenkel's The Jewish Press of the World (19676), which reflects the situation after World War ii. In this period, the distinction between Zionist and non-Zionist publications has become blurred, and any comprehensive list of Jewish publications reflects principally Zionist or pro-Zionist publications (see also Hebrew *Press; for other lists of publications, including those prepared by Fraenkel, see Shunami, Bibliography, second edition, index).
More problematic is the task of getting to the vast amount of material in the press. Indexes of the press, long accepted as standard in the world at large, are still rather innovations in the realm of the Jewish and Hebrew press. Only lately have really useful indexes come into being, but this venture is still in its infancy. One thing must be stressed in regard to material on Zionism: it is not to be found under subject headings such as "Zionism" and the like. Over the last generation Zionism encompassed the entire Jewish world and is thus to be found under thousands of other subject headings. Among the indexes included by Shunami and others that have been issued recently, the following deserve special attention:
(1) S.A. Udin and S. Landress (eds.), Palestine and Zionism (vols. 1–11, 1949–58) is organized according to a dictionary catalog (as are the two following works), so that "Zionism" is scattered among an abundance of sources; at the end of each volume of this important index to periodicals is a separate index to books and pamphlets, and it also covers material published in languages other than English from 1946 to 1956.
(2) Index to Jewish Periodicals, edited by Miriam Leikind, has been published in Cleveland, Ohio, since 1964 (seven volumes through 1970) and covers material from 1963 onward.
(3) Index to Ha-Po'el ha-Ẓa'ir, edited by Isa and G. Kressel (1968). The index to this weekly during the 50 years of its existence is essentially an index to all the events in the Zionist movement, the yishuv, and the labor movement during this period and is the largest index of this kind (in its dimensions and number of entries – more than 100,000) that has yet been published in Hebrew. It is also worth noting that an event located in the index to one newspaper can easily be found, according to the dates, in the rest of the press.
(4) The quarterly of the Jewish National and University Library, Kirjath Sepher, lists (beginning with no. 21) with exactness the contents of periodicals on Jewish studies and important articles in the daily press. Anyone wishing to keep up with what is going on in all fields of Jewish studies or any one or set of fields therein must go over each and every issue; for the sake of expediency, however, Issachar Yoel has compiled the Index of Articles on Jewish Studies (for 1966ff.), which reviews the yearly output according to special categories, including Ereẓ Israel, Zionism, and State of Israel. It includes an index to the largest number of newspapers and periodicals in this ramified field.
Encyclopedias and Lexicons of Zionism
Every Jewish lexicon obviously contains much material on Zionism, whether on personalities or Zionist affairs. Nonetheless, throughout the decades the need was felt for a special lexicon of Zionism, which would cover all aspects of this subject. The first attempt at this task, which still holds a position of major importance, was the lexicon published by the Zionist Federation in Germany in 1909, Zionistisches A-B-C Buch. The entries therein on personalities and Zionist affairs are written with exactitude and provide a comprehensive picture of the Zionist Organization, through the end of the first decade of its existence. The participants in putting the volume together were the heads of the Zionist movement in Germany and Austria. The second venture into this field was the Leksikon Ẓiyyoni (1924) of the Hebrew writer S.L. Zitron; however, it is restricted to personalities only. A Zionist lexicon (in Yiddish) of greater dimensions, whose intention was to cover personalities, Zionist affairs, the names of settlements in Ereẓ Israel, etc., began to come out in Warsaw under the title Tsiyionistisher Leksikon, under the editorship of B. Zweibaum; however, only one volume was published (1935; up to the middle of the letter "bet"). Another Yiddish lexicon published in Warsaw, Yidisher Gezelshaftlekher Leksikon, edited by Reuven Ben-Shem (Feldschuh), met a similar fate. Its first volume, which also included personalities, institutions, affairs, etc., came out close to the outbreak of World War ii and is preserved in only a few copies throughout the world. It goes up to the middle of the letter "vav" and covers primarily Polish Jewry, but it is considered a Zionist lexicon because of the wealth of Zionist material covered therein.
In Palestine, Moshe Kleinman aspired to publish the Enẓiklopedyah le-Ẓiyyonut (1947), but was prevented from issuing more than one volume (which goes up to the end of the letter "gimmel") by the conditions in the country and finally by his death. Since 1957 Enẓiklopedyah shel ha-Ẓiyyonut ha-Datit, edited by Y. Raphael (assistant editor G. Bat-Yehudah), has been published in Jerusalem; it covers personalities only. A large encyclopedic venture covering personalities is David Tidhar's Enẓiklopedyah le-Ḥalutzei ha-Yishuv u-Vonav, published from 1947 (19 volumes) which list biographies of personalities in Ereẓ alphabetically, but the indexes to each volume and to the work as a whole facilitate locating an entry. This work contains a wealth of Zionist material, especially in the latter volumes, which contain biographies of personalities in Ereẓ Israel mostly from Eastern Europe, the United States, England, etc. The Leksikon la-Sifrut ha-Ivrit ba-Dorot ha-Aḥaronim, by G. Kressel, also contains entries on many Zionist personalities. A two-volume work in English, Encyclopedia of Zionism, covering both personalities and Zionist events and affairs, was published in New York under the editorship of Raphael Patai (1971). Note should also be made of the various Jewish Who's Who volumes in English, Hebrew, and other languages that have come out in Israel and abroad.
Journals, Research Institutes, and Archives
Material on research into the history of Zionism is found in abundance in Jewish periodicals throughout the world. Especially rich in material are the official organs of the Zionist movement (Selbstemanzipation, Die Welt, Juedische Rundschau, Haolam, etc.). Since the beginning of the Zionist movement, however, the need for a special forum for Zionist research has made itself felt. In 1905 a forum of this type appeared for the first time in Germany, known as Die Stimme der Wahrheit and subtitled Jahrbuch fuer wissenschlaftlichen Zionismus (edited by L. Schoen). The notation "the volume of the first year" expressed the intention to perpetuate this publication, which was not realized. Since then collections honoring the memory of Herzl, for example, have turned into platforms for Zionist research: Theodor Herzl, A Memorial, edited by Meyer Weisgal (New York, 1929), and the Herzl-Jahrbuch, an annual for research on Herzl and Zionism, only one issue of which (by T. Nussenblatt) was published (1933). In Israel three collections were put out (one of which was in two volumes; 1950–56) under the title Shivat Ẓiyyon; they were intended to become an annual (edited by a staff of editors), but publication ceased. In the United States, Raphael Patai published the Herzl Year Book (6 vols. 1958–65). In 1970 the first collection on the history of the Zionist movement and the yishuv in Ereẓ Israel, Ha-Ẓiyyonut, was published under the editorship of Daniel Carpi. All these collections contain mostly research papers and documentary material.
Research institutes have been established at Tel Aviv University (named in honor of Chaim Weizmann) and the Hebrew University, Jerusalem (named in honor of Israel Goldstein). The former has already put out a number of books that investigate various aspects of the history of the yishuv and Zionism. The largest and most important archive for the history of Zionism throughout the world is the Central Zionist Archive in Jerusalem, but other archives are found in New York, in Bet ha-Tefuẓot of the University of Tel Aviv, etc. See *Archives.
[Getzel Kressel]
bibliography:
general: N. Sokolow, History of Zionism, 2 vols. (1919); A. Boehm, Die zionistische Bewegung, 2 vols. (1935–37); I. Cohen, The Zionist Movement (1946); B. Halpern, The Idea of the Jewish State (1961); A. Hertzberg (ed.), The Zionist Idea (1960, 1997); R. Learsi, Fulfillment: Epic Story of Zionism (1951); Ch. Weizmann, Trial and Error (1948); Y. Gruenbaum, Ha-Tenu'ah ha-Ẓiyyonit, 4 vols. (1942–54), partial translation into Eng. History of Zionism, 2 vols. (1943–46); J. Heller, The Zionist Idea (1947); L. Stein, The Balfour Declaration (1961); C. Sykes, Crossroads to Israel (1965); A. Bein, in: Herzl Year Book (1959), 1–27, includes bibliography. Ḥibbat zion: N. Sokolow, Hibbath Zion (1935); idem, History of Zionism, 1 (1919); Y. Gruenbaum, History of Zionism, 1 (1943); A. Boehm, Die zionistische Bewegung, 1 (1935), 96–150; A. Levinson, Bibliografiah Ẓiyyonut (1943), 51–69; A. Druyanow, Ketavim le-Toledot Ḥibbat Ẓiyyon, 3 vols. (1919, 1925, 1932); idem, Pinsker u-Zemanno (1953); Ḥ. Ḥissin, Mi-Yoman Aḥad ha-Bilu'im (1928); B. Dinaburg, Tekufat Ḥibbat Ẓiyyon (1932, 1934); S. Jawnieli, Sefer ha-Ẓiyyonut: Tekufat Ḥibbat Ẓiyyon, 2 vols. (1942, 19612); S. Breiman, in: Shivat Ẓiyyon, 1 (1950), 138–68; 2–3 (1953), 83–227; I. Klausner, Ḥibbat Ẓiyyon be-Rumanyah (1958); idem, Be-Hitorer Am (1962); idem, Mi-Katoviẓ ad Basel (1965); N.M. Gelber, Toledot ha-Tenu'ah ha-Ẓiyyonit be-Galiẓyah, 1 (1958), passim; M.L. Lilienblum, Derekh La'avor Ge'ullim (1899); T. Lavi et al. (eds.), pk Romanyah, 1 (1970), 47–60, 213–4 (bibl.). zionist policy: C. Sykes, Crossroads to Israel (1965); H.M. Sachar, The Emergence of the Middle East 1914 – 1924 (1969); Ch. Weizmann, Trial and Error (1948); O.K. Rabinowicz, in: Herzl Year Book, 1 (1958), 1–106; M. Medzini, Ha-Mediniyyut ha-Ẓiyyonit me-Reshitah ve-ad Moto shel Herzl (1934); R.G. Weisbord, African Zion …(1966); N. Friedman, J. De Haas, H.M. Kallen et al., A Memorandum on the Relations between the Ottoman Government and the Zionist Administration (1913); I. Friedman, in: jsos, 27 (1965), 147–67, 236–49; idem, in; Journal of Contemporary History, 5:2 (1970); P.A. Alsberg, in: Shivat Ẓiyyon, 4 (1956), 161–209; Y. Rabi, in: Middle Eastern Studies, 4 (Apr. 1968), 198–242; L. Stein, The Balfour Declaration (1961); M. Vereté, in: Zion, 32 (1967), 76–114; idem, in: Middle Eastern Studies, 6:1 (Jan. 1970); J. Kimche, The Unromantics – the Great Powers and the Balfour Declaration (1968); M. Medzini, Eser Shanim shel Mediniyyut Arẓiyisre'elit (1928); F.E. Manuel, The Realities of American-Palestine Relations (1949); idem, in: Shivat Ẓiyyon, 4 (1956), 210–39; Zionist Organization, Political Report (1921); H.L. Samuel, Memoirs (1955); F.H. Kisch, Palestine Diary (1938); Ch. Arlosoroff, Yoman Yerushalayim (1950); M. Sharett, Yoman Medini, 2 vols. (1968–70); R. Meinertzhagen, Middle East Diary, 1917 – 1956 (1959); esco Foundation for Palestine: Palestine, A Study of Jewish, Arab, and British Policies, 2 vols. (1947); V. Jabotinsky, The Story of the Jewish Legion (1945); H. Parzen, in: Herzl Year Book, 4 (1962), 345–94; S.L. Hattis, The Bi-National Idea in Palestine during Mandatory Times (1970); Y. Bauer, From Diplomacy to Resistance (1970); D. Joseph, British Rule in Palestine (1948); Dinur, Haganah; D. Ben-Gurion, Medinat Yisrael ha-Meḥuddeshet, 1 (1969). zionist organization: Zionist Organization, Protocols of the Zionist Congresses, in particular of the 1st (1897) and 23rd (1951); idem, The New Constitution of the World Zionist Organization (1960); Jewish Agency, Constitution of the Jewish Agency for Palestine (1950); Zionist Organization, Reports of the Executive of the zo submitted to the Congresses, in particular to the 22nd (1946); idem, The Jubilee of the 1stZionist Congress (1947). zionism in austria: J. Fraenkel, The Jews of Austria (1967), passim; H. Gold (ed.), Geschichte der Juden in Wien (1966). in australia and new zealand: M. Freilich, Zion in Our Time – Memoirs of an Australian Zionist (1967); A. Wynn, Fortunes of Samuel Wynn (1968). in bulgaria: A. Romano, J. Ben, and N. Levy (eds.), Yahadut Bulgaryah (1967), 87–606; Ch. Keshales, Korot Yehudei Bulgaryah (1969); N.M. Gelber, in: jsos, 8 (1946), 103–26. in czechoslovakia: F. Weltsch (ed.), Prag vi-Yrushalayim (1953); Ch. Yahil, Devarim al ha-Ẓiyyonut ha-Tchekhoslovakit (1967); idem, in: Gesher, no. 59–60 (1969); The Jews of Czechoslovakia, 2 vols. (1967–71). in france: André Spire, Le Mouvement sioniste 1894 – 1918 (1919); idem, Poèmes Juifs (1919, 1959); A. Bein, Introduction au sionisme (19392); A. Blumel, Léon Blum, juif et sioniste (1951). in germany: M. Bodenheimer, Prelude to Israel (1963); R. Lichtheim, Die Geschichte des deutschen Zionismus (1954); idem, Rueckkehr (1970); K. Blumenfeld, Erlebte Judenfrage (1962, Heb. 1963); E. Auerbach, Pionier der Verwirklichung (1970). in great britain: P. Goodman, Zionism in England, 1899 – 1949 (1949); J. Fraenkel, in: Zionist Year Book (1959–60), 283–312; idem, in: yivo Bleter, 43 (1966), 72–147; Ch. Weizmann, Trial and Error (1948), passim; Zionist Federation of the United Kingdom, Annual Report (1968). in holland: Jaarverslagen van het Bondsbestuur van de Nederlandse Zionistenbond; Bishviley Jachid (1950). in hungary: Z. Zehavi, Toledot ha-Ẓiyyonut be-Hungaryah, 1 (1966). in italy: D. Lattes, in: D. Carpi et al. (eds.), Scritti in Memoria di Leone Carpi (1967), 208–18; A.J.M. Pacifici, ibid., 219–29; S. Minervi, Angelo Levi-Bianchini e la sua opera nel Levante 1918 – 20 (1967); E. Castelbolognese (ed.), H.E. Sereni, Ha-Aviv ha-Kadosh (1947), an anthology of diaries, letters, and essays. in latin america: P. Schwartzman, Judiós en América … (1963), index; I. Austri-Dann (ed.), Yorbukh fun Meksikaner Yidentum (1950–52), 331–51; M. Senderey, Di Geshikhte fun dem Yidishn Yishuv in Chile (1956), 231–56; J. Shatzky, Communidades Judías en Latino América (1952); Communidades Judías de Latino América (1968); Primero Congreso Sionista Latino Americano (1946); Primera Convención Juveníl Judia Latino Americana (1962). in north africa and asia: H.J. Cohen, Ha-Pe'ilut ha-Ẓiyyonit be-Iraq (1969), incl. bibl.; J.M. Landau, Ha-Yehudim be-Miẓrayim ba-Me'ah ha-Tesha-Esreh (1967), 126–35. in poland: N.M. Gelber, Toledot ha-Tenu'ah ha-Ẓiyyonit be-Galiẓyah, 2 vols. (1958); Y. Gruenbaum (ed.), Warsaw, 1 (1953), 357–466; 2 (1959); I. Schwarzbart, Tsvishn Beyde Velt-Milkhomes (1958); L. Spizman (ed.), Antologye fun der Khalutsisher Bavegung, 3 vols. (1959–62); H.M. Rabinowicz, The Legacy of Polish Jewry: 1919 – 1939 (1965); A Tartakower, in: Algemeyne Entsiklopedye Yidn, 6 (1963), 147–63. in romania: T. Lavi et al. (eds.), pk Romanyah, 1 (1970), 47–61, 101–6, 177–89, 209–24 (incl. comprehensive bibl.); M. Landau, in: Gesher, 3:1 (1957), 77–94; 3:2 (1957), 78–91; 3:3 (1957), 101–13. in russia: L. Greenberg, The Jews in Russia, 2 (1951), 160–202; J.B. Schechtman, Zionism and the Zionists in the Soviet Union (1966); idem, in L. Kochan (ed.), The Jews in Soviet Russia (1970), 99–124; G.G. Goldman, Zionism under Soviet Rule 1917 – 1928 (1960); G. Aronson, in: J. Frumkin, G. Aronson and A. Gildenweiser (eds.), Russian Jewry 1860 – 1917 (1966), 144–71; I. Ben-Zvi, ibid., 209–18; S. Baron, Russian Jews under Tsars and Soviets (1964), index; A. Rafaeli (Zenziper), Pa'amei ha-Ge'ullah (1951); idem, Ha-Ma'avak la-Ge'ullah (1956); M. Nurock, Ve'idat Ẓiyyonei Rusyah (1963); Y. Gruenbaum, Ha-Tenu'ah ha-Ẓiyyonit be-Hitpatteḥutah, 3, 4 (1949, 1954); I. Klausner, OppoziẒyah le-Herzl (1960); A. Levinsohn, Be-Reshit ha-Tenu'ah (1947); Y. Erez (ed.) Sefer Z.S. (1963); B. West, Struggle of a Generation: The Jews Under Soviet Rule (1959); Y. Eliash, Zikhronot Ẓiyyoni me-Rusyah (1955); B.Z. Dinur, Be-Olam she-Shaka 1884 – 1914 (1958); idem, Bi-Ymei Milḥamah u-Mahpekhah 1914 – 1921 (1960); J. Rabinovich, Mi-Moskva ad Yerushalayim (1957); He-Avar le-Divrei Yemei ha-Yehudim ve-ha-Yahadut be-Rusyah (1952). in south africa: M. Gitlin, The Vision Amazing (1950). in the united states: I.S. Meyer (ed.), Early History of Zionism in America (1958), includes a series of articles and comprehensive bibliographies; M. Feinstein, American Zionism 1884 – 1908 (1965); A. Friesel, Ha-Tenu'ah ha-Ẓiyyonit be-Arẓot ha-Berit ba-Shanim 1897 – 1914 (1970), includes a comprehensive bibliography; idem, in: D. Carpi (ed.), Ha-Ẓiyyonut, 1 (1970), 121–49; N.W. Cohen, in: ajhsp, 40 (1950/51), 361–94; S. Udin (ed.), Fifty Years of American Zionism 1897 – 1947: A Documentary Record (1947); R.J.H. Gottheil, The Aims of Zionism (1899); idem, Zionism (1914); M. Rischin, in: ajhsp, 49 (1959/60), 188–201; Y. Shapiro, Leadership of the American Zionist Organization 1897 – 1930 (Ph.D. thesis, Columbia, 1964); S.S. Wise, Challenging Years (1949); S. Halperin, The Political World of American Zionism (1961); C. Reznikoff (ed.), Louis Marshall, Champion of Liberty, 2 vols. (1957), index and passim; B. Halpern, The American Jew, Zionist Analysis (1956); R. Patai (ed.), Herzl Year Book, 5 (1963), contains a series of studies in the history of Zionism in America 1894–1919; H. Parzen, ibid., 4 (1962), 345; 6 (1965), 311–68; idem, in: jsos, 23 (1961), 235–64; Saul D. Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals, n.y., 1946, 1969; Robert Wolff, Barrington Moore, Jr., and Herbert Marcuse, A Critique of Pure Tolerance, n.y., 1965; Paul Jacobs, Is Curly Jewish?, n.y., 1965, 1973; David Mandel, On rza, in press; Jack N. Porter, ed. and introd., Jewish Radicalism, n.y., 1973; Charles A. Reich, The Greening of America, n.y., 1970; Richard Siegel, Michael Strassfeld, and Sharon Strassfeld, Jewish Catalog, n.y., 1973; James Sleeper and Alan L. Mintz, New Jews, n.y., 1971; Ellul, Ellul 5733; Commentary, "Revolution and the Jews," 51:2, Feb. 1971; Response, "Jewish Radicalism – Then and Now," No. 15, 73–81; No. 19, 105–20; Net Outlook, Aron Manheimer, "Radical Zionism Reconsidered," 16:5, June 1973. zionist utopias: G. Kressel (ed.), Ḥezyonei Medinah (1954); idem, in: I. Cohn and D. Sadan (eds.), Me'assef le-Divrei Sifrut, Bikkoret ve-Hagut, 8–9 (1968), 456–69. christian zionism: M. Vereté, in: Zion, 33 (1968), 145–79: N.M. Gelber, Vorgeschichte des Zionismus 1695 – 1845 (1927); F. Kobler, The Vision Was There (1956); A.M. Hyamson, in: ajhsp, 26 (1918) 127–64; N. Sokolow, History of Zionism, 2 vols. (1919–68), passim, index; Y. Malachy, in: Herzl Year Book, 5 (1963), 175–208; 6 (1964/65), 265–302; B. Tuchman, Bible and Sword (1956). add. bibliography: W. Laqueur, A History of Zionism (1972); S. Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism: Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State (1981); R. Furstenberg, Post Zionism: The Challenge to Israel (1997); J. Reinharz and A. Shapira (eds.), Essential Papers on Zionism (1995); H.M. Sachar, A History of Israel from the Rise of Zionism to Our Time (19962); G. Shimoni, The Zionist Ideology (1995); D. Vital, The Origins of Zionism (1975).
Zionism
ZIONISM
ZIONISM . The origin of the word Zion is unclear. It most likely derives from a word meaning "rock" or "stronghold" or perhaps "a dry place." The first occurrence of the name is in 2 Samuel 5:7, where David captures the Jebusite city of Jerusalem. The "fortress of Zion" appears to have been the Jebusite name for the place that was henceforth to be called "the citadel of David." But although Jebusite in origin, the name Zion (Hebrew, Tsiyyon ) was assimilated into the Israelite vocabulary and became associated with the Davidic monarchy and its capital in Jerusalem. In writings of such prophets as "First Isaiah" and Jeremiah and in Psalms, the name Zion is used as a synonym first for the Temple in Jerusalem, then for the kingdom of Judah, and finally, in postexilic literature, for the Land of Israel. In the Babylonian exile the psalmist wrote: "By the waters of Babylon / There we sat down, yea, we wept / When we remembered Zion" (Ps. 137:1). Thus what was first a specific place-name came to represent symbolically the whole Land of Israel, whose people had been exiled. The particular associations between Zion and the Davidic monarchy gave the word a special resonance in later messianic literature that expressed longing not only for the return of the people to their land but also for the reestablishment of the kingdom of David.
A particular tension has informed the Jewish relationship to Zion since biblical times. On the one hand, the Land of Israel is regarded as a land specially promised to the ancient Israelites and their descendants (the term Holy Land, however, only appears once in the Hebrew Bible). According to this position, the Israelite God can be worshiped only on this sanctified territory. Thus when David flees from Saul to the land of the Philistines, he laments that "[men] have driven me out this day that I should have no share in the heritage of the Lord, saying 'Go and serve other gods'" (1 Sm. 26:19). In Psalm 137, verse 4 the writer wonders, "How shall we sing the song of YHVH in a foreign land?" In both biblical and rabbinic law, much of the agricultural, ritual, and even civil law applied only to the Land of Israel.
On the other hand, a strong universalist tendency already developed in biblical times held that God rules over all the world and can be worshipped anywhere. This tendency became particularly prominent as a result of the Babylonian exile and found expression in such exilic writers as "Second Isaiah" (Is. 40ff.). In some of this literature there is even a hint of criticism against those who wished to limit worship of God to Zion: "Thus says YHVH: with heaven my throne and earth my footstool, what house could you build me, what place could you make for my rest?" (Is. 66:1).
The realities of Jewish life during and after the Second Temple period (538 bce–70 ce) made a combination of these positions necessary. From the time of the Babylonian exile, a large Jewish community developed outside the Land of Israel and became particularly prominent during the Hellenistic and Roman Empires. Even before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 ce and the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–135 ce), the Jews of the Diaspora probably constituted a majority of the Jewish people. Nevertheless these Jews maintained a strong connection with the Land of Israel and its religious institutions. They made regular pilgrimages to the Temple and contributed money to it for sacrifices. After the Temple was destroyed, the Palestinian community remained important until the late third century, when it began to decline, and following the Muslim conquest in the seventh century, it ceased to play a significant role in Jewish life. Even after the Temple was destroyed, the Land of Israel continued to function as a religious center for Diaspora communities, owing in part to the continuing authority of the Palestinian rabbis. But at the same time the emerging rabbinic center in Babylonia challenged its Palestinian counterparts and insisted on the equal—or sometimes even the greater—importance of its own community. From a legal point of view, these rabbis did not legislate that one must live in the land in order to fulfill all those commandments that could only be realized there. But they did make the decision of a man to "go up" to the land binding on his wife.
The rabbis developed rituals that could be practiced anywhere and yet were designed to preserve the memory of the Temple (zekher le-hurban). Such ceremonies included leaving a small area of wall unfinished in one's house. It was during this period that prayers were added to the daily service that pleaded with God:
Sound the great shofar for our freedom; raise the standard for the gathering of our exiles, and assemble us from the four corners of the earth.… Restore our judges as of old.… And to Jersualem thy city return in mercy and dwell therein as thou has spoken, rebuild it soon in our days as an everlasting building, and speedily set up therein the throne of David. (The Daily Prayer Book)
Medieval Period
The spiritual connection to Zion was kept alive during the Middle Ages primarily through literature. To be sure through the centuries there were individual Jews who made pilgrimages or actually settled in the Land of Israel, but no theology of pilgrimage developed, nor was it seen as religious obligation. The theme of Zion played an important role in the medieval liturgical poems (piyyutim) and especially in the lamentation poem (qinot) recited on the Ninth of Av (the day, according to tradition, on which the First and Second Temples were destroyed).
The best examples of secular poetry devoted to longing for Zion are found during the "classical age" of the Spanish Jews (900–1200 ce). Two themes intermingle in this poetry: descriptions of the beauty of Zion and lamentations for its ruin. Some of the Spanish Jewish writers achieved high positions in Spanish society, but their work reflects persistent attachment to the land of their forefathers. Shemuʾel ha-Nagid (933–1055/6 ce) was the vizier of Granada and the commander of its army. One of his poems, "My Heart Waxes Hot within Me," celebrates victory over his enemies, but the first part is a lament over the destruction of Zion. Thus Shemuʾel's pride over his military accomplishments was tempered by the feeling that they were incomplete as long as the Jews lived in exile.
Perhaps the most outstanding representative of this school of poets was Yehudah ha-Levi (c. 1075–1141), whose Shirei Tsiyyon (Songs of Zion) inspired many imitations later in the Middle Ages. One of his poems, ("Zion, Will You Not Seek the Welfare of Your Prisoners?") was included in the liturgy of the Ninth of Av. In another, titled, "My Heart is in the East," he wrote:
My heart is in the East and I am at the edge of the West How then can I taste what I eat, how can I enjoy it? How can I fulfill my vows and pledges, while Zion is in the domain of Edom [i.e., the Christian Crusaders] and I am in the bonds of Arabia [i.e., Muslim Spain]? It would be easy for me to leave behind the good things of Spain, just as It would be glorious to see the dust of the ruined Shrine. (The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse)
Ha-Levi emigrated to the Land of Israel toward the end of his life, although whether he moved out of ideological or pragmatic reasons remains disputed.
Moses Nahmanides (1194–1270), the twelfth-century Spanish commentator, philosopher, and mystic, who died in the land in 1270, advanced the most radical position on settlement in the land. Not only did he view it as a religious obligation, but he held that it was perhaps the cardinal obligation. Where other thinkers had noted the fact that perhaps a third of the laws of biblical and rabbinic Judaism pertained to the land—and especially to its agriculture—Nahmanides suggested that all of the commandments required performance in the land if they were to achieve their full mystical effect on the divine.
This proto-Zionist sentiment cannot be dissociated from medieval Jewish messianism. All messianic thinkers in the Middle Ages considered the return to Zion to be among the primary tasks of the Messiah. Even as messianic expectations were embroidered with supernatural fantasies, such as the belief in the resurrection of the dead, the core of Jewish messianism remained political and nationalistic: the Messiah would return the Jews to Zion, reestablish the kingdom of David, and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. The movements mentioned here were all attempts to spark the messianic process by encouraging human beings to take the first steps of resettling the Land of Israel. In the seventeenth century the Shabbatean movement caused Jews throughout the world to prepare themselves for the imminent return to Zion, a hope largely dashed when the putative Messiah, Shabbetai Tsevi (1626–1676), converted to Islam in 1667.
On the other hand, another group of medieval thinkers deemphasized the importance of immigration to Zion. Some, such as Ḥayyim Kohen (twelfth century), saw no obligation to live in the Land of Israel since the commandments pertaining to the land could not be observed until the coming of the Messiah. Meir ben Baruch of Rothenburg (c. 1220–1293) argued that it is permissible to leave the Land of Israel to study the Torah. Similarly Moses Maimonides (Mosheh ben Maimon, 1135/8–1204), the most renowned of medieval Jewish philosophers and legal scholars, gave greater emphasis to the study of the Torah than to awaiting or hastening the coming of the Messiah. In his code of Jewish law (Mishneh Torah, c. 1180), Maimonides did not include settling in the land as one of the 613 commandments. For Maimonides the central event in Jewish history was at Mount Sinai, and the return to Zion in messianic times would be a means toward uninterrupted study of the law revealed at Sinai. Although Maimonides clearly believed in the coming of the Messiah (which he understood as a realistic and not solely supernatural process), he subordinated Zion to Sinai.
This trend of thought became even more pronounced in eighteenth-century Hasidism, which, as Gershom Scholem (1897–1981) has argued, frequently played down expectations of the imminent coming of the Messiah. Dov Ber, the maggid of Mezhirich (1704–1772), believed that the qabbalistic task of "raising the sparks" might be more effectively accomplished in the lands of the exile. Naḥman of Bratslav (1772–1810), who was perhaps the most messianic of the Hasidic masters, stretched the holiness of the Land of Israel to encompass all the lands in which the Jews lived, thus spiritualizing what had hitherto been a concrete concept.
The Nineteenth Century
In the nineteenth century the forces of modern nationalism, released by the French Revolution, awakened nationalist hopes among the Jews throughout Europe. Although emancipation and assimilation caused many Jews, particularly in western and central Europe, to identify with the national aspirations of the countries in which they lived, increases in anti-Semitism and the failure of emancipation to fulfill its promises refocused attention on Zion. The nineteenth century thus witnessed a fusing of traditional messianism with modern nationalism that culminated in the emergence of modern Zionism at the end of the century.
Two important intellectual developments in the nineteenth century, among both modernizing and traditional Jews, prepared the ground for Zionism. The first was the movement of Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah), which began in Germany in the late eighteenth century and spread to eastern Europe in the nineteenth. The Haskalah developed in two directions with respect to Zion. On the one hand, there was a general tendency to promote the emancipation of the Jews in Europe by glorifying the European nations. The Reform movement in Germany, which was one product of enlightenment, deleted references to Zion in the prayer book and emphasized the patriotic attachment of Jews to their native countries. Some Haskalah writers used messianic language to describe European rulers, such as Joseph II of Austria (1741–1790) and Alexander II of Russia (1818–1881), who were perceived as particularly sympathetic to the Jews.
On the other hand, much of the new Hebrew literature written by Haskalah authors, especially in eastern Europe, harkened back to the land of the Bible. Avraham Mapu (1808–1867), the first Hebrew novelist, placed the plots of two of his novels, Ahavat Tsiyyon (Love of Zion, 1853) and Ashmat Shomron (Guilt of Shomron, 1865–1866), in romantic biblical settings. Hebrew newspapers such as Ha-shahar and Ha-maggid, published in Russia, also fostered interest in the Land of Israel and countered assimilationist tendencies by arguing for a Jewish national consciousness. In addition the activities of western European Jewish philanthropists, such as Edmund de Rothschild (1845–1934), Adolphe Crémieux (1796–1880), and Moses Montefiore (1784–1885), in settling Jews in Palestine fostered the beginnings of the modern settlement in the country. Thus both in literature and philanthropy modern "enlightened" Jews created the basis for a Zionist movement.
One secular Jewish thinker of particular importance was Moses Hess (1812–1875). Hess was one of the early leaders of European socialism. Following the 1848 revolutions, he withdrew from political activity and became interested in the history of national groups. He rediscovered his Jewish origins and became a fervent advocate of Jewish nationalism. In his Rome and Jerusalem (1862), he advanced a proposal for the renewal of the Jewish state, arguing that the continuation of the Jewish people could be justified only on national, rather than religious, grounds.
The second important nineteenth-century development was among traditional Jews. Tsevi Hirsch Kalischer (1795–1874) appealed to the Rothschild family to buy the Land of Israel from Muḥammad ʿAlī (1769–1849), the ruler of Egypt. Kalischer developed a plan to reinstitute the ancient sacrifices on the Temple mount as a way of hastening the coming of the Messiah. He based his messianic doctrine, which called for human initiative, on Moses Maimonides, who had argued that certain human actions might precede the actual coming of the Messiah. Later, following the Damascus blood libel affair of 1840 and the attempt by Western philanthropists to rescue the Damascus Jews, Kalischer advocated agricultural settlement in the Land of Israel. However, even in his later writings, which put forward this kind of practical suggestion, Kalischer never abandoned his messianic expectations, nor did he give up his hope that the sacrifices might be reinstituted by the new settlers.
A similar kind of religious "Zionism" can be found in the writings of Yehudah ben Shelomoh Alkalai (1798–1878), who until the Damascus Affair was an obscure preacher in the Balkans. Like Kalischer, Alkalai argued in numerous pamphlets for Jewish settlement in the Holy Land as a means toward bringing the Messiah.
The writings of Kalischer and Alkalai had little immediate effect, although there was an increase in immigration to Palestine by Orthodox Jews throughout the nineteenth century. New communities of religious Jews were established outside the walls of Jerusalem, in some cases with the help of philanthropists like Montefiore. In 1878 a group of Orthodox Jews established the first agricultural colony, Petach Tikva. Despite their traditionalist orientation, these religious Jews made important contributions in laying the groundwork for the later Zionist settlement.
Modern Secular Zionism
The rise of anti-Semitism in France, Germany, and Russia in the last quarter of the nineteenth century raised serious questions about the prospects of Jewish integration into European society. Under the influence of modern nationalist ideas, a number of secular or partially secular Jews in several countries began to conceive of a Jewish homeland as the only answer to the Jewish situation. In addition to the political problem of anti-Semitism, many of these thinkers felt that the growing problem of Jewish assimilation could be addressed only by the creation of a Jewish society with its own national culture.
The new Zionist thinkers attempted to combine the ideas of secular nationalism with the messianic aspirations still cultivated by the large population of traditional Jews. Indeed it might be argued that Zionism emerged when it did as a result of the influence of modern nationalism, but that it emerged at all was a result of the persistence of the age-old religious longing for Zion. Yet the tensions between these seemingly similar national ideals were evident from the inception of modern Zionism, and they continue to characterize the conflict between the secular and the religious in modern Israel.
Following the pogroms in Russia in 1881, a group of eastern European intellectuals formed the Ḥibbat Tsiyyon (Love of Zion). The members of this movement came from both of the groups previously mentioned: followers of the Haskalah and religious figures. Ḥibbat Tsiyyon was primarily a practical movement that sought to foster settlement and agricultural development in Palestine. It borrowed its ideology of "productivization" of the Jews from the earlier Haskalah. The Ḥibbat Tsiyyon was a response to the mass emigration of Jews from Russia that began in the wake of the pogroms, and it tried to direct the immigration to Palestine instead of to western Europe and America. Although the Ḥibbat Tsiyyon sponsored a number of colonies in Palestine, it never became a mass movement, and its impact was largely on Russian Jewish intellectuals.
Modern Zionism really began with Theodor Herzl (1860–1904). The term Zionism was coined in 1890 by Nathan Birnbaum (1864–1937) in his journal Selbstemanzipation and was adopted by Herzl and his followers at the First Zionist Congress in 1897. Although some rabbis supported Herzl, most members of the movement, including Herzl himself, were secular and Westernized. Nevertheless Herzl was greeted by many eastern European Jews as a messianic figure. The first substantial Zionist emigration from eastern Europe to Palestine started after the pogroms of 1903 and 1905 to 1906 and was largely made up of young secular Russian Jews, many of whom were influenced by the Russian radicalism of the period.
The attitude toward religion among the early secular Zionist thinkers was frequently quite hostile. Traditional Judaism was viewed as the religion of the exile, and the Zionists saw themselves as a movement to "negate the exile" (shelilat ha-golah). This position received its sharpest expression in the writings of M. Y. Berdichevsky (1865–1921), J. H. Brenner (1881–1921), and Jacob Klatzkin (1882–1948). Berdichevsky, for example, saw the whole religious Jewish tradition, going back to Mount Sinai, as being opposed to a proud national life, and he wished to create a "new Hebrew man" based on a "Nietzschean" countertradition of strength and naturalism. Berdichevsky traced this countertradition back to the biblical period, when, he believed, the ancient Hebrews followed a revelation from Mount Gerizim, mentioned in Deuteronomy 27:11–26, that was opposed to the "ethical" Torah of Mount Sinai. The prophets, and later the rabbis, suppressed this Torah of nature, but it persisted in heretical movements and splinter sects, such as the first-century Zealots and the eighteenth-century Ḥasidim. This idea, that the Jews had been misled by the rabbis and had followed a tradition alien to their roots, had an important influence on the more radical secular Zionist attitudes toward the Jewish religion.
Nevertheless there were other secular Zionists who tried to base the new Zionist culture on elements from the religious tradition. Aḥad ha-ʿAm (the pen name of Asher Ginsberg, 1856–1927) tried to develop a secular Judaism based on certain principles from the Jewish heritage. He believed that the Jewish religion was one expression of a wider Jewish national culture. The elements that a secular Judaism might borrow from the tradition varied in Aḥad ha-ʿAm's writings (sometimes "absolute monotheism" was stressed, other times "liberal ethics"), but he held that the development of this culture was possible only in a Jewish national home. This national cultural center would in turn revitalize the Jewish Diaspora, which had been spiritually weakened by assimilation and the decline of the Jewish religion.
A number of the leaders of the secular Zionist labor movement also tried, with varying degrees of success, to incorporate a more positive attitude toward the Jewish religion into their secular ideologies. Aharon David Gordon (1856–1922), who was one of the pioneers of the early agricultural settlements, developed a religion of labor based on a mystical bond between the Jew and the Land of Israel. Physical labor on the national soil is a way of renewing the self and bringing it into harmony with the cosmos. Although Gordon was not a practicing Orthodox Jew, his philosophy relied heavily on Jewish mysticism and Hasidism as well as on Tolstoyan ideals.
Another labor leader, Berl Katzenelson (1887–1944), argued for the adaptation of traditional Jewish holidays and rituals to the new national home. Katzenelson, who was enormously influential as a cultural and ideological writer, laid the groundwork for a secular national culture that had its roots in Jewish tradition. Similarly the first prime minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion (1886–1973), sought to base the new national culture on a return to the Bible, a theme that had precedent among the Haskalah writers of the nineteenth century.
The ambivalence toward the Jewish tradition that one finds in many of these early secular Zionists had much to do with their biographies. In most cases they came from traditional homes and were educated in the yeshivot (rabbinic academies) of eastern Europe. Zionism was a radical revolution for them against the world of their childhood, but they never fully broke with their memories of this religious culture. Even if their way of life was secular, they wished to recreate an authentic Jewish culture on a new, national basis.
If the labor Zionists were ambivalent at best toward the Jewish religion, their counterparts in the Revisionist Zionist Party (organized in 1925) were militant. The Revisionists were led by Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880–1940), the Russian-Jewish journalist and poet, and they acquired the reputation of a right-wing, nationalist movement. Although Jabotinsky had a few religious followers, his movement was generally adamantly secular and opposed to religion. In the 1940s a splinter group under the poet Yonatan Ratosh (1908–1981) broke off from the Revisionists and formed the Young Hebrew, or "Canaanite," movement (the latter term was originally used by their opponents). The Canaanites saw the Jews as a religious group whose history was in the exile, whereas the new Hebrew community in Palestine was to break from the religious past and develop its own indigenous culture. The Canaanites were inspired by the myths of the ancient Canaanites that were uncovered in the Ras Shamra excavations of the 1930s. Although the Canaanites were an extreme nativist movement, their thought points to an important trend in Israeli culture away from traditional Jewish religion and toward a new national culture that might incorporate ancient Near Eastern myths.
Religious Zionism
Although the majority of the Orthodox Jewish world was either indifferent or opposed to Herzl's Zionist movement, there was a significant group that responded favorably to the idea of a Jewish state. Among the first rabbis to join Herzl were Yitsḥaq Yaʿaqov Reines (1839–1915) and Shemuʾel Mohilever (1824–1898), who was perhaps the most prominent rabbi in the Ḥibbat Tsiyyon movement. In 1902 Reines formed Mizraḥi, a religious faction within the World Zionist Organization (the name is a composite of some of the Hebrew letters from the words merkaz ruhani, "spiritual center"). Mizraḥi consisted of two groups, one that opposed the introduction of any "cultural" issues into the Zionist movement, for fear that the secularists would set the tone in such endeavors, and another that saw that Zionism could not avoid confronting cultural questions and demanded that Mizraḥi try to influence the Zionist movement in a religious direction. Although the "political" faction was initially predominant, the Mizraḥi movement ultimately saw as its raison d'être the fostering of religious education and public religious practice in the Zionist settlement in Palestine and later the state of Israel.
Mizraḥi played a major role in mustering support for Zionism among Orthodox Jews in Europe and the United States. It created a network of schools in which Zionism was taught together with traditional religious subjects. At the same time Mizraḥi established schools in Palestine that formed the backbone of the religious educational system that is an important part of the general educational system in the contemporary state of Israel. The Mizraḥi youth movements, Young Mizraḥi and Benei Akiva, began establishing agricultural settlements in Palestine in the 1920s.
The Mizraḥi joined three other religious parties to create a religious faction in the first Israeli governing coalition. In 1956 they formed the National Religious Party (NRP) and Poʿel Mizraḥi (Mizraḥi workers). The NRP has sat in every Israeli government (with the exception of one year) to date and regularly receives approximately 10 percent of the vote. However, this percentage began to drop in the 1980s with the defection of more nationalist elements to other, nonreligious parties and the emergence of the ultraorthodox Shas Party, which appealed to Jews of Middle Eastern and North African origin. Despite its relatively small share of the national vote, the NRP has constituted an important "swing" element in Israeli governments since neither the Labor Alignment nor the Likud Party has been able to win a clear majority. Thus the NRP has exerted disproportionate influence on Israeli politics and on the role of religion in Israeli society.
Since its inception the Mizraḥi sought to avoid the problem of the relationship of Zionism to Jewish messianism. Much opposition to Zionism in the religious world stemmed from the belief that human beings should not "force the end" (i.e., initiate messianic times by secular means). Instead of answering this position with a new messianic theory, the adherents of Mizraḥi took a cautious stance, claiming that the Zionist movement constituted a "beginning of redemption." They saw their role as guaranteeing that the future redemption would not be ruined by the heretical actions of the secular Zionists.
There were, however, certain elements among the religious Zionists who took a bolder approach to the question of messianism. Primary among these was Avraham Yitsḥaq Kook (1865–1935), who became chief rabbi of Jaffa in 1904 and then chief Ashkenazic rabbi of Palestine from 1921 until his death in 1935. Kook held that redemption had begun with the Zionist movement, and in anticipation of imminent messianic times, he fostered study of the sacrificial laws in his yeshivah. Unlike other religious Zionists and religious anti-Zionists, Kook believed the secular pioneers were a necessary force to prepare the material foundation for messianic times. He argued dialectically that the profane was necessary for subsequent emergence of the sacred. Kook met frequently with leaders of the labor Zionist movement and developed close ties with them. As chief rabbi of Jaffa he played a central role in 1909 in the attempt to solve the problem of the shemittah, the agricultural sabbatical during which land owned by Jews in the Land of Israel is supposed to lie fallow. Kook arranged for sale of such land to a non-Jew, which allowed it to be worked by Jews and permitted the continuation of the agricultural settlements. Kook's unusually positive attitude toward the secular Zionist movement was based on his belief that, when Zionism succeeded, messianic times would come and the Zionist movement would itself return to its unconscious religious roots.
Kook's messianic philosophy had little direct impact on the religious Zionist parties, but it did influence a new generation of religious Israelis, particularly through the Merkaz ha-Rav Yeshivah in Jerusalem, established by Kook and headed by his son Tsevi Yehudah Kook (1891–1982) until the latter's death. This new generation did not accept the compromise position of the older leaders of Mizraḥi, who believed that the religious parties should primarily guard the religious status quo in the state of Israel. The young religious Zionists, who grew up after the creation of the state in 1948, believed strongly in Zionism as the fulfillment of traditional Jewish messianism. This belief took political expression after the Six-Day War of 1967. Young religious Israelis reestablished the settlements in the Etsion bloc south of Jerusalem and created a Jewish outpost in Hebron in 1968. (This illegal settlement was later recognized by the government and developed into the town of Qiryat Arba outside of Hebron.) In 1974, following the Yom Kippur War, these religious activists founded the Gush Emunim (bloc of the faithful) movement, which advocated the incorporation of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank of the Jordan River) into Israel. The Gush Emunim led a settlement drive in these areas, sometimes with the support of the Israeli government and sometimes illegally. They constituted a significant messianic force in Israeli politics and formed alliances with secular nationalist forces.
Religious Institutions in the State of Israel
Under both the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate, Jewish religious courts enjoyed official jurisdiction over matrimonial and inheritance law. The office of the hakham basi in the Ottoman Empire was succeeded by the Ashkenazic and Sefardic chief rabbis under the British Mandate. These functions were carried over to the rabbinic courts and the chief rabbinate of the state of Israel, which were given jurisdiction over matters of personal law by a Knesset enactment of 1953. Rabbinical judges were given the same status as district court judges, and their decisions were enforced by the civil authorities. Thus in matters of marriage, divorce, and child custody, rabbinic courts—ruling according to Jewish law (halak-hah) —have state sanction. Civil marriage and divorce do not exist, although civil marriages are recognized if contracted abroad. The Ministry of Religious Affairs deals with the needs of the various religious communities in Israel and funds the construction and maintenance of synagogues, yeshivot, and other religious facilities.
Although both the Conservative and Reform movements have small followings in Israel, their rabbis are not authorized by the rabbinate to perform marriages, and they do not benefit from the budgets available through the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Conversion to Judaism is supervised by the rabbinate, and thus Conservative and Reform conversions are not recognized as valid unless contracted abroad.
Although the majority of the Jewish citizens of Israel are secular or quasi-traditional, a religious status quo is maintained. The Sabbath is the national day of rest, and Jewish holidays are national holidays. Sabbath rules apply in public places at the discretion of local municipalities, but the various political parties have undertaken to maintain the practices that have existed since the creation of the state. In the 1977 and 1982 coalition agreements, the Agudat Yisraʾel Party, which represents some of the most orthodox elements, demanded certain changes in the status quo, such as cancellation of Sabbath flights by the national airline, El Al.
The problem of religion in the state of Israel is connected more generally to the question of a Jewish state. According to the Orthodox interpretation, a Jewish state would have to be a "theocratic" state governed by Jewish law (halakhah). At the opposite extreme, the secular nationalist argument holds that Israel should be a secular state in which synagogue and state are strictly separated and whose Jewish character is determined purely by the sociological makeup of its population. For the Orthodox the identity of the Jews can only be determined by the halakhah: one is a Jew only if born of a Jewish mother or converted by a halakhic procedure. For the secular Zionists anyone who declares himself or herself a Jew should be considered as such. Moreover some secular nationalists argue that a new Israeli identity should take the place of Jewish identity, which they regard as a religious relic of the years of exile. In a case in the 1960s the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that Jewish identity is not determined by the halakhah. The case concerned a Carmelite monk, Brother Daniel, who was born a Jew and had fought against the Nazis as a partisan. He requested Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return, arguing that, according to the halakhah, he remained a Jew even though he professed another religion. The court ruled against him with the argument that the conventional understanding of who is a Jew contradicted the halakhah in such a case and, since Israel is not a halakhic state, that the common definition should prevail. Similarly in 1970 the court ruled that a child born of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother might be registered as of "Israeli" rather than "Jewish" national identity. This decision would have set aside the concept of a corporate Jewish state in favor of a new secular Israeli identity. As a result of pressure from the religious Zionist parties and of discomfort on the part of many secular Zionists, the Knesset passed a law providing that only persons recognized as Jews by the halakhah might be registered as Jews by nationality. In 1980 the Knesset passed a law stipulating that, in matters in which there is no specific law or precedent, judges should be guided by "Hebrew jurisprudence" (mishpat ʿivri). Judges were directed to follow traditional Jewish law, but by avoiding the term halakhah, the Knesset was able to satisfy the secular refusal to accept a theocratic state. Thus the judicial system has generally attempted a secular definition of Jewish identity, whereas the legislative system, responding to religious sentiments, has avoided such a break with tradition.
The immigration of nearly a million Russian Jews following the breakup of the Soviet Union posed new challenges to Israel's identity. Many of these Russian Jews were of mixed parentage, and a large percentage (perhaps as many as a third) was not Jewish at all. The courts faced problems of whether fallen soldiers of Israel's army could be buried in Jewish cemeteries. The state faced another problem in 1994 with the immigration of Ethiopian Jews, whose religious traditions did not include rabbinic law. The rabbinate ruled that they were to be considered Jews, even though the weight of historical evidence seemed to preclude such ethnic descent on religious grounds.
Anti-Zionism
There are a number of expressions of anti-Zionism based on religious motivations. In both Europe and America nineteenth-century Reform Judaism was unalterably opposed to a national definition of Judaism. The Pittsburgh Platform of 1885 specifically rejected any expectation of a return of the Jews to Zion. By 1937, however, the Reform movement had moved to a more neutral position and adopted the Columbus Platform, in which the "group loyalty" of the Jews is recognized and the Jewish community of Palestine is supported "not only [as] a haven of refuge for the oppressed but also [as] a center of Jewish culture and spiritual life" (Plaut, 1963–1965). Nevertheless a wing of the Reform movement, which formed the American Council for Judaism, actively opposed the creation of Israel in the 1940s. Following the Six-Day War, the Reform movement became explicitly Zionist and joined the World Zionist Organization. Reform Jews established several kibbutsim and congregations in Israel.
Among the Orthodox, Zionism was initially greeted with skepticism or hostility. The initial plan to hold the First Zionist Congress in Munich was canceled as a result of opposition by the German rabbis. In 1912 Agudat Yisraʾel was formed by rabbis from Germany, Hungary, and Poland as an organization to advance orthodoxy in Jewish life. The Agudah opposed secular Zionism but maintained an ambivalent attitude toward settlement in the Land of Israel. Following the establishment of the state, the Agudah became a political party advocating a state based on the halakhah. The ideology of the movement opposes participation in Zionist governments, although its representatives have nevertheless from time to time held cabinet seats and although they provided coalition support for the government after 1977. The Agudah has used its political influence to strengthen its educational and religious institutions and has sought religious concessions from the Knesset, such as exemptions for religious girls from national service and stricter adherence to Sabbath rules. As opposed to the National Religious Party, the Agudah considers itself non-Zionist and does not identify with the national goals of the state.
In the 1980s the Shas Party was formed under the spiritual leadership of Rabbi ʿOvadyah Yosef (b. 1920), an Iraqiborn sage who served as chief Sefardic rabbi of Israel. The Shas Party appealed primarily to Jews of Middle Eastern and North African origin and defined itself as non-Zionist, by which it meant that, like the Agudat Yisraʾel, it favored a theocratic state in place of the secular state of Israel. But Shas was characterized more by pragmatism, seeking state subsidies for its extensive network of schools and social services for its constituents.
A more extreme anti-Zionist group is the Neturei Karta (guardians of the city), which broke off from Agudat Yisraʾel in 1935. The Neturei Karta are largely followers of the Satmar Hasidic sect. Neturei Karta opposed the creation of the state of Israel and regarded Zionism as a heinous sin that prevents the coming of the Messiah. They believe the Nazi Holocaust was punishment for secular Zionism, and they declared their willingness to participate in an Arab government in Palestine. They clashed violently from time to time with the Israeli police in demonstrations against what they regard as violations of Jewish law in the state. The members of Neturei Karta live for the most part in Jerusalem, where they govern themselves, taking no services from the state and paying no taxes. They also have significant support from certain ultraorthodox Jews in the United States.
Conclusion
Modern Israel is the product of both secular and religious tendencies with origins in modern nationalism and in the traditional messianic connection to Zion. With the exception of the small anti-Zionist group, most Jews in the world, representing virtually the whole religious spectrum, support the basic aspirations of Zionism. Thus the character of the Jewish state—religious, secular, or some combination of both—remains an issue of political conflict among Zionists, but this conflict is also emblematic of the larger question of the relationship of religion to nationalism in the modern world.
See Also
Agudat Yisraʾel; Messianism, article on Jewish Messianism.
Bibliography
Two books devoted to the subject of Zion throughout the history of Jewish thought are Abraham S. Halkin, ed., Zion in Jewish Literature (New York, 1961), which contains essays on the biblical and rabbinic periods, medieval secular and religious poetry, and nineteenth-century Hebrew poetry and prose; and the more synthetic Jean-Christophe Attias and Esther Benbassa, Israel, the Impossible Land (Stanford, Calif., 2003). An additional source of Zionist poetry is The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, edited by T. Carmi (New York, 1981), which includes poetry by Yehudah ha-Levi. For additional articles on the biblical period, see Shemaryahu Talmon's "The Biblical Concept of Jerusalem," Journal of Ecumenical Studies 8 (1971): 300–316; and Ben Zion Dinaburg's "Zion and Jerusalem: Their Role in the Historic Consciousness of Israel" (in Hebrew), Zion 16 (1951): 1–17. Other valuable discussions of medieval writings are Yitzhak F. Baer's "Erez Yisrael and the Diaspora in the View of the Middle Ages" (in Hebrew), Zion Yearbook 6 (1946): 149–171; and H. H. Ben-Sasson's "Exile and Redemption through the Eyes of the Spanish Exiles" (in Hebrew) in Yitzhak F. Baer Jubilee Volume, edited by S.W. Baron, B. Dinur, S. Ettinger, and I. Halperin (Jerusalem, 1960). A nationalist argument about the relationship between the Jews and Zion in Jewish history and especially the modern period is in Ben Zion Dinur's Israel and the Diaspora (Philadelphia, Pa., 1969). For the relationship of the Jewish Enlightenment to Zion, see Isaac F. Barzilay's "National and Anti-National Trends in the Berlin Haskalah," Jewish Social Studies 21 (1959): 165–192; and Jacob S. Raisin's The Haskalah Movement in Russia (Maple Shade, N.J., 2001), an old but still useful work. The attitude of nineteenth-century Reform is treated in W. Gunther Plaut's The Rise of Reform Judaism (New York, 1963–1965).
On the origins and history of the Zionist movement, see David Vital's The Origins of Zionism (Oxford, U.K., 1975) and Zionism: The Formative Years (Oxford, U.K., 1982). A good general history of Zionism is Walter Laqueur's A History of Zionism (New York, 1972). The history of Zionist thought has been treated by Shlomo Avineri in The Making of Modern Zionism: The Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State (New York, 1981) and by Ben Halpern in The Idea of the Jewish State (Cambridge, Mass., 1961). A good anthology of Zionist thought with a superb introductory essay is Arthur Hertzberg, ed., The Zionist Idea (Philadelphia, 1997). The specific issue of religion in the Zionist movement is treated by Ehud Luz, Parallels Meet: Religion and Nationalism in the Early Zionist Movement (1882–1904) (Philadelphia, 1988) and, in the state of Israel, by Ervin Birnbaum, The Politics of Compromise: State and Religion in Israel (Rutherford, N.J., 1970), Charles S. Liebman and Eliezer Don-Yehiya, Religion and Politics in Israel (Bloomington, Ind., 1984), and S. Zalmon Abramov, Perpetual Dilemma: Jewish Religion in the Jewish State (Rutherford, N.J., 1976). A good treatment of the relationship between Zionism and Jewish messianism is Aviezer Ravitzky, Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism (Chicago, 1996). An anthology of anti-Zionist thought is in Michael Selzer, ed., Zionism Reconsidered (New York, 1970). A semischolarly treatment of religion in Israel from the viewpoint of Neturei Karta is Emile Marmorstein's Heaven at Bay: The Jewish Kulturkampf in the Holy Land (London, 1969).
David Biale (1987 and 2005)
Zionism
Zionism
Zionism may be summarily defined as the Jewish nationalist movement whose endeavors to solve the “Jewish problem” led to the establishment of the “Jewish state” of Israel.
The aims of Zionism were those of many nationalist liberation movements: to revive a national language (Hebrew or Yiddish) and culture; to repossess and develop the resources of the national territory; and to achieve sovereignty for a national state. But the nation to be liberated lived in exile from its ancestral home, with its members scattered all over the globe. Accordingly, Zionist objectives also included removing Jews from the countries of their dispersion and colonizing them in Zion, the ancient homeland.
Upon the successful execution of its program, Zionism anticipated that anti-Semitism, rooted according to Zionist theory in Jewish homelessness, would disappear. The Jews remaining in the Diaspora would be reduced to a number susceptible of assimilation (Herzl [1894-1904] 1955, pp. 241-242). Another theory held that a free Jewish community in Zion, not dominated by the milieu of the Gentile majority, would unfold the full potentialities of the Jewish historic individuality. It would produce a national cultural revival and advanced social institutions of universal significance, whose influence would enable Diaspora Jewries to sustain their collective existence even under modern conditions of equal citizenship and acculturation tending to dissolve their identity.
Thus, like other national liberation movements, Zionism developed a rationale that was Utopian, or even messianic, in tone. But its strategic situation also dictated a tactical approach of pragmatic reasonableness.
Palestine in the nineteenth century was neither controlled nor in any large measure occupied by Jews. Zionism could not hope to negotiate its aims unless it defined them in a way compatible with the interests of the suzerain power, Turkey, and other powers concerned with the Eastern Question. Hence, at the first Zionist Congress in Basle, 1897, Theodor Herzl, 1860-1904, obtained a resolution demanding not a “Jewish state” but an “oeffentlich-rechtlich gesicherte Heimstaette” a term subsequently translated in the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, by the vague expression “national home.”
The Zionist position in the Jewish community was equally weak. Unlike other nationalist liberation movements, which could appeal to massive and powerful popular resentments focused on a single, concrete foreign oppressor so that all ideological opposition was often swept out of the field, Zionism was only one of many rival Jewish ideologies (Halpern 1961, pp. 22-23). Moreover, it was divided by a wide diversity of internal factions. The objectives it could agree on had to be compromises, capable of uniting rival Zionist parties on a common denominator and attracting essential support from the non-Zionists in the Jewish community. Hence, the broad formulas of the 1897 program and of the statute of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, formed in 1929.
History
The idea that the Jewish position in the Gentile world presented a problem to be rationally solved, one of the basic Zionist principles, first became current in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. A Jewish movement to achieve this solution, beginning in western Europe in the late eighteenth century, produced campaigns for enlightenment and general humane culture among Jews; for their civic emancipation; and eventually for religious reform, discarding many traditional practices and beliefs. In Russia, the pogroms and repressive laws of the 1880s thoroughly disillusioned some Jewish intellectuals who until then had favored reforms similar to those advocated by their western European counterparts. They turned in revulsion and humiliation against the Western principle of accommodating to a general humanism and insisted that the Jews themselves, and not benevolent Gentiles, must actively and militantly solve their own problem—and solve it by returning to their own sources. These new “Lovers of Zion” (Hovevei-Zion) dedicated themselves not to the aim of emancipation but to the counterposed aim of “auto-emancipation,” a slogan provided by the title of an 1882 brochure written by Leo Pinsker, 1821-1891, a physician who in 1884 became the chosen leader of the movement.
In spite of ideological opposition, the Hovevei-Zion were compelled to cooperate with Western Jews. Since the 1840s the emancipated and enlightened Western Jewish community—including many who no longer believed in redemption in Zion —had introduced rational objectives and methods into the traditional support extended by the Diaspora to pious Jews in Palestine. At first, outstanding individuals like the British Sir Moses Montefiore, 1784-1885, and, since 1860, a major French-led organization, the Alliance Israèlite Universelle, had sought to obtain political and legal security for the Jewish settlement, to provide vocational training and secular culture, and to place Jews on farm-holdings, instead of maintaining a community in Palestine almost exclusively devoted to prayer, study, and penance (Sokolow 1919, vol. 1, pp. 115-120, 176-183). Dr. Pinsker, like Theodor Herzl after him, found it natural to appeal to such Jewish benefactors for support in their projected work in Palestine, even though it was conceived in a different spirit. The Hovevei-Zion, based on a poor membership and not permitted to work freely under Russian law, were rebuffed in their attempt to obtain political concessions from the Sublime Porte for colonization and checked in their spontaneous immigration to Palestine by legal and administrative obstacles swiftly set up against European Jews by the Turks. They were driven back on slow, more or less surreptitious methods of colonization and had to rely for political and financial support on Western philanthropists, notably Baron Edmond de Rothschild, 1845-1934. The consequence was the emergence of a faction in the movement, led by the writer Ahad Ha’am, 1856-1927, which severely criticized Rothschild paternalism and, above all, the settlers’ dependency in all those spheres—economic, cultural, communal— where the Zionist ideal had hoped to build a nucleus of national independence in Palestine.
The positive doctrine of this group centered on the desire of disillusioned eastern European intellectuals to recapture traditional attitudes and cultural motifs that Western modernists had abandoned. Against the Reform thesis that the Jewish dispersion was a divine mission, not a penance, they declared that the exile of the Jews was a fact. Against the liberal notion of civic emancipation as the Messianic redemption of the Jews, they reasserted the restoration to Zion as the solution of the Jewish problem. As a result the young Zionist intellectuals were welcomed back into the fold by many traditionalists—and the new Zionist movement was constituted as much by the latter as by the former.
The seeds of difference were inherent in this union. Traditionalist Jews who became Hovevei-Zion soon began to demand that the prodigal sons make their return complete by submitting fully to the yoke of tradition. The new Zionists, although penitents, rather like the Russian Slavophile radicals who were their contemporaries, were not ready to abandon modernistic and rational standards because of their rebellion against Western values. They saw their Jewish situation not as a divinely decreed election and a penance to be borne but as a social historical problem that urgently required a rational solution. They became lovers of Zion, of the Hebrew language, and of the tradition but wished to free all of these values from the dead hand of sacramentalism. In consequence, the Hovevei-Zion movement in Russia developed traditionalist and modernist factions. The former re-emerged, at a later date, as a distinct party called the Mizrachi in the World Zionist Organization created by Theodor Herzl. The modernist school worked toward the ends of a “cultural Zionism,” seeking a secular revival of the Hebrew language and culture and of an active national will and consensus. While cultural Zionism did not continue as an organized faction after the Hovevei-Zion were absorbed by the World Zionist Organization, it was a pervasive influence thereafter in the movement, especially in the “practical Zionist” faction.
Theodor Herzl entered the Zionist movement as a sharp critic of colonization in Palestine, as conducted by Baron de Rothschild and the Hovevei Zion together. He developed in his 1896 booklet Der Judenstaat, and in his conduct of the World Zionist Organization from 1897 to his death in 1904, the doctrine of “political Zionism.” As conceived by him, and his successors and supporters Max Nordau, 1849-1923, and David Wolffsohn, 1856-1914, and, in a later generation, the self-styled “Herzlian” Zionists led by Vladimir Jabotinsky, 1880-1940, the Zionist strategy must concentrate on achieving adequate political conditions for its nationalist aim before beginning other subsidiary activities, such as colonization. An opposing faction, generally called the “practical Zionists” and led after World War i by Chaim Weizmann, 1874-1952, insisted that other nationalist aims, such as the cultural revival and continuing resettlement in Palestine, must be pursued simultaneously with the Zionist diplomatic campaign. Indeed, achievement of the nationalist political goals, they felt, would be most effectively advanced by building up the Jewish settlement in Palestine and thus adding the rights of occupation to the rights of historic connection and present Diaspora needs to bolster the Zionist claim.
Until the death of Herzl in 1904, the views of political Zionism prevailed. Herzl also maintained an entente with the religious Zionists, restricting at the congress sessions discussion of projects to revive a secular Hebraic culture because of their objection. The failure of Herzl’s diplomatic campaign for a charter to resettle Zion frustrated the movement; and his one major success—the British proposals in 1903 to resettle Jews not in Palestine or its environs but in east Africa—split it. After the definitive rejection of this proposal, some Zionists, led by Israel Zangwill, 1864-1926, left the organization to form their own Jewish Territorialist Organization. Within the Zionist organization the practical Zionists grew increasingly strong, until they took over the leadership fully in 1911. The new policy that was initiated strengthened the tendency, already marked since 1908, to pursue the colonization of Palestine under existing political conditions, setting aside the quest for a charter (Boehm 1935-1937).
It also introduced new stress on the nationalist cultural revival. As a side effect, some religious Zionists left the congress and joined with earlier anti-Zionists in Orthodox Jewry to form a new ultra-Orthodox world organization, Agudat Israel. The Mizrachi who remained Zionists developed a set of minimum demands, requiring respect for tradition in general Zionist facilities and support for autonomous religious cultural activities by Mizrachi paralleling any general cultural activity. Granted this, they proposed to fight for acceptance of Jewish tradition in Orthodox interpretation as binding on all Zionists and, ultimately, as constitutional in the Jewish state.
At the outbreak of World War i, any uniform policy of an international organization divided between the warring nations became virtually impossible. Leading Zionists in the German headquarters of the organization and in England pursued Zionist diplomacy independently in a form consonant with the war aims of their respective countries. Major responsibility was vested in new Zionist leaders residing in neutral countries, notably Louis D. Brandeis, 1856-1941. Toward the end of the war the practical Zionist Chaim Weizmann, aided by Nahum Sokolow, 1859-1936, secured from Britain the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, and parallel statements from Britain’s allies (Stein 1961). This declaration of sympathy for Zionist aspirations, with its pledge to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, was embodied in the San Remo agreement of April 26, 1920, assigning Palestine as a mandate territory to Britain, and also in the mandate instrument approved by the Council of the League of Nations on July 24, 1922.
The Balfour Declaration and the mandate represented in form the charter which Herzl’s diplomacy had sought in vain, but in practice it did not make possible the orderly, relatively rapid mass transfer of Jews to Palestine that Herzl had envisaged. Consequently, Herzlian Zionists like Max Nordau and Vladimir Jabotinsky regarded the mandate instrument as inadequate for Zionist purposes and called for political action to obtain more precise commitments toward the ultimate creation of a Jewish state. Nordau demanded in 1920 the immediate transfer to Palestine of enough Jewish immigrants to form a Jewish majority.
A diametrically opposed view was pressed in 1920 by Justice Brandeis. He regarded the diplomatic phase of Zionist history as closed with the San Remo treaty. The world Zionist organization should resolve itself into a federation of philanthropic societies, each with autonomy in its own country, and a central executive agency devoted chiefly to practical colonization. The latter body should be made up not of political leaders but of technicians and administrators, not necessarily committed to the whole Zionist doctrine but ready to work under the conditions laid down in the mandate for developing the Jewish national home.
Chaim Weizmann, who succeeded in winning control of the movement, followed a line which, in the Zionist congress of 1907, he had defined as “synthetic” (Weizmann 1949, p. 157). He accepted the existing legal framework of the mandate and pursued practical work under its terms. However, far from allowing the political functions of the world Zionist organization to lapse, he developed and tightened them in the running battle with the mandatary over the precise meaning of the mandate instrument. The co-option of experts and enlistment of supporters from among non-Zionist Jews, suggested by Brandeis, was carried out by Weizmann through the Jewish Agency for Palestine, formed in 1929 in agreement with such men as Louis Marshall, 1856-1929, and Felix Warburg, 1871-1937. Weizmann’s immigration and colonization policy was one of gradualism not merely because Winston Churchill in a 1922 white paper had imposed upon Jewish labor immigration into Palestine the limit of “economic absorptive capacity” but also because such an approach was in accord with his own beliefs, as a disciple of the prudent Ahad Ha’am.
After an initial period of opposition, the labor Zionist factions became Weizmann’s reliable and consistent allies in this strategy and finally the dominant force in the coalition. They concentrated on what they regarded as the primary, critical task both of Zionist and Jewish socialist strategy: to create in Zion a Jewish farmer-worker class and thus eliminate the fundamental cause of the dependency of the Jewish people in the Diaspora—their lopsided, “unproductive” occupational distribution.
Although firmly united by a strong workers’ federation with unusually wide powers and functions, labor Zionist factions differed on numerous issues and were organized and acted independently. Most prominent politically were the three major federations of collective settlements or kibbutzim (“communes”), which had the greatest immediate influence on labor immigrants. They differed not only in their plans of village organization but also in their attitudes toward the second and third socialist internationals, the proper Zionist policies vis-a-vis the Arabs, and the definition of the ultimate Zionist aim.
The question of the final political status of Palestine became increasingly acute. Arab riots of increasing violence and magnitude broke out in 1920, 1921, and 1929, culminating in the outright revolt of 1936-1939. Owing also to mounting pressure from the emerging Rome-Berlin Axis, Britain sought to gain Arab support, or at least mitigate Arab hostility, by an increasingly anti-Zionist interpretation of its obligations as mandatary. A White Paper in 1939 proposed to freeze the Jewish community at the one-third proportion of the Palestine population which it had virtually reached; and in the following year land regulations banned or rigorously restricted Jewish land purchase in all but a tiny part of Palestine. At this time Nazi oppression had made the Jewish refugee problem unbearably acute and the omens of the deliberate extermination of European Jewry were becoming manifest.
The pressure to redefine Zionist policy became overwhelming. Some left wing and pacifist Zionists favored a binational Arab-Jewish state, with a provisional limit of 40 per cent of Jews in the population and additional immigration to be permitted by majority decision. Jabotinsky’s Revisionist group wanted a militant Zionist policy demanding a Jewish majority in the whole mandate territory, including Transjordan, which had been excluded from the Jewish national home area by Churchill’s 1922 White Paper. The Irgun Zvai Leumi and the “Stern group” arose as more or less autonomous Revisionist paramilitary formations, and the latter, even during the war against the Axis, demanded an immediate Jewish uprising against the British. Non-Zionists associated with the Jewish Agency proposed to restore the original criterion of economic absorptive capacity as the sole principle governing Jewish immigration. The dominant group among Zionists, headed by the labor leader David Ben-Gurion, opposed an outright Jewish revolt against the mandate itself, but it undertook active resistance to the restrictions on Jewish immigration. Opposing both binationalism and a demand for a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan, as well as mere restoration of the status quo ante the 1939 White Paper, it was prepared to consider solving the Palestine problem by partition.
The world war was victoriously concluded and a Labour government came to power in Britain, but the 1939 White Paper policy was not rescinded. The limited resistance of the major Zionist paramilitary force, the Jewish Agency-controlled Haganah, escalated into a phase of attacks on government installations and, for a period, was combined in a joint assault with the two Revisionist-oriented bands. British repressive measures, directed both at the armed Zionist resistance and the refugee ships that sought to run the British blockade, raised violence to such a pitch that recourse to outside arbiters was essential. Beginning with an attempt to resolve the issue by joint action with the United States, through an Anglo-American Inquiry Committee in 1946, England was forced to refer the Palestine problem to the United Nations.
A United Nations Special Committee on Palestine turned in a majority proposal for the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, with a UN-supervised economic union between them and with UN administration of an internationalized corpus separatum including Jerusalem and Bethlehem. With certain revisions this proposal was passed by the UN General Assembly on November 29, 1947. Accepted by the Jews of Palestine, it was rejected by the Arabs and immediately opposed with violence. The British refused to aid the implementation of the UN resolution in any way and made haste to leave the country. The fighting, restricted in the final months of the mandate to areas no longer garrisoned by British troops or essential to their departure, extended to the whole land after the British withdrawal on May 15, 1948, and, with the invasion by regular Arab armies from across four frontiers, turned into a full-scale war. UN action availed only to interrupt the hostilities with ill-observed truces, until the growing Jewish strength forced the Arab states to enter into armistice negotiations.
Thus the state of Israel, proclaimed on May 14, 1948, as the British departed and immediately recognized by the United States and the Soviet Union, maintained its integrity in war and secured its present boundaries under armistice agreements. In this way and to this degree were the political aspirations of Zionism realized.
Anti-Zionism and non-Zionism
The Zionist idea had ideological opponents in the Jewish community even before it crystallized in an organized movement and even after it culminated in the creation of Israel. But the anti-Zionist groups were always opposed to one another in many crucial attitudes where one or another such group found itself in agreement with the Zionists. This led to parallel efforts toward similar goals or to cooperation in a common task between Zionists and some of their ideological foes. Those anti-Zionists who shared in the major practical Zionist activities in Palestine identified themselves (at least for the duration of that effort) as “non-Zionists” (Halpern 1961, chapters 3-7).
Opposition to the idea of nationalism as a solution to the Jewish problem dominated Western Jewry for a century before Zionism arose. It was argued that only illiberal enemies of freedom and equality still believed that Jews were a nation or that Jews hoped to see a Davidic kingdom restored in Zion. On the other hand, long before Zionism, Western Jewish organizations had devoted themselves to what became characteristic Zionist concerns: aid to Jewish emigration from eastern Europe and other trouble spots, general and vocational education, and support of the growing Jewish community in Palestine. Cooperation in such projects began in the 1880s, after the rise of Zionism, with the non-Zionist sponsors holding the main responsibility and control; but the position was reversed after the mandate became effective. Alternating with long periods of cooperation were episodes of ideological conflict—in 1897, from 1914 to 1917, and intermittently from 1937 to 1947—when major political issues arose, evoking sharper definitions of Zionist demands and, in reaction, more elaborate defenses of anti-Zionist views by erstwhile non-Zionists, among others.
Only a minor group of privileged Jews, relatively detached from the main community, represented the type of Western anti-Zionist in eastern Europe. Traditionalist Jews, who dominated the communal consensus until late in the nineteenth century, continuously supported the settlement of some Jews in Palestine as a religious duty; but, long before Zionism, they considered sacrilegious and pseudomessianic any resettlement of Palestine in a deliberate plan to hasten the end of the Exile—let alone a rational secular design to solve the Jewish problem. In 1911 traditionalist anti-Zionism achieved a modern form of organization through the founding of Agudat Israel.
Socialist, radical anti-Zionism arose as a significant force in eastern Europe more or less simultaneously with Zionism. It condemned the plan to solve the Jewish problem by immigration to Palestine as desertion from the barricades where the battle to solve the whole social problem, and the Jewish problem as part of it, would be fought— eastern Europe. In 1897, the year the World Zionist Organization was founded, the Bund (General Jewish Workers’ Union in Poland and Lithuania) was established.
Both radical anti-Zionism and traditional eastern European anti-Zionism were thus primarily opposed to the very aspect of Zionism which made cooperation in western Europe possible: the Zionist practical endeavors in Palestine. On the other hand, they shared in general the Zionist view that Jews were not a mere denomination but an ethnic, cultural group in Europe. Accordingly, eastern European Zionist and anti-Zionist Jewish organizations worked on parallel lines to promote Jewish languages and culture, each in its favored mode, and occasionally joined in common struggle for the political prerequisites to all their aims (Vlavianos & Gross 1954).
In the years following World War i, opportunities open to Jewish migrants were sharply reduced by the American immigration acts, while nationalist and anti-Semitic pressures against the Jews reached unprecedented heights of ferocity. Pales tine became the pre-eminent refuge legally assigned and, until 1939, open with the least onerous restrictions for Jews. The extensive sympathy this won for the national home project from Jews of widely different ideologies was converted by the catastrophes of the war period into organized, institutional support of the community as a whole (Halperin 1961).
These circumstances made the major prewar anti-Zionist organizations moderate the substance and tone of their opposition. The Bund’s conception of Jews as a national cultural entity had focused primarily on Poland and Lithuania, and the destruction of the bulk of eastern European Jewry destroyed basic assumptions of their ideology. The Bund survives as a minor group devoted to Yiddish culture throughout world Jewry; and it accepts Israel, while criticizing some of its policies from an internationalist, socialist point of view. The main body of Agudat Israel gave up its opposition in principle to the creation of a Jewish state during World War II. Like Mizrachi, it now works within Israel’s political system, trying to bring it fully under traditional religious law.
Two small organizations, the ultra-Orthodox Natorei Karta (“wardens of the city”) of Jerusalem and the American Council for Judaism, Inc., became prominent during and since World War II because of their militant, irreconcilable anti-Zionism. The Natorei Karta, while living in Israel, refuse on religious grounds to recognize the authority of the state. The American Council for Judaism, Inc., alleges that Israel in conjunction with the World Zionist Organization seeks, by constituting a form of political allegiance for all Jews, to confuse the sharp line of distinction which, they argue, separates Jewish religious adherence from any ethnic bond. Both organizations stand outside the Jewish consensus and in defiance of it. Within the consensus, the Zionist achievement of a Jewish state has blurred the differences between ideological Zionism and non-Zionism, since the organized Jewish community as a whole, without reference to these labels, extends moral and material support to Israel.
Achievements and prospects
Israel is not only the specific realization of Zionist political aims, but its culture, economy, and social structure bear clear traces of their origins in the ideologies of Zionist factions. The revival of the Hebrew language, the most generally supported aim of Zionism, owes a particular debt to the school of cultural Zionists. Israel’s labor settlements, its producers’ cooperatives, and its broad and powerful labor federation are an outgrowth of labor Zionism. The Mizrachi movement has a dominant influence over the religious courts and chief rabbinate, which act in the tradition of religious Zionism.
The creation of the Jewish state, a triumph of the policy of the World Zionist Organization, relieved the organization of some of its major functions, but Zionist aims are such that the creation of a state does not completely fulfill them. If all Jews who cannot or would not live in Diaspora countries are to be brought to Zion—as Zionist doctrine requires—the state itself must be a means to this end. This Zionist task is shared by Diaspora Jews through their contributions to the Jewish Agency and membership in the World Zionist Organization, organizations that still play a major role in immigrant resettlement and land reclamation in Israel.
Another continuing responsibility is based on the Zionist prediction that the Jewish problem would be solved through the return to Zion. The Zionist movement feels a particular responsibility to stimulate or sponsor educational activities by which Diaspora Jewish communities can share the values created by the revived Hebrew culture in Israel. Thus, Jewish nationalism remains, in a restricted sphere of activities, a continuing organized force in the Diaspora after the rise of the state of Israel.
Ben Halpern
[See alsoanti-semitism; Judaism; Nationalism; near eastern society, article onisrael; social movements.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Boehm, Adolf 1935-1937 Die Zionistische Bewegung. 2 vols. Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag.
Brandeis, Louis D. 1942 Brandeis on Zionism: A Collection of Addresses and Statements. Washington: Zionist Organization of America.
Cohen, Israel (1945) 1946 The Zionist Movement. Edited and revised, with a supplementary chapter on “Zionism in the United States,” by Bernard G. Richards. New York: Zionist Organization of America.
Esco Foundation FOR PALESTINE, Inc. 1947 Palestine: A Study of Jewish, Arab and British Policies. 2 vols. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.
Halperin, Samuel 1961 The Political World of American Zionism. Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press.
Halpern, Ben 1961 The Idea of the Jewish State. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press.
Hertzberg, Arthur (editor) (1959) 1964 The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader. Cleveland: World.
Herzl, Theodor (1894-1904) 1955 Theodor Herzl: A Portrait for This Age. Edited with an introduction by Ludwig Lewisohn and a preface by David Ben-Gurion. Cleveland: World. → A selection of Herzl’s writings.
Herzl, Theodor (1895-1904) 1960 The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl. 5 vols. New York: Herzl Press. → First published in German. The English edition con tains material left out of the original German collection.
Nordau, Max 1941 Max Nordau to His People. New York: Scopus.
Pinsker, Leo S. (1882-1886) 1944 Road to Freedom: Writings and Addresses. With an introduction by B. Netanyahu. New York: Scopus. → First published in German.
Sokolow, Nahom 1919 History of Zionism: 1600-1918. 2 vols. London: Longmans.
Stein, Leonard J. 1961 The Balfour Declaration. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Vlavianos, Basil J.; and Gross, Feliks (editors) 1954 Struggle for Tomorrow: Modern Political Ideologies of the Jewish People. New York: Arts.
Weizmann, Chaim 1949 Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann. New York: Harper.
Zionism
ZIONISM.
The historians of nationalism have reached a consensus that modern nationalism began as a secular movement, but almost all its varieties were affected by an undertow of older religious sentiments and loyalties. In many of the nationalisms (for example, in the battles between Greeks and Turks in the second decade of the nineteenth century or in the quarrel between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland) the religious dimension of the quarreling nationalisms was clear and avowed. In the case of Zionism the reverse seemed to be true. When modern Zionism appeared in the nineteenth century, it defined itself in secular terms. It did not come into the world to bring about the age of the messiah that had been foretold in many of the classic texts of the Jewish religion. Zionism offered to answer two major problems that faced contemporary Jews. They were victims of large-scale persecution, most overtly in Eastern Europe, and the Jewish intelligentsia were being all too attracted to the promise of equality in society—which was apparently only being offered to those who were willing to abandon their separateness and assimilate into the non-Jewish majority. The modern Zionist movement suggested that a Jewish national home would help solve the problems of persecution and assimilation (the Zionists really meant that they wanted a state of their own). Jews would have a homeland that would always gladly receive them, and Jews who were conflicted about their identity would be able to deal with this question in the safe and nurturing environment of a Jewish community in which they were an autonomous majority.
The question of religion did, inevitably, arise at the very beginning of modern Zionism. In the 1830s two rabbis from Central Europe, Yehudah Hai Alkalai and Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, each proposed that with nationalism burgeoning all around them—the Greeks had just won their revolt against the Turks, and other European nationalities were arising to fight for their independence—it was time for the Jews, who could trace their national existence back to biblical times, to assert their own unique identity. Surely, so Alkalai and Kalischer argued, as the oldest of all nationalities, the Jews had the right and even the duty to lead the contemporary parade of nations who were asserting their rebirths. But Alkalai and Kalischer, both of whom were not only rabbis learned in the Talmud but scholars of the Kabbalah (Jewish esoteric mystical teaching), were very careful to deny that they were announcing the beginning of a messianic movement. They held fast to the inherited doctrine that the messiah could come not as the result of human action, but as a free gift from God. The nationalism that Alkalai and Kalischer were suggesting might have some connection to messianic hopes: kabbalistic teaching had allowed that "stirrings down below" might act to remind heaven of the longing of the Jewish people for the messiah, but no political program could be built on this hope. In the nineteenth century peoples were defining themselves by their history and group identity; the Jews should therefore cease to think of themselves as a persecuted minority and begin to assert themselves as a people among the peoples of the earth.
Thus, it is inaccurate to label even the "religious Zionists" as the ancestors of contemporary Zionist messianism. This element in present-day Zionism descends from two sources; the first is the confusion that existed in the minds and hearts of some of the most seemingly secular of the Zionist leaders and thinkers. For example, Chaim Weizmann (1874–1952), the long-time leader of the World Zionist Organization and the first president of Israel, made no secret of the total secularity of his way of life. Nonetheless, at every crucial moment in the debate over the rights of Zionists to a Jewish national home and, ultimately, to a state in the Holy Land, Weizmann invoked sacred Scripture. He kept saying that "the Bible is our charter." The Zionist contemporary who was second only to Weizmann, David Ben Gurion (1886–1973), the first prime minister of Israel and the man who led the country to win its independence, was an even more avowed secularist than Weizmann. After years of studying his work, the author of this entry reached the conclusion that he was best defined by a paradox: there is no God, but he chose the Jewish people and gave them the land of Israel. So, at the time of Israel's astounding victory in June 1967, when it conquered the large territories all the way to the Jordan River and the Suez Canal, the pervasive mood in Israel and among the Jewish people as a whole was that a miracle had happened. Never mind whether it was God or the inherent "spirit of the Jewish people" that had performed the miracle. Most Jews were sure that they were living in a version of messianic times; they were free to carve out their own destiny, at least in much of the land that was now under their control.
The second source of the new messianism was in a change in the theology of the Orthodox Zionists. In the first years of the twentieth century a young and universally respected rabbinic scholar and Kabbalist, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935), arrived in Jaffa to assume the post of chief rabbi of its growing Jewish community. Kook insisted that the Jews were indeed living in messianic times. He asserted that the new Zionist movement, despite its pronounced bias against religion, was despite itself an instrument of God's hands. Modern Zionism was reviving the sacred language, Hebrew. Kook insisted that the religious character of the tongue of the Bible was so deeply ingrained that the revival of Hebrew would inevitably act to bring contemporary Zionists closer to their roots. The secular Zionists, so Kook continued, might think that they were engaged in regaining the soil of the Holy Land for a contemporary Jewish state, but this soil was inherently holy; the labor to regain it and to dwell in it would soon transform the self-avowed secular people who were devoting their lives to this task. When World War I broke out in 1914, Rabbi Kook interpreted this enormous bloodletting as the war of Gog and Magog, the ultimate destructive war that had been foretold as the last preamble to the messianic age. The gentile world was destroying itself, and the moral credit of its achievements was now worthless. So it went after each major turning point in the course of the Zionist revival. Kook saw every event as part of the immediate drama of messianism.
Kook was clearly a holy man, but his teaching contained a unexploded bomb. If the Jewish people were living in the immediate preamble to the messianic age, as he maintained, then what was to be done with the disappointments and the blockages that would occur on the path to redemption? Kook died in 1935, so these questions were left to a lesser figure, his son, Rabbi Zvi Yehudah Kook (1891–1981), to contemplate. He ultimately succeeded his father as the head of the Mercaz Harav ("the rabbi's center"), the Yeshiva, the School of Tamudic Learning and Theological Thought, which the father had established. This school taught its students not only the conventional studies in Talmudic literature that were the staples of the other yeshivot. At this unique school the students were taught to enter the army and to prepare themselves to be elite combat troops. These young people were imbued by Zvi Yehudah Kook with an activist faith that it was their privilege and duty to help bring the messiah soon, in their own day—and Zvi Yehudah Kook never gave up the dream that all of the land that the Jews had possessed in biblical times, including especially the West Bank, would and must be returned to the Jewish people. The enormous and heady victories of the Six-Day War in 1967 were hailed in this religious circle as proof of their ideology. Yes, the messianic miracle had occurred, and the whole of the land of biblical Israel must now be possessed and never returned. Jewish settlement on the West Bank was a religious commandment, and those who opposed such settlements or hindered them or threatened to make them impossible were never to be forgiven. The most extreme thinking among this element was expressed by some younger people, especially among the rabbis who ministered to the new communities in the West Bank. Several of them were accused of encouraging Yigal Amir, the assassin who murdered Israel's prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, in 1995. Rabin's "sin" was that he had signed the agreement that Israel and the Palestinians had made secretly in Oslo in 1992. On behalf of Israel, Rabin had agreed to allow the Palestinians ultimately to establish a state of their own on the West Bank. He was therefore regarded by the hard-line believers in the "undivided land of Israel" as leaning toward religious and national treason.
At the start of the twenty-first century the shock of this murder had not abated because the activist minority—probably 20 percent of Israel's population—made no secret that it would engage in civil, and some even in armed, disobedience against any Israeli government that intends to allow the Palestinians a state of their own on most, or almost all, of the West Bank. This embitterment had the most profound effect on the question of the very nature of the Zionist enterprise. When modern Zionism was created, there was an existing consensus among all its factions that the highest authority within the Zionist movement would be the civil government of the national home that was being established. To be sure, from the very beginning a certain amount of respect was extended to the religious elements within the Jewish community. There was no question that the kitchens of the Israeli army would be kosher everywhere and that the Orthodox rabbinate would be given the ultimate authority on such matters as marriage and divorce among Jews. Through the years some elements in Israel have chafed under these controls, but the majority have made peace with the amount of religious coloration that exists in Israel's public life, but these issues were essentially peripheral. They did not involve religious judgments on the foreign policy of Israel or the questions of relations with the Arab world. In the aftermath of the Six-Day War of June 1967, the newly awakened messianic believers reframed their Zionist aims as politically maximalist. The new messianists proposed to enact their program in the name of God's will.
More recently, in the first years of the twenty-first century, modern Zionism is under attack from two other perspectives. The ultraright Zionists are ever more forthright in insisting that if the messiah does not come soon, they will at least solve the problem of keeping a Jewish state Jewish even as it controls a population that, between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, is already half Arab, either by denying the Arabs full political rights or by creating the conditions for the large-scale "transfer" of Arabs from the land of Israel. Such thinking used to be anathema to the Israeli mainstream, but it has become more thinkable as the armed conflict between Jews and Palestinians has become ever more embittered. By the end of 2003, there were well over two thousand dead among the Palestinians, but there had been nearly a thousand casualties among the Israelis since the outbreak of the "second intifada" in 2000. These deaths occurred in guerrilla warfare, including suicide bombings by the Palestinians, and in reprisals by the Israelis. In the current struggle, Israel's moderates have diminished after each suicide bombing, and no new moderates have appeared among the Palestinians. It seems ever less likely that Israelis and Palestinians will find a way to put their hurts behind them and make peace across the table. They will need strong leadership and pressure from the United States and from some of the rest of the international community.
By April 2004 Sharon made the first step toward accepting a notion that no one had ever expected he would accept: the demographic balance in "the undivided land of Israel" was shifting toward an Arab majority. He, therefore, proposed that the Israelis begin by evacuating all 7500 settlers from the Gaza Strip and leaving that to Arab rule. Despite opposition from his own Likud party, Sharon insisted ever more openly that demography commands Israel to cease ruling an unwilling and hostile Arab majority. Sharon's policies make an Arab state living beside Israel an inevitabilty, but one that will take much military and political turmoil to work.
On the side of the Palestinians and their sympathizers, especially in the Arab world, there is equally strong awareness that demographic trends are producing an Arab majority in the supposedly "undivided land of Israel." The basic Arab policy seems to have moved in the direction of waiting out the next few years and then demanding that only one state should exist in this land but that this state should be ruled by the principle of "one man, one vote." This notion is often dressed up as the realization of the great democratic dream, a binational state of Jews and Arabs, in which Jews can be assured that a growing Arab majority will not treat them harshly. Most of those who argue this view, however, do not manage to hide their indifference, or even glee, at the thought that the Zionist venture would then be over. The Jewish state would be gone; it would be replaced by a state with an Arab majority. All the claims that the Jews have made concerning their need and their right for a state of their own in which they could make their own destiny by their own rights would end in failure. These Jewish notions seemed plausible—so the argument goes—only late in the nineteenth century and early in the twentieth when nationalism and even colonialism still had some credit in the world.
But modern Zionism will not die so easily and certainly not in the pages of left-wing journals in the Western world or in the pronouncements by Islamic nationalists in their own media in the Arab world. The Jews who founded Zionism and their followers who began to come to Palestine more than a century ago to establish the modern Zionist presence did not suffer and die so that, as Chaim Weizmann once said, they might become "Hebrew nationals in a Palestinian State." Zionists will not allow the state of Israel to pack up and leave but are determined to stay put despite the bitter quarrels. Devotion to Israel's survival as a Jewish state does, and will, force it to fight. By the same token, the Palestinians are not going to leave. The Arab states in the Middle East have no desire to absorb any substantial number of Palestinian Arabs, and the world as a whole, especially the West, is not overly hospitable to those who would enter it as part of a new mass migration.
These considerations already existed many decades ago when it became clear that Jews and Palestinian Arabs were, despite themselves, having to find ways of living in some tolerable peace. The reigning suggestion was defined in 1937 by the Peel Commission, the highest-level investigation into the conflict in the Holy Land that the British authorities ever empowered. This body knew very well that there was no happy answer to the conflict between Jews and Arabs, but they ruled that the least obnoxious and most likely mode of making some tolerable peace would be the partition of the land between Jews and Arabs. Ten years later in 1947, the nascent United Nations reiterated the conclusions of the Peel Commission and voted to divide the land between a Jewish and an Arab state. On neither of these two occasions was the recommended solution enacted peacefully because the bulk of the Palestinians and their Arab confederates refused to recognize the legitimacy of giving the Jews even one ell of the land of Palestine for a state of their own.
The most interesting new development lies not in Palestinian and Arab opinion, but in a substantial shift among many political liberals who had traditionally supported the Zionist vision and program. This change in opinion began in some circles in 1967 when parts of the liberal intelligentsia shifted allegiance during and after the Six-Day War. They found reason to be annoyed with the Jews for concentrating on so parochial a purpose as the survival of the Jewish state and not on such wider concerns as America's misdeeds in the Vietnam War and, more immediately, on the pains and needs of the Palestinians. By 1967 the memory of the Holocaust, the murder of six million defenseless Jews in Europe, had begun to fade, and the Jewish people as a whole were becoming for many in the liberal left an annoying reminder of past deaths and past guilts. Israel was now a going concern—an increasingly powerful one—and thus the Palestinians became the new "victims" of choice. The undertow of this change in political faction was an increasing impatience with the unique demands that the Zionist state was making for special consideration for the Jewish people.
Why, indeed, should the Jews need a state of their own? The main charge that the Arab states have kept raising against the state of Israel is that it is a "rabbinic theocracy" but no one has challenged almost all of the Arab states to not conduct themselves as "Muslim theocracies" with scant concern for the right of minorities. On the contrary, left-liberal doctrine insisted that Jewish nationalism should disappear even as most other nationalisms in the world have an unquestioned right to continue. The most interesting part of this phenomenon is that some of its theories are being advanced by Jews. The older assimilationist doctrines, which stated that the Jews should meld into the majority among whom they lived, are being applied even to the Zionist community in the Middle East: it should accept and gladly welcome absorption among the many million of Arabs in the region.
In the early twenty-first century it is being argued by various spokesmen of the liberal left—many Arabs and some Jews—that the Zionist state should be dismantled. Let one state be established in which the inevitable Arab majority could supposedly be trusted to treat the Jewish minority fairly according to democratic principles. Anyone who knows the history of the region and has any reasonable assessment of the present tensions knows that this vision is a pipe dream. It is advanced by people who might wring their hands when a supposed democracy of Jews and Arabs in one state does not live up to its promises, but then these thinkers will have lost interest in the problem. Of all the visions that are being held out to the warring Israelis and Palestinians, the one-state solution is by far the least likely because neither side to the conflict can trust the other to rein in its maximalists.
The most sober assessment has to be that the problems will continue and that the conflict will not be easily resolved, but modern Zionism and its creation, the state of Israel, are here to stay. Its future is not guaranteed by the coming of the messiah soon, but Israel is not ultimately threatened even by the intifada and the suicide bombers. It exists and will continue to exist by the will of its own people. Jews will not surrender their claim to a home of their own to which those who need to come may come freely, nor their claim to a national center of their own in which Jewish energies may continue to define what the long past of this people means in the present and what it can be understood to mean in the future.
See also Judaism ; Miracles ; Nation ; Nationalism .
bibliography
Antonius, George. The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement. New York: Capricorn, 1965.
Cleveland, William L. A History of the Modern Middle East. Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1994.
Elon, Amos. The Israelis: Founders and Sons. New York: Penguin, 1983.
Ezrahi, Yaron. Rubber Bullets: Power and Conscience in Modern Israel. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997.
Hertzberg, Arthur. The Fate of Zionism: A Secular Future for Israel and Palestine. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003.
——. The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader. New York: Atheneum, 1972
Khalidi, Walid, ed. From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem until 1948. Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1987.
Laqueur, Walter, and Barry M. Rubin, eds. The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict. 5th ed. New York: Penguin, 1995.
Lustick, Ian. Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel's Control of a National Minority. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980.
Morris, Benny. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Ravitzky, Aviezer. Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Radicalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Said, Edward. The Question of Palestine. New York: Vintage, 1992.
Shipler, David. Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land. New York: Times Books, 1986.
Shlaim, Avi. Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.
Arthur Hertzberg
Zionism
ZIONISM.
ORIGINSTHE GROWTH AND LIMITATION OF THE YISHUV
ZIONISM AFTER ISRAEL
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Zionism is a Jewish nationalist political and cultural movement that developed in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. Although it emerged among the Jewish masses of eastern Europe in the 1870s, it achieved recognition on the international stage when central European Jews became its leaders. Zionism was a response to two features of the contemporary Jewish situation: the surprising strength of anti-Semitism, even in countries that had conferred citizenship on their Jewish residents; and the erosion of a specific Jewish culture as a concomitant of the secularization of Jews and their assimilation to the norms of the larger society.
ORIGINS
Although it drew on traditional Jewish longing for Zion, Zionism was a secular movement that shared the nationalist zeal of the European fin de siècle. Zionists claimed that Jews, like other ethnic minorities, constituted a nationality. Lacking a territorial base in Europe, they would reconstitute themselves in their ancient homeland, Palestine. By working their own land and taking responsibility for their own affairs, Jews (and males especially) who settled in Palestine would remake themselves as physically strong and psychologically confident persons. They would overcome the deleterious impact of almost two thousand years of living in Diaspora and would also escape anti-Semitic persecution. Zionism was particularly aimed at the economically impoverished Jews of Russia, who suffered from pogroms and rampant governmental discrimination. Early Russian Zionists, such as the Lovers of Zion, fostered efforts to establish agricultural settlements in Palestine, with no explicit political goal and with little success.
Theodor Herzl (1860–1904), an assimilated Viennese journalist and essayist with a Europe-wide reputation, established Zionism as an international political movement with a distinct political goal. Deeply affected by the anti-Semitism he witnessed throughout Europe, in 1896 he published Der Judenstaat, which outlined his understanding of Jewish nationalism and called for the establishment of a Jewish national home. Herzl proved to be a charismatic leader whose force of personality inspired commitment. In the face of widespread opposition from rabbis, who asserted that Jews should rely on God for their ultimate redemption, he convened the first international Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, attracting almost two hundred delegates and much publicity. The congress issued the Basel Program, proclaiming that the movement sought "for the Jewish people a publicly recognized, legally secured home in Palestine" (Laqueur, p. 106) through the encouragement of the settlement of Jewish agricultural workers and other laborers there and through obtaining the consent of governments throughout the world. The World Zionist Organization (WZO), formed at the Zionist congress, coordinated a network of local branches and national federations.
Herzl succeeded in the several years remaining before his early death in 1904 in placing Zionism on the international public agenda, establishing the framework of Zionist congresses, a Jewish nationalist fund for the purchase of land in Palestine, and a Zionist paper called Die Welt. However, his diplomatic efforts to secure the cooperation of the Turkish authorities, the German kaiser, Russian governmental figures, and prominent Jewish philanthropists were unsuccessful, and he could not fully bridge the differences between those who emphasized diplomatic activity to achieve legitimacy for Zionism (political Zionists) and those who focused on settlement efforts and/or addressed the issue of the creation of Jewish culture (practical Zionists). After his death, different factions, which ultimately became parties, contended within the movement.
THE GROWTH AND LIMITATION OF THE YISHUV
The Zionist movement was established on a firm footing by the conclusion of World War I through a combination of "practical" and "political" Zionism. About forty thousand Jews emigrated to Palestine between 1905 and 1914, the years called the Second Aliyah, comprising almost half of the total Jewish population of eighty-five thousand in 1914. Although many left by the end of the war—in large part because of Ottoman expulsion policies—and only a small minority were idealistic agricultural settlers of socialist convictions, it was these idealistic Zionist "pioneers" who set the tone of the new Yishuv (Jewish settlement). From their ranks emerged the leaders who built the institutions of the state-in-the-making and dominated the political elite of the State of Israel in its early years. It was during this period of the Second Aliyah that the pioneers experimented with various forms of collective and cooperative living and agricultural work for which the Zionist Yishuv became well known, including the kibbutz. They also organized a group called Hashomer (The Watchman), to defend their settlements, laying the ground for future military organization. In 1909 Zionist settlers established the city of Tel Aviv as a demonstration of a modern, technologically sophisticated Zionist city.
Perhaps the most significant success of practical Zionism before World War I was the building of a Jewish cultural center in Palestine based on Hebrew. Drawing on the achievements of a handful of Zionist settlers from the 1880s, the pioneers revived Hebrew as a spoken language and as the language of public life. The WZO subsidized the establishment of Hebrew-language schools, and in 1913 Zionist activists in Palestine made it clear that the newly founded Technion in Haifa must adopt Hebrew as its language of instruction. Jerusalem boasted two Hebrew dailies, and a Hebrew high school had been founded in Jaffa. Plans for a Hebrew university, first articulated in 1903, were put in motion, though the university did not open in Jerusalem until 1925. A 1916 census indicated that 40 percent of the Jewish population, the non-Zionist Orthodox aside, declared Hebrew to be their first language.
The political Zionists of the WZO actively fostered the efforts of settlement as they continued their diplomatic activity. In 1907 the movement established the Palestine Office, which became involved in land purchase, agricultural training, and assistance to poor settlers. Most important, the WZO succeeded in realizing Herzl's dream of acquiring international recognition. With the situation in the Middle East in flux during the war, both sides considered the Zionists as potential allies. The British, with whose politicians Zionist leaders, particularly Chaim Weizmann (1874–1952), were in close touch, were the first to issue a statement of support for Zionist goals in Palestine. The British authorities acted in order to strengthen their position in the postwar Middle East and thereby protect access to their colony in India. On 2 November 1917 the foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) issued a declaration that stated "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." The 1920 San Remo Conference determined that Great Britain would be given the mandate over Palestine and the Balfour Declaration would be included. Although the British were ambivalent about the commitments they had made to the Zionist movement in the Balfour Declaration and concerned about mitigating its negative impact on relations with Arabs in Palestine and elsewhere in the Middle East, the recognition of the Balfour Declaration by the League of Nations in 1922 legitimated the Zionist settlement in Palestine in the international political realm.
In the face of active Arab opposition to the Zionist enterprise and increasing British restriction over Jewish immigration to Palestine, the Zionist movement labored to construct a Jewish society in Palestine. The Jewish Agency was initially considered in 1923 so that mandatory authorities would have an organization separate from the WZO to deal with as regards the growth of the Yishuv. It took years of political negotiation to shape the type of agency that Chaim Weizmann, president of the WZO, envisioned alongside the Zionist movement. Along with American Jewish leaders, he sought to involve representatives of world Jewry in the building of the Yishuv's economy and educational institutions. In 1929 the Jewish Agency was formally expanded to include non-Zionists, and especially representatives of American Jewry, on its board. Prominent European Jews, such as the French socialist leader Léon Blum, the scientist Albert Einstein, and the British first high commissioner of Palestine, Herbert Samuel, became members.
Although the Jewish Agency was important in assisting the new immigrants as well as Zionist economic activity in general, it was the labor Zionist Histadrut—the General Federation of Hebrew Workers in Palestine, established in 1920—that became the most powerful institution in the Yishuv. Labor Zionists recognized that class-conscious politics had to take a back seat to nation building. Thus, the Histadrut not only defended the rights of workers but also was instrumental in entrepreneurial activity in a wide variety of industries that employed the workers. The Histadrut marketed all the products of the agricultural collectives, ran companies in the building and transport sectors, founded a large insurance company, and set up cooperative retail stores. It was also deeply involved in cultural activity: it had its own network of schools and kindergartens, teachers' seminaries, libraries, and cultural clubs. It published a daily Hebrew newspaper and set up successful publishing houses. Finally, it established Kupat Holim, a sick fund, which became the basis of the State of Israel's national health service.
Despite the political ascendancy of labor Zionism in the Yishuv, Zionism was rife with factions and parties. Each of these factions and parties sponsored its own youth movement, which fostered the continuation of ideological and political division. Virtually from the beginning of the movement, the socialist Left itself was divided. Only in 1930 did the two major labor factions merge to become the Mapai Party, which came to play a central role in Yishuv and later Israeli politics. In the WZO and its congresses, however, the non-socialist, middle-class centrist General Zionists wielded control. They, too, however, were plagued by dissension. In addition, religious Zionists were organized under the title Mizrahi as early as 1903, but they were divided as to whether their primary loyalty was to Zionism or Orthodoxy, and their 1931 decision to fight the non-Orthodox majority within the WZO limited their influence. The largest fault line in Zionism, however, was between the WZO and the Revisionists, who considered all other Zionist parties to be insufficiently militant in the face of a dire situation facing European Jews.
Revisionism was a Zionism of the Right, led by a charismatic figure, Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky (1880–1940), a cultured Russian litterateur. Jabotinsky had worked within the WZO, achieving fame in his strong advocacy for the establishment of a Jewish brigade in the British Army during World War I. Resigning from the WZO executive in 1923, he established a Zionist party called Revisionism, with its own youth movement, Betar, that argued for a Jewish nationalism averse to compromise. Revisionism advocated the right of Jews to settle in all of Palestine, including Transjordan, which the British had separated from the Palestine mandate, and by 1934 called for non-cooperation with the British authorities. Influenced by Italian fascism, it promoted militarism and physical strength and became increasingly antisocialist. In 1935 Jabotinsky and his followers established a rival to the WZO, the New Zionist Organization.
Aside from its political, cultural, and economic achievements in Palestine, Zionism exerted an influence on European Jewry in the interwar years. In western and central Europe, Zionist youth movements stimulated interest in Hebrew and in Jewish culture broadly defined. Ethnic elements, which had been suppressed among Jews as part of their accommodation to emancipation, reappeared in Jewish public pronouncements. The Zionist Yishuv, not to mention the political situation of Palestinian Jewry, was accorded significant attention in the Jewish press. Activists in Zionist youth groups later played a large role in Jewish resistance to the Nazis.
Zionism—and non-Zionist support for the Yishuv—grew in the period between the wars even as the political plight of the Yishuv seemed to worsen. The Arabs of Palestine and of the Middle East in general had been opposed to Zionism from its inception. While Zionists did not see their movement as antagonistic to the Arab population, or as colonialist, they were unable to accept the Arabs as equal rivals for the land of Palestine. After World War I brought the Arabs no success in their desires for independence, Palestinian Arabs chose violence as a way of displaying to Zionists and British alike that the Jewish presence in Palestine would be costly. Beginning with lethal attacks in Jaffa in 1921 that spread throughout Palestine and continuing with a massive attack on the Jews of Hebron in 1929 that ignited rioting throughout the country and cost 133 Jewish lives and the Arab revolt of 1936–1939, the Arabs disrupted the stability that the British desired and brought the threat of death and injury to the members of the Yishuv.
By 1930 British took ever more seriously the qualification in the Balfour Declaration that the Jewish homeland "not prejudice the civil or religious rights of non-Jewish communities in Palestine." Decisions about Jewish immigration to Palestine were to be based on the economic capacity of the country as the British authorities defined it. The Passfield White Paper of 1930 was pessimistic about Palestine's economic potential and made it clear that Britain had the same obligation to Arabs as to Jews in Palestine. Despite Arab calls for a cessation of all Jewish immigration to Palestine, the general prosperity in Palestine in 1933–1935 had persuaded the British to allow 134,000 (of a much larger total) requests for immigrant visas. The new settlers contributed to an expansion of the entire Palestinian economy. After the outbreak of the Arab riots, however, immigration was sharply curtailed, and in the years 1936–1939, when Nazi persecution of Jews was explicit and grim, the mandatory government permitted only 69,400 Jews to enter Palestine. In 1939 there were 460,000 Jews and 1,070,000 Arabs in Palestine. In that year, recognizing that the Arabs had more to offer should an anticipated world war break out, the British issued a White Paper that capped Jewish immigration to Palestine at fifteen thousand a year for the next five years. After March 1944 no new Jewish resident would be allowed in Palestine and the Jewish proportion of the population of Palestine would be no more than a third.
In addition to controlling Jewish immigration to Palestine, the British also began to devise means to extricate themselves from the political morass of the Arab-Zionist struggle. Beginning in 1937, the idea of partitioning Palestine was bruited. The 1939 White Paper, however, envisioned one future state of Palestine with a permanent Jewish minority. Both Arabs and Jews rejected the 1939 White Paper, the Arabs because it did not grant them immediate independence, the Jews because it restricted immigration. A small group of Zionists, organized as Brit Shalom (Covenant of Peace) advocated a binational Jewish-Arab state as early as 1925 but they had little support. During World War II the Zionists changed their policy, accepting partition as the only way to attain the sovereignty that they considered essential. They also reacted to British policy by fostering illegal immigration, which attracted favorable publicity when the displaced survivors of Nazi camps were involved after the conclusion of World War II. Two paramilitary groups not under the control of the WZO, the Irgun Zvai Leumi (IZL), essentially the military wing of the Revisionist movement, and the even more radical Lechi, also called the Stern Gang, broke with the WZO's policy of self-restraint vis-à-vis the British. The latter in particular engaged in armed insurrection and committed terrorist acts against the British. The hostility of both Arabs and Zionists led the British to hand the Palestine problem over to the United Nations (UN) in 1947.
ZIONISM AFTER ISRAEL
The United Nations established the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) to study the Palestine situation. After meeting with Arabs and Jews in Palestine and displaced persons (DPs) in Europe, UNSCOP delivered its report in September, with the majority recommending the partition of Palestine. On 29 November 1947, the United Nations voted in favor of the partition resolution. After the British withdrew from Palestine and the Zionist leaders declared the establishment of the State of Israel on 15 May 1948, the hostilities between local Arabs and Jews, which had broken out after the UN vote, became an all-out war between the new state and four invading Arab armies. Israel achieved a resounding victory, ratified in four armistice agreements in 1949, that greatly expanded the territory of the Jewish state. The war also created the Arab refugee problem that has prolonged Arab-Israeli hostilities.
The history of the Zionist movement effectively ended with the creation of the state of Israel. Zionism was subsequently redefined as support for the State of Israel. The issues of immigration, settlement, and nation building that the Jewish Agency had supervised were now controlled by appropriate state agencies. David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973), a veteran of the Second Aliyah and Israel's first prime minister, effectively brought independent militias under the aegis of the state, disbanding both the IZL and the Lechi at the cost of some lives.
Zionist ideology, however, underlay state policy. The theme of Zion as a refuge for Jews suffering from persecution motivated the 1950 Law of Return that gave Jews everywhere the right to immigrate and quickly attain citizenship. Even in the most economically difficult years of the late 1940s and 1950s, the new state welcomed European survivors of the Holocaust, immigrants from Yemen, and later newcomers from Morocco, Egypt, and Iraq. By 1956 the Jewish population of Israel had nearly tripled, reaching 1,667,000. Subsequently, Israel opened its door to a small immigration of Ethiopian Jews and after 1989 hundreds of thousands of Soviet and post-Soviet Jews. As of 2005 there were 5.3 million Jews in a total population of 6.9 million. To be sure, the settling of large numbers of Jews strengthened Israel in its demographic struggle with the Arabs, but it also realized the Zionist dream of the ingathering of the exiles. Pragmatism alone does not explain the Law of Return.
Zionism has also seen the Jewish settlement of the land as a form of secular redemption. Indeed, working the land not only redeemed the land: it also transformed those who undertook the task. When Israel's overwhelming victory in the 1967 war left it in control of a vast amount of Arab land, including the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria, some Jews viewed the victory in messianic terms. With the encouragement of successive Israeli governments, they transformed settlement into a messianic act. The most ideologically motivated settlers, the Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) blended nationalism and religion into a heady brew. They proclaimed themselves the true Israeli Zionists. Most Israeli Jews saw the newly acquired territory as legitimate fruit of victory.
By the year 2000, however, it had become clear to the majority of Israel's Jewish citizens that it would be impossible to maintain Israel as a Jewish and democratic state while holding on to the territory occupied since the 1967 war. A peaceful solution to the "Palestine problem" that met the needs of both Palestinians and Israeli Jews was necessary. Reality on the ground had proven the Zionist goal of redeeming the whole Land of Israel irreconcilable with the values of a modern nation-state rooted in European culture. Whether Israelis and their Palestinian counterparts choose to press for and achieve a negotiated peace will ultimately determine the fate of Zionism in the future.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources
Hertzberg, Arthur, ed. The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader. New York, 1959; Philadelphia, 1997. A collection of writings of early Zionist thinkers, with a splendid introductory essay.
Herzl, Theodor. The Jewish State. Translated by Harry Zohn. Reprint, New York, 1970. Translation of Der Judenstaat (1896).
Secondary Sources
Avineri, Shlomo. The Making of Modern Zionism: Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State. New York, 1981.
Berkowitz, Michael. Zionist Culture and West European Jewry before the First World War. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1993.
Bernstein, Deborah, ed. Pioneers and Homemakers: Jewish Women in Pre-State Israel. Albany, N.Y., 1992.
Laqueur, Walter. A History of Zionism. New York, 1972. The classic one-volume history of Zionism to 1948.
Morris, Benny. Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001. New York, 2001.
Reinharz, Jehuda, and Anita Shapira, eds. Essential Papers on Zionism. New York, 1996. A collection of important scholarly articles on history, ideology, politics, and culture.
Shapira, Anita. Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881–1948. Translated by William Templer. New York, 1992.
Shavit, Jacob. Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Movement, 1925–1948. London, 1988.
Shimoni, Gideon. The Zionist Ideology. Hanover, N.H., 1995.
Vital, David. The Origins of Zionism. Oxford, U.K., 1975.
Paula E. Hyman
Zionism
Zionism
The article below has created substantial controversy. In response, Gale has commissioned a suite of articles, including an entry on Zionism, that appear under the title "Nationalism and Ethnicity" and address historical and contemporary issues worldwide.
Zionism is the political movement created to foster the establishment of a Jewish state. It is based on the idea that Jews, wherever they live, constitute a single people. It developed in Europe in the late nineteenth century against a backdrop of rising nationalism and anti-Jewish sentiment, especially in areas ruled by the czar, where the greatest number of Jews lived, but also in France, where the Dreyfus case revealed widespread resentment of Jews, even in a modern democracy where they were comparatively assimilated. Because it defines Jew not by religious observance, language, place of birth, or culture, but by descent, Zionism is an ideology of race.
To many early Zionists, the location of the future Jewish state was of no importance; among the areas contemplated were Argentina and Uganda. The first World Zionist Congress, organized by Theodore Herzl and held in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897, set its sights on Palestine in order to draw upon the religious tradition that holds that with the coming of the Messiah, Jews will be reunited there and the kingdom of God will be accomplished for the whole of humankind.
MODERN PALESTINE
In 1868 there were 13,000 Jews in Palestine, out of an estimated population of 400,000; the majority were religious pilgrims supported by charity from overseas. In 1882 the Frenchman Baron Edmond de Rothschild, combining philanthropy and investment, began to support Jewish settlers from eastern Europe who were brought to Palestine to build a plantation system along the model the French had set up in Algeria. By 1895 the number of Jews had grown to 50,000; they spoke Yiddish, Arabic, Persian, Georgian, and other languages. Hebrew was a liturgical language, spoken in daily life by no one. As late as 1907, Jews made up only 80,000 out of a population of 700,000.
In 1917, Lord Balfour, the British foreign minister, seeking support for Britain’s efforts in World War I, issued a declaration expressing sympathy with efforts to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine, then under British rule. He also vowed that such a homeland would not harm the interests of the Arab majority. The Zionists seized upon this statement, interpreting it to mean support for a Jewish state. At the time of the Balfour Declaration, Jews constituted less than 10 percent of the population and owned 2.5 percent of the land in Palestine.
The problem of building a Jewish society amid an overwhelmingly non-Jewish majority came to be known as the “conquest of land and labor.” The Zionists formed a corporation, known as the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which acquired land in the name of the Jewish people. They leased this land only to Jews, who were not allowed to sublet it. Leases from the JNF specifically prohibited the employment of non-Jewish labor on JNF plots. In some cases, when land was bought from absentee landlords, the Arab peasants who resided on and worked the land were expelled. The effort to establish a Jewish monopoly extended to industry, and the Zionists formed an institution, the Histadrut, to organize Jewish workers and exclude Arabs from competing with them in the labor market.
Despite these policies, and the encouragement of the British government, in the thirty years following the Balfour Declaration the majority of the world’s Jews showed no interest in settling in Palestine. In the years between 1920 and 1932, only 118,000 Jews moved to Palestine, less than 1 percent of world Jewry. Even after the rise of Hitler, Jews in Europe did not choose Palestine. Out of 2.5 million Jews who fled Europe between 1935 and 1943, scarcely 8.5 percent, about 200,000 persons, went to Palestine. Almost two million went to the Soviet Union, 182,000 to the United States, and 67,000 to Britain’in spite of strict quotas on admissions in the latter two countries.
U.S. and British limitations on the number of Jews admitted coincided with Zionist policy, as enunciated by David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel: “If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael [the Land of Israel], then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel” (Brenner 1983, pp. 149–150). The policy of attaching more importance to the establishment of Israel than to the survival of the Jews (which was consistent with the Zionist rejection of assimilation) led the Zionists to collaborate with the Nazis (with whom they shared the belief that Jews were a racial community based on blood) in promoting Jewish emigration to Palestine.
THE BIRTH OF ISRAEL
The triumph of Zionism was made possible by the millions left homeless in Europe at the end of World War II, the continued restrictions on immigration to the United States and Britain, and the sympathy Jews had won as victims of Nazi persecution. After Britain announced its intention in 1947 to relinquish its control over Palestine, the United Nations voted to divide Palestine
into Arab and Jewish states’awarding the Jewish state 54 percent of the territory, notwithstanding the fact that Jews owned no more than 7 percent of the land. Although 75,000 Jews had moved to Israel between 1945 and 1948, Jews still were a minority in the country. Even before the proclamation of the State of Israel, the Zionists had begun driving out Arab residents. The attack on the Palestine village of Deir Yassin in April 1948, in which Zionist paramilitary forces under the command of the future prime minister Menachem Begin massacred more than 250 Palestinian civilians, thereby sending a message to others that they should depart, is the best-known example of how this population transfer was brought about. Some fled bombing attacks from British planes directly aiding the Israelis. In the war that ensued, the Zionist forces, trained and equipped by Britain and with additional arms from other countries, were easily able to defeat the outnumbered and outgunned forces of Jordan, Egypt and four other Arab states, whose rulers had already accepted the partition of Palestine.
The war ended with the Zionists in control of 80 percent of Palestine; more than 750,000 Arabs were driven from their homes. Some went to neighboring countries; others became refugees in their own country. These people and their descendants make up the Palestinian refugee problem’one fourth of the total number of refugees in the world. Although the United Nations has repeatedly demanded they be allowed to return, the Israeli government has refused.
The founding of the State of Israel meant the destruction by the Zionists of nearly 400 Arab villages. In a famous speech before students at the Israeli Institute of Technology in Haifa in 1969, Moshe Dayan, the Israeli defense minister from 1967 through 1974, stated:
Jewish villages were built in place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahial arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kebar Yehusha in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population (Davis 1987, p. 108).
The first census of the state of Israel, conducted in 1949, counted 650,000 Jews and 150,000 Arabs. The legal foundation for a racial state was laid down in two laws passed the following year. The first, the Law of Return, permitted any Jew, from anywhere in the world, the right to immigrate to Israel and acquire citizenship. The second was the Absentee Property Law, which confiscated the property of Arabs no longer residing on the land over which they held title. Arab refugees living inside Israel were termed “present absentees” and prohibited from returning to their property. Those who attempted to do so were termed “infiltrators,” and some were shot in the attempt. Confiscated lands have since become Israel Lands, leased only to Jews and accounting for the vast majority of new Jewish settlements.
The state of Israel does not belong, even in theory, to those who reside on its territory, but has been held by Israeli courts to be the “sovereign state of the Jewish people,” wherever they may exist. Consistent with this self-conception, the state has never defined its borders or even declared the existence of an Israeli nationality.
JEWISH PRIVILEGES IN ISRAEL
Under Israeli law, anyone born of a Jewish mother is Jewish, unless such a person converts to another religion. The rationale for this departure from the Judaic code is that such persons weaken Jewish national identity because of their tendency to intermarry. At the same time, the State of Israel, eager to increase the numbers of loyal residents, has extended the Right of Return to persons who lack a Jewish mother but have an affiliation with Jewish identity by marriage or inheritance through the male line. Such persons are registered as “under consideration.” In addition, a few individuals have gained Jewish status by converting to Judaism and having their conversion officially approved.
Jew in Israel is an assigned identity. Among the privileges attached to it, in addition to immigration and land acquisition, are citizenship, housing preferences, education and employment opportunities, political participation, and preferred treatment within the justice system.
Citizenship . Jews who immigrate to Israel become citizens automatically. Arabs seeking citizenship must meet a series of requirements, with final discretion resting with the minister of the interior. This applies also to Arabs born in what is now Israel but who resided elsewhere for any period of time. Arab noncitizens who marry citizens receive only residency status, not citizenship. As one scholar has stated, “citizenship is almost never granted to non-Jews” (Adalah 1998, pp. 24–28).
Housing . The government of Israel openly discriminates in housing. The Supreme Court has ruled that an Arab seeking to buy a home in a Jewish district could legally be barred from doing so on the grounds that the apartments were intended to help Jews overcome the effects of discrimination under British rule. Rates for government subsidized mortgages are at least one-third lower for Jews than for non-Jews. The authorities restrict the development of Arab towns by denying them expansion permits, while permits are granted to Jewish towns with smaller populations. Building licenses are routinely denied to Arabs, and obstacles are placed in the way of Arabs when they seek to build homes. Of 429 localities designated as National Priority A Areas under the National Planning and Building Law, only four are Arab. As a result, Arabs have been forced into overcrowded areas in mixed cities and into unrecognized towns lacking such basic services as running water, sewers, and electricity. Residents of these areas live under constant threat of being evicted and having their homes demolished.
Education and Family Policy . The country operates what is essentially a segregated school system. Significant gaps exist between Jewish and Arab schools at every level from early childhood to higher education. The Ministry of Education exercises control over the curriculum for Arab schools and secular Jewish schools, while granting autonomy to Jewish religious schools. The curriculum, even in Arab schools, stresses Jewish history and culture and ignores the history and culture of the indigenous Palestinians. Because Arabs do not serve in the armed forces, they are not eligible for financial benefits, including scholarships, loans, and child allowances available to those who serve. The Supreme Court has ruled, however, that paying subsidies to Jewish students who study in religious schools and are exempt from military service, while denying them to Arab students who do not serve, is not discriminatory.
Employment . The Histadrut was born as a combination labor union and cooperative society for Jewish workers. For many years it was the dominant institution in Israeli society and served as the mass base for the governing Labour Party. In recent years, as the Israeli economy has evolved, the Histadrut has faded in importance, but its legacy remains, as Jewish workers dominate the advanced sectors of the economy and Arab workers constitute a low caste. Further, Arab workers are increasingly being displaced by Thais and Filipinos, partly in response to the growth of the Palestinian resistance.
Political Participation . No party that denies the existence of Israel as a Jewish state is permitted to contest elections. It is against the law even to display symbols and sing anthems of anti-Zionist groups. Furthermore, the major parties have made it clear that no governing coalition can depend on the support of the Arab community (which makes up 20% of the population), and no important decision relating to the future of the Jewish state can be taken without a Jewish majority in parliament. Thus, the non-Jewish minority is prevented not merely from seeking to overturn its second-class status through parliamentary means, but even from throwing its weight on the scale when Jewish opinion is divided.
The Justice System . The state does not provide comparative information on sentencing of Jews and Arabs convicted of criminal offenses, but an examination of court records shows great disparities in sentencing as well as indictments. Israeli courts, up to the Supreme Court, have consistently ruled that discrimination between Arabs and Jews is legitimate given the founding of Israel as a state for Jews. In one representative case, a Jewish settler was convicted of shooting an Arab child. The judge sentenced him to a suspended jail term of six months plus community service. In response to critics, the judge declared, “It is wrong to demand in the name of equality, equal bearing and equal sentences to two offenders who have different nationalities who break the laws of the State. The sentence that deters the one and his audience, does not deter the other and his community” (Adalah 1998, pp. 17–21).
The types of discrimination noted above apply within the so-called “Green Line”’the area of the Israeli state as set up in 1948. In 1967, Israel occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank of the Jordan River, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Gaza Strip, restoring the territorial integrity of Palestine, which had been an administrative unit for centuries, first under Ottoman and later under
British rule, except for the two decades after 1948. After 1967 the system of military administration first established in 1948, which had been partially lifted within Israel in 1966, was imposed on the remainder of Palestine, and the area was opened for Jewish settlement, with state subsidies for settlers.
In the early twentieth century there are 500,000 Jews residing in the West Bank. They live in fortified towns surrounded by soldiers, are served by their own services and utilities, and are connected by a network of roads for Jews only. Arab cities and towns are isolated from each other by hundreds of checkpoints and motorways on which Arabs are forbidden to travel. In 2002, the Israeli government, citing the need to maintain internal security, began building a thirty-foot-high concrete-and-barbed-wire structure snaking through historic Palestine. Although the barrier was, in theory, to follow the Green Line (except for East Jerusalem, which was officially annexed to Israel), it became an opportunity for new Jewish expansion. In 2003, the military commander of the West Bank signed an order declaring all land between the Wall and the Green Line closed to all but Israeli citizens.
DEMOCRACY IN ISRAEL
Since the founding of the State of Israel, its defenders have had difficulty reconciling the reality of a Jewish state with a vision of democracy. Some have dealt with the matter by rejecting democracy as a goal for non-Jews. Among this number is Ariel Sharon, who became prime minister in 2001; Sharon stated, “Our grandparents did not come here to build a democratic state. They came to build a Jewish state.” Others have denied any contradiction, insisting on both the Jewish and democratic character of the state. For these people, the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has posed new ideological problems: If the Arabs living within the State of Israel, comprising one-fifth of the population of Israel, can be said to be second-class citizens, the 3.5 million Arabs residing in the territories occupied after 1967 must be regarded as stateless people with no representation or legal rights whatever. Under pressure from internal critics and international opinion, the Zionist authorities have accepted the principle of a separate state on some part of historic Palestine. The problem, then, has become how to maximize the area to become part of the Jewish state while minimizing the numbers of indigenous Palestinians within it. To this end, Zionist authorities have continued to expand the Jewish settlements (to strengthen their claims to additional land in anticipation of a settlement) while evicting indigenous Palestinians, destroying villages, and making life difficult for those who remain.
Zionist authorities have since withdrawn from Gaza, a six-by-twenty-eight mile strip of land that is home to 1.4 million indigenous Palestinians, mostly refugees from 1948 or 1967 and their descendants. They have removed 7,500 Jewish settlers (1.7 percent of the total number of settlers in the territories occupied by Israel after 1967), but have left the area surrounded by barbed-wire electric fences and guard towers. All traffic and commerce into and out of Gaza are controlled by Israel, as are the airspace and water resources. There are even plans for an offshore fence to provide Israel with full control of its coastal boundary.
Meanwhile, the expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank continues without interruption. It appears that the dream of one of the principal architects of the Jewish state is close to being realized: As Joseph Weitz, former chairman of the Israel Land Authority, stated, “Among ourselves it must be clear that there is no place in our country for both peoples together. The only solution is Eretz Israel, or at least the western half of Eretz Israel, without Arabs, and there is no other way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, transfer all of them, not one village or tribe should remain.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. 1998. Equal Rights and Minority Rights for the Palestinian Arab Minority in Israel: A Report to the UN Human Rights Committee on Israel’s Implementation of Articles 26 and 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Shfaram, Israel: Adalah. Available from http//www.arabhra.org/publications/reports/PDF/lccpr98.pdf/.
Al-Qawuqji, Fauzi. 1972.“Memoirs, 1948 Part 1.” Journal of Palestine Studies 1 (4): 27–58.
Brenner, Lenni. 1983. Zionism in the Age of the Dictators. Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill.
Davis, Uri. 1987. Israel: An Apartheid State. London: Zed Books.
Finkelstein, Norman. 2003. Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, 2nd ed. London: Verso.
Khalidi, Walid. 1988. “Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine.” Journal of Palestine Studies 18 (1): 4–33.
Menuhin, Moshe. 1965. The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time. New York: Exposition Press.
Morris, Benny. 1988. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Qumsiyeh, Mazin B. 2004. Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle. London: Pluto Press.
Segev, Tom. 1999. One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate. Translated by Haim Watzman. New York: Henry Holt.
Shlaim, Avi. 1988. Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement and the Partition of Palestine. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
_____1995. “The Debate about 1948.” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 27: 287–304.
van Creveld, Martin. 1998. The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israeli Defense Force. New York: Perseus.
SEE ALSO Nationalism and Ethnicity.
Noel Ignatiev
Zionism
ZIONISM
Movement for the establishment of an independent state in Palestine for the Jewish people.
Zionism may be seen as a national liberation movement for a Jewish homeland based on a nineteenth-century European political model. It defined Jews as a nation whose collective future depended upon the establishment of a national territorial entity in Eretz Yisrael (in Hebrew, "the land of Israel"), from which most Jews had been dispersed by the Roman Empire at the beginning of the second century c.e. The movement's name was coined by the Viennese Jewish writer Nathan Birnbaum in 1885 and derives from Zion, one of the biblical names for Jerusalem, the focus of worldwide Judaism.
Zionists believed that antisemitism was endemic to the diaspora; thus, the achievement of national and civil rights in host nations, while desirable, was insufficient to secure economic and cultural interests for Jews in the long run. Few Zionists believed that the diaspora would be swept away (as was attempted a century later by Hitler's Nazi Germany), but a Jewish homeland—which would serve as a cultural and political model and as a magnet for its finest sons and daughters—could help to secure a future for Jews.
Foundations of Zionism
Through the centuries of exile, ritual, prayer, and the study of sacred texts preserved for Jews the knowledge that Judaism had developed in Eretz Yisrael and Zion. In nineteenth-century Europe during the Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment), revival of the Hebrew language as a nonreligious, literary medium transmitted secular works and secularized versions of sacred histories to assimilated generations losing faith in religion and religious authority. If Zionism were to ensure the survival of the Jewish people, it could do so only by going through the modern European Jewish experience, not by denying it. Zionists were Jews who believed that only in Zion could Jewish culture and the Jewish people be re-established and secure. At that time, however, Zion was located in Palestine, within the Ottoman Empire, and was populated by Arabs under Ottoman jurisdiction.
A "proto-Zionism" had existed in fact before it was fully defined or before the word itself was coined. As a way of helping the indigent and scholarly Jewish populations in Ottoman Palestine, Western European philanthropists such as Edmond de Rothschild and Sir Moses Montefiore proffered aid to projects that later would come to be associated with the Zionist movement—the purchase of land for settlements, farms, and businesses from Ottoman officials and Arab landlords; the building of schools for vocational training; and the opening of medical facilities.
Jewish emigration to Eretz Yisrael also antedated the emergence of a Zionist movement. Jewish religious leaders had always endorsed the idea of living in the Holy Land as a means of discharging religious duties, and had actively promoted the expansion of Jewish communities in Safed, Tiberias, Hebron, and Jerusalem, creating financial mechanisms to meet the immigrants' material needs.
The wave of pogroms that followed the assassination of Russia's Czar Alexander II in 1881 turned an attachment for Zion into an ideology embraced by some of Russia's secular Jewish leaders and intellectuals. Newly promulgated regressive legislation and the resuscitation of antisemitic rhetoric dashed the hopes of those who had believed Russia's polity would evolve into a democracy, with basic rights granted to its population and the ideals of tolerance espoused. Although emigration to the United States and Britain was a popular way of escaping the immediate disabilities imposed by Russian policies, some educated Jews saw that moving to another land would neither end antisemitism nor secure a Jewish future. They argued that only a purposeful immigration with the goal of establishing a Jewish majority in a territory would achieve international respectability for Jewry and help protect Jews everywhere against discrimination. For those who called on Jews to liberate themselves, the Zionist idea supplanted the ideal of assimilation. Zionism was presented as resolving the Jewish problem by normalizing the conditions of Jewish existence.
Development of Zionist Organizations
Although many rabbinical authorities opposed Zionism for its secular and humanistic principles, many rabbis—most notably Samuel Mohilever and Isaac Jacob Reines—welcomed Zionism; they affiliated with Hibbat Zion, the first international Zionist organization to be founded, partly because they reasoned that in Eretz Yisrael a social and cultural environment could be created that was conducive to religious observance.
The Orthodox rabbinate did not, however, establish an entirely harmonious relationship with the secular leadership in Hibbat Zion. Many Orthodox %
rabbis could not abide the dynamics of a political struggle that effected compromises between the demands of Zionism's secular and religious constituencies. Nor were the Orthodox entirely comfortable in an organization that did not acknowledge the primacy of religious law and rabbinic authority. The first nonsecular Zionist group, the Mizrahi, opened its office in 1893, but most rabbis, though comfortable with the nationalist claims of Zionism, were unwilling to accede to Zionist demands to share power and resources in local Jewish communities. As a consequence of the frustrating handicaps under which Hibbat Zion labored in the 1880s and 1890s, Zionism was at an impasse when Theodor Herzl undertook to lead the struggle for a Jewish state.
Unaware of developments in Eastern Europe, Herzl, a Viennese journalist, championed the idea of Jewish nationhood in response to the outbreak of antisemitism in France during the fraudulent espionage trial of Alfred Dreyfus (1894–1895). In 1896 Herzl published Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), a book that set forth the argument that both the world and the Jews needed a Jewish state. In 1897 Herzl succeeded in drawing together representatives from the local and regional Hibbat Zion organizations in eastern Europe and Jews from western Europe, establishing and becoming president of a new Zionist framework, the World Zionist Organization (WZO). Authorized by the WZO to secure international recognition for Zionist political goals, Herzl pursued in the capitals of Europe and in the Ottoman capital, Istanbul, official sanction for Jewish colonization in Palestine, but his efforts, albeit feverish and intense, were unsuccessful. The Ottoman sultan Abdülhamit II was not persuaded that a larger Jewish population in Palestine was consistent with his imperial political objectives or that such a population would promote economic development.
%Herzl's leadership did broaden the popularity of Zionism in western and eastern Europe and enlarge its Orthodox membership. Herzl focused the activities of the WZO on diplomacy and finances. This approach mobilized the support of a number of Orthodox rabbis concerned with easing the economic hardships in Palestine for eastern European immigrants and hopefuls, as well as with the creation of a hospitable political climate there. By permitting groups to shift the mode of their representation from regional affiliation to ideological, the WZO was also used advantageously by the Orthodox to influence the direction of policies and, for a number of years, to exclude Jewish culture from the scope of Zionist activities.
Zionism's preoccupation with political solutions and stratagems triggered opposition. Against the political orientation associated with the leadership of Hibbat Zion, the writer Ahad Ha-Am argued that the purpose of Zionism ought to be to revive a modern Jewish culture through the medium of the Hebrew language and a renewed interpretation of classic religious texts; a new Jewish state could only be founded with new artifacts of Jewish culture. Cultural Zionist Ahad Ha-Am's insights on the problems besetting the Jewish people and the Zionist movement helped to inspire a group opposing Herzl's leadership and political Zionism—the Democratic Faction. This group, led by the scientist Chaim Weizmann, did not repudiate political methods or consider them insignificant; rather, they insisted that just as legal titles (to land) could facilitate resettlement, so could settlement lead to concrete political gains. Insisting that the structure of the WZO must be reformed to increase popular participation and broaden its agenda, the Democratic Faction defined its own priorities as the investigation of the physical, political, and social conditions of Palestine for purposes of increasing Jewish immigration.
Creating a Jewish community in Palestine was not simply the solution to continuing antisemitism but also the opportunity to establish a whole and vigorous modern Jewish life. In the early years of the twentieth century, efforts to create a youth movement and to popularize Zionism among the young led several Zionist leaders to synthesize socialism with Zionism. No longer would Jews have to choose between socialism (popular in Russia and in the Pale of Settlement) and Zionism. Some Socialist-Zionists promoted a non-Marxist socialism, emphasizing social welfare and justice; others insisted that even the Marxist version of socialism could be combined with Zionism. Branches of the first Labor Zionist party, Poʿalei Zion, founded in 1906, opened in many towns and cities of eastern Europe, attracting many educated Jewish teenagers. Ha-Halutz, the young pioneer farm movement, was nonpartisan and attracted many capable Austro-Hungarian Jewish youth, especially when it was funded by the WZO after World War I.
Before the conclusion of World War I, Zionists were unable to engage openly in mass mobilization in many countries. In the United States and western Europe, where organizations could operate freely, Zionism did not hold the imagination of most immigrants, who were struggling to work their way out of grinding poverty. In Russia, where the majority of Jews presumably felt sympathy with Zionist aims, Zionist activities were hobbled by the Russian Revolution, Soviet dictatorship, and persecution.
Establishment of the Jewish State in Palestine
With the issuance of the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and the Sèvres Treaty of 1920, Britain became formally committed to the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish national home. This gave Zionism its first major political victory. World War I had changed the map of Eastern Europe as well as that of the Middle East, thereby providing Zionists an opportunity to engage in grassroots political organization among previously isolated Jewish communities. Youth groups expanded, and camps were created to offer vocational and Hebrew-language training to prepare Jews for life and work in Palestine.
Throughout its history, the Zionist movement has had to make crucial choices among several options: Eretz Yisrael (Palestine) versus another territory, such as Uganda, Canada, Australia; a national home versus a cultural center for world Jewry; a Jewish nation-state versus a binational state in which Jews and Arabs might share political power; neutrality during World War I versus pro-British cooperation; high political profile versus quiet political lobbying; and uniformity versus diversity in political goals. Each decision was made after great debate during and outside of Zionist congresses, often triggering enmity, hard feelings, and the creation of new splinters and factions. One of the most serious splits occurred when Vladimir (Zeʾev) Jabotinsky left the WZO to create his own Revisionist Zionist movement.
With increasing knowledge of the extent of the Holocaust during World War II, the Zionist movement chose Jewish survival over acquiescence in British restrictions on immigration, which resulted in an anti-British militancy aimed at gaining free entry for Jewish refugees into Palestine from 1944 until 1948. With the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, the fulfilment of one of Zionism's goals was endorsed by international consensus—majority support at the United Nations, official recognition by many of the world's nations, and acceptance by most Jews (religious Jews excepted). The Arab and Muslim world remained outside this consensus. Post-1948 Zionism evolved into a movement dedicated to immigration (aliyah) for as many Jews as possible, land purchase for continued settlement, and political and economic support for Israel through institutionalized activity. Despite the recent "post-Zionist" intellectual trend that urges a redefinition of Israel as an inclusive state for all its citizens and detaches it from its special diaspora Jewish connections, many Jews continue to consider themselves Zionists in affirming this connection and the importance of Israel in sustaining their Jewish identity.
see also abdülhamit ii; ahad ha-am; aliyah; antisemitism; diaspora; dreyfus affair; eretz yisrael; ha-halutz; haskalah; herzl, theodor; hibbat zion; holy land; jabotinsky, vladimir zeʾev;jerusalem; labor zionism; mizrahi movement; mohilever, samuel; montefiore, moses; pogrom; rothschild, edmond de; weizmann, chaim; world zionist organization (wzo); zionist commission for palestine; zionist organization of america; zionist revisionist movement.
Bibliography
Avineri, Shlomo. The Making of Modern Zionism: Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State. New York: Basic Books, 1981.
Dowty, Alan. The Jewish State: A Century Later. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
Halpern, Ben. The Idea of the Jewish state. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969.
Hertzberg, Arthur. The Fate of Zionism: A Secular Future for Israel and Palestine. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003.
Hertzberg, Arthur, ed. The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1997.
Laqueur, Walter. A History of Zionism: From the French Revolution to the Establishment of the State of Israel. New York: Schocken Books, 2003.
Rubinstein, Amnon. From Herzl to Rabin: The Changing Image of Zionism. New York: Holmes and Meier, 2000.
Sternhell, Zeev. The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism, Socialism, and the Making of the Jewish State, translated by David Maisel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.
Vital, David. Zionism: The Crucial Phase. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1987; New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
donna robinson divine
updated by neil caplan
Zionism
ZIONISM
jews and nationalismjewish nationalism
the lovers of zion
theodor herzl and "political zionism"
struggle for the jewish future
bibliography
First used in public on 23 January 1892 by Nathan Birnbaum, Zionism is the term used for the main Jewish nationalist movement that originated in central and eastern Europe in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Zionism's main ideological claim was that the Jews were not simply an ethnic or religious minority group but were rather a distinct, if dispersed, people—a nation. As such, Jews could never be fully integrated into their host societies, and indeed should not; instead they needed, and had a right to, their own state, in their national homeland, Palestine, or, as most Zionists came to call it, Eretz Israel (Hebrew for "Land of Israel"). Zionism therefore rejected the main integrative, assimilationist strategy of the movement for Jewish emancipation that started in the late eighteenth century. Zionism's relation to this movement was, however, highly ambivalent, for while many Zionists insisted on a distinct cultural and national identity for Jews, many others, including its founding figure and initial leader, Theodor Herzl, also saw the movement as a means of integrating the Jews into the rest of civilized society, but on a national rather than individual level. Jews were to be, therefore, a "normal" nation, but they were also to be a model "normal" nation: pioneers in technology, culture, progressive social causes, and pluralist tolerance, and at the center of world civilization. Zionism, therefore, rather than "solving" the Jewish Question, as was claimed for it, came to reflect the complex, dialectical relationship between particularism and universalism that marked Jewish emancipation and indeed modern Jewish history generally.
jews and nationalism
Zionism differed markedly from almost all other European nationalisms in the period, even diasporic nationalisms such as that of the Greeks, by having only a marginal overlap between people and territory. There were some Jews in the Jewish "homeland" in Palestine, but Jews were far from being a majority in the area, and had no political control or recognized claim to the territory. The vast bulk of Jews lived outside of Palestine: the Sephardic Jews were scattered mainly across the lands, current and former, of the Ottoman Empire as well as parts of western Europe and the Americas; the Ashkenazi Jews were concentrated in central and eastern Europe, especially the area of the Russian Empire known as the Pale. This discrepancy between people and territory was an accepted part of premodern, traditional Jewish life and thought. Jews thought of themselves as a people, living as they did in autonomous communities, apart from, and usually discriminated against by, the surrounding societies. Yet they did not see themselves in modern nationalist terms, and their dispersion was explained, and justified, in religious terms, with an ingathering of the Jewish people to the homeland in Palestine seen almost exclusively in connection with the coming of the Messiah.
This situation became untenable with the onset of the modern state and its concomitant, secular nationalism, in the late eighteenth century. Jewish autonomy was abolished as part of the centralization of state power, and the spread of secular nationalism, associated most strongly with the French Revolution, was a direct challenge to the Jews' traditional group identity.
The modernizers within western and central European Jewry, including the neo-Orthodox, initially responded by defining Jewish identity exclusively in individual religious terms, thus denying any secular Jewish group (i.e., national) identity. Many even removed any vestigial mention in the liturgy of the wish to return to Zion as an outdated confusion that might hamper the full identification of Jews with their respective nations, whether French, German, or any other. This "assimilationist" strategy was effective as long as the national identity in question was inclusive, civic, and not seriously challenged by competing national identities. Where the nation gained an ethnic or racial, hence exclusive, definition, or where nationalities competed for regional supremacy, as in the empires of central and eastern Europe, the strategy's success was not so clear: Jews were not accepted as members of the nation because of their different ethnicity and traditional prejudices against them. It was also unclear to which national group Jews should try to belong: in Bohemia, for instance, German, Czech, or "Austrian"? In this way, Jews often became caught in the crossfire between competing nationalisms.
jewish nationalism
There was also a more positive possibility arising from the Jewish confrontation with nationalism. In areas such as the Russian Pale, where Jews were in sufficient numbers to retain a strong group identity, the option presented itself of Jews imitating the other groups around them by themselves forming their own "nation." Hence Russian Jewish intellectuals, led by Perez Smolenskin, developed in the 1860s their own brand of secular Jewish nationalism, alongside all the others.
Initially, however, most of the proponents of this secular Jewish national identity thought it could be realized in Europe in deterritorialized form. Most saw no need for the apparently impossible project of mass immigration of Jews to Palestine. There were, admittedly, calls from the early nineteenth century from various sources, including several British Christian evangelicals and Benjamin Disraeli, for the Jews' return to their biblical homeland, and the connection between the rediscovery of Jewish identity and the reclaiming of Zion was the centerpiece of George Eliot's novel Daniel Deronda, published in 1876. A prominent German Jewish intellectual, Moses Hess, once an avowed supporter of total Jewish integration in a socialist society, in his book Rome and Jerusalem (1862), also lent his voice to the call for recognition of Jewish nationhood and the restoration of a Jewish state in Palestine. Until the very end of the 1870s, however, very few held this view. In western and central Europe the strategy of assimilation, or at least integration, remained dominant among Jews, and even those, largely in eastern Europe and Russia, who supported a secular Jewish nationalism denied that this necessitated a Jewish state in Palestine.
the lovers of zion
The radicalization of European nationalism around 1880 brought a sea change in Jewish attitudes. In central Europe the emergence of "anti-Semitism" as a formal political movement began to sow doubts in the minds of some supporters of assimilation; and in eastern Europe the success of Slav liberation movements against the Turks led to the rapid growth in Russian elites of Pan-Slavism. The effect of this on Jews was twofold. Some, such as Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, were inspired by Slav nationalist success to demand that the Jews also realize their national identity. In Ben-Yehuda's view this meant that Jews should speak Hebrew, which in turn necessitated their living in their own land, which meant immigrating to Palestine, as he recommended in 1879. Others were dismayed at the ethnonationalist nature of Pan-Slavism, which threatened the status of Jews within the Russian Empire. Their fears were confirmed in 1881 when the assassination of the relatively liberal Tsar Alexander II was followed by a spate of pogroms and a reactionary crackdown under Alexander III.
After the pogroms of 1881 most Jewish nationalists, including Smolenskin, became supporters of mass Jewish immigration to Palestine. In many of Russia's Jewish population centers they formed groups, under the general rubric of Hovevei Ziyyon (Lovers of Zion), to promote this goal. The new rationale of the movement was articulated by Leo Pinsker's Auto-Emanzipation (1882), which identified anti-Semitism as a psychic disease that was incurable and would bar the acceptance of Jews by European societies. Hence Jews needed to emancipate themselves, and form their own state. Ironically, Pinsker was not at all convinced that this state should be in Palestine, thinking North America a preferable site, but the vast majority of secular Jewish nationalists, with their more ethnocultural understanding of Jewish identity, could recognize only Palestine as the goal of emigration.
The new movement gained some unity of purpose at the Kattowitz Conference of 1884, received some financial backing from such figures as Edmond de Rothschild, and did see some land purchases and immigration to Palestine, the "First Aliyah" (literally "Going Up"). Overall, however, the Lovers of Zion suffered from a lack of organization, persecution by the Russian authorities, and conflict between the secular and religious factions. Although the pressure to emigrate remained, this could be relieved more easily by settling in America than in Palestine. By the early 1890s, with its initial impetus long gone, the movement was almost defunct.
theodor herzl and "political zionism"
The intervention of a Viennese journalist with no previous connection to Zionism, Theodor Herzl (1860–1904), revived the movement's fortunes. A fairly typical product of Vienna's assimilated Jewish liberal bourgeoisie, Herzl had been a liberal German nationalist in his youth, and he held quite a negative opinion of the parvenu Jewish society around him. Increasing concern about anti-Semitism in France (where he was the correspondent of the Neue Freie Presse in Paris from 1891 to 1895) and Austria, and the negative effects of the new, social "ghetto" in which assimilated Jews found themselves as a result, eventually led him to question the wisdom of assimilation. In June 1895, in the wake of the Dreyfus trial in France and, more crucially, the electoral triumph of the anti-Semitic Christian Socials in April that year in Vienna, Herzl came to the radical conclusion that the only way to solve the Jewish Question was for the Jews to recognize that they were a separate people, and should leave Europe to settle in a state of their own, as agreed to by the international community.
After failing to win over the western and central European Jewish elite, Herzl started appealing to the Jewish masses, and his plan was published as a pamphlet, Der Judenstaat: Versuch einer modernen Lösung der Judenfrage (The Jewish state: An attempt at a modern solution of the Jewish Question), in February 1896. His call met with an enthusiastic response not among western and central European Jews (at which it was aimed), but rather among eastern European Jews, in the preexisting Zionist movement of which Herzl had been unaware. While in many respects simply repeating the core ideas of Pinsker, Herzl's plan was more detailed, Herzl himself had a higher prestige, as a "Western" intellectual, and he brought to the "Jewish cause" a remarkable political and organizational flair and energy. Very soon he became the leader of the movement, with Max Nordau, another highly prestigious "Western" intellectual, as his deputy.
The initial results of Herzl's leadership were dramatic: in 1897 he convened the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, and he managed in a very short space of time to create the institutional structures and the appearance of a legitimate, substantial Jewish nationalist movement that firmly anchored Zionism in the international political world. His brand of "political Zionism" laid great stress on securing international recognition of and hence legitimacy for the goal of a Jewish state, and the resulting diplomatic campaign saw Herzl meet many of Europe's heads-of-state, including William II of Germany. This made Zionism respectable and gave it a high profile that was indispensable for its later success.
struggle for the jewish future
Zionism, however, remained weak, and was soon in deep crisis. The movement convinced only a small minority of western and central European Jewry of the need to give up the strategy of integration into European society. Even in eastern Europe, Zionism had to compete with other models of Jewish modernization, such as the socialist Bundists, and within Zionism there were several competing visions of how to proceed. Herzl's political Zionism, for all its diplomatic glamour, had achieved hardly any success in pursuit of the movement's main goal: securing the right to a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Its neglect of a distinct, ethnoculturally Jewish content for the new state of the Jews also antagonized the "cultural Zionists," such as Asher Ginzberg (also known under the pseudonym Ahad Ha'am) and Martin Buber. Herzl's main goal for his Jews' state was to act as a refuge from anti-Semitism and to transform Jews into "real humans" by making them fully responsible citizens—of their own country. He had (like Pinsker) initially not seen Palestine as the necessary and sole site for his state, and even when he accepted this need, his Zionist vision, as articulated in the novel Altneuland (1902; Old new land), remained one with a progressive, liberal, universalist, pluralist, and humanist character (as befitted his central European Jewish background), rather than one with an identifiably, ethnically Jewish one. Cultural Zionists, in contrast, were intent on promoting a particular, culturally Jewish national identity (especially involving Hebrew as the national language), and saw a Jewish homeland more as a means to that end, rather than as a site for the "normalization" of Jews. "Practical Zionists" also differed from the political Zionists in insisting on the need to pursue colonization of Palestine even before international agreement on this (especially from the Turkish government that ruled Palestine) had been achieved.
The conflict over the movement's future culminated in the Uganda Crisis of 1903, when the (largely Russian) opposition protested vehemently at Herzl's agreement to pursue the prospect of a Jewish colony in British East Africa ("Uganda"), seeing this as a fatal detour from the goal of Palestine. Herzl achieved a compromise with the rebels, but very soon thereafter, on 3 July 1904, he died of heart disease. In the aftermath of the leader's death, the movement regrouped, but with power shifting to the "Russians." The supporters of the idea behind the Uganda project, of a territory that could be a "night shelter" for Jews fleeing anti-Semitism, broke away in 1905 and formed the Jewish Territorial Organization. David Wolffsohn became the new leader and continued the political Zionist strategy of Herzl, negotiating with Turkey for more Jewish rights in Palestine. Meanwhile, however, the goals of the cultural and practical Zionists, to further Jewish educational and economic development, and Jewish settlement, in Palestine, were also pursued. The combination of diplomatic activity and practical activity on the ground, named "synthetic Zionism" by its leading practitioner, Chaim Weizmann, became the dominant trend in the movement, especially after Wolffsohn's resignation in 1911, and Nordau's subsequent self-imposed absence.
By 1914, Zionism presented a complex and ambivalent picture. On the one hand, it remained riven by factional disputes, with political, cultural, and synthetic Zionists being accompanied by other factions, such as the religious-Orthodox Mizrahi, and the socialist Poale Zion. On the other, however, many of these disputes were taking place in Palestine as well as in Europe because the Second Aliyah, after 1905, had brought a substantial number of Jews to Palestine, and various educational, cultural, and economic institutions had been founded and financed, much of it under the skillful direction of Arthur Ruppin at the Palestine Office of the Jewish National Fund. Moreover, the evident weakness of Turkish rule in the area had led to renewed hopes of a diplomatic breakthrough, which was indeed to occur with the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
What remained quite unclear in 1914, and almost entirely unaddressed, was the question of how—assuming its future success—the nascent Zionist colony in the Jewish homeland of Palestine would deal with the fact of the Arab population that already lived there.
See alsoAnti-Semitism; Herzl, Theodor; Jews and Judaism; Minorities; Nationalism.
bibliography
Primary Sources
Hertzberg, Arthur, ed. The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader. Garden City, N.Y., 1959.
Herzl, Theodor. Old New Land. Translated by Lotta Levensohn. New York, 1960.
——. The Jewish State. Translated by Harry Zohn. New York, 1970.
Secondary Sources
Avineri, Shlomo. The Making of Modern Zionism: Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State. New York, 1981.
Beller, Steven. Herzl. 2nd ed. London, 2004.
Frankel, Jonathan. Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862–1917. Cambridge, U.K., 1981.
Laqueur, Walter. A History of Zionism. New York, 1972. Reprint, with a new preface by the author, New York, 1989.
Vital, David. The Origins of Zionism. Oxford, U.K., 1975.
——. Zionism: The Formative Years. Oxford, U.K., 1982.
Steven Beller
Zionism
Zionism
WORLD WAR II AND POSTCOLONIALISM
Zionism is the modern movement whose goal is the restoration of the Jewish people to the region on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean commonly known (at least until the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel in 1948) as Palestine or Zion. Not all of its adherents have been Jews. It draws, however, on ancient motifs sustained in Jewish collective memory, religion, and culture (and to some extent in the Christian West more generally), relating the telos of world-historical redemption and the coming of the Messiah to the restoration of the Jews to their ancient homeland and the building of the third, and eternal, holy Temple in Jerusalem. Since its inception in the nineteenth century, Zionism has been an ideologically multifaceted and internally contentious movement, and its fortunes have changed in complex relation with European anti-Semitism and with colonialism beyond Europe’s borders.
It is certainly difficult, and may be impossible, to present a summary account of Zionism, along with its bases of support and the sources of opposition to it, that is genuinely objective—not only because the movement continues to inspire intense passions, both positive and negative, but because its premises rest on accounts of history, geography, and nationality that are themselves fundamentally contested. Thus, Palestine refers to an ancient Roman province, to a British protectorate in the period of late European colonialism, and to the place claimed as a homeland by those residents of the region who have come to understand themselves as forming part of a non-Jewish, Palestinian nation. Speaking of the land as Zion reinforces the centrality of the region to Christian as well as Jewish sacred history and eschatological expectations. Even the notion that the Jewish people the world over constitute a single nation, central to Zionism and accepted as well by some competing Jewish movements prior to World War II (1939–1945), has not been universally accepted by Jews in the modern period.
ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL ROOTS
Zionism draws on a rich and powerful repository of memorial resources preserved through Jewish generations, which profoundly inform ritual and expressions of religious yearning. Memorial literature that has been continuously studied since the destruction of the First and then the Second Temples in Jerusalem mourns their loss, enjoins their memory, and promises their restoration. The model of return from exile, as noble adventure and divinely sanctioned, is prefigured in the chronicles of the return from Babylonian exile led by Ezra and Nehemiah. Portions of the Babylonian Talmud detailing the correct procedures for fulfillment of commandments and strictures that relate only to times when the Jews live in Israel and the Temple stands continued to be studied, both in commemoration of the past and in anticipation of a redeemed future.
Nearly all this commemoration took place not only in the absence of Jewish sovereignty, but outside the land. At least since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 ce, and continuing throughout the Christian era until the twentieth century, Jewish communities have been found overwhelmingly outside the imagined national homeland. This condition is itself subject to differing designations with various ideological implications. The Hebrew and Yiddish terms galut or goles, commonly translated as exile, stress the element of loss inherent in location outside the homeland. On the other hand, the scattered Jewish communities are also commonly described as being in diaspora, an ancient term originally applied to colonies of Greek settlers throughout the Mediterranean. A thriving Jewish diaspora existed prior to the destruction of the Second Temple, and some recent scholarship has stressed the sustainability and creativity of Jewish and other diasporas.
Along with the memory of the land, its reality was preserved throughout the Middle Ages by the reports of occasional pilgrims, including famous Jewish artists and thinkers, such as the twelfth-century philosopher-poet Judah HaLevi. Extremely pious Jews sought to die, or at least to be buried, in the soil of Zion. Small settlements of religious mystics were established in Jerusalem and the Galilee during the early modern period. During the late seventeenth century, the false messiah, Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676), raised hopes of immediate restoration of the Jews to Zion; Jews across the Western world sold their worldly goods and prepared for the journey that never came.
MODERN ZIONISM
The modern movement of Zionism, understood in large part as a mobilization to “actualize” these ancient hopes and dreams, is inseparable from key aspects of modern European history, including the dissolution of the ancien régime; the rise of secularism and religious pluralism; and the effort to create one-to-one alignments between ethnic collective identities and territorially defined nation-states. As part of the first aspect, Jewish communities were simultaneously freed of historic restrictions on movement, settlement, and employment, and deprived of their historic self-governing character. As part of the second, the haskalah, or “Jewish Enlightenment,” sparked a profound internal critique and resistance to traditional modes of communal authority, based as it was on patriarchy, family, and class prestige, and mastery of religious law and lore. Meanwhile, chauvinist nationalisms in Europe spawned the modern variety of Jew-hatred that went by the “scientific” name of anti-Semitism. This inspired Zionism as a response, claiming that the only possible place for the Jewish people in a modern world of nation-states was together, preferably in its own historical homeland.
Starting in the late nineteenth century, various Zionist manifestos appeared. In Eastern Europe, Leon Pinsker’s (1821–1891) Autoemancipation, which was inspired by a wave of pogroms in 1881 and argued that the Jews would neither be safe nor free so long as they remained in an “abnormal” situation as guests and strangers, was published in 1882. In 1896 the Viennese journalist Theodor Herzl (1860–1904), who came to be canonized as the founder of Zionism, published his The Jewish State, arguing that the Jews would never be free nor gain respect until they ceased being a scattered minority. Ahad Ha’am (1856–1927), who argued that Zion should serve as a spiritual center for the renewal of world Jewry, did not carry the day, but his vision may be seen as a remarkable prediction of the relation between Jewish Israel and the Jews of the diaspora at the start of the third millennium. Intellectuals such as Judah Magnes (1877–1948) and Martin Buber (1878–1965), concerned with the ethical demand to acknowledge the presence and humanity of the Arab inhabitants of Palestine, argued early in the twentieth century for a binational solution to what came increasingly to be understood as a conflict between two nationalist movements struggling for control of the same land. The Revisionists, led by Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880–1940), contended that such reconciliation was impossible and that the conflict might well be a fight to the death, one that the Jews must at all costs win. Meanwhile the most popular variant of Zionism as a popular movement was Socialist Zionism, itself subject to bitter contention, though all of its adherents believed both that the way to revive the Jewish people was through the renewal of Jewish labor in the Jewish land and that the Zionist effort was consistent with the worldwide movement of the working class. Zionist ideology emphasized the close attachment between the people and the land in modern practice, not only in historical memory; and Zionist strategy prior to World War II involved substantial efforts to purchase land in Palestine.
WORLD WAR II AND POSTCOLONIALISM
World War II affected the Zionist movement in profound ways: It seemed to offer convincing proof that there was no safe future for Jews in diaspora, and it led to mass immigration by refugees and survivors to what was, until the late 1940s, still commonly called Palestine even by Jews. The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and the ensuing war marked a new phase in the history of the movement and the controversies surrounding it. Many Zionists understood themselves as anticolonialists, both because the Jews worldwide whom they sought to redeem could plausibly be understood as being “internally colonized” by various powerful nations and empires, and because the Zionist pragmatic and military effort involved resistance as well as collusion with the British protectorate. Palestinians displaced during the 1948 war known in Israel as the War of Independence were neither allowed by Israel to return to their homes, nor absorbed into surrounding Arab countries, thus exacerbating and perpetuating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Soviet Union, after initially voting in the United Nations for recognition of Israel, came to be aligned with the Arab States and with the Palestinian movement, while much of the world came to see Israel and Zionism as opposed to postcolonial liberation struggles.
Consistent both with the Zionist ideal of worldwide Jewish peoplehood and with the reality of vastly different Jewish communities in various parts of the world, the mass absorption of a large percentage of the world’s Jews has been problematic and controversial. In the decades following World War II, the majority of the Jews of North Africa and the Middle East emigrated to Israel, as did a large percentage of the Jews of Eastern Europe and, somewhat later, the Soviet Union. Tensions arose and persist among these major immigrant groups. In the latter decades of the twentieth century, the secular Zionist goal of shaping the “new Jew,” free of supposed religious obscurantism and the supposed neuroses of diaspora, was challenged both by movements to retain rather than jettison traditional Jewish cultures and by an increasingly popular and militant combination of Zionist-exclusive territorialism and fervent religious orthodoxy. Moreover, a number of scholars and commentators have argued that by the end of the twentieth century, the era of “postZionism” had come, meaning that the fundamental goal of establishing and securing a Jewish state had been achieved, but that it was no longer feasible or necessarily desirable to persist in the attempt to gather in all of the world’s Jews.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ben-Ari, Eyal, and Yoram Bilu, eds. 1997. Grasping Land: Space and Place in Contemporary Israeli Discourse and Experience. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Benvenisti, Meron. 1986. Conflicts and Contradictions. New York: Villard.
Herzl, Theodor. [1896] 1997. The Jews’ State. Trans. Henk Overberg. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.
Vital, David. 1975. The Origins of Zionism. Oxford: Clarendon.
Zerubavel, Yael. 1995. Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Jonathan Boyarin
Zionism
Zionism
Zionism, the Jews' movement of national liberation, holds that the Jews constitute "a people, one people." Founded in 1897 by Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) to establish a Jewish state, Zionism created the State of Israel in 1948. The Zionist movement therefore identified the Jews as a political, not solely a religious, group, and maintained that the Jews' problem was a political one. They held that anti-Semitism was deeply embedded in Europe and that the Jews had to evacuate Europe to save their own lives. Building a Jewish state in Palestine formed the principal goal of political Zionism, which achieved success in 1948. Zionist thought extended to political questions on the definition of the Jewish people and the description and meaning of the history of the Jewish people. Zionism formed one of the principal sources for the definition of Jewish thought and scholarship in the first half of the twentieth century.
The Zionist Definition of "Israel," Worldview, Way of Life
First of all, Zionism defined its theory of "Israel" as a people, one people, in a secular sense. In Judaism, "Israel" had meant the people of God, brought together at Sinai to receive the Torah. Zionism therefore represented a considerable revision in the received definition of who and what the Jews were, now no longer just a religious community but also an ethnic or national entity. Zionism shaped a worldview that composed of the diverse histories of Jews a single, unitary history of the Jewish people, seen as a nation. That history led from the land of Israel through exile back to the land of Israel. Again, this recapitulation of the biblical narrative derived not from a religious but from a nationalist perspective. The way of life of Zionism, in place of the religious way of life of prayer, practice of the Commandments, and study of the Torah, for the elitist or activist Zionist required political action. That meant participation in meetings, organizing within the local community, and attendance at national and international conferences. Later, as settlement in the land itself became possible, Zionism defined as the most noble way of living immigration to the land, and, for the socialist wing of Zionism, building a collective community (kibbutz). So Zionism presented a complete and fully articulated Judaism, and, in its day, one of the most powerful and effective of them all.
Four main streams of Zionist theory flowed abundantly and side by side in the formative decades, expressed in cultural, political, socialist, and religious Zionist organizations.
Cultural Zionism
The cultural stream, represented by Ahad HaAm, laid stress on Zion as a spiritual and cultural center, to unite all parts of the Jewish people. Ahad HaAm laid emphasis on spiritual preparation, ideological and cultural activities, and the long-term intellectual issues of persuading the Jews of the Zionist premises. The revival of the Hebrew language as a living tongue represented the greatest achievement of cultural Zionism.
Political Zionism
From the beginning, Zionism maintained that the Jews should engage in practical activity, seeking recognition from the nations of the Jews' own nationality, too. This political Zionism sought further to provide for the emigration of the masses of their nation from Eastern Europe, then entering a protracted state of political disintegration and already long suffering from economic dislocation, to the land of Israel—or somewhere, anywhere. Herzl in particular placed the requirement for legal recognition of a Jewish state over the location of the state, and, in doing so, set forth the policy that the practical salvation of the Jews through political means would form the definition of Zionism. Herzl stressed that the Jewish state would come into existence in the forum of international politics. The instruments of state—a political forum, a bank, a mode of national allegiance, a press, a central body, and a leader—came into being in the aftermath of the first Zionist congress, in Basel. Herzl spent the rest of his life after 1897—less than a decade—seeking an international charter and recognition of the Jews' state.
Socialist Zionism
A third stream of Zionism derived from socialism and expressed a Zionist vision of socialism or a socialist vision of Zionism. The Jewish state was to be socialist, as, indeed, it was for its first three decades. Socialist Zionism in its earlier theoretical formulation (before its near-total bureaucratization) emphasized that a proletarian Zionism would define the arena for the class struggle within the Jewish people to be realized.
Religious Zionism
While many Orthodox Jews rejected Zionism because they believed only God would bring holy Israel back to the land of Israel at the end of days, some took a different view. Mizrachi (coined from the Hebrew words merkaz ruhani, spiritual center), founded in 1902, took the slogan "The Land of Israel for the People of Israel according to the Torah of Israel." Mizrachi Zionism propagated the ideal of a Jewish national renaissance among Orthodox Jews and formed the federation of religious Zionists within world Zionism.
The Zionist Success
Zionism became a mass movement in World War I. On November 2, 1917, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, declaring that it favored the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish national home, provided that the civil and religious rights of others not be impaired. In the rising nationalism of European peoples and the breakup of the multiethnic empires such as Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Germany into nation-states such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe saw in Zionism a counterpart of Jewish nationalism. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, most Jews worldwide favored the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Led by David Ben-Gurion and in accord with U.N. decision of November 1947, the State of Israel was declared on May 15, 1948.
Zionism in the United States
In the United States, until the massacre of the Jews of Europe between 1933 and 1945 and the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism remained very much a minority movement in Jewry. Jewish socialism and Yiddishism, in the new nations of Eastern Europe, and the New Deal in American Democratic politics attracted a far larger part of Jewry, and the former, though not the latter, formed a competing Judaic system in particular. Reform Judaism rejected the definition of the Jews as a political entity and insisted that they formed a religious community. Before 1948 the Jewish population of the land of Israel/Palestine had scarcely reached half a million, a small portion of the Jews of the world. In the United States and in Western Europe Zionist sentiment did not predominate, even though a certain romantic appeal attached to the pioneers in the land. Down, indeed, to 1967, Zionism constituted one choice among many for Jews throughout the world. When the State of Israel regained access to Jewish holy places closed off from Jewish access from 1948 through 1967, many thought that Zionism had finally reached its goal: the reunification of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish State of Israel.
Zionism and Israelism as American Judaism
Since, at the present time, Jewry nearly unanimously attaches to the State of Israel the status of the Jewish state; affirms that the Jews form a people, one people; concedes all of the principal propositions of Zionism; and places the achievement of the Zionist program as the highest priority for Jewry throughout the world, we may say that today, but not a great many days before, Zionism forms a system bearing self-evident truth for vast numbers of Jews. But because post-1948 Zionism in the State of Israel defined "being a Zionist" as settling in the State of Israel or planning to do so, American Jewry has had to reframe its pro-Israel attitudes and activities into a different pattern from the normative Israeli-Zionist one. It has emphasized political activism in the support of Israeli causes, frequent trips to the State of Israel, learning modern Hebrew, and other activities connected with the culture and life of the Jewish state.
See alsoAnti-Semitism; Belonging, Religious; Holocaust; Holy Land; Jewish Identity; Jewish Renewal; Judaism; Religious Communities; Religious Persecution.
Bibliography
Avineri, Shlomo. The Making of Modern Zionism:Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State. 1981.
Cohen, Naomi. American Jews and the ZionistIdea.
Elon, Amos. Herzl. 1975, repr. 1986.
Halkin, Hillel. Letters to an American JewishFriend:AZionist's Polemic. 1977.
Jacob Neusner