Zionism

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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.