Zionism

CHAPTER 32
Zionism
Ze’ev Levy
The emergence of the idea of Jewish nationality in its modern form—Zionism—took
place relatively late, long after the idea of nationalism had taken hold of other European
peoples. At the same time as nation-states were already coming into actual existence in
Europe, in Judaism there were only a very few precursors of the Jewish national—
Zionist—idea. The most important among them from the philosophical view-point was
M.Hess (1812–75) whose conception of Jewish nationalism was analyzed in the last
chapter.
There were several other forerunners of Zionism at the time, foremost among them
Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai and Rabbi Zvi Kalischer (with whom Hess corresponded), but
they were mainly inspired by religious and messianic motives, without any philosophical
background. They were, however, strongly impressed by the liberal and nationalist ideas,
flourishing in Europe in the mid-century; these certainly served as a springboard for their
messianic-flavored notions too. The rise of anti-semitism, on the other hand, did not play
any significant role in their activities.
Hess’ outlook on Jewish nationality was shaped by the concepts of Hegelian
philosophy, and by his enthusiastic inspiration from and interpretation of Spinoza. His
starting-point was philosophy; it determined his response to tradition. In this connection
another important philosophical concept played a decisive role in steering his notion of
Jewish nationality to its Zionist consequences, namely the Fichtian concept of
Bestimmung. This ambiguous German word signifies “determination” as well as
“destination;” at the same time it also arouses associations with the notion of “mission,”
so dear to Hess and Jewish thinkers of the nineteenth century. It indeed fits Hess’s trend
of thought extremely well; the destination—the mission—is determined by general
objective laws. The concept of “mission” underwent several metamorphoses in Hess’
thought; in his early writings its heralds were Jesus and Spinoza, later on he assigned it to
certain nations, in particular France, and finally he ascribed it to Judaism.
But how did Hess reach his Zionist conclusions? How do mission and
national revival converge in his philosophical world view? To accomplish
its historical mission, the Jewish people must establish its own state. To
diffuse the idea of universal human harmony which is incumbent upon the
Jews as part of the global struggle for social and national liberation
necessitates a normal national life. Without the precondition of a natural
and independent life in one’s own land the mission will be of no effect.
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690
Concerning the Jews, much more than those nations that are oppressed on
their own soil, national independence must precede any political-social
progress. The common soil of the homeland is for them the first condition
of appropriate working relations…. Otherwise [man] will deteriorate to
the level of a parasite that subsists only at the expense of alien
production.1
His general socialist vision intermingles with his Zionist message. Like Marx, Hess
firmly believed the establishment of a socialist society to be a forthcoming reality. “In the
Exile Judaism cannot regenerate…. The masses of the Jewish people will take part in the
great historical movement of humanity only when they will have a Jewish homeland.”2
Although the theoretical layer of Hess’ Zionist conviction was derived from a
metaphysical conception of Israel’s “mission” among the nations, he did not ignore the
prevailing anomaly of Jewish life in the Golah. His conclusions with regard to a renewal
and normalization of Jewish life in its homeland anticipated many ideas which the
socialist-Zionist movement proclaimed half a century later, and which Borochov tried to
explicate by means of a systematic Marxist method. Hess was not only the precursor of
socialism and the precursor of Zionism but the precursor of socialist Zionism. He grasped
by his intuitive vision many ideas that formed the ideological infrastructure of the Zionist
labor movement in the twentieth century. At the same time he emphasized that Jewish
patriotism ought not to prevent the participation of Jews (including himself) in the social
and cultural life of their countries of residence in the Golah. Yet, emanicipation does not
solve the Jewish question; it is only a first step towards national freedom.
Although his book Rome and Jerusalem caused a sensation, it did not elicit any
positive responses from Jews (except Graetz). Western Jews to whom Hess addressed his
book already enjoyed a substantial repeal of former economic and social restrictions;
liberal individualism reigned supreme and enabled Jews in the West to prosper as never
before, and, despite growing anti-semitism, to integrate into their environment. The time
was not yet ripe for Hess’ Zionist message. Only about three decades later, with the
founding of the Zionist organization, Hess’ book was retrieved from oblivion, and
became an integral part of Zionist ideology. Notwithstanding its philosophical
weaknesses and mixture of theoretical analysis with intuition and sentimental
speculation,3 it has become an important keystone of the philosophical foundations of
Zionism.
Pre-Herzlian Zionist ideas began to spread in Eastern Europe through the
Hibbat-Zion movement, which drew its inspiration from Jewish tradition.
Religious feelings of attachment to Eretz Yisrael, on the one hand, and
difficulties in attaining true emancipation, on the other, outweighed by far
any philosophical deliberations. The sole attempts to give a philosophical
(or ideological) basis to Hibbat-Zion were undertaken by L.Pinsker and
Achad Ha‘am. In his Autoemancipation of 1882 Pinsker (1821–91) began
with an analysis of anti-semitism, from which he went on to explicate
Jewish existence, as did Hess before him, as a distinct ethnic organism that
cannot be assimilated or integrated into its environment. The reason is not
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that Jews are unable to assimilate but that they are not tolerated. Like
Spinoza, he postulated Jew-hatred as the chief cause of Jewish
separateness. “Judophobia,” the anti-semitic form of “xenophobia,” is a
persevering psychosocial phenomenon that prevents Jews everywhere
from becoming a normal national entity. The nations dislike foreigners,4
and, in order to overcome their perennial state as foreigners, Jews must
become a proper nation with a state of their own. The only solution is to
leave the places of residence where they are the object of hatred, and to
regain a homeland where they can live in peace and dignity like any other
normal nation. Pinsker attacked the Jewish Liberal idea that the Jews were
dispersed in order to fulfill a “mission” in the world, as well as the
Orthodox view that they ought to wait passively for the coming of the
messiah. It is noteworthy that, according to Pinsker himself, Spinoza’s
remarks (at the end of the third chapter of the Theologico-Political
Treatise) were one of the main reasons that instigated him to write his
book.
Oh yes, if Spinoza, the moderate and unbiased thinker, who considers
everything very carefully, and does not show much sympathy to
Judaism—if he could believe in the possibility that the Jews may, “if
occasion offers…raise up their empire afresh, and that God may a second
time elect them,” it proves that this is no mere dream or illusion.5
At the end of his life, however, Pinsker seemed to have adopted the view that Palestine
will become only the spiritual center of Judaism, an idea which became famous through
Achad Ha‘am (see below).
Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, expressed in his Der Judenstaat
(Vienna, 1896) the same idea as Pinsker, namely that the Jewish problem can be solved
only if the Jews cease to be a national anomaly. However, notwithstanding his paramount
role in the history of Zionism, Herzl was a journalist, a prophetic visionary, and a great
statesman, but he was not a philosopher. He is therefore of no concern to this inquiry.
It is different with Achad Ha‘am (1856–1927). Although he was more of a
first-rank publicist than a systematic philosopher, his thought was strongly
influenced by the evolutionist conceptions of the nineteenth century, and
especially by the philosophy of H.Spencer. Albeit his outlook never
became the main road of Zionist ideology, it left a powerful impact on its
philosophical and theoretical implications, and even more so since the
establishment of the state of Israel. According to his principal
presupposition, rational truths cannot explicate Jewish particularity.
Jewish nationality, as every other nationality, is acquired naturally, in
contradistinction to the concept of humanity which is derived by abstract
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692
reasoning. Jewish particularity is grounded in a spontaneous sentiment of
national belonging, akin to family ties. A person’s relation to his or her
nation is in no need of theoretical proofs; it is prior to consciousness. The
nation’s “will to live” is an outcome of every individual’s will to live. At
the same time Achad Ha‘am maintained an idea, expressed already by
N.Krochmal (with whose philosophy he was very much impressed),
namely that every nation is distinguished by some particular characteristic
culture of its own which is based on some central spiritual principle.
Under the influence of this idea, which also exhibits some infiltration of
Hegelian concepts, Achad Ha’am awarded priority to spiritual
determinants over the real political factors of actual statehood. There does
not exist, as it were, any Jewish national problem, any more than there
exists a French or English one. The peculiarity of the Jewish question
derives from the fact that Jewish national reality engenders special
problems which are much more complex than those of other nations. The
most portentous of them is assimilation, to which Achad Ha‘am devoted
much of his thought.6 He believed it to represent a danger to Jews only as
individuals. A “spiritual center” in Palestine that will radiate to the Jewish
“periphery” in the Golah will constitute an efficient barrier to assimilation,
“will strengthen national consciousness in the Golah…and endow spiritual
life with a true national content.”7 But do the Jews who are influenced by
the center show any willingness to cooperate with those that desire to
influence them? This question indeed highlights one of the cardinal issues
of Zionist thought: to what extent does the Zionist solution of the Jewish
question entail the consent and readiness of Jewish individuals to realize it
or to identify with it?
Achad Ha‘am thus distinguished between the problem of Judaism, to be solved by a
spiritual center in Palestine, and the problem of Jews in the Golah whose identity will be
assured by their relation to that center. The tragic error of his idealist philosophical
conception was that he did not try to search for any deeper roots of these special Jewish
national problems. He paid very little attention to the anomaly and extraterritoriality of
Jewish life. He believed that his Zionist solution of the problem of Judaism would lead
also to the desired solution of the problem of the Jews, without entailing the necessity for
all of them to immigrate to Palestine. What was most important to him was to suggest a
solution to the problem of Judaism. This distinguished him from other important Zionist
thinkers of his time, such as J. Klatzkin, B.Borochov, and N.Syrkin.
Jacob Klatzkin (1882–1948) was a philosopher who devoted the bulk of his scholarly
work to Jewish medieval philosophy as well as to Spinoza, whom he held in high esteem
as a metaphysician but denounced from the Jewish national viewpoint. (He wrote a
Hebrew book on Spinoza and translated the Ethics into Hebrew.) Yet, in addition to his
scientific inquiries, he also elaborated some kind of a philosophical conception of Jewish
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nationalism. He strongly criticized the liberal tendency to transform Judaism into a
spiritual idea; this he condemned as “Jude-sein ohne Jüdisch-sein”, which paves the road
to assimilation. To be an “assimilated Jew” is, as it were, a contradiction that reflects the
Jewish anomaly. To speak about the “spirit” or “essence” of Judaism is incompatible with
a national conception of Judaism. Both the Orthodox way of life as well as the Liberal
aspiration to reduce Judaism to a spiritual mission manifest subjective criteria of Judaism
while a national definition requires an objective standard. Jewishness is not merely a
matter of religion or morality because to be a Jew does not any more entail a particular
religious or spiritual mentality. On the other hand, the objective phenomenon of national
belonging stems from the subjective historical will to belong to the Jewish people.8 In the
modern era voluntaristic elements—the will to be a Jew—determine the selfidentification and belonging of Jewish nationality. Klatzkin does not deny the spiritual
influence of Judaism on other religions and on Western culture; he does not even reject
the notions of “spirit of Judaism” and “Jewish ethics,” but he is bitterly opposed to
employing them as national paradigms. The criteria of Jewish nationalism must be rooted
in objective ground—land and language. “They are the forms of national existence.”9 His
Jewish-national conception was part of his general philosophy which emphasized
vitalistic and biological aspects rather than rational ones. In order to preserve Jewish life,
the Jewish people ought to abandon the intellectualist and spiritualist trends that
characterized Jewish life throughout the ages, and to resume national life in its own
homeland and with its own language.
When Klatzkin wrote this, towards the end of the First World War, he defined land
and language as “anticipations of national demand.” If there exists already the subjective
will for redemption, “for the revival of our land and language,” the Jewish people can be
regarded as a “nation” already in the Galut.10 From the philosophical angle, however, his
arguments were fraught with many theoretical shortcomings. He defined land and
language as national “forms,” following his hypothesis that “only forms can serve as
national criteria,”11 and denied them value as contents. This arbitrary explication of
“form” led him to quite idiosyncratic conclusions. Since contents become Jewish only as
a result of national form, then literature, or philosophy, even if they deal with Jewish
matters but are not written in Hebrew, do not belong to Jewish national property;12 on the
other hand, a detective novel, translated into Hebrew, does. These eccentric ideas do not
diminish the importance of his conception that the will to settle on one’s own land and to
speak one’s own language is one of the preconditions of Jewish nationalism. At the same
time he did not underrate external factors. Like Spinoza, Klatzkin also stressed the role of
Jew-hatred, persecutions, discrimination, etc. Therefore it is not enough to establish in
Palestine a spiritual center a la Achad Ha‘am; only a national center in Eretz Yisrael can
solve the Jewish question.13 The modern definition of being a Jew is secular. Only those
whose homeland is Eretz Yisrael and whose language is Hebrew (or who aspire to
achieve this) can be considered as Jews. This arbitrary definition of Judaism virtually
excludes from the Jewish nation all Jews who continue to live outside Israel and do not
intend to settle there. Prima facie Klatzkin’s conception of Jewish nationalism and its
Zionist conclusion look much more realistic than Achad Ha‘am’s spiritual one, but,
viewed retrospectively, it may have been the other way round. Perhaps this was the
reason why, unlike his important explorations in the field of Jewish philosophy that have
become an integral part of modern Jewish scholarship, his philosophical reflections on
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694
Jewish nationhood played only a minor role in Zionist thought and left no significant
traces.
We have already mentioned certain theories of Jewish nationalism and Zionism that
derived their inspiration from socialist ideas, foremost among them those of M.Hess.
From a philosophical perspective there are two more thinkers whose theories deserve
closer attention—B. Borochov and N.Syrkin.
Ber Borochov (1881–1917) laid the foundations of a socialist-Zionist Weltanschauung
that combined a Marxist outlook with an analysis of Jewish national needs, based on a
synthesis of class struggle and nationalism. It was one of the first theoretical attempts to
explicate the national question in general and the Jewish question in particular by Marxist
concepts.14 This became the starting-point of his search for the deeper covert causes of
Jewish existence which underlie its overt spiritual and cultural manifestations. They
consist in the separation of the Jewish people from its homeland, because without a
country of its own, without normal economic relations, Jews remain a powerless national
minority. This means that only in their own country will the Jewish workers be able to
wage their class struggle against the bourgeoisie under normal conditions. The return to
Palestine will put an end to the anomaly of Jewish life in the Diaspora where Jews are
restricted to “unproductive” and peripheral pursuits, that is, to a life without a healthy and
independent economic basis. Since in the anomalous situation of the Diaspora Jewish
workers are confined to petty and secondary trades and have no access to modern heavy
industry which represents “the axis of the historical wheel,” they lack a “strategic basis”
for a normal and influential class struggle. While orthodox Marxists emphasized the
conflict between “forces of production” and “relations of production” as the chief agent
of class struggle, Borochov emphasized the lesser-known Marxist concept of “conditions
of production” that distinguish the Jewish from the non-Jewish workers. They prevent
them from becoming true proletarians; “proletarianization” will be possible only when
the “inverted pyramid” of Jewish economic life is put on its broad base. Although
Borochov did not play down the threat of anti-semitism, it was the social and economic
anomaly of Jewish life which held his attention and drove him to his Zionist conclusion.
He condemned assimilation; it is not only objectively of no avail but introduces a morally
faulty distinction between the individual rich Jews “who made it” and the multitude of
the Jewish masses who continue their miserable alienated life. Furthermore, assimilation
is a dangerous illusion because it turns Jews away from the main struggle for national
emancipation and normalization.
Socialism and Zionism are mutually interlocked because both aim at making Jewish
life normal and productive again. In order to achieve this end, the Jewish people should
migrate not to other countries, because that will merely perpetuate the anomaly, but to its
own territory, to Palestine. Borochov considered Palestine not only to be a strategic base
for Jewish proletarian class struggle but as the homeland for the Jewish people as a
whole. Various concepts of Borochov’s Marxist interpretation of the Jewish question
look obsolete now, but his contribution to socialist-Zionist thought was exceedingly
influential. It made a powerful impact on the Zionist labor movement.
Another prominent ideologist of socialist Zionism was Nachman Syrkin (1868–1924).
Like Borochov, though before him and independently of him, he developed at an early
age a synthesis of socialism and Zionism (although for a short while he adhered to the
trend of territorialism (see previous chapter). Already in 1898 he declared that “a
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classless society and national sovereignty are the only means of completely solving the
Jewish problem.”15 He criticized the assimilationist tendencies of Jewish socialists and
liberals as well as Achad Ha’am’s spiritual conception of Judaism because all of them
disregarded the actual social realities which constitute the main causes of the Jewish
question—anti-semitism, mass migration, etc. The Jewish masses are the “proletariat of
the proletariat,” the “slave of slaves”—miserable peddlers, tailors, shoemakers, and so
on—whose “sole redemption lies in Zionism” (1901).16 Although he criticized
Borochov’s Marxist interpretation of the Jewish question, and gave class struggle only
secondary importance in his Zionist outlook, he also considered the Jewish proletarian
masses to be the true realizers of the Zionist idea.
There were also other non-Marxist socialist Zionists, such asA. D.Gordon or Berl
Katznelson and their followers. For them Zionism was first of all a voluntary act of the
individual who affirmed the dignity of physical labor and the ties to the soil. They aspired
to create a new Jew instead of the alienated Jew of the Golah. Some others, like the writer
J.H.Brenner, influenced by Nietzsche, also accentuated this outlook in a radical way.
They not only denounced Golah mentality, but called for a total break with most of
Jewish spiritual heritage. Their opposition to any solidarity with Judaism and Jews
outside Israel attracted, however, only a tiny fraction of some later Jewish writers in
Israel who called themselves Kana’anites, in order to distinguish themselves from Jews
elsewhere.
Finally, M.Buber (discussed also in other chapters) played an important role in
shaping the Zionist consciousness of young Jews in Western Europe at the beginning of
the century, especially in the wake of his three famous Addresses on Judaism of 1909–11.
But his Zionist thought was on the whole overshadowed by his dialogical philosophy, his
studies of Chasidism and the Bible, and his general philosophicosociological work. His
Zionist outlook stressed certain ideas of utopian socialism, under the influence of
A.D.Gordon and the anarchist G. Landauer (a close friend of Buber). It developed into
what he described as “Hebrew humanism,” emphasizing those idealist features by which
Zionism differed from other national movements. Buber, guided by the humanist
principles of his philosophy, was among the first and most important Zionist ideologists
to devote much thought to the issue of Jewish-Arab relations. He stressed relentlessly the
goal that the Jewish and Arab peoples should live together in peace and harmony in their
common homeland. Regrettably these ideas of Buber aroused little response in the
Zionist movement and thought at the time.
This chapter has dealt with the philosophical roots of Zionism, with its
“founding fathers” on the philosophical plane. There were and are many
more philosophers and historians who engaged in theoretical and
ideological issues of Zionism. They included, among others, Yechezkel
Kaufmann, Josef Klausner, Ben-Zion Dinur (Dinaburg), Fritz Baer, Felix
Weltsch, Max Brod, Nathan Rotenstreich, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, and
many others who realized their Zionist convictions by Aliyah and life in
Israel. Also working on this issue were M.M.Kaplan, A.J.Heschel,
A.Neher, E.Levinas, and many others. Contemporary Jewish thought,
dealing with various problems of Zionist ideology, embraces a very
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696
impressive list of Jewish philosophers. Notwithstanding their important
and original contributions, they belong, however, to a generation for
which Zionism has become a fait accompli, a living and active reality.
They were no longer concerned with its “roots” but—to continue the
metaphor—with cultivating its different and multicolored “flowers.”
NOTES
1 Hess 1935, pp. 128–9.
2 Ibid., p. 130.
3 Hess himself wrote in a letter to A.Herzen: “I am more of an
apostle than a philosopher” (Hess 1959, p. 241).
4 We still are witness to this distressing state of affairs in present-day
Europe with the ever-growing migration of refugees and “guestworkers” from East to West.
5 Klausner 1955, p. 296.
6 His famous essay “Imitation and Assimilation” became a classic
signpost of Zionist literature.
7 Achad Ha‘am 1930, p. 92.
8 Klatzkin 1918, p. 10.
9 Ibid., p. 23.
10 This also may have served him as an apologetical excuse for not
putting into practice his national convictions by immigrating himself
to Eretz Yisrael.
11 Klatzkin 1918, p. 27.
12 Ibid., p. 130.
13 Ibid., p. 70.
14 Borochov developed his theory most systematically in Class
Struggle and the National Question and Our Platform (Borochov
1955, pp. 154–80, 193–310).
15 Encyclopedia Judaica 1971, 15:653.
16 Ibid.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Texts
Achad Ha‘am (1930) Al Parashat Derahim (On the Crossroads) (Berlin:
Jüdischer Verlag).
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Borochov, B. (1955) Works [Hebrew], vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz
Hameuchad and Sifriat Poalim).
Hess, M. (1935) Rom und Jerusalem—Die letzte Nationalitätenfrage
(Vienna and Jerusalem: Loewit).
——(1959) Briefwechsel (The Hague: Mouton).
Klatzkin, J. (1918) Probleme des modernen Judentums (Berlin: Jüdischer
Verlag).
Studies
Klausner, J. (1955) From Plato to Spinoza [Hebrew], (Jerusalem: Madda).