Jewish nationalism

CHAPTER 31
Jewish nationalism
Ze’ev Levy
The rise of Jewish nationalism is a unique phenomenon of modernity, following the
nationalist ideas and national movements in Western Europe during the nineteenth
century. It expressed the transformation from mere awareness of ethnically distinctive
features to consciousness of national identity and the willingness to fight for its
recognition and realization. The concept of nationalism made its first appearance on the
European scene in the wake of Napoleon’s armies1 and afterwards in the struggles for
national liberation from 1848 onwards. Its causes and development obviously are a
matter of historical research rather than of philosophical reflection. Judaism seemed to be
better equipped for national consolidation than other groups, owing to its long history of
religious and communal isolation and to the strong impact of messianism throughout the
ages. But de facto there was nothing of the kind before, neither in medieval Jewish
philosophy nor in Mendelssohn’s concept of Judaism. Furthermore, since the struggle for
emancipation had not succeeded in the 1860s, most Jewish thinkers were reluctant to
defend the idea of Jewish nationalism. They feared that to represent Jews as a separate
national entity would play into the hands of the opponents to emancipation. Therefore it
should not come as a surprise that the notion of nationalism was first mentioned in
modern Jewish thought by its adversaries, namely those Jewish philosophers who were
opposed to it as an alleged obstacle to integration in European culture. They
differentiated between religion and nationality in order to present Judaism as a religion,
along with Protestantism and Catholicism, inside a common national environment.
Jewish religion and Jewish nationhood were conceived as antagonistic and excluding
each other. According to this view Jews share their national identity with other citizens,
and are distinguished only on the denominational level. Therefore, in order to achieve
national and cultural assimilation, Jews ought to get rid of their separate national
traditions and eliminate all references to Zion and Jerusalem. This came to a striking
expression in the resolutions of the Assembly of Jewish Notables and the Sanhedrin,
convened by Napoleon in 1806/7.2 This negative view with regard to Jewish nationalism
became more or less characteristic of the mainstream of Jewish philosophy during the
nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth, until the rise of Nazism in
Germany. One of its most famous and extreme philosophical spokesmen was Hermann
Cohen.3
As against this mental outlook which distinguished Judaism from its surroundings
solely on religious grounds, there evolved, principally in Eastern Europe, another
viewpoint. It emphasized the notion of national association and belonging, and regarded
the Jewish religious dimension as one of the constituents to be derived from it. Most of
the protagonists of this conception, however, did not formulate it in any systematic
philosophical manner. There was only one notable exception, Nachman Krochmal (see
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676
below). Although a few of these thinkers, such as Achad Ha‘am, J.Klatzkin, and several
others had some philosophical schooling or certain philosophical inclinations, most of
them came from a different background. P.Smolenskin, M.Lilienblum, and M.J.
Berdiczewski were Hebrew writers, L.Pinsker was a medical doctor, B. Borochov was a
Marxist theoretician, Y.Kaufman was a biblical scholar. (Some of them will be discussed
in the following chapter.) All of them, and many others, made important contributions to
modern Jewish national thought; they certainly drew inspiration from the general and
Jewish philosophical currents of their time, but their work does not belong to Jewish
philosophy. It ought to be emphasized, however, that, unlike their immediate
predecessors who considered the concept of a Jewish nation to be incompatible with
emancipation, they regarded Jewish nationalism as the inevitable consequence of the
struggle for emancipation. In what follows, we shall call attention to the underlying
philosophical elements of their writings. In the twentieth century one encounters again
Jewish philosophers who elaborate the essence of Jewish nationality and nationalism by
explicit philosophical criteria, foremost among them A.D.Gordon, M.Buber,
F.Rosenzweig, L.Baeck, F.Weltsch, M.Brod, M.M.Kaplan, and others. One might
perhaps say schematically that in the nineteenth century Jews fought for the right of Jews
to be equal citizens—the struggle for emancipation—while Jewish national
consciousness in the twentieth century emphasizes the right to be recognized as different.
When one sets out to explore the philosophical roots of Jewish nationalism, one
cannot not mention the greatest and at the same time most controversial Jewish
philosopher of modern times—Baruch Spinoza. Despite his excommunication by and
alienation from the Jewish community, Spinoza referred on various occasions to the
Jewish nation, not only to the Jewish religion—first of all in the Theologico-Political
Treatise but also in his letters, and implicitly even in his Hebrew Grammar.4 He certainly
did not work out any theory of Jewish nationality, and personally he was indifferent to
Jewish destiny, but there is one important passage in the Treatise which exerted a
significant influence on the crystallization of national consciousness of later Jewish
thinkers. It therefore contributed, though indirectly, to the shaping of their nationalist and
Zionist ideas.
Spinoza asserted that the religious commandments, prescribed by the Bible,
constituted the political laws of the Hebrew nation in its ancient state. Since this state has
ceased to exist, its laws have become obsolete. So why do the Jews still cling to the laws
of a state which has disappeared from the historical scene? Why has the Jewish people
conserved its distinctiveness while this is no longer necessary? By Spinoza’s definitive
premise, which is obviously questionable, this distinction cannot be explained through
internal reasons; therefore its cause must be external. Spinoza claims that it was “gentile
hatred” which prevented the disappearance of Jewish national distinctiveness.5 He even
tried to corroborate his thesis by an “historical” example, a distinction between the
converted Jews in Spain and Portugal. All these “renegades” (Spinoza’s term) abandoned
their Jewish distinctiveness but the converted Jews in Portugal, unlike those in Spain,
remained victims to discrimination—ethnically though not religiously—and therefore
preserved their ties to Judaism. The hatred of the gentiles which did not dissipate after the
conversion of the Jews preserved their Jewishness. Whatever the truth or plausibility of
Spinoza’s historical argument, it explicates very clearly the role which he ascribed to the
national-ethnic element in Judaism. To the negative aspect of Jew-hatred as conserving
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the Jewish people he added another, positive, aspect, namely circumcision which he
described as a national characteristic, like the pigtail of the Chinese.6 It “is so
important…that it alone would preserve the nation for ever.”7
Spinoza does not use the abstract concept of Judaism but speaks about the Jewish
people—he also employs the concept of “nation”—and explains its separate national
existence by two arguments that grow out of each other. On the one hand, gentile hatred
separates the Jews from the surrounding world; on the other, this hatred sustains the
alienation of the Jews and perpetuates their separate existence. The obvious flaw in
Spinoza’s argument was his disregard of the intrinsic spiritual elements of Judaism which
played a preponderant role in the preservation of the Jewish people in the Diaspora. Yet,
despite these shortcomings, Spinoza’s attempt to offer a secular historical interpretation
of Jewish nationhood, although he himself was indifferent to it, left its strong imprint on
later Jewish thinkers. From this it follows, rather unexpectedly, that notwithstanding
Spinoza’s alienation from Judaism, his concept of the Jewish people was more germane
to future Jewish national aspirations than, for instance, the concept of Judaism put
forward by Mendelssohn. The latter’s starting-point was the same as Spinoza’s (and
perhaps influenced by him), namely that the religious commandments had been the
political laws of the ancient Jewish state. But while according to Spinoza political laws
without a political framework become anachronistic, Mendelssohn affirmed their abiding
validity qua religious laws. According to his view they were divinely revealed (at Mount
Sinai), and therefore cannot be discarded by humanity. They are still of a binding nature
but only on the descendants of those upon whom they were imposed, that is, Jews. Jewish
distinctiveness is limited by Mendelssohn to the observance of the “revealed law” while
as human beings Jews are, or at least ought to be, part of their surrounding nations and
participate in their spiritual and cultural life.8 Although Mendelssohn uses on several
occasions, more or less casually, the word “nation” with regard to Jews, his concept of
Judaism leaves no place for any national definition.
It is therefore rather surprising again that Mendelssohn’s contemporary Solomon
Maimon who, like Spinoza, quit the Jewish religion (although he did not relinquish his
personal and sentimental ties to Jewishness), opposed the latter on this point and
emphasized the national traits of Judaism. Jewish religion after the destruction of the
Jewish state has become the expression of national consolidation. Judaism represents a
“theocratic state,” and as such is entitled to enforce laws on its “citizens.” All who
acknowledge their membership in this “state” must obey its laws. Only Jews who, like
himself, have given up their membership in this theocratic state, that is, have renounced
their national identity, are exempt from its laws.9 Moreoever, to Maimon it looks simply
“unlawful” (unrechtmässig) to proclaim adherence to the Jewish religion (i.e. nation) out
of family sentiments or other interests but at the same time to transgress its laws.10 One
has to either belong to the Jewish nation and obey all the laws of its state or drop out of it
entirely. Reform Judaism would appear to him to be some kind of unacceptable
hybridism. Maimon negated any distinction between Jewish religion and Jewish state.
But while Spinoza limited their identity to the ancient Jewish state, and considered its
laws to be invalid in the Diaspora, or while Mendelssohn emphasized their sole religious
connotation, Maimon vindicated their religious and national identity in the Diaspora as
well.11
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These remarks on Spinoza’s, Mendelssohn’s, and Maimon’s conceptions of Judaism
and Jewishness highlight a significant turnabout in Jewish philosophy. In chapter 21
above attention was called to the growing interest of modern Jewish thinkers in political
philosophy and philosophy of history. It reflected the increasing national awareness of
Jewish philosophy; Jewish philosophers tried to come to grips with the extraordinary
political, social, and legal situation of Jews in their countries of residence, that is, their
exceptional national status in the Diaspora. Already the Maharal in his Be’er ha-Golah
and his disciple David Gans in his Tzemah David,12 in the sixteenth century, sought to
shed light on the continuing national existence of the Jews in the Diaspora although they
had not yet at their disposal the philosophical tools which Spinoza used a century later.
All of them—and that holds for the subsequent thinkers as well—endeavored to derive
the anomalous national status of the Jews from the exceptional historical development of
Judaism. All were in agreement that understanding Jewish history was an essential
precondition for the conduct and planning of Jewish life in the present and the future.
The outstanding philosophical work in this respect was Nachman Krochmal’s Guide
of the Perplexed of our Times of 1844.13 We are not concerned here with Krochmal’s
philosophical speculations on “absolute spirit” (Ha-ruchani ha-muchlat), etc., but with
those parts of the book that elaborate a philosophy of history. This was based on the
assumption that the decisive factor in history is spiritual perfection, and that each nation
is endowed with a peculiar spiritual principle which determines its existence and
contributes to the general spiritual treasure of humankind. “The substance of a nation
does not lie in its being a nation, but in the substance of the spirit therein.” Inspired by
G.Vico, and in particular by J.G.Herder, Krochmal divided history into cycles of three
periods—growth, flowering, and withering away (development, vigor, and decline)—that
characterize the history of every nation. After having contributed its particular spiritual
share to humankind, it vanishes from the historical scene. Although the Jewish people
undergo the same threefold cycle as other nations, it differs from them through its
eternity. After each period of decline it begins a new cycle. This exceptional national
status results, as it were, from the special relation between the Jewish people and absolute
spirit (God). According to this metaphysical speculation that blends together ideas of
Herder and Hegel, the eternity of Israel manifests itself in a neverending renewal of its
national life. Later Zionist thinkers regarded Krochmal’s historiographical scheme as
anticipating their conception of Jewish-national revival although Krochmal never uttered
any explicit proto-Zionist ideas. He was, however, one of the first modern Jewish
thinkers to interpret Jewish nationhood through philosophical concepts.
Another very important Jewish thinker of the nineteenth century to vindicate the
national essence of the Jewish people by resorting to modern philosophical ideas was
Moses Hess, a precursor of socialism as well as of Zionism. Although his thought was
not an outcome of pure philosophical reasoning or scientific research, he acquired
extensive knowledge by his independent inquiries into Jewish life and history. The
vagueness of his concepts, together with his predilection for sentimental and prophetic
language, are balanced by the freshness and originality of his thought. Hess, who until the
end of his life was deeply involved with the German workers’ movement and who had in
his early years collaborated closely with Marx and Engels, was reminded of his Jewish
ties by two fateful external events—the notorious blood-libel of Damascus in 1840 and
the so-called “Spring of the Nations,” that is, the emergence of the national idea
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(especialy in the wake of the liberation struggles in Italy). Although he mentioned, in the
fifth letter of Rome and Jerusalem, the shock that the Damascus affair and prior antiJewish outcries (“Hep! Hep!”) in Germany had had on him, they did not leave any traces
in his literary and public activities at the time. His explanation, twenty years later, that the
greater misery of the European proletariat then stifled his Jewish patriotic feelings,14
looks rather apologetic. It was not the “Jewish question” as an expression of particular
Jewish issues that instigated Hess’ rekindled Jewish national consciousness but the
general cause of national liberation that ought to include the rights of the Jewish people
together with those of the Greek, Italian, and other peoples. This led Hess to the
conclusion that national liberation must go hand in hand with social emancipation. This
idea he tried to buttress with Spinoza’s philosophy which he glorified as the supreme
spiritual manifestation of Judaism in modern times. Hess did not reach his Jewishnational outlook immediately. In his early writings he professed an exceedingly negative
stance toward Judaism which did not refrain from quasi-anti-semitic locutions, for
example a “fossilized mummy,” etc.15 After 1848, in exile in Switzerland, he began to
evolve his monistic theory of cosmic, organic, and social life, aspiring toward perpetual
harmony. Notwithstanding its scientific deficiencies and far-fetched analogies between
biological and social evolution, these speculations ultimately drove him to a reassessment
of the problem of nationalism on the general and Jewish plane. True to his biological
analogies, he regarded national entities as members of a living organism; every one is
destined to fulfill a particular definite role in the life and history of humanity. All the
nations are but facts of nature whose distinctions are directed to one single purpose—to
develop the appropriate qualities that conform to each particular environment. The final
unfolding of the optimal qualities of the different nations will encourage their merger and
assure a harmonious life of human society in the future. The universal social end inspired
Hess’ outlook on the functions of nations. This was the philosophico-ideological
background of Hess’ new conception of Jewish nationhood. If every nation fulfills its
special function in the organism of humankind, this holds no less for the Jewish people.
His interest in the latter’s destiny he now tried to establish on a philosophical basis. After
the national liberation of Greece and Italy there remains, as it were, one single “last
nationality question” (this was the subtitle of Rome and Jerusalem) that awaits its
solution. The national revival of the Jewish people is part of the general struggle for
national emancipation. The impact of Romanticism and the rise of nationalism in Europe
become clearly visible in his terminology; he writes about “national renaissance,” the
“creative genius of the nation,” and so on. Like Spinoza’s argument by analogy that the
same historical laws govern the life of the Jews and the Chinese,16 Hess elicits Jewish
national revival from the Italian national liberation struggle, but he does so by resorting
to a wide though sometimes rather dubious historiographical perspective.
All social institutions and spiritual outlooks reflect original racial creations. Hess’ use
of the term “race” has, of course, no racist connotation; it is synonymous with “nation.” It
simply reflects his tendency to derive his thought from natural science, in order to
corroborate his monistic world view. “All history until now was moved by race and class
struggles. Race-struggle is primary, class-struggle secondary.”17 Races, that is, nations,
manifest the multifariousness of nature. Humankind is an organism of which the races are
the members. Some of them, after having accomplished their purpose, die and wither
away (Egypt, Greece, Rome, etc.) while the people of Israel belongs to those members
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680
that enrich humanity for ever anew. This may remind us of Krochmal although Hess
probably did not know about him. The people of Israel is a member, endowed with
unique predestined features that determine its particular role in human history—its
“mission.” While his Jewish contemporaries spoke about the Jewish “mission” of
propagating the idea of “ethical monotheism” which implies the disintegration of Jewish
nationhood, Hess extolled the “mission” of propagating the unity of cosmic, organic, and
social life which necessitates the maintenance and revival of Jewish nationhood. Hess’
close friend the historian H. Graetz expresed similar ideas in a small essay on The
Renewal of Youth of the Jewish Race,18 postulating some special innate features of the
Jewish race which open up new roads for world history.19 Hess defined his theory
sometimes as a “genetic world view,”20 exhibiting “innate” racial qualities of the Jewish
people (both Graetz and Hess employed the Cartesian notion of “innate”), but denying
any superiority of one race over another. These innate exceptional character traits make
the Jewish people especially well chosen to accomplish its mission—to spread the abovementioned monistic idea. All races (nations) possess different and unique features but
they are of equal value; the eventual synthesis of their good qualities (and elimination of
the bad ones) will inaugurate the ideal harmonious human society to come. (In the next
chapter we shall see how Hess’ conception of Jewish nationalism, and the idea of a
“mission” derived from it, led him to his Zionist conclusions.)
Most later Jewish philosophers more or less identified Jewish nationalism with
Zionism, and will be discussed mainly in the next chapter. The two most prominent
among them were A.D.Gordon and M.Buber. Gordon, who was influenced by Tolstoy,
elaborated a conception of nationality which was couched in religious language and
reflected his personal encounter with Palestine and its social reality. The yearned-for end
is redemption which will set up the individual inside an organic whole, progressing from
the family to the nation, from the nation to humanity, and ultimately to the infinite
cosmos. The nation is an organic whole, composed of individuals who draw their
inspiration from all these spheres and contribute, by their activity, their own particular
share to the harmonious integration of all cultures. (Some of these ideas show an
astonishing similarity to those of Hess although Gordon was probably not aware of it.) In
order to achieve this ultimate aim, the Jewish creative genius which was mutilated in the
Golah (Diaspora) will be resuscitated in a national Jewish frame in Palestine. There are
multiple traditional religious elements in Gordon’s conception of Jewish nationality, and
according to some scholars (such as E.Schweid), even kabbalist influences.
Martin Buber’s conception of Jewish nationality was strongly influenced by M.Hess
whose fervent admirer he was (he wrote the introductions to the two volumes of Hess’
writings, translated into Hebrew), and by A.D.Gordon. At the same time, however, he
also absorbed certain ideas of such non-Zionist Jewish philosophers as H. Cohen and
F.Rosenzweig. Buber conceived of Judaism not merely as a spiritual or cultural
phenomenon, and certainly not as a religious denomination, but as a manifestation of
certain particular biological roots. He yearned for an intellectual and social renaissance of
Judaism “here and now,” to be realized on a national basis. His thought thus reflects a
fruitful encounter of modern Jewish philosophy with modern national thought. His aim
was to create, or perhaps to renew, what he considered to represent the intrinsic
relationship between Jewish religiosity (but not in its traditional Orthodox forms) and
Jewish nationality. However, the national basis, that is, the political framework of a
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Jewish state, is not the ultimate quintessence but a necessary tool to assure genuine
spiritual revival of Judaism as part of an allencompassing spiritual and social redemption
of humankind.
This does not exhaust the picture. There evolved also trends of Jewish nationalism that
opposed or denounced the Zionist conclusions and sought to develop some kind of
Jewish nationalism in the Diaspora. We shall limit our survey to those of them that tried
to elaborate these viewpoints by certain philosophical arguments. The two most
important representatives of this tendency were the historian Simon Dubnow and the
philosopher Franz Rosenzweig. Dubnow proposed to create autonomous national and
cultural Jewish institutions in their respective countries of residence, in order to
overcome the anomalous situation of a Jewish minority. This was in line with his general
historiographical conception that in the future all nations would or should no more
depend on any particular territory but would be distinguished by their cultural and
historical heritage alone. Dubnow believed that, by establishing national autonomy in the
Diaspora, the Jews would become the forerunners and teachers of all other nations to
realize this prophetic vision. There were also several more versions of Diaspora
nationalism in Eastern Europe, for example those of Chaim Zhitlowski, and in particular
the Jewish Socialist Bund. The latter was very influential until the Second World War,
but had no philosophical foundations. It considered Yiddish to be the chief national
distinctive feature of Jewishness but had no further significant Jewish-nationalist
aspirations.
Very important attempts to elaborate a concept of Jewish nationalism on a
philosophical basis are found in the work of Franz Rosenzweig. Rosenzweig rejected the
view that Judaism is distinguishable only as a religion. Unlike the Christian who becomes
a Christian, the Jew is born a Jew. Jewishness is a particular biological fact by which
Jews form a nation. However, this nation differs from all other nations by its continuous
existence. This reflects the fact that all other nations are subject to history while the
people of Israel, on account of its unique proximity to God the Father, is not. Rosenzweig
speaks of both Judaism and Christianity as “eternities,” but, once again, Christianity—
“the eternal way”—is plunged into history, while Judaism—“the eternal life”—is already,
from the very beginning, beyond history. The Jewish people is different from the
“worldly” nations by its particular spiritual essence. These speculative ideas come to their
most striking expression in Rosenzweig’s essay on “The Spirit and the Periods of Jewish
History”21 as well as in the third part of his Star of Redemption.
Rosenzweig’s idea of the metahistorical status of the Jewish people was not entirely
new. Already S.R.Hirsch, the founder of neo-Orthodoxy, had expressed similar ideas in
the nineteenth century. According to Hirsch, the sources of truth are beyond history
which is of no relevance to the people of Israel, already in possession of the true faith.
History applies only to other peoples and cultures. Although in 1848 he had been active
in the struggle for national liberation and Jewish emancipation, Hirsch, being an
extremely Orthodox thinker, was more concerned with the religious nature of Judaism
than the national aspect of the Jewish people that formed the subject matter of
Rosenzweig’s essay. Anyway, he expressly spoke about the Jewish people and even
employed the concept of “national Jewish consciousness.” His Jewish nationalism
entailed an affirmative view of the Diaspora where it is Israel’s mission to spread its
ideas about God. But on the whole his religious outlook was more concerned with the
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682
duties of a Jew—Jisroel-Mensch—than with the role of the Jewish people.22 Although
Rosenzweig did not share his Orthodox beliefs, Hirsch’s approach to Jewish nationalism
anticipated certain of his views. (He mentionedS. R.Hirsch on several occasions in his
letters.)
Rosenzweig stressed the spiritual essence of Jewish nationhood. This led
him to the assertion that it was the talmudic period, distinguished by very
intensive spiritual activity, which overthrew the dichotomy of homeland
and Diaspora. It suspended the power of history over the Jewish people
and released it from subordination to time and place. It became the basis
of Jewish eternity which means to exist outside of “wordly” history and to
become part of the sphere of the “spiritual.” Therefore, all peoples are tied
to the soil and subjugated to time, except the people of Israel. Following
Hegel’s logic that every finite thing will bring itself to extinction,
Rosenzweig interprets non-temporality or infinity as implying the eternity
of the Jewish people and applies it to the Diaspora as well. Hegel asserted
that every nation contributes its special share to “world spirit” (Weltgeist)
and exists from history. Rosenzweig, like Krochmal before him, ripostes
that the Jewish people did not disappear because it exists outside history,
in the sphere of eternity. According to this historiographical scheme, the
Golah characterized Jewish existence from its very beginnings in Egypt,
or even Mesopotamia (for example Abraham):
Since its outset Jewish history wanders from one diaspora to another,
because the spirit of Galut, estrangement from the land, strife for higher
life, instead of succumbing to the rule of land and time, is entrenched in
this history from its very beginning.23
The ties to a homeland are not essential; Palestine never was a homeland but the “holy
land,” a land of nostalgia (Sehnsucht). It was only a temporary spiritual center while
Jewish history—namely the history of that people which is outside of history—is
characterized by going from one Diaspora to another. This disdainful attitude toward real
life on the land and in an historical reality distinguished Rosenzweig from the
assimilationist thesis, on the one hand, and from the Zionist outlook, on the other. The
former denied, according to him, the national identity of the Jewish people and viewed
Judaism as only a religion. The latter considered the Jewish people as a nation, active in
history like other nations, and yearned for a return to its historical homeland. However,
the intent to reintroduce the Jewish people into history betrays its eternity. As against
these two tendencies Rosenzweig endeav-ored to emphasize the national uniqueness of
Judaism as based on a metahistorical conception. He took upon himself to demonstrate
the reality of the Jewish nation, although it lacked the habitual characteristics of a nation.
The anomaly which Zionism aspired to redress seemed to him to express the normal
patterns of Jewish national existence. In the same vein he also characterized the Hebrew
language as a “living” language, not a dead one like Latin, but at the same time as an
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eternal, “holy” language not to be soiled by profane use.24 (This he proclaimed when
Hebrew had already become again a colloquial language in Palestine.)
In the third part of the Star of Redemption Rosenzweig reiterates the same ideas. The
land, the soil, is the human’s enemy because it alienates one from one’s true spiritual
essence,25 and ties one to worldly affairs. He represents extraterritoriality as the desirable
ideal, and, as mentioned above, totally disregards the problem of normalization of Jewish
life propounded by Zionist thinkers. Although there is a kernel of truth in his assertion
that when the land or the state are regarded as the ultimate end instead of being mere
means for assuring the life of the people, this endangers the true essence of the nation.
He, however, also rejected their role as tools, since he proclaimed that to be an authentic
Jew means to live in the Diaspora.26 The Jew, as it were, is at home everywhere; this may
include Palestine too. It was not Jewish life in Eretz Yisrael which aroused his scorn but
the programmatic goal of the Zionist vision to revive the Jewish people on the historical
plane and to cherish Palestine (Eretz Yisrael) as the national Jewish homeland. Judaism
has not, and ought not to have, worldly ties; it is not moved by the will for a homeland
but by “the will to be a people” (“der Wille zum Volk”)27 that can be accomplished only
by the people itself.28
Mordecai M.Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionism, was one of the
latest Jewish thinkers to devote attention to Jewish nationalism using
philosophical standards. In this chapter we are not concerned with his
religious naturalism and its theological and humanist implications.
Although Kaplan was a fervent Zionist, and spent some of the last years of
his long life in Jerusalem, he considered Jewish life in the Diaspora to be
no less creative and desirable than Zionist realization. From this point of
view he made an interesting and original, though disputable, contribution
to the philosophical foundations of modern Jewish nationalism. He
defined Judaism as an “evolving religious civilization” or as a “religion of
ethical nationhood.” These concepts enabled him to stipulate both Eretz
Israel and the Golah as forming the underlying structures of Jewish
creative existence and activity. His outlook was in part inspired by Achad
Ha‘am’s concept of “center and periphery” (see the following chapter). He
dedicated his Religion of Ethical Nationhood to the memory of Achad
Ha‘am, among others; he charac-terized him there as one “who revealed to
me the spiritual reality of the Jewish people.”29 The concept “civilization”
is to a certain extent ambivalent and problematic because it transgresses
national boundaries. Therefore, Kaplan’s intertwining of national
existence in Israel and creative existence in the Golah insinuates that
Jewish nationality also includes some sort of a supranational element.
While in his theological conception of the Jewish religion Kaplan rejects
supranaturalism, in his philosophical conception of Jewish nationality he
allows for some supranaturalism. By referring to Judaism as an “evolving”
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civilization, Kaplan endeavored to award priority to the concrete national
characteristics of the Jewish people in changing historical situations rather
than to its religio-metaphysical sources. Jewish life is concerned with the
actual needs of the Jewish people in the present. Tradition, as derived from
the ancient holy scriptures, must be subordinated to present-day tasks and
requirements, in order to assure a meaningful existence for the Jewish
people in the surrounding world. Under the influence of E. Durkheim,
Kaplan considered any meaningful and collective entity as displaying
religious features the task of which is to link the individual to the group
and to underscore the importance of his or her identification with it. In line
with this view, religion lies at the bottom of every culture and civilization;
there does not exist any civilization without it. One can obviously ask
whether by this quite arbitrary definition would a secular Frenchman, and
a fortiori a secular Jew, be nationally defective? Kaplan probably thought
so. On the other hand, from all this it also follows that there is no
contradiction between religious and national-cultural components because
both take part in the shaping of the all-encompassing spiritual reality of
Jewish civilization. Hence “Judaism” and “Jewish religion” are not
synonyms. The latter is part of the former although Kaplan considers it, as
shown above, a most important part. There is no other nation where
religion occupies such a focal position as in the Jewish nation. This view
continues, of course, a characteristic view of the nineteenth-century
Jewish philosophers. Yet, in order to conserve Jewish life it is not enough
to maintain the Jewish religion but it is imperative to preserve the
unlikeness, the otherness, of Judaism, that is, all those features by which a
Jew differs from a non-Jew.
Judaism as otherness is thus something far more comprehensive than the
Jewish religion. It includes that nexus of a history, literature, language,
social organization, folk sanctions, standards of conduct, social and
spiritual ideals, aesthetic values, which in their totality form a
civilization.30
Judaism represents an all-encompassing social-spiritual heritage; by defining it as a
“civilization,” Kaplan wishes to explain all that by which it is distinguished from others.
There obviously are common elements, shared by different civilizations and transmitted
from one to another, in the areas of science, etc., but they are unable to constitute a
civilization by themselves. This is accomplished only by those elements that mold
otherness and uniqueness and that cannot be transmitted elsewhere: language, literature,
art, religion, and laws.
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685
The concept of Judaism as a civilization thus sets before Jewish life in modernity three
alternatives: first, life in Eretz Yisrael, that is, the Zionist solution which is indeed the
most perfect, authentic, and ideal one. Second, life as an autonomous cultural minority.
This possibility (formerly recommended by Dubnow, see above) does not exist after the
Second World War. Third, communal life in a general civilization (such as Western
culture), together with an affiliation to a Jewish sub-civilization. Since not all Jews will
opt for the first alternative, the third one must be taken into consideration too. It means to
define Judaism as “a new type of nation—an international nation with a national home.”31
This sounds prima facie like a contradiction but according to Kaplan it would give an
adequate answer to the fact that Jewish dispersion is a permanent phenomenon. However,
he admits himself that this definition would be accepted neither by non-Jews (the
accusation of “double loyalty”) nor by the Jews themselves. None the less he is firmly
convinced that “the restoration of the Jews to national status will contribute, rather than
detract from, international-mindedness.”32
There was another trend of Jewish nationalism in the twentieth century, known as
territorialism. It included several movements which had split off from the Zionist
organization. They aimed at establishing some kind of Jewish settlement on a territory
where Jews will then form the majority of the population. From the philosophical
viewpoint they had no interesting and original ideas. They differed from Zionism (see the
following chapter) in that they considered Palestine not to be the only territory where a
Jewish homeland might be re-established. Their aim was “to procure a territory upon an
autonomous basis for those Jews who cannot, or will not, remain in the lands in which
they at present live.”33 Their chief spokesman was Israel Zangwill. In 1935, there was
also founded the Freeland League, pursuing a similar aim, namely “to find and obtain
large scale room in some sparsely populated area for the Jewish masses where they could
live and develop according to their own views and culture and religion.” The League
emphasized that it wants to help “those Jews who seek a home and cannot or will not go
to Palestine.”34
The thinkers mentioned in this chapter, do not exhaust, of course, the list
of modern and contemporary Jewish philosophers who dealt with the
problem of Jewish nationalism. Some of them we shall encounter in the
next chapter.
NOTES
1 For example, J.G.Fichte’s famous Reden an die deutsche Nation of
1807/8 in Berlin.
2 To what degree these resolutions were forced on the delegates by
Napoleon is a matter for historical research.
3 Hermann Cohen, Deutschtum und Judentum (Giessen:
A.Topelmann 1915). This pamphlet, written during the First World
War, aroused the unanimous indignation of all Jewish philosophers at
the time, including F.Rosenzweig, who was Cohen’s faithful disciple.
History of Jewish philosophy
686
4 In his Hebrew Grammar Spinoza emphasized twice that his
intention was to write a grammar of the Hebrew language while all
former grammarians had dealt with the holy language. Spinoza 1962,
pp. 36, 96.
5 Spinoza, 1951, p. 55.
6 Ibid., p. 56.
7 Ibid.
8 In his preface to the German translation of Menasseh ben Israel’s
Vindiciae Judaeorum Mendelssohn also emphasized the right of the
Jews to become “citizens of the state.”
9 Maimon 1911, p. 263.
10 Ibid., p. 264.
11 Personally Maimon was perhaps inconsistent because despite his
declaration that he, as a ‘freethinker,” has joined the “philosophical
religion,” and no longer belongs to the Jewish state (nation), he
remained attached to it sentimentally all his life.
12 On these two books see Neher 1991 [1966], 1974.
13 Krochmal 1961.
14 Hess 1935, p. 35.
15 The young Hess’ anti-Jewish vituperations reached their climax in
his article “Über das Geldwesen” of 1845.
16 Spinoza 1951, p. 56.
17 Hess 1935, p. 199. The title of the fifth paragraph (of the
“Epilog”) is: “Die letzte Rassenherrschaft,” pp. 197–200.
18 Graetz 1969, pp. 103–9.
19 Ibid., p. 124.
20 The third paragraph in the epilogue of Rom und Jerusalem is
called “Die genetische Weltanschauung.” Hess 1935, pp. 180–7.
21 Rosenzweig 1984, pp. 527–38.
22 Hirsch 1962.
23 Rosenzweig 1984, p. 537.
24 Ibid., pp. 535–6. Also “Neuhebräisch,” ibid., pp. 723–9.
25 Rosenzweig 1988, pp. 332–5.
26 “Jude sein heisst im ‘Golus’ sein.” Rosenzweig 1979, p. 700.
27 Rosenzweig 1988, p. 333.
28 “Das Volk ist Volk nur durch das Volk,” ibid.
29 Kaplan 1970, p. v.
30 Kaplan 1934, p. 178.
31 Ibid., p. 232.
Jewish nationalism
687
32 Ibid., p. 241.
33 Encyclopedia Judaica 1971, 15:1019.
34 Ibid., p. 1021.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Texts
Hess, M. (1935) Rom und Jerusalem—Die letzte Nationalitätenfrage
(Vienna and Jerusalem: Loewit).
Kaplan, M.M. (1934) Judaism as a Civilization: Toward a Reconstruction
of American-Jewish Life (New York: Macmillan).
——(1970) The Religion of Ethical Nationhood: Judaism’s Contribution
to World Peace (New York: Macmillan).
Krochmal, N. (1961) More Nevuchej ha-Zeman, in The Writings of
Nachman Krochmal, edited by S.Rawidowicz (Waltham: Ararat).
Rosenzweig, F. (1979) Gesammelte Schriften, I.Abteilung: Briefe und
Tagebücher, 2. Band (The Hague: Nijhoff).
——(1984) “Geist und Perioden der jüdischen Geschichte,” Gesammelte
Schriften, III. Abteilung: Zweistromland. Kleinere Schriften zu Glauben
und Denken (Dordrecht: Nijhoff), pp. 527–38.
——(1988) Stern der Erlösung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp).
Spinoza (1951) Theologico-Political Treatise, vol. 1 in The Chief Works
of B. de Spinoza (New York: Dover).
——(1962) Hebrew Grammar (Compendium Grammatices Linguae
Hebraeae), translated by Rabbi M. Bloom (New York: Philosophical
Library).
Studies
Graetz, H. (1969) Essays—Memoirs—Letters [Hebrew] (Jerusalem:
Bialik Institute).
Hirsch, S.R. (1962) Horeb—A Philosophy of Jewish Laws and
Observances, trans. I.Grunfeld, 2 vols. (London: Soncino).
——(1969) The Nineteen Letters on Judaism (Jerusalem and New York:
Feldheim).
Maimon, S. (1911) Salomon Maimons Lebensgeschichte (Munich:
Müller).
History of Jewish philosophy
688
Neher, A. (1974) David Gans, disciple du Maharal de Prague, assistant de
Tycho Brahe et de Jean Kepler (Paris: Klincksieck).
——(1991) [1966] Le Puits de l’exil, tradition et modernité: La Pensée du
Maharal de Prague (Paris: Cerf).