Читать книгу Return to the Promised Land. - Jacek Surzyn - Страница 9

Introduction

The Promised Land …where at last

we can live as free men on our own soil

and die in peace in our own homeland

– Theodor Herzl

The Zionist movement brought into existence by Theodor Herzl was not only a political movement for the realization of the idea of Jewish state. Zionism also contains deep philosophical assumptions that contribute to shaping a new vision of the role of Jews in the world and in relation to human history. Herzl already formulated a postulate to create a Jewish identity based on the modern foundations: the right to be a nation with its own history, own tradition, and own identification. Other theorist, Max Nordau, initiated the search for Jewish identity even in the philosophical sense of biological (racial) roots. Moses Hess and Leo Pinsker also spoke in a philosophical spirit, which described the role of Jews in the history of all mankind, and Hess even referred to the messianic vision of history. All these ideas shaped Zionism and built its foundations not only as a political movement, but also as a philosophy and ideology based on them. The ultimate and practical goal of Zionism was formulated by Theodor Herzl in his pamphlet “The Jewish State” – it was to create an independent Jewish state. Herzl writes: “The Jews who wish for a State will have it. We shall live at last as free men on our own soil and die peacefully in our own homes.” And just fifty years after writing these words, this goal was realized: Jews called into existence their own independent state in Palestine. For many reasons, this fact should evoke admiration and astonishment at the same time. To bring about such a happy end, Zionism had to defeat both internal and external obstacles. It is hard to decide which one of these two was more dangerous for the realization of the Zionist political plan. However, there is no doubt the assessment of this issue and, in general, the evaluation of Zionism itself, is strongly influenced by the unprecedented genocide of the Jewish community committed by the Nazis during the Second World War. The extent of this crime eclipsed everything that had happened in the history of Jews before and influenced the Zionist movement and its effectiveness. It can be said that Zionism, which is now the official ideology of Israel, has “taken over” the Holocaust and has claimed to be the only representative of the victims of the Nazi crime.

Perhaps for a less experienced observer of the contemporary Jewish history, and also for someone less familiar with their history in general, the Nazi ←7 | 8→genocide turned out to be the biggest challenge for Zionism and in this sense its most serious external obstacle. Nazi ideology based on anti-Semitism led to the real annihilation of the largest Jewish diaspora in Europe. From this perspective, it can be said that only the defeat suffered by the Nazi Germany saved all (or at least European) Jews from being murdered. Thus, the external enemy showed its terrible face of death, because the Jews for the first time in history faced the real immediacy of physical annihilation. Therefore, the Holocaust has been seen as a turning point in the modern history of Jews – its climax, after which everything must be understood and explained differently.

Without ignoring the significance of the crime of the Holocaust as a great challenge to Zionism (and it is a challenge in many respects: moral, social or also philosophical – the Holocaust is a big problem for philosophy. See for example opinions: Hannah Arendt, Berel Lang, or Lucy Dawidowicz), it should be emphasized that from the very beginning, the movement has also struggled with the internal obstacle. The ideas of Zionism practically overcame the old diaspora tradition and its philosophy, redefining both the position of the Jews in the non-Jewish world around them and the Jewish identity itself. In other words, Zionism defined a new dimension of being the Jew and the principles of belonging to the Jewish community. Zionism based these ideas on new philosophical foundations that implemented modern philosophical ideas of great transformation of the late nineteenth century. Since the beginning, Zionism has had to deal with the strong criticism of the old part of the world’s diaspora, which also provides various perspectives of the Zionism and allows us to evaluate its effectiveness in different ways.

The establishment of the state of Israel (it was a two-stage process: first, the declaration of the General Assembly of the UN of November 1947 on dividing Palestine into two states: Jewish and Arab, and then, unilateral announcement of the independence of Israel on May 14, 1948, although it was undoubtedly the realization of the most important and the ultimate aim of the Zionist movement declared by its founder Theodor Herzl and evident in Zionist pursuits, from the real perspective, it did not prove to be a final resolution to the “Jewish Question” – Herzl’s great dream. Then, the so called “Jewish Question” has remained unresolved, and undoubtedly the fact that Zionism failed to stop the Nazis from trying to solve the Jewish question ultimately (whether Zionism was able to do it is another thing – it was rather beyond its capabilities) should be considered as a defeat of the movement. It is worth mentioning that contemporary the “Jewish Question” is understood differently to its classical understanding from the turn of nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Today the “Jewish Question” is primarily seen through the prism of the crisis in the Middle East, ←8 | 9→i.e. the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is a consequence of the broader Jewish-Arab conflict. For the contemporary Western world, especially in the context of the war with terrorism and the growing radicalism of the Muslim world (the Sunni controversy with Shias on the Saudi Arabia – Iran axis), in the face of the strategic need to ensure security in important areas of raw materials supply, the “Jewish Question” remains one of the greatest challenges determining global politics. In this way, the Jewish question is constantly present and awaits its final resolution. Zionism, which is represented today by the State of Israel in conflict with the Muslim world (the Palestinian question), nowadays faces similar challenges as at the beginning of its existence. The Zionist movement was pursuing the demand of establishing an independent Jewish state. At the same time, Theodor Herzl was convinced that the creation of a Jewish state and total immigration of Jews to independent Israel would also lead to the end of the “Jewish Question.” He writes in The Jewish State: “I think that the Jewish Question is no more a social than a religious one, notwithstanding that it sometimes takes these and other forms. It is a national question, which can only be solved by making it a political-world question to be discussed and settled by the civilized nations of the world in council.”¹ Zionism accepted this task, but it should be said that it fulfilled it only partially, for although the state of Israel was established, the “Jewish Question” has not disappeared at all.

It is also important that the Zionist movement failed to implement the idea of a Jewish mass movement that would cover the vast majority of the diaspora, and hence could act as the leader of the world Jewry. In this sense, Zionism has not become a common Jewish philosophy. The current effect of this situation is that a relatively large group of Jews from the world diaspora, but also of Israeli citizens, do not identify themselves with an independent Zionist state. Thus, they do not play any role in its formation and development and – last but not least – they do not accept the Zionist philosophy and its national consciousness either in the social or in the political dimensions. In the contemporary situation of Jews, someone can identify himself as a Jew without being an Israeli, that is, a citizen of the State of Israel. So, there is a “non-Israeli” way of determining the Jewish identity. This results in the existence of two mutually interacting but also disputable attitudes characterizing today’s Jewish identity within the framework of the world Jewry: one identity defines through the world’s diaspora, which is still bigger than the number of Israeli citizens, and the other identity refers to patriotism ←9 | 10→based on statehood and the development of the Israeli nation together with its culture and attitude toward the world – patriotism in which loyalty to the state of Israel is strongly emphasized. While the Jewish diaspora builds an identity based mainly on the religious, philosophical tradition and history of the chosen nation, in the Zionist philosophy the identity is largely determined through the myth that emerged as part of the nineteenth-century socio-philosophical transformations occurring in Europe, which also strongly influenced the reality of the traditional diaspora. This definitely affects the overall evaluation of the Zionist movement. There is no doubt that Zionism proved to be a great breakthrough in the Jewish history, directing it to new paths. The Zionist idea of an independent state is the implementation of the traditional (religious) idea of returning to Zion, and the fact of existence of the Israel can hardly be assessed as a defeat or failure of this movement.

For Zionists, the emergence and existence of the modern Israel is an unquestionable proof of the effectiveness of their own movement. It must not be forgotten that today’s Israel is a wealthy land with a high level of economic development, and a stable and strong democracy, which should be even more appreciated against the background of the misery of the closest Muslim environment in all these respects. Israel seems to be the mainstay of the Western civilization and principles currently promoted as a standard in global relations, so its existence would be in the interest of the whole free world. This is undoubtedly a huge success of Zionism, because in this sense, Jews have such a strong position for the first time in the sociopolitical history of the world. In a way, Zionism has done something impossible, with so little competences and a strong internal resistance of the Jewish diaspore. Taking into account the moderate size of the global Jewish diaspora and its socio-economic potential, Zionism has created a strong democratic state that plays a decisive role in the Middle East, and – remembering the proportions – also in the world’s politics. The Zionist movement has always been understood in the Jewish milieu as a minority movement, so throughout its hundred years’ long history, it has failed to attract the majority of Jewish masses and has not transformed into a mass movement of the national liberation. Its founder Theodor Herzl and the first theorist Max Nordau dreamed about Zionism as a mass movement. Even the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897 had in its program the postulate of massification, and thus transformation into the only representative of the Jewry’s world.

It was the basis of credibility and effectiveness of Zionists’ actions toward the creation of a Jewish state. However, the massification of this movement never took place and Zionism since the beginning has been an elite movement, gathering a minority group of mainly assimilated and strongly secularized environments ←10 | 11→of the Jewish intelligentsia, a middle-class which came from major European capitals such as Vienna (the city of Herzl, though he was born in Budapest) and Paris (the city of Nordau), joined by the intelligentsia from tsarist Russia. The bourgeois spirit together with violent processes of social changes in the classical era of capitalism to a large extent shaped the Zionist movement. Zionist bourgeoisie were open to modern ideas – freedom, equality, individualism. While upholding the religion of their ancestors, Zionists favored a transformation of the traditional and the centuries-long concept of coming of the Messiah and return to Zion (the Promised Land) – so important for the whole Jewry – from a religious idea to its real version. In other words, Zionism transformed the religious idea of returning from exile and reconciliation with God, common for all Jews around the world, into the secular version of building the Jewish state on the territory of the Promised Land in Palestine.

The proposal to treat Zionism as a secular postulate, and thus to sever it from its religious dimension, had to meet with strong criticism of the traditional rabbinate, which had ruled the life of the Jewish diaspora for centuries. Traditional environments in the vast majority treated the Zionist movement in terms of the threat to the Jewish identity, which was ground on the religion and faith of the ancestors. For centuries, Jewish identity had been defined only in the area of religious identity, that is, belonging to the unique community of God’s chosen group (people, nation). Jewish history began with the appointment of Abraham (whose name means “Father of many nations/peoples”) and his journey to the Promised Land – Canaan. The covenant made between God and man determined the position of Jews as chosen people, which was confirmed and strengthened by the renewed covenant mediated by Moses. This sense of belonging to the religious community of the chosen people has formed Jewishness both in the intangible sense, within the community, and outside it, in the area of relations with the non-Jewish world. From that point of view, Zionism proposed by Herzl since the beginning has become a serious threat to the traditional vision of Jewishness, usurping the right to take over the idea of returning to Zion. According to orthodoxy, Zionists committed an unacceptable profanation of the holy idea, destroying the highest value of the Jewish faith and thus breaking the covenant with God. This understanding still determines strong opposition to Zionism – the opposition that exists in Israel itself, but also outside it in the world’s diaspora. This opposition primarily emphasizes the anti-religious character of the movement. Undoubtedly, Zionism in the nineteenth century managed to present the issue of Jewish identity as a problem by considering it in non-religious terms. Zionism was formed in response to the three motives that developed in the nineteenth century, characterizing the relationship between the ←11 | 12→Jewish community and the non-Jewish environment. These motives are the following: 1. The emergence of the modern anti-Semitism; 2. The process of Jewish emancipation and its consequences; 3. The problem of the mentioned above “Jewish Question” (Judenfrage). The creators of the Zionist movement, i.e. its founder Theodor Herzl and his first ideologist Max Nordau, like earlier protagonists of the movement (i.e. Moses Hess and Leo Pinsker), regarded anti-Semitism, emancipation, and the “Jewish Question” as fundamental problems faced by Jewry and assumed the Jewish future would depend on their solution. There is no doubt that the nineteenth century nationalism and its philosophical or ideological principles had a great influence on the perception of these problems and, consequently, the development of the Zionist movement.

According to Zionists, nationalism as the new philosophy was to become the remedy for all evil, that is, Zionists saw the nationalist perspective as a possibility of removing anti-Semitism, overcoming the failures of emancipation and solving the “Jewish Question.” In other words, in accordance with the intention of Zionism, the ubiquitous European nationalism propelling a new spiral of animosity and hatred toward Jews could only be neutralized by the Jewish nationalism: Jews were to become a law-conscious nation and fight for the possibility to create their own national state, since only then could they become equal to other nations. Theodor Herzl presented this idea most vividly and showed the plan of its implementation. According to him, the Jewish state was supposed to be (and it actually became once it was established) the quintessence of the Jewish nationalism: Jews became a nation, Israelis, and as a nation they won the right to have all political privileges that result from that fact. In this sense, since its beginning Zionism has followed the mainstream of national movements, which in the nineteenth and twentieth century shaped the socio-political history of Europe and the world. All this causes the lack of clear criteria for assessing the effectiveness of the movement from the perspective of more than a century of its history. As I mentioned above, on the one hand, we can point to the great success, that is, the creation of Israel as an independent, modern state, theoretically open to all Jews. On the other hand, however, it is difficult to overcome the reflection that the state of Israel was founded too late and Zionism itself was not able to save millions of Jews from genocide. In a way, it can be said that the “price” for the creation of Israel was six million victims. However, regardless of the evaluation of the Zionist movement, it remains a unique phenomenon. The belief in its uniqueness was also my motivation for working on this book.

In this book, I want to analyze the foundations of the Zionist ideology itself – the philosophical foundations in the deepest sense. I tried to maintain a neutral approach to this task, i.e. to refer to the thoughts of protagonists and ←12 | 13→philosophers of the movement rather than to judge them. Nevertheless, some choices must always be made, even from the perspective of methodological decisions regarding the selection of the analyzed content, sources, or literature. In my case, I attempted to describe the issue of foundations of the Zionist philosophy from the perspective of the researcher with a positive attitude to the subject of study, because I believe that, all in all, the Zionist movement has more positives than negatives.

The Zionist thought was not free from the weaknesses typical of any thought, but it made an effort to improve the grave Jewish fate; it was a reaction to the harassment and suffering that Jews had been facing for centuries and began to intensify at that time. What is important, the Zionist movement did not appear as an expansive movement threatening other peoples or nations. On the contrary, it was a Jewish way of self-defense against real threats. This fact should always be remembered in any attempt to evaluate the activities of Zionism. The Jews simply had (and still have) the right to take defensive actions against the threat to their identity or physical survival. The consciousness of this fact gives some indication for a positive assessment of the movement. The existence of the State of Israel is the confirmation of success of Zionist aspirations and dreams. However, the defense of the Israel’s existence cannot be the only reason for justifying the actions taken by this country that are often controversial and that often arouse legitimate opposition. Nevertheless, the rise of the Jewish state caused a permanent change both in the perception of the Jews in the world and of the Jewish diaspora itself. The formation of a Jewish nation postulated by Zionism – which brought positive effects: such a nation was born and has its own state – must also influence the evaluation of the Zionist movement. So there are presently Jews-Israelis, citizens of an independent state, forming a nation with all the attributes of a nation (I will not focus on the definition of a nation here, but in general, I use the term nation, which can be found in the works of Benedict Anderson or Ernst Gellner). There are also Jews who are not Israelis, members of the diaspora, who express their various attitudes to the Jewish state: from full acceptance, through indifference, to open hatred. Thus, the contemporary Jewish community makes a mosaic of various attitudes, for which the Zionist idea of a Jewish state is the strong point of reference. As I have already mentioned, Zionism has never taken the form of a mass movement, but in terms of activities carried out, it covered really the whole diaspora, thus, influencing the life and the present situation of all Jews. In my work, I attempted to show these positive elements of the Zionist movement in its philosophical and conceptual layers, which could contribute to a better understanding of its phenomenon. I tried to avoid the hagiographic approach, which for obvious reasons dominates in (especially Hebrew) literature.

←13 | 14→

To realize my intention, I decided to refer to selected thoughts and concepts that shaped the Zionist movement throughout the nineteenth century. I had to make a choice and adopt some troubleshooting options, so I chose several representative thoughts by authors who can be regarded as the founders and forefathers of the Zionist movement. It is obvious that the group of founders should include Theodor Herzl and Max Nordau. For formal reasons, I had to limit myself to the presentation of their positions only, and omit such well-deserved Zionist thinkers as, for example, Achad Ha Am, Nathan Birnbaum, Nathan Syrkin, or many others. I assumed that their views were already a modification of the idea of the Zionist movement and grew out from the conceptions formed by Herzl and Nordau. To these two figures I added the thinkers who certainly deserve to be called Zionist protagonists, namely, Moses Hess and Leo Pinsker. In their postulates, one can find everything that is contained in the concept of Zionism presented by Herzl and Nordau. The fact that each of these thinkers paid a lot of attention to three issues, namely the anti-Semitism, the emancipation, and the Jewry’s future, definitely played a part. It seems to me that these three issues, inextricably linked to the Jewish reality in the nineteenth century, set the framework for the formation of modern Jewish ideology and philosophy. The anti-Semitism, which in the nineteenth century assumed a new racial but also political meaning (in contrast to earlier anti-Judaism based on religious ground) definitely determined Jewish attitudes and served as a catalyst for the inner personal transformation for each of these authors. Each of them benefited from the fact that the process of legal and social emancipation of Jews had been progressing since the 18th century and gaining momentum. The anti-Semitism and the emancipation had developed at various speeds and in different ways in Europe, and it is no coincidence that all these authors devoted a lot of attention to both. Perhaps the anti-Semitism and the emancipation should also be treated in terms of a political and philosophical founding myth, which every ideology needs and from which Zionism has never been free. However, there is no doubt that both the anti-Semitism and the emancipation allow us to look at the beginnings of the Zionism from the proper perspective, because these two phenomena dynamically developed in the nineteenth century, combined with an extremely important Zionist idea inscribed in the Jewish identity: with the dream of Jews to return to the Promised Land. This dream meant that the birth of secular Zionist thought became a logical consequence of unchanging Jewish expectancy.

Gaining access to social emancipation and equality as part of transformations that began with the French Revolution (there was a reason why the revolution was treated with deference by Hess and Nordau), Jews faced both a chance and an unprecedented threat for the diaspora. The chance was the opportunity to ←14 | 15→obtain full social and political rights, and consequently, also economic rights. In the situation of economical and philosophical transformations and the creation of a new socio-political space in the nineteenth century, the many acted upon this chance, though this phenomenon had an individualized character, i.e. it did not refer to the whole community of Jews but to individuals. The threat mostly resulted from the fact that political and social emancipation de facto forced those individuals to break up the relationships with the diaspora, and actually with their inner Jewishness, because it was practically impossible to take part in centuries-long rhythm of Jewish social life determined by religious rites and faith itself if someone was out of the diaspora. In other words, being the Jew – for centuries connected with the faith, the covenant with God and the belonging to the chosen nation – was destroyed as a result of the emancipation, which forced a new approach to the issue of Jewish identity. Thus, a difficult dilemma arose for Jews: whether to try to improve their personal situation, i.e. leave the diaspora and assimilate, which was tantamount to resigning from their Jewishness, or to remain a part of the community, but without any chance of improving their situation yet with the threat of facing new persecution and repressions from the growing anti-Semitism. This dilemma was faced by Moses Hess and Leo Pinsker, regarded as the protagonists of the Zionist thought. It also affected Theodor Herzl and Max Nordau, so actually each thinker discussed in this book personally encountered the issue of the emancipation and the Jewish assimilation and participated in these processes.

Herzl and Nordau are special cases because of their significance for the Zionist movement. Both of them underwent the process of assimilation, especially in Nordau’s case reflected in his conscious choices. Both Nordau and Herzl were deeply permeated with the German culture, both spoke German as their native language and perfectly well suited the avant-garde of European intelligentsia of the second half of the nineteenth century. Nordau, older than Herzl, was one of the key thinkers of the end of the century, a mentor of his times, and one to critical evaluate the condition of the society, the culture and philosophy of the fin-de-siècle (see his works, particularly the book Degeneration). Herzl perfectly well suited the avant-garde of bourgeois Western Europe intelligentsia. He was a renowned, brilliant journalist, as well as playwright and prose writer. In his work, he related and criticized major socio-political events of contemporary Europe.

For both of them, the experience of emancipation of Jewry mostly meant the assimilation and the adoption of culture of the leading European nations, especially Germans. The encounter of anti-Semitism proved to be the breakthrough (although the breakthrough should largely be treated in the category of the founding myth), and in more practical terms, for Herzl and Nordau, the ←15 | 16→anti-Semitism was an important basis for justifying the Zionist thought as a solution to the “Jewish Question.” Thus, both the anti-Semitism and the emancipation led to the birth of a secular-philosophical version of the religious idea of Jews’ return to Zion after a thousand years of exile. Against this background, Zionism emerges as an inevitable complementation of the abovementioned nineteenth-century phenomena. I think we may and should approach the sources of the Zionist idea in this way, and if I research this issue and study the philosophical and social background of Zionism, such a triad (anti-Semitism, emancipation and return to Zion) makes up a logical whole, explaining my choice of thinkers and thoughts. Undoubtedly, it is impossible to write about the origin of Zionism without writing about Hess, Pinsker, Herzl, and Nordau, although apart from them, there are a number of authors who were extremely important for the shaping of Zionism and its different forms. I mean particularly Ahad Ha Am, but also Nathan Birnbaum. With limitations resulting from the length of the book and the need of text coherence, and with the intention to avoid just another story of Zionism, I decided to limit myself to the views of four most outstanding thinkers and omit all the others, though equally interesting. On the one hand, I did not intend to write another history of Zionism, presenting all its trends and doctrinal interpretations, because in source literature there are many such works. On the other hand, I feel that deeper analysis of the main works by Hess, Pinsker, Herzl, and Nordau may be justified and valuable in the light of the state of research on Zionism and alternatively its philosophical principles. Here, I want to stress that the choice of the analyzed works, i.e. Rome and Jerusalem by Hess, Auto-Emancipation by Pinsker or The Jewish State by Herzl is not a random one and is has both historical and thematic legitimizations. Most researchers agree that Hess’ book Rome and Jerusalem was the first comprehensive presentation of the situation of the Jewish diaspora combined with the Messianic idea of realization of religious Zion. Hess presents the Jewish nation as the restorer and leader of all the nations in the upcoming new era. In this context, he emphasizes the need for a real Jewish revival and building their own identity. Pinsker points to the problem of Jewish identity even more straightforwardly. His Auto-Emancipation is basically a manifest, almost entirely overlapping with a later brochure by Herzl, The Jewish State, which Herzl used to emphasize. According to Pinsker, auto-emancipation, or the self-liberation, of Jews was to be the means to create their new national philosophy and, thus, to form a strong nation, which could be able to effectively compete on the international arena and to gain a strong position in the community of nations. The formation and existence of a Jewish state seemed to Pinsker the only logical solution to the Jewish Question.

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The thoughts advanced by Hess and Pinsker were collected and finally expressed in full in the initiative by Theodor Herzl. The Jewish State, as a real political program, became the basis for the new movement. The history of Zionism is determined by the slogan of forming the Jewish nation and Jews’ right to have their own, independent, and politically and economically strong state. Unlike the theoretician Hess and the social activist Pinsker, Herzl had a great charisma as a politician and practitioner. His social and political activity was complemented by the thinking by Max Nordau, who at the very beginning of the movement created the theoretical foundation for Zionism and perhaps Max Nordau may be called the first Zionist philosopher. He was the author of the Zionist movement program, which was adopted at the First Congress in 1897, and then, for two decades, he determined the ideological framework of Zionism; Nordau also needed philosophical arguments to discuss with opponents and present Zionism to others as a coherent thought about the situation and goals of Jewry.

This approach to the Zionist issue made me select these four authors: Hess, Pinsker, Herzl, and Nordau. This selection determines the internal composition and scope of the work. Hence, I divided the book into four parts, each of which refers to one of the thinkers. All of these thinkers originated from Jewish families of intelligentsia with different degrees of the assimilation. They benefited from the emancipation, but each of them was personally affected by the anti-Semitism, and at least in two cases (Pinsker and Herzl, but also Hess), the anti-Semitism was the main motivation for their return to Jewry and looking for solutions to the Jewish question. In this respect, the biographies of the presented thinkers are very similar.

I based the presentation of their thoughts on the analysis of their selected source texts, and I only used studies and secondary literature to supplement or stress the importance of some problems and concepts I discussed. I referred to secondary literature to a limited extent, because the larger part of it (e.g. concerning Herzl and Nordau) is either hagiographic or critical, which I tried to avoid in my text, in an attempt to remain objective (although I may not have maintained full objectivism, because the choice and evaluation are always subjective). I did my best to document the thoughts of thinkers described in this book with relevant sources, so it includes multiple quotations from their original works.

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1 Theodor Herzl, A Jewish State. An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question, trans. Jacob de Haas, New York: Maccabean Publishing Co. 1904, pp. 4–5.