Return to the Promised Land.. Jacek Surzyn

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

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      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 СКАЧАТЬ