A DREAM COME TRUE
A Historical Look at Religious Zionism
A Historical Look at Religious Zionism
by
Prof. Dan Michman
Department of Jewish History
This article will be an
attempt to examine a basic concept which was born and has grown to maturity in
modern Jewish history, and which is an important key to understanding the
history of the State of Israel: "Religious Zionism". I believe that a
re-examination of the concept is in order and may enable us to better comprehend
the complex reality in which we live..
Emancipation, secularism,
the national renaissance of the peoples of Europe and modern Anti-Semitism --
these are the four highly powerful processes which deeply influenced the history
of the Jews of the nineteenth century. Facing them, Jews -- as a collective
entity, and also each individual Jew on his own -- were forced to define their
Jewish identity and the extent of their commitment to the Jewish collective.
This collective, standing on the brink of modern times, had two specially
important characteristics: A. A religious perception of nationhood and a
nationalistic perception of religion, and therefore, non-separation between
religion and nationality -- the ancient tradition of nationalism.1 B.
Existence outside the territory which was considered as the
"Homeland", in the form of communities with autonomous leadership
though dependent on external factors, as well. The four processes mentioned
above caused a transformation of the communities from being official entities,
universally recognized and obligatory, to a status of voluntary framework
organizations. Jews found it increasingly possible to enter the society which
surrounded them. Moreover, this was demanded of them, as was adoption of the
collective identity of that surrounding. The status of the religious aspect of
Jewishness weakened (and since Judaism is a national religion much of the
nationalistic connection weakened, as well).
Simultaneously, however,
Jews met with renewed and reinforced phenomena of rejection, and watched
admiringly the fascinating processes of national renaissance of other ancient
peoples (such as the Greeks and Italians). Some of those Jews who had strayed
far from religious belief were attracted to a new kind of Jewish national
consciousness. This developed in a number of forms -- one of which was Zionism.
Zionism sought not only a refuge from persecution but also a base upon which to
re-construct Jewish national identity, specifically in Eretz Yisrael, the
homeland of the people in ancient times, the land to which Jewish tradition
throughout its generations was so closely related and therefore, the only place
that the Jewish people could be properly rebuilt. Most of the founders, leaders
and activists of Zionism were non-religious and even anti-religious. Zionism as
an idea and those who made it a reality, and the state of Israel, its ultimate
creation, were and are today, poised before the dilemma of their connection to
the Jewish religion, which is the source of Jewish nationalism. The problem
seems unsolvable.
Religious Jews, of all
variations, were also, and still are caught in a dilemma concerning their
relationship to a movement which does not see religious belief as its core and
foundation , but does contribute significantly to Jewish national existence.
A number of highly complicated solutions have been proposed. For purposes of examination we may place each of them in one of three categories:
- Total rejection of Zionism and its activities and active opposition to it.
- A view of Zionism as a necessary, positive political development which may perhaps bring us closer to eventual redemption but which, for the present lacks any specific religious meaning.
- Adoption of Zionism as an expression of the process of redemption though most of its participants are unaware of that fact.
The first answer was that
given by most Torah-observant Jews from the early beginnings of Zionism in the
late nineteenth century until the Holocaust. Later, matters became more complex,
though most of the communities usually referred to as "Haredim"
(Ultra-orthodox) still hold that opinion. The second and third answers provided
the basis and central axes of "Religious Zionism".
The second answer was given
in the early days of Religious Zionism and provided the basis for co-operation
with secular Zionism. Rabbi Samuel Mohiliver (1824-1898), a leader of the
Chovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) Movement in the 1880's wrote in a letter to the
first Zionist Congress:
"For the success of
this assembly it is necessary to establish that all the "Sons of Zion"
whose hearts are loyal to our cause should live together in complete love and
brotherhood, even though they are in conflict as to matters between man and G-d.
Even if there be some who see their comrades as having transgressed all
boundaries, they must consider that if their homes were engulfed in a great fire
and everything was in danger, their property and lives, and someone came to save
them, whom they considered a transgressor, would they not receive them with love
and joy ?"
Rabbi Mohiliver advocated
settlement in Eretz Yisrael for this reason, emphasizing that: "There are
among our ancient sages who say that this weighs equally "With the entire
Torah, and the simple reason for the great significance of this commandment is
because it is the basis for the existence of our people". He never denied
that, in his opinion: "the basis of the love of Zion is to preserve the
entire Torah as it has been passed on to us from generation to generation",
though immediately emphasizing that: "I do not mean by this to criticize
any private individuals about their conduct".2 Thus, Rabbi
Yitzchak Ya'akov Reines who founded the "Mizrachi" (abbreviation of Merkaz
Ruchani [spiritual center]) movement in 1902, saw national
redemption as being of supreme importance, and therefore, he defined Zionism as
a "material" movement, in which the Mizrachi could operate as one
component. An alliance was formed between the Mizrachi and Herzl which even
brought about the support of many of its members for the Uganda Plan, the plan
to create a Jewish state in Africa, in 1903.3
The continuation of this ideological and behavioral line, after World War One, was found in the "Hapoel Hamizrachi" (Mizrachi Labor Federation), founded in 1922, which, according to the historian Yosef Shalmon, stood for:
"An entity of
Klal-Yisrael (the entirety of the Jewish people) which was defined as "Jewishness"
(distinct from Judaism as a religion)... The modern aspect of the ideals of
Hapoel-Hamizrachi are expressed in the view of Jewish tradition -- including the
commandments -- as a component of national identity and its cultural content.
Thus developed a philosophy which recognized three fundamental elements in
Jewishness: religion, nationality and social justice". The traditional
aspect of the Hapoel-Hamizrachi ideology was the demand to preserve Jewish
tradition in the day to day life of the national community. The
ideologists of Hapoel-Hamizrachi included the non-traditional elements of Jewish
nationalism in this concept of "Jewishness", attempting to find
precedents for them in the literature and values of the tradition".4
A further development of
this concept, which also celebrated the value of labor (Torah Ve'avoda), came a
decade later, with the Aliya of groups of young religious Jews from Germany.
They had been educated in the light of the modern "Torah im Derech Eretz"
school of religious thought, founded by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. Here they
found a positive attitude toward the modern, secular world and its values, most
significantly towards democracy, rather than a tendency to retreat from it.
These young members of "Brit Chalutzim Datiy'im" (Covenant of
Religious Pioneers) who had also internalized socialist values, enriched
religious-Zionist thought with the establishment of what later became known as
"Kibbutz Hadati" (The Religious Kibbutz). The central focus of the
vision of Hakibbutz Hadati in the area of their relationship to the secular
society was that an exemplary religious community, presenting a model of a full
Jewish lifestyle, sHalacha on all aspects of life, could reach out and have an
influence on the entire Jewish community, thereby bringing about a national
"tikun" (correction). In this regard the emphasis was on the
rebuilding of the internal spiritual life of the nation along with the idea that
this could be accomplished only in the Holy Land, in Eretz Yisrael.5
Hakibbutz Hadati, despite
never having become a mass movement served as a role-model for Religious-Zionist
youth in Israel and in the Diaspora for several decades. The youth movement
"B'nei Akiva" educated its members toward "Hagshama"
(fulfillment of the ideal) within the framework of Kibbutz Hadati. Here the
commandment to settle the Land of Israel was seen as an obligation to take hold
of the Land and work it, creating upon it a value-oriented society both moral
and constructive. The borders of Eretz Yisrael per se, did not become a focal
point of formative thinking. The State of Israel, itself, was not perceived as
having any intrinsic religious holiness -- as expressed in the words of Simcha
Friedman: "I do not attach to the State any religious weight or meaning,
though other complete, G-d fearing Jews, far better than me, do so ... I see in
the State of Israel, the creation of which took us by surprise, without our
being prepared for it, a challenge which calls out: Hic Rhodos, hic salta! (Here
is Rhodes! Jump here! -- Show what you are capable of, immediately!) That is to
say: You received a state -- now prove that you can be G-d fearing, commandment
observing Jews in that state, not as a sport, but because such an opportunity
has not existed for many centuries. Now prove yourselves to be more complete
Jews".6
Due to various reasons
having to do with Israeli society in general and the Orthodox Religious society
in particular, the dominant position occupied by Hakibbutz Hadati, along with
its unique ideological message, began to recede toward the end of the 1960's.
We must now return
chronologically to the third answer to the Zionist challenge -- the second
religious-Zionist alternative -- the Geulah (redemption) oriented motif. The
first expressions of this view are also to be found in the beginnings of
religious -- Zionism during the 1880's (Yechiel Michel Pines, for example), and
perhaps -- in other forms -- even earlier, among the mid- nineteenth century
thinkers who addressed the question of settlement in Eretz-Yisrael. A fuller,
more comprehensive and powerful expression of this approach was to be reached
only later in the writings of Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Hacohen Kook (1865-1935)
who was Chief Rabbi of Eretz Yisrael. Rav Kook saw secular Zionism ("the
secular Jewish image of Israelite nationality") as a mistake and a
falsification of the Jewish nationalistic entity -- which consists of
recognition of the Divine value of the soul of the nation.7 He did
not invalidate the mistake entirely, but rather saw it as a basis which
unknowingly draws from the divine source of Israelite Nationality. For this
reason one must work with it and nurture it until the mistake is recognized.
According to Rav Kook, this new national renaissance -- Zionism -- is an
expression of the beginning of the Geulah process. Eretz Israel has a special
quality and only the union of Am Israel to Eretz Yisrael can make both of them
whole:
"The soul of the people
and the land work together to create the secret of their existence, demanding
their role in the realization of their aspiration of holiness... the people
expend their spiritual power upon the land ... and the land causes the people to
realize their attribute of desiring Divine life complete in their
construction".8
The theories of Rav Kook
(which may be interpreted in various ways) were developed more fully by his son
, Rabbi Tzvi Yehudah Hacohen Kook (1891-1981) and by his disciples who were
educated in the Merkaz Harav Yeshiva.9
The generation of the 40's
and 50's bore witness to two overwhelmingly important events in Jewish history:
the Holocaust, on the one hand, and the establishment of the State of Israel,
shortly afterwards, on the other. These events engendered deep emotional and
mystical reactions in various Jewish circles (not only in those called
"religious"). In religious Zionism the reaction was especially
meaningful: On the one hand there was the vision of the Torah centers and great
concentrations of observant Jews in Europe; on the other hand the fulfillment of
the yearning for Jewish nationhood. On this background the Geulah motif began to
grow in strength within the religious -- Zionist community. The State of Israel,
which represents the Zionist endeavor is, according to Rav Tzvi Yehudah:
"The true redemption,
revealed in the perfection of settlement on the Land and the rebirth of Israel
upon it, later in the further renewal of settlement on the Land and the
ingathering of the prisoners of exile to it ... it appears at the zenith of its
actual growth -- inheritance of the Land ... and the rule of our government upon
it".10
Yeshivat Mercaz Harav grew
in status, and its graduates, from the end of the 1950's onward began a
widespread development of the Religious Zionist educational systems. In a little
over a decade -- during the 60's -- they became the leading force in Religious
Zionism.11 The energy stored up inside both educators and students
was formidable. On the surface stood out, initially, their desire to enter into
all aspects of Israeli society thereby contributing to the national renaissance
in contrast to the relatively marginal status of the Religious Zionist community
at the time in Israeli society. On an unseen level, however, their special
approach to the question of the Land of Israel awaited an opportunity for
expression.
The Six-Day War was the
first turning point for the Religious-Zionist community. The territories which
were conquered -- Judea, Samaria, Gaza, Sinai and the Golan -- provided a
channel for all that untapped energy seeking activity and hinted at the
realization of the Geulah messianic redemption motif, as well. The result was
the formation of "Gush Emunim" (the bloc of the faithful) which began
its activities in the early 1970's and then pushing the other Religious-Zionists
alternatives to the sidelines. The Yom Kippur War and the shock it left in its
wake, especially in the public image of the Labor Zionist Movement, added
strength to the self confidence of the Geulah school of thought in Religious
Zionism which began to see itself in the role of the reinforcer of national
renaissance feelings and as a pointer of the way for the masses. The political
upheaval of 1977 -- the rise of the Likud to power -- became another turning
point. The new administration made possible a much broader entry for Religious
Zionism to a leading position in society and gave significant backing to the
settlement endeavors.12
The second political
upheaval -- that of 1992 -- brought the dominant Geulah school of thought in
Religious Zionism to a point of severe crisis. The turnabout in Government
policy -- especially the willingness to withdraw from parts of Eretz Yisrael --
was perceived (by those who saw Eretz Yisrael as the focal point of national
renaissance) as proportional to "Churban" (Destruction). These
policies were compared even to the Holocaust (proving a lack of minimal
understanding of the Holocaust). Internal tensions rose to new heights and the
history of Zionism became blurred. The orthodox supporters of the Geulah motif
forgot, among other things, the territorial concessions and withdrawals which
the leaders of the Zionist Movement and governments of the State of Israel had
made in the past. (For example acceptance of the Peel Commission partition plan
of 1937 and the withdrawals from territories occupied in the War for
Independence in 1949 and the Sinai Campaign of 1956). Those previous withdrawals
had been accepted without any Halachic objection and with the agreement of the
leaders of Religious Zionism -- and in no way interrupted the progress of the
Zionist endeavor. Also forgotten, by the Geulah advocates was the awareness of
the crucial legacy of the first AshkChief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Yizchak Halevi
Herzog, who provided the basis for the Halachic approval of democratic
Government. Failure to recall the history of Zionism brought them to the point
of believing the unfounded fear that all the great achievements of Zionism would
be wiped out of existence because of a limited territorial withdrawal from parts
of Eretz Yisrael.
The crisis we have described here seems to have taken on an acute nature because it coincided with the development of a more widespread and basic conflict within contemporary Israeli society -- the question of the cultural and national character of the state. It is precisely this issue which gives increased relevance to the words of Rabbi Mohiliver in his letter to the First Zionist Congress quoted above: "For the success of this assembly it is necessary to establish that all the "Sons of Zion" whose hearts are loyal to our cause should live together in complete love and brotherhood, even though they are in conflict as to matters between man and G-d".
notes
1 - The interpretation of
the terms 'Dat' and 'Dati' as meaning commandment-observing religious believers
is an innovation of the nineteenth century; in their sources, these words mean
'law' or 'legal'.
2 - Quoted from: Arthur
Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea (Keter: Jerusalem, 1970, p.309-310).
3 - On these issues in
detail se: E. Luz , Makbilim Nifgashim (Am Oved-Sifriat Ofakim: Tel-Aviv,
1985).
4 - Y. Shalmon, Shiluv
Hasozialism im Hadat: Hearot l'toldot Histadrut Hapoel Hamizrachi (The
Synthesis of Socialism and Religion, Remarks on the History of the
Hapoel-Hamizrachi Federation) and Dat Vetzionut: Imutim Rishonim (Religion
and Zionism: First Conflicts) (Hasifriah Hatzionit: Jerusalem, 1990, p.
340-341).
5 - See: Fishman, Ben Dat
l'Idelogiah - Yahadut Vemodernizatzia Bakibbutz Hadati (Between Religion
and Ideology - Judaism and Modernization in the Religious Kibbutz) (Yad
Yitzchak Ben Tzvi: Jerusalem, 1990, especially pages 72-73). It would seem that
there existed here a late development of a very central issue in the thought of
Rabbi S.R. Hirsch: The relatively reduced importance of Eretz Yisrael as
compared to the Torah and the Jewish people: "The independent political
life of ancient Israel was not the meaning or purpose of the peoplehood of
Israel, but served as a means to achieve its spiritual goal. Land and territory
never united Israel, the common objective of the Torah was what imposed the
connection upon it." S.R. Hirsch , Igrot Tsafon, Nineteen Letters About
Judaism (translated by A. Porat) (Mossad Harav Kook: Jerusalem, 1976, p.
68). After the appearance of Anti-Semitism and the nationalist renaissance
movements, Eretz Yisrael returned to its central place in the thinking of
Western European Religious Zionists -- not as a purpose in itself, but as
"a means to achieve its spiritual goal".
6 - S. Friedman, Hesder
Hayachasim ben Datiy'im and Chiloniy'im (Arrangement of Relationships
between Religious and Secular Jews) (Y. and A. Tirosh), Hatzionut Hadatit
Vehamedinah (Religious Zionism and the State) (World Zionist
Organization, Dept. of Torah Education and Culture for the Diaspora: Jerusalem,
1978, p.290).
7 - Harav A.Y.H. Kook, Chazon
Hage'ulah (The Vision of Redemption) (Jerusalem, 1941, p.96-97).
8 - Cited from quotation by
Tz.Varon, Mishnato shel Harav Kook (World Zionist Organization, Dept. of
Torah Education and Culture in the Diaspora).
9 - See at length in A.
Ravitzki, Haketz Hameguleh Umedinat Hayehudim: Meshichiut, Tzionut
Veradikalizm Dati Beyisrael (The Revealed End and the Jewish State:
Messianism, Zionism and Religious Radicalism in Israel) (Am Oved - Sifriat
Ofakim: Tel-Aviv, 1993, Ch. 3 and conclusion).
10 - Rav Tzvi Yehudah Kook, Linm'tivot
Yisrael (The Pathway of Israel) (Jerusalem, 1967, Part 1, p. 56; see
also Ravitzki, ibid., p. 113).
11 - Of special interest:
Chief Rabbi in the Mandatory period. On these matters see, inter alia: A. Don-Yechya,
Hadat Beyisrael - Ma'amad Irgun Vasherutim (Religion in Israel -
Status, Organization and Services) (Israel Government Information Center:
Jerusalem, 1987); A. Belfer, (ed.), Manhigut Ruchanit Beyisrael (Spiritual
Leadership in Israel) (The Institute for Contemporary Judaism and Thought,
Bar Ilan University Press: Ramat Gan, 1984); M. Friedman, Harabanut Harashit
Leyisrael - Dilemma l'lo Pitaron ( The Chief Rabbinate - A Dilemma
Without a Solution), Medinah Vemimshal Viyachasim Benleumi'yim (State,
Government and International Relations), Vol. 1, No. 3, Spring 1972); Harabanut
Harashit Leyisrael - 70 Shana Leyisudah (The Chief Rabbinate of Israel -
70 Years Since its Establishment). (Religious Education Administration and
the Pedagogic Administration, Curriculum Branch of the Ministry of Education and
Culture: Jerusalem, 1991).
12 - Parenthetically it can be said that this development is also the reason for the decline in the strength in the N.R.P. (National Religious Party) The party founded to represent Religious Zionism. As long as religious Zionism was a clearly separate entity in Israeli society its voters gave their support entirely to the N.R.P. which represented their collective group interests. As the opportunities to enter the broader society and economic life in all their aspects opened up, Religious Zionists spread out into the political spectrum in all directions. The status and strength of the N.R.P. as an exclusive representative declined. Notwithstanding, the dominance of one variant in Religious Zionism (The Geulah Motif) brought most Religious Zionists to the right of the political spectrum and the positioning of the weakened N.R.P. on that side, as well.
Reproduced From: Bar - Ilan University web site
The following information is courtesy of the Library of Congress Country Studies series.The major event that led to the growth of the Zionist movement was the emancipation of Jews in France (1791), followed shortly thereafter by their emancipation in the rest of continental and Central Europe. After having lived for centuries in the confines of Jewish ghettos, Jews living in Western and Central Europe now had a powerful incentive to enter mainstream European society. Jews, who had previously been confined to petty trade and to banking, rapidly rose in academia, medicine, the arts, journalism, and other professions. The accelerated assimilation of Jews into European society radically altered the nature of relations between Jews and non-Jews. On the one hand, Jews had to reconcile traditional Judaism, which for nearly 2,000 years prior to emancipation had developed structures designed to maintain the integrity and separateness of Jewish community life, with a powerful secular culture in which they were now able to participate. On the other hand, many non-Jews, who prior to the emancipation had had little or no contact with Jews, increasingly saw the Jew as an economic threat. The rapid success of many Jews fueled this resentment.
The rise of ethnically based nationalism in the mid-nineteenth century gave birth to yet another form of anti-Semitism. Before the mid-nineteenth century, European anti-Semitism was based mainly on Christian antipathies toward Jews because of their refusal to convert to Christianity. As a result, an individual Jew could usually avoid persecution by converting, as many did over the centuries. The emergence of ethnically based nationalism, however, radically changed the status of the Jew in European society. The majority gentile population saw Jews as a separate people who could never be full participants in the nation's history.
The vast majority of Jews in Western and Central Europe responded by seeking even deeper assimilation into European culture and a secularization of Judaism. A minority, who believed that greater assimilation would not alter the hostility of non-Jews, adopted Zionism. According to this view, the Jew would remain an outsider in European society regardless of the liberalism of the age because Jews lacked a state of their own. Jewish statelessness, then, was the root cause of anti-Semitism. The Zionists sought to solve the Jewish problem by creating a Jewish entity outside Europe but modeled after the European nation-state. After more then half a century of emancipation, West European Jewry had become distanced from both the ritual and culture of traditional Judaism. Thus, Zionism in its West European Jewish context envisioned a purely political solution to the Jewish problem: a state of Jews rather than a Jewish state.
For the bulk of European Jewry, however, who resided in Eastern Europe's Pale of Settlement - on the western fringe of the Russian Empire, between the Baltic and the Black seas--there was no emancipation. East European Jewry had lived for centuries in kehilot (sing., kehilah), semiautonomous Jewish municipal corporations that were supported by wealthy Jews. Life in the kehilot was governed by a powerful caste of learned religious scholars who strictly enforced adherence to the Jewish legal code. Many Jews found the parochial conformity enforced by the kehilot leadership onerous. As a result, liberal stirring unleashed by the emancipation in the West had an unsettling effect upon the kehilot in the East.
By the early nineteenth century, not only was kehilot life resented but the tsarist regimes were becoming increasingly absolute. In 1825 Tsar Nicholas I, attempting to centralize control of the empire and Russify its peoples, enacted oppressive measures against the Jews; he drafted a large number of under-age Jews for military service, forced Jews out of their traditional occupations, such as the liquor trade, and generally repressed the kehilot. Facing severe economic hardship and social upheaval, tens of thousands of Jews migrated to the cities, especially Odessa on the Russian coast. In their new urban environments, the restless and highly literate Jews clamored for the liberalization of tsarist rule.
In 1855 the prospects for Russian Jewry appeared to improve significantly when the relatively liberal-minded Tsar Alexander II ascended the throne. Alexander II ended the practice of drafting Jewish youth into the military and granted Jews access, albeit limited, to Russian education institutions and various professions previously closed to them. Consequently, a thriving class of Jewish intellectuals, the maskalim (enlightened), emerged in cities like Odessa, just as they had in Western Europe and Central Europe after emancipation. The maskalim believed that Tsar Alexander II was ushering in a new age of Russian liberalism which, as in the West, would eventually lead to the emancipation of Russian Jewry.
The hopes of the maskalim and of Russian Jewry in general, however, were misplaced. Alexander II was assassinated in 1881, and a severe pogrom ensued that devastated Jewish communities throughout the Pale of Settlement. The new Tsar, Alexander III, enacted oppressive policies against the Jews and denied police protection to those Jews who remained in the countryside. As a result, a floodtide of impoverished Jews entered the cities where they joined various movements that sought to overthrow the tsar.
The openly anti-Semitic policies pursued by the new tsar and the popularity of these policies among large segments of the nonJewish population posed serious political, economic, and spiritual dilemmas for Russian Jewry. On the economic level, the tsar's antiSemitic policies severely limited Jewish economic opportunities and undermined the livelihood of the Jewish masses. Many impoverished East European Jews, therefore, emigrated from the Russian Empire. Between 1881 and 1914, an estimated 2.5 million Jews left the empire, 2 million of whom settled in the United States.
For many Jews, especially the maskalim, however, the pogroms and the anti-Semitism of the new tsar not only meant economic hardship and physical suffering but also a deep spiritual malaise. Before 1881, they had been abandoning the strict confines of the kehilot en masse and rebelling against religious orthodoxy, anxiously waiting for the expected emancipation to reach Russia. The 1881 pogroms and their aftermath shattered not only the faith of the maskalim in the inevitable liberalization of tsarist Russia but also their belief that the non-Jewish Russian intellectual would take an active role in opposing anti-Semitism. Most of the Russian intelligentsia were either silent during the pogroms or actually supported them. Having lost their faith in God and in the inevitable spread of liberalism, large numbers of Russian Jews were forced to seek new solutions. Many flocked to the revolutionary socialist and communist movements opposing the tsar, while others became involved with the Bund, a cultural society that sought to establish a Yiddish cultural renaissance within Russia.
A smaller but growing number of Jews were attracted to the ancient but newly formulated notion of reconstituting a Jewish nation-state in Palestine. Zionism as it evolved in Eastern Europe, unlike Zionism in the West, dealt not only with the plight of Jews but with the crisis of Judaism. Thus, despite its secularism, East European Zionism remained attached to the Jewish biblical home in Palestine. It also was imbued with the radical socialist fervor challenging the tsarist regime.
Zionism's reformulation of traditional Judaism was deeply resented by Orthodox Jews, especially the Hasidim. Most East European Jews rejected the notion of a return to the promised land before the appearance of the messiah. They viewed Zionism as a secular European creation that aspired to change the focus of Judaism from devotion to Jewish law and religious ritual to the establishment of a Jewish nation-state.
The following information is courtesy of the Library of Congress Country Studies series.The impulse and development of Zionism was almost exclusively the work of Ashkenazim - Jews of European origin; few Sephardim were directly engaged in the movement in its formative years. (In 1900 about 9.5 million of the world's 10.5 million Jews were Ashkenazim, and about 5.2 million of the Ashkenazim lived in the Pale of Settlement.)
The first writings in what later came to be known as Zionism appeared in the mid-1800s. In 1840 the Jews of Eastern Europe and the Balkans had been aroused by rumors that the messianic era was at hand. Various writers, most prominently Rabbi Judah Alkalai and Rabbi Zevi Hirsch Kalisher but including many others, were impressed by the nationalist fervor of Europe that was creating new nation-states and by the resurgence of messianic expectations among Jews. Kalisher wrote that Jewish nationalism was directly akin to other nationalist movements and was the logical continuation of the Jewish enlightenment that had begun in France in 1791 when Jews were granted civil liberties. Alkalai consciously altered his expectations from a miraculous messianic salvation to a redemption by human effort that would pave the way for the arrival of the messiah. Both authors urged the development of Jewish national unity, and Kalisher in particular foresaw the ingathering to Palestine of many of the world's Jews as part of the process of emancipation.
Another important early Zionist was Moses Hess, a German Jew and socialist comrade of Karl Marx. In his book Rome and Jerusalem, published in 1862, Hess called for the establishment of a Jewish socialist commonwealth in Palestine. He was one of the first Jewish thinkers to see that emancipation would ultimately exacerbate anti-Semitism in Europe. He concluded that the only solution to the Jewish problem was the establishment of a national Jewish society managed by a Jewish proletariat. Although his synthesis of socialism and Jewish nationalism would later become an integral part of the Labor Zionist movement, during his lifetime the prosperity of European Jewry lessened the appeal of his work.
The following information is courtesy of the Library of Congress Country Studies series.Political Zionism was emancipated West European Jewry's response to the pervasiveness of anti-Semitism and to the failure of the enlightenment to alter the status of the Jew. Its objective was the establishment of a Jewish homeland in any available territory--not necessarily in Palestine--through cooperation with the Great Powers. Political Zionists viewed the "Jewish problem" through the eyes of enlightenment rationalism and believed that European powers would support a Jewish national existence outside Europe because it would rid them of the Jewish problem. These Zionists believed that Jews would come en masse to the new entity, which would be a secular nation modeled after the post-emancipation European state.
The first Jew to articulate a political Zionist platform was not a West European but a Russian physician residing in Odessa. A year after the 1881 pogroms, Leo Pinsker, reflecting the disappointment of other Jewish maskalim, wrote in a pamphlet entitled Auto-Emancipation that anti-Semitism was a modern phenomenon, beyond the reach of any future triumphs of "humanity and enlightenment." Therefore Jews must organize themselves to find their own national home wherever possible, not necessarily in their ancestral home in the Holy Land. Pinsker's work attracted the attention of Hibbat Tziyyon (Lovers of Zion), an organization devoted to Hebrew education and national revival. Ignoring Pinsker's indifference toward the Holy Land, members of Hibbat Tziyyon took up his call for a territorial solution to the Jewish problem. Pinsker, who became leader of the movement, obtained funds from the wealthy Jewish philanthropist, Baron Edmond de Rothschild- -who was not a Zionist--to support Jewish agricultural settlement in Palestine at Rishon LeZiyyon, south of Tel Aviv, and Zikhron Yaaqov, south of Haifa. Although the numbers were meager--only 10,000 settlers by 1891--especially when compared to the large number of Jews who emigrated to the United States, the First Aliyah (1882-1903), or immigration, was important because it established a Jewish bridgehead in Palestine espousing political objectives.
The impetus to the founding of a Zionist organization with specific goals was provided by Theodor Herzl. Born in Budapest on May 2, 1860, Herzl grew up in an environment of assimilation. He was educated in Vienna as a lawyer but instead became a journalist and playwright. By the early 1890s, he had achieved some recognition in Vienna and other major European cities. Until that time, he had only been identified peripherally with Jewish culture and politics. He was unfamiliar with earlier Zionist writings, and he noted in his diary that he would not have written his book had he known the contents of Pinsker's Auto-Emancipation.
While working as Paris correspondent for a Viennese newspaper, Herzl became aware of the pervasiveness of anti-Semitism in French society. He saw that emancipation rather than dissipating antiSemitism had exacerbated popular animosity toward the Jews. The tearing down of the ghetto walls placed Jews in competition with non-Jews. Moreover, the newly liberated Jew was blamed by much of non-Jewish French society for the socioeconomic upheaval caused by both emancipation and accelerated industrialization.
The turning point in Herzl's thinking on the Jewish question occurred during the 1894 Paris trial of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, on charges of treason (the sale of military secrets to Germany). Dreyfus was convicted, and although he was eventually cleared, his career was ruined. The trial and later exoneration sharply divided French society and unleashed widespread anti-Semitic demonstrations and riots throughout France. To Herzl's shock and dismay, many members of the French intellectual, social, and political elites--precisely those elements of society into which the upwardly mobile emancipated Jews wished to be assimilated--were the most vitriolic in their antiSemitic stance.
The Dreyfus affair proved for Herzl, as the 1881 pogroms had for Pinsker, that Jews would always be an alien element in the societies in which they resided as long as they remained stateless. He believed that even if Jewish separateness in religion and social custom were to disappear, the Jews would continue to be treated as outsiders.
Herzl put forth his solution to the Jewish problem in Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) published in 1896. He called for the establishment of a Jewish state in any available territory to which the majority of European Jewry would immigrate. The new state would be modeled after the postemancipation European state. Thus, it would be secular in nature, granting no special place to the Hebrew language, Judaism, or to the ancient Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Another important element contained in Herzl's concept of a Jewish state was the enlightenment faith that all men--including anti-Semites--are basically rational and will work for goals that they perceive to be in their best interest. He was convinced, therefore, that the enlightened nations of Europe would support the Zionist cause to rid their domains of the problem-creating Jews. Consequently, Herzl actively sought international recognition and the cooperation of the Great Powers in creating a Jewish state.
Herzl's ideas were not original, his belief that the Great Powers would cooperate in the Zionist enterprise was naive, and his indifference to the final location of the Jewish state was far removed from the desires of the bulk of the Jewish people residing in the Pale of Settlement. What he accomplished, however, was to cultivate the first seeds of the Zionist movement and to bestow upon the movement a mantle of legitimacy. His stature as a respected Western journalist and his meetings with the pope, princes of Europe, the German kaiser, and other world figures, although not successful, propelled the movement into the international arena. Herzl sparked the hopes and aspirations of the mass of East European Jewry living under Russian oppression. It was the oppressed Jewish masses of the Pale, however--with whom Herzl, the assimilated bourgeois of the West, had so little in common--who absorbed his message most deeply.
In 1897 Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. The first congress adopted the goal: "To create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by Public Law." The World Zionist Organization was founded to work toward this goal, and arrangements were made for future congresses. The WZO established a general council, a central executive, and a congress, which was held every year or two. It developed member societies worldwide, continued to encourage settlement in Palestine, registered a bank in London, and established the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemet) to buy land in Palestine. The First Zionist Congress was vital to the future development of Zionism, not only because it established an institutional framework for Zionism but also because it came to symbolize for many Jews a new national identity, the first such identity since the destruction of the Second Temple in A.D. 70.
Cultural Zionism
The following information is courtesy of the Library of Congress Country Studies series.The counterpoint to Herzl's political Zionism was provided by Asher Ginsberg, better known by his pen name Ahad HaAm (One of the People). Ahad HaAm, who was the son of a Hasidic rabbi, was typical of the Russian maskalim. In 1886, at the age of thirty, he moved to Odessa with the vague hope of modernizing Judaism. His views on Zionism were rooted in the changing nature of Jewish communal life in Eastern Europe. Ahad HaAm realized that a new meaning to Jewish life would have to be found for the younger generation of East European Jews who were revolting against traditional Jewish practice. Whereas Jews in the West could participate in and benefit from a secular culture, Jews in the East were oppressed. While Herzl focused on the plight of Jews alone, Ahad HaAm was also interested in the plight of Judaism, which could no longer be contained within the limits of traditional religion.
Ahad HaAm's solution was cultural Zionism: the establishment in Palestine of small settlements aimed at reviving the Jewish spirit and culture in the modern world. In the cultural Zionist vision, a small number of Jewish cadres well versed in Jewish culture and speaking Hebrew would settle in Palestine. Ahad HaAm believed that by settling in that ancient land, religious Jews would replace their metaphysical attachment to the Holy Land with a new Hebrew cultural renaissance. Palestine and the Hebrew language were important not because of their religious significance but because they had been an integral part of the Jewish people's history and cultural heritage.
Inherent in the cultural Zionism espoused by Ahad HaAm was a deep mistrust of the gentile world. Ahad HaAm rejected Herzl's notion that the nations of the world would encourage Jews to move and establish a Jewish state. He believed that only through Jewish self-reliance and careful preparation would the Zionist enterprise succeed. Although Ahad HaAm's concept of a vanguard cultural elite establishing a foothold in Palestine was quixotic, his idea of piecemeal settlement in Palestine and the establishment of a Zionist infrastructure became an integral part of the Zionist movement.
The ascendancy of Ahad HaAm's cultural Zionism and its emphasis on practical settlement in Eretz Yisrael climaxed at the Sixth Zionist Congress in 1903. After an initial discussion of settlement in the Sinai Peninsula, which was opposed by Egypt, Herzl came to the congress apparently willing to consider, as a temporary shelter, a British proposal for an autonomous Jewish entity in East Africa. The Uganda Plan, as it was called, was vehemently rejected by East European Zionists who, as before, insisted on the ancient political identity with Palestine. Exhausted, Herzl died of pneumonia in 1904, and from that time on the mantle of Zionism was carried by the cultural Zionists led by Ahad HaAm and his close colleague, Chaim Weizmann. They took over the WZO, increased support for Hibbat Tziyyon, and sought Jewish settlement in Palestine as a prerequisite to international support for a Jewish state.
The following information is courtesy of the Library of Congress Country Studies series.The defeat of Herzl's Uganda Plan ensured that the fate of the Zionist project would ultimately be determined in Palestine. In Palestine the Zionist movement had to devise a practical settlement plan that would ensure its economic viability in the face of extremely harsh conditions. Neither Herzl's political Zionism nor Ahad HaAm's cultural Zionism articulated a practical plan for settlement in Palestine. Another major challenge facing the fledgling movement was how to appeal to the increasing number of young Jews who were joining the growing socialist and communist movements in Russia. To meet these challenges, Labor Zionism emerged as the dominant force in the Zionist movement.
The intellectual founders of Labor Zionism were Nachman Syrkin and Ber Borochov. They inspired the founding of Poalei Tziyyon --the first Labor Zionist party, which grew quickly from 1906 until the start of World War I. The concepts of Labor Zionism first emerged as criticisms of the Rothschild-supported settlements of the First Aliyah. Both Borochov and Syrkin believed that the Rothschild settlements, organized on purely capitalist terms and therefore hiring Arab labor, would undermine the Jewish enterprise. Syrkin called for Jewish settlement based on socialist modes of organization: the accumulation of capital managed by a central Jewish organization and employment of Jewish laborers only. He believed that "antiSemitism was the result of unequal distribution of power in society. As long as society is based on might, and as long as the Jew is weak, anti-Semitism will exist." Thus, he reasoned, the Jews needed a material base for their social existence--a state and political power.
Ber Borochov's contribution to Labor Zionism was his synthesis of the concepts of class and nation. In his most famous essay, entitled Nationalism and Class Struggle, Borochov showed how the nation, in this case the Jewish nation, was the best institution through which to conduct the class struggle. According to Borochov, only through the establishment of a Jewish society controlling its own economic infrastructure could Jews be integrated into the revolutionary process. His synthesis of Marxism and Zionism attracted many Russian Jews caught up in the revolutionary fervor of the Bolshevik movement.
Another important Labor Zionist and the first actually to reside in Palestine was Aaron David Gordon. Gordon believed that only by physical labor and by returning to the land could the Jewish people achieve national salvation in Palestine. Gordon became a folk hero to the early Zionists by coming to Palestine in 1905 at a relatively advanced age--forty-seven--and assiduously working the land. He and his political party, HaPoel HaTzair (The Young Worker), were a major force behind the movement to collectivize Jewish settlements in Palestine. The first kibbutz was begun by Gordon and his followers at Deganya in eastern Galilee.
Before Gordon's arrival, the major theorists of Labor Zionism had never set foot in Palestine. Zionism in its theoretical formulations only took practical effect with the coming to Palestine of the Second Aliyah. Between 1904 and 1914, approximately 40,000 Jews immigrated to Palestine in response to the pogroms that followed the attempted Russian revolution of 1905. By the end of the Second Aliyah, the Jewish population of Palestine stood at about 85,000, or 12 percent of the total population. The members of the Second Aliyah, unlike the settlers of the first, were dedicated socialists set on establishing Jewish settlement in Palestine along socialist lines. They undertook a number of measures aimed at establishing an autonomous Jewish presence in Palestine, such as employing only Jewish labor, encouraging the widespread use of Hebrew, and forming the first Jewish self-defense organization, HaShomer (The Watchmen).
The future leadership cadre of the state of Israel emerged out of the Second Aliyah. The most important leader of this group and the first prime minister of Israel was David Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion, who arrived in Palestine in 1906, believed that economic power was a prerequisite of political power. He foresaw that the fate of Zionist settlement in Palestine depended on the creation of a strong Jewish economy. This aim, he believed, could only be accomplished through the creation of a Hebrew-speaking working class and a highly centralized Jewish economic structure. Beginning in the 1920s, he set out to create the immense institutional framework for a Jewish workers' state in Palestine.
The following information is courtesy of the Library of Congress Country Studies series.Labor Zionism, although by far the largest organization in the Yishuv (the prestate Jewish community in Palestine), did not go unchallenged. The largest and most vocal opposition came from a Russian-born Jewish intellectual residing in Odessa, Vladimir Jabotinsky. Jabotinsky was both a renowned writer and the first military hero of the Zionist revival; he was commander of the Jewish Legion. While residing in Italy, Jabotinsky became attached to the notions of romantic nationalism espoused by the great Italian nationalist Giuseppe Garibaldi. Like Garibaldi, Jabotinsky viewed nationalism as the highest value to which humans can aspire. He called for massive Jewish immigration to Palestine and the immediate declaration of Jewish statehood in all of biblical Palestine. He viewed the world in Machiavellian terms: military and political power ultimately determine the fate of peoples and nations. Therefore, he called for the establishment of a well-armed Jewish self-defense organization.
Jabotinsky sharply criticized Ben-Gurion's single-minded focus on creating a Jewish working-class movement, which he felt distracted the Zionist movement from the real issue at hand, Jewish statehood. He gained wide popularity in Poland, where his criticisms of socialism and his calls for Jewish self-defense appealed to a Jewish community of small entrepreneurs hounded as a result of anti-Semitism.
Reproduced From: About.com
ZIONISM: THE NATIONAL LIBERATION MOVEMENT OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE
By Professor Robert Rockaway
A. ANALYSIS - Zionism is a modern national liberation movement whose roots go far back to Biblical times. Its purpose is to return to the Jewish people the independence and sovereignty which are the right of every people. The Jews lost that independence and sovereignty in the Judaeo-Roman war two thousand years ago.
ZIONISM differs from other national Liberation movements in its point of departure. Whereas other movements arose among peoples who, though oppressed and exploited, continued to live on their own land, Zionism had to cope with Jewry's unique position in the world: homelessness and exile.
This movement sought to introduce a fundamental change in the geo-demographic position of Jewry in the world. It meant the transfer of a whole people back to its home, the land of Israel. Palestine has never been a state with a separate identity except in the minds of the Jews -- in their prayers, in their historical memory, in their hopes, and national ideology. It is the Jews, and the Jews alone, who lent a special status and gave political, religious and cultural identity to that land. For all other people who occupied the land, Palestine was merely a piece of their empire. This was the case for Rome, Byzantium, Ottoman. Even for the Crusaders, Palestine was an extension of Christian Europe.
ZIONISM -- the Jewish national liberation movement had two goals: reversing the course of Jewish history of the past two millennia by removing the exile imposed on Jewry from without; seeking to be revolutionary movement from within. This latter goal expressed itself in different aspects of Jewish life:
1. ZIONISM called for the restructuring of the social and economic pattern of Jewish life. Thus, the town-dwelling Jew, who for so many centuries and against his own will, used to be identified in the Diaspora with petty commerce and money l ending, was called upon by Zionism to change his habits and till the soil, develop industries, and do all other work by himself.
2. ZIONISM brought about the secularization of the expression of Jewry's traditional attachment to Palestine. Orthodoxy, Conservatism, and Reform all had to redefine their positions vis-a-vis the concept of the centrality of Israel. On the one had, Zionism made the modern Jew rediscover, proudly assert and emphasize the national component of his identity as Jew and on the other hand, it channeled the age-old messianic longings as well as the people's concrete needs for immediate alleviation of diasporic misery into five major endeavors:
a. The organization of world-Jewish support for Zionist activities in and for Palestine;
b. the acquisition, through purchase, of land in Palestine;
c. immigration;
d. settlement;
e. the establishment of Jewish self-governmental agencies.
3. ZIONISM called for a linguistic revolution in Jewry, or a renaissance of the ancient Hebrew tongue, once the living language of the Jewish state but long considered dead, or at least relegated to use in prayer, in study or in purely literary creativity. Zionism expected that language to serve not merely as an educational instrument for the expansion of Jewish historical consciousness, but as an effective vehicle for fusing together Jewry's scattered tribes.
4. ZIONISM meant self-liberation from ghetto mentality into the creation of a breed of Jews, proud, enterprising, efficient, ready to stand up for their rights, unafraid of adversity or of sacrifice. Jews asserted their right to shape their own destiny whatever the reaction of fore or friend.
ZIONISM was a minority view point among the Jewish people. It was electrifying to the youth, while at the same time, undermining the authority of the parents who were trying to survive. It was critical of the leaders, a challenge to the traditional leadership of the diasporic community.
Many well-meaning Jews tried many remedies to solve the "Jewish Problem" -- assimilation, Communism, diasporic autonomism, cultural self-determination, territorialism (non-Palestinocentric). All these remedies failed for none of them had produced the one and only solution that was needed most: a sovereign home.
Only the attainment of national sovereignty -- the ultimate goal of all liberation movements and the ultimate goal of classical Zionism could provide the basis for the solution of Jewish "homelessness".
The State of Israel, the ultimate goal of Zionism, was created not solely for those Jews who had the good fortune and wisdom to make it their home, but primarily for those who had not done so, yet are at present, or will be at some future juncture, in need of a haven from physical and/or spiritual persecution.
The State of Israel arose in response of the Jewish need as well as the Jewish desire for a national home. Hence, the State was built by and for those who either had to come, driven by anti-Semitism, or wanted to, driven by a quest of their own identity, searching for their historical roots and a place of their own to live a full and creative Jewish life. It was only natural that this place be in the land of Israel.
B. THE CONTINUITY OF JEWISH PRESENCE IN THE LAND OF ISRAEL - - The physical link between the Jews and the Land of Israel was never broken over the centuries. Despite difficulties, Jews kept arriving from Italy, Spain, France and North Africa to Jerusalem. In the letters they sent to the Diaspora, they called upon their brethren to settle in Israel disregarding all the obstacles and economic distress existing in those times in the country. The Jewish presence in the land of Israel was not extinguished at any moment even under religious persecution by Moslems and Christians. The crusaders harassed the Jewish communities in the land of Israel. Yet, even under crusader rule, (Thirteenth Century) 300 Rabbis arrived in the country with their families from France, and England, in order to settle and to renovate here their community life.
During the Sixteenth Century, the Jewish communities in the Land of Israel increased. Tiberias was rebuilt and the Jewish population of Safed reached 15,000. Safed, the capital of Northern Galilee, became the spiritual centre of Judaism, influencing the entire Jewish world. The Jewish mystical doctrine (Kabala) emerged there, and it was there that Rabbi Joseph Caro codified the Oral Law in his "Shulchan Aruch". In that century, the Jews made up 15% of the total population in the country. In modern times, the Return to Zion began during the Eighteenth Century as a consequence of positive factors as well as negative ones such as anti-Semitism. Ever since, the process of return of the Jewish people to its land has continued and has become ever stronger.
Jewish immigration to Palestine in modern times began in the late Nineteenth Century. In 1850, there were 20,000 Jews in Palestine; in 19145, there were approximately 100,000.
C. ZIONISM AND THE ARABS -- While the Zionist movement had as its major target the finding of a permanent solution to Jewish suffering and homelessness, it did not aim at doing so at the expense of and to the exclusion of the Arabs living then in Palestine. It was Zionism that struggled for human and national equality and dignity for all people.
The ideologists of Zionism did not anticipate a Jewish-Arab conflict. On the contrary, they thought it would be possible to unite the national interest of both peoples and they assumed that a modern Jewish society in the Middle East would complement the patriarchal Arab society.
Dr. Chaim Weizmann, a dedicated scientist and Zionist leader, who later became the first President of the State of Israel, signed in 1919 a pact of co-operation between the Zionist Movement and the Arab National Movement, represented by Emir Feisal, chief Arab delegate at the Paris Peace Conference, who, three months after the signing of the Agreement, wrote to Professor Frankfurter:
"....We understood that Arabs and Jews are blood cousins and that both suffered similar oppression at the hand of stronger powers and that now, due to a happy coincidence, they are able to take their first step together towards their nation al ideals. We, Arabs, view the Zionist Movement with deep sympathy. The Jewish movement is nationalist, not imperialist. Along with my people, I foresee and look forward to a future in which we shall help you and you shall help us."
With regard to land ownership, Jewish immigrants lived on land that was legally purchased from Arab -- often absentee-owners, and for which they often paid exorbitant prices. Dr. Arthur Ruppin, one of the fathers of the agricultural settlements i n Israel, decreed that Arab farmers who had been living on land acquired by the Zionist Movement from the Effendis (Turkish or Arab absentee landowners) had to be compensated even when the purchase deals for such lands did not incorporate such an obligati on. The Jews bought the land, dunam by dunam, and not a single Arab was displace. On the contrary, the Arab population doubled in that same period. They were attracted by the economic progress being made. The years for which we have reliable statistics ar e 1922 - 1931. In those years, about 94,000 Jews immigrated, and approximately 60,000 Arabs. In other words, the Arab immigration of that period accounted for 36.8 percent of total immigration. The number of Jewish owned enterprises increased from 1,850 t o 6,007, and sixty percent of the industrial work force it employed in 1927 was Arab. Prior to 1922, Arabs were leaving the country; after 1922, they began to come in from Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Transjordan, and Egypt. The figures for Jerusalem are even mo re impressive. The Encyclopedia Britannica of 1911 gives the following figures for 1905, reporting the Turkish census: of a total population of about 60,000, there were 7,000 Moslems, 13,000 Christians and 40,000 Jews.
British government statistics show that in May, 1948, when the State of Israel was established, 8.6 percent of the land was owned by Jews and 3.35 percent by Arab Israelis, while 16.9 percent had been abandoned by Arab owners who fled the country . More than seventy percent of the land was vested in the Mandatory Power and so reverted to Israel as its legal heir.
The new society that the Zionist Movement wanted to create gave a wide range of rights to all the citizens of the future state, and this was clearly specified in Israel's Declaration of Independence:
"The State of Israel ... will uphold full social and political equality of all its citizens without distinction of creed, race or sex ... will guarantee full freedom of conscious worship, education and culture ... will safeguard the sanctity and inviolability and the protection of all the holy places of all religions." (14 May 1948)
Israel stayed true to her Declaration of Independence. Despite constant conflicts with her Arab neighbors, Israel preserves intact a democratic society, which gives absolute freedom for all political ideologies. It is the only state in the Middle East where minorities enjoy full civil rights and develop along with the majority of the population.
Statistics clearly show the remarkable progress of Arabs living in Israel, both in comparison with 1948 as well as in relation to those living in neighboring countries.
This essay was written in 1975 at the request of the American Zionist Movement
© American Zionist Movement 2001, all rights reserved
Reproduced gratefully From: American Zionist Movement web site