Zionism

Early History

The early Zionists were either religious or socialist. Religious Zionists such as Rabbi Yehudah Alkalai (1798–1878) saw the return to Israel in messianic terms as the “third redemption,” that is, the return to Israel after the first destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, in 586 BC, by the Babylonians, and the second by the Romans, in 70 AD. Alkalai, a Serbian Jew from Sarajevo, was influenced by Greek and Serbian independence movements. However, unlike other religious leaders, he proposed the creation of Jewish colonies in the Holy Land by people's own efforts. This idea was, of course, at variance with the pious notion that the Messiah would come via a miraculous act of divine intervention. Alkalai was the first religious Zionist, as opposed to being a religious messianist. A second religious Zionist, Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer (1795–1874), from the Polish-German border area of Posen, spoke of a redemption through natural causes by human effort and by the will of governments gathering the scattered tribes of Israel to the Holy Land.

[Page 1427]Socialist Zionists, both Marxist and Utopian, included Moses Hess (1812–1875), a friend, but later opponent, of Karl Marx, as well as Bernard Lazare (1865–1903), Nahman Syrkin (1867–1924), Ber Borochov (1881–1917), Aaron David (Aleph Daled) Gordon (1856–1922), Berl Katznelson (1887–1944), and Martin Buber (1878–1965). They used a Marxist framework to negate the diaspora, emancipate Jewry, and establish a socialist state in Israel via Jewish labor. These Zionists set the foundation for the kibbutz movement and for socialist Zionist leaders such as David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, and a host of other, less-known thinkers and politicians, as well as organizations such as Farband; Pioneer Women (now called Naamat); LZOA (Labor Zionist Organization of America); Habonim Labor Zionist Movement, a youth movement; and other institutions worldwide, along with their intellectual thinkers—Moshe Kerem, Max Langer, Moshe Tzedek, Aviva Zuckoff, Label Fein, and Muki Tzur.

Nationalists were of two types: religious or secular. Today, in Israel, they have elements of both. Religious nationalism began with Rabbi Samuel Mohilever (1824–1898) of Vilna, continued with Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935), and continues to this day with the radical rabbis called “settlers,” on the West Bank and Gaza, who seek both a messianic and pragmatic redemption of lands on former Palestinian soil. Secular nationalists included Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880–1940), Joseph Trumpeldor, and Menachem Begin. All these movements have their counterparts in the Israeli political machinery. The Labor Zionists had the Mapai party and its many offshoots; Menachem Begin had Likud and its many offshoots, including the present 2007 government of Ehud Olmert; and the religious have their national political parties and movements.

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