Zionism

Zionism and Its Jewish Critics

The Zionist project came up at a time of crisis for the Jewish world, which faced a double challenge during the 19th century. The first challenge was internal, linked with the weakening of traditional community structures, speeded up by the growing interaction between Jews and their surrounding societies. The second challenge was external and stemmed from the hostility that Jews continued to face in European societies, be it the “old anti-Judaism” based on religious grounds or the “new, racial anti-Semitism,” which was aimed primarily at newly assimilated Jews. Zionism presented itself as a way to overcome this double challenge by inventing a new form of togetherness, a national one. As Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, wrote in his manifesto The Jewish State (1896), the “Jewish question” was first and last a national issue that had to be resolved by the building of a state for the Jewish people.

Half a century later, this objective was reached with the founding of the state of Israel in May 1948. The eventual success of Zionism should not obscure the fact, however, that among the Jews the issue was passionately debated and met with strong, sometimes fierce, opposition from some quarters of the Jewish world.

The critique of Zionism took three main forms. Those who chose to assimilate had implicitly rejected the basic premise of Zionism concerning the historical continuity of the Jewish people. For the followers of Marxism or supporters of political liberalism, the Jews were no longer a people; they were just human beings following a particular faith who had to take part either in the general revolutionary struggle against capitalism or in the political debates within the states of which they had become citizens during the emancipation process. The second criticism came from the followers of Jewish ultra-orthodoxy (who were numerous in Eastern Europe): They fully accepted the idea that the Jews were a people—but a people apart from [Page 2766]the others, with a strictly religious calling. The longing for political normalization, which was the aim of Zionism, was condemned because it broke with this unique destiny. The third form of opposition was driven by other Jewish nationalisms, particularly the one advocated by the Bund (General Jewish Labor Union of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia), which campaigned for the recognition of the cultural autonomy of Jewish communities and their political rights in the diaspora.

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