Auto-empancipation
This is based on the third and last lecture by Dr. Shlomo Sharan:
The rise of the democratic state in the nineteenth century brought to the Jews the sense that they had been emancipated from the ghetto and would henceforth be treated as equal citizens under the law. However, the promise was never realized, since although the Jews were entitled in principle to equal treatment under the law, in fact the Jews continued to be treated as a distinct group who were discriminated against, persecuted and denied social acceptance throughout Europe.
Whereas in feudal Europe the chief identity of the peasantry has been Christian, in nineteenth century Europe this religious identity was gradually replaced by a national identity, each "tribe" with its own nation-state, France, Germany, Hungary, etc. The Jews did not fit into this identity, even though they might give up their own religion and try to assimilate.
There were several responses to this predicament, and it became urgent for the Jewish elite to resolve this problem, since many of them foresaw disaster ahead. One response was socialism or communism, the belief that all men are brothers, in other words "internationalism," and that national identity did not matter, but in fact it did. Another response was "territorialism" the belief that the Jews should have their own separate nation state in Europe, but this was a non-starter. Another approach was proposed in 1882 by Leo Pinsker a Russian Jew who published a small but influential pamphlet entitled "Auto-Emancipation."
What Pinsker said in this pamphlet was that the Jews should not depend on the surrounding peoples to grant them emancipation, but the Jews must emancipate themselves, they must become a nation like other nations, and expect equality with them as individuals and as a group. It is noteworthy that in his proposal, he says nothing about Judaism, he is not interested in religion per se, he is trying to formulate a path whereby Jews and the Jewish people can be physically saved, both from assimilation and from persecution.
These views were echoed in 1896 by Theodor Herzl, an assimilated Jewish journalist who wrote for a Viennese paper and covered the Dreyfus trial in 1895. The widespread hatred that Herzl experienced in France convinced him that the hatred of the Jews was not rational and was not religious, but was racial. He felt that the Jews could not survive in that atmosphere in Europe for very long, and so he formulated his views in a pamphlet entitled "The Jewish State: A search for a modern solution to the Jewish question."
In this work Herzl took Pinsker's proposal to its logical conclusion, in order to achieve full auto-emancipation the Jews needed to have their own nation state, not an artificial one carved out of Europe, but the return to a modern version of the Jewish State in its original location, in Zion. Thus was born political Zionism, and the first Zionist Congress took place in Basle in 1898, when Herzl famously declared "today I have taken the first steps to found the Jewish State," it took a mere 50 years.
It is important to note that the founders of the Zionist movement were not predominantly religious in their motivation, but they were predominantly nationalist, like Zeev Jabotinsky, or, even though the majority of Jewish socialists were internationalists, some were socialist-nationalists, such as Ber Borochov, who quoted the Talmud "If liberation is carried out in Eretz Yisrael then it is carried out everywhere." He was followed by others, including David Ben Gurion, so the nation State of Israel was founded by predominantly secular Jewish intellectuals. Unfortunately, the vast majority of European Jews remained impervious or opposed to this process, remaining either traditional or attempting to fully assimilate. The tragic processes of history revealed in time that Zionism was in fact the only effective answer to the Jewish predicament.
The rise of the democratic state in the nineteenth century brought to the Jews the sense that they had been emancipated from the ghetto and would henceforth be treated as equal citizens under the law. However, the promise was never realized, since although the Jews were entitled in principle to equal treatment under the law, in fact the Jews continued to be treated as a distinct group who were discriminated against, persecuted and denied social acceptance throughout Europe.
Whereas in feudal Europe the chief identity of the peasantry has been Christian, in nineteenth century Europe this religious identity was gradually replaced by a national identity, each "tribe" with its own nation-state, France, Germany, Hungary, etc. The Jews did not fit into this identity, even though they might give up their own religion and try to assimilate.
There were several responses to this predicament, and it became urgent for the Jewish elite to resolve this problem, since many of them foresaw disaster ahead. One response was socialism or communism, the belief that all men are brothers, in other words "internationalism," and that national identity did not matter, but in fact it did. Another response was "territorialism" the belief that the Jews should have their own separate nation state in Europe, but this was a non-starter. Another approach was proposed in 1882 by Leo Pinsker a Russian Jew who published a small but influential pamphlet entitled "Auto-Emancipation."
What Pinsker said in this pamphlet was that the Jews should not depend on the surrounding peoples to grant them emancipation, but the Jews must emancipate themselves, they must become a nation like other nations, and expect equality with them as individuals and as a group. It is noteworthy that in his proposal, he says nothing about Judaism, he is not interested in religion per se, he is trying to formulate a path whereby Jews and the Jewish people can be physically saved, both from assimilation and from persecution.
These views were echoed in 1896 by Theodor Herzl, an assimilated Jewish journalist who wrote for a Viennese paper and covered the Dreyfus trial in 1895. The widespread hatred that Herzl experienced in France convinced him that the hatred of the Jews was not rational and was not religious, but was racial. He felt that the Jews could not survive in that atmosphere in Europe for very long, and so he formulated his views in a pamphlet entitled "The Jewish State: A search for a modern solution to the Jewish question."
In this work Herzl took Pinsker's proposal to its logical conclusion, in order to achieve full auto-emancipation the Jews needed to have their own nation state, not an artificial one carved out of Europe, but the return to a modern version of the Jewish State in its original location, in Zion. Thus was born political Zionism, and the first Zionist Congress took place in Basle in 1898, when Herzl famously declared "today I have taken the first steps to found the Jewish State," it took a mere 50 years.
It is important to note that the founders of the Zionist movement were not predominantly religious in their motivation, but they were predominantly nationalist, like Zeev Jabotinsky, or, even though the majority of Jewish socialists were internationalists, some were socialist-nationalists, such as Ber Borochov, who quoted the Talmud "If liberation is carried out in Eretz Yisrael then it is carried out everywhere." He was followed by others, including David Ben Gurion, so the nation State of Israel was founded by predominantly secular Jewish intellectuals. Unfortunately, the vast majority of European Jews remained impervious or opposed to this process, remaining either traditional or attempting to fully assimilate. The tragic processes of history revealed in time that Zionism was in fact the only effective answer to the Jewish predicament.
posted by Jack Cohen at 12:13 PM
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