Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Territorialism

The second of Dr. Sharan's lectures on Jewish history concentrated on the topic of "territorialism," the idea that the Jews should have a separate territory, but not in the ancient homeland of Israel. The greatest exponent of this view was Simon Dubnow (1860-1941), the great Jewish historian who travelled throughout Eastern Europe and wrote the classic work "World history of the Jewish people," first published in German in 1929 in ten volumes. This was a very influential work and many Jews in Eastern Europe agreed with his views.
During the medieval period the Jews were often invited to feudal lands by the rulers in order to participate in administration, tax collecting and banking (usury was forbidden by the Church). This resulted in hatred of the Jews by the populace who were often treated not much better than slaves by the feudal Lord while the Jews were protected and became rich. The Jews became the first middle class, between the aristocrats and the mob. The ghetto in many towns was adjacent to the castle for greater protection from the mob and the Jews were often guarded by the Lord's soldiers.
The irony of Jewish history is that when the French revolution occured and all people were emancipated, the Jews no longer had that protection and were at the mercy of the mob. This can be seen in the reaction of the French in the Dreyfus case and the Germans in many cases. Even though democracy in principle made the Jews equal citizens, in fact the Christian citizenry, now also emancipated from the control of the feudal Lords, could then strike at the hated Jews who were spread out as a minority throughout Europe.
The response of Simon Dubnow to the new situation of racist anti-Semitic attacks was to call for the establishment of a Jewish sovereign territory within Europe. He argued that for hundreds of years the Jews had had no physical connection with their ancient homeland and had become Europeans, born and living in European societies for generations. Yet the Jews had their own particular culture, spoke their own language, Yiddish, and had their own religion, so Dubnow argued the Jews should have their own enclave, a land separate from the surrounding States and nations.
However, the Jews had no means to enforce such a plan, even though there were millions of them living within the "Pale of Settlement" the area of Eastern Europe controlled by Russia within which they were allowed to live. In order to do that they would have needed an army, but only states could organize such armies and the surrounding peoples that hated them would certainly not give up territory for the formation of a Jewish country. Although it might seems a good idea in principle, it was, as we say now, "pie-in-the-sky."
The reaction of the Jews to violent widespread anti-Semitism was either to cower or run. This only enhanced their powerlessness, and so when push came to shove, and the Nazis arrived on the scene they not only murdered the Jews, ironically including Simon Dubnow himself, but they killed any idea of such a Jewish territory.
Attempts were made to find an alternative underpopulated territory elsewhere for the Jews, such as Uganda (suggested as an alternative to Palestine by the British), western Canada and Brazil. But, none of these had any great attraction for the Jews. In the USSR, Stalin, seeing the anomaly of the Jews as the only "nationality" without a homeland within the USSR, concocted the far-away Birobidzhan as the autonomous Jewish homeland and shipped thousands of Jews there, but it never worked, although there are still some Jews remaining and they speak Yiddish..
The destruction of the European Jews exposed the futility of territorialism and enhanced the attraction of Zionism, the return to the real Jewish homeland, to the remaining Jews. Zionism, that had been conceived of as a romantic notion by the Jews of Eastern Europe before WWII and a threat to the lives of assimilated Jews in Western Europe and the USA, suddenly was seen as the only practical solution to the Jewish national problem.

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