If one were to pick the major political disease of the twentieth century, one would have to choose chauvinism. Intense nationalism, in all its forms, has been responsible for more war and genocide than any other social force. Patriotic imperialists may choose to be brutal or subtle, but they are always dangerous. Although they may prefer to mask their tribal feeling under the guise of some universal mission like communism or democracy, the insistence on their nation’s permanent right to power betrays their ‘phoniness’.
No doctrine has despised historic nationalism more than humanism. With visions of a world state in which human identity was primary, the classical humanist viewed the inbred ethnic enclave as subversive of man’s welfare. With trust in the ideal of a detribalized and autonomous individual whose sense of security arose from his own personal creative efforts, the rational liberal feared the propaganda of the jealous nation state as a monstrous stimulus to racial prejudice and aggression.
Consequently, the phenomenon of Jewish nationalism has always posed a problem to the Jewish humanist. If Zionism is an attempt to create one more tribal reservation and to construct one more national fence, then it apparently violates the one world vision of historic humanism: The modern Jewish obsession with the preservation and growth of the Israeli state seems to stand in sharp contrast with the universalist ideal; while the cultivation of a separate Hebrew speaking culture seems to set up one more barrier to world unity.
A recent anti-Zionist publication faults the American Jew, on his Israel hang-up. It condemns him for his betrayal of the universal values of historic Judaism and his surrender to the narrow bigotry, of chauvinism. It assaults the concept and practice of the Israeli state and accuses it of succumbing, to the very disease it sought to cure. Avoiding the absurd pose of the familiar and frightened American anti-Zionist -(who feels compelled to plead his patriotism by substituting American nationalism for the Jewish variety), the author does not view the Jews as a religious society alone. He does not even indulge the humiliating defense. that they are nothing more than loyal citizens of the Jewish faith’. He simply sees them as a special kind of nation.
The argument against the cultivation of a landed Jewish state derives from the unique status the Jewish people have achieved. The author maintains that the Jews have become what ‘no other nation has succeeded in becoming. They have developed .a technique for survival which is independent of national territory, a national language, and a single political allegiance. They have evolved, in the words of the Russian historian, Simon Dubnow, into an “international nation”, at home in every culture, climate, and citizenship and free of the chauvinistic sins of parochial interest and imperialistic aggression. No longer tied down to the defense of one land and one government the Jews are precursors of what all nations must become in the future, social exemplars who combine cultural loyalty with world citizenship. Zionism betrays this unique achievement by seeking to “normalize” the Jewish people as an ordinary territorial nation. It implicitly displays the vulgar antisemitism of those, who denounce the Jew for’his “rootlessness” and cosmopolitan character and who find in his international nationalism a sick deviation. The. unique achievement of two thousand years of Diaspora history is perfunctorily, dismissed in favor of what any other nation can easily do.
Our author views Zionism as reactionary, as a throwback to a primitive national concept which the Jews painfully outgrew. Instead of resisting the propaganda of the nineteenth century nationalists who viewed the nation state as the ultimate expression of human organization, the founders of political Zionism cynically surrendered to the very ideology which sponsored the exclusion of Jews from the civic life of European countries. The Zionists were brainwashed into accepting the techniques of their enemies only in reverse. If Frenchmen Could be exclusive, so could Jews.
The result of this imitation, our anti-Zionist maintains, was a diversion of the energies of the Jewish people from the task of creating a world in which national boundaries are Irrelevant, to the exhausting work of imposing a new ethnic state on a hostile native population amid the violence of mutual fear and hate. The old “spiritual” goals of friendship and peace were replaced by the “material” lust for land and power. In such a political atmosphere supercharged with racism, it was inevitable, that Jew would even turn on Jew. The European Ashkenazi, fed on the cliche of Western nationalism, exploits the Oriental Sephardi, rejects his culture, and demands a national conformity to his own background.
Is this the classic “mission” of the Jew? the author asks. Is the role of the Jew to be nothing more than the expert in military tactics and the manipulator of defeated Arab populations? For over two thousand years, our writer maintains, the Hebrew people treasured a this-worldly profoundly concerned with social compassion and international peace. The Jews conceived themselves to be missionaries of justice whose exemplary behavior would provide a pattern for moral imitation. Through centuries of cruel persecution, they persevered in their dedication. Will the international people of Israel now sell its religious birthright for a mess of Zionist pottage? Will the pleasant taste of power subvert its idealism?
It is indeed ironic our author contends, that the so-called Jewish state has, totally reversed the value system of Judaism and turned the Jews into goyim. Israel has become a secular state, obsessed by a concern with national survival, proud of its military skills, and utterly contemptuous of the conquered “aborigines.” In the act of resisting the racialist Aryans the Jews have themselves become Aryanized. In the process of becoming normal, the Jews have betrayed their distinctive virtues and have unconsciously assumed the life pattern of the very nations they resisted. The Zionist program has scrapped the historic destiny of the Jewish people and substituted conventional chauvinism. While it claims to be the grand savior of Jewish culture, it has, for all practical purposes, destroyed it.
The indictment of the writer continues through many more assaults a But the major charges of a relevant anti-Zionism have already been clearly stated and deserve our special scrutiny. If we respond with tribal hysteria and accusations of group disloyalty, we will only verify by our excitement the power of these arguments. If, on the other hand, we view these statements with the possibility that they may be true, we may cease to be defensive long enough to uncover the truth.
For instance, the assertion that Zionism and Israel are destroying the unique international character of the Jewish people confuses cause and effect. It is not the case that political Zionist ideology preceded the disintegration of Jewish commitment to a special Diaspora culture. Zionist passion was provoked by the obvious fact that this culture was simply ceasing to exist. As long as Jews were confined to the total segregation of the urban ghetto and were restricted to the performance of peripheral economic roles, they could retain a unique linguistic and religious milieu over a wide dispersion. Where group isolation was so complete, territorial separation was irrelevant. But the French Revolution undermined the conditions of Diaspora culture. After emancipation no distinctive Jewish culture was possible in the European Diaspora. The social-climbing middle-class world in which Jews feverishly labored was not hospitable to ethnic diversity and demanded assimilation. By the end of the nineteenth century there was no “international Jewish nation” in Western Europe; and the Yiddish ghetto of Eastern Europe faded away with the Bolshevik upheaval. All that remained of Jewish unity was the common experience of antisemitism and the need to resist it. Group cultural life lingered on in the castrated forms of the modern synagogue where the socially respectable vestiges of a pariah culture could be revered.
Moreover, the international character of the Jewish people before the French Revolution was neither unique nor one- worldish. The gypsies provided a perfect lower-class counterpart to Jewish alienation. To view nomadic outcasts as self-conscious harbingers of universal order is as absurd as to confuse a band of desert Bedouin with world federalists.
Cultural Zionism was never an alternative to a vital Diaspora nationality. In an age where Jewish isolation was neither desirable nor feasible, Jewish ethnic culture without Israel would be well on its way to permanent limbo. If linguistic diversity has. value in a world of technological sameness, then the only workable provision for a unique Hebrew presence is territorial concentration’ and an independent political authority to promote it. Israel is not one of several existing Jewish cultural options. It is the only one.
Nor is the Zionist guilty of a self-hating rejection of Diaspora nationhood. Outside the bizarre enclaves of Hasidic piety, there is nothing to reject. Dubnow’s pre-Bolshevik Russia is a non-existent alternative. As for Jewish America, its caloric puberty rites provide no serious competition. To score nationalism as reactionary is humanistically valid. It would be nice to live in a world in which every man could function as an autonomous individual and in which every person would be allowed diversity and uniqueness. But then we don’t. The society in which we live is obsess by group labels, diseased by bigotry, and sick from chronic antisemitism. Neither the Jew nor the Negro is presently in charge of those chauvinistic social forces which assault his ego and aggravate his self-hate. Black Power and the frightening petty nationalisms of Asia and Africa seem incongruous with the one-world technology of the twentieth century. But they are psychically necessary. European arrogance is reaping the harvest of its racialism.
The Negro cannot respond first as an individual, and then as a Negro, because the social environment in which he presently lives reverses the order. Only when he achieves a sense of group power and vicarious self-esteem as a black man will he be strong enough to play the individual. The Jew was and is no different. He requires the same ego support. Patroizing reassurances at interfaith banquets do not solve his problem; they only emphasize his dependence and his powerlessness. A corner of the world in which Jews collectively exercise control over their destiny is the first step toward self-respect. Anglosaxons who have tasted national power for three centuries and have enjoyed the gift of its self-confidence are psychically best disposed to lead the way to individualism. They’ve already had their group therapy.
Israel may not have cured the world of antisemitism, as its Zionist proponents once suggested. But it certainly has done more than any other existing social institution to alleviate the massive self-hate which has distinguished Diaspora Jewry. Jewish self-esteem is never a function of pity and perpetual martyrdom. Nor is it enhanced by cheap rationalization about how noble it is to be weak and persecuted. The simple ordinary pleasure of defending oneself against attack is far more effective.
As for “materialism” it seems an odd accusation. To describe the historic concerns of Diaspora Jews as “spiritual” and the present Israeli push for land and power as “materialistic” seems too ludicrous to sustain scrutiny. If any form of economic behavior characterizes the two millenia of Jewish dispersion, the bourgeois pattern of trade and money accumulation has been dominant. This social niche may have been either voluntary or 4 compelled – but it was real. To imagine that the submissiveness of a pariah outcast people was due to a friendly desire to share the wealth and to promote universal peace is to be more than foolish. Behind the Jewish smiles and shrugs lurked a hostility so massive that it dominated the fantasy life of every Jew. The official prayerbook featured daily reminders of how a sympathetic God would wreak vengeance on Jewish enemies and restore his people to the position and power their pedigree demanded. The Diaspora attitude toward goyim was hardly benign.
It is interesting to note that the first Jewish social experiments which were motivated by a vision of worldwide reform, were instituted by Zionists. One may or may not be sympathetic to socialism – but the kibbutz cooperative stands as a pioneer effort to create a viable social unit with more than Jewish usefulness. Despite all the cliched propaganda about the age-old Diaspora concern with economic justice, and despite the long roster of distinguished Jewish humanitarians who functioned largely outside the official community, one searches in vain for any sustained collective Jewish effort to promote social reform before the twentieth century. Would it be too unfair to assert that the lovers of Diaspora values are as pretentious as some of the Zionist zealots?
If the Jews of Diaspora reality were a nervous, neurotic, and self-absorbed bourgeoisie in various stages of affluence and degeneration, their mental condition was understandable. Given the provocations they sustained, who wouldn’t be nervous or self-absorbed? To maintain that rabbinic ideology, or any form of historic Judaism was addicted to the notion of an ethical mission to the Gentiles, is to defy fact. The overwhelming obsession of Jewish ideology since the trauma of the Babylonian exile has been with Jewish survival. Both theology and the phenomenon of religious segregation were subservient to this need. So absorbed were our ancestors with this monumental task that no energies survived for anything else. Even today, whether the enemy be persecution or assimilation, the Jews, like all threatened ethnic minorities, are self- pityingly tied up with their own problems. They are emotionally incapable of performing the role their naive theologians keep assigning them.
The virtue of Zionism was its attempt to “normalize” Jewish life. If a secure territorial base could be established for the survival of Jewish culture where Jews could sustain a linguistically unique Hebrew culture and where they could avoid the exhausting self-hate of an ethnic pariah, they might relax long enough to worry about somebody other than themselves. Although the Arab threat promotes the continuation of chauvinism, the Israeli environment breeds i more self-confident and less defensive Jew than the Diaspora, who does not need to prove that he is special.
To speak of the ‘Aryanization’ of the Jew is to describe not only the Israeli present but also the Jewish past. Any reader of the Bible can detect the territorial obsession of its authors. Divine promises about real estate begin with Genesis and continue with unending repetition to Ezra and Nehemiah. The books reveal the extraordinary love of an ordinary people for a less than ordinary land.. Dreams of national power dominate its prophecies and hostility to neighbors covers over half of its poetry. Even the special vulnerability of the Jews to defeat and exile made them too angry to die. The difference between Gentiles and Diaspora Jews was not that one desired to be a landed nation and the other did not. It was the simple contrast between fulfillment and frustration.
A healthy Judaism begins with two requirements – honesty about the Jewish past – and a willingness to confront present reality. It also beg with compassion.: The job of an effective religion is to satisfy the real needs of real people – not the abstract requirements of some vague utopia The test of Jewish humanism will not be found in a doctrinaire dismissal of the transitional need for Jewish nationalism (or Arab nationalism, for that matter). It will rest on the ability of the Zionist Jew to transcend the traditional Diaspora obsession with Jewish survival – and even worry about Arabs.