READING ASSIGNMENTS for Are Jews a Nation?What follows is an introduction to the course by Professor Myers.
In the spirit of Nahum Goldmann, and in our current age of globalization, one can—and must--ask: do Jews represent a cohesive group? Is there a single Jewish nation or people, or rather an isolated aggregate of individuals? In what ways does a Jewish collective exist? How can we fortify it?
At the heart of this set of questions is the premise that we currently find ourselves in a state of poverty in thinking about Jewish collectivity. We have a very limited vocabulary to describe our collective existence as Jews, and surprisingly little passion in debating its contours. To a great extent, we are the victims of our own modern successes. On one hand, the modern Jew is an autonomous and liberated "Sovereign Self," an individual who acts on his own and decides how to lead his life. Luring the Sovereign Self back into a robust and meaningful collective is like herding cats.
On the other hand, there is a powerful ideology of Jewish collective existence at work in Jewish life today. It is the belief in the importance of the State of Israel as the axis of Jewish life. But on closer inspection, it is important to ask whether the State of Israel is identical to the Jewish nation or people. If 60% of Jews live outside of the State of Israel today, what part do they have to play in the fate of the Jewish collective? What "rights" do they possess as citizens of a global Jewish nation? Can we even talk of a global Jewish collective that includes but is not equivalent to the State of Israel?
To gain traction on these questions (and perhaps revive the debate), this course will delve into the past by exploring a number of representatives from what we might designate "the Golden Age of Jewish Nationalism." Commencing in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, this era was full of constant and intense debates over Jewish collectivity. Zionists, Bundists, Territorialists, Agudists, Socialists, and others engaged one another in this open marketplace of ideas. They generated not a single response, but an abundance of answers to the question of Jewish collectivity.
We will begin our course by tracing the origins of Political Zionism, whose founding father, Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), laid out the rationale already in 1896 for the creation of a Jewish state. Not all of Herzl's Zionist contemporaries shared his vision of a Jewish state. One of his chief foils was the Hebrew essayist, Ahad Ha-am (1856-1927), who declared that Zionism should be a solution not to the physical insecurity of Jews, but to the decrepit state of Jewish culture. His Cultural Zionism stood at the opposite end of the spectrum from Herzl's Political Zionism. But it also stood in opposition to a forgotten form of Jewish nationalism known as Autonomism. Autonomism's leading representative was the Russian-Jewish historian Simon Dubnow (1860-1941), who believed that the heart of the Jewish nation should dwell neither in a sovereign state nor in Erets Yisrael (the Land of Israel), but rather in the Diaspora, where the overwhelming majority of world Jewry lived at the time he was active.
Ahad Ha-am and Dubnow differed over the preferred location and language of the Jewish people. But it was an oft-neglected thinker from a later generation, Simon Rawidowicz (1897-1957), who wisely concluded that Jewish nationalism was not a zero sum game—either the Diaspora or Zion. He articulated a program that conceived of the Jews as a single nation with two cultural capitals, "Babylon" and "Jerusalem."
When Rawidowicz wrote, well over 90% of the world's Jews lived in the Diaspora. As that number declines, the question of whether it is possible to live a full Jewish life outside of Israel is possible. The renowned Israeli author, A. B. Yehoshua, believes not, as he has frequently noted—most recently, in a controversial address delivered at the centennial anniversary of the American Jewish Committee in Washington in 2006. Yehoshua's reiteration of his stance prompted me to write a polemical response that challenges the proposition that life in the Jewish state is necessarily fuller and richer than in the Diaspora. My own contribution is intended less as a definitive antidote to the state of poverty in thinking about Jewish collectivity than as a prod to further discussion and debate.
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| Week 1 THE IDEAL OF A JEWISH STATE: THEODOR HERZL Reading assignment: Pinsker, Herzl Europe in the late nineteenth century sent deeply conflicting messages to the millions of Jews in its midst. On one hand, Jews anxiously sought realization of the lofty ideals of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, which promised equal opportunity and citizenship. On the other hand, new and virulent forms of hostility—now termed for the first time "anti-Semitism"—took rise. Indeed, Europe continued to contend with what was widely known as "The Jewish Question." The outbreak of violent pogroms in Tsarist Russia in 1881 prompted one Jewish doctor, Leo Pinsker (1821-1921), to call for Jews to emancipate themselves from European society (p. 56). Even bolder was Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), who is credited as the founder of Political Zionism. Raised in an assimilated Jewish family in Budapest and then Vienna, Herzl was a man of grandiose visions. Once, in his early thirties, he imagined leading a group of Jewish children to the baptismal font at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna. Shortly thereafter, while stationed as a journalist in Paris, Herzl witnessed a wave of accusations against Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jewish officer accused of espionage on behalf of the Germans. Scholars debate whether the Dreyfus Affair was the catalyst for a significant shift in Herzl's thinking or whether the shift came earlier. Whatever the case, by 1895, Herzl had begun to outline his plans to solve the perennial "Jewish Question" in Europe. The case of Capt. Dreyfus made clear to Herzl that Jews were not welcome on the Continent and that they required what every other self-respecting people possessed: a state of their own. In 1896, Herzl published a pamphlet on this theme, Der Judenstaat, or "The State of the Jews" (more commonly translated as "The Jewish State). A year later, he presided over the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. In The Jewish State, Herzl outlined in detail how a Jewish state would take rise. In the selections included in this unit (pp. 78-85), he discusses the contours of the state he hoped to create. While deemed a fantasy by many in his day, Herzl wrote in his diary in 1897 that within five—and at most, fifty—years, a Jewish state would take rise. Guided Reading Questions
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| Week 2 WHAT AND WHERE SHOULD THE JEWISH NATION BE? Reading assignments: Ahad Ha'am , Dubnow Theodor Herzl's call for a Jewish state, seemingly sensible and reasonable today, was greeted with bewilderment and hostility in its day. Traditionally observant Jews believed that Herzl was attempting to assume the role of Messiah by pushing for the reconstitution of a Jewish state. Even among early Zionists, Herzl's proposal was received with skepticism. Chief among Herzl's Zionist critics was the Russian-born Hebrew writer Ahad Ha-am (1856-1927), who confessed that he sat at the First Zionist Congress like "a mourner at a wedding feast." Whereas Herzl's focus was on securing the physical wellbeing of Jews, Ahad Ha-am was concerned with the spiritual and cultural wellbeing of Judaism. In his view, Judaism had fallen into a state of decline over the centuries, a process exacerbated by the pace of assimilation in his own day. The key to Jewish national revival lay not in the creation of a state, but rather in the rehabilitation of Hebrew language and culture. This process could only take place in the "spiritual center" of the Jewish nation: Erets Yisra'el (the land of Israel). While taking aim at Herzl's Political Zionism, Ahad Ha-am (pp. 107-115) also polemicized against another current of Jewish nationalism in the early twentieth century: Autonomism. Indeed, it is essential to remember that there were many competing varieties of Jewish nationalism in that period. Autonomism was associated with Ahad Ha-am's friend and ideological foil, the prolific Russian-Jewish historian Simon Dubnow (1860-1941), who argued that throughout history there was always a major center of influence, a single cultural capital, in the Jewish world. In the early twentieth century, Dubnow (pp. 255-264) maintained that this center was in Eastern Europe, where the majority of the world's Jewish population lived. He called for "national cultural autonomy" for the Jewish nation in Europe; this would entail the right of Jews to speak their own language (mainly Yiddish), raise up their own school system, and run their own cultural institutions, preferably with the political and financial support of the host state. In fact, the idea of "national cultural autonomy" was advocated by a number of thinkers (Jewish and non-Jewish) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It reflected a curious moment in the history of Europe in which there was a concerted drive to grant recognition to groups as "nations," but without the usual demand for sovereignty or statehood. Jewish thinkers such as Dubnow believed that this form of nationalism was especially appropriate for a group like the Jews, the overwhelming majority of whom lived in the diaspora. Guided Reading Questions
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Week 3 BABYLON AND JERUSALEM: THE DISTINCTIVE VISION OF SIMON RAWIDOWICZ Reading assignment: Rawidowicz Ahad Ha-am and Simon Dubnow, friends and fellow Russian Jews, were among the most important contributors to the raging debate over Jewish collectivity in the Golden Age of Jewish Nationalism. While Ahad Ha-am believed in the therapeutic powers of Hebrew, especially in the spiritual center of Erets Yisra'el, Dubnow was committed to Jewish national life in the Diaspora, including in the chief language of the Jewish masses of Eastern Europe: Yiddish. A somewhat later and oft-forgotten contributor to the debate was Simon Rawidowicz (1897-1957), an innovative Jewish scholar from Eastern Europe who regarded himself as both a disciple and critic of Ahad Ha-am and Dubnow. Educated in Berlin in the 1920s, Rawidowicz subscribed to the view that the mutually exclusive views of Zionists and Autonomists were mistaken. The Jewish nation was a global nation with two cultural capitals, which he metaphorically labeled "Babylon" and "Jerusalem." Throughout Jewish history, and in the present, these two centers operated not in opposition, but rather in tandem. Rawidowicz (pp. 151-161) called for a meaningful and reciprocal shutafut (partnership) between the co-equal parts of the Jewish nation—joined, he hoped, by a shared commitment to the cohesive force of Hebrew (à la Ahad Ha-am). At one level, there is something quite intuitive in Rawidowicz's program of "Babylon and Jerusalem." The Diaspora and Israel today are approaching a state of demographic parity. At another level, the imbalance between a sovereign political state and a loose collection of individuals and communities would seem to undermine the logic. What therefore can we make of Rawidowicz's vision today? Guided Reading Questions
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Week 4 A key aim of many Zionists has been the negation of the Diaspora, based on the belief that the quality of Jewish life is considerably better in the homeland than abroad. Thinkers from Herzl to David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973) tended to dismiss the Diaspora as the site of Jewish national dishonor, of subservience and passivity that must be overcome through Zionist activism. And yet, Ben-Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister and dominant political personality in the State's formative phase, felt compelled at times to acknowledge that the State of Israel could not simply dictate to Diaspora Jews how to behave. In 1950, two short years after the State was created, he signed an agreement with Jacob Blaustein, president of the American Jewish Committee, in which he acknowledged that Israel did not speak on behalf of or represent Diaspora Jews. On many subsequent occasions, Ben-Gurion affirmed his hope that Diaspora Jews make aliyah to Israel, for it was there, and only there, that one could lead a full Jewish life. This view is hardly unique to Ben-Gurion. It has been reiterated with particular frequency and force by the noted Israeli author, A. B. Yehoshua (b. 1936), in a long series of articles and books. On one noteworthy occasion, the centennial celebration of the American Jewish Committee in Washington in 2006, Yehoshua created a storm of controversy by reaffirming (p. 10) that Jewishness in the Jewish state "is immeasurably fuller and broader and more meaningful than the Jewishness of an American Jew." In response to Yehoshua's remarks, I wrote a paper, "Beyond 'Statism': A Call to Rethink Jewish Collectivity," that challenged the very premise of Statism—that is, the belief that existence in the State of Israel guaranteed a fuller and richer Jewish life. The paper went on to recall the views of Simon Rawidowicz as a means of reviving debate over the nature of global Jewish collective. The paper, in fact, makes a number of recommendations for institutionalizing the global Jewish collective, which should be seen as inclusive of but limited to the State of Israel. To a great extent, this paper seeks to evoke the polemical and self-consciously ideological writing of the Golden Age of Jewish Nationalism, principally as a means of re-igniting debate over the nature of Jewish collectivity. Guided Reading Questions
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