Assessing Zionism and the State of Israel as a Dramatic Break with the Jewish Religious Tradition

WHAT IS MODERN ISRAEL? By Yakov M. Rabkin, Pluto Press, 240 Pages, $27.00

In recent days many respected Jewish academics, authors and religious leaders have expressed their dismay with Zionism and the State of Israel, which they once embraced.

Writing in Haaretz (Aug. 1, 2016), Professor Hasia Diner, director of New York University’s Center for American Jewish History, notes that she stopped being a Zionist in 2010. She criticizes Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and declares that, “The Law of Return can no longer look to me as anything other than racism,” referring to the Israeli law that bestows automatic citizenship on immigrants with at least one Jewish grandparent.

In the article, written with Babson College history professor Marjorie Feld, Diner argues that their renouncing of Zionism signals a broader trend in the American Jewish community. More and more Jews, in their view, reject the idea of Israel as a “Jewish homeland.” They declare: “Though we certainly do not claim to speak for all American Jews, as scholars we know we are part of something much larger, something that … should be shaking the foundation of American Jewish leaders. There is a growing gap between these leaders and the people for whom they claim to speak.”

Rabbi David Gordis, a former executive of the American Jewish Committee and former president of Hebrew College and Vice President of the Jewish Theological Seminary, wrote in Tikkun (Feb. 23, 2016) that Israel is “a failure,” and the Zionist dream has “curdled into Jewish selfishness.” He states that, “After a life and career devoted to the Jewish community and to Israel, I conclude that in every important way, Israel has failed to realize its promise for me … Present day Israel has discarded the rational, the universal, the visionary. These values have been subordinated to cruel and oppressive occupation, an emphatic materialism … and distorted by a fanatic obscurantism and fundamentalist religion which encourages the worst behavior rather than the best.”

Zionism Is a Break with Judaism

Voices such as these are growing in number. Yakov Rabkin, professor of history at the University of Montreal, in his thoughtful new book, shows us that Zionism was conceived as a clear break with Judaism and the Jewish religious tradition and has historically been opposed by the majority of Jews, Orthodox, Conservative and Reform. He shows that it must be seen in the context of European ethnic nationalism, colonial expansion and geopolitical interests, rather than as an incarnation of Biblical, prophecies or a culmination of Jewish history. He also points to the Protestant roots of Zionism, explaining the particular support for Israel among evangelicals in the United States, the United Kingdom and other Western countries.

“Political Zionism,” Rabkin writes, “is part and parcel of the history of late 19th-century ethnic nationalism. The nationalism that led to the creation of Israel is essentially and profoundly European, drawn up by Europeans to solve the ‘Jewish question,’ itself strictly European in nature … The collapse of multinational empires in the wake of the First World War released powerful nationalist feelings … The United Kingdom, which not only kept its empire, but also sought to extend it to the Middle East, expressed in 1917 by way of the Balfour Declaration its support for the idea of a ‘Jewish national home in Palestine.’ In this sense, Zionism is an integral part of the European colonial history. Colonialism at the time had no negative connotation; the principal financial arm of the Zionist movement was then officially known as the Jewish colonial trust.”

The religious idea of a Jewish return to Palestine had nothing to do with the political enterprise of Zionism. “Jewish tradition,” writes Rabkin, “holds that the idea of return must be part of a messianic project rather than the human initiative of migration to the Holy Land. It then becomes much easier to understand why the Zionist enterprise, reflecting as it did Christian motifs, was rejected by the overwhelming majority of Jews at the turn of the 20th century. There was little room for Jewish tradition in the Zionist scheme, which not only originated among Protestants but was also sustained by individuals of Jewish origin who were atheists or agnostics.”

Idea of “Jewish nationality” Has No Basis

Considering Israel’s place in Jewish tradition, Rabkin shows that the Zionist notion of “Jewish nationality,” has no legitimate basis. Jehiel Jacob Weisberg, a rabbinical authority who developed a creative synthesis of Lithuanian Judaism and German Orthodoxy, pointed out that, “Jewish nationality is different from that of all nations in the sense that it is uniquely spiritual, and that its spirituality is nothing but the Torah … In this respect we are different from all other nations, and whoever does not recognize it, denies the fundamental principle of Judaism.”

It is not the physical geography of the Biblical land of Israel which is essential for Jews, Rabkin writes, but “the obligation to follow the commandments of the Torah that have traditionally been the hallmark of the Jews and that makes them a ‘chosen people,’ a concept that implies moral and ritual responsibilities rather than intrinsic superiority … According to the Pentateuch, the Jews … did not originate in the land of Israel. As a group, they emerged in Egypt, having been consecrated as a distinct people near Mount Sinai only by their acceptance of the Torah. Spiritual purification, essential for entry into the Promised Land, took place — obviously — outside the land, during 40 years of wandering in the desert … the Holy Land cannot sanctify the Jews, but their transgressions can profane the land, which in turn will ‘spew’ them out (Leviticus 18:28).”

To the question of whether Jews constitute “a people,” Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the Orthodox Jewish thinker and Hebrew University professor, provides this assessment: “The historical Jewish people was defined neither as a race, nor a people of this country or that, nor as a people that speaks the same language, but as the people of Torah Judaism and its commandments … The words spoken by … Rabbi Saadia Gaon (882-942) more than a thousand years ago: ‘Our nation exists only within the Torah’ have not only a normative, but also an empirical meaning. They testified to a historical reality whose power could be felt up until the 19th century. It was then that the fracture, which has not ceased to widen with time, first occurred: the fissure between Jewishness and Judaism.”

Jewish Nationalism Is “Invented”

Rather than representing Judaism and Jewish tradition, notes Rabkin, “… a mere handful of assimilated Jews in Central Europe invented Jewish nationalism in the second half of the 19th century. Frustrated, despite their best efforts as individuals to assimilate, these Jews did not feel entirely accepted by their non-Jewish environment. As a remedy to their frustration they sought collective assimilation: to become a nation like all other nations … Their movement, which took the name of Zionism, touched off a profound sense of rejection among the majority of Jews.”

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, leader of modern Orthodoxy in Germany, encouraged Jews to integrate into the surrounding society. In Hirsch’s view, Jewish nationalism could only be a transcendent idea, contingent neither on possession of land, nor upon political sovereignty. “The Torah does not exist for the state but the state for the Torah,” he declared. In the midst of Europe, rife with many varieties of nationalism, Hirsch was restating the classic concept that the Torah, and only the Torah, makes the Jews a collective entity.

Growing anti-Semitism at the end of the 19th century, writes Rabkin, “was to act as a catalyst … to rally a handful of Central European intellectuals to the Protestant notion of the physical ingathering of exiled Jews in the Holy Land. In such a form, Jewish nationalism proved to be conceptually compatible with anti-Semitic principle, for it also postulates the impossibility for a Jew to become a full member of European society, History has shown that the attractiveness of Zionism increases with the intensity of anti-Semitism.”

Bringing About the Return of Jesus

The Jews, Rabkin shows, came to Zionism long after the Christians. The translation of the Bible into vernacular languages during the Reformation, and particularly into English, encouraged the belief that the concentration of the Jews in the Holy Land should be considered an event of supreme importance for Christianity. Such an occurrence would bring about the return of Jesus to earth, precipitating the Apocalypse and the ultimate triumph of Christianity, which would be signaled by the mass conversion of the Jews. It was a notion first promoted in England. The Puritans spread these ideas in North America. In the 18th century, Joseph Priestley, a prominent scientist and philosopher, attempted to convince British rabbi David Levi to organize a transfer of Jews to Palestine. The rabbi rejected the idea of reinstating the Jews in the Holy Land by material means and affirmed that the Jews must accomplish their mission in their countries of residence.

In the 19th century, an Anglican priest, John Nelson Darby, launched the Christian proto-Zionist movement in Plymouth, where he formulated a doctrine that he termed “dispensationalism.” Drawing on a literal reading of three biblical verses, he affirmed that the Second Coming of Christ was possible only if the land of Israel belonged exclusively to the Jews. This doctrine was favorably received by many in the U.S. where, in 1908, the Scofield Reference Study Bible was published.

Drawing on these ideas, the modern-day authors Tim LaHay and Jerry Jenkins wrote the Left Behind series, of which more than 100 million copies were printed and which were adapted for the screen. In this series, writes Rabkin, “… the State of Israel is clearly presented as the incarnation of Darby’s vision. Christian Zionism, which today has become a significant force, can thus be seen as part of a several centuries’ long continuum … The Balfour Declaration … issued in 1917 … reflected the already well- established tradition of using Christian beliefs to advance the imperial designs of the European powers.”

Herzl’s Program of “Protestant Inspiration”

Well before the Balfour Declaration, William Hechler, a Protestant visionary, befriended Zionist leader Theodor Herzl and encouraged him to gather the Jews in the Promised Land. “Hechler,” notes Rabkin, “thus became the ‘prophet’ who inspired Herzl, the ‘Prince,’ in his project for the salvation of the Jews. As the former vice mayor of Jerusalem Andre Chourtaqui has noted, Herzl’s program seems to be primarily of Protestant inspiration.”

The Zionist activists who emerged in Eastern Europe never experienced the tolerant variety of nationalism that makes a clear distinction between nation, religion, society and the state, the kind of nationalism found in countries such as Canada, Australia, the U.S. and other Western societies. They both rejected Jewish religious tradition and the idea of a tolerant, and diverse society. Unlike the Russian Zionists, who largely rejected Judaism as a religion, Theodor Herzl’s “relationship with Judaism was a more pragmatic and functional one,” notes Rabkin. “So remote from the tradition as to refuse to have his son circumcised, he nonetheless recognized that it could serve to attract those Jews ‘still sunk in the old ways,’ precisely those who, in spite of their mistrust of the new ideology, were deemed more susceptible to Zionist overtures. On the political level, Herzl conceived Judaism as a useful tool for state building, very much along the lines of clericalism in Christian lands.”

Herzl’s natural allies in promoting Zionism were ant-Semites who shared his goal of removing Jews from Europe. Rabkin provides this assessment: “The nationalist conceptualization of the Jews and of their history can be traced both to Zionism and to the racial anti-Semitism from which the Jews suffered in the 20th century. Herzl counted upon the assistance of the anti-Semites to bring the Zionist project to fruition. It must be remembered that both Zionism and anti-Semitism originated in Europe, the home of colonialism and racial discrimination. The dominant current in the Zionist movement continued to take inspiration from European nationalism by encouraging settler colonialism that excluded and ultimately dispossessed the local population. Zionism succeeded in setting up a state just as the nations of Europe were recoiling from ethnic nationalism in the wake of the atrocities of the Second World War. Moreover, the Zionists intended to establish sovereignty over a territory in which they constituted an immigrant minority made up of disparate ethnic groups. For these reasons Zionism can best be described as a belated ‘illegitimate son of ethnic nationalism.’”

Zionism Represented Nothing in Jewish Tradition

In Rabkin’s view, Zionism represented nothing found in Jewish religious tradition but was, instead, an example of Western ethnic nationalism and colonial enterprise: “… the Zionist movement sought to colonize with Europeans a territory in Western Asia inhabited by a variety of ethnic and confessional groups. The first Jewish immigrants, at the end of the 19th century, settled on the land in a random manner, employing Arab workers on their farms. Unlike them, those who migrated to Palestine in the early 20th century practiced a concentrated form of colonization: they set up exclusively Jewish settlements, which entailed the displacement of local populations. The accent placed on the establishment of ethnically homogeneous settlements could not but have created resistance … The Zionist movement adopted a policy of separate development that remains in force up to the present … A lasting resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict would necessarily involve a form of decolonization. Since the Zionist colonialists have no country to which they could return … decolonization might follow the South African model. There, the leadership of the African National Congress recognized the legitimacy of the presence of white colonists in their country …”

When Israel proclaims itself a “democracy,” and is defended as such by its American supporters, this is only part of the story. “Israeli society is democratic,” notes Rabkin, “but, faithful to its founding principles, in a selective manner, so it functions as an ethnocracy. The Law of Return allows any Jew to migrate to Israel and acquire citizenship, while the same citizenship is often inaccessible to those who have been living in the country for generations. The Zionization of the land, that is, its ‘de- Arabization,’ much more than simply declaring the state ‘Jewish,’ has maintained and reinforced segregation in its various forms, and constitutes one of the pillars of the Israeli Zionist identity … A year after the unilateral Declaration of Independence, the state of Israel, in association with the Jewish National Fund, controlled 93 per cent of these lands, an outcome achieved by the expropriation of land belonging to the Palestinian refugees whose return was forbidden by the Israeli authorities.”

The contradiction between Judaism and Zionism was set forth by many, in Israel and elsewhere, who are cited by the author. Haim Hazaz, an author and Zionist ideologue, writes through one of his protagonists: “Zionism and Judaism are not the same thing, but are two very different things. In fact, there can be no doubt that they are two self-contradictory things. When one can no longer be a Jew, one becomes a Zionist. Zionism has emerged from the ruins of Judaism, as the people faced exhaustion … One thing is certain, Zionism is not a continuation — nor is it the remedy for a sickness. It uproots and destroys. On the contrary, it misguides the people, defies it, goes against its will and its spirit, empties and uproots and abandons it for another path.”

Zionists Put Palestine before Rescuing Nazism’s Victims

When the Nazis came to power in Germany and the persecution of the Jews began, Rabkin shows that the Zionists placed the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine before any efforts to rescue Jews: “… several planned attempts to save the Jews of Hungary and elsewhere appear to have encountered resistance from the Zionist leadership. Even before the war, the Zionists attempted to block diplomatic efforts, particularly at the Evian Conference in 1938, to find a place of exile for Jewish refugees. In response to an appeal to come to the aid of the Jews of Europe, Itzhak Gruenbaum, prominent Zionist leader and future Israeli minister of the interior, replied, ‘One cow in Palestine is more important than all the Jews of Poland.’ Another, Sol Meyer, a wartime Zionist functionary, refused to save thousands of lives by paying the Nazis, arguing, ‘If we do not have sufficient victims, we shall have no right to demand an independent state.’”

In 1938, following Kristallnacht, which set off a wave of physical violence against Germany’s Jews, David Ben-Gurion said: “If I knew that all Jewish children could be saved by having them relocated to England, but only half by transferring them to Palestine, I would choose the second option, because what is at stake would not only have been the fate of those children, but also the historical destiny of the Jewish people.”

Historians, writes Rabkin, “… concur in their assessment that Ben-Gurion and his inner circle hindered attempts to save the European Jewish communities from extermination. The Zionist leadership, they argue, did its utmost to subordinate rescue efforts to their primary objective, which was the establishment of a Jewish state and a New Hebrew Man … In so doing, it treated human beings as ‘human material,’ reducing the survival and death of millions to a matter of political expediency.”

On his return from a visit to the Jewish communities of Europe prior to the Second World War, Rabbi Morris Lazaron, an early leader of the American Council for Judaism, protested against the concentration on financing projects in Palestine to the detriment of the rescue of Jews threatened by the Nazis in Europe. He also protested against the Zionist claim that Palestine represented the only place of safety for the Jews and lashed out at Zionist propaganda that the world would sooner or later reject the Jews because they were Jews. In his view, it was irresponsible to undermine the confidence of American Jews by inviting them to forfeit their trust in free and democratic Western societies because of events in Germany.

Affinity between Zionism and National Socialism

The irony, which few today properly recognize, is, Rabkin writes, that, “To a certain extent, there existed a conceptual, if not political, affinity between the Zionist movement and National Socialism: both considered the Jews as foreign people who could never be assimilated and had no place in Europe. Rabbi Joachim Prinz, a Zionist activist in Germany, greeted the ascent to power by the Nazis and celebrated ‘the end of liberalism’ in his book ‘Wir Juden’ (We Jews), published in Berlin in 1934. From the safety of Britain, he later confirmed that the Nazis treated the Zionists like favorites, in stark contrast to the treatment meted out to other Jews.”

Zionist behavior in Palestine, Rabkin points out, also created a tense situation with the indigenous Arab population, causing Britain to sharply limit Jewish emigration. An Orthodox Jewish leader in Palestine, Rabbi Josrph Zvi Duschinsky, declared before the United Nations in 1947 that Zionism was responsible for the violence and friction with the Arabs, forcing the British government to limit Jewish immigration in the early 1930s. Zionism stood accused, in his eyes, of making it impossible to save millions of Jews from death: “The colossal massacre of millions of our brethren might have been averted to a very substantial degree, for many of them might have been able to live peacefully in the Holy Land.” He concluded that if the traditional leaders, devoid of even the slightest national ambition, had continued to run the Jewish communities in Palestine, the long history of neighborliness with the Arabs would have made it possible to open the doors to the threatened Jews of Europe.

This was a view expressed before the massacre of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. In 1937, Rabbi Judah Magnes, president of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, wrote a letter to The New York Times stating, “We have failed. We have not known how to make peace … With Arab consent we could settle many hundreds of thousands of persecuted Jews in various Arab lands. That is worth a real price. Without Arab consent even our 400,000 in Palestine remain in jeopardy, despite the momentary protection of British bayonets.”

The manner in which Palestinians were displaced upon the creation of Israel, Rabkin points out, has little to do with Israeli declarations on the subject: “More than 800,000 non-Jews left Palestine in 1947-49 … In violation of numerous U.N. resolutions, the Israeli government forbade the refugees to return to their homes and confiscated their property. Several thousand non-Jews who remained within the new country likewise looked on as their villages and dwellings were destroyed or confiscated without compensation. More than 500 villages were leveled. In the early 1950s, the Knesset adopted legislation authorizing the expropriation of land belonging to Palestinians.”

Jewish Opposition to Zionism

Of particular interest is the chapter on the long history of Jewish opposition to Zionism. “Zionism was, at its inception,” Rabkin writes, “a marginal movement. Opposition to the Zionist idea was articulated on the spiritual and religious as well as the social and political levels. Most practicing Jews, both Orthodox and Reform, rejected Zionism, referring to it as a project and an ideology that conflicted with the values of Judaism … The outlook of the Zionists, and their ideas, were to a great extent foreign to Judaism … the respected Israeli intellectual Boaz Evron argues that, ‘Zionism is indeed the negation of Judaism.’ The words that for decades have been inscribed on the walls of the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) quarter of Meah Shearim in Jerusalem echo this basic position: ‘Judaism and Zionism are diametrically opposed to each other.’”

In the case of Reform Jews, writes Rabkin, “Like the majority of streams of Judaism at the beginning of the 20th century, the Reform movement stood in firm opposition to the new ideology.” Rabbi Louis Grossman, a professor at Hebrew Union College, declared in 1899 that, “A sober student of Jewish history and a genuine lover of his co-religionists sees that the Zionist agitation contradicts everything that is typical of Jews and Judaism.” The president of the college, Rabbi Kaufman Kohler said in 1916: “Ignorance and irreligion are at the bottom of the whole movement of political Zionism.”

Opposition to Zionism declined in the wake of the Nazi period. Yet, Rabkin points out, the traditional Reform opposition to Jewish nationalism and belief in a universal, prophetic Judaism, was kept alive by the American Council for Judaism. He writes: “Reform rabbis focused on the priority of religious identity and deplored its transformation into a national, even a racial, concept … Principled anti-Zionism in the ranks of Reform Judaism has survived mainly within the American Council for Judaism … For Reform Judaism, Zionism is as much a departure from tradition as it is for Orthodox Judaism.”

Critics Are Now Seen As Prophetic

As support for Zionism grew, its critics were treated harshly but, Rabkin argues, they have now come to be seen as prophetic: “Those who warned against the creation of a Zionist state saw their words treated with disdain, or at least with condescension. However, these same Jewish authors have proven to be prophetic in identifying early on the trends that have now appeared in Israeli society and in Jewish communities around the world. They had, in particular, foreseen the upsurge of chauvinism and xenophobia, the creeping militarization of society, and the growing popularity of fascist ideas. This is why their writings today warrant the most serious attention.”

In 1938, alluding to Nazism, Albert Einstein warned an audience of Zionist activists against the temptation to create a state imbued with “a narrow nationalism within our own ranks against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish state.” Another world-renowned German Jew, the philosopher Martin Buber, spoke out in 1942 against the “aim of the minority to ‘conquer’ territory by means of international maneuvers.” In the midst of hostilities that broke out after Israel unilaterally declared independence, Buber cited with despair, “This sort of ‘Zionism’ blasphemes the name of Zion; it is nothing more than one of the crude forms of nationalism.”

One of the objects of the humanistic critique of Zionism, notes Rabkin, is “Zionism’s discrimination against non-Jews. This is particularly evident in the portable citizens’ rights that the settlers carry with them irrespective of their actual physical location. They were able to exercise their right to vote in national elections from the Occupied Territories in 1967, while the conquered local population was deprived of this political right … Meron Benvenisti, former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, characterized this system as ‘Herrenvolk (master race) democracy.”

Military Rabbinate Embraces Repression

In the course of the Israeli operation against Gaza in 2009-10, a new tactic used by the military rabbinate was revealed, Rabkin notes, “to use Judaic texts to lend weight to calls for merciless repression of the Palestinian population. One year later, a rabbi from Itzhar in the West Bank affirmed, in a book called ‘Torat-ha-melekh’ (The King’s Torah) that the prohibition ‘Thou shalt not kill’ (just like ‘You shall love your neighbor’) applies only to Jews … It is described as permitted, and even obligatory, to kill all those — Jews and non-Jews — who oppose Israeli military operations. By identifying the modern state of Israel with the realms of biblical Israel, the book advocates the murder of children ‘who will grow up to hurt us.’ … Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin Yigal Amir was convinced that his victim had become a danger to Israel and that he should be killed without hesitation.”

While the majority of Israelis today support the policies of the Netanyahu government, more and more prominent voices have been heard in opposition. A former speaker of the Knesset, Avraham Burg, believes that converting Israel into a state of all its citizens, and erasing its distinct Jewish nature, is “our only hope for survival.” Prominent poet and intellectual Yitzhak Laor argues, “We don’t have to leave this place or give up our lives … we have to get rid of Zionism.” Rabkin writes that, “These Jews, many of whom are veterans of Israel’s many wars, today feel that they are being held hostage to a situation over which they have no control. They are seeking a more peaceful outcome, compatible with their sense of decency; despair has sensitized them to the arguments put forward for more than a century detailing the dangers that the Zionist nature of the state represents first of all for the Jews.”

Sadly, in Rabkin’s view, Jewish organizations around the world have substituted what some have called “Israelotary,” a form of idolatry, for Judaism: “The official Zionist ideology has made Israel a state without borders. In geographical terms, it can be extended with military conquest or colonization … This borderless character is also embodied by Israel’s claim that it belongs to the world’s Jews rather than to its citizens. This leads to the increasingly overt transformation of Jewish organizations around the world into Israeli vassals. Moreover, by emphasizing the primacy of an ethnically and denominationally defined ‘Jewish nationality,’ the state of Israel turns its back on the idea of an ‘Israeli nationality’ that would reflect the multicultural society that has taken shape on this land … over the last century … The demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a ‘Jewish and democratic’ state simply affirms the Zionist nature of the state in the face of the ‘de-Zionization’ naturally brought about by social and demographic realities.”

An Essential Guide

Anyone who seeks to understand the nature of Zionism and its dramatic break with traditional Judaism, as well as the prophetic critiques of Zionism which have been heard from the beginning, and are increasing at the present time, would do well to read Professor Rabkin’s carefully researched book. It is certain to become an essential guide for those who seek a genuine understanding of this divisive subject. Those who are working for peace in the Middle East will find in this book a road map showing how we have arrived at today’s perilous moment and how we might emerge from it, with justice for both Israelis and Palestinians. •