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Friday, June 01, 2007

The Point of Contention, Part Two

I posited in the previous post, that the essential argument over the character of the Jewish State relates to the secular/religious divide.

One could ask, what difference does it make?  You need theologians to inspire, and you need worldly people who are going to get the job done.  You have text study and mysticism, but you also need organizations, a standing army, a system of justice, etc.

The critical difference--and I believe that it is the difference that creates the tension in our society--depends on the answer to the following question: which ideal gets pride of place, which is a handmaiden to the other?

Before the Return to Zion became a political issue, the plans of its religious proponents (there were no known secular proponents of Jewish nationalism before the 1860s) were generally threefold: purchase land in Palestine, train Jewish people to become self-sufficient agriculturalists, and educate these Jews in self-defense, that they may be able to protect themselves in the land of Israel.  What was the “chapter heading”, the ultimate goal to which these plans alluded?  The Ingathering of the Exiles as a catalyst for the Redemption.  Being in Israel would be an opportunity to live Judaism in the perfect context for Judaism--the land of Israel.

Once Zionism (phrase coined in 1890 by Nathan Birnbaum, who eventually left the movement) emerged, the modus operandi did not change: purchase land in Palestine, train Jewish people to become self-sufficient agriculturalists, and educate these Jews in self-defense, that they may be able to protect themselves in the land of Israel--and hopefully, in time, the Jewish State would be built atop these foundational elements.  The ultimate goal of the secularists, however, was entirely different: a new type of Jewish society, populated by a new type of Jew. 

First, this society would right the “inverted pyramid”, as Zionist thinker Ber Borochov stated, and create a situation where Jews would enter the agrarian and workingman professions they had been closed out of in Europe.  A society of Jewish peasants would finally exist--this was actually a virtue extolled by writer A.D. Gordon.  Second, a modern, proprietary Hebrew culture would be created, and the Hebrew language revived after nearly 2000 years of disuse.  The Jewish State would be the avant-garde of socialism in the world.  It was land for land’s sake, agriculture for agriculture’s sake, and self-defense for the sake of self-defense.  The Redemption, in the eyes of the secularists, had a modern application: an escape from anti-Semitic violence. 

More significantly, the secular Zionists, due to their secular orientation, became the ideological heirs to the maskilim of the 18th century, those Jews of the Haskalah ("Enlightenment"), who advocated for the total secularization and assimilation of the Jewish population of Europe.  While the aims of the maskilim, could not be fully realized in anti-Semitic Europe, secular Zionists envisioned that they could be in a Jewish homeland.  Thus, Jews would be able to be normal people and pursue their aspirations in a manner that was impossible for them in the Gentile societies in which they lived.

But as we see throughout history, the desire of a collective to attain acceptance by others goes hand-in-hand with a certain self-hatred and disenfranchisement.  African Americans, as they made their way out of their roles as slaves in 19th century America, still had racism to contend with, and therefore did as much as possible to blend with and access the white society that had kept them down.  In the process, many developed a type of distaste for their fellow persons of color.  I remember seeing, during a history course in university, an article on a club run by blacks where one of the entry requirements was that the applicant had to be able to pass a comb through his hair.

The creation of the Modern Hebrew language was one of the most astounding accomplishments of Eliezer Ben Yehuda, and its proliferation to the point of being the spoken first language of an entire nation--when it had not been used for 2000 years--was miraculous.  The Hebrew language was and is one of the crowning achievements of the Zionist movement (although Herzl wanted German to be the language of the State).  But for many maskilim, who plunged themselves into the study of Hebrew as a secular discipline, love of the Hebrew language was accompanied by hatred of the Yiddish language, an international Jewish language which had been in use for a thousand years.  Yiddish represented the shtetl and was therefore an object of derision.  For people seeking entry into the larger society, Yiddish was a roadblock.  To the Zionist, Yiddish was equally repulsive because it represented the Diaspora Jew with all of his vulnerability and antiquated ways. 

Thus, the most ardent anti-Zionists in Israel even today speak no Hebrew, only Yiddish, whereas for their secular, Zionist counterparts, Yiddish is a museum exhibition piece just like its speakers.

To be continued…