Zionism
Political Zionism - R&G notes (I swear I am ruddy well burning this book when I’m finished this year)
p.59 - Zionism emerged against a backdrop of brutal persecution in Eastern Europe, and Central-European political antisemitism
Theodor Herzl covered the Dreyfus case as a young journalist, and strongly affected by the antisemitism he witnessed
p.160-1 - Late 19thC saw wave of violent pogroms in Russia and Ukraine, with authorities turning a blind eye
p.161 - restrictive legislation introduced - 1883 - Jews could only live in the Pale of Settlement, and had limited rights to rent or buy property; 1887 - quota system introduced in education - Jewish pupils were limited to only 10% of the number of Christian pupils at each school in the Pale of Settlement (bear in mind that Jews made up 30-80% of the population there)
Quotas even smaller outside the Pale
1891 - 20,000 Jews expelled from Moscow before the tzar’s palace was moved there
1892 - Jews in Pale stripped of voting rights
1893 - Jews of Yalta (resort in the Crimea, in the Pale of Settlement) were expelled so that tzar could visit his villa there without being contaminated by their presence
During periods of industrial unrest and economic decline, Jews were scapegoated by the government e.g. 1903 pogrom, with govt consent, during Pesach
p.162 - Jews accused of aiding the Japanese in the 1904-7 war
1911 - blood libel case brought against Mendel Beilis - accused of murdering a Christian child
This led to huge waves of immigration out of Russia - many to America
(and yes, leads to discriminatory immigration laws - but I’m not doing those all over again, fgs).
Socialism and Zionism
Socialism internationalist, Zionism nationalist
Both proved attractive to Jews demoralised and frightened by political antisemitism
Marxism particularly attractive to assimilated, haskalah Jews in Russia - universalist, radical
p.164 - Jews active in the anti-tsarist radical movements in late 19thC, and in setting up trade unions and workers’ associations
1897 - the ‘Bund’ founded - General Union of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland and Russia
aimed to politicise Jews, organise self-defence leagues against the pogroms, and create links with the gentile Russian trade union movement as equal, but separate, partners
They fell out with the Social Democratic party in 1903, due to long-running tensions about the relationship between the two groups, and withdrew from the alliance
Wrestled with the issue of Jewish identity and particularism - in the socialist ideal, all particularism would vanish away, but the Bund were committed to a strong and separate (albeit totally secular) Jewish identity
Opposed to Zionism - called it “romantic bourgeois nationalism”
Zionism rejected the possibility that Jews could achieve full equality and acceptance in non-Jewish societies, even socialist ones - saw the foundation of a Jewish nation as only solution to antisemitism - needed a sanctuary, somewhere Jews could live unmolested and defend themselves. Otherwise Jews would perpetually remain a persecuted minority
Not all Jews agreed - e.g. when the British consul in Syria wrote to Sir Moses Montefiore in 1840 arguing that he and the Board of Deputies should organise Jewish colonisation in Palestine, they were unmoved
Many Jews wanted emancipation in their own countries, not to found their own state
Moses Hess (1812-75) first important thinker to argue for a national homeland
- early socialist and follower of Hegel
p.165 - initially a colleague of Marx and Engels, but fell out with Marx
1862 - published Rome and Jerusalem - included argument for a socialist Jewish state in Palestine
Peretz Smolenskin (1842-85) - editor of Ha-Shachar journal (The Dawn); originally opposed to idea of a Jewish homeland, promoted a “Diaspora nationalism”; changed opinions to support idea of a homeland in Palestine in response to the pogroms in Russia, 1881-2
1881-2 massacres also led to the formation of Chibbat Tziyyon (Love of Zion) groups in villages in the Pale of Settlement
Early settlers went to Palestine
- e.g. the Bilu association (from acronym of Isaiah 2:5 - O House of Jacob, come, let us walk), a group of university students from Kharkov, who emigrated to Palestine to work on the land
(First Aliyah)
1882 - Judah Leob Pinsker (1821-91, b. Odessa) published ‘Auto-Emancipation: A Warning to His Kinsfolk by a Russian Jew’
→ Jews could not rely on the whims of non-Jewish rulers; had to take destiny into own hands, create their own homeland to defend themselves
by end of 19thC Zionism was embraced by educated, assimilated Jews across Europe, including Theodor Herzl (1860-1904)
Bourgeois, Reform Jewish family; grew up in Vienna; playwright and journalist for liberal Viennese newspaper, the Neue Freie Presse
p.166 - 1896 - published ‘The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modernist Solution to the Jewish Question’
1897 - first Zionist Congress, Basle
“Everywhere, we Jews have honestly tried to assimilate into the nations around us, preserving only the religion of our fathers. We have not been permitted to … We are a nation - the enemy has made us one without our desiring it… We do have the strength to create a state and, moreover, a model state.”
Herzl elected first chairperson of the World Zionist Organisation by the congress - group marginal, unpopular with most Jews, but started the Jewish National Fund to buy land in Palestine, and expanded across USA and Europe
Herzl took diplomatic approach - sought support of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Turkish sultan, Russian and British politicians
Joseph Chamberlain, British colonial secretary, proposed Uganda as the site of a J.n.h, but this rejected by the 6th Zionist Congress (indicates Herzl’s lack of religious knowledge, failed to understand the emotional pull of Eretz Yisrael)
p.167 - “a land without a people for a people without a land” [er, not exactly accurate]
Succeeded in constructing “a working political framework” for the future foundation of a Jewish state in Israel
First Aliyah - 1880s/90s
→ set up 20 agricultural holdings
→ difficulty of the life - malaria, hostile indigenous population, recalcitrant Turkish administration, and lack of economic development in the region
Baron Edmund de Rothschild took active interest in the project, donating large sums of money, and interfering a bit too much
Second Aliyah - 1904-14
→ largely young people from Russia, idealistic, trying to escape antisemitism at home
→ this wave of newcomers set up kibbutzim - blended Zionism with socialism (kibbutz literally ‘group’)
1910 - Deganya founded - first kibbutz
1909 - Tel Aviv founded [Tel Aviv taken from Sokolow’s Hebrew translation of Herlz’s Altneuland, the title of which was Tel Aviv, which in turn was taken from Ezekiel - “Then I came to them of the captivity at Tel Aviv, that lived by the river Chebar, and to where they lived; and I sat there overwhelmed among them seven days”]
by 1914, 85,000 Jews in Ottoman Palestine (total population 800,000)
had also set up a Hebrew press and school system, political parties, intelligensia
pp.167-8 - Achad Ha-Am (‘One of the People’, real name Asher Ginzburg, 1856-1927) most important literary figure
→ idea of “cultural Zionism”, Eretz Yisrael to be the “spiritual centre of modern Jewry”
p.168 - Palestinian Jews fought for the British Army in the First World War; important Jews in Britain also made valuable non-combat contributions -
e.g. Professor Chaim Weizmann, Biochemist at Manchester, produced acetone for guns for Britain - was also an outspoken Zionist
Led to British viewing Zionist claims more sympathetically:
→ Balfour Declaration, 1917
letter from British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, to Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild, considered representative of British Jewry, declaring support for establishment of a J.n.h. in Palestine
“His Majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people… it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
Post-War Europe: 1917-38
Pale of Settlement finally ‘abolished’ by Austrian and German conquest in WW1 - Jews flooded into greater Russia as refugees
1917, Russian revolution, Tzar shot
New revolutionary govt repealed discriminatory laws against Jews in Russia
p.169 - but civil war after October Rev led to death of thousands of Jews in massacres perpetrated by the Ukrainian armies led by Petlura, and the White Army, as well as peasant mobs
more than 1,100 pogroms, 500 communities of Jews affected, 60,000 Jews dead. Only ended in 1921
Poland held lion’s share of European Jews - 3million+
Romania also now contained large numbers of Jews (and historically persecuted the native Jews, in line with Russian policies), because in peace agreement acquired Bukovina, Transylvania and Bessarabia, home to large concentrations of Jews
1919 Paris Peace Conference supposedly guaranteed minorities equal rights in the new states - unenforced, discrimination rife (except in Czechoslovakia, which scrupulously protected the rights of its Jews)
economic problems - depression, hyperinflation - led to scapegoating and persecution; Jews also suffered poverty alongside non-Jewish neighbours
Communist Russia’s ‘equality’ not all it was cracked up to be - meant sacrificing Jewish identity, no competing loyalties allowed. Jewish organisations disbanded (Zionist, religious, and political)
p.170 - Crackdown on yeshivot
thousand of Jewish intellectuals purged in Great Terror 1934-8
Yevsektsiia - Jewish wing of C party - disbanded by Stalin
By 1939, govt and Communist party totally purged of Jews
But in Western Europe and the USA, govts blocked further Jewish immigration because they feared it would bring with it “Jewish Bolshevism”
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion circulates again in Germany, claims a plot between Jewish Zionists, Bolsheviks and bankers, to take over the world
This was accepted even in USA and UK
Great Depression led to another wave of antisemitism and attendant violence
But despite this climate there was a growing assimilated Jewish middle class in Europe - prominent in various fields
e.g. German foreign minister Walter Rathenau (assass by antisemites), French PM Leon Blum [who was sent to Buchenwald in 1942], Sigmund Freud, Einstein, Chagall, Wittgenstein, Kafka etc
Towards WW2
Adolf Hitler born 1889 - “a rootless, drifting individual, a would-be artist, who associated with the anti-Semitic factions in Vienna”
Fought in WW1, demobbed, and became leader of National Socialist German Workers’ Party - Nazi Party, in Munich
p.171 - raised its membership from a tiny, insignificant handful of fanatics to a popular party
Basic platform of German nationalism, anti-Semitism and anti-Communism
Tapped into popular anger at the 1919 peace deal, which stripped Germany of much of her power and basically humiliated her; also at the economic problems that had crippled Germany
1923 - Beer Hall Putsch failed, Hitler imprisoned in political prison for a time
Nazi party grew in response to fears of communism; German businessmen sponsor the party as a result of this fear
1928 - Nazis took 810,000 at election
1930 - 6 million votes
1932 - 14 million, taking 230 seats
Hitler made chancellor in January 1933, by President Hindenburg
1933 elections, Nazis waged campaign of intimidation and won 44% of the vote
As soon as assumed power, started to introduce repressive laws and policies
State of Emergency declared - Trade unions disbanded, civil liberties suspended
Schutzstaffeln - SS - became police force, in charge of both concentration camps and Gestapo
1934 - Hindenburg dies; Hitler promoted to post of ‘Fuehrer’ - Leader
Staged introduction of antisemitic policies - feared upsetting Church or middle classes (“They need not have worried”)
Barely a murmur as in April 1933 Jews were purged from civil service; schools, universities, doctors and lawyers also purged
September 1935 - the Nuremburg Laws
→ withdrew citizenship rights from Jews
→ forbid sexual relations or marriage between Aryans and Jews
→ defined anyone with a Jewish grandparent as Jewish and subject to the laws
Still, no outcry from Church or professions
p.172 - Many Jews fled the country, going to Palestine, the Americas, and Europe
March 1938 - Nazis enter Austria
Large numbers of Jews arrested, and sent to concentration camps; Austrian collaboration
Evian-les-Bains conference to address the issue of Jewish refugees, June 1938; no one willing to accept more than a handful of Jews - green light to Hitler to continue antisemitic measures, knew he faced no retribution
October 1938 - 17,000 Polish-German Jews expelled from Germany - many became trapped in “no-man’s land, … on the eastern border”
November 1938 - Herschel Grunspan, son of one of the Jews thus trapped assassinated a German officer in Paris, in German Embassy
Pretext for retaliation
9 November 1938 - Kristallnacht, pogrom across Germany
hundreds of synagogues burnt; shops looted; homes razed; windows smashed
30,000 Jews arrested and deported to concentration camps
1 billion mark fine imposed on Jews for the damage
March 1939 - Nazis enter Czechoslovakia
p.173
August 1939 - Non-Aggression Pact with Soviets, dividing Poland between Russia and Germany
1 September 1939 - Germans invade Poland
→ Britain declares war on Germany