A European Enlightenment in the Promised Land? The Jewish Kulturkampf at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the European Kulturkampf in the nineteenth century from the points of view of the Russian Hebrew writer Judah Leib Gordon and the founding father of the Zionist movement Theodor Herzl. Gordon’s literary outlook emphasizes the tension between the traditional Jewish religious leadership and the maskilim as an instance of the sweeping all-European Kulturkampf phenomenon, in which the problem of the rabbis was the last issue that had not yet been solved. He believed that the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel, without the elimination of the rabbis’ authority, carried serious dangers. In his dystopian feuilleton published in 1885 depicting the future Jewish state, he argued that the victory of liberalism was a historical necessity in order to avoid a radical orthodox and nationalistic hegemony. Like Gordon before him, Herzl feared that losing the basic humanistic principles of the Enlightenment the Jews had acquired in Europe would be one of the outcomes of their settling in the Land of Israel. In his 1902 utopian novel Altneuland he declared: “Stand by the principles that have made us great: Liberalism, Tolerance, Love of Mankind. Only then will Zion be truly Zion.” Gordon and Herzl both expressed their concerns in their fictional works, probably wishing that these would serve only as warning signs.     

论19、20世纪之交东欧犹太移民在美国的群体互助

从19世纪80年代持续到一战后初期,东欧犹太人为逃避俄国及其周边国家的反犹迫害浪潮而大批涌向美国。他们在老一辈美国犹太人的慷慨资助下渡过最初的困境后,就着手调动自己有限的资源创立帮助犹太新移民的慈善组织,并且按照乡镇或地区来源建立同乡会共渡生活难关。他们还将欧洲犹太社区中久已存在的无息贷款社移植到美国,无偿为有志创业者提供小额资金。这些互助组织有效地保障了整个东欧犹太移民群体在美国的生存和发展。     

Zionism and Jewish Nationalism: An Inquiry into an Ideological Relationship

The axiomatic link in modern Jewish thought between Zionism and Jewish nationalism is questioned in this essay. It will be suggested that the connection between both embodied an ideological “marriage of convenience” blessed by both Jews and non-Jews, but not a deep-rooted bond, and that the idea of a “Jewish nationalism” deserves critical reconsideration. Three complementary hypotheses are proposed and analyzed: that Zionism and nationalism were basically unconnected; that Zion-related concepts, rooted in Jewish historical awareness, were a constant ideological factor among broad sectors of modernizing Jewry; and that Zionism was a modern concoction rooted in Zion-related concepts which also absorbed ideological elements from the general European milieu, among them national notions—national, in this context meaning “national in general,” and not “Jewish-national.”     

Zionism and Irish Nationalism: Ideology and Identity on the Borders of Europe

This paper is a comparative cultural history of Zionism and Irish nationalism, focusing on themes of race, gender and identity. It seeks to highlight the strong similarities of both nationalist projects: to show how Zionists and Irish nationalists were both heavily invested in state-building projects that would disprove European racist stereotypes about their respective nations and yet, paradoxically, were also part of the general history of European nationalism. Both Zionism and Irish nationalism sought to create idealised images of the past and claimed to be rebuilding a glorious ancient society in the future as a means of escaping a degraded present. Both movements saw language revival as a key means of carrying out this ‘return to history’. And both emphasised martyrdom as a way to build up prideful ideals of devotion to the nation and used sport, militaries and agriculture as forms of nationalist social engineering. Despite their claims to the contrary, neither national movement was truly unique.