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.”