Zionism as Revolution? Zionism as Rebellion?
Author(s): David Vital
Source: Modern Judaism, Vol. 18, No. 3, 100 Years of Zionism and the 50th Anniversary of
the State of Israel (Oct., 1998), pp. 205-215
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1396697
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David Vital
ZIONISM AS REVOLUTION?
ZIONISM AS REBELLION?*
I
Was there a Zionist revolution? If there was, what was its nature? And
what happened to it? These, as best I can phrase them, are the questions
to which I should like to sketch some preliminary answers.
That there is something to be said for regarding the impact of Zionism
on the history of the Jews as at least verging on the revolutionary is
beyond all question, it seems to me. Equally beyond question are the extraordinary
consequences of the rise of Zionism in the international
sphere. The general point can be made, that whatever it was particular
Zionists thought they were doing at any particular moment, their movement,
all in all, did mount the most penetrating attack on the established
social and political structure of the Jewish people in modern
times ever attempted. Yet, somehow, the more closely one examines the
case, the less clear cut the specifically revolutionary character of the
movement appears to be.
There was, for example, never any question of it being a violent revolution.
If a revolution it was, it was not therefore of the class that normally
catches the public eye. There were, needless to say, no Bastilles or
Winter Palaces to storm, no kings to be decapitated, no parliaments to
be dispersed, no generals to form ajunta or, alternatively, to be shot. It
is not that violence was unknown among the Zionists-any more than it
was unknown in Jewry generally. But it was always of negligible proportions
and, certainly, it was never central to the enterprise.' Was Zionism
then in the category of what Macaulay called "noiseless
revolutions,' those whose progress, as he put it, "is rarely indicated by
what historians are pleased to call important events... [that] are not
achieved by armies, or enacted by senates, [that] are sanctioned by no
treaties, and recorded in no archives."?2 Zionism does not seem to have
been quite in that class, either. But it is worth recalling that all revolu*An
earlier version of this paper was presented at the Brandeis University-Hebrew
University Symposium on the 100th Anniversary of the Zionist Movement.
Modern Judaism 18 (1998): 205-215 @ 1998 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
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206 David Vital
tions-noisele
common, th
that which r
that which th
One of the d
positive side
striving for,
cific, they w
deeply char
sions of it p
Zionism, cu
"monistic" Z
them quite o
than once. It
members of
litical indepe
for all of th
were quite a
sovereignty
natural justi
all-embracin
circumstance
precisely th
out of his wa
But then th
disinclination
and by turn
thereafter, t
about the po
eventually to
There were
Programme i
the Endziel o
the moveme
the status and
such a state
was an absen
the State-to-b
state-and the
Why this sh
which nobod
Whether thi
poses in ful
source of we
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Zionism as Revolution? 207
debate. Conceivably, i
ture of Zionism-seen w
tance-lay elsewhere. It
recommendation, and
neutral sense I have in
was against, what it wis
modify and diminish
1939 and all options
apotheosis of 1948-tha
its fundamental dynam
Jewish social landscap
and the first few decad
tion of Zionism by the
tively by some, passivel
deliberate calculation b
as a matter of course.
Why was this so; and what does it tell us?
However incoherent the Zionists were in other respects, there was on
on which they were united: they were modernists. They might be
vided on where the Jews should go (actually or figuratively) on what cultural
baggage they should take with them, on what they should discar
and on what precisely they should do with themselves upon arrival
their destination. But what none of them doubted at any time was th
the Jewish people in its entirety was very painfully in need of radical ag
giornamento, of being brought up to date, in one form or another. Of th
goal they made no secret, and it sufficed to bring them into inexorab
conflict with those who, on the contrary, maintained-if anything wit
greater passion and conviction-that it was of the very essence of Ju
daism that in all major departments of private and collective existenc
everything of importance had already been ordained. For those f
whom even change at a virtually imperceptible rate was problematic,
free, serious, and open-ended discussion of the question whether, and
so, by what means (but most especially to what extent), the Tradition
its established form should or should not be preserved was, of cour
anathema.
What was at issue and at work here was not the familiar matter of
the rigor or otherwise of religious observance. Nor was it even that of
the dismay, given the accelerating rate of alienation, dissidence, and disaffection
at the edges ofJewry, with which those still faithful to Orthodoxy
regarded the outlook for the Jewish people as a whole. What was
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208 David Vital
hardest for
ticular class
retain a pres
and in due c
that was the
phrase went,
lutions passe
the strictly
the First Wo
fensive Ortho
traditionalist
to the autho
who wielded
threatened.
tury later, th
After all, the Zionists were not alone in their modernism. There
were others who brought into question the established patterns of personal
and collective conduct, as well as the thinking and beliefs that
we crudely, but usefully gather together under the portmanteau term
tradition. There were the Bundists, the Russifiers, the Polonizers, the
Germans of Mosaic persuasion, the Israelites of France, the Jewish Englishmen,
the various contending schools of religious reformers, and so
on. All favored an aggiornamento of one kind or another. Some were prepared
to go a good deal further in their antitraditionalism than the
Zionists. Yet, no great alliance of modernists, no counterpart and rival
to Agudat Israel, was ever formed.
One obvious obstacle to anything of that kind was the division in
the modernist camp on the issue of Jewish nationhood and nationality.
Yet even there, the Zionists were not alone. The Autonomists and, with
reservations, the Bundists, too, had similar ideas. Where the Zionists
were unique was in the view they took of the existential basis ofJewry and
Judaism: the condition of Exile itself. The Zionists asked whether it was
tenable in practice. They went on to pose the trickier question whether
it was tolerable in principle. Having given a flatly negative answer to
both questions, they proceeded to consider on what other basis Jewry
might be held together and have its particular needs and interests met.
Most urgently of all, they took the position, that if indeed it was imperative
to re-examine the condition of the Jews, and to do so in a frank and
even favorable anticipation of change, the always nervous matter of relations
between Jews and Gentiles on which so much in Jewry itself
hinged, had to be radically revised. On all this, they parted company
with the other modernists. They did so, moreover, in a way that struck at
the foundations of the other, the lay wing of established authority in
Jewish society in late nineteenth-century Europe-the plutocratic. In
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Zionism as Revolution? 209
the first instance, it
quo. But there were tw
engaged the plutocrat
which it is appropriate,
III
The Zionists stood for policy on the major issues confront
being subject to free and open debate. They wanted decisio
rived at competitively, rationally, disinterestedly, and accordin
tablished procedure. They had been taught by Herzl that t
claimed to lead the Jews needed to be publicly answerable t
stitutions of some kind. If there was considerable wavering
from time to time, they did broadly stick to this position: righ
cause it was one of the principal sources of their moral str
of it, however, was, or could be, remotely acceptable to the
the Schiffs, the Guenzburgs, and the other great men of late n
and early twentieth-century Jewry. Nor was it to the individu
and devoted figures who labored in the Jewish interest in
men's shadows and to some extent on their behalf-the Pau
the Lucien Wolfs, the Sylvain LUvys, and their like.
The other respect in which the Zionists struck at what may
called the Jewish Establishment-its plutocratic lay compon
first instance, but indirectly and for different reasons at i
component as well-was that of migration. Let me be clear a
have the years prior to the First World War in mind. Altho
tive forces were less desperate than later, they were power
poverty, persecution, and deepest of all, perhaps, the desire
the externally and internally determined trammels by whic
patedJews in Eastern Europe were hemmed in. Their lives w
dered solitary, to be sure, but were certainly lives Hobbes
recognized as nasty, brutish, and short. It will be recalled th
gration and immigration were still relatively free at this st
entry were therefore matters of personal choice and the ra
lation of advantage. It did not seem to anyone in those days tha
legitimate to debate the pros and cons and general social an
desirability of Jews leaving the lands of their birth en masse. I
stances of firm opposition from on high in Jewry to any
smacked of mass movement were legion. In the West, it wa
fear, lest the integrationist boat be dangerously rocked. In
was chiefly for fear, lest the credentials of Jews as loyal su
Tsar or perhaps the King of Romania be laid open to em
question. It was not, of course, directly and exclusively a fun
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210 David Vital
appearance of
ceded them b
others who p
tion; and did
the catastroph
that the Jew
foresaw what
arguably poin
nation, denig
that it was un
coming to his
than palliative
at all events,
lated by Pins
That rescue
was in many
ran counter t
then conceived. None were more fervent in this belief than those who
saw themselves, and who were seen by most others, as the natural
leaders of Jewry. This was as true of those in Eastern Europe who h
been denied the advantages of emancipation thus far no less than o
those who were, as anyone could see, its greatest beneficiaries. To ad
to the possibility of a catastrophe engulfing the greater part of the Jew
ish people in the unspecified, but by no means remote, future was tantamount
to abandoning this confidence in the stability and validity of
very social order that had allowed every single one of them, in his o
way, to rise to those degrees of wealth, comfort, influence, and so
prominence that quite ordinary Jews had for so many centuries been
the habit of assuming were fair indicators not only of legitimate po
but of social and political wisdom.
But alas for consistency and neat dichotomies in human affairs,
was not many years before the so-called catastrophic foundations o
Zionism began to be played down by the Zionists themselves; even, a
tonishingly, by the all-important Russian Zionists. But then they, t
were men of their time. By 1905 Herzl was in his grave, Nordau was
fectively in retirement, and a semi-constitutional, marginally liberal
regime had been instituted in Russia. That upper-class, semi-Russif
Jews would begin to think about the prospects for the Jews in the priso
house of nations, and therefore the merits or otherwise of their own involvement
in Russia's political affairs, in somewhat different terms t
in the past was inevitable. And so, more than a little contradictorily, con
sidering the terrible impact the Revolution of 1905 had on the Jews
Russia, the notion that the problem of the Jews was one of extreme
gency and requiring radical treatment was set aside for the time bei
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Zionism as Revolution? 211
A new "synthetic" Zioni
the Turks for a Charter
Palestine, as opposed to "
energy than before. The
rose to the top of the ag
It could be argued, of c
gency was not new. Aha
even if catastrophe wer
sources of the movement
Ahad-Ha-'Amian (and, I
for decades. When the f
ably, in the immediate aft
one, was not sure he even
Still, the defining issu
mixed feelings about the
its impropriety. On wha
tion (or repudiation) of
were (once upon a time)
was commensurate neith
that finally and definitive
icant movement in conte
most painful weapon in
the only one to prove
long, that is, as those wh
wield it.
Of course, in our own day, it is exceedingly rare for a sharp distinction
between the reality and the propriety of the Exile to be drawn.
Some think it unnecessary. Some think it is impolite. Many, in their innocence,
fail to see its significance. Such, more or less, has been the fate
of that other equally old, valid and latterly understated, underlying
principle of the movement, namely that its character and intentions
were not, and could not be, other than secular. An entire school of
thought is currently committed to denying mightily that such was or
ever could have been the case. There are other ways, too, in which, having
regard to the discounting of what it once stood for, it is possible to
discern the central contemporary truth about the Zionist Revolution-if
that is what it was-that is, as is the way with all revolutions sooner or
later, it is over, all passion spent.
But was it ever a revolution?
I should like to try, in the little space left to me, to deal quite summarily
with this question.
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212 David Vital
IV
The Zionists were certainly engaged in the promotion of a revolutio
for a time, at least. There is a strong sense in which their final achiev
ment, the State of Israel, constituted a revolutionary event-no othe
term is appropriate-in the lives of the Jews immediately concerned,
well as in those of their neighbors. But beyond that? Perhaps a "noise
less" revolution in the sense in which Macaulay used the term? Even th
is uncertain. Once one separates out that which pertains to the u
doubted reality and authority of the sovereign state of Israel from th
which pertains to the hearts and minds of the Jews as such, and in a
parts; and when one bears in mind that a "noiseless" revolution, too, d
notes mutation, sea-change; and, generally speaking, much being lef
behind never to be present or available again-the questions multiply
So I return to my point that it is the resistance to revolution an
the consequent dialectic between the revolutionaries and the counter
revolutionaries-if, indeed, that is what they were-that offer the be
keys to understanding and assessing such cases. Seen in this light, it w
be noted that Zionism met instantly-and from its point of view prom
ingly-with very great hostility because, indeed, there were aspects
the movement that the more perceptive spirits in the Jewish world were
quick to grasp and to fear. On the other hand, not very many decade
passed before this hostility largely waned, fear subsided, and the boge
man was admitted to the club. Why so? Was this because the putativ
revolutionaries had won? Was it, contrariwise, because their teeth had
been pulled? Or had it much more to do with that old, deep-seated
determinacy within the movement itself about its aims and purposes
which I have alluded earlier? Was it then, less a revolution than a rebe
lion? A great rebellion, to be sure, but, as the term implies, perhaps
phase in the history of the Jews rather than a true turning point?
I hesitate to offer an answer. A single century may be too short a period
for the general trend in Jewry in so important a matter to emer
with adequate clarity. Even the full significance of the Emancipation h
yet to work its way through the Jewish body politic. More than enou
has happened in the past hundred years to have altered the structur
features, and not least, the aspirations of the Jewish people. What th
Jews are actually in process of making of the great changes wrought
the events that have overtaken them is, however, still far from clear.
Although the Zionist movement's material and political achievements
have been greater than any of its pioneers could have imagine
none of the issues which fueled it doctrinally have been resolved. Tha
they have not been resolved either in fact or in principle in the Jewi
Diaspora may be unfortunate but is readily understandable.5 That the
has been a consistent failure to resolve them in what one was entitled to
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Zionism as Revolution? 213
suppose was Zionism'
aster.
Consider the fundamental operative principle that dro
founders of the movement. It is easily stated. It is that public po
the Jewish people must be geared before all else to the core inte
the Jews themselves, men, women, and children: their safety, their
fare, and their dignity. Considerations of an abstract and collective
acter, not excluding those that may rightly be thought to be of ver
importance in themselves-the national cultural and religiou
tion, attachment to the ancestral land, and so forth-must be secondary.
It was this goal that ruled the minds of Herzel and Nordau, and
Pinsker before them, and in his odd way, Zangwill, too. Their successors
did not go so far as to deny that this was what Zionism was ultimately
about. But they dithered perpetually. And now, for all to see, old battles
are being refought, old wounds reopened, old dissatisfactions revived.
So perhaps: not really a revolution; rather a rebellion. In which case
the decisive transformation ofJewry, the real revolution, is still to come.
Will it come? I myself an inclined to think that it will. But then I am
among those who would hate to see this stupendous enterprise being reduced
to mediocrity, its work only half done.
TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY
NOTES
1. It is the case, or so it seems to me, that the men and w
movement over in the 1930s and pushed the Zionist enter
conclusion had something in common with their exact c
rulers of Soviet Russia: absolute devotion to Party, ferocio
and the habit of being economical with the truth. It was not
their enemies, and even some of their friends, called them
it is an important but, there was no Dzerzhinsky or Yagod
bianka, no Gulag, certainly no Stalin; and if Ben-Gurion, l
maker of political structures, he had nothing like the fanati
compromising ruthlessness of the maker of Soviet Russia.
2. T. B. Macaulay, "History," Miscellaneous Essays (Londo
3. For example: A conference of Jewish notables conv
October 1872 to discuss the miserable condition of Romani
as to declare, that it "unanimously rejected all thought of
soil of Romania" and that such thinking was "regarded as
Jews of Romania whose devotion to their country was sple
the course of the conference deliberations." It went on to a
decision would amount to a casting of an aspersion on the
ian Christians to whom their brothers, the Romanian Jews
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214 David Vital
port in the eff
land." ("La con
de la Roumani
les Isra61ites r
I'6clat dans les
d6cision serait
les Israelites ro
et consolider l
1872, p. 56. Ci
ra'lite Univers
1876)'; Revue d
When, a gener
don in the wak
of Russia had
although, fortu
out any attemp
the Russian Em
connected gro
of Lord Roths
those who had
back on their
so timorous, t
their belief and
gration from
hinderung der
criteria guidin
uns bei unsere
Verhinderung
sondern sofor
Betroffenen ih
denem Umfan
"Documents on
1973), p. 150, n
what was requi
tives of the re
furt to draw
learned. At thi
In the event, t
ference the Zio
mind a very m
was to meet in
into the proble
not only the e
organization so
cally Zionist c
ideas on anyon
tion, and atten
the intolerable
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Zionism as Revolution? 215
Jews in all parts and o
Wolffsohn's conference,
asco. Almost to a man, t
invitation down, the m
prevent the conference
fused to put in an appe
tion to the rule of non
Nathan of the German H
in that of nanny, the g
make sure the Zionists g
invites admiration for th
it is necessary to unders
To have invited the Zio
as legitimate members o
about the Zionists in t
known to be involved i
the equipping ofJewish
itself, both on the strai
also because the Zionist
other radicalJewish org
the strict philanthrop
strongly disapproved, a
indirectly. There was,
charity nor having any
nization was in no posit
of the victims of the po
ists that the convenors
keeping the Zionists out
sohn in his conference in Brussels several weeks later was of a somewhat different
order. It had to do with the overall view of the collective and public affairs of
the Jews taken in each case. Here, the salient differences between the contending
schools were unbridgeable.
4. "We must not be told as the Poles are trying to do [we find Weizmann
writing privately to the Foreign Editor of the Times], 'You have your Palestine,
clear out of here!' [For] if so, we shall have all the miserable refugees who will
be driven out of Poland, Galicia, Rumania, etc., at the doors of Palestine. We
shall be swamped in Palestine and shall never be able to set up a community
worth having there." Letter to H. Wickham Steed, 30 November 1918. The Letters
and Papers of Chaim Weizmann (New Brunswick, N.J., 1980) Vol. 9, No. 45, p. 50.
5. Of all the oxymorons with which the world of ideas is cluttered, Diaspora
Zionism is surely one of the silliest.
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