Editorial Perspective
Correcting the misconstrued views of the Zionist idea expressed by several audience members in the NAPH session on Zionism (2024 AAR-SBL Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA, November 23-26). Particularly, colonialism, apartheid, and genocide were directed to the State of Israel (people, military) during the current Israeli-Palestinian crisis heard in and out of the 2.5 hour session.
Understanding Zionism in Terms of “The Land,” Religion and Nationality
The function of Zion in early Israelite religion and later Judean nationalism is reflected in the biblical age. From the Abrahamic cycle of self-dependence (“Not a thread or a sandal strap lest you [the Nations] shall say: ‘I [we] have made Abram rich,”’ Gen 14:23) to the Covenant at Sinai by which a priest nation was born (“You shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation,” Ex 19:16) to the settlement of the Land under Joshua and the Judges to the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians (587-586 B.C.E.). Sinai and Zion (Jerusalem): divine plan and religious idealism vs. political realism and earthly sanctuary (Ex 25:8,9,40; I Chron 28:19).The First Exile (“By the rivers of Babylon there we sat and wept, as we thought of Zion” and “If I forget thee, O’ Jerusalem,” Ps 137: 1,5) and the hope of return (“Let us go up to the Mount of the Lord [Zion] to the House of the God of Jacob,” Is 2:3; Mic 4:2). The rise and fall of the Second Jewish Commonwealth (164-163 B.C.E.). First and second-century Eretz Israel in turmoil. The Great Revolt against the Romans, fall of Jerusalem and Second Temple, Masada suicide (66-73 C.E.), and Bar Kochba Rebellion (133-135 C.E.): triangular nationalism (zealot-pacific-messianic). Golah (diaspora, dispersion, “Off-the-Land”) vs. Galuth (exile, banishment, captivity). Beyond nationalism, the ascendancy and triumph of rabbinic Judaism: Torah as a portable homeland.
Enlightenment and Emancipation brought a radical departure from traditional thought patterns and aspirations. Emancipation destroyed the authority of the Jewish community and Enlightenment offered an ideological justification of surrendering the authority of Jewish tradition. The organic relationship of God-Torah Israel (religion, culture, peoplehood) was now challenged by reason and equalitarianism. Count Clermont Tonnerre’s declaration to the French National Assembly in 1791: “To the Jew as an individual – everything; to the Jew as a nation – nothing,” and the position adopted by the French Great Sanhedrin in February 1807, though bestowing civic rights upon Jews, began the process of redefining Jewish doctrines and values.
Unlike the national-religious identifying Jews in the Arab world and in Eastern Europe, Jews of the West now saw themselves as nationals of their countries of citizenship and worshipped in the “Mosaic faith.” However, what Jews as individuals may have gained by Emancipation, Jews as a group lost. By leaving the Ghetto and attaining the status of citizens, the Western Jews loosened the bonds of Jewish group identity, which in many cases led to total assimilation. Fin-de-siècle Zionism provided an alternative to the reverential on your-knee responses before European assimilation, nationalism, and modern antisemitism
Zev Garber, LA Valley College
Editor, Iggeret Bulletin