Look to early Zionism!

How 19th century Jewish writers can help us navigate this moment

We’re looking at two major crises in the post-October 7 world. On the one hand we have Israel’s security nightmare and global isolation. On the other is the wave of vicious hatred in the West from a small but extremely vocal minority that seeks to eliminate key features of Jewish identity, such as solidarity with Israel, identification with Zionism, public Jewish pride, and more. Both these problems will require deep reflection from the Jewish world about the points of failure and what to do now.

So I turn to Jewish history! In particular, I’m zeroing in on a group of Jewish intellectuals who, starting in the mid-1800s, sought to address similar challenges of insecurity and rejection and ultimately came up with the foundations of Zionism. One problem was in Western Europe, where the Enlightenment failed to fully accept Jews into modern society as equals with their fellow French, German, and Italian citizens. The other problem was unrelenting persecution in Czarist Russia in Eastern Europe, which kept Jews impoverished and powerless.

Those two crises required a rethink about Jewish identity, adaptation to modern society, how to harness the ideologies then in vogue for Jewish renewal and security, and the practical steps necessary to secure the Jewish future. Socialism, nationalism, secularism, rationalism — all these and more were the intellectual ideas swirling through 19th century Europe, and Jews tried to place themselves in those frames, especially as, one by one, they came to exclude the Jews. Ultimately Jews would develop a range of solutions, such as the Reform Movement, greater emphasis on religious observance, full assimilation, mass emigration to America — all these and more were considered, debated, and acted on to varying degrees of success.

But for many leading Jewish thinkers, the most powerful responses to the failure of Enlightenment and Czarist oppression were the notions that became Zionism — a national movement of Jewish renewal that would return the Jews to their ancient homeland, where they could “return to history” as the drivers of their own fate rather than as subjects of the whims of intolerant Europe. This was the core idea of Zionism. Although it was later leaders like Herzl, Jabotinsky, and Ben-Gurion who get credited with the birth and development of Zionism, it was mid-1800s thinkers like Heinrich Graetz, Moses Hess, Peretz Smolenskin, Moshe Leib Lilienblum, Leon Pinsker, and Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai who explored the intellectual groundwork that became the Jewish national movement.

The short version of the book-length story here is that these early-Zionist thinkers (it wasn’t called “Zionism” yet) generally concluded that the Jews constituted a distinct nation, not just a religious community; that both the status quo and assimilation would fail to provide for long-term Jewish survival; and that the answer to the problems of Enlightenment and Czarist persecution was the establishment of a homeland in Palestine, in which this nation of Jews would finally have their own territory to effect a historic program of Jewish renewal.

Why am I telling you all this? Because Jewish history is awesome. No, actually it’s because I find parallels with today’s dilemmas.

Take Israel. October 7 profoundly shocked Israelis’ sense of security and confidence, leaving them feeling vulnerable, isolated, and forced to fight a nasty war that is upending their lives in profound and lasting ways. When we look back these early Zionist thinkers, we see a similar situation. After several decades of small but significant reforms in Czarist Russia that seemed to offer a better future for the Jews, a wave of horrific violence beginning in 1881 instantly erased all these gains. These pogroms stunned the Jewish world, spurring these early-Zionist thinkers to despair of any hope for Jewish security. They realized Jews would need to leave Eastern Europe to ensure their permanent safety, and argued that the Land of Israel — Palestine — was the place to gradually begin developing a renewed Jewish homeland. Israel now confronts the question of Jewish safety anew, and it’s a question that Israelis will have to search for new answers for.

For Jews in the Western world, we’ll need a different kind of reckoning, also similar to our 19th century counterparts. In the wake of the Eastern European pogroms and the rise of Western antisemitism, Jews discovered that the enlightened ideals they embraced from the surrounding society didn’t fully apply to them. All that talk of liberté, egalité, fraternité only applied to individual Jews who shed distinct markers of Jewish identity — that is, who fully assimilated into the surrounding majority, subsuming connection to their fellow Jews beneath the greater value of universal citizenship.

It sounds like the emails I get from people these days. Jews who have been card-carrying members of the left for years or decades: “I stood up for every single marginalized group, and now the one time I need allies they not only reject me, but vocally ostracize me to signal their own righteousness.” Or students who tell me that they’re only allowed into their campus social justice spaces, “if I publicly reject Zionism, make sure I don’t wear anything that identifies me as Jewish (like a Jewish star necklace), and never bring up my Judaism unless it’s to denounce Israel ‘as a Jew’.” Just like the mid-1800s, Jews are still held just out of reach from the supposedly egalitarian “diversity, equity, and inclusion” value system that dominates our culture today.

We can look to those 19th century Jewish intellectuals for inspiration about what we can do next: reassess Jewish identity and engagement with modern society to produce new ideas and actions that elevate Jewish civilization. Let’s not dwell in victimization, since that is no basis on which to build Jewish renewal. Yes, we must fight back against the antisemitism and nastiness and exclusion, and call out the hypocrisy of the institutions engaged in double standards and demonization. But just as those 19th century Jews were galvanized by their hardships to reimagine a great new era of Jewish renewal, so can we in our post-October 7 world.

What will this reimagined new Jewish world look like? I have no idea! We’re at the beginning here.

But here’s an example. We’ve experienced the ferocity of the left’s anger towards Israel, Zionism, and Jews. Yet it’s the left where most Jews have situated themselves for decades. Just as the Enlightenment failed those Jews who embraced it, so, too, are broad swaths of the left now failing the Jews who want to take part. How do we adapt? How can we take the best parts of social justice, align them with Jewish values, and discard the parts that exclude us from full participation? What new ideas, actions, organizations, and movements will arise from such a rethinking? Can we apply the good parts of the Ivy League to other institutions of higher learning where Jews are fully embraced and accepted? There are certainly existing universities which fit the bill, but perhaps there is also an opportunity to create new institutions devoted to Jewish learning, or centers within those other colleges.

There’s much thinking and experimentation to do. How should we now navigate the interaction between Jews and the social justice movement? How can we retell the story of Zionism that isn’t simply a reaction to the accusations of anti-Zionism? How can we build solidarity with the people of Israel — who represent half of world Jewry — that doesn’t limit itself to politics and conflict but instead embraces a fuller and deeper narrative connection? And on and on.

The media shows you the sensational: young Jews standing arm-in-arm with Hamas’ supporters on campus. But take your eyes off the headlines and you’ll see tens of thousands of Jews, including and especially young Jews, embracing their Jewish identity, identifying more strongly as Zionist, seeking out the Jewish history they feel they never really learned, rediscovering great traditions and rituals, and in all respects rising to the meet the challenge that has confronted Jews of every generation going back millennia: how to be Jewish in our modern world. In time they will come up with new answers, just as Jews did in the 1800s.

These Jews are the future. Things are looking good.

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Who Killed Chaim Arlosoroff? In-person presentation this Sunday, June 9

Come see me in-person at the 36th Annual East Bay Tikkun — A Day of Learning in Honor of Shavuot. Registration (free) required here. Shavuot is a spring festival marking when the Israelites received the Jewish law at Mt. Sinai, and is often celebrated by studying Torah and other aspect of Judaism.

JCC East Bay, 1414 Walnut Street, Berkeley, CA

Sunday, June 9, 2–8pm (not sure what time my session will be yet)

My talk: Who Killed Chaim Arlosoroff? How a 1933 unsolved murder on the beach in Tel Aviv explains Israeli politics. Get ready for twists and turns!

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No new episode this week

Expect a few less episodes this summer, as I’m taking a break from the podcast to focus on other Jew Oughta Know projects. But keep an eye on this Substack for regular articles, and I’ll still pop up in podcast form now and then.

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Jew Oughta Know on all seven continents!

With confirmation from a listener in ANTARCTICA, it’s official: Jew Oughta Know has been downloaded and streamed on all seven continents! Let’s keep it going: any submariners out there? Astronauts?

This is all thanks to your support in DONATING, leaving good reviews, and spreading the word. Tell everyone you know in every country on the map, and find your name listed on the website when you donate at the Jew Oughta Know website. Please note that donations are not tax deductible.

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Picture of the Day

Photo: Jason Harris

The Ari Synagogue in Tzfat, Israel, is one of the oldest synagogues still in active use in Israel. It was built in the late 1500s by Spanish Jewish exiles who first fled to Greece before settling in Tzfat. The synagogue is named in honor of Rabbi Isaac Luria (known as “Ha’Ari”, “the Lion”), the visionary Kabbalist (mystical Judaism) whose followers stayed in the city up to this day. There is a Jew Oughta Know episode about him!

Legend has Luria praying in this synagogue on the eve of Shabbat, and then leading the congregation outside to welcome Shabbat in the open air. Some Jewish congregations still reference to this practice today as they turn to face the entrance of their synagogue while singing “Lecha Dodi.”

The synagogue was felled by a earthquake in 1837 and rebuilt in the 1850s. Today it serves both Ashkenazi Hasidim and Sephardic Jews, and is a must-stop for visitors to Tzfat.

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