9 - Zionism

Summary

Chapter 9 examines Zionism’s complex relationship with Jewish religion, culture and identity. Zionism was born out of the drive to find a response to the problems Jews faced as a distinct collective, and its solution was based on defining the Jewish people as a nation with distinctive cultural characteristics entitled to self-determination realized in a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. While Zionism was fundamentally a modernist, dynamic, revolutionary, and secular movement, it recognized the Jewish faith and Jewish history as the source of its formative stories and national cultural symbols. Zionism never entirely suppressed the cultural issue; it rather adopted a moderate stance that manifested itself in several ways. First, the Zionist movement kept the cultural Zionists on a low burner. Second, Zionism spoke in a collective national language and saw itself as speaking for and representing the entire Jewish people, and voicing all its problems and needs. Third, Zionism translated its ethos of unity into democratic procedure. Fourth, the Zionist movement took upon itself to operate in a way that would facilitate civil cooperation and good neighborliness. Fifth, the Zionist movement made a point of stressing the cultural symbols common to and accepted by most Jews.