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Neither Germans nor Poles: Jewish Nationalism in Galicia before Herzl, 1883-1897

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2009

Joshua Shanes
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Although galician jewry constituted one of the largest Jewish communities in the world before World War I, it has attracted too little scholarship. Galician Jews sat on the frontier between East and West. Religiously and economically, they were similar to Russian and Romanian Jewry, but since their emancipation in 1867 they enjoyed wideranging civil and political rights akin to those of their Western brethren. Historians focusing either on the numerically more significant Russian Jewry, or the politically and financially more important Western Jewry, have tended to avoid Galicia, even though the region was home to almost a million Jews by the turn of the century. Most Zionist historiography has also underemphasized the importance of this community, particularly in the pre-Herzlian period, by which time Galician Zionists could already boast a considerable degree of organizational infrastructure. This neglect is partly a reflection of the general historiographical trend within modern Jewish history. It also reflects, however, the unusual nature of Galician “Zionism,” which was largely Diaspora-oriented—directed toward national cultural work in the Diaspora as well as political activities designed to secure national minority rights—long before Zionists in either Russia or the West had begun to engage in such activities.

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Articles
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Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 34 , January 2003 , pp. 191 - 213
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Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 2003

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References

1 Marsha Rozenblit's review of recent literature on Habsburg Jewry skips over Galicia completely (Marsha, Rozenblit, “The Jews of the Dual Monarchy,” Austrian History Yearbook 23 (1992): 160–80),Google Scholar a problem which she herself recognized and hoped would be redressed. The lacuna is most obvious in William, McCagg'sA History of Habsburg Jewry, 1670–1918 (Bloomington, 1989);Google ScholarMcCagg's entire thesis of Jewish national “self-denial” rests on largely ignoring Galician Jews, two-thirds of Austrian Jewry.Google Scholar An important corrective to this gap is Piotr, Wrobel's “The Jews of Galicia under Austrian-Polish Rule, 1869–1918,” Austrian History Yearbook 25 (1994): 97–138, which provides an excellent overview of Galician Jewish life during that period.Google ScholarSee also Israel, Bartal and Antony, Polonsky, eds., “Focusing on Galicia: Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians, 1772–1918,” Polin 12 (1999).Google Scholar

2 Characteristic of this trend is David, Vital'sThe Origins of Zionism (Oxford, 1975), in which the narrative moves geographically from Russia to the West, skipping over Galicia completely.Google ScholarJust two monographs have focused on Galician Zionism.Google Scholar The first, Nathan, Gelber'sToldot ha-tenuah ha-Tsiyonut be-Galitsyah (History of the Zionist movement in Galicia) (Jerusalem, 1958), remains the classic work on this subject.Google ScholarGelber, born and raised in Galicia, is still the community's most important historian. However, his work is very limited by its Zionist agenda. One senses in it that Zionism is some hidden stream of history that Jews increasingly discovered, rather than a conscious choice that Jews increasingly made. It also, as a result, underemphasizes the movement's Diaspora orientation and overemphasizes the uniqueness of Zionism as a nationalist movement.Google ScholarAdolf, Gaisbauer'sDavidstern und Doppeladler (Vienna, 1988), although limited to German-language sources, corrects Gelber's Zionist bias by painstakingly detailing the Diaspora activities of the Galician Zionists, but unfortunately, he gives just a few pages on the critical formative period before 1897.Google Scholar

3 Zionist historiography has traditionally viewed itself in the same vein.Google Scholar For an important critique of this approach, see Miroslav, Hroch, “Zionismus als eine europäische Nationalbewegung,” in Judentum und Christentum, Band 1 (Kohlhammer, 2000), 33–40.Google Scholar Important exceptions are Hugh, Seton-Watson'sNations and States: An Enquiry into the Origins of Nations and the Politics of Nationalism (London, 1977);Google Scholar and especially Anthony, Smith'sThe Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford, 1986), whose theory focuses on the origins of nations in the premodern period.Google Scholar

4 Jewish linguistic, cultural, and even religious disunity further undermined their claim to nationhood, although Eugen, Weber (among others) has shown that such disunity in France plagued even the so-called “historical” nations well into the nineteenth century.Google ScholarEugen, Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen:The Modernisation of Rural France, 1870–1914 (London, 1979).Google Scholar

5 See, for example, Gideon, Shimoni, The Zionist Ideology (Hanover, 1995), 4–51;Google Scholar and Mitchell, Cohen, “A Preface to the Study of Jewish Nationalism,” Jewish Social Studies 1, no. 1 (1994): 73–93.Google Scholar

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8 See Smith, , Nationalism, 187–98;Google Scholar and idem, Ethnic Origins.Google Scholar

9 See Shimoni, , Zionist Ideology, 5;Google Scholar and Gellner, , Nations, 2.Google ScholarGellner, does include “Diaspora nationalism” in his typology, but he conceives of it only in the most narrow terms, writing that “for these kinds of nationalisms, the acquisition of territory was the first and perhaps the main problem” (106). Thus he writes that Israel is “the most famous and dramatic case of a successful Diaspora nationalism,” but he ignores the complex and diverse nature of the Jewish nationalist movement, of which Zionism (in the territorial sense) was only one branch.Google Scholar

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12 Besides the power of the Polish-controlled diet, buttressed by the Polish gentry's political domination at the district level, in 1867, Galicia's (formerly German-oriented) schools were Polonized through the formation of a Polish-dominated school board; in 1869, an imperial decree made Polish the language of the bureaucracy and courts in Galicia; and in 1870–71, Polish became the official language of instruction for Galicia's two universities in Cracow and Lemberg. In 1871, a permanent cabinet ministry (without portfolio) was created to oversee Galician affairs, a post continuously held in Polish hands.Google ScholarSee James, Shedel, “Austria and its Polish Subjects, 1866–1914: A Relationship of Interests,” Austrian History Yearbook 19–20, Part 2 (1983-1984): 23–42.Google Scholar

13 Jews were also disproportionately concentrated in the east, where three-quarters of them lived. In 1900, Jews constituted 7.71 percent of the population in Western Galicia (186,544), but about 12.75 percent in Eastern Galicia (624,639). These numbers hide, however, extraordinary Jewish urban concentration, Jews constituted over one-quarter of Galicia's two largest cities, Lemberg and Cracow, and formed either a majority or a plurality in most East Galician cities and towns. Overall, 40.4 percent of the cities' and 44.5 percent of the towns' population were Jews in 1900.Google ScholarMax, Rosenfeld, Die Polnische Judenfrage (Vienna, 1918), 77;Google Scholar and Jakob, Thon, Die Juden in Österreich (Berlin, 1908), 17–20.Google Scholar For an excellent demographic analysis based primarily on Polish sources, see Tomasz, Gasowski, “Jewish Communities in Autonomous Galicia: Their Size and Distribution,” in The Jews in Poland, ed. Andrzej, Paluch (Cracow, 1992), 205–22.Google Scholar

14 Article 19 of the December Constitution of 1867 guaranteed the “inalienable right” of every People (Volkstamm) to “preserve and cultivate its nationality and language,” including the equal rights of all languages in schools, government administration, and public life.Google Scholar On the December Constitution and the issue of national minority rights, see Gerald, Stourzh, Die Gleichberechtigung der Nationalitäten in der Verfassung und Verwaltung Österreichs, 1848–1918 (Vienna, 1985).Google ScholarOnly certain recognized nationalities received these rights, however, and this list did not include Jews.Google Scholar

15 Electoral manipulation was relatively easy as the Polish gentry maintained power through its domination of the Bezirkshauptmannschaften, the county prefects who conducted the elections and confirmed their “results.” Moreover, the peasant curia, already limited in its percentage of parliamentary seats, elected their representatives indirectly, so that ultimately only a small number of peasant electors had to be bribed or threatened to vote as the Polish gentry wished.Google ScholarJohn-Paul, Himka, “Dimensions of a Triangle: Polish-Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Austrian Galicia,” Polin 12 (1999): 35.Google Scholar

16 Der Emes'r Jud, March 4,1904.Google Scholar

17 This pro-German identity had been carefully cultivated by the Habsburgs, who viewed Jews as Germanizing agents in the largely Slavic province. It was especially well-rooted in the secular intelligentsia, which had come under the influence of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah), a movement which emphasized the importance of modernization and secular learning, both of which it associated with German culture.Google Scholar

18 The group succeeded in electing three of its candidates, although by the time of the next parliamentary elections in 1879, Polish political hegemony in Galicia was sufficient to guarantee that virtually no such opposition would again succeed.Google Scholar On Jewish activity before and during the election, see Rachel, Manekin, “Politics, Religion, and National Identity: The Galician Jewish Vote in the 1873 Parliamentary Elections,” Polin 12 (1999): 100–119.Google Scholar

19 On the transformation of Polish nationalism and the growth of anti-Semitism, see Brian, Porter, When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in Nineteenth-Century Poland (New York, 2000).Google Scholar

20 There was no assimilationist movement toward the Ruthenian nation. With its generally uneducated, often anti-Semitic, peasant population and its largely clerical intelligentsia, itself struggling to overcome Polish domination, it was not an appealing option.Google ScholarAs John-Paul, Himka put it, “For the Jews to hitch their wagon to the politically marginalized, oppressed, and plebian Ukrainians would have made no sense.”Google ScholarHimka, , “Dimensions,” 35.Google Scholar

21 Initially, the growth of Ruthenian nationalism deepened Ruthenian-Jewish enmity by politicizing the traditional economic conflict between the two groups, particularly the role of Jews as agents of the Polish nobility.Google ScholarSee John-Paul, Himka, “Ukrainian-Jewish Antagonism in the Galician Countryside During the Late Nineteenth Century” in Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective, ed. Howard, Aster and Potichnyj, Peter J. (Alberta, 1988).Google ScholarThis began to change only toward the end of the century.Google Scholar

22 In 1869, Jews were still generally recorded as German, but with the Polonizarion of the state bureaucracy, Galicia's “German” population steadily declined in favor of the Polish. By 1880, 60.4 percent of Galician Jews were “Polish,” 74.6 percent in 1890, 76.5 percent in 1900, and by 1910, over 92 percent were registered Poles.Google ScholarRosenfeld, , Polnische, 147.Google Scholar For a more recent analysis of the census politics in Galicia, see Emil, Brix, Die Umgangssprachen in Altösterreich zwischen Agitation und Assimilation (Vienna, 1982), 353–83.Google ScholarThis was of course indicative of Polish power and not of Jewish Polonizarion, per se. As late as 1931, by which time Polish Jewry had undergone a substantial degree of Polonizarion since the prewar period, just 12 percent of all Polish Jews declared Polish their mother tongue.Google ScholarEzra, Mendelsohn, Zionism in Poland: The Formative Years, 1915–1926 (New Haven, 1981), 10.Google Scholar

23 In 1890, for example, Poles constituted 53.3 percent of the Galician population by Umgangssprache, Ruthenians 43.1 percent and Germans 3.4 percent. By religion, Jews constituted 11.66 percent of the population in that year. The ramifications of these numbers (with most of Jews answering Polish, the Poles actually numbered about 44 percent) were clear to all three nationalities.Google Scholar See Thon, , Die Juden, 110;Google Scholar and Heinrich, Rauchenberg, Die Bevölkerung Österreichs (Vienna, 1895).Google Scholar For a more recent statistical overview of Jews as a nationality in the Habsburg Empire, see Wolfdieter, Bihl, “Die Juden,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie, 1848–1918, ed. Adam, Wandruszka and Peter, Urbanitisch, vol. 3, bk. 2 (Vienna, 1980), 880–948.Google Scholar

24 The most important of these groups was the Przemyśl Society for Settling the Land of Israel, established in 1875.Google Scholar See Gelber, , Toldot, 65–67.Google Scholar

25 The Russian-Jewish intelligentsia was similarly disillusioned, only far more completely. In Russia, the pogroms and the Draconian anti-Semitic “May Laws” that followed soon after crushed Jewish hopes for emancipation by the state and led to the growth of various post-liberal solutions to the Jewish problem (including Jewish nationalism), which demanded self-emancipation,Google Scholar or, as Leo, Pinsker's classic 1882 booklet declared, Autoemanzipation.Google ScholarSee Vital, , 49–186;Google Scholar and Jonathan, Frankel, Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862–1917 (Cambridge, 1981).Google ScholarRecent scholarship has suggested that this trend had already begun in the 1870s, after a major pogrom exploded in Odessa, and was merely accelerated (albeit rapidly) in 1881.Google Scholar See John, Klier, Imperial Russia's Jewish Question, 1855–1881 (Cambridge, 1995), 358–63.Google Scholar

26 Marsha, Rozenblit describes this as a “tripartite” identity: “Austrian by political loyalty, German (or Czech or Polish) by cultural affiliation, and Jewish in an ethnic sense.”Google ScholarMarsha, Rozenblit, Reconstructing National Identity: The Jews of Habsburg Austria during World War I (New York, 2001).Google Scholar

27 For an explanation of this dichotomy, see Shimoni, , Zionist Ideology, 46–51.Google Scholar

28 See Miroslav, Hroch, “The Social Interpretation of Linguistic Demands in European National Movements” (San Domenico: European University Institute Working Papers 94/1,1994), 25.Google Scholar

29 Shimoni, , Zionist Ideology, 32.Google ScholarOnly at the turn of the century would a Jewish Diasporanationalism take root in Russia. Its most important advocate was probably the Jewish socialist party known as the Bund, which by 1901 had begun calling for national-cultural autonomy, although the ideology was actually formulated by the anti-socialist Jewish historian Simon Dubnow in a series of articles beginning in 1897.Google ScholarSee Simon, Dubnow, Nationalism and History: Essays on Old and New Judaism (Philadelphia, 1958).Google ScholarFollowing the 1905 Russian revolution, Russian Zionists themselves also adopted a resolution to pursue national rights in Russia.Google Scholar

30 Viennese Zionists in this period generally remained focused on Palestine as well. A Diaspora-nationalist party, the Jüdische Volkspartei, was founded in Vienna in 1902. Austrian Zionists themselves began agitating for national minority rights on the eve of universal suffrage in 1906.Google Scholar See Marsha, Rozenblit, The Jews of Vienna, 1867–1914: Assimilation and Identity (Albany,1983), 161–93.Google ScholarRozenblit's, division of Jewish nationalists into “Diaspora nationalist” and “Zionist” camps, albeit with overlapping membership and activities, emerges in Galicia as well, although there the distinction is less clear because those who called themselves Zionists adopted an ideology closer to Rozenblit's, Diaspora nationalism. See discussion below.Google Scholar

31 Just months earlier in Vienna, Rubin Bierer (originally a founding member of Shomer Israel), M. Schnirer, and Nathan Birnbaum had formed Austrian Zionism's most important association of this period, the academic fraternity Kadimah.Google Scholar

32 See the memoirs of two of the society's most important members, Mordechai Braude and Mordechai Ehrenpreis, both of whom came from strict orthodox backgrounds, as well as those of Adolf Stand, who came from a thoroughly secular background.Google ScholarBraude, M., Zikhron Mordechai Ze´ev Braude (Festschrift for M. Braude), ed. Dov, Sadan (Jerusalem, 1960), 80,95;Google ScholarEhrenpreis, M., Ben mizrah le-máarav (From east to west), reprint ed. (Tel Aviv, 1986), 25–26;Google ScholarAdolf, Stand, Kitvei Stand (Stand's writings) (Tel Aviv, 1943), 69–76.Google Scholar

33 It sought their integration, but not necessarily their “assimilation.” Although many members wanted to go this far, the group as a whole was far more ambiguous. Thus their official organ, Ojczyzna, included a Hebrew supplement until 1886, which praised Hebrew language and literature and sought to spread awareness of it among Jews.Google Scholar On the society and one of its most important advocates, see Ezra, Mendelsohn, “Jewish Assimilation in Ľviv: The Case of Wilhelm Feldman,” Slavic Review 28, no. 4 (1969): 577–90.Google Scholar

34 See Ezra, Mendelsohn, “From Assimilation to Zionism in Lvov: The Case of Alfred Nossig,” The Slavonic and East European Review 44 (1971): 521–34.Google ScholarOjczyzna began publication in 1880, and until 1886 included a Hebrew supplement, Ha-Mazkir, whose editor, I. Bernfeld, also later joined Mikra Kodesh.Google Scholar

35 Selbst-Emanzipation (hereafter SE), Aug. 3,1885.Google Scholar

36 Founded by Birnbaum in 1885, the paper appeared regularly until mid 1886, when it was discontinued, and then again appeared regularly from 1890–1893.Google Scholar

37 The paper frequently referred to “Agudas-Achim” as “Agudas-Akum,” a slight vowel shift which changed the meaning of the name from “union of brothers” to “union of pagans.” It continuously attacked the assimilationists as unimportant and devoid of any real support, but this obsession obviously suggests that just the opposite was the case. For example, although it claimed only eighteen to twenty guests assembled at the seventeenth annual meeting of Shomer, Israel, the paper has two articles, over three columns of text combined, which discuss just how unimportant the meeting was.Google ScholarSE, Feb. 2, 1885.Google ScholarAnother article later that year mentions that Agudas Achim membership had fallen from 500 to under fifty (“One could not complain for lack of space” at their fundraiser), while an 1886 article puts it at about twenty members.Google ScholarSE, May 3, 1885, and Mar. 17,1886.Google Scholar

38 Joseph, Bloch recalled of Byk: “The association Schomer Israel as well as Byk and the preacher Löwenstein had once in their unregenerate days gone in for anti-Polish, German-centralist politics, together with the Ruthenians; they were now super-patriots and sang ‘Jescie Polska’ [sic].”Google ScholarBloch, J. S., My Reminiscences (New York, 1923), 78.Google ScholarSaul, Landau, wrongly dating Byk's conversion to 1891, recalled in his memoirs that Shomer Israelites dropped their pro-German orientation at that time to become “Hausjuden des Polenklubs”Google Scholar in exchange for a parliamentary mandate in Landau, Brody. S. R., Sturm und Drang im Zionismus (Vienna, 1937), 32.Google ScholarIn fact, Byk, as president of Shomer Israel, announced the society's switch in early 1885.Google ScholarSee Der Israelit, Feb. 6,1885.Google Scholar

39 SE, Nov. 17,1885.Google Scholar

40 SE, July 1,1890.Google ScholarThe president of the Ruthenian Academic Association, notably, responded by supporting the Jewish-national position.Google ScholarThe Seleucid Greeks had attempted to Hellenize Jewish society, forbidding circumcision, placing idols in the Jerusalem Temple, and so on. Many Jews were in fact deeply attracted to Hellenist culture, and fought with the Seleucid Greeks against the Maccabees. Zionists candidly described themselves as modern-day Maccabees fighting modern-day Hellenists.Google ScholarA report from Lemberg's 1895 festival, for example, declared: “Filled with feeling and excitement was the speech of Herr David Schreiber, who compared today's ‘assimilationists’ with the former Hellenists, and the ‘Lovers of Zion’ with the Maccabees, and expressed the hope that the Zionist idea will in the end be victorious and the assimilationists will be defeated just as the former Hellenists. The speech was greatly applauded.” Ha´am-Das Volk, Jan. 10,1896.Google ScholarAssimilationists who dismissed the festivals as unimportant celebrations of a foreign people (that is, ancient Israel) naturally made the Zionist comparison even easier.Google ScholarOjczyzna, for example, once wrote of the festivals: “What are the Maccabees to us, they who lived 2,000 years ago in Asia minor, while we are Poles and have no part in them.” Quoted by Gelber, , Toldot, 110.Google Scholar

42 Braude recalls triumphantly how he succeeded in getting the city's aged preacher, Rabbi Y. Löwenstein, to speak at Zion's first Maccabee festival in 1888. According to Braude, Löwenstein had no idea about the society's nationalist program and was only too happy to find Jewish youth interested in Judaism.Google ScholarBraude, , Zikhron, 98.Google Scholar

43 See, for example, reports on the Lemberg and Stanislau Maccabee festivals held in December, 1885.Google ScholarSE, Dec. 22,1885.Google Scholar

44 This use of ancient history as a unifying myth suggests yet another aspect of Jewish nationalism that was entirely similar to other national movements.Google Scholar See Anthony, Smith, “The ‘Golden Age’ and National Renewal,” in Myths and Nationhood, ed. Geoffrey, Hosking and George, Schöpflin (New York, 1997), 36–59.Google Scholar

45 Shmuel, Almog, Zionism and History: The Rise of a New Jewish Consciousness (Jerusalem, 1987), 32.Google Scholar

46 SE, Jan. 1,1886.Google Scholar

47 SE, Oct. 1,1885.Google Scholar

48 Although Jewish nationalists continued to support Bloch enthusiastically throughout his twelve-year parliamentary career, in the end he did not join the Zionist movement. After briefly flirting with Jewish nationalism, he ultimately preached an identity of Jewish pride as Austrians “sans phrase,” the only true Austrian citizens in an era of hypernationalism.Google Scholar See Joseph, Bloch, Der Nationale Zwist und die Juden in Österreich (Vienna, 1886), 41.Google Scholar

49 For Bloch's account of his 1883 victory over Byk, see Bloch, , My Reminiscences, 79.Google ScholarFor a detailed account of the 1885 campaign against Byk,Google Scholar see ibid., 209–26.

50 Bloch's predecessor, Rabbi Simon Schreiber, voted consistently with the Polish Club, never once even raising his voice in a debate, as he spoke neither German nor Polish.Google Scholar

51 SE, June 2,1885.Google Scholar“Moszko,” Polish for Moses, is the slang pejorative with which nationalists dismissed “assimilationists.” Poles regularly called all Jews Moszek or Moszko. Zionists conveniently overlooked the fact that Bloch pledged, if elected, to join the Polish Club, which he dutifully did, costing him his previous support among German-Jewish liberals in Vienna.Google ScholarBloch, , My Reminiscences, 78–79.Google Scholar

52 See Gelber, , Toldot, 119–24.Google ScholarFor firsthand accounts, see Braude, , Zikhron, 96;Google Scholar and Ehrenpreis, , Ben, 25–26.Google Scholar

53 Ehrenpreis, , “Vor Herzl und Mit Herzl,” Theodor Herzl Jahrbuch (Vienna, 1937), 183.Google Scholar See also idem, “Zionist Movement in Galicia” (in Hebrew), Ha-Magid, Nov./Dec. 1894.Google Scholar

54 History lessons continued to focus on heroic periods in Jewish history, such as the Maccabean and Bar-Kochba revolts against the Assyrians and Romans respectively, as well as on great Jewish thinkers, such as Judah Halevi and Maimonides.Google ScholarLectures, as stated earlier, began to focus on the Zionist program itself. Topics such as “The Task of the Jewish Intelligentsia,” “The Position of the Jews vis-á-vis the Non-Jewish Fellow Citizens,” and “The Solution of the Jewish Question through the Colonization of Palestine” appeared frequently.Google ScholarZion also hosted so-called discussion evenings, with similar topics designed to attract Jewish intellectuals away from the Poles and into the Jewish national camp: “Anti-Semitism,” “The nationality concept in general and the Jewish national concept in particular,” “Assimilation,” and “Nation and confession.”Google ScholarSE, 1891, Dec. 19,1892, and Feb. 10,1893.Google Scholar

55 Ehrenpreis, , “Our Aim,” (in Yiddish) Yidisher folkskalender (Lemberg, 1895), 3.Google Scholar

56 Ehrenpreis, , “Vor Herzl,” 185.Google ScholarThis “double program” was something then unique to Galician Zionism. Eventually, other Zionist groups adopted similar resolutions, including the Austrian Zionists, who formed the Jewish National Party on July 1, 1906, to run candidates in parliamentary elections, as well as the Russian Zionists at their Helsingfors conference in 1906.Google ScholarThis union of gegenwartsarbeit, or “work in the present,” together with efforts to achieve a state in Palestine, became known as “synthetic Zionism.7rdquo;Google ScholarSeeAlmog, , 177–237.Google Scholar

57 The subtitle of the brochure, “Lamentations for Tisha B´av,” refers to its main section, where a young Zionist lambasts religious Jews whose “prayers [for the rebuilding of Jerusalem] are chatter without heart and feeling” because they refused to actually take any concrete steps toward that goal, that is, by supporting the Jewish colonies.Google ScholarZion's other Yiddish pamphlet in its Volksbibliothek series, titled Der Wecker (The alarm clock), similarly justifies the Zionist ideology by framing it as the natural conclusion of religious Judaism: How can one pray with proper intention without knowing fluent Hebrew? What does “Next Year in Jerusalem” mean if not supporting those who actually move to the land of Israel?Google ScholarLike Der Kantchik, it ridicules the religious establishment as both religiously hypocritical and socially insensitive, and argues that Zionism constituted a more authentic Jewish ideology.Google ScholarIn short, like Der Kantchik, it sought to influence the secularizing religious youth, who shared many of these criticisms, in favor of Zionism and the Jewish Enlightenment. Both booklets are available at the Jewish National Library, Jerusalem.Google Scholar

58 Zion undertook to publish a Yiddish weekly, Der Carmel, in 1893, but it proved short-lived and fell apart about a year later.Google Scholar

59 Quoted in Ehrenpreis, “Vor Herzl,” 184.Google Scholar

60 Although obviously its “outer” program of settling Palestine radically opposed Shomer Israel's entire agenda.Google ScholarIndeed, Der Israelit printed a scathing review of the brochure, arguing that it worked against the achievement of equal rights for Galician Jewry.Google ScholarGelber, , Toldot, 173.Google Scholar

61 SE, June 12,1892.Google ScholarEzra Mendelsohn similarly described the dissolution of Agudas Achim as symbolic of the victory of Zionism over assimilationism.Google ScholarMendelsohn, , “Jewish Assimilation in Ľviv,” 110.Google Scholar

62 Ehrenpreis, , “Vor Herzl,” 185.Google ScholarMalz, (Ehrenpreis's brother-in-law) wrote the “obituary” for SE, Aug. 5,1892.Google ScholarThe launch of Przysztość was announced in SE, Sept. 19,1892.Google Scholar

63 Both groups had specifically Diaspora-oriented programs, solidified (in both cases) after brief crises which ended with the victory of the Diaspora camp.Google Scholar

64 Founded in 1891 by Salz, who later became an important leader in the World Zionist Organization, Ahavath Zion became the most important specifically Palestine-oriented Zionist organization in Galicia.Google Scholar

65 Der Volksfreund, July 15,1891.Google Scholar

66 SE, Oct. 9, 1892.Google ScholarIts growth in membership also led it to acquire a larger headquarters in 1892, which doubtless contributed to the group's growing self-confidence.Google ScholarGelber, , Toldot, 133.Google Scholar

67 Birnbaum, in this phase of his life, was staunchly Palestine-oriented and could hardly tolerate any deviation from this ideology—ironically so, considering that he himself would eventually abandon Zionism in pursuit of Jewish national autonomy in Austria.Google Scholar On Birnbaum, see Robert, Wistrich, “The Clash of Ideologies in Jewish Vienna (1880–1918): The Strange Odyssey of Nathan Birnbaum,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 33 (1988): 201–30.Google Scholar

68 The conference was delayed a full year as a result of very light response to Zion's initial 1891 call. In the interim period, Zion published its program brochure and began publication of Przysztość, which generated a wider response to the conference.Google ScholarFor a full report of the conference, see SE, May 18,1893.Google ScholarNote that with the exception of Salz, party leadership rested exclusively with Lemberg Zionists.Google Scholar

69 In 1892, the “outer” program of building a home in Palestine had at least been oriented toward that goal: to facilitate emigration of Jews from Russia and Romania to Palestine, to found agricultural settlements in Palestine, to awaken the national feelings of Jews already there and to replace their spoken Yiddish with Hebrew, to found agricultural schools, and to found associations in Europe to collect money for the settlements.Google ScholarGelber, , Toldot, 172.Google ScholarIn 1893, other than its Hebrew-language initiatives, only the support of colonization societies made it into the platform (and only on the initiative of Birnbaum himself), but even here the job was passed to a different federation. See below.Google Scholar

70 SE, May 18,1893.Google Scholar

71 He visited a total of thirteen cities in Galicia and Bukowina: Cracow, Tarnow, Rzeszow, Jaroslau, Przemyśl, Lemberg, Sambor, Drohobycz, Stryi, Stanislau, Kolomea, Czernowitz, and Radautz.Google ScholarSE, Aug. 3,1892.Google Scholar

72 The most important of the Zion union's branches was Ahavath Zion, founded already in 1891 but now reconstituted as a branch of the Viennese federation. In late fall 1893, the new president of Kadimah, Jacob Kohn, led his own agitation trip through Galicia to found Diaspora-oriented nationalist groups, which proved equally successful.Google ScholarGaisbauer, , Davidstern, 66–67.Google Scholar

73 Ibid., 66. On the history of these terms, largely coined by Birnbaum, see Alex, Bein, “The Origin of the Term and Concept ‘Zionism,’” Herzel Year Book, vol 2. (New York, 1959), 1–27.Google Scholar

74 Ehrenpreis, , “Vor Herzl,” 185.Google Scholar

75 For a detailed discussion of these papers, see Joshua, Shanes, “Papers for the Jewish Volk: Jewish Nationalism and the Birth of the Yiddish Press in Galicia,” Polin 16 (2003).Google Scholar See also Jacob, Toury, Die Jüdische Presse im Österreichischen Kaiserreich (Tübingen, 1983), 131-38.Google Scholar

76 Specific programs promoted by this press included the campaign for Jews to declare Yiddish their Umgangssprache on the 1890 census and the campaign to reelect Joseph Bloch to Parliament in 1891. The convergence of religious orthodoxy and nationalism was especially obvious in the latter case, when the papers portrayed support of Bloch as a badge of one's Jewishness, opposition to him a sin against God.Google Scholar See, for example, Der Volksfreund, Feb. 1, 1891;Google ScholarJudische Volkszeitung, Mar. 1, 1891;Google Scholar and Israelitische Volksblatt, Feb. 8, 1891.Google Scholar

77 Gaisbauer, , Davidstern, 67.Google Scholar

78 Ibid., 68.

79 See Jacob, Bross, “The Beginning of the Jewish Labor Movement in Galicia,” YIVO Annual (1950): 55–84.Google Scholar See also Wistrich, , “Austrian Social Democracy and the Problem of Galician Jewry, 1890–1914,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 26 (1981): 89–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

80 See Rick, Kuhn, “Organizing Yiddish-Speaking Workers in Pre-World War I Galicia: The Jewish Social Democratic Party,” in Yiddish Language and Culture Then and Now, ed. Leonard Jay, Greenspoon (Omaha, 1996), 37–63.Google Scholar

81 The conservative elements in parliament, including the Poles, had hoped with this reform to satisfy growing demands for the equal and direct election of the entire Reichsrat. The fifth curia elected seventy-two out of 425 seats.Google Scholar See William, Jenks, The Austrian Electoral Reform of 1907 (New York, 1950), 22–26.Google Scholar

82 Shimoni, , Zionist Ideology, 86–87.Google Scholar