Zionism

I

Introduction

Zionism, movement to unite the Jews of the Diaspora (exile) and settle them in Palestine; it arose in the late 19th century and culminated in 1948 in the establishment of the state of Israel. The movement's name is derived from Zion, the hill on which the Temple of Jerusalem was located and which later came to symbolize Jerusalem itself. The term Zionism was first applied to this movement in 1890 by the Austrian Jewish philosopher Nathan Birnbaum.

II

Historical Background

Zionism as an organized political movement originated in the 19th century, but its roots go back to the 6th century bc, when the Jews were carried off to captivity in Babylon and their prophets encouraged them to believe that one day God would allow them to return to Palestine, or Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel). Over the centuries, the Jews of the Diaspora associated the hope of the return with the coming of the Messiah, a saviour whom God would send to deliver them. Individual Jews often migrated to Palestine to join the Jewish communities that continued to exist there, but they remained a small minority among a largely Arab population.

A

The Haskalah and the Move to Assimilate

A secular Zionism could not emerge until Jewish life itself was to some extent secularized. This process began in the 18th century with the Haskalah (Hebrew, “enlightenment”), a movement inspired by the European Enlightenment and initiated by the German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. The Haskalah marked the beginning of a move away from traditional orthodox Judaism and created a need for Jewish national feeling to replace religion as a unifying force. Initially, however, the trend was towards assimilation into European society. The liberal Jewish reform movement in Germany sought to reduce Judaism to a religious denomination, allowing Jews to adopt German culture. The achievement of political equality by European Jewry began in France in 1791 during the French Revolution and spread over most of Europe in the next few decades.

B

The Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism

Political emancipation, however, proved to be a false dawn. In the second half of the 19th century organized anti-Semitic parties emerged in Germany and Austria-Hungary. In Russia, where the emancipation had in any case been superficial, the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 unleashed a wave of nationalist feeling, and anti-Jewish riots (pogroms) spread across the country. The 1881 pogroms were as much a turning point for Russian Jewry as the French Revolution had been for French and Western European Jewry.

To escape persecution, large numbers of Russian Jews migrated to the West, primarily to the United States. A smaller number, believing that Jews living in the Diaspora were destined for the eternal role of scapegoat, and that their only security lay in a homeland of their own, went to Palestine, which was then under Turkish rule. They were given financial support by the French Jewish philanthropist Baron Edmond de Rothschild, but many did not persevere, and this early Jewish immigration was insignificant.