Zionism ציונות

Longing for Zion is older than any movement: the whole book of Psalms is about it, the Passover evening ends with it, three times a day people turn towards Jerusalem. What was new at the end of the nineteenth century was not the wish but the plan: to make the return a work of human hands and a political matter.

What came before it. Emancipation had promised: become like everyone, and you will be accepted. The pogroms of 5641 in Russia and the Dreyfus affair in France showed that even such would not be accepted. Hence Pinsker's Auto-Emancipation: there is no help to wait for; the people must help itself.

What it was made of. The argument was not about the aim but about everything else. Herzl's political Zionism: first a charter from the powers, then settlement. The practical kind, Hovevei Zion: first settlements, the charter will follow. Ahad Ha'am's spiritual kind: not a state but a centre, from which renewal would go out to the whole dispersion. The religious kind, Mizrachi and Rav Kook: the return is the beginning of redemption, and to work at it is a duty. Jabotinsky's revisionist kind: faster and harder, with an army of its own.

And the refusal. A considerable part of the people did not go with the movement at all, and for two different reasons. Agudat Yisrael and most of the yeshiva world—because redemption is not made by hands and exile is not annulled by a congress; the Satmar Rebbe carried this argument to its conclusion. Part of the Old Yishuv—because the newcomers brought another kind of life. And the Reform communities of the West objected at first from the other side: they did not consider themselves a people in exile. The First Congress met in Basel precisely because in Munich both the orthodox and the reformers opposed it.

Where it ends in this timeline. In a state, in 5708—and the argument did not end there but moved on to other questions. We show where it ran; we do not settle it.