- What exactly is Zionism?
Where did the idea of Jewish return to the land of Israel,
which came to be an integral part of Zionism, originate?
And what did this return mean
to different groups at different times?
Was and is there more than one kind of Zionism?
(upbeat music)
For starters, we have to know that
Zionism didn't begin with Theodor Herzl.
The roots of the Zionist idea
grow deep in the land of Israel.
The Jewish people's connection to the land
has been at the center of their story
for at least 3000 years.
For about a 1000 years, the Jewish people built
a rich and thriving ancient civilization in the land.
This lasted until the year 70 CE,
when the Romans destroyed the Jewish temple
in Jerusalem and exiled the Jews from their land.
For the 2000 years since then,
Jews scattered across the globe
have been carrying a collective connection
to the land of Israel and hoped to return to it.
But let's go back to the beginning.
According to the Biblical record,
the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs
made their home in the land of Israel.
Their descendants, freed from Egyptian slavery,
returned to the land several hundred years later.
Centuries of civil war among the Israelite tribes
was followed by the United Kingdom of David
and later Solomon, which centralized Jewish worship
in Jerusalem with the establishment of the first temple.
Of course, there are debates over
the historical accuracy of many Biblical stories.
But what's grounded in historical fact
is that the Jewish people living in Israel
centuries before their exile told
these foundational stories.
Perhaps, more importantly, these stories have been
essential to Jewish identity for millennia.
But back to history.
After some four centuries of religious
and national development under Jewish rule,
the land was invaded by the Babylonians.
The Jerusalem temple was destroyed
and many Jews were exiled to Babylon.
This was a period of great devastation
for the ancient Jewish civilization.
It was only after the Babylonian empire fell to Persia,
roughly 50 years later, that those exiled
were eventually able to return in a
remarkable and historic homecoming.
Referred to as Shivat Zion or the return to Zion,
this movement was initiated by the visionary leaders
Ezra and Nechemya.
The Jewish community was revitalized
and the temple was rebuilt.
In many ways, this shorter period of exile and return
can be seen as a precursor to the ideals and ambitions
of Jewish self-determination that is now known as Zionism.
Jewish civilization in ancient Israel
then continued for another 400 years
until the Romans destroyed the second temple
and exiled the Jewish people yet again
in the first and second centuries.
This time though the exile would last 2000 years.
Of course, this is a fairly simplistic,
condensed summary of a much more extensive ancient history.
But what it all means is that for 1000 years
the land of Israel was the center of Jewish
political and cultural life and day-to-day society.
So there's an ancient connection between
the Jewish people and the land of Israel.
But if the land is so important
then how were Jews able to remain Jews
for almost 2000 years without living there?
Well, despite their distance from it,
the land has always remained the geographic center
of the Jewish faith and religious practice.
The annual cycle of the Biblical Jewish festivals
are based on the agricultural cycles and seasons
in the land of Israel.
The Maccabean Revolts commemorated by Hanukah,
also occurred in the land.
The Biblical and post-Biblical stories
still studied today were rooted in the land.
The rabbis that taught and developed
the very foundation of Jewish practice resided in Israel.
Their teachings were compiled in this 63-volume
legal anthology known as the Mishnah,
the basis of Jewish religious law even today,
also written in Israel.
Even the longing for their return to the land
developed into a foundational piece
of Jewish religious, cultural, and national identity.
The Jewish liturgy includes prayers
three times a day for a collective return to
and rebuilding of the land.
Religious study includes ancient rites and rituals
that would only apply once the Jews were to return
and rebuild the temple.
At the close of the Passover Seder,
Jews call out, "next year in Jerusalem"
and each summer on Tisha B'Av,
the Jewish people mourn the destruction of the temple
and their exile from the land.
At Jewish weddings, the couple breaks a glass
in commemoration of Jerusalem's destruction
and the hope that they return to it.
From country to country throughout the diaspora
Jews maintained a deep faith that they would
one day be returned to their homeland.
Some Jews even made efforts to actualize that dream
by immigrating to Israel, known as making Aliyah.
The long and dangerous journey was difficult
and often life threatening.
Many who sent out on Aliyah didn't make it.
The 13th century Spanish rabbi Nahmanides
was one of the first medieval rabbis
who traveled to Jerusalem hoping to renew Jewish life there.
He found the city in desolation as a result of The Crusades,
yet he succeeded in reestablishing a lasting
Jewish communal life there and established
a synagogue that is still in use today.
After the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492,
a large number of Jews immigrated to the land.
Among them were the families of future rabbis
who would become pivotal in the development of Judaism.
These included Rabbi Isaac Luria and Rabbi Joseph Caro,
both of whom became the leaders of
the mystical Kabbalistic Movement that emerged
in the City of Tzfat in Northern Israel.
The influx of Jews from Spain and North Africa
led to a Golden Age of Tzfat,
during which the city was a global center
for Jewish learning and trade
through the 15th and 16th centuries.
In the late 18th century, some followers of the
Hasidic Movement also began to make Aliyah
to the land of Israel.
One of the earliest Hasidic masters,
Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk,
settled in Tzfat with 300 of his followers in 1777,
the first of several Hasidic settlements.
During roughly the same period, The Vilna Ga'On,
who many consider the greatest Jewish scholar
in centuries, wrote that the long-awaited redemption
would only come once the Jews took practical action
on their own and settled the land of Israel.
They could not rely on prayer and meditation alone
while waiting for a Messianic age.
So in the early 19th century,
more than 500 disciples of The Vilna Ga'On
made the difficult and dangerous journey to Israel,
settling in Jerusalem, where they revived
ancient rituals and customs and established schools.
Later, in the mid-19th century,
Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai and later
Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, also stressed
that redemption would only come
as a result of practical steps.
They called for resettling of the land
as a method of Jewish self-help and shared
many ideas that would later be applied by
the Zionist Movement.
Okay, so there were plenty of small migrations
and movements to return to Israel but
how did these give way to the organized
mass movement of Jews from around the world
returning to the lands that we know today as Zionism?
Well, a large part of what fueled such organization
was the idea of Jewish Emancipation that emerged
from the Enlightenment in the 18th century
combined with the new 19th century concept of nation-states.
Added to the mix was the intensifying
persecution of Jews in Europe.
In 1882, a pamphlet called Autoemancipation:
Warning to His Kinsman From a Russian Jew
was published by a physician named Leon Pinsker.
Pinsker came to the novel conclusion
that hatred of Jews, what he termed Judeophobia,
wouldn't be overcome by a change in Jews'
political status in their host countries
or even by equal rights.
Instead he argued for a new approach,
the establishment of a sovereign political Jewish state.
He then founded an organization called
Hovevei Zion or Lovers of Zion,
which began to facilitate the immigration of Jews
to the land of Israel.
This was the birth of a practical
or political Zionism that aimed towards
the eventual creation of an independent
nation-state for Jews.
And when Rabbi Samuel Mohilever and his disciple
Rabbi Yitzchak Yaacov Reines became leaders
of Hovevei Zion and its religious offshoot,
the Mizrachi Movement, it marked the beginning
of Religious Zionism as a movement
and its early partnership with political Zionism.
But these weren't the only Zionist ideas in development.
Another Zionist Movement began to emerge in 1888
with the circulation of an essay called
Lo Zu Haderekh or This is Not the Way.
It laid out a harsh critique of practical Zionism
and was written by Ahad Ha'Am,
the founder of what would come to be known
as cultural Zionism.
Ahad Ha'Am had been influenced by Pinsker's pamphlet
and ideas and was a member of Hovevei Zion.
But he was critical of the feasibility of practical Zionism
and the massive immigration that it envisioned,
let alone the large scale establishment of a nation-state.
Instead, Ahad Ha'Am proposed the gradual
establishment of a Jewish cultural renaissance
that would unite Jews across the world
with its spiritual center in Israel.
Two of its central goals would be a revival
of Hebrew language and Jewish literacy.
But there were yet other strains of Zionism
developing during the same period.
Socialist and labor Zionist movements,
inspired by Marxist ideals, aimed to work the land
in order to create a socialist communal model of society.
In time these efforts would eventually lead
to the early Kibbutz Movement.
But then how did all of these different movements
eventually come together?
Well, this is where a Jewish Austrian journalist
named Theodor Herzl finally comes in.
Just five years after Pinsker's death,
Herzl published his book, Der Judenstaat
or The Jewish State in 1896.
This changed everything.
Not necessarily because Herzl's ideas were so new.
In fact, they were very similar to Pinsker's.
But mainly because the timing was so perfect.
There had been so many Zionist developments
that the stage was now set for Herzl's vision.
And so when Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress,
Pinsker's Hovevei Zion was absorbed into
Herzl's new Zionist organization.
But disagreements remained.
Ahad Ha'Am, as before, opposed what he now
referred to as westernized Zionism.
He saw Herzl's Zionism as devoid of Judaism
and as an abandonment of Hebrew language
and Jewish culture in preference of
a purely westernized state.
He considered Herzl's vision of mass immigration
and a nation-state to be wishful thinking.
He also objected to the Zionist Movement's general dismissal
of the Arab population already living in the land.
Herzl died in 1904 and so he didn't witness
the most significant development towards his vision,
which came 13 years later when the Balfour Declaration
was issued in 1917.
This was a statement by the British Government
that supported the establishment in Palestine
of a national home for the Jewish people.
It was a hard-won result of more then
a decade of effort by Zionist leader, Dr. Chaim Weizmann.
Weizmann's mentor, none other than Ahad Ha'Am,
advised him during the Balfour negotiations.
Ultimately, Ahad Ha'Am's cultural Zionism
merged with Herzl's political Zionism.
Once it was clear that not only was a Jewish state
feasible but that a large immigrant population
and Jewish culture were already flourishing in the land.
So do we think there's just one idea
that defines Zionism or that Zionism
is the same for everyone?
Whatever one's flavor of Zionism,
be it political, religious, cultural, social, or other,
the unique advancements for the Jewish people
that have come with the state of Israel,
demonstrate how self-determination fulfills
not merely a single expression of Zionism
but as Zionism that can cover the entire spectrum
of Jewish life.
Zionism is not just about the successful return
to Jewish sovereignty that was central to
political Zionism or the spirituality and national
redemption that was a concern of religious Zionism
or the establishment of a socialist community
dedicated to radical equality that was
an ideal of social Zionism or even the
revitalization of an ancient language, literacy,
and culture that was the ambition of cultural Zionism.
Zionism is all of these things and much more.
It is an acknowledgement of the unique role
of the State of Israel in establishing
a thriving, modern Jewish civilization
as the embodiment of the Jewish people's
connection to their ancient homeland
that is rooted in history and dedicated to the future.
Thanks for watching.
See you guys next week.
(upbeat music)