Beyond the Nation-State: the Zionist Political Imagination from Pinsker to Ben-Gurion'

H-Nationalism Behar on Shumsky, 'Beyond the Nation-State: The Zionist Political Imagination from Pinsker to Ben-Gurion'

Review published on Monday, December 9, 2019

Dmitry Shumsky. Beyond the Nation-State: The Zionist Political Imagination from Pinsker to Ben- Gurion. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. 320 pp. $40.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-300-23013-0.

Reviewed by Moshe Behar (University of Manchester) Published on H-Nationalism (December, 2019) Commissioned by Cristian Cercel (Ruhr University Bochum)

Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=53474

In a thought-provoking, evidence-based study, Dmitry Shumsky sets out to defend one principal contention: that contrary to the prevailing view in both scholarly and activist-oriented circles, the “fathers” of Zionism were far from being interested in the single overriding idea of establishing a (Jewish) state. They instead entertained several alternatives to secure what they understood to be Jewish national life—including a federation, a binational state, or a multinational democratic state comprising Jewish and Arab parliaments. The conceptualization by Zionism’s “fathers” of national self-determination was thus far from being confined to the familiar model of a Jewish nation-state.

To appreciate the originality of Shumsky’s quest it is worth noting that scholars of Palestine/Israel ordinarily know something about pre-1948 movements or organizations that offered alternatives to the twin ideas of Palestine’s territorial partition and establishment of a Jewish state. These include organized Sephardic/Mizrahi (non-European) Jews who supported, since the 1908 Young Turk revolution, a shared Jewish-Arab homeland; Brit Shalom (1925-33); Kedma-Mizraha (late 1930s); the Ichud/Union (1942-48); and some Marxist currents that since the early 1940s began to entertain socialist binational arrangements. Intriguing as these groups, their members, and ideas were—and remain—they have all occupied a peripheral position and sociopolitical space in Ottoman and mandatory Palestine vis-à-vis the Zionist-Palestinian nationalist currents surrounding them; the latter have ultimately suffocated all those bottom-up alternatives.

Shumsky’s major contribution is that he discusses nothing that could earn the label marginal or peripheral. His study instead implants the discussion of alternatives to the notion of a Jewish nation- state directly in the heart of the Zionist ultra-mainstream. Equipped with knowledge of Hebrew, Russian, German, and Polish, masterful historical-archival work, and meticulous attention to detail, Shumsky analyzes the five most important activist Jewish thinkers, hailing from the Habsburg and Russian Empires, who probably have had the greatest impact on the shaping of the ideology of Zionism. These are Leon Pinsker (1821-91), Ahad Ha’am (Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg, 1856-1927), Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880-1940), and David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973). As Shumsky devotes a full chapter to each of these individuals, they can also be read as separate, self- contained texts—methodological organization and structuring that make the book distinctively friendly for teaching purposes.

In terms of methodology and explanatory approach to the study of Zionism, as one manifestation of

Citation: H-Net Reviews. Behar on Shumsky, 'Beyond the Nation-State: The Zionist Political Imagination from Pinsker to Ben-Gurion'. H-Nationalism. 12-09-2019. https://networks.h-net.org/node/3911/reviews/5529146/behar-shumsky-beyond-nation-state-zionist-political-imagination Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Nationalism the global phenomenon of nationalism, Shumsky carries his readers both “backwards” and “forwards” simultaneously. By “backwards” I have in mind his full-blownreturn to the dominant tradition that typified the study of Zionism during the second half of the twentieth century, that is, an analysis that chiefly highlights the study of the ideational realm—of writings, doctrines, texts, ideologies, intellectuals, etc. Since the turn of the millennium, the dominance of the ideational school in the study of Jewish (and incidentally also Arab) nationalism has shrunk when compared to approaches that emphasize non-ideational domains, including bottom-up societal and economic changes, power and politics, institutions and organizations, technological change and transformation of collective consciousness, settler-colonial approaches, and more. Yet in carrying readers “backwards” by reembracing ideationalism, Shumsky introduces to the older studies of this type countless revisions, insights, and uncharted essays and op-eds that his five protagonists published—sources that have earned insufficient scholarly attention. In doing so, Shumsky carries his readers exponentially “forwards” in substantive terms as he is successful in complicating to a huge extent the dominant narrative that singularly governed the study of the Zionist quest for sovereignty and self-determination, which were always assumed to adhere to Jewish state formation.

Shumsky’s exclusive focus on the history of ideas ultimately weakens the impact of his otherwise momentous study. When the Zionist movement was embryonic and weak and enjoyed little demographic, political, and economic power—both generally and within world Jewry—it is little surprising that the five Zionist leaders were willing to entertain ideas that Shumsky is perhaps incorrect to term “beyond the nation-state” (his book’s title): the term “beyond” unleashes connotations of a “progressive” “inclusive” post-national(ist?) disposition that he suggests occupied center stage among his five protagonists. Yet their respective considerations of alternatives to a Jewish nation-state seem to emerge less from conviction and candid commitment to non-nationalist political configurations and much more from the simple straightforward lack of power to materialize their otherwise desired standard nation-state model. Shumsky himself accepts that by 1936-37 the model of a Jewish nation-state became exclusive. When one is in a state of sociopolitical weakness, scarcity, and starvation, adherence to the notion that “half a loaf is better than no bread” is not surprising and thus does not originate from candid commitment to sub-state alternatives.

Shumsky’s readers will ponder to what extent alternative ideas to the Zionist nation-state notion were followed by sociopolitical activism and advocacy in order to materialize them, presumably up to the maximal point of abandoning altogether the idea of a fully sovereign Jewish state. Empirical non- ideational history of Zionism does not indicate modestly sufficient attempts to concretize ideas for a Jewish non-nation-state. By way of illustration, think of a man who self-declares himself a feminist and who had additionally spoken and written widely on pro-feminist subjects. Would such an ensemble of oral and written feminist declarations testify to this man’s commitment to feminism or to his self-declaration that he is a feminist? Suppose further that in—say—fifty years a scholar of Shumsky’s caliber would have accessed all of this man’s feminist ideological material. Could this scholar then suggest to future readers that this man’s feminism was meaningful or that he was indeed a feminist?

I would think that the answer is no. To determine how serious of a feminist this man was, one would probably need to examine the extent to which he hadacted upon his elaborate ideas, ideology, or written plans in order to materialize them concretely. One way to arrive at this end would be to interview this man’s wife, daughters, or female work colleagues, or to ideally study what they had

It would be legitimate for one to suggest that the absence of this dimension in Shumsky’s book is not at all as critical as I deem it. It will be, however, harder to counter the claim thatsub -state ideas of the five intellectuals Shumsky studies (not their “beyond” ideas) were not followed by modestly meaningful activism. That certainly was not the case after 1937 (as Shumsky concurs) but more critically also not earlier.

One final contextual proposition that far exceeds Shumsky’s book itself deserves a mention: his book is to a great extent driven by contemporary developments and considerations more than by historical scholarly curiosity. The twenty-first-century trajectory of Israel/Palestine renders this book highly important. Shumsky is one of the foremost public intellectuals who has regularly penned op- eds in leading Hebrew dailies analyzing astutely Israel/Palestine’s post-Oslo condition. As territorial partition to two states seems highly unlikely due to Israel’s relentless colonization, the key emerging question is how to guarantee, in a non-partitioned setting, individual and collective rights for all. Those who are of the view that securing equal collective rights to Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews is the single most critical prerequisite for future peace and normalcy would do well to wholly immerse themselves in Shumsky’s book: the pre-1937 ideas Shumsky brilliantly analyzes are in my reading profoundly more relevant today than they have ever been during the years they were articulated.

Citation: Moshe Behar. Review of Shumsky, Dmitry, Beyond the Nation-State: The Zionist Political Imagination from Pinsker to Ben-Gurion. H-Nationalism, H-Net Reviews. December, 2019.URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=53474

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.