Kaplan on Zionism and Other Key Zionist Texts Collected by Rabbi Elyse Wechterman ([email protected]) Congregation Agudas Achim, Attlebor, Ma

Texts of Classical Zionism

Herzl, “The Jewish State.” 1896 The world needs the Jewish State; therefore it will arise. The plan would seem mad enough if a single individual were to undertake it; but if many Jews simultaneously agree on it, it is entirely reasonable, and its achievement presents no difficulty worth mentioning. The idea depends only on the number of its adherents…. Let me repeat once more my opening words: The Jews who will it shall achieve their State. We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and in our own homes peacefully die.

AD Gordon, “People and Labor,” 1911 In Palestine, we must do with our own hands all the things that make up the sum total of life. We must ourselves do all the work, from the least strenuous, cleanest and most sophisticated to the dirtiest and most difficult. In our own way, we must feel what a worker feels and what a worker thinks – then, and only then, shall we have a culture of our own for then we shall live a life of our own. It all seems very clear: From now on our principal ideal must be Labor. Through no fault of our own we have been deprived of this element and we must seek a remedy. Labor is our cure. The ideal of Labor must become the pivot of all our aspirations. It is the foundation upon which our national structure is to be erected. Only by making Labor, for its own sake, our national ideal shall we be able to cure ourselves of the plague that had affected us for many generations and mend the rent between ourselves and Nature.

Ben-Gurion, “the Imperatives of the Jewish Revolution,” 1944 We must master our fate, we must take destiny into our own hands! This is the doctrine of the Jewish revolution – not non-surrender to the Galut but making an end of it. Galut means dependence – material, political, spiritual, cultural, and intellectual dependence – because we are aliens, a minority, bereft of a homeland, rootless and separated form the soil, from labor, and from basic industry. Our task it to break radically with this dependence and to become masters of our own fate – ion a word, to achieve independence. To have survived in the Galut despite all odds is not enough; we must create, by our own effort, the necessary conditions for our future survival as a free and independent people. The meaning of the Jewish revolution is contained in one word – independence! Independence for the Jewish people in its homeland! Kaplan’s New Zionism

The Future of the American Jew, McMillan Co., 1948 We must definitely disavow the notion, held by our people until modern times, of a completely comprehensive kibbutz galuyot, the ingathering of all the Jews in the Diaspora. We cannot aim at brining all Jews back to Eretz Yisrael. We cannot aim at brining all Jews back to Eretz Yisrael. Not only is Eretz Yisrael incapable of absorbing the entire Jewish people, but millions of Jews have thrown in their lot with the nations of which they form a part, and have no desire to be uprooted from their present homes. However, Eretz Yisrael must be kept open as a haven of immigration for all Jews who are not able to feel at home in the lands where they now reside…..

Eretz Yisrael imbues the scattered remnants of the Jewish people with a sense of unity and creates an international Jewish public for the gifted Jewish writer, artist or musician… the Diaspora becomes an impetus for fostering culture in Eretz Yisrael no less than Eretz Yisrael is for fostering Jewish cultural milieu in the Diaspora.

An attitude of distrust toward the possibility of maintaining Jewish life in the United States, is, moreover, unfair to our country….We have a part in the social, economic and cultural life of America, and, unless we give to the common welfare of the American people the best that is in our power to give, we are not doing our full duty to our country. But as Jews, the very best we have to give is to be found within Judaism, the distillation of centuries of Jewish spiritual experience. … The attitude of Jewish isolationists or the sholelei hatezufah, (negators of the Diaspora) which would keep American Jewry with its loins perpetually girt for a hasty departure for Eretz Yisrael is not likely to inspire our neighbors with confidence in the Jew, or with respect for Judaism.

Kaplan on Zionism and Other Key Zionist Texts, collected by Rabbi Elyse Wechterman Downloaded from the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation jrf.org. p. 2 of 4 From “A New Zionism”, Herzl Press, 1955

As Zionists, we have to reconstitute our peoplehood, reclaim our ancient homeland and revitalize our Jewish way of life. Each of these three objectives should be pursued with the end in view, both in Israel and in the Diaspora, of developing such interpersonal and intergroup relations as are likely to help us become more fully human. That is to be our religion and our mission.

…living in “two civilizations.” For that, the tradition has not prepared us. Only a movement which dares to face the new realities in the world about us is likely to help us achieve that new style of living. That is the task of the New Zionism. The New Zionism should make it possible for us to see Jewish life steadily and whole. It should relate the Jewish people, the Jewish religion and the Jewish way of life to Eretz Yisrael as the alpha and omega of Jewish existence. Eretz Yisrael has to be reclaimed as the only place in the world where Jewish civilization can be perfectly at home. But also other lands where Jews have taken root have to be rendered capable of harboring that civilization. The one purpose cannot be achieved without the other. Should Jewish civilization fail to be at home in Eretz Yisrael, it will disappear everywhere else. Should it disappear everywhere else, it is bound to give way to some new Levantine civilization in Eretz Yisrael.

Jews who live in the Diaspora, by maintaining their oneness with the Jews in Eretz Yisrael, may serve to restrain the chauvinistic tendencies which the Israeli struggle for survival is apt to produce. On the other hand, they will also participate in the experiences of the Jews in Eretz Yisrael, together with the moral and spiritual values which those experiences may yield.

Ahad Haam was convinced that a thriving Jewish life in Eretz Yisrael would bring about a spiritual renaissance among Jews everywhere else. What is actually happening, however, is Jews in the Diaspora assuming that they no longer have the moral responsibility of keeping the Jewish People alive through their refusal to become assimilated with the rest of the world. They need have no further compunctions about becoming full-fledged Goyim… So Zionism must undo its most serious blunder: retaining the traditional belief that the ultimate destiny of the Jewish people is to be completely ingathered within the boundaries of Eretz Yisrael.

Outside the State of Israel the Hebrew language should not be the sole means of imparting a Jewish education. On the other hand, no Jewish education can be deemed adequate which fails to impart facility in the understanding of the Bible, prayer book, and other Jewish literature in the original, and which does not enable the individual Jew to maintain contact through the Hebrew language with the inner life of Israel.

Kaplan on Zionism and Other Key Zionist Texts, collected by Rabbi Elyse Wechterman Downloaded from the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation jrf.org. p. 3 of 4 Rabbi Jack Cohen “Reflections on Kaplan’s Zionism,” The American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan Edited by Goldsmith, Scult and Seltzer 1990, NYU Press

Cohen was the first Kaplan student to make aliyah to Israel where he founded Mivakshe Derekh, a Reconstructionist synagogue and continues to live and teach.

[Kaplan] sought to maintain a balance between the rational need for a land to ensure the creative continuity of the Jewish people-an understanding that followed upon his mystical awareness that only Eretz Yisrael could be that land-and a conviction that the future of the Jewish people demanded a strong Diaspora. Without a vital center in Eretz Yisrael where Judaism could be the primary civilization of the Jews, the Diaspora would lack an essential source of inspiration and purpose. Kaplan loved the Jewish community of the United States, but he equally loved the yishuv. He related t both of them as a devoted offspring for whom the loss of either parent would be irreparable.

The primary motivation for Zionism should come from the internal conditions and needs of the Jewish people, rather than viewing it as a countermeasure to anti-Semitism.

[as described by Ehud Ben-Zvi: “A Zionism of freedom, which found inspiration in the inner resources of Judaism and not in the persecution of the Jews.”]

The second direction of [Kaplan’s] Zionism would be transterritorial. The Zionists would eventually have to strengthen the Jewish periphery as well, requiring that a new kind of voluntary association-founded on common spiritual, ethical and cultural interests would have to be devised and given structural actuality.

[Kaplan’s] Zionism was meant not only to establish a secure Jewish homeland but to supply an essential instrument for the revival of Jewish life wherever possible. The instrumentality of a creative Jewish community in Israel was to provide the focus of a new type of transterritorial people. This idea is still anathema to Zionist leaders in Israel, who refuse even to raise the possibility that there can be any value to the Jewishness of the Diaspora. In their opinion, it is only a matter of time before Jews outside of Israel will drown through assimilation.

Kaplan on Zionism and Other Key Zionist Texts, collected by Rabbi Elyse Wechterman Downloaded from the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation jrf.org. p. 4 of 4