The Historical Continuity Motif in Conservative Judaism's Concept of Israel

The historical continuity motif in Conservative Judaism's concept of Israel

Allon Gal Ben-Gurion Research Ctr. and the Dept. of History, Ben-Gurion University of The Negev, Sede Boer and Beer Sheva Campuses, Israel

The inherent ideological tendency of European Zionism in its general negation of the golah (diaspora, exile) was to concentrate on and idealize the periods of Jewish sovereignty, that is, the First and Second Commonwealths. Despite the differences between them, both political Herzlian Zionism and cultural Ahad Ha-Amist Zionism, generally speaking, gravitated toward the periods of Jewish independence, particularly the earlier Biblical period (as distinguished from the Second Commonwealth). Herzlian Zionists were attracted to the more political and heroic aspects, whereas Ahad Ha-Amists focused on the Hebrew culture and the Jewish ethos exemplified by the prophets. Later Zionist leaders of European background, personages such as Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion, for all their differences, shared a negation of the golah and an attraction to the independent periods, especially to the bibilical period when there was no diaspora and an authentic Hebrew culture was presumably retained. Ben-Gurion, in particular, the leader of the Yishuv and emerging Israel, was staunchly and zealously committed to the ancient Hebrew history of Eretz Israel, the Bible, and the Hebrew language. Indeed, permeating the emergence of the State of Israel was a passionate yearning to "renew our days as of old" (Lamentations 5:21).1

1 Nathan Rotenstreich, Modern Jewish Thought (Tel-Aviv; 1987), 2 vols. [in Hebrew], vol. 1, pp 281-322; Jacob Katz, Jewish Nationalism: Essays and Studies Oerusalem: 1979) [in Hebrew], pp. 72-84; Shmuel Almog, Zionism and History (Jerusalem: 1982), [in Hebrew] in its entirety; Charles s. Liebman and Eliezer Don-Yehiya, Civil Religion in Israel: Traditional Judaism and Political Culture in Israel (Berkeley, 1983), pp. 89-99; Shlomo Avineri, The 157 158 Allon Gal

The thrust of European Zionism was obviously to create an alternative to the exilic experience. The goal of political independence was often contrasted with the experience of persecution and humiliation; the goal of cultural revival with what were deemed to be the sterile, even stifling, patterns of the Jewish Middle Ages. The Jewish medieval period became for many European Zionists a symbol of both political subjugation and spiritual stagnation. Zionists of European background tended to be disparaging of "those two thousand years of agonized exile," as the popular phrase went. On the whole, they showed little interest in the long exilic period, other than as an example of the very experience the Zionist enterprise was to shun.2 In contrast to European Zionism, mainstream American Zionism never negated the golah. The critical challenge for American Zionism was not to respond to anti-Semitism, but rather to preserve Jewish civilization in the face of the threat of assimilation. Hence, the movement tended to develop a positive interest in the Jewish historical experience outside of Eretz Israel. The molders of American Zionist ideology - personalities such as Judah Magnes, Louis Lipsky, Horace Kallen, Louis Brandeis and Henrietta Szold - were thus positively engaged with the Jewish diaspora of and after the Second Commonwealth era. Their approach shaped American Zionist ideology toward a conception of the Zionist enterprise in Eretz Israel as having an affinity with past diaspora experiences; more as a continuation of Jewish history than a radical departure from it.3 Along these parameters, the twin theses of this article are, first, that Conservative Zionist thinkers most consistently conceived the nationalist endeavor in Eretz Israel as positively related to exilic history; secondly, they were especially inclined to interpret that historical relationship as bearing significant social and ethical im- plications for the Yishuv and Israel.

Making of Modern Zionism: The Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State (New York: 1981), pp. 13-24,100-104,227-257.

2 Rotenstreich, Jewish Thought, vol. 1, pp. 159-215; Katz, Jewish Nationalism, pp. 99-106; Arnold M. Eisen, Galut: Modern Jewish Reflection on Homelessness and Homecoming (Bloomington: 1986), esp. pp. 148-180. 3 Allon Gal, "The Motif of Historical Continuity in American Zionism", Iyunim Bitkumat Israel: Studies in Zionism, the Yishuv and the State of Israel [in Hebrew], I (1991), pp. 440--461.