On Zionism and Jewish Pessimism
Despite Golda Meir’s claim that “Zionism and pessimism are not compatible,” Zionism is in theory and in practice firmly grounded in Jewish pessimism, which can be defined as the philosophical viewpoint that the Jewish experience is ultimately shaped by the repercussions of systemic antisemitism. In his address at the First Zionist Congress, Max Nordau discussed the advent of “moral Jewish misery” following Jewish Emancipation. The exodus of the Jewish people from the Ghetto is consequently understood to have led to the degeneration of Jewish identity, as Jews experienced (or allegedly self-imposed) societal pressures to assimilate into the cultures of their adoptive nations. Nordau, along with Theodor Herzl, argued that these nations would never truly accept Jews as equal citizens- citing the pervasion of racial antisemitism in the West- and that Jews in the Diaspora were invariably afflicted by the moral misery of such an existence.
The negation of the Diaspora, which is a central component of Zionism, often echoes the anti-Semitic portrayal of Jews as “rootless cosmopolitans”, or opportunistic grifters who drift from place to place with no loyalties to their host society. A.D. Gordon wrote that Jews in the Diaspora “are a parasitic people […] and we are parasites not only in an economic sense, but in spirit, in thought, in poetry, in literature, and in our virtues, our ideals, our higher human aspirations.” The mixing of Hebrew with other languages was presented as another argument for the deformation of Jewish culture in the Diaspora by early Zionist thinkers such as Yehezkel Kaufmann.
Furthermore, in rejection of the antisemitic portrayal of Jews as feeble intellectuals, Nordau coined “muscular Judaism” in his speech at the Second Zionist Congress and argued a need for the emergence of a “new Jew” in order to establish the national revival of the Jewish people. According to the Zionist view, Jewish identity ought to centrally incorporate- among other qualities- physical strength, athletic prowess, and discipline. It is no great leap to argue that this philosophy was responsible for the well-documented militarization of Israeli society, and surely it is no leap at all to assert that modeling the Zionist Jewish way of life after an antisemitic caricature is a thoroughly pessimistic way of viewing Jewishness.
I agree, in some sense, with the utilitarian assessment that antisemitism will never completely disappear within the existent framework. However, my conclusion is not that Jewish liberation can only be achieved through national self-determination, but that the power structures allowing for the systemic oppression of any ethnic group, including Jews, need to be dismantled. The pervasion of antisemitism, which has not disappeared from the West, must be addressed and anti-Jewish rhetoric must be condemned.
The establishment of the apartheid state of Israel did not resolve the issues of antisemitism, nor does living in the Diaspora denote an erosion of one’s Jewishness. To suggest so would be to denigrate Jewish identity by reducing it to something that can be altered and re-defined by enemies of the Jewish people or even the existence of national borders. In this age, it would be inadvisable to claim that it is possible or even desirable for Jewish culture anywhere to remain completely stagnant, but it is possible for its essence to be preserved. Only by abolishing the broader emphasis on national identity- including that which allows for the existence of Israel- can Jewish liberation finally occur.
