On the Foundation of Zionism in the Philosophy of History

One may think about Zionism as one wishes: one may consider it an aberration or an idea that has a claim on the future; one may regard it from the heights of a fantastical cosmopolitanism as a disastrously reactionary idea or see it as the last possible resort for the continually hounded Jewish people to find a resting place and attain a happy independence; one may approach it as friend or foe, one thing will not be denied by anyone—that it exists. No one can contest today with any sort of justification that the group of thoughts, upon which the Zionists base their ambition and hopes, has become a factor that exerts a great and daily increasing influence on the lives of Jews, internally as well as externally.

The existence of Zionism contains in itself the task—for friend and foe alike—to look for an explanation of how it originated and in which circumstances it developed. By becoming a historical fact, it must be understood and explained as part of history.

The usual explanation applied to it is antisemitism. This explanation is particularly popular with the opponents of Zionism who can add immediately that antisemitism is only an ephemeral phenomenon, an acute illness, so to speak, that will soon disappear, and that therefore it was not necessary to fight against it with means as radical as Zionism. When we examine this more closely, we actually find that the addition already contains the rebuttal of the argument that antisemitism produced Zionism. Since an ephemeral phenomenon would not have the strength to produce a movement that courses powerfully toward an expansive future—toward the future. Therefore the Zionists, who are using basically the same argument, hasten to point out that antisemitism is chronic, and to a degree that a cure seems impossible: its core is always the same, even if in different times it appears in different forms. Therefore there is no safe harbor but Zionism. Therefore! This is Herzl’s argument and partly also Acher’s. But what speaks against constructing a causal connection between Jewhatred [Judenhaß] and Jewish nationalism, is history itself.

The form in which Jewish nationalism manifested itself earlier was messianism, be it as quiet hope, prayer, and fearful anticipation, be it, as happened frequently enough, as the violent eruption of a messianic revolution. The latter can unquestionable be taken as a yardstick for the escalation and intensity of national feelings. And we can see now that especially the relatively calm periods were favorable for the emergence of a pseudo-Messias. To mention just one example:

The roughly one hundred years that preceded the appearance of Shabbetai Tzvi were among the happiest and least troubled in Jewish history. The Jews who migrated en masse to Turkey after their expulsion from Spain and the many expulsions from Germany, found there a hospitable home that accepted them readily, perhaps because it needed them. Within a short time they accrued power and wealth and gained influence with the government. In short, they were doing well and the atmosphere was free of antisemitism. And in this period Shabbetai Tzvi appeared. Almost immediately he acquired a large following; indeed, with few exceptions all of Turkish Jewry and a large part of European Jewry, to whom the news of the impending salvation had traveled with lightning speed, were among his worshipers. The movement was so deep and powerful that even a hundred years later, both the hope that the Jews had invested in Shabbetai Tzvi, and the gnawing pain about the bitter disappointment they had suffered were still present as small tremors. One could say that Shabbetai Tzvi arrived at the right time.

And that was, as stated, a quiet, happy time, without any disruptive and worrisome Jew-hatred, because one simply cannot ascribe any influence to Khmel’nyts’kyi’s slaughter of the Jews, which occurred almost simultaneously in Poland, since the Sabbatean movement was already so powerful even refugees from Poland brought the news of their persecution to Turkey. In contrast, I cannot recall a single historical fact, documenting that during a time of brutal persecution or immediately afterwards a pseudo-Messiah emerged with any kind of notable success. Psychologically this is easy to grasp. During a time when daily worries are overwhelming, it is impossible for the kind of mood to arise that produces the enormous measure of courage and hope necessary to make bold plans for the future. A messiah was never the product of despair, but of an elevated mood. I would be almost tempted to claim that our Zionism today, in its deepest feelings and daring, far-reaching plans and hopes for the future came into being despite antisemitism and not because of it. In any case, it is completely wrong to derive Zionism in any way from antisemitism.

In my opinion the basis of this argument is the faulty conclusion: post hoc, ergo propter [after that, therefore because of that]. Or, and probably more likely in this case, a not unusual confusion of root cause and immediate trigger.

One may well admit that the noise of the Jewhunts [Judenhetzen] in Romania and Russia, the ferocious barking of the antisemitic pack in Germany and Austria roused the Jews from sleep and terrified them, from the sleep into which they had been lulled by the tender, sweetly lachrymose tones of the fraternization concert during the liberal era. Flung from the celestial dream back into brutal reality, they began to think about their lot and found in themselves the ancient hope of a return to their old homestead. In themselves—because throughout history they never quite let go of that hope entirely, even if, for a short time during the last decades, particularly in the circles of the intellectuals, the so-called assimilation Jews [Assimilationsjuden] were not moving, were not active.

This is nothing but a well-known phenomenon in individual psychology transposed onto a social group: an idea that was pushed below the “threshold of consciousness” is lifted back into consciousness due to an external stimulus. After all, we become conscious of our elementary vital functions only when they are disrupted, obstructed, or somehow endangered. In the same way, antisemitism made us conscious again in our elementary vital functions, the vital nerve of the Jewish community: the hope of returning to Palestine and the will to transform this hope into reality to the greatest extent possible under our own steam.

I called this hope the vital nerve of the Jewish community. Indeed, I could not imagine Jewish history with all of its horrifying pain and suffering without the firm belief in “Zion” always providing a vista from the bleak present into a bright future. I mean this particularly in a moral sense. Just as an individual never becomes “depraved,” never falls victim to total decadence—in the less refined sense of the word—as long as there is a will and hope, so it is with the entire people. Once this ray of light out of and into the future goes out, the life spark, that conducts warmth and energy to individuals and peoples to enable them to endure adversities, dies too. Truly, the Jews had to endure plenty of adversities were plentiful in the history of the Jews, and yet it is morally at least at the level of the fortunate Aryan peoples.

In any event, I would like to maintain that a direct line connects our Zionism today to the messianism of the earlier theological period¹ of our history. To wit, the same national emotion, the same dissatisfaction with the present that produced the hope for a messiah, are today the sources of the most important thoughts of Zionism. Zionism, historically considered, is a continuation of messianism, although with the significant difference that earlier people were awaiting a miracle, whereas today they are trying to set in motion a natural and orderly development. Earlier putting their hopes in a savior from the outside, today the entire people is appealed to: it should save itself—it is salvation from the inside.

In an investigation of Zionism within the framework of the philosophy of history, I am therefore not asking: How did Zionism come into being? Because it didn’t originate de novo, but developed. Its roots reach all the way back to the beginning of Jewish history. Thus, the issue for me is its evolution, which is always the question for historical phenomena, and I am asking: What are the historical circumstances that can explain the transition from messianism to Zionism? What historical factors pushed the established religious belief to expand into and focus on a program of social and political action?

I am not planning to present final answers to these questions. What I am looking for is path along which one could arrive at a decisive solution of this problem.