Modern Gnosis and Zionism by Yotam Hotam

Author:Yotam Hotam [Hotam, Yotam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Middle East, Israel & Palestine, Social Science, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781136190711
Google: k0e0VUH_NFEC
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-05-20T17:06:44+00:00

Zionism as a return to national Jewish provenance

Klatzkin regarded his Zionist political program as the heart of his philosophical enterprise, and both his metaphysics and critique of culture lead into his Zionist standpoint. It is here that his modern gnostic approach evolves into its conclusive form. His discussion of the Zionist political program comprises two sections. In the one Klatzkin defines the ‘Jewish question.’ In the second he presents the national solution to the Jewish problem – the moment of redemption.

According to Klatzkin, the ‘Jewish problem’ comprises two cataclysmic events, between which an essential process plays itself out. The first of these events is the moment of exile, of expulsion from the land. It was this point in time that marked the end of the so called ‘original’ condition of a people living in the national framework of its land and the beginning of the ‘diasporic’ condition. The second cataclysmic event is the emancipation. To him this constitutes a ‘second exile,’ and a particularly destructive one at that. The essential process that occurred between these two points – the first and the second exiles – and beyond them was one of decline and termination of the original Jewish condition.

Klatzkin focuses here upon points of fracture or crisis. He does so because of the vitalist mode of thought that he had acquired. According to this approach, crises are perceived as states in which a fundamental problem, which bursts forth from the point of fracture and may therefore be identified, is exposed. From a Life Philosophical perspective it is therefore more significant for Klatzkin to discuss such moments of ‘civilizational breaks’ than to portray in detail the process generated in their wake.

The two cataclysmic events (exile and emancipation) reveal to Klatzkin one major characteristic: the departure of Jewish existence from an original way of life and a descent into spirituality. The two also complement each other, and the process that begins with the expulsion from the land accelerates with the emancipation.

How, then, does Klatzkin visualize this alleged original way of life? He believes that the original way of life is associated with a concept of ‘national’ collective. To Klatzkin the term ‘national’ is therefore of great importance. It represents the authentic, original and ‘living’ part of the collective way of life, while also expressing the desirable political solution to the state of crisis in the metaphysical sense, and of redemption in the theological sense. These connotations are connected, since the national solution to the state of crisis can be implemented only if it embodies a return to an authentic, original way of life. Within such a way of life the ancient people works its land, observes the religious rituals associated with the life of agriculture, and in this sense constitutes an ‘original’ (that is national) collective. In this state of collective existence, ‘national’ and ‘authentic’ are synonymous concepts. The crises that Judaism undergoes are, in this context, a process of elimination of the authentic element and the shaping of a spiritual, cultural, Jewish way of life.

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