Next Year in Jerusalem by Greenspoon Leonard J.;

Author:Greenspoon, Leonard J.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Purdue University Press

Is Zionism a Movement of Return?

Haim Sperber

Mainstream Zionist historiography tends to describe Zionism as a movement of return. Early Zionism (1881–1917) is portrayed as a political movement composed of two distinct subgroups: religious Zionism and secular Zionism. Both groups are described as having the same objective: creating a Jewish state in the Land of Israel.1 This essay offers another perspective regarding Zionism. I shall focus our attention here on one question: was Zionism a movement of return from its outset, or did it become one in a later stage?

Conventional historiography offers the following periodization of early Zionism (before 1914):

• The Lovers of Zion [Hovevei Zion] phase (1881–1896), focusing on immigration to Zion. This constitutes the First Aliyah period.2 The movement operated mainly in Eastern Europe.3

• The Zionist Organization movement, which was the Herzlian phase (1897–1904). In this period the focus was on international politics. It was Theodor Herzl who made Zionism an international Jewish movement, not just an East European one.

• Post–Herzlian Zionist organization (1904–1914), which focused on immigration to Zion. This was the period of the Second Aliyah.

In this essay I claim that early Zionism (1881–1914) was not aiming at returning4 to Eretz-Israel and reestablishing the Third Temple [Beit Ha-Miqdash Ha-shlishi], a popular term for Zionists after 1967. Why did this change? I offer here an alternative interpretation of the development of Zionism: only in 1967 did Zionism become a movement of return. I also claim that the roots of the post-1967 division in Israeli society respecting the rule of the whole Land of Israel [Eretz Israel Ha-Shlema] derive from a change in the ways the Zionist objectives were set.

My main claim is that the Zionist movement was in fact a political union of two different movements aiming at two different objects: (1) re-creating the old kingdom of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel or in other places (cultural-ethnic nationalism) and (2) creating a new political Jewish nation (political nationalism).

Asher Ginsberg [Ahad Ha’am]5 offered a similar claim by distinguishing between those aiming at solving the Jewish question and those concerned with the Jews question. In my view, these two movements reflect two different kinds of nationalism—the Jewish question: cultural-ethnic, and the Jews question: political. Ahad Ha-am and his bitter rivals, the religious Zionists, reflected the first; Herzl reflected the second.

In this essay I investigate the difference between the various attitudes and claim that at the end of the nineteenth century, both movements came to the conclusion that establishing a united political organization was a must but did so for different reasons. The decision to form a united political organization blurred the difference between the two. Only after the Six-Day War in 1967 did the issue emerge again; it continues to influence Israel until now.

In my view, there are three periods during which the idea of return changed: 1897–1917, 1917–1967, and 1967 onward. Only since 1967 has the idea of return become important.

1897–1917

Dichotomy was part of Zionism, as it is part of any other political movement. Nationalism covers but a part of the whole range of political activities.

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