JWST 235 Week of 4 15 I Jewish Nationalism II Role of Secularization a There were other forms that did not want a state in the Middle East or a state at all Nationalism is separate from Israel b Break apart ideas of anti Semitism and Jewish nationalism as always being eternal c Continuity or Rupture i Nationalism is a modern idea linked to the emergence of the centralized political state ii Has the power to impose identity makes people believe that they have more in common with the other 50 million people who live in their country internalizing and accepting the idea iii Has the need to do so mobilizes and controls the population needs to raise large armies iv Why The nation is the story of the modern era v An almost exclusive legitimizing rhetoric a Powerful rhetoric adopted in reaction to the secularization of the Jewish experience assumption of the 19th century that the society is moving towards secularization Jews need to believe that their tradition is unbroken because they do not have a constitutional or direct line to proof b Co optation of religious terminology agree with something but not for the obvious reason implies an element of trickery or force c Note the changing attitude of the Orthodox it is with a secular set of terms with which Jews can justify their identity in the early years both Orthodox and Reform Jews objected to the Zionist movement i Reform wanted it to be a nationalist movement not a religious movement ii Orthodox said it was unnecessary and recognized that they were already Jewish and didn t need a movement to tell them so i Historical Simon Dubnow Jews were the oldest and yet still the most modern nation ii Socialist Bund social problems could be solved by working together with other groups of workers to form a more just society believed in socialism but they were a Jewish society iii NONE of these people wanted to leave their homes they just saw the Jews as a separate entity b Zionism central idea is territorial self definition you HAD to move countries to be Jewish territorial specifically in Israel III Multiple Forms a Diaspora Nationalism i Poitical Herzl Jewish state ii Cultural Ahad ha Am Asher Ginzberg yes we need a homeland but we don t necessarily need control of the government c Zionism wins When and why IV The Jewish Problem a Physical pogroms obvious targets to other people economic success and limitations legal status and power political b Elephants c Need craving for self definition and self expression d Trying to resolve real problems but also a need to find a way to self express V Diaspora Nationalism people who live in a diaspora who do not want to go back to a central homeland but they do want control of their government school newspapers language and do all those things that make a group live they want to be able to have political representation in another country i e in Israel there are Arab parties in the Knesset form of cultural identity but they are asking for political identity too a Late 19th and early 20th centuries i Attempts to define minority rights within multi national empires the idea that Jews would be able to create a country is incredibly far fetched ii Nations are defined where none had existed before iii Criteria language faith and land iv Fall back on subjective values like common culture and common destiny they do not have a common land they don t have a common faith VI Jewish Minority Rights a Versailles following WWI VII Simon Dubnow i Paris 1919 documentary on YouTube b Jews given cultural autonomy and representation in many countries from Greece to Poland c Period of time where everything is unstable and Jews are starting to define specific actions as a community a Jewish people evolved from racial ethnic to territorial political to cultural historical the Jews are a secular nation b The last spiritual stage doe not need the trappings of a state like land language and sovereignty c The nation must redefine itself now through secular institutions d Error of religious reformers to define the group religiously e Volkspartei People s Party VIII Bund a Jewish socialists highly Russified b Aim to escape particularism and parochialism c Young socialists are shocked by popular anti Semitism and its acceptance by the left i Socialism of the masses pressure on the socialists to become more Jewish that becomes a form of nationalism Jewish masses suspicious of assimilationists Jewish interests are separate d e f Gerneral Worker s Union in Lithuania Poland and Russia largest group identity for Jewish and express it in the fight for socialist values i Established 1897 in Russia ii As with most modernizing movements in the east it is associated with Vilna and Lithuania and then spreads iii Reaction to decline of old Jewish craft guilds a 1870 s begins to spread Marxism in Yiddish b tension between internationalism of socialism and of these Jews and their Jewish orientation c Russian language gives way to Yiddish 1890 95 d Recognition of separate interests and political needs a Relations with other socialist organizations b Cooptation c Plish Bund 1914 d Yiddishist movement Yiddish becomes a literary language under the IX Aaron Lieberman X Bund and Nationalism Bund e CySHO schools XI Zionism a Precursors b Religious messianism c Moses Hess Rome and Jerusalem 1862 d Romanticism e Solution to split identity f Theodore Herzl