Trudy Gold
Different Strands in the Zionist Movement

Trudy Gold | Different Strands in the Zionist Movement

- So in my last session, I talked about why Zionism arose. And remember, Zionism is a 19th-century movement, and it came out of, ironically, probably the best century the Jews had ever experienced in the West. If in the 1600s anyone had asked a Jew, and nobody would’ve done, “How’d you regard yourselves?” it would’ve been a nation in exile. And remember also what a small portion of the people of the world the Jews really were. In this particular period, the bulk of them are living in Czarist Russia in the most dire straits. Whereas in the West, in Western and Central Europe, by 1878, the Jews have been emancipated. Now, I talked last time with you about the crisis of modernity. And if you remember, in Chinese modernity the crisis is made up of two figures. One is opportunity; the other is danger. And on one level, what happens is the Jews, who’ve become a very urban people in the West, they plunged into the modern world. And out of all proportion to their numbers, you had this extraordinary success story. They really did fall in love with Western culture, and what became the accepted view for the majority, we are citizens or subjects of the countries in which we live, of the Jewish religion. However, as we already established, there were many different strands at work in the 19th century, one of the most turbulent centuries the world had ever experienced. The increase in technology, urbanisation, the movement from the countryside to the towns, the poverty in the towns, the fact that an old way of life for many people was being eroded. It led to a huge amount of insecurities. You know, today we’re living in a world where again we have social, political, and economic insecurity.

And I don’t think you need much imagination to go back over 100 years. When that happens, people become fearful, and they become tribal. Look, history does not repeat itself, but trends do. And on one level, you have this Jewish success story. Out of all proportion to their numbers, they absolutely plunged into the arts, the sciences, business. Now that’s not to say every Jew became rich and famous; on the contrary, but what happened was they went into what I would call visible employment patterns. And we discussed this last week. And what it did was give them a high visibility profile. They were outside the system. And I think that’s one of the reasons the success story was quite extraordinary. But we also looked at other issues, the rise of racism. Now, this grew out of all the insecurities. People in different countries saying, “My group, by blood, is better than yours.” Be it in Germany, in France, wherever there was a clash of cultures. In Germany, not unified till 1871, a chauvinist nationalism. In France, a country that had undergone in the 19th century six different changes of government, couldn’t make up its mind if it was a republic or whether it was a monarchy. Nothing changes, does it? Think about what’s happening in France today, all the different strands at work. And the point is that the Jew, the different one, becomes the focus of antisemitism. And don’t forget, antisemitism is a modern term. It’s a modern racial term. You cannot opt out of being a Jew. It doesn’t matter that Karl Marx was the grandson of rabbis on both sides but had completely renounced his Judaism. He’d been baptised; he had none of the benefits of being a Jew.

On the contrary, he hated his Judaism. He laid very dangerous seeds on the left by equating Judaism with capitalism. You see, in the end, the Jew was everything you didn’t want to be. Capitalism equated communism with Jews. Communism equated capitalism with Jews. The reality was that the majority of Jews just wanted to live their lives. But the other issue with Marx was the development of Jewish self-hatred. What I’m going to talk about. But tonight we’re talking about Zionism. Now, Zionism, and the term, if you remember, was not created until 1891 by Nathan Birnbaum. Zionism comes out of a reaction to antisemitism, also along with all these other nationalism, saying, “Hold on a minute, are we not also a nation? Don’t we have all the requirements of a nation? We have a common history, we have a common past. What we lack is geography.” And then, of course, the strand in Zionism, the strand in Jewish history that is almost indefinable. Next year in Jerusalem, the fact that those of you who attend synagogue, the ark always faces Jerusalem. It is part of the whole fabric of being a Jew. Now, what is interesting, and it’s the product of a different kind of lecture, I could suggest to you that with the fall of the second temple and the creation of the Talmud, the rabbanim deliberately excised Messianism from Judaism because they saw what it led to. What did the Bar Kokhba revolt lead to? Bar Kokhba was proclaimed Messiah, Messiah, it means leader, by the great Rabbi Akiva, but he failed. And the other point, a kind of quietism developed in the diaspora. We will keep our heads down.

Of course, and for 1800 years, they had had to deal with the tragedy of anti-Judaism. Now they’re dealing with a completely different beast because it doesn’t matter how you define yourselves. Now, what were the responses? Those three responses are going to lead to different strands in the Zionist movement. And I decided to do a session on them today because in many ways they are all reflected in the current state of Israel. And also, again, the Jewish state is at the centre, is it not? And many of these trends, and how they developed, you can see in the politics of Israel. And another point that I want to make very, very, very strongly: Zionism is a minority movement in the Jewish world. We’re going to see that the majority of Jews were never Zionists. In the West, they wanted to be the citizens of the countries in which they live, of the Jewish religion. In the East, for the Hasidic community, which made up about 50% of the Jews of Eastern Europe, go further inside yourself, study more, love the Torah, love the Almighty, he will protect us. The outside world is evil. And for the traditional Orthodox, 40% of them, what happened to them? They did leave as a result of the horrors of Russia, but the majority of them, where did they choose? America. Those of you online today, I would suggest, those of you who are born Jewish, the majority of you living in America, in Britain, in South Africa, Canada, Australia, I would suggest that you are descended from Eastern European Jews because 40% in the majority of the mitnagdim, the Orthodox, which merely means opposes to Hasidism, they got out. 40% of them got out.

So very important this: Zionism was never a majority response. It is the Shoah that’s going to change everything. And giving you my own personal opinion on the horrible rise of Jew-hatred at the present time, remember the words, of course, of Jonathan Sacks, that I often quote, “First they hated our religion, then our race, and now our nation.” And also, the fact that Zionism is a dirty word today. It’s absolutely extraordinary. Again, we are at the centre of it. Now, how much of it is a total misunderstanding of what Zionism was and what Zionism is? And the other point I want to make: When Holocaust studies went on the curriculum for country to country to country, in my view, it was ripped out of its Jewish context. There was no teaching of ‘45 to '48 and what happened to the survivors and how many of them were persecuted after the war and went to Israel. I’ll be doing a whole session on that. It’s been Judaized and put together with everybody else’s horror. Now, that’s not to say there aren’t other horrors, but they are not the Shoah. And today the word genocide, it’s bandied about. Karl Popper said, “The 20th century is,” and I’m going to add to that the 21st century, “is all about the meaning of words.” And what I find absolutely extraordinary is how words are perverted and polluted.

And that word genocide is in danger of… Well, it’s gone that way, hasn’t it? And one of the reasons I think it’s important that we study Zionism is at least, and I’m sure many of you know a lot about it, particularly our cousins in Israel. What I think is interesting is what I’m going to do today, and I’ll very much value your input into this, is to talk about the strands. Now, before that, I want to give you a quote from one of the great supporters of the Jews, the extraordinary Mark Twain. He wrote this in “Harper’s Magazine” in 1898: “Spain decided to banish the Jews 400 years ago, and Austria about a couple of centuries later. In all the ages, Christian Europe has curtailed his activities. Trade after trade was taken away from the Jew by statute till practically none was left. He was forbidden to engage in agriculture. He was forbidden to practise law. He was forbidden to practise medicine except amongst Jews. He was forbidden the handicrafts. Even the seats of learning in the schools of science had to be closed against this tremendous antagonist.” And Twain, of course, puts it down to theological Jew hatred. Now, he goes on to say, “See Zionism as the saviour of the Jewish people.” Now ironically, as I said to you before, and please remember this is very important, Zionism was not a majority Jewish response. In the main, it came from people who were living on the edge. And many of those characters actually predate the word that was invented by Nathan Birnbaum. I want to give you… I’m going to pull together different strands now. We’re going to talk first about political Zionism. So can I see the first slide, if you don’t mind? The next slide.

This is a fascinating character called Peretz Smolenskin. He came from the Pale of Settlement. He was a Russian Jewish novelist. And he believed as an observer, a wanderer. He was very much a wanderer from the Pale. He goes to Vienna, and he writes “The Wanderer’s Way of Life”. It’s actually the title of his autobiography. And he is looking for an answer. By the time he’s 20, we find him in Odessa, that great port on the Black Sea that becomes the centre for enlightenment amongst the Jews of Russia. There’s a brief period in Russian Jewish history when there was a dream that Russia would actually open up to the Jews. And it doesn’t happen. Now, he is a figure of the Hebrew Enlightenment, and he’s going to be totally disillusioned by the Russian pogroms. And I’m just going to read you some of his ideas because he looked at the Jews of the West, and this is important. Zionism saw one of their main enemies: emancipation and assimilation. Zionism came to believe, whether you came from political Zionism, cultural Zionism, labour Zionism, that the Jews did have the requirements of a nation. What they’re going to argue about is what kind of nation should it be? So Smolenskin says this in his wonderful article “It’s Time to Plant”: “The Jewish people has outlived all others because it has always regard itself as a people, a spiritual nation.

We are a people. We’ve been a people from our beginning. The foundation of our national identity was never the soil of the Holy Land, and we didn’t lose the basis of our nationality when we were exiled. We have always been a spiritual nation, one whose Torah was the foundation of statehood.” This is another important thread that runs through Zionism. “That there is something in the spirituality of the Jew that must now be in the spirituality of the nation.” And it’s important, because I would suggest to you, and this is my personal opinion, a higher standard is expected of the Jewish state than any other nation in the world. I want to discuss that with you later. And certainly, to a large extent, it does come from some of these Zionist thinkers. And he goes on to say in another pamphlet, “Let Us Search Our Ways”, after the 1881 pogrom. “The mob, a ravenous wolf in search of prey, has stalked the Jews with a cruelty unheard of since the Middle Ages. Perhaps most shocking of all, many supposedly decent people appeared amongst the makers of the pogrom.” And then he goes on to say: “We have no sense of national honour. Our standards are those of second-class people. We find ourselves rejoicing when we are granted a favour and exulted when we are tolerated and befriended.” This is another core decree of many of the Zionists: “The diaspora has downgraded you. We are grateful. We no longer know how to fight back.” What I found so interesting about the rescue of those four Israeli hostages. When the IDF banged on the door, what did they say? “We’re going to bring you home. This is the IDF, we’re going to bring you home.” This is pure Zionism in action.

They did the same in Entebbe. Never again will the Jewish people be homeless and never again will the Jewish people be afraid. And it comes through Zionist thinking. Also, he screams out against the Haskalah of Berlin. He screams out against those Jews who are aping the Gentiles. This is what he says: And remember, I discussed this with you last time. The majority of Jews trying so hard in Vienna, in Berlin, in Paris to be French or in Vienna, of course, to turn to German culture. And in Berlin, he says this: “The Haskalah of Berlin rests on this keystone: to imitate the Gentiles, to abandon our own traditions, to disdain our own manners and ideas, and to conduct ourselves at home and without, in the synagogue, within our families, in imitation of others. The consequence of this doctrine was first the destruction of the sentiment which is the unifying principle and the strongest foundation of the house of Israel, that we are a nation, and second, the abandonment of the hope of redemption.” And he compares Jews to dogs. He says, “Only a dog neither has nor wants a home. A man who chooses to live his whole life as a transient without a thought for the establishment of a permanent home for his children will forever be regarded as a dog. And we will seek a home with all our hearts, our spirits, and our soul.” So Smolenskin is the outsider. He leaves the Pale. He then goes to Odessa, he wanders to Vienna. He is a man who observes, and he’s deep within the Jewish tradition. He is a writer. But these people are pretty isolated. Let’s go on to the next person: Leon Pinsker.

And I mentioned him last week because, of course, he had believed that under Alexander II’s early years, reform would happen. He’d become a doctor. He was part of the Society for the Promotion of Culture. And the pogroms were a lightning rod to him. And, of course, he writes his pamphlet “Auto-Emancipation” and that extraordinary expression “Judeophobia.” Remember, he’s a medical doctor. The western world suffers from Judeophobia. It’s a psychic aberration. It is a 2000-year-old disease. And something else, which I think is very pertinent. He said to those who are fleeing to America: “You are fooling yourselves.” And he says this: “The age-old problem long called the Jewish question provokes the discussion. This is the kernel of the problem: The Jews comprise a distinctive element amongst the nations amongst which they dwell, and they can neither assimilate nor be readily digested by any nation. Hence the solution in finding a means of readjusting this exclusive element to the family of nations so the essential reason for the Jewish question will be permanently removed. The Jewish people lacks authentic, rooted life, which is inconceivable without a common language and custom and without geographical cohesion.” He goes on to say: “The Jew is a corpse to the native, a foreigner to the homesteader, a vagrant, to the proprietor, a beggar, to the poor, an exploiter and a millionaire, to the patriot, a man without a country, for all, a hated rival.

Consequently, we are duty-bound to devote all our remaining moral force to reestablishing ourselves as a living nation so that we may ultimately assume a more fitting and dignified role among the family of nations. 'Let now or never’ be our watchword.” And, of course, when he sends it to relatives in Vienna, they laugh at him. They say he’s gone mad. Excuse me. My cold hasn’t gone. So important to remember, political Zionists. And also, don’t forget, there’s already settlement on the land. From 1881 onwards, the First Aliyah. Jews of Eastern Europe actually leaving under a dream to go to Palestine to buy land, mainly from landowners, and to begin the settlement. Also, don’t forget there was a religious kind of Zionism. We talked about rabbis Alkali and Kalischer, and also a Mizrahi community that went to Palestine. But more about them later on when it becomes more important after the Exodus, of the tragic exodus of the Jews from the Arab world. And now, of course, the man who made it happen, Theodor Herzl. Can we go on to the next slide, please? Now we’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years talking about Herzl. There are many lectures on him. And I have promised my colleagues that I’m going to prepare tracts for you within all our past lectures, so that if you want to follow a thread, say for example on Theodor Herzl from lots of different presentations from different people, you’re going to be able to, but that’s going to have to wait till the summer. Now, Theodor Herzl, the assimilationist, the sophisticated Budapest Jew, and remember by 1920, 25% of Budapest was Jewish, who goes to live in Vienna. He’s the only son, very adored by his parents. And it’s Theodor Herzl who, of course, at first believes in assimilation.

He sees antisemitism. The Dreyfus case is the final nail in the coffin. And what he says, the man of action, the journalist, he actually creates the Congress. He lays down the whole notion of “Der Judenstaat”, “We are one people, we are strong enough to form a state, indeed a model state.” And at the first Zionist Congress in 1897, he actually writes, “Today I created the Jewish state. Maybe in five years, certainly in 50, it will be a reality.” What Herzl does, he brings together this incredible journalist, the publicity machine engendered. He put Zionism on the world map. And he said, “Let sovereignty be granted us over a portion of the globe large enough to satisfy the requirements of a nation.” Excuse me one second. I’m going to call my grandson to get me some water. Andrew? Thank you. Water, please. Can you all hear me? Yeah. Okay. Important to remember that Herzl, the Viennese Zionist, does not live within the Jewish tradition. I’m not talking religiously now, he doesn’t even live within the Jewish world. He’s unaware until the Zionist Congress just how important it is to the Jews of Eastern Europe. The majority of the delegates actually come. Thank you, Arthur. The majority of the delegates actually come from Eastern Europe, and they are going to push the fact that what it needs to be is our ancient homeland. He even suggested Switzerland at one time.

But what is also important about Herzl, he wrote “Altneuland” in 1902, and in it, he lays down what kind of state it will be. It will be a state based on Western values. He envisaged an opera house where Wagner would be played. Arabs would be part of the body politic. And he would create a democratic state on the shores of the Mediterranean very much in a European mould. That was Herzl. And we’ll be coming back to him, of course, when we talk about the British in the Middle East. And so, it’s no accident that when Ben Gurion proclaimed the state of Israel, it’s under a portrait of Theodor Herzl. Because without him, what you would’ve had was a group of intellectuals dreaming of a different kind of dream. And the man who was with Herzl through all of it, probably the most famous man of the time in the Jewish world, was actually Max Nordau. And let’s have a look at his picture, please. Now, Max Nordau was a fascinating character. Max Nordau had come from Budapest. He was actually the grandson of a rabbi. He was like many of these characters , incredibly clever, spoke 15 languages. He travelled the world. He became a doctor. He was an assimilationist, an atheist. He later had an affair with a Russian aristocrat who was an antisemite. And he married a non-Jew. The story goes, he was in Paris and Herzl was sent to see him because his friends said, “Look, Herzl’s got”… A lot of Herzl’s friends thought he’d gone completely crazy. Nordau had written a book called “Degeneration”, where he had called out about the degeneration of civilization. He was a very important intellectual.

Herzl seduces him to his ideas. And it’s he, along with Herzl, and a man called Israel Zangwill, who many of you know a lot about, were the prime movers of the Zionist Congress. And he actually opens the Congress where he says basically, “The Western world is antisemitic, apart from England, and the only hope is to create a Jewish state.” But interesting, what kind of state would it be? In 1903, he addressed Kadima, which was a student association at the University of Vienna, and he wrote a pamphlet called “Muscle Jews”. “For too long or too long, we have engaged in the mortification of our flesh, or rather to put it more precisely, others did the killing of our flesh for us. Their extraordinary success is measured by hundreds of Jewish corpses in the ghettos, in the churchyards, along the highways of mediaeval Europe. We ourselves would’ve gladly done without this virtue. We would’ve preferred to develop our bodies rather than kill them or have them figuratively and actively killed by others.” And he goes on to say, “In the narrow Jewish street, our poor limbs soon forgot their gay movements. That basically the diaspora tradition has stopped us being strong.” And he talks about the gymnastic association that’s been formed by the students. “Our new muscle Jews have not yet regained the heroism of our forefathers, who in large numbers eagerly entered the sports arena to take part in competition and pit themselves against the highly trained Hellenistic athletes and powerful Nordic barbarians.

But morally, even now, the new muscle Jews surpassed their ancestors, for the ancient Jewish circus fighters were ashamed of their Judaism and tried to conceal the sign of the covenant by means of a surgical operation, while the members of Bar Kokhba,” this is the association, “loudly and proudly affirm their national loyalty. May the gymnasium club flourish and thrive to become an example to be imitated at the centre of Jewish life.” Now, Max Nordau, of course, is in a strain of Zionism which I’m sure you can all respond to. Because do you see how these various trends are really going to play out in the modern state of Israel? The next one I want to bring to your attention and we’ll be coming back to time and time again is, of course, the extraordinary Chaim Weizmann. Now, Chaim Weizmann was very much of the people. Born in the Pale of Settlement, educated in Zurich. He dreamed of a Jewish state. He comes to England, and of course, he is the one more than anyone else is who going to be responsible for the granting of the Balfour Declaration. And he’s going to put his faith in England. And I’m going to talk more about Weizmann when next week I talk about the Balfour Declaration. So, and what he basically says, “We have the right to build up our homeland in Palestine.”

And basically, he’s the one who is going to go on to become the first president of the state of Israel. Can we come on to the next character? Now, why have I included the pacifist Albert Einstein? Because Albert Einstein is quite important in all of this. Albert Einstein, although he was a pacifist, although he hated war and he refused to sign the petition of ‘92, this was when in the First World War the top intellectuals in Germany signed a petition saying they were fighting for German culture. He refused to sign it. And later on, of course, in 1940, along with Leo Szilard, really the instigation of Leo Szilard, he did send a letter to the American President Roosevelt telling him to get the bomb before the Germans did. So he’s an ambiguous character. He was a reluctant Zionist. And he came from a secular family, but he did realise that the Jew was in a very vulnerable position. And consequently, he became a supporter of Zionism. He was close to Weizmann, and he did raise money for the Hebrew University. And interesting, in 1944, with Eric Carle, this is what he had to write. He was actually worried that these Zionists in Palestine were not taking enough notice of the Arabs. And he believed that would be a problem. And don’t forget that when Weizmann, who, of course, was the first president of Israel, when he died, it was offered to Einstein. Einstein didn’t take it.

He said he was much too independent for politics. But this is what he wrote with Eric Carle, April 14th, 1944, because there had been a lot of articles saying that he was anti-Zionist. He was never anti-Zionist, on the contrary. And this is April 1944, when there’s absolute knowledge of the Holocaust. And remember what happened to Einstein. He fled Germany in 1933. There was a price on his head. And he knew what was happening to the Jews in Germany. He’d witnessed Weimar. He saw it all. Clearer, perhaps, than many of the others. “Even if we put aside the spiritual, religious, and cultural ties making Palestine the only place in the world which persecuted Jews considered their home, and develop with all the devotion a homeland inspires, there is not even any other country acceptable to human beings which the numerous refugee conferences were able to offer this hounded people. The Jews prepared for extreme sacrifice and hardest work to convert this narrow strip, which is Palestine, into a prosperous country of model civilization.” Again, the dream, the dream that we will create the super state. “For the true source of Arab resistance and hostility towards a Jewish Palestine is neither religious nor political, but social and economic. The big offenders we offer, example, and the impulse which the Jewish colonisation of Palestine presents to the people of the Near East, they resent the social and economic uplift of the Arabian workers in Palestine.

They act as all fascist forces have acted. They screen their fear of social reform behind nationalist slogans and demagoguery.” This is very, very interesting, you know? He believed that Jews and Arabs could eventually work together. Now, whilst this is all happening, there’s a completely different stream of Zionism, and that is labour Zionism. And it comes out of the socialist impulse. This is important. If you’re really going to understand the Zionist movement, it’s important you understand all the different forces at work. I mentioned Moses Hess to you last week. Moses Hess, can we see his face, please? Moses Hess, who’d been born into a very religious family, he had deserted his roots, he had studied at the University of Bonn and then at Berlin under Hegel. He became a close confederate of Karl Marx. He’d worked with him on the first draught of the “Communist Manifesto”. And then he comes back, he sees what’s happening in the world. He is the ultimate outsider, outside of the Jewish world now. He actually marries a woman who’d once been a prostitute, not because he loved her, but to redress the social balance. And she was running a brush shop in Marseille. He never deserts socialism. But he says this: “The Germans hate the Jews not because of their peculiar religion but because of their peculiar race. No reform of the Jewish religion, however extreme, is radical enough. As long as the Jew denies his nationality, as long as he lacks the character to acknowledge that he belongs to the unfortunate, persecuted, and maligned people, his false position has become even more intolerable.”

“The Jewish people”, he says, “will only participate in the great historical movement of present-day humanity only when it will have its own fatherland.” Now, this is incredibly important. He never deserts socialism. In fact, he was buried in Cologne. Here lies Moses Hess, one of the founding fathers of German social democracy. He created the German social democratic movement in communism, basically. He’s reentered kibbutz Degania, and he lies with the founding fathers of Zionism. He believed in an idea of social justice and socialism in the state of Israel. Can we go on, please? Here you see the extraordinary Nachman Syrkin. Nachman Syrkin, who believed in a classless society, national sovereignty, as the only means of solving the Jewish problem. And in his important pamphlet, “The Jewish Problem and the Jewish State”, he says this: “For the Jewish state to come to be, it must from the very beginning avoid all the ills of modern life. To evoke the sympathetic interest of modern man, its guidelines must be justice, rational planning, and social solidarity. The Jewish state can only come about if it is socialist. Only by fusing with socialism can Zionism become the ideal of the whole Jewish people, of the proletariat, the middle class, and the intelligentsia. All Jews will be involved in the success of Zionism.” Now, this is very, very important. Now, what’s going on in Russia? This is where he comes from, remember? And what has happened in Russia post-1881, as many of you know, after all, that’s when your ancestors got out.

What happened to those who stayed? Many of them turned to socialism, but within the framework of Russian society. The Labour Bund, which was founded in 1897 in the back of a blacksmith shop in Vilna, this is authentic Jewish working class saying, “We must create a better social government. We must get rid of the evil czars. But we are creatures of the diaspora. Yiddish is our language. What we want to do is to stand with the revolutionaries, overthrow the evil czar, and we want Jewish autonomy within the Russian Empire.” It was far bigger a movement in Russia than was Zionism. And important and in fact, the Bundists, not the Zionists, they said that basically… Basically, what they wanted was, they were middle class, and they wanted an adventure. Whereas, what they should do is fight it out in Russia. Ironically, there was another Jewish response within the socialist movements, international socialism. And it was Trotsky who said, in fact, the Bundists were Zionists who suffered from sea sickness. Because what Trotsky wanted, this is the smallest group, international revolutionaries. There were 44 of them, by the way, who met at a church hall not far from the centre of London, and they created actually the Bolshevik movement. More than half of them were born Jewish.

They’d thrown away their Jewishness. They said we need an international world revolution. You know, it’s interesting. John McDonald, who is a very close associate of Corbyn in London, he said, “How can you accuse me of antisemitism when I support Trotsky?” Trotsky was a Jew. What he never realised, you know, Trotsky in 1938, he said, when he’s in exile in Mexico, he actually said, “Half the world is divided up into those countries that won’t let the Jews in, and the other half divided up into those countries that won’t let the Jews live.” So, it’s interesting. So important to remember, socialism was becoming an important movement in Russia, and Zionism is becoming socialist. Many of those who were settling in Palestine are under the ideas of people like Syrkin and also his colleague. Can we see the next slide? Borochov. And Ber Borochov, he said Zionism can only be realised if there is an authentic Jewish proletariat. And he says, “Antisemitism is becoming a dangerous political movement. It flourishes because of the national competition between the Jewish and non-Jewish petty bourgeoisie and between the Jewish and non-Jewish proletariat and unemployed masses. Antisemitism menaces both the poor Ostjuden and the all-powerful Rothschilds.” It’s fascinating, isn’t it? “So, we will create in Palestine the perfect Jewish socialist state.”

And then we come on to another important character, Aaron David Gordon. Aaron David Gordon was very much a mystical… He’s called the movement’s secular saint. In fact, his father was the manager of a large estate in Russia. He left his wife and children behind and he went out to Palestine. His dream was, “We actually have to turn every stick and stone in Palestine itself.” He goes to work in Petah Tikva; he worked there for more than five years. And he says this: “The Jewish people have been completely cut off from nature and imprisoned within city walls these 2000 years. We’ve been accustomed to every form of life, except to a life of labour or labour done at our own behest for its own sake. Every stick and stone in Palestine must be turned by Jewish hands. These people are going to become, if you like, the gods of the Second Aliyah.” Can we go on, please? Many of you know these characters. What I’m trying to do now is pull them together. And Ben Gurion, who we’ll be talking about a lot more later on, of course, is under these ideas. Can we go on, please? Cultural Zionism. Yes, and this is where it becomes very, very interesting. And who are we talking about when we talk about cultural Zionism? We’re talking about, of course, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and his notion of Hebrew. Now, what he said was, “Only if we have our own language in our own state can we ever become a real people again.”

Yiddish is the jargon of the diaspora. It’s got to be Hebrew. And this is the extraordinary individual who is going to create a national language, the first Hebrew dictionary. So, you see which way it’s going. “The Hebrew language,” he says, “can only live if we revive the nation and return to its fatherland.” It’s interesting, you know, because when the Technion was established in Haifa, they wanted the language to be German because they thought that was the language of science. It’s Ben-Yehuda who says, “No, it’s got to be Hebrew.” And he says, “Our youth is abandoning our language. You’ve got to stop.” And then, of course, the other important character, Ahad Ha'am, Asher Zvi Ginsberg. Can we go on? Now, of course, he came from the Ukraine. He came from a Hasidic family. A fascinating, incredibly interesting man, and Herzl’s greatest opponent. He actually said this. He didn’t believe in the total ingathering of the exiles. He said, “Out of Zion will come the light that will radiate to the whole diaspora and light up the whole world.” He was an elitist. He created B'nai Moshe, the Sons of Moses. You had to be culturally, intellectually, and spiritually elite. He’d spent some time in Odessa with the Society for the Promotion of Culture amongst the Jews of Russia. When they were disillusioned, so many of them turned to Zionism. He didn’t like all the fanfare of the Jewish state at all, of Herzl’s Jewish state. He said what we got to do is never forget we are the spiritual ones, and what we must do is create a different kind of world.

And following on from him, of course, I’m going to show you their faces and come back to them at another time because they deserve far more than a few words. All of these characters do. What I’m trying to show you today is the various strands which I think has caused an incredible muddle for the outside world. And the question you have to ask yourself: Does the world expect Israel to be different from any other state, or were there people within the Zionist movement who did believe that? Who believed we could create the super state? Can we go on and have a look at some of the other greats which we will return to? Of course, the great Hebrew poet Bialik. Go on. The wondrous Martin Buber, far more on him later on. And then there’s another kind of Zionism. Oh dear, we’ve left out an I. And of course, that is Vladimir Jabotinsky. Don’t forget, and I’m sure none of you sitting around today will ever forget, that in fact Jabotinsky secretary in America was Benjamin Netanyahu. And of course, Netanyahu has been brought up at the feet of Jabotinsky. Much more about him in the future. He also came from Odessa, another young genius. You know, it was Weizmann and Ben Gurion who said he was the least Jewish of us all. He had a kind of chivalry about him. He was an incredibly good writer. He wrote novels, he wrote , he studied in Italy. He was interested in all sorts of ideas. He turns to Zionism because of the pogroms of 1903. He said, “I don’t like Jews much. They’re not a very nice people, but I am a Jew, and my fortunes will rise and fall with them.” It’s interesting, in personality, I think he was quite like Trotsky. They were both brilliant whirlwinds.

Jabotinsky is probably the most loved or most hated of all the Zionist leaders. It was Jabotinsky, we’ve already met him. It was Jabotinsky who was part of the Zion Mule Corps. It was Jabotinsky who created the 38th and 39th Royal Fusiliers fighting with the British. It was Jabotinsky who created the Haganah. It was Jabotinsky who broke away Weizmann because he believed the British eventually would betray Zionism. And it was Jabotinsky who said that we have to be strong at all costs. So let’s have a look at his face. Jabotinsky. And who followed on from Jabotinsky? His son, by the way, worked with the Bergson Group in America. Bergson, of course, was the nephew of Ralph Cook. And he took the alias so not to upset his father, his uncle. And of course, it was Bergson who worked with Ben Hecht and many others in America, bringing the world’s attention to what was going on in the Shoah. And when I look at the Jewish world in the '20s and '30s, I’m going to look with you in a lot of detail about Jabotinsky’s responses to what was going on. He, of course, died before the Shoah was completely underway, but he gave the most extraordinary address in Warsaw in 1938, begging them to get out. Now, so to sum it all up, this overview that we’ll be going back to, there are many strands within the Zionist movement, many that decry the diaspora existence, that saw assimilation and emancipation as the great enemy. It’s a minority movement, but of course, it’s the war that changes everything. Because on one obscene level, what was the Shoah? It was the wiping out, an attempt by the most civilised, cultivated, clever nation in the world, quote unquote, to wipe the Jewish people off the face of the earth.

And as far as the Zionists were concerned, the rest of the world, apart from a few notable exceptions, stood by and let it happen. And out of Jabotinsky and Ben Gurion and Weizmann are going to develop the Haganah, the Irgun, the Lehi. And these people are all going to find their place in Israeli politics. And these ideas are with us today. And I think this is what either the world doesn’t want to understand or can’t understand. And there’s part of me that thinks it’s the first, not the second. Never forget, Howard Jacobson, “They can never forgive us the Holocaust.” And that doesn’t mean that I personally believe we don’t have to come to terms at some stage with the Arabs in Palestine. But what kind of state can we be? And there you have it, all these incredible characters. But please take away from this presentation something very important. Right up until the Shoah, the majority of Jews in the world were not pro-Zionist. You can go as far as to say many of the Jews of the West, and would be dealing with them, were actively anti-Zionists. In fact, William touched on that yesterday. And for the Hasidic Jews of the East, only the Messiah. But never forget, 96% of them died in the Shoah, between 94 and 96%. Why can’t I give you accurate figures? Because whole lines of descent were wiped out. So, on that note, let’s have a look at questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Hillel says, “Zionism has become a dirty word in many circles because it’s identified today to a great degree with the messianic and racist views of Smotrich and Ben Gvir, given enormous power by their actual strength within Israeli society by Netanyahu, as if that is the meaning of Zionism today.” Yes, of course, you have a point, Hillel, with what is going on in Israel today. And I don’t really want to get into politics at this stage, but yeah, your point is very well taken. Rose says, “I prefer to use Jewish hatred rather than anti-Semitism as the Muslims are mostly Semitic too.” That’s a complication as well. And please don’t forget, not all Muslims are our enemy. We’ve got to be careful here.

And Dr. Annette Wolf presented a Zoom yesterday on “Words as Weapons,” fascinating and available. Yes, she’s absolutely superb. “Einstein supported a binational status, the solution of the end of the British mandate, along with Magnus, the president of Hebrew University, Professor Martin Buber, Henrietta Szold, Hannah Arendt.” Yes. Yes, very much so, Hillel. And I think one of the things I want to do is to look at the board of the Hebrew University. And look, the whole notion of a binational state begins, of course, with the Peel Commission, and we will be looking at that.

Q: Shelly, “Why do so many of the people referred to today seem to think the Jewish problem was caused by the fact that we had no homeland and persecution from supersessionists?”

A: Because, I think the point was, it was the rise of nationalism. The Jews are emancipated onto the ideas of the Enlightenment, and it’s nationalism that says you’ve got to be German, and we are a superior group, or you’ve got to be French, and we are a superior group. The Jews didn’t fit in. It was bewildering for many of them because they’d thrown in their lot with the Enlightenment, that wonderful idea in European civilization.

I’m afraid my great friend, Robert Wistrich, the last real conversation I had with him, it chokes me to have to remember it. About two months before he died, he was visiting London. He was actually engaging in a debate at Cambridge University, and I dropped him at the airport, and the last words he ever said to me was, “Trudy, the Enlightenment is a blip. I’ll see you in Jerusalem.” He died two months later.

Yes, David Septon, the “Compendium of Zionism” by Gil Troy. Yes, it is an excellent edition. Thank you. Can I also mention, David, that the original Zionist idea by the great Arthur Hertzberg, his introduction is brilliant.

Q: “Did Jabotinsky start the Betar Youth Movement?”

A: Yes, he did. And now, was it named for the stronghold or was it named for Joseph Trumpeldor, the Covenant? Mitzi, you have put the Betar Movement, also dubbed Beitar, is a Revisionist youth movement founded in Riga, Latvia. Yes, it was one of several right-wing . Yes, we’ll be talking about Betar, of course, because out of Betar, later, the majority of the Irgun came from Betar.

Q: “You have put the burden when coming to terms with the Arabs with the Jews. Are you forgetting that the Arabs have rejected coming to terms many times?”

A: Yeah, Mitzi, I haven’t forgotten that. What I’m asking you, in these characters that I’m talking about, did we set ourselves up? We were going to be the light unto the nations. Israel was going to be the super state. This comes from Jews too. You know, we’ve always been a quarrelsome disputatious people. Never forget it was Jews who invited the Romans into Palestine. They invited Pompey in. Even in the Warsaw ghetto, we quarrelled. What can I tell you? Although we’re going through very, very dark times, I am still an optimist. I take the wonderful. The people I like to read when I’m feeling depressed: Isaiah Berlin, Edmund Flegg, Simon Dubnow, the great historian. We’re going through dark times, but we will be there. I believe we are the eternal people. What can I tell you?

“How Safadis look at Zionist.” Yes, wonderful Lynn Julius will be talking about that.

Shelly, I just feel we Jews always blame ourselves for how others treats us. Look, it’s part of our condition, isn’t it? It’s part of our condition. It’s complicated being a Jew. Never forget what Freud said. He was so pleased when Jung joined the movement because he said, “Otherwise, it’s going to be seen as a Jewish science.” We are the people of question. We question ourselves. At our best, we question ourselves and we question everyone else.

Monty says, “The Enlightenment has reached its sell-by date.” You have to believe, Monty, that it can come back, can’t you? Yes, Jonathan talks about Jabotinsky’s wonderful expression, the “frozen stampede,” when talking about the trapped Jews of Europe. You see, Jabotinsky saw it, but so many of them did. If you read Weizmann’s appeal to the Royal Commission, read Jabotinsky’s appeal. Look, nobody could quite predict Auschwitz. Nahum Goldman, he said you needed to have the soul of a Dante to imagine the inferno. Nevertheless, they realised something appalling was about to happen. So did Trotsky. These are the alienated ones who see further. Many of the Zionists I’ve talked about were alienated from the majority of the world, really.

Anyway, I’ll be back next week. We’re putting together, from a lot of different historians, various presentations on the Middle East. I must admit I’ve been scared to do it for quite a long time because it’s so contentious, but we felt we had to. And I’m bringing in many different historians, and I myself will be back next week. I wish you all well, by which time I hope I have my voice back. So I wish you all, tomorrow is Shabbat, and let’s just hope that… Oh, there’s another mark from David. No, no, sorry, just people saying thank you.

Anyway, bless you all, and let’s have a peaceful Shabbat. Take care. God bless.