Jewish Opposition to Zionism (1882–1948)

This essay will discuss the various forms of Jewish anti-Zionism prior to the creation of the State of Israel. Zionism began as a predominantly secular ideology which tried to answer the so called ‘Jewish Question’ by promoting Jewish nationalism and the colonisation of Palestine. The first wave of Zionist migration began in 1882 as a response to the rise of ethno-centric nationalism in Europe, and it was catalysed by the spread of virulent anti-Semitism. However, not all European Jews were enthusiastic about Zionism, as many perceived it be both too idealistic and unrealistic. Here, a distinction can be made between ‘non-Zionists’, those Jews that were apathetic to Jewish nationalism and the idea of migrating to Palestine, and ‘anti-Zionists’, those who actively opposed Zionist ideas or methods. This essay will focus primarily on the fundamental division between ‘religious’ anti-Zionism and ‘secular’ anti-Zionism, with the latter including assimilationist, liberal and socialist critiques. However, before making this dichotomy, this text will begin by adding some historical context by highlighting the progress of Zionist opposition between the advent of Jewish migration in 1882, and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.
During the 1970s, after over 20 years of Israeli statehood, anti-Zionists constituted no more than eight percent of the Jewish population[1]. However, a century earlier, many Jews were either apathetic or completely disregarded Zionist ideology as utopian or heretical. The lack of support for Zionist migration is highlighted by the fact that between 1881 and 1914, out of the 2.5 million Jews who left Eastern Europe in the wake of anti-Semitic persecution, between 1 million and 1.5 million opted for the United States rather than Palestine[2]. Prior to the First World War, there was little sympathy for Zionism outside Eastern Europe. In Central and Western Europe the movement was mostly isolated to pockets of support among the Jewish intelligentsia in Vienna, Prague and Berlin. A prime example of Zionist unpopularity was the forced relocation of the First Zionist Congress of 1897 from Munich to Basel due to protests from both secular and religious Jews. However, in the aftermath of the First World War, the credibility of Jewish opposition was undermined significantly by the growth of exclusivist nationalism and anti-Semitism. These changes also led to ‘a palpable mellowing of anti-Zionist sentiment into a more pragmatic form of non-Zionism’ and as a result, ideological anti-Zionism ‘began to lose much of its intellectual coherence and edge’[3]. Finally, the tyranny of fascism and Nazism during the 1930s and 1940s ‘cut the ground from under the feet of mainstream assimilationism’ as a solution to the Jewish Question, and ‘the notion of Palestine as an essential refuge for persecuted Jewry became more credible and urgent’[4].
Although events between 1914 and 1948 did much to harm the aspirations of Europe’s emancipationist Jews, criticism from religious Jews which emphasised the conflict between Zionism and Judaism could not be so easily deflected. Consequently, anti-Zionism was one of the few issues that succeeded in uniting Orthodox and Reform Jews in their condemnation of Zionism. In other words, commitment to the Torah formed a ‘common denominator’ for religious opposition[5]. Many religious Jews were particularly alarmed by the Zionists’ attempts to transform Judaism from a purely religious affiliation to one with an ethnic and national dimension. Indeed, the Hasidic sect Neturei Karta argued that ‘by emphasising national and racial identification of Jews, the Zionists undermine the importance of Jewish Law’[6]. For these Jews, Zionism represented a break with over two millennia of Judaic tradition. Zionism was also accused of exploiting and distorting messianic concepts taken from the Torah and using them to justify the colonisation of Palestine. Its religious opponents were particularly horrified by the Zionists’ success in using the appropriation of Judaic concepts for Jewish nationalism as a means for attracting masses of Russian Jews to Palestine following the 1881 pogrom[7].
In Jewish tradition, their exile from the Holy Land is seen as a divine punishment for their sins, and their return was only permitted with the advent of the messianic age. This is summed up by the following Biblical passages from Leviticus: ‘So let not the land spew you out for defiling it, as it spewed out the nation that came before you’, and ‘you shall observe all My laws and all My regulations, lest the land to which I bring you to settle in spew you out’[8]. For religious opponents of Zionism, advocating a premature return to Palestine prior to the messianic age directly defied the word of God and was thus considered heresy. This notion was articulated by rabbis protesting against the First Zionist Congress of 1897, who circulated a letter which read, ‘the efforts of the so-called Zionists to create a Jewish National State in Palestine are antagonistic to the messianic promises of Judaism as contained in Holy Writ and in later religious sources’[9]. On this issue, Zionism also faced particularly strong opposition from the Hasidic tradition which explicitly ‘rules out the use of force to hasten deliverance’, and thus ‘for these detractors, Zionism is truly satanic: it had replaced the supernatural by the natural, the religious by the secular, patience and trust in God by political and military action’[10].
The Orthodox Jewish community who had lived in Palestine prior 1882 was known as the Old Yishuv and it also formed one the early obstacles to Zionist expansion. Unlike European Jewry, the Old Yishuv had not been exposed to European nationalism and thus Zionism was seen as an alien and hostile ideology. Indeed, the veteran religious urban population ‘resented newcomers, and could not accept the secular way of life of the immigrants who entered Palestine after 1905’[11]. Some of these native Jews expressed some sympathy for Jewish migrants settling in Palestine following the 1881 pogrom. However, ‘their enthusiasm quickly turned to dismay when they realised that many of the settlers were not practicing Jews’[12]. Despite the relatively puritan nature of the early Zionist immigrants, the emergence of Jewish prostitutes appeared to confirm fears of secular moral decay[13]. Palestinian Orthodox Jews were particularly critical of Zionist secular schooling and they saw the presence of radical Zionist teachers as a threat to their religious tradition[14]. Zionist education focused on virtues such as ‘strength, self-affirmation and combativeness’ which contrasted with the religious and pacific traditions of the Orthodox community[15]. In some instances, tensions between the Zionists and Old Yishuv led to outbreaks of physical conflict. For example, the Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish communities in Jaffa often resorted to violence over disputes relating to religious practices and community leadership[16].
The second major strand of Jewish anti-Zionism which existed prior to 1948 was that of assimilationism. Indeed, the emergence of Zionism in Europe during the late nineteenth century provoked an active debate over the morality and viability of Jewish nationalism in contrast with assimilationist ideals. The battle between these conflicting ideas ‘was a major chapter in the history of Jewish self-definition as a group’[17]. Support for Jewish assimilation within European society, as an alternative to fostering an exclusivist Jewish nationalism, was catalysed by the emancipation of Jewry in Central and Western Europe over the course of the nineteenth century. The concentration of assimilationism among Western Jews helps explain why Zionism was initially slow at gaining support outside Eastern Europe. The emancipation of European Jewry also amounted to their denationalisation, and it is precisely this factor which Zionists aimed to reverse as they were worried that these trends would lead to ‘the extinction of the Jewish people as a distinct cultural and historical entity’[18]. However, the Zionists were unable to convince a large portion of non-Zionist Jews about the pragmatic issues of colonising Palestine, which was seen, from an Orientalist European perspective, as ‘a provincial Middle Eastern backwater lacking the basic infrastructure of modern civilisation, elemental physical security, human rights or personal freedoms’[19]. Furthermore, these pragmatic sceptics of Zionism were aware that ‘the Turkish sultan was highly unlikely to resign himself to even a partial dismemberment of his empire’[20].
As well as highlighting the practical issues, the assimilationist anti-Zionists were disturbed by the rise of Jewish nationalism which called into question their national loyalties. There was also a belief that ‘the Zionists were partly responsible for the anti-Semitism which they proposed to eradicate’[21]. Indeed, ‘the Zionists appeared to be echoing and even providing fresh arguments for the anti-Semites, who constantly reiterated that Jews were indeed “aliens” or guests on European soil’[22]. For example, the representative bodies of Anglo-Jewry, namely the Board of Deputies and the Anglo-Jewish Association, ‘regarded Zionism not merely as irrelevant but positively harmful, jeopardising the legal rights won by the Jews over many decades’[23]. Lucien Wolf, Honorary Secretary of the Conjoint Foreign Committee at the Board of Deputies, stated that ‘Dr Herzl and those who think with him are traitors to the history of the Jews which they misread and misinterpret’[24]. Wolf also rejected the notion of ‘the unassimable character of the Jew’ and condemned the racialisation of Jewry[25].
The most ardent assimilationists in Central and Western Europe and in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were elite liberal intellectuals. These liberals tended to stress the importance of Jewry to the fabric of European society and they celebrated the ‘cultural symbiosis’ they had entered into with their host nations[26]. One of the most prominent liberal anti-Zionists was the German-Jewish neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen, who glorified the diaspora as a respectable position for Jews and condemned Zionism’s disregard for universalism and humanism[27]. He held a positive view of assimilation and believed that ‘Jews could totally integrate into German society on the basis of the affinity between messianic ideals and the post-Reformation German ethos and spirit’[28]. In France too, the enlightenment spirit of the revolution resonated within the Jewish population. Indeed, the Zionist ‘conception of Jewish existence was contrary to everything in which they had believed since the French Revolution’[29], and thus French Jewish liberals ‘faithfully echoed the assimilationist doctrines of the French state and of the liberal-republican consensus’[30]. In Britain and North America, the liberal Jewish communities were in a far stronger position prior to the First World War due to greater toleration of religious non-conformity. In the United States, the American Jewish Committee opposed Jewish nationalism on the basis that it ‘reinforced Jewish isolation and withdrawal from the wider society instead of aspiring to the rapid integration and Americanisation of the new immigrants’[31].
Another secular ideological source of anti-Zionism was from the left. Although early Zionism was heavily influenced by socialism, many on the far left became disillusioned with the movement as it ‘steadily relinquished its radical character in favour of the created facts of land confiscation, population expulsion and military conquest’[32]. Indeed, many Jews felt that ‘the messianic appeal of socialism was irresistible….incomparably more attractive than any political activity within the narrow confines of the Jewish community’[33]. One of the most prominent left-wing organisations that explicitly rejected Zionism was the Russian Jewish Labour Bund, which ‘insisted that social, cultural and political freedom for the Jews could only come about if Jews fought for socialism in their own countries’[34]. The Bund, as well as other left wing critics, repeatedly stressed the colonial nature of Zionism, denied any affiliation between Zionism and socialism, rejected claims that it was a movement for self-determination, and emphasised the need to seek class interests in order to solve the Jewish Question. However, with the advent of Nazism and growing anti-Semitism in Europe, many Jewish leftists began to display a more sympathetic attitude towards Zionism, which by this time was under the leadership of the left-wing labour Zionists[35].
Overall, it can be said that like Zionism itself, which is comprised of various sub-factions, anti-Zionism cannot be considered a uniform movement. This is because there is a large diversity of critiques from various political, cultural, religious and geographic perspectives. However, a fundamental distinction can be made between the religious and secular opposition. Religious critiques are centred on grievances that relate to the violation of Jewish law, excessive secularisation and the degradation of Judaism from a purely religious affiliation to one which includes racial, ethnic and national connotations. On the other hand, the secular opposition is more concerned with the pragmatic grounds of sustaining a colony in the Ottoman Empire, and the ideological conflict between Zionism and liberal-assimilationism or socialism. Finally, in relation to the historical context and the intensity of anti-Zionism, one can also make a distinction between the pre-war and post-war periods. Prior to the First World War, Zionism did not have mass support in Central and Western Europe due to both the practical issues and the extent of assimilation. However, the instability that struck Europe after 1914 eroded the credibility of assimilation as an alternative to Jewish nationalism. This subsequently led to a steady decline in anti-Zionist opposition and following the advent of Nazism, there were increasing calls from those who had previously been Zionist sceptics for Palestine to be used as a Jewish refuge.
[1] C. Glass, ‘Jews against Zion: Israeli Jewish Anti-Zionism’, Journal of Palestine Studies, №1/2 (1975–1976), p. 57.
[2] J. L. Gelvin, The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War (Cambridge: 2005), p. 43.
[3] R.S. Wistrich, ‘Zionism and its Jewish “Assimilationist” Critics (1897–1948)’, Jewish Social Studies, №2 (1998), p. 61.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Y. M. Rabkin, A Threat From Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism (London: 2006), p. 3
[6] Glass (1975–1976), p. 60.
[7] Rabkin (2006), p. 81.
[8] Ibid., p. 30 quoting Leviticus (18:28) and Leviticus (20:22).
[9] P. R. Mendes-Flohr and J. Reinharz, The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History (2nd Ed., New York: 1995), p. 539.
[10] Rabkin (2006), pp. 85–86.
[11] I. Pappe, A History of Modern Palestine (2nd Ed., Port Melbourne: 2006), p. 53.
[12] Rabkin (2006), p. 41.
[13] Pappe (2006), p. 53.
[14] J. Reinharz, ‘The Conflict between Zionism and Traditionalism before World War I’, Jewish History, №2 (1993), p. 71.
[15] Rabkin (2006), p. 40.
[16] Pappe, (2006), p. 53.
[17] Wistrich (1998), p. 59.
[18] Ibid., p. 60.
[19] R.S. Wistrich, ‘Zionism and its Religious Critics in fin-de-siecle Vienna’, Jewish History, №2 (1996), p. 99.
[20] Wistrich (1998), p. 65.
[21] W. Laqueur, ‘Zionism and its Liberal Critics, 1896–1948’, Journal of Contemporary History, №4 (1971), p. 170.
[22] Wistrich (1998), p. 60.
[23] Laqueur (1971), p. 176.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Wistrich (1998), p. 78
[26] Laqueur, (1971), p. 175.
[27] D.N. Myers, ‘Can There Be a Principled Anti-Zionism? On the Nexus between Anti-Historicism and Anti-Zionism and Modern Jewish Thought’, Journal of Israeli History: Politics, Society, Culture, №1 (2006), pp. 37–38.
[28] Wistrich (1998), p. 71.
[29] Ibid., p. 60.
[30] Ibid., p. 64.
[31] Ibid., p. 90.
[32] Glass (1975–1976), p. 61
[33] Laqueur (1971), p. 165.
[34] P. Jacobs, and I. Shahak, ‘Jews and the Left’, Journal of Palestine Studies, №3 (1975), p. 157.
[35] Ibid., p. 155.