- Much of the fiercest opposition to Zionism came from
the Jewish religious community which attacked its secular nationalism.
Akiva Orr, who characterizes himself as a Jewish refugee from Israel, describes
this conflict between religion and secularism as follows:
-
- The State of Israel is a secular state: its law, its
legislative assembly (the Knesset), and the majority of its population
are non-religious. This is hardly surprising as Israel came into existence
due to the efforts of a secular political movement motivated by non-religious
nationalism, namely political Zionism. In its early days Zionism came into
fierce conflict with religious Jewry. The Zionists rejected religious submissiveness;
the religious saw the atheist attempt to create a secular Jewish state
as blasphemy.19
-
- A nonreligious Jewish identity is antithetical to a religious
definition of Jewishness. This fact presents an irreconcilable contradiction
between the religious and secular streams in the Jewish community. Theodore
Herzl, David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir and many other leading Zionists were
non-believers who actively sought to reformulate the basis for Jewish existence
on race and territorial nationalism.20 This process would thereby "normalize"
the existence of the Jewish people.21 The anti-religious component of political
Zionism explains the vehement opposition of most devout Jews when the movement
first emerged.
-
- For religious Jews the restoration of Zion could only
be brought about by divine intervention; human attempts to reestablish
Israel were heretical. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the religious leader
of nineteenth century German Orthodox Jews stated that it was a sin to
promote Jewish emigration to Palestine.22 Zionists were called by Rabbi
Joseph Hayyim Sonnenfeld of Brisk "ruffians" and "evil men."23
In 1898 Rabbi Sonnenfeld wrote that Zionists have
-
- asserted view that the whole difference and distinction
between Israel and The Nations lies in nationalism, blood and race, and
that the faith and the religion are superfluous. . . . Dr. Herzl comes
not from the Lord, but from the side of pollution.24
-
- Other leading Jewish religious leaders who opposed Zionism
included Moritz Gudemann, Chief Rabbi of Vienna,25 Dr. Herman Adler, Chief
Rabbi of Great Britain,26 the Lubbavitscher Rebbe, Rabbi Shulem ben Schneersohn,27
the Holy Gerer Rebbe, the Stas Emes,28 and Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, the
leader of the American Reform Movement.29 Many more Jewish religious leaders
were opposed to Zionism.30
-
- Religious Jews in Palestine and the Orthodox Jewish organization,
Agudas Yisroel, founded in 1912, also opposed the political Zionist colonization
program in Palestine. They protested, to the British Mandatory Administration,
against the Zionist claim to represent the entire Jewish community.31 Nathan
Birnbaum, an early Zionist, who is credited with coining the term Zionist,
later broke with the movement and became a devoutly Orthodox anti-Zionist
Jew. For a brief time he served as one of Aguda's spokesmen.32
-
- On June 30, 1924, Jakob Israel De Han, a member of Aguda's
executive committee, was assassinated in Palestine by underground soldiers
of the Haganah. He had "violently denounced Zionism in cables to British
newspapers and attacked the Balfour declaration" and British colonial
officials who were "pro-Zionist " De Han became a martyr to Jerusalem's
anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews.33
-
- In time, the Zionists managed to win much of the Orthodox
Jewish community to their cause. This was done in part by granting the
Orthodox political and economic concessions and by implementing a proportional
representation system in central Zionist organizations and in the Israeli
Knesset. This type of political mechanism gave the Orthodox Jews an important
role in determining the course of Jewish affairs in Zionist institutions.
-
- The various religious parties in Israel today represent
Orthodox Jewish opinion that has accommodated itself to the Zionist view.
However, the religious orientation of these parties is frequently at odds
with the majority secular-national interpretation of "Jewishness"
in Israel. This contradiction is the source of much political conflict.34
-
- It can even be said that the Israeli ultra-orthodox religious
parties which participate in Israeli politics are still anti-Zionist, despite
that involvement. The ultra-Orthodox parties are Shas (the Sephardic religious
party), Aguda (the Hasidic) and Degel Hatorah (the Flag of the Torah or
the "Lithuanian party"). They are supported by between 250,000
and 300,000 Orthodox Israeli Jews and won 13 Knesset seats in the 1988
election.35
-
- These three religious parties are opposed to the Zionist
aim of creating a secular Jewish homeland, and as such are considered by
some as anti-Zionist. This view is held despite the fact that they support
the continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and bargain for financial
support from the state. The National Religious party, which won five seats
in the 1988 Israeli election, is considered Zionist and over the years
has become increasingly nationalistic.36
-
- While much of the Orthodox religious Jewish community
was eventually won over to the extent of giving at least nominal support
to the state of Israel, significant pockets of resistance remain. The Neturei
Karta ("Guardians of the Walls") in their large enclaves in Jerusalem's
Mea Sharim Quarter and in Bnai Brak near Tel Aviv, preserve Orthodox Jewry's
fierce opposition to Zionism. They refuse to have anything to do with Israeli
state authorities.37 The following is an excerpt from a Neturei Karta advertisement
that appeared in The New York Times on June 15, 1981:
-
- Besides the millions of Jews who are non-Zionist, there
are many hundreds of thousands of Jews who are fervently anti-Zionist.
They are opposed to Zionism and the very existence of the Zionist state
because Zionism seeks to change the essence of Judaism and substitute chauvinism
and militarism and loyalty to the Zionist state for the lofty and unchangeable
principles of the Jewish faith. The Jewish nation was not founded by Zionist
politicians but the character of Jewish nationhood was determined on Mount
Sinai and the Jewish people as well as every individual Jew are bound to
fulfill the Mitzvos (commandments) of the oral and written law of the Torah.
Jews are certain that the Jewish redemption will come with the coming of
the Moshiach. The establishment of the Zionist state before that time is
heretic and indeed blasphemous. Our greatest rabbis have taught us that
Zionism is one of the worst calamities that has ever befallen the Jewish
people.38
-
- The intensity of the ultra-Orthodox's opposition to political
Zionism is fierce. Rabbi Moshe Schonfeld, for example, argues that Zionism
is causing a genocide of the Jewish people by destroying the religious
and spiritual basis for Jewish existence.39 Rabbi Moshe Leib-Hirsch summarized
the extent of Neturei Karta's opposition to Zionism by stating, "We
will not accept a Zionist State even if the Arabs do."40
-
- Joel Teitelbaum, the Satmar rebbe, until his death in
1979, at the age of 91, was also implacably anti-Zionist and "influenced
Orthodox Jewry in the whole of Transylvania." After World War II,
and a brief stay in Jerusalem, he emigrated to New York. Many of his followers
congregated there and new members joined his flock. Rabbi Teitelbaum opposed
Zionism not only on halachic grounds but also because he believed that
"Zionism forestalled the Messiah. . . brought the Holocaust and other
calamities on the Jewish people." In his view the Jewish state "condemned
itself through its own lifestyle and politics." Teitelbaum's 40,000
chassidim are found largely in Williamsburg, New York, and in Jerusalem.41
-
- In January 1986, the non-Zionist Central Rabbinical Congress
of the United States and Canada, representing Orthodox and Hasidic Jews,
issued a statement attacking Zionism and Israel's policies towards the
Palestinians. It included the following:
-
- It is our duty to denounce those who invoke the name
of the Almighty in vain. It is our holy obligation and our moral responsibility
to call on them: Stop using these falsehoods and heresies to justify yourselves
and your misdeeds. The Jewish faith, as transmitted by the Almighty to
our forefathers has not and will never countenance the zionist and nationalistic
doctrines of the state of Israel. These false doctrines are compounded
of atheism and anti-religious zionism, ideologies alien to Judaism. Let
them not be misrepresented to the world as Jewish.42
-
- Reform Jews in the United States were also opposed to
Zionism. Their Pittsburgh Platform of 1885 stated their opposition to the
establishment of a Jewish state very clearly: "We consider ourselves
no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither
a return to Palestine. . . nor the restoration of the laws concerning the
Jewish state."43
-
- With the emergence of the Zionist movement their position
even hardened. In 1897, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR)
declared:
-
- . . . we totally disapprove of any attempt for the establishment
of a Jewish state. Such attempts show a misunderstanding of Israel's mission,
which from the narrow political and national field has been expanded to
the promotion among the whole human race of the broad and universalistic
religion first proclaimed by the Jewish prophets. . .44
-
- It was not until 1937, and after the rise of Hitler,
that the CCAR changed its position on the question of Zionism. This reversal,
however, also spawned another anti-Zionist Jewish organization.45
-
- In 1943, a group of 92 Reform rabbis, and many other
prominent American Jews, created the American Council for Judaism with
the express intent of combatting Zionism. Included in the Council's leadership
were Rabbi Morris S. Lazaron of Baltimore; Lessing J. Rosenwald, the former
chairman of the Sears, Roebuck & Company, who became president of the
Council; Rabbi Elmer Berger who became its executive director; Arthur Hays
Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times; and Sidney Wallach of the
American Jewish Committee. Membership in the Council grew to over 15,000.
Its members were highly articulate and greatly angered the Zionist leadership,
who wanted the American Jewish community to present a united front on the
Palestine question.46
-
- Even after the establishment of the state of Israel in
1947 the American Council for Judaism continued to oppose Zionism vocally.
The magazine, Issues, was their principal vehicle of communication.47 Issues
was joined in its opposition to Zionism by The Menorah Journal edited by
Dr. Henry Hurwitz48 and William Zukerman's Jewish Newsletter.49
-
- After Israel's spectacular success in the 1967 Arab-Israeli
war, however, a change in the policy towards Zionism occurred in the American
Council for Judaism. Alfred Lilienthal suggests that "Zionist infiltration"
succeeded in "neutralizing" the Council.50 A separate organization
was subsequently established in 1969 called American Jewish Alternatives
to Zionism (AJAZ). The new group, which is based in New York, continues
the original anti-Zionist tradition of the American Council for Judaism.
Rabbi Elmer Berger is currently the president of AJAZ and also editor of
its publication the AJAZ Report.51
-
- One of the most articulate and vocal critics in Canada
today of Israel's policies towards the Palestinians is Rabbi Reuben Slonim.
He is a spiritual Zionist in the tradition of Ahad Ha-am. His criticisms
of Israel's policies eventually led to a break with his congregation in
Toronto. However, he does have a small, but devoted, following among the
Canadian Jewish community.52 In 1983 he wrote:
-
- Today we Jews are losing [the] humanism and universalism
of Judaism, all for the sake of Jewish statehood. We love Israel, and so
we should, but we are so blinded by that love that we are willing to pay
a prohibitive price for it. We condone acts we would declare unconscionable
anywhere else in the world: nuclear weapons are wrong but necessary for
Israel; apartheid is wrong, but for the sake of Israel's survival we will
tolerate it; human rights are critical, but not for the Palestinians; we
have a right to a state but Palestinians do not. Our racism towards Arabs
would be regarded as anti-Semitism if others spoke of us in the same light.
In all things we need to remember that the Jewish people and the Jewish
state are but instruments, not ends in themselves; that what is good for
the world is good for the Jews, not what is good for the Jews is good for
the world; that the ultimate goal of the Jew, if he be truly Jewish, is
to serve humanity.53
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