“Jewish” Politics or the Politics of “Jews”?: On Israeli Nation-Statehood

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ReOrient

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“Jewish” Politics or the Politics of “Jews”?: On Israeli Nation-Statehood

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Author(s): Yaacov Yadgar

Publication date (Print): 1 October 2020

Journal: ReOrient

Publisher: Pluto Journals

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Abstract

This essay seeks to explicate a tension that lies at the very root of our discourse on Israel as a Jewish state. I argue that the academic and political fields tend to confuse and conflate two different, often contradictory understandings or constructions of the very meaning of Jewish politics. Schematically labelling these as Jewish politics versus the politics of Jews (and derived from these, the outlook of Israel as a “Jewish state” versus the notion of it being solely a “state of Jews”), I argue that the conflicting political and ideological constructions are nourished by different readings of Jewish identity and authenticity, which were first developed in Europe by leading (self-identified secular) Zionist ideologues, and later shaped mainstream readings of Israeli politics. The essay outlines the basic contours of this conceptual distinction, traces its roots in Zionist ideology (as developed in Eastern and Central Europe), and concludes with a consideration of the playing out of the tension at hand in contemporary Israeli politics.

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Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (doi): 10.2307/j50009694

Journal ID (jcode): reorient

Title: ReOrient

Publisher: Pluto Journals

ISSN: 2055-5601

ISSN: 2055-561X

Publication date (Print): 1 October 2020

Volume: 6

Issue: 1 ( doiID: 10.13169/reorient.6.issue-1 )

Pages: 20-46

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University of Oxford yaacov.yadgar@ 123456area.ox.ac.uk

Article

Publisher ID: reorient.6.1.0020

DOI: 10.13169/reorient.6.1.0020

SO-VID: 350523b1-2e71-4a84-8f0b-11c0c1f6ecc4

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Literary studies,Religious studies & Theology,Social & Behavioral Sciences,History,Philosophy

References

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Comments

Comment on this article

[1] Aḥad Haam (1902) Yalquṭ qaṭan - Altneuland. Hashiloaḥ. 10 (6), 566-578.

[2] Aḥad Ha'am (2015) Words of Fire: Selected Essays of Ahad Ha'am. Devon: Notting Hill Editions.

[3] Aḥad Ha'am (5690) Al Parashat Derakhim. Berlin: Judischer Verlag.

[4] Aḥad Ha'am (5707) kol kitvey Aḥad Ha'am (The collected writings of Aḥad Ha'am). Tel Aviv and Jerusalem: Dvir.

[5] Alpher, R. (2018) ḥoq hamarkolim mokhiaḥ shehaḥilonim sovlim mirigshei neḥitut. Haaretz, 9 January. https://t.ly/1r8Y5.

[6] Alroey, G. (2016) Zionism without Zion: The Jewish Territorial Organization and its Conflict with the Zionist Organization. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.

[7] Baker, C. M. (2017) Jew. Key words in Jewish studies 8. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

[8] Behar, M. and Benite, Z. B.-D. (2013) Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought: Writings on Identity, Politics, and Culture, 1893-1958. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University.

[9] Bender, A. (2018) berov shel 62 tomkhim mol 55 mitnagdim: ḥoq hlaeom ushar baknesset. Maariv, 19 July. https://goo.gl/VKreUg.

[10] Boyarin, D. (2018) Judaism: The Genealogy of a Modern Notion. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

[11] Boyarin, J. and Boyarin, D. (2002) Powers of Diaspora: Two Essays on the Relevance of Jewish Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

[12] Butler, J. (2012) Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism. New York: Columbia University Press.

[13] Cavanaugh, W. T. (2009) The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict. New York: Oxford University Press.

[14] Cohn, B. S. and Dirks, N. B. (1988) Beyond the fringe: The nation state, colonialism, and the technologies of power. Journal of Historical Sociology 1 (2), 224-9.

[15] Conforti, Y. (2010) East and West in Jewish nationalism: Conflicting types in the Zionist vision. Nations and Nationalism. 16 (2), 201-19.

[16] Conforti, Y. (2019) Shaping a Nation: The Cultural Origins of Zionism 1882-1948. Jerusalem: Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi.

[17] Cooper, J. E. (2016) The turn to tradition in the study of Jewish politics. Annual Review of Political Science. 19, 67-87.

[18] Dabashi, H. (2006) Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundation of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. New York: Transaction Publishers.

[19] Deutscher, I. (2017) The Non-Jewish Jew: And Other Essays. London: Verso Books.

[20] Dirlik, A. (2002) Rethinking colonialism: Globalization, postcolonialism, and the nation. Interventions. 4 (3), 428-48. doi: 10.1080/1369801022000013833.

[21] Don-Yehiya, E. (1980) Secularization, negation and accomodation of conceptions of traditional Judaism and its terms in Socialist Zionism. Kivunim. 8, 29-46.

[22] Evri, Y. (2020) The Return to Al-Andalus: Disputes Over Sephardic Culture and Identity between Arabic and Hebrew. Jerusalem: Magnes Press.

[23] Glickson, M. (1926) Aḥad Ha'am: Ḥayaw ufa'olo. Jerusalem: Haaretz.

[24] Goldshtein, Y. (2011) Ahad Ha'am and Herzl: The Struggle for Political and Cultural Nature of Zionism in the Shade of Altneuland Affair. Kuntresim - Texts and Studies 99. Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ben-Zion Dinur Center for Research in Jewish History.

[25] Haaretz. (2013a) Basic Law: Apartheid in Israel. Editorial, 30 May. https://goo.gl/x9SGk1 (accessed 10 May 2017).

[26] Haaretz. (2013b) The Jewish coercion administration. Editorial, 22 May. https://t.ly/XARRZ (accessed 6 November 2017).

[27] Haaretz. (2019) A state for some of its citizens. Editorial, 11 March. https://goo.gl/aSu1nM (accessed 11 March 2019).

[28] Halkin, H. (2016) What Ahad Ha'am saw and Herzl missed - and vice versa. Mosaic. https://t.ly/R0xxv (accessed 3 June 2019).

[29] Hallaq, W. B. (2012) The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity's Moral Predicament. New York: Columbia University Press.

[30] Helman, D. and Arbel, A. (2009) doresh 'igun. The Institute for Zionist Strategies. https://goo.gl/SvW5cx (accessed 27 April 2017).

[31] Herzl, T. (1917) The Congress Addresses of Theodor Herzl. Translated by N. Straus. New York: Federation of American Zionists. https://archive.org/details/congressaddresse00herziala.

[32] Herzl, T. (1973) Zionist Writings: Essays and Addresses. Translated by H. Zohn. New York: Herzl Press.

[33] Laqueur, W. (1989) A History of Zionism. New York: Schocken Books.

[34] MacIntyre, A. (1988) Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

[35] Myers, D. N. (2009) Between Jew and Arab: The Lost Voice of Simon Rawidowicz. Hanover, NH, London: Brandeis University Press.

[36] Nordau, M. (1960) Zionist Writings: In Four Books. Edited by B. Netanyahu. Translated by Y. Yeivin and Ḥ Goldberg. Jerusalem: Hasifriya Haṣiyonit.

[37] Peled, Y. and Peled, H. H. (2018) The Religionization of Israeli Society. 1st ed. London: Routledge.

[38] Penslar, D. (2020) Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader. New Haven: Yale University Press.

[39] Plamenatz, J. (1976) Two Types of Nationalism. In Kamenka, E. (ed.), Nationalism: The Nature and Evolution of an Idea. London: Edward Arnold, 29-31.

[40] Rabinovitch, S. (2015) Defining Israel, Part II: Jewish and Democratic According to the Law, The Marginalia Review of Books. https://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/?p=6833 (accessed 22 May 2017).

[41] Ram, H. (2009) Iranophobia: The Logic of an Israeli Obsession. 1st ed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

[42] Shimoni, G. (1995) The Zionist Ideology. Hanover, NH, London: Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England.

[43] Shumsky, D. (2018) Beyond the Nation-State: The Zionist Political Imagination from Pinsker to Ben-Gurion. New Haven: Yale University Press.

[44] Slabodsky, S. (2015) Decolonial Judaism: Triumphal Failures of Barbaric Thinking. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. (Orig. published 2014.)

[45] Yadgar, Y. (2017) Sovereign Jews: Israel, Zionism, and Judaism. Albany: SUNY Press.

[46] Yadgar, Y. (2020) Israel's Jewish Identity Crisis: State and Politics in the Middle East. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.

[47] Yehoshua, A. B. (1988) Hapetil hakaful shel hayisre'elim (The Israelis' double fuse). Haaretz, 29 September.

[48] Yehoshua, A. B. (2013) Mihu yehudi (Who is a Jew). Haaretz, 9 May.

[49] Zamert, Z. (2006) Ahad Ha'am and the shaping of secular education. Iyunim Bitkumat Israel. 16, 171-94.

[50] Zeira, M. (2002) Keru'im Anu (We are torn apart). Jerusalem: Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi.