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February 11, 2005
State is more Jewish than Zionist
The transition to advanced industrialization was more in keeping
with modern Jewish trends, prof. explains.
PAT JOHNSON
The question was: Is Israel a Jewish state? The answer, put plainly,
was yes, but not in the ways you might think.
The question was the subject of the annual Itta and Eliezer Zeisler
Memorial Lecture. Prof. Derek Penslar, a University of Toronto historian,
engaged about 200 people Feb. 3 with a comprehensive and evocative
presentation in the Wosk Auditorium of the Jewish Community Centre
of Greater Vancouver.
Zionism was a revolutionary movement in the true sense of the term,
Penslar argued. Instead of representing a continuity of Jewish tradition,
Zionism proposed a stark rejection of several significant tenets
that reflected Jewish life for centuries. This revolutionary movement
meant Jewish nationalism challenged traditional Jewish behaviors
so that, when the state of Israel was created, it was in many ways
antithetical to Jewish heritage.
The clearest example of the phenomenon was Zionism's effort to turn
an urbanized European Jewish population into an agricultural Middle
Eastern society. The Jewish nature of the state, Penslar argued,
is evidenced partly through the reversion to industrialization and
urbanization in Israel. Though Zionist pioneers may have hoped to
revolutionize Israel's Jews into an agricultural people, the revolution
was co-opted, so to speak, by the rapid and dramatic industrialization
that has made Israel one of the most industrialized and technologically
advanced countries in the world. The idea of creating an agricultural
society was revolutionary, Penslar said. The irrevocable transition
to advanced industrialization was more in keeping with modern Jewish
trends, he said.
Even Israel's democratic structure is antithetical to pre-state
Jewish communal organization, Penslar maintained.
"The Jews are not, by nature, a democratic people," he
said. Jewish communities in the Diaspora tended to be dominated
by a fluid, but decidedly oligarchic, leadership. Elites that were
defined either by wealth or learning tended to exercise fluctuating
political control over the Jewish masses, a dominance that was threatened
by Zionism's founding democratic principles. Interest group politics
and horse- trading compromises tended to dominate Diaspora politics,
Penslar said, a phenomenon that might resemble the way special-interest
political parties over the past several decades have learned to
bargain for group advantages in Israel's Knesset – a phenomenon
that Penslar argues might be more Jewish than Zionist.
The role of Hebrew
The revival of the Hebrew language is yet another area where Penslar
believes Jewish continuity has trumped the Zionist revolution. A
significant part of the Zionist narrative rests on the revival of
the Hebrew language as the Jewish people's lingua franca.
This is a myth, argued Penslar.
"It's simply not true," he said. "Hebrew never died."
The language was always used in religious settings and even in the
Haskallah, the Jewish enlightenment of the 17th and 18th
centuries, scientific inquiry was conducted largely in Hebrew. When
Ashkenazim and Seph-ardim met, long before political Zionism emerged
as a force, Hebrew, however stilted and awkward, was the only common
language they shared. Moreover, there was an active Hebrew press
in Europe, Penslar said, well before the Zionist movement trumpeted
Hebrew revival as a pillar of Jewish nationalism. Penslar debunks
the idea that Hebrew is a Zionist language, insisting that it is
very much a Jewish language that adapted and survived the Zionist
revolution.
Another shibboleth Penslar attacks is the assumption about religion
in Israel. The common perception is that Israel contains a small,
vital Orthodox minority and a massive secular majority. Polls of
Israeli religious behaviors, in fact, suggest contemporary Diaspora
observance and the religious attitudes of most Israelis are not
as far apart as assumptions suggest. In fact, in some instances,
Israelis generally seem far more observant than Diaspora Jews. While
14 per cent of American Jewish households maintain separate meat
and dairy dishes, said Penslar, 50 per cent of Israeli households
do so. Two-thirds of Israelis believe in God and divine provenance,
he said. Even among Israelis who declare themselves "secular,"
Penslar said, one-third fast on Yom Kippur "just to be on the
safe side."
Importance of charity
Economics in the state of Israel is yet another example of Jewish
tradition besting the revolution of Zionism, Penslar argued.
"Jews have always had an imperative to give to charity,"
he said. Zionism changed that, in some ways, when Israel was founded
with a cradle-to-grave social welfare system founded on Zionism's
communitarian values, reducing the need for voluntary charity. But
Israel's welfare system in recent years has faced the same challenges
of other heavily subsidized societies, including Canada's. Government
cuts to social welfare have forced Israel to rely on private philanthropic
efforts to provide social support.
The psychological aftermath of the Holocaust is a further example
of Israeli and Jewish traditions conflicting, Penslar said. Zionism
challenged the Jews to cease being a victimized people and become
a strong, modern society.
"The state of Israel was supposed to cure the Jews not only
of their economic ills, but their psychological ills," Penslar
said. In the early years of the Jewish state, this refusal to adopt
a narrative of victimization remained strong, but by the time of
the Eichmann trial in the early 1960s, followed by the Six Day War
of 1967 and the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israelis had reverted to a
more traditionally Jewish position of defensiveness and victimization.
The memory of the Holocaust, for a variety of reasons explored by
historians and psychologists, was not an overwhelming factor in
the early years of the state, but became far more central to Israeli
identity in the 1960s and '70s, said Penslar.
Even "post-Zionism" is inherently Jewish, Penslar argued.
The phenomenon whereby Israel is perceived as a multicultural state
like many other countries, and less of a distinctly Jewish entity,
represents a Jewish trend toward self-criticism and a rejection
of parochialism, he said.
Pat Johnson is a B.C. journalist and commentator.
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