Liberal Rabbis and Jewish Nationalism

Throughout its existence, Israel has been subjected to significant criticism from within the Jewish community as well as from without. In this sermon, still from his days as a student-rabbi with his East Liverpool, Ohio congregation, my father takes to task those who equate the nationalist drive of Jews in pre-World War II Palestine with the nationalistic fervor of the totalitarian leaders of Europe at that time.

Even a cursory consideration of the facts will suffice to show that the Jewish concept of nationalism is not only different from the fascist doctrines of Europe, but is altogether in direct opposition to them.
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JUST A FEW WEEKS AGO the biennial meeting of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations[1] was held in the city of New Orleans. According to all reports, one of the finest addresses of the convention was that delivered by Rabbi Morris Lazaron[2] of Baltimore. Rabbi Lazaron in his usual masterful fashion presented to the delegates of the convention his conception of what Judaism’s message to the world should be in its present crisis. With the greatest part of this address there can be little difference of opinion. Rabbi Lazaron presented a brilliant exposition of the meaning of Judaism which was everywhere acclaimed. On one point, however, he has been challenged by many of his colleagues, and, as I believe, justly so. When he spoke of the work which has been going on in Palestine for the past few years, a very serious and misleading charge against it was made. Rabbi Lazaron said:

Behind the mask of Jewish sentiment one can see the specter of the foul thing which moves Germany and Italy. Behind the camouflage of its unquestioned appeal to Jewish feeling, one can hear a chorus of ‘Heil.’ Judaism cannot accept as the instrument of its salvation the very philosophy of nationalism which is leading the world to destruction.” 

The inference of this statement is clear. Nazism, fascism, and Zionism are here all placed together in the same category and all condemned as being equally undesirable.
 
Not only Rabbi Lazaron, but several other prominent Reform rabbis also have in the past weeks been guilty of similar misrepresentation and misconstruction of the meaning of Jewish nationalism. In New York City one man even has gone to the ridiculous extreme of asserting that the Nazi Horst Wessel Song[3] and the Zionist Hatikvah[4] rank together in the offensiveness of their nationalistic spirit. There is room for a difference of opinion as to the merits of Zionism and the place it should occupy in Jewish life, but such an identification of Zionism and the belligerent nationalist movements of Europe today is altogether unwarranted and belied by facts.
 
The mistake upon which such expressions of opinion are founded is a presupposition that all nationalism regardless of its nature is inherently bad. We have before us the repugnant examples of German Nazism, of Italian fascists and of Spanish rebels, and because we are so completely terrified by the path that nationalism has taken in these countries we immediately jump to the conclusion that all nationalism must by its very nature be evil, and some of us in the anxious effort at any cost to keep liberalism above suspicion, band all nationalism together without any discrimination, without any effort to make a distinction between them, and label them all reactionary and a hindrance to social progress. It is not true however, that all nationalism is necessarily opposed to social idealism and is a stumbling block on the road toward the universal brotherhood of man.
 
There is a nationalism that works itself up into a frenzy of war and hate, but likewise there can be a nationalism of peace and justice. There is a nationalism that preaches the theories of a Hitler, but likewise, there can be a nationalism that preaches the ideals of the prophets. “Nations are no more than collective individuals,” says Dubnow,[5] the Jewish historian. There are some individuals who are continually motivated by the desire to dominate over others and to get ahead of their neighbor, regardless of consequence and regardless of whether or not there be any provocation for such acts. There are some, however, who while they desire to assert and develop their own individuality, at the same time respect the personalities of others and seek to live together in harmony with them.
 
The first type of man meets with our wholehearted condemnation, yet we do not for this reason condemn every individual person on the face of the earth. We rather cherish and respect the second type all the more because he knows how to live and let live. If it be true then that nations are no more than collective individuals, the same criterion of judgment must be applied to national life. We must distinguish between a national individualism which seeks to preserve and develop its own nationality and a national egotism which is aggressive and whose sole purpose is to suppress and annihilate all other peoples. Before we can jump to conclusions with regard to any particular brand of nationalism be it Jewish or any other kind, it is necessary to analyze completely its motif, to review its ideals and purposes, to note how these are being translated into action, and then to judge accordingly.
 
Even a cursory consideration of the facts will suffice to show that the Jewish concept of nationalism is not only different from the fascist doctrines of Europe, but is altogether in direct opposition to them. The nationalism of a Hitler is a concept which centers completely in the glorification of the state. All peoples are divided into political units, and to the political unit all of their loyalty must be attached. Their own individual wills and personalities must be suppressed as the state is deified and made supreme. The driving force which motivates such a nationalism is the lust for power and glory. It develops an inflated ego with a worldwide imperialism as its ideal goal. It feels itself superior to every other people and longs for the time when it can gain, if not political, then at least economic control over them all. The evils of such a view are too obvious to mention. But even if it wanted to, Jewish nationalism could not talk in such terms. Palestine is not even a state in its own right. It is still—and undoubtedly will continue for some time to be—under British supervision by authority of a mandate from the League of Nations. Zionists could not, if they would, give way to meaningless dreams of imperialist expansion, or any other similarly foolish political aspirations. The nationalism of the Jew is not political, but cultural. Its goal is not the exaltation of a Jewish state, but the creation of a center for the expression of the Jewish spirit, for the development of language and literature, the creation of its art, a refuge for the oppressed, the achievement of a social ideal. The nationalism of the Jew does not seek to dominate and to lord over other peoples. It is not of the type which divides the whole world into countless fighting units. It is rather of that type which can make for peace in the world and accords to all the right to live.
 
This difference is very evident in the economic field especially. Fascism is nothing but the attempt to prevent any change in the present economic system. It would retain it completely as it is and freeze the wealth of the few and maintain the poverty of the many. It has no social vision and seeks no improvement on the state of society. The building of Palestine on the other hand is significant for its social strivings and the economic experiments which are being carried on within its midst. From the very outset the program of official Zionism has sought to establish a society which would make for greater equality among its members. One of the first principles to be established was that of the public ownership of land. The moment the Jew was given the opportunity to create his own society he remembered the ancient law of the Bible, “The land shall not be sold, saith the Lord, for the land is mine.” Thus the Jewish National Fund was created to purchase land in Palestine in the name of the whole people of Israel and to hold it in perpetuity for them, their children, and children’s children. It is impossible for anyone to buy or sell this land. It can only be leased for a period of forty-nine years[6] with the privilege of renewal when the lease should expire. Of course individuals may still buy privately, land over which the National Fund has no control, but the Zionist movement in itself is based definitely on this principle of common ownership which was to be the first blow aimed at the monopolies of private greed.
 
A second social principle, which is entirely foreign to the nationalism of Europe, is the prohibition by the National Fund of all manner of human exploitation. No man is permitted to lease any national fund land except on condition that he work that land himself. Hired labor is forbidden on national fund property. No man may lease more soil than he can cultivate with his own hands and with those of his family. Not the absentee landlord who reaps the benefits of another man’s labors, but the laborer himself enjoys the fruits of his work. Here is another principle aiming at a blow at those very vested interests which fascism but seeks to protect.
 
Of even greater significance than either of these, however, is the rising power of the Jewish labor movement in Palestine. Over 85% of the laboring class are now members of the federation of labor.[7]  Of this labor movement it may be said, without any fear of contradiction, that it is the only ethically motivated program of economic life which does not violate its own principles in attaining its goal, for it does not advocate violence to achieve peace nor dictatorship to establish democracy. In the fifteen years or so of its existence it has organized producers’ and consumers’ cooperatives, established its own banks, sick funds and insurance funds for laborers, hospitals, all types of educational institutions, and sought to establish closer understanding and cooperation with the Arabs. What this labor Zionism means to Jewish nationalism is best seen from a statement by A.D. Gordon[8], the philosopher of the movement. “We must create the kind of life,” he says, “concerning which it will be said it is a national ego in the image of God, for without a national ego in the image of God, there is no personal ego in the image of God.”
 
This then is the nature of Jewish nationalism. What a far cry from the boastful arrogance of Germany and Italy! To these ideals in theory there are of course some exceptions in actual practice. The achievement of perfection in such a short space of time would be altogether too much to expect. We have our profiteers and land speculators who flood Palestine with their get-rich schemes and who have no regard for even a minimum of social ethics. We have our small group of Revisionists who seek in their amateurish way to imitate the methods of a Hitler and are deluded with visions of grandeur. We shall be forced to struggle with these tendencies for some time to come. But these are not the official ideals of Jewish nationalism, and no one condemns these tendencies more than do the Zionist leaders themselves. These exceptions are by no means sufficient reason for frightened liberals to condemn the whole of Zionism and throw it in the same class with the curses of Europe. The very fact that we look upon these things as undesirable exceptions instead of the accepted standard is in itself proof of how utterly different is the nationalism of the Jew. We have nothing to gain from sweeping condemnation of the Zionist movement. It’s our duty rather to ally ourselves with those aspects of the movement that seek to fulfill our social ideals that they may have added strength more easily to overcome the obstacles that lie before them. With us or without us, Palestine will be rebuilt. If we have faith in the Jew we must have faith that the spirit of justice will eventually completely prevail. May it be speedily and in our day.


[1] The Union for Reform Judaism (until 2003: Union of American Hebrew Congregations) is the congregational arm of Reform Judaism in North America.

[2] Morris Samuel Lazaron (1888-1979), U.S. Reform rabbi, served Baltimore Hebrew Congregation for 31 years beginning in 1915. His efforts in the non-Zionist movement brought him into conflict with many pro-Zionist leaders, such as Stephen S. Wise, and led to his assisting in the founding of the American Council for Judaism, an organization dedicated to supporting the efforts and goals on the non-Zionist movement.

[3] The Horst Wessel Song, written in 1929 by Horst Wessel, a Nazi stormtrooper, was the anthem of the Nazi Party from 1930 to 1945, and from 1933 to 1945 a co-national anthem of Germany, along with the first stanza of the Deutschlandlied.

[4] Hatikvah, literally “The Hope” in Hebrew, is the national anthem of Israel, written by Naphtali Herz Imber, a secular Jew from the Ukraine who moved to the Land of Israel in the early 1880s. The anthem's theme revolves around the nearly 2000-year-old hope of the Jewish people to be a free and sovereign people in the Land of Israel.

[5] Simon Dubnow, (1860-1941) Russian  Jewish historian, writer and activist.

[6] This parallels the biblical requirement that the Jubilee year (every 50 years) was to be treated like a Sabbatical year, with the land lying fallow, but also required the compulsory return of all property to its original owners or their heirs.

[7] With the increasing liberalization and deregulation of the Israeli economy since the 1980s, and with the arrival of Israel's modern universal health care system in 1995, the role and size of Histadrut has significantly declined.

[8] Aaron David Gordon (1856-1922), Russian who emigrated to Palestine on 1904, more commonly known as A. D. Gordon, was a Zionist ideologue and the spiritual force behind practical Zionism and Labor Zionism. He founded Hapoel Hatzair, a movement that set the tone for the Zionist movement for many years to come. Influenced by Leo Tolstoy and others, it is said that in effect he made a religion of labor.