The Jewish State: A Century Later (review)

Book Reviews Book Reviews 127 The Jewish State: A Century Later, by Alan Dowty. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 337 pp. $35.00. The title ofthis volume signals the scope and significance intended by its author. In this very impressive work Alan Dowty seeks to evaluate many of the assumptions of the Zionist movement and to ask questions relating to how much Zionism has achieved in the last century. Professor Dowty is a highly respected and well established scholar in the field, and this book will no doubt contribute to his reputation as one oftoday's most insightful scholars in this area of inquiry. This is a volume that students of Israeli history and politics will definitely want to own. The very first sentence of the book indicates both the breadth and the direct approach that the author uses throughout the volume: "Can a state be both Jewish and democratic?" Professor Dowty addresses a wide range ofweighty and profound issues head-on in this study, and in doing so leaves us in a position to much better appreciate how much Israel has really achieved in its five decades of independence. After addressing questions relating to the meaning of Jewishness, obstacles to democracy, and the kind of democracy found in Israel, Professor Dowty seeks to examine whether there is any continuity between the shtetl and the modem State in what he refers to as "Jewish political habits" (p. 19). The common experiences in Jewish history in Eastern Europe and elsewhere that provided a foundation for modem Israeli political institutions are examined, and we are shown why Jewish political traditions are inclined toward consociational, rather than majoritarian democracy. This does, of course, have significance for political behavior in the contemporary state. Zionism itself is theoretically central to Dowty's defmitive work. He tells us that "Israel, more than almost any other state, is the result of an idea imposed on reality ... Israel would not have come into existence without the strength of beliefs that moved their adherents to create new political realities" (p. 34). After explaining the importance ofideology and demonstrating the value ofperce,iving Zionism as a kind ofnationalism, we see some ofthe ways in which Zionism held constant to its roots, and other ways in which it changed in response to challenges ofthe times. Some early institutions worked and remained; others adapted. Certainly the challenges that arose during the Mandate period could have destroyed a movement that was too rigid. Professor Dowty shows how, with some evolution, Zionist leaders were able to transform their abstract visions into what he calls a "civic state," and how the development of political institutions in the State's early years continued to reflect a "Jewish" nature of politics. It must be recognized, ofcourse, that Zionism has not had the luxury ofdeveloping and evolving in an entirely positive environment, and Professor Dowty shows that what he calls "the filter of security" has affected the evolution of ideology and the development of political institutions. Security and defense concerns have traditionally 128 SHOFAR Summer 2000 Vol. 18, No.4 had to be weighed against desires of Zionist ideology and civil liberties to enable the State to survive. This has, we are shown, resulted in a certain erosion ofpure ideology, as Israel's now-famous pragmatism has helped to modify ideological preferences. In the secondpart ofthe volume ProfessorDowty addresses a number ofsignificant challenges to Israeli democracy and leaves us marveling that a democratic government could have survived in Israel at all. Israel is certainly experiencing significant potential and actual lines of social cleavage, and we see here how these major cleavages developed and where the most vulnerable fault-lines are. Tradition, ideology, ethnic origin, degree ofreligious orthodoxy, and any number ofother issues could, each, serve as the basis for a major civil war in another setting. In Israel all ofthese potential faultlines are significant, and still the state survives. The gaps between the groups are real. The cleavages are, indeed, cross-cutting, so that individuals who may disagree sharply on one issue may be allies on another. Professor Dowty shows us, however, that a strong sense of common Jewishness seems to overcome subgroup identities in most contexts...