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Volume 10, No.1 Fall1991 MINORITY RIGHTS, JEWISH POLITICAL TRADITIONS, AND ZIONISM Alan Dowty Alan Dowty is Professor of Government and International Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and Research Associate at the University of Haifa. 23 One of the central puzzles of Israeli politics is the general strength of democratic institutions, given the fact that relatively few of the immigrants to Palestine or to Israel over the last century came from countries with a viable democratic tradition. A second puzzle is that one of the weaker aspects of these democratic institutions is respect for minority rights, though it is preciselyas a minority group that Jewish historical experience is most extensive. A number of influences have clearly contributed to this outcome. The general currents of Western liberalism, the role of the British model, and populist aspects of East European socialist ideologies all pushed the Zionist movement and Israeli governance in a democratic direction. On the other hand, Zionism, like contemporary nationalisms to which it was both an imitation and a reaction, focused on the rights of those who shared a Jewish identity rather than their relations with those who did not. As Jews knew all too well from their own experience with modern nationalism, the place of minorities in a state based on the principle of nationality was highly problematic . Furthermore, Zionism functioned in a Middle Eastern context where ethnoreligious particularism-the delineation of all rights and privileges according to group identity-was the rule even before the advent of modern nationalism. And finally, Zionism and Israel both have had to contend with an ethnic group considered to represent a basic threat to the security or survival of the Jewish community. While these influences may be important, one cannot overlook the impact of political traditions developed during centuries of Jewish communal life. Attitudes toward democratic procedures and non-Jewish rights were inevitably shaped by the way that Jews had customarily organized their political life; as Shlomo Avineri argues, "in the Jewish kehilla [community] lie the origins of Israeli democracy as well as some of the lack of elegance which ac- 24 SHOFAR companies it." 1 The Zionist movement was, in large degree, a revolt against Jewish history. But Zionists were also heirs to an experience of extensive selfgovernment involving institutions that were voluntary, inclusive, pluralistic, and contentious. It was also a closed system, facing a hostile external world and not equipped to deal with non-Jews as a group. Whether decisive or not, this experience encouraged attitudes highly consonant with subsequent attitudes and policies of the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine (the Yishuv) and of Israel. This paper will trace the continuity of these patterns. Jewish Politics Jewish communities throughout history had long experience in maintaining many institutions of a self-contained political system. In Tsarist Russia -where half the world's Jews lived in the nineteenth century-jewish communities had enjoyed a wide-ranging autonomy that the regime was trying , belatedly, to whittle down. Jewish communities were organized politically and regularly elected both secular leaders and rabbis, they levied taxes (or apportioned the taxes levied on the community as a whole by the state), they maintained courts with varying types of sanctions, they established extensive welfare systems, they passed laws (takanot) regulating extensively all aspects of life in the community from commerce to codes of personal dress, and they appointed agents (shtadlanim) as "diplomats" to represent the community in its relations with external authority. A distinctive and persistent political tradition grew out of the normative institutions of Judaism as shaped by the peculiarities of Diaspora existence that most Jewish communities (non-European as well as European) experienced in common.2 Some elements of this rich and variegated experience are of more relevance than others to subsequent political developments. Of particular rele1Avineri , "The Historical Roots ofIsraeli Democracy," Second Annual Guest Lecture, Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Research, University of Cape Town, March 31,1985, p. 8, and published in Shofar, Vol. 6, NO.1 (Fall 1987), pp. 1-6. 2rhe general picture of the Jewish political tradition is based on the following: Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog, Life is with People: The Culture of the Shtetl (Schocken Books...

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