Zionism: Introducing the Topic

2 SHOFAR Fall 1994 Vol. 13, No. 1 ZIONISM: INTRODUCING THE TOPIC by Richard Iibowitz Richard Iibowitz is a member of the Intellectual Heritage faculty at Temple University and the Theology Department ofSaint joseph's University. The author/editor offive books and many studies and reviews, his works include Mordecai M. Kaplan as Redactor: The Evolution of Reconstructionism and Methodology and the Academic Teaching of the Holocaust. Teaching many of the facets of Judaism to college students means confronting challenges involving language, logic systems, unfamiliar beliefs and a history sprawled across four millennia and six continents. Seeking to simplify the task while gaining western understanding and approval, academicians have long struggled with the assimilation of yahdut into Wissenschaft des ]udentums. Today, after nearly two hundred years of research, abetted by the impetus for ethnic studies in American colleges and universities which arose a generation ago, courses about Jewish history, sociology, religious practices, literature, and the Holocaust have been developed by the thousands. Jewish Studies majors and minors abound on the undergraduate level, and public universities now offer graduate degrees in fields that were once the exclusive. domain of the jewish teacher colleges and rabbinical seminaries. Within these programs, the study of Zionism has often been relegated to a secondary position, referred to within general survey courses or as background to the history of the State of Israel. The surveys often limit discussions· to millennial jewish yearnings for a return to the homeland and the modern efforts launched by Theodore Herzl, while the latter concentrate on cataloguing wars and the development of the kibbutz movement. Other aspects of Zionism may occasionally be discussed, but Zionism: Introducing the Topic 3 the curriculum rarely moves beyond Ahad Ha-Am and, perhaps, Zev Jabotinsky. Few undergraduate students are familiar with the name of Yitzhak Reines, and fewer still have ever heard of Ber Borochov. Difficulties in the teaching ofZionism begin with matters ofdefinition. Is Zionism a political movement of national liberation and restoration or an extension of European colonization and the subsequent suppression of Third World peoples? Is Zionism a socialist movement or one linked to classical fascism? Is it a religious movement, associated with mystical yearnings for messianic redemption, or a vestige of nineteenth-century European Romanticism? If Zionism is defined as the effort seeking recreation of a Jewish State, can a legitimate Zionist movement be said to exist today, four decades after the emergence of the State of Israel? Has the concept of Zionism, therefore, become little more than a euphemistic smokescreen used by Diaspora Jews to justifY their political and economic support of Israel while absolving them from any accusations of dual loyalty? If Zionism cannot be defined, is it at least possible to indicate who is a Zionist? Each suggested definition can make claims of validity, insofar as each offers a partial view of an old/new melange. In order for students to understand the collective acts and hopes that have been Zionism, they must develop some sense of the matrix from which it arose, a task that is begun through a redefinition ofJudaism from the normative but misleading American understanding of a religious faith! to that definition first offered by Mordecai M. Kaplan, "the evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people."2 ]n teaching Zionism, therefore, it becomes necessary that students learn something about the nature ofJudaism itself. Even Jewish students, who may have greater familiarity with certain terms, concepts, or practices than their non-Jewish classmates, are not above an ignorance on this score. Proposing an understanding of Zionism as the primary expression of Jewish national identity and political desire is best achieved through a wide-ranging exposure to the elements ofJewish nationaVpoliticallongings to be found at least as early as the Book of Psalms. The preliminary task of my own curriculum, therefore, is to introduce the civiIizational definition of Judaism; support for this definition and its Zionist implica- 'This classic definition was used by Will Herberg in his study of American religious practices, Protestant, Catholic alldjeUJ. 2Kaplan, who developed that definition most fully in his classic work, judaism As A Civilization, served a term as president of the Zionist Organization of America. 4 SHOFAR Fall 1994 VoL...