|
|  |
Jewish Political Studies Review Abstracts
Volume 3, Numbers 1-2 (Spring 5751/1991)
The Jewish people represents the classic state-and-diaspora
phenomenon of all time. Indeed, the term "diaspora" originated
to describe the Jewish condition. In the 3500 years of the
existence of the Jewish people, Jewish states have existed for
roughly 1000 years, while Jewish diasporas have existed for at
least 2600 years. For some 1500 years the Jewish people existed
as an exclusively diaspora community. Nevertheless, the Jewish
people not only preserved their integrity as an ethno-religious
community, but continued to function as a polity throughout their
long history through the various conditions of state and
diaspora. This essay analyzes the unique characteristics of the
Jewish people, particularly in the context of a world Jewish
polity. An historical survey traces the patterns of development
of the Jewish polity and its institutions from its original
foundings through the beginning beginnings of diaspora and up to
the present day.
This article examines two bargaining (accommodationist)
types of leaders, the shtadlan and the court Jew, using Hebrew
Bible and post-Biblical stories. Its focus is the notion of
obligation as a way of understanding how leadership types can
maximize the survival strategies of an oppressed group. Leaders
organize, articulate, propose strategies, represent their group
to the oppressor, and in general are critical to the survival and
identity of the group. Different types of leaders differently
affect a group's sense of its identity and sense of efficacy.
This difference relates to the way obligation ties between
members and between members and leaders are reconfirmed and
validated.
This essay explores some of the concerns which might have
influenced early rabbinic reconstructions of the private life and
public career of King David. David and his monarchy were treated
as vehicles for constitutional polemic, transposed into symbols
of a particular type of ruler and regime. Three specific
instances recorded in the Babylonian Talmud which lend themselves
to political interpretation are discussed. When linked to allied
early rabbinic dicta on the exercise and distribution of
political power, they illustrate separate facets of what appears
to have been an integrated constitutional doctrine. That
doctrine is outlined and the purposes to which it was put are
demonstrated.
The debate over the nature and authority of Jewish
governance did not first emerge with the creation of the State of
Israel. It has its earliest roots in the Book of Deuteronomy and
continues through the centuries in Rabbinic literature. The
basis for the debate was the issue of whether kingship was
divinely ordained (a mitzvah), and whether the people could have
a king and still remain different from "all the nations."
This essay examines the Jewish basis of David Ben-Gurion's
foreign policy. For Ben-Gurion, Israel was the sum and substance
of everything Jewish. Therefore, his foreign policy was totally
Israel-centric -- ideological when it came to matters of Israel's
centrality and pragmatic when it came to Israel's survival.
Ben-Gurion developed a unique interpretation of Judaism which
enabled him to adopt policies and make decisions that would be
compatible with his own version of Judaism while at the same time
serving the collective interests of the new Jewish state. Such
foreign policy issues as non-alignment, reaction to the alleged
Jewish doctors' plot in the USSR, rapprochement with West
Germany, attitudes towards South Africa, anti-Semitism in the
diaspora, and the Eichmann trial are analyzed in this light. In
practice, when Israeli interests contradicted the interests of
Jewish communities in the diaspora, Ben-Gurion tended to favor
Israel's interests. Yet, in cases where Israeli interests were
not at stake, Ben-Gurion was ready to support the Jewish cause.
The study of policy-making in the Jewish community is a
generally neglected area in contemporary research on Jewish life.
One way to begin exploration of this domain is by looking at the
characteristics of Jewish communal leaders, those who play the
greatest role in policy-making. Over the past few decades
leadership characteristics have been changing. Research and
impressionistic evidence confirm that Jewish organizational
leaders are more Jewishly-oriented, more focused on "survival"
issues, and more formally socialized into leadership roles than
in the past. These changes have a number of implications for
both the substance of communal policies and the dynamics of
policy-making which bear further study.
The rise and subsequent decline of the Cuban Jewish
community in the twentieth century embodies a unique chapter in
the study of diaspora Jewry. Beginning with a group of U.S. Jews
in a Spanish-speaking society, home to Ladino-speaking immigrants
from the Ottoman Empire, a haven for Jews fleeing the Holocaust,
witness to a mass exodus in the wake of the Castro Revolution,
the Cuban Jewish community today continues to maintain a limited
Jewish communal life under difficult conditions. Because Cuba
lacks any tradition of religious antisemitism, there is no
reported local antisemitic feeling, even though Cuba has taken a
prominent anti-Zionist stand. Factors that threaten its
disappearance as an organized community include demographic
decline due to emigration, aging and assimilation; the lack of
spiritual leadership; the poverty of Jewish educational and
cultural activities; and the hostility of the majority society
toward identification with religious institutions.
The basic ambivalence of Mizrachi/Poalei Mizrachi toward
institutionalized Zionist education in the diaspora, which from
the beginning of the twentieth century was deemed to be primarily
secular in nature, evolved from a non-participatory stance to an
active -- even aggressive -- participation via what it termed
"Jewish" or "Torah education," which was considered by them to be
ipso facto true Zionist education. During the initial three
years of the State of Israel, Mizrachi/Poalei Mizrachi exploited
the political realities of both the state and the World Zionist
Organization in order to establish as a base its own separate WZO
Department of Torah Education and Culture for the Diaspora.
|
