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Jewish Political Studies Review Abstracts
Volume 9, Numbers 1 & 2 (Spring 5757/1997)
Zionism at 100
This article traces Bernhard Felsenthal's ideological and
institutional odyssey from extreme radical Reform to committed
Zionism. In the face of the overwhelming opposition of his
Reform colleagues, Felsenthal endorsed and embraced the nascent
Zionist movement and devoted his final years to its support.
In 1905, after much hesitation, and in spite of significant
opposition from lay supporters of the Jewish Theological
Seminary, Solomon Schechter declared publicly his allegiance to
Zionism. This essay explores his path to that occurrence, and
argues that three factors influenced his course of action. First,
the events of 1904 and 1905: Herzl's death, the Russian pogroms
in the fall of 1905, and the continuing interest in
territorialism, all of which suggested a need for leadership and
a program that could unify world Jewry. Second, Schechter's
rethinking of his antipathy for Herzlian political Zionism, which
he opposed as irreligious, but which now struck him as less
salient than Zionism's utility in the fight against Jewish
assimilation. Third, Schechter's emergence as a communal leader,
which led him to consider new platforms from which he could
propound his views on manifold issues in Jewish life. This
represented a significant change from his years in England, when
he held many of the same ideological positions, as revealed in
personal correspondence, but circumstances and his own role were
quite different.
While most of Vladimir Jabotinsky's articles have been
published in various volumes of collected writings and have thus
been available to scholars for years, a number of his essays
remain unknown to both scholars as well as his disciples. This
is largely due to the fact that the Revisionist party's archives
were destroyed during the bombing of London, but also because of
the wide range of publications in which Jabotinsky published.
This article introduces four recently discovered essays, "Self-
Administration for Palestine" (1920), "The Justice of the Jewish
Claim" (1921), "Shall the Jewish Middleman be Spared" (1930), and
"The Jewish Mission, the Religious Ideals of the Jew and of the
Aryan Compared" (1923), and discusses how they add to our
understanding of Jabotinsky as well as their continued relevance
for our own era.
Revolution and civil war in Russia (1917-1921) precipitated
far-reaching changes in the life of Belarus Jewry. The shtetls
(settlements) were extremely overpopulated and Jews eventually
sought and found an escape. In 1923, 18 percent of Soviet Jewry
lived in Belarus. This essay describes the attitude of the
authorities to the problem of Jewish land tenure regulation in
the New Economic Policy, creation of individual farms,
cooperatives and collective farms, and attitudes to that of the
Belarussian peasantry. Despite the fact that the Jewish
population in Belarus was mainly urban, beginning in the mid-
1920s Jewish agriculture began to be taken seriously. The number
of collective farms founded by Belarussians decreased from 287 to
235, while at the same time Jewish ones increased from 127 to
145, although the majority of Jews preferred to work in a private
economy. The Jewish farmers were very enterprising and made use
of various agronomical and technical innovations.
Zionist activists, not without reason, were strongly opposed
to Jewish land tenure in Belarus, considering it to be a
Bolshevik trick. At the beginning of the 1930s, Jewish farmers
were forcibly absorbed by the Belarussian general collective
farms during Stalin's collectivization policy. Its agricultural
institutions gradually degenerated and by the end of the decade
most were liquidated.
Contacts between the Jewish communities of Palestine and the
diaspora continued throughout the ages by shlichim (emissaries)
who were sent from Palestine. This essay examines the background,
goals, and activities of shlichim to Libya in the twentieth
century, taking the earlier period as a background. In addition
to traditional emissaries, an increasing number of Zionist ones
were sent to Libya, at first imitating the practices of
traditional ones. Gradually, the Zionist emissaries tried to
transform the community and prepare it for emigration to Israel
professionally, socially, culturally, and politically.
This article identifies and analyzes three concepts of
democracy that have developed in the history of the Israeli Labor
movement: institutional, competitive and pioneer. The
institutional concept originated in the Labor party, and the
Federation of Labor (Histadrut); the competitive concept was
fully articulated by members of the circle of young leaders of
Mapai in the 1950s; and the pioneer concept was developed by the
collectivist kibbutz movement. The differences among the three
concepts are discussed in relation to the suggested distinction
between a system of democratic choice and a system of democratic
approval. The former recognizes elections as a sufficient source
of legitimacy; the latter, adds to it other tests (normative and
constructive). Accordingly, the system of choice is open to
competitive election, while the selection of leaders in the
system of approval is carried out by an inner circle, and the
formal election is turned into a ritual act of approval.
The article discusses the clash between the institutional
and competitive concepts of democracy in Mapai (1930-1968); the
kibbutz and the pioneer approach; the collective charismatic
assertion of founding leaders; and finally, the current victory
of the competitive concept of democracy that was coupled with the
weakening of the historic institutions of the Israeli Labor
movement -- party organization, Histadrut, and kibbutz.
The question of Jewish-Israeli identity is one of present-day Israeli society's cardinal and pressing issues. The identity
of a citizen of Israel is not that of a purely Israeli identity,
nor is it a purely Jewish identity. It is, in varying degrees, a
synthesis of Jewish and Israeli components, depending on the
particular subgroups or subidentities. Stress develops around
the relationship between Jewishness and Israeliness and around
the relationship between Jewish religion and Jewish nationality.
Our findings revealed four distinct models of Jewish-Israeli
identity: 1) Non-religious (secular); 2) Traditionalist
(religious tradition-oriented); 3) National religious (State
Religious sector); 4) Ultra-Orthodox (Independent sector). A
meaningful shift has occurred in the attitude of Israeli youth
toward the Holocaust. The Holocaust has become a major factor,
at times the uppermost factor, of Jewish identity. However, the
meaningful shift in attitudes toward the Holocaust does not
involve a shift in attitude with regard to other periods in the
history of the Jewish diaspora, nor is there any change in
attitude toward Jews living in the diaspora.
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