What does the land of Palestine have to do with being Jewish?
Although Zionism has evolved since the late-19th century when the modern movement began, it continues to hold out similar hopes and to raise similar questions. One aim of our play is to cast light on its early history – including the reasons why some people embraced the cause while others objected to it – thereby encouraging dialogue and reflection today.
The age-old Jewish longing for redemption, “Next year in Jerusalem,” L’Shana Haba’ah B’Yerushalayim, which is shouted at the end of the Passover Seder and Yom Kippur, is a reminder of exile and an expression of hope for return to Biblical Israel (also known as Palestine). The Talmud expresses a reverence for this strip of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, affirms the universal obligation of Jews to live there, and is confident that one day this dream will be fulfilled. But also very old is questioning about this prophecy; should such an ingathering be the destiny of all Jews? Might L’Shana Haba’ah be understood – and this too is suggested in scripture – as a prayer for universal redemption, for peace and freedom worldwide?
Let’s review the history of this controversy. A Viennese Jew, Theodor Herzl, who convened the first international Zionist congress in 1897, envisaged a secure “homeland for the Jews” that would put an end to the Diaspora. But the chief rabbi in late 19th-century Vienna, Moritz Güdemann, took exception to this Zionist project, and he confronted Herzl privately and in public. Just before the Zionist Congress took place, Güdemann published a widely read anti-Zionist polemic, Nationaljudenthum, in which he argued that Judaism is a world religion that stands in irreconcilable conflict with nationalism.
Theodor Herzl
Moritz Güdemann
Although he was acutely aware of the pogroms going on in Eastern Europe and Russia, along with amplifying antisemitism in Austria itself, Güdemann didn’t believe that Zionism offered a righteous path forward. The danger, he writes, is that a Judaism “with cannons and bayonets” will “swap the role of David for that of Goliath and be a pathetic travesty of itself.” Herzl was more hopeful, believing that Jewish settlement in Palestine would not only benefit the Arabs living there but also set an example for the world: “Nothing prevents us from being and remaining the exponents of a united humanity when we have a country of our own. To fulfill this mission we do not have to remain literally planted among the nations who hate and despise us.”
The characters in Arthur Schnitzler The Road Into the Open wrestle with these matters. Leo attended the first Zionist congress and has become an impassioned believer. Another young man, Oskar Ehrenberg, repudiates his Jewish identity and converts to Christianity. Therese doesn’t abandon her Jewish heritage, but gives it expression through her commitment to social democratic activism. Heinrich, who in the novel stands in for Schnitzler himself, perceives the situation of Jews — facing rising antisemitism on the one hand, with no realistic prospect of Zionist redemption on the other — as inherently problematic, if not irresolvable.
Although Schnitzler’s novel was written over a century ago, some of the disputes about Jewish identity and relationship to the land of Palestine that are taken up in it remain unsettled today. Decades before the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, Schnitzler and his Viennese contemporaries raised questions about what the achievement of statehood in a distant land would mean. Among the participants in conversations about Jewish identity in the Diaspora and in Palestine were Bertha Pappenheim and Martin Buber. He was a Biblical scholar and teacher who embraced the Zionist cause and moved to Palestine. Pappenheim was a social activist who criticized Zionist methods and ethics. Despite their ideological differences, they became close friends who worked together and learned from one another.
Bertha Pappenheim (1859-1936) wears a medal with the initials “JFB” standing for “Jüdischer Frauenbund” (League of Jewish Women), an organization that she founded and led for 20 years.
“We Jews should remember that we can see the summit of Mount Sinai from anywhere in the world, from the Diaspora—and Palestine too is Diaspora.”
Martin Buber (1878–1965) is most well-known for his exploration of what he calls “I-Thou Relationships.” One’s whole being is involved when one is fully present and transparent to another, enabling recognition of their experience, dignity, and intrinsic worth.
“Fifty years ago, when I joined the Zionist movement for the rebirth of Israel, my heart was whole. Today … I cannot … even be joyful in anticipating victory, for I fear lest the significance of Jewish victory be the downfall of Zionism.”
Two new ideas in the late 19th century – psychoanalysis and Jewish feminism – are bound up with the life of one woman, Bertha Pappenheim. Before she became well-known as a social reformer, feminist, and founder of the field of social work, she entered the history of psychoanalysis as “Anna O,” the young patient whose case motivated the invention of the “talking cure” (Pappenheim herself coined this name for her treatment) as a method of psychotherapy.
She was described by Sigmund Freud, in a book co-authored with Josef Breuer, Pappenheim’s family doctor, as suffering from hysterical symptoms that included hallucinations, paralysis, facial pain, and disturbed speech–sometimes she lost her German entirely and could converse only in English, French, or Italian! These symptoms had begun while she was caring for her dying father, and she entered therapy in 1880 at the age of 21. Freud and Breuer portray her as a beautiful woman with “a powerful intellect and a penetrating intuition who was suffocated by an extremely monotonous existence of an upper-class daughter in a narrow-minded orthodox Jewish family.”
Pappenheim regained her health in her late 20s, emerging from her personal suffering with inexhaustible energy, compassion and vision. She traveled to Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Middle East to organize resistance against the plight of women entrapped in prostitution, sex trafficking and other forms of exploitation. While remaining religiously devout throughout her life, Pappenheim recognized that Jewish women had to deal not only with antisemitism but also with unequal treatment within Jewish tradition itself.
Zionism, Pappenheim believed, could not provide a solution to the problems of being Jewish, especially not for women. On the contrary, the movement was biased in favor of men and retained women in subordinate roles. Biblical Palestine, in her view, is most significant within Judaism as a carrier of meaning, not as a geographical center of command that stands apart from the Diaspora and exercises authority over it. Pappenheim’s vision is inclusive: “For the spirit of Judaism, the whole world is just big enough…. We Jews should remember that we can see the summit of Mount Sinai from anywhere in the world, from the Diaspora—and Palestine too is Diaspora.” She traveled to Palestine extensively, collaborated with Zionist women, and participated in Zionist cultural programs. Yet she held that what fundamentally unites Jews can never be physical location but must remain their shared history and the values they hold dear.
Martin Buber agreed with Herzl about the need for a Zionist movement, but not about its aims. In a context of rising antisemitism Herzl’s focus was on territory and safety ensured by national sovereignty. In contrast, Buber embraced Zionism as a source of cultural and spiritual renewal. No less would be required, Buber thought, if Jews were going to meet their Arab neighbors in the land of Palestine with openness and an abundance of good will.
Buber celebrated the life of Baal-Shem-Tov, a Kabbalist who founded Hasidism in the 18th century.
Buber moved to Jerusalem in 1938 and became a university professor there. Zionism for him meant “Hebrew humanism,” which is universalist in its outreach. “Israel’s problem, ” he said, is inevitably “linked to the task of humanity in general.” The return of Jews to the Holy Land, Buber believes, is bound up with the formation of a new kind of community that honors what is deeply meaningful and ethically compelling in the traditional canon.
Such a progressive Zionism remains alive today, but is the dream not sharply contradicted by the laying waste of Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank? Mindful of the admonition in Exodus, “You shall neither mistreat nor oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt,” Buber comments on Jewish-Palestinian conflict:
“Remember … how the nations looked down upon us and continue to look down upon us at all places, as strangers, as an inferior group….. Let us be careful not to commit ourselves what has been committed against us! [We need] to imagine the soul of the other—of the stranger …. despite all our differences of interest (which result from illusion rather than politics) a political consensus is possible, for there is love for the land there and here, for there is a will for the future of this land there and here. And as we share this common love and common will, it is possible to work together.”
Jews and Palestinians march together against the war in Gaza and for equality, social and environmental justice, and peace.
Following in the footsteps of Bertha Pappenheim and Martin Buber, many peacemakers, Palestinian and Jewish, have advocated mutual recognition of the human rights and dignity of both peoples, leading to negotiation that brings an end to the conflict. Economically as well as politically, history has shown what collaboration between Palestinian and Jewish communities can achieve. (Connecting with the Enemy, by Sheila Katz)
