Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Gol Kalev
Read between
January 9 - January 20, 2022
Reform movement,
reversed course and de facto recognized it in its 1935 Columbus Platform:
While Herzl’s political Zionism was a prerequisite to the success of Zionism, it is likely that so was having Jews on the ground in Palestine (“practical Zionism”). This led to the so-called “synthetic Zionism” that was adopted as policy after Herzl’s 1904 death. It blended Herzl’s political Zionism with the immigrants’ practical Zionism.
the Jews did not come.
some Jews did come.
1919-1924 (Third Aliya) brought with it about 35,000 people – mostly from Russia and Poland, but also from other Eastern European countries.
young Jews.
about 40% of the Third Aliya immigrants were single.
Taxes imposed in Poland, and adverse conditions for Jews, combined with America closing its gates for immigration in 1924
resulted in 70,000 new immigrants coming to Palestine, mostly from Poland (Fourth Aliya). This was a more wealthy and older immigration wave, which this time included families.
Similarly, the immigration wave that followed in the early 1930s (Fifth Aliya) – the one resulting from Nazis taking power in Germany and the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe – was wealthy and older.
The elevation of the profile of the Zionist immigrants, combined with the diverse source-countries within Europe, further shifted the balance of power within Zionism towards the Palestine Jews.
Each wave of immigration tended to be snobbish to the ...
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France invaded Syria,
The pro-Zionist Hashemite Arab king Faisal was overthrown by France,
The British gave Iraq to the Hashemites as compensation, and later carved out Palestine and gave the eastern portion of it to Faisal’s brother Abdullah.
The 1929 violence played a key role in the Yishuv’s takeover of Zionism.
Despite their heavy contribution to Zionism, to the British war effort in World War I and creating facts on the ground in settling the land, the Palestine Jews were frustrated that they did not get an adequate voice in the Zionist movement and its institutions.
Paris Peace conference
it was only European Zionists and not the Yishuv Zionists...
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European Zionist leadership decided
to maintain its cozy relationship with the British.
The reaction of the Yishuv to the British reversal split the Yishuv. A splinter group began to attack the British, at the same time that the mainstream was joining the British in their war effort against the Germans.
Zionism was headed towards a military conflict. This, along with the disappointment in European Zionist leadership, made the Yishuv takeover of Zionism nearly inevitable.
The stream that took over in 1935 and held power until the late 1970s was a particular one. This stream, led by Ben-Gurion, was adamantly secular. To some extent, it was rebelling against the Jewish religion. It was also socialist and it was rigid, instituting the mechanism of adherence to the ethos that it itself instilled.
Ben-Gurion and his colleagues were successful in part because they took complete control of Zionist institutions.
government institutions, the media, the education system, economy and even business, allowed Ben-Gurion and his party to adjust the Zionist narrative retroactively, as they saw fit for what was needed for the survival for the fledgling state. Zionism was secularized retroactively:
life back in the ancestral land represented a new form of Jewish life that was different from, and even in contrast to, the Jewish life of previous centuries.
Ben-Gurion’s revolutionary movement rebelled against the past: The miserable Jew, the unproductive Jew, and indeed the religious Jew.
Only after Israel’s 1948 establishment did Ben-Gurion make a substantial correction and developed a strong interest in the Bible.
With the rejection of Jewish religiosity came the outright rejection of the Diaspora. Zionism evolving as a revolutionary movement meant a rejection of the past, and the building of a new Jew in Palestine.
the call for Aliya, and the dissonance towards the masses who did not answer the call was core to Israel’s developing ethos.
Negation of the Diaspora was not only rejection of Diaspora life outside of Israel, but also of rejection of Diaspora life in Israel. The Zionist narrative was about making sure that those who came to Israel were indeed “Israelized.”
The Palestinian Jew vs. the European Jew that had its early expression in the Ben-Gurion vs. Weizmann contrast, trickled to the next generations.
Establishment Jews in the Diaspora had rejected the fringe movement called Zionism. Once the fringe movement rose, it rejected Diaspora Judaism. That dance of rejections came to an end as the 20th century progressed. A synthesis emerged.
The establishment Jews demonstrated their support primarily through generous financial giving.
Israel eventually accepted that there is legitimate Jewish life outside of Israel.
no longer true that “we need every Jew here in Israel.”
by the early 21st century, a binary Jewish world emerged: About 85% of today’s Jews are spread between North America and Israel.
trends in those two core centers are indicative that Judaism is indeed transforming to Judaism 3.0.
transformations are not “announced,” but pinpointed later.
Perhaps in the future people will point to the 1948 establishment of the Jewish state as the point when Judaism transformed and Zionism became its organizing principle, but as discussed in this book, the transformation to Judaism 3.0 occurred over a period of time and did not take full effect until well into the second decade of the 21st century.
A transformation of Judaism, whereby the Jewish national aspect is becoming its organizing principle and Israel once again becomes the primary Jewish point of orientation, is both natural and simple. It is on the one hand, a return to the natural state of being, and on the other, merely a shift from one aspect of the Jewish nation-religion to the other.
The transformation to Judaism 3.0 is less radical than other transformations discussed earlier;
the transformation can be viewed as a “reverse-merger” of Zionism into Rabbinic Judaism. The once small nascent movement which was born fairly recently, is inheriting the infrastructure, awareness, membership and consciousness that the “parent” has.
No aspect of Rabbinic Judaism is compromised as a result of the transformation.
Rabbinic Judaism as the organizing principle of Judaism by incorporating it into itself. Judaism 3.0 strengthens Rabbinic Judaism
Not only have the “Israelis” taken over Zionism, but to a large extent, so has Israeli culture, achievements and contributions to humanity “taken over” Judaism.
An organizing principle is not a hierarchical concept. It is a reference point, an architecture.
Biblical Judaism
