[lbo-talk] Religious vs National struggles...

[Jeffrey Fisher]

colin, i'm not an expert on israeli history, but it has always seemed to me
that this was essentially 19th-century european nationalism -- the same
stuff that gave rise to the ahistorical kilt. no mysteries, there. it's
essentially a kind of secular religion, right? and in that sense, the bible
was for people like ben gurion or weizmann the central source of
national(ist) mythology. atavistic in a way, i suppose, but in the end no
moreso than scots nationalists harking back to robert the bruce and welsh
nationalists teaching themselves scots gaelic (remember eliezer perelman/ben
yehuda and the invention of modern hebrew).

and i think the famous and widespread opposition of religious jews all over
europe (that is to  say, sephardim and ashkenazim) in this process is quite
telling. religious zionists have coopted a secularly-framed project -- a
project that was already deeply problematic, no doubt, but a secular process
nonetheless. they were able to do it in part precisely because the
non-religious and even anti-religious early zionists had no other -- or at
the very least no better -- source of national identity than the bible.

i suspect, but again am no expert, that avnery is spot on when he fingers
the educational system as the main culprit in the shift. many aspects of
jewish-israeli society were fought over between secular and religious jews
in the early days of israel, but the role of religion in education seems to
be the critical one (see madrasahs in pakistan and pesantrin in indonesia).

fwiw

j

On 2/26/06, Colin Brace <cb at lim.nl> wrote:
>
> Fascinating piece, Johanna; thanks for posting it. It begs the
> question though: if the original Zionists didn't define themselves in
> religious terms, by their religions practices, what then formed the
> ideological basis for their project? How else could one define a Jew
> except by religion? They had no common language at the time, nor a
> distinctive racial identity, not even a over-arching culture (cf, the
> synagogues in 17th century Amsterdam; separate ones for Sephardic and
> Ashenazi Jews) And these avowed "atheists" established a nation whose
> citizenship is defined by one's mother having been "Jewish"? What
> right did they have to settle in Palestine except that established in
> a two-thousand year old religious text? Based on what Avnery says,
> Zionism sounds at best like a cynical land and power grab, at worst a
> kind of atavistic tribalism.
>
> --
>   Colin Brace
>   Amsterdam
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

--
"lo que decimos no siempre se parece a nosotros"
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