Zionist negations of Judaism. Theodor Herzl and orthodoxy

Abstract

Zionism is a term whose semantics refer to the key issue of Jewish identity and, consequently, the place of Jews among other nations. It expresses a set of views referring to the idea of the return of all Jews from the diaspora and the creation of a so-called ‘national home’ in Eretz Israel, identified with the Promised Land. The initiator of this movement was Theodor Herzl (1860–1904), who organized the First Zionist Congress in 1897. However, this idea was met with harsh criticism from religious circles at the time, especially Orthodox ones. The dispute between Herzl and Orthodoxy was mainly based on two issues: The first and most important is the idea of messianism, which, according to Herzl, ‘can be taken into human hands’ without waiting any longer for the Messiah in the rabbinical sense. Veiled messianism thus became one of the elements of the Zionist program. The second point of contention was the ideological negation of the old ghetto culture and the absolute separation of the religious sphere from the so-called secular needs of emancipation, i.e. social, economic, political and cultural. This program was called ‘negation of the diaspora’ and naturally excluded the rabbinate from participating in the creation of a new Jewish state. The aim of this text is to illustrate the above-mentioned disputes, using both contemporary literary sources and visual/iconographic material.