Between Zionism And Judaism: The Radical Circle In Brith Shalom 1925-1933 9004115072, 9789004115071

Table of contents :
Contents
Foreword
Part One: Cultural and Political Background
1. “Idea”, “Ideal”, and “Ideology” as Understood by the Central European Emigrants in Brith Shalom
2. Formative Years: Fin-de-siècle, Neo-Romanticism and Neo-Mysticism
3. Between the Organic-Developmental Concept and the Rejection of the Present; the Idolization of Values and “the Spirit of the People”
Part Two: Zionism, Judaism, and Morality in the Polemics of Brith Shalom
4. The Incidents at the Western Wall and the 17th Zionist Congress as the Background to the Demand for “a new Zionist ideology”
5. The Men from Central Europe in Brith Shalom and Their Link to Ahad Ha-am and Buber
6. “Majority” Zionism and the Rejection of the Nation-State
7. The Polemic about the Rejection of the Exile
Part Three: Roots in the Past: Nationalism, Universalism, and Religious Socialism
8. From Cultural Zionism to Religious Zionism
9. Between Zionism and Religious Socialism
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

BETW EEN ZIONISM AND JUDAISM

BRILL’S SERIES IN JEWISH STUDIES GENERAL EDITOR DAVID S. K A TZ (Tel Aviv) ADVISORY EDITORS STUART COHEN (Bar-Dan) ANTHONY T. GRAFTON (Princeton) YOSEF KAPLAN Jerusalem) FERGUS MILLAR (Oxfoni) V O L. 23

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BETWEEN ZIONISM AND JUDAISM The Radical Circle in Brith Shalom 1925-1933

SH A LO M RATZABI

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B R ILL LEIDEN • BOSTON • KÖLN

2002

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library off Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ratzabi, Shalom. Between Zionism and Judaism : the radical circle in Brith Shalom, 1925-1933 / by Shalom Ratzabi. p. cm. — (Brill's series in Jewish studies, ; vol. 23) Includes bibliographical references (p.). ISBN 9004115072 (alk. paper) 1. Zionism—Philosophy. 2. Berit shalom (Organization : Palestine) 3. Zionism—-Palestine—History. I. Title. II. Series. DS149.R3224 2001 327.1 ’72*0605694- ^dc21

2001043180

Die Deutsche Bibliothek * dP-Einheitsaufhahme Ratzabi, Shalom: Between Zionism and Judaism : the radical circle in Brith Shalom 1925- 1933 / by Shalom Ratzabi. - Leiden ; Boston ;Köln : Brill, 2001 (Brill's series in Jewish studies ; Vol. 23) ISBN 90-04-11507-2

ISSN 0926-2261 ISBN 90 04 11507 2 © Copyright 2002 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands

All rigfUs resented. No part ofthis publication may be reproducedtranslatedstored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in anyform or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otheruise, withoutprior written permissionfrom the publisher. Authorization to photocopy itemsfor internal orpersonal use is granted by Brillprovided that the appropriatefees arepaid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Roseivood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers AIA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS

CONTENTS Foreword .........................................................................................

ix

Part One: Cultural and Political Background I. “Idea”, “Ideal”, and “Ideology” as Understood by the Central European Emigrants in Brith Shalom .................. A. “Idea”, “Ideal”, and “Ideology” ..................................... A .l. From Idea to Ideal ................................................. A. 2. Ideology and the Study of Ideology ................. B. Central European Emigrants in Brith Shalom as a Group with Ideological Characteristics ........................ C. Conclusion ........................................................................ II. Formative Years: Fin-de-siècle, Neo-Romanticism and Neo-Mysticism ........................................................................ A. General .............................................................................. B. The Limits of the Link to German Culture and the Meaning of that Link ..................................................... C. The National Tensions in Central Europe and Their Influence .................................................................. D. The Connections with fln-de-siècle Moods .................. D .l. Fin-de-siècle Expressionism and Its M eaning ..... D.2. How the Fin-de-siècle Was Expressed in Prague D.3. Neo-Romanticism and Neo-Mysticism ................ E. The Jewish Home as a Factor in Exposure to the Fin-de-siècle ...................................................................... F. Conclusion ........................................................................ III. Between the Organic-Developmental Concept and the Rejection of the Present; the Idolization of Values and “the Spirit of the People” ..................................................... A. General ............................................................................... B. The Unique Features of the Doctrine of Nationalism on the Basis of Developmental Theories ...................... B. l. Between Romanticism and Völkisch Ideologies B.2. Rejecting the Present and Idolizing Values .......

3 3 3 10 22 37 40 40 42 51 65 65 71 75 82 91

93 93 96 % 98

VI

CONTENTS

C. The Connection of Members of the Coterie to Organic-DevelopmentalIdeologies ................................ C .l. The Place of Absolute Values and the Rejection of the Present ...................................................... C.2. The Rejectionof the Jewish Present .................... C.3. The Need of the Members of the Coterie for the Concept of the “People” in the Spirit of the V olk.................................................................... D. Conclusion ......................................................................

101 101 110

118 131

Part Two: Zionism, Judaism , and Morality in the Polemics of Brith Shalom IV. The Incidents at the Western Wall and the 17th Zionist Congress as the Background to the Demand for “a new Zionist ideology” .................................................................. A. The Events of 1929 and the Battle over the Profile of Zionism ........................................................................ A .l. The Roots of the Demand for Revision of the Zionist Conception ............................................... A. 2. The Members of the Radical Circle in Brith Shalom and the Issue of the Final Goal after the 17th Congress ................................................. B. Zionism and “Messianism” ....................................... B. l. Zionism and “Messianism” at the Beginning of Zionism .............................................................. B.2. The Place of Messianism in the First Four Decades of the Twentieth Century ...................... B.3. The Members of the Coterie and the Intensification of Messianic Tension in Jewish Society in Israel at the End of the 1920s ......... C. The Members of Brith Shalom against the Background of the Ideological Struggles towards the End of the 1920s ................................................................................. D. Conclusion ...................................................................... V. The Men from Central Europe in Brith Shalom and Their Link to Ahad Ha-am and Buber .......................... A. General ............................................................................. B. The Character of Jewish Nationalism in the Spiritual

137 137 137

147 155 155 161

168

179 185 188 188

CONTENTS

Zionist Doctrine Founded by M artin Buber and Ahad Ha-am .................................................. C. The Links between the Men from Central Europe in Brith Shalom and M artin Buber and Ahad Ha-am ................................................................ C .l. Zionist Identification as a Personal Decision .... C.2. BetweenZionism and Judaism ............................. D. Conclusion .................................................................... VI. “Majority” Zionism and the Rejection of the Nation-State ...................................................................... A. General ........................................................................ B. The Land of Israel as Part of the Jewish Struggle for Existence and for Preservation of Jewish Identity .......................................................................... C. Aliyah, Settlement, and Hebrew Culture ................ D. Rejection of the National State ........................ E. Zionism as a Jewish Mission ..................................... V II. The Polemic about the Rejectionof the Exile .............. A. General ........................................................................ B. The Idea of “the Rejection of the Exile” at the End of the 1920s and the Start of the 1930s ........ C. The Men of Brith Shalom and the Idea of “the Rejection of the Exile” ............................................... D. The Idea of “the Rejection of the Exile”, Nationalism and Tradition ......................................... E. Nationalistic and Humanistic Motivation ................

VÜ

189

203 203 209 232 235 235

236 247 256 284 287 287 288 307 325 332

Part Three: Roots in the Past: Nationalism, Universalism, and Religious Socialism V III. From Cultural Zionism to Religious Zionism .............. A. Expressions of Cultural Zionism as a Response to the Problem of PersonalIdentity .................................. B. From Cultural Zionism to Religious Zionism ........ B .l. Buber’s Three Lectures and Their Meaning .... B.2. O uter Expressions of Religious Zionism among the Men from Central Europe in Brith Shalom up to the First World W ar .............................. C. Zionism as a Religious and Moralistic Movement

337 337 343 343

358 376

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CONTENTS

IX. Between Zionism and Religious Socialism ................... 378 A. General ........................................ 378 B. The Links of the Men of the Coterie with Religious Socialism ..................................................... 379 C. Socialism and Zionism in the Wake of the First World W ar .................................................................... 382 D. Zionism as the Good Tidings of Hebrew Humanism .................................................................... 389 D .l. From Religious Zionism to Hebrew Humanism ......................................................... 389 D.2. The Social Elements of the Utopian Socialism of A.D. Gordon, Gustav Landauer, and M artin Buber ..................................................... 403 E. The Expression of Religious Socialism in the Activity and Thought of the Members of the Coterie after the First World W ar ................................................. 409 Conclusion .....................................................................................

424

Bibliography ................................................................................... Newspapers and Periodicals ................................................... Works Cited in the Text or Notes ....................................... Abbreviations of Libraries and Archives ................................

433 433 433 445

Index

447

FOREW ORD This study has two aims. O n the one hand, it aims to uncover the sources, the “ideas” and the “ideals” of men like Gershom Schalom (Scholem), Ernst Simon and Robert Weltsch, emigrants from cen­ tral Europe, who formed a circle or coterie in the Brith Shalom Society in Palestine from 1925 to 1933. O n the other hand, the study aims to consider the relationship between the ideology—which they preached to the public—and reality. The importance of these tasks inheres in the fact that these personalities were considered by many— even by themselves—to represent the Spiritual trend of Zion­ ism among the Jews living in the country. If we recall that this group included philosophers, educators, historians and economists, none of whom was a politician in the ordinary sense of the word, the importance of the goals of the study becomes quite clear. Brith Shalom was founded in 1925. Its goals were: to study the Jewish-Arab conflict; “to And a proper juridical arrangement for rela­ tions between Jews and Arabs”; to serve as a vehicle for clarifying the immediate issues that were likely to feature in the long term, such as the issue of cooperation between Jews and Arabs in legisla­ tion, administration, taxation, and the like; to strive to find a JewishArab understanding that would respond both to the moral requirements of its founders and to the demands of the Arabs. All this was to be done without harming the foundations of Zionism, as the members of the society understood it.1*However, almost from the very day it was founded, differences of opinion came to light, both differences regarding principle and differences regarding tacúes. As a result, the society changed from being an organization for research and delib­ eration to a political organization taking political positions and pro­ moting its own initiatives. These included, in addition to the bi-national idea and support for the establishment of a parliament for Palestine according to the existing relation of forces, assent to limiting the 1 See also Ruppin, Arthur, Be-bmyan ha-arts ve-ha-am 1920-1942, Tel Aviv, 1968, p. 225; “Agudat ‘Brith Shalom’—Taqanot” AZM, A / 187; Paul R. Mendes-Flohr (ed.), A Land of Tvoo Peoples, Martín Buber on Jews and Araks, New York, 1983, pp. 74-75. The statutes of ‘Brith Shalom’ was printed in Hebrew, English and Arabic and dis­ tributed immediately after its publication. It was published also in the first journal of Brith Shalom, Sh/’ifhoUinu, which appeared in 1927.

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immigration of Jews to Erets-Israel, in accordance with the princi­ ples of the 1922 White Paper.2 These positions, and especially the last one, which seemed to be too conciliatory, aroused public polemics accompanied by defama­ tion of the society and its members, to the point at which doubt was being cast on their allegiance to the Zionist idea. In the wake of the Western Wall Events (1929), the members of the society were even accused of treason, of placing a stigma on the Zionist camp, and of attempting to undermine Zionism through exposing its flaws in public. Thus, through a continuing process, which began almost on the day it was founded, the organization found itself outside the national consensus.3 As early as the first half of the nineteen-thirties, immediately after the Biith Shalom oigan, She’ifoteim [Our Aspirations], stopped appearing for various reasons,4 the withdrawal from active involvement by several of its outstanding members, such as Arthur Ruppin and Rabbi Binyamin (Yehoshua Radler-Feldmann) forced the organization to cease its activities.5 At the same time, as Hugo Bergmann relates, despite the disgust with politics felt by many of its members in the years leading up to the establishment of the Ihud Society in 1942, they knew no rest and examined various ways to influence political reality. M artin Buber defined their situation well 3 About this development and its sources see Kedar, Aharon, “Agudat ‘Brith Shalom’: ha-ma’avar me-Agudat Mehqar ve-iyyun le-aguda poli tit”, Dam ha-qongres ha-olami ha-6 le-medaei ha-yahdut, Vol. 2 (1976), pp. 365-370. On Brith Shalom’s polit­ ical position from its inception up to its disappearance from the political stage in 1933 see Kedar, Aharon, “Le-toldoteia shel ‘Brith Shalom’ ba-bshanim 1925-1928”, in Bauar, Y., Davis, M., Kolatt, Y., Pirqei mehqar be-toldot ha-tsiyonut, Jerusalem, 1976, pp. 224-285. See also Kedar, Aharon, “Le-hshqafoteia shel ‘Brith Shalom’”, in Ben-Zion, Y. & Kedar, A. (eds.). Ideología u-mediniyut tsiyonit, Jerusalem, 97-47; Gomy, Yosef, Zionism and the Arabs, 1882-1948, Oxford, 1987, pp. 118-128. Dothan, Shmuel, Ha-Mavq al Eréis Israel, Tel Aviv, 1983, pp. 56-63. About the affinity of Brith Shalom with the bi-national idea see Susan Lee Hattis, The Bi-National Idea in Palestine dur­ ing Mandatory Times, Tel Aviv, 1970, pp. 47-51. 3 For the Yishuv’s reactions towards Brith Shalom’s political stance see Kedar, Aharon, “Le-hshqafoteia shel ‘Brith Shalom*”, pp. 107-108. 4 The reasons included the rise to power of the Nazis in Germany, and the per­ secution of Jews in Germany and other countries in central and eastern Europe. So in his lecture of 16 May 1973 E. Simon referred to the relationship between the rise to power of the Nazis in Germany and the disappearance of Brith Shalom. See in the Diaspora’ Archive, Tel Aviv University. 3 As the result of the reaction of some members of Brith Shalom to Kotel’s events in 1929 Ruppin declined to serve as the chairman of Brith Shalom. However, he continued to be a member of Brith Shalom, so he took part in the society's meet­ ings. For examples see Ruppin, Arthur, Be-binyan ha-arts ve-Ha-am, p. 205. See also protocol of the Brith Shalom meeting of 30 December 1931, CZA-A/187/47.

FOREWORD

XI

when, at one of their meetings in 1935, he described the members of the organization as “yeast seeking dough”. T hat is, they sought a political field of action.6 The roots of this development lay in the fact that Brith Shalom embraced men from various circles and parties.7 For this reason, one of its members rejected arguments—such as those made by Abraham Shvadron (Sharon)— which treated the “ideology” of Brith Shalom as one block.8 According to him, “Brith Shalom held to one prin­ ciple that it would not deviate from . . . It is a principle that most Zionists do not disagree with, that realizing Zionism is not possible without achieving a political agreement with the Arabs of the coun­ try”.9 Since these remarks were made in the context of other mat­ ters, especially in connection with the demand for a revision of Zionism, they did not present the “ideology of Brith Shalom” as being representative of a political line, and they should be seen as only expressing the opinion of the person who made them. Some joined Brith Shalom out of faith in its values and goals, and some joined for tactical and pragmatic reasons alone. Some of its members saw their activity as merely having political and social meanings, while others saw it as representing a religious and moral mission.10 Yet all of them, as Simon attested, thought that Zionism was obliged “to create. . . the normal grounds for maintaining the Election of Israel, not against its will, that is, not under the abnor­ mal conditions of the Exile”.11 And indeed as most researchers have discerned, the Brith Shalom Society was more a movement of ideas * See Bcrgmann’s Journal entry of 20 April, 1935 in Schmuel Hugo Bergman, Tagebücher und Briefe, Band 1, 1901-1943, Bonn, 1985, pp. 390-395. 7 For example see Kedar, Aharon, “Le-hshqafotea shel ‘Brith Shalom” 9 p. 100. 8 M. Meir, “Ideology of Brith Shalom? To the paper of A. Shevadron99, She’ifotemu, Vol. 2, No. 6 (August 1931) pp. 209-214. Indeed even from the criticism of Shevadron himself it recognized that he found in Brith Shalom varities of political stances and not homogeneous politics. See Shevadron (Sharon) Avraham, Le-biqoretyesodei ha-ideologya shel Brith Shalom9mi-tokh ha-shkafat ha-tsiyonut ha-integralii, Jerusalem, 1931, p. 5. And that is right even when we speak about the Jewish-Arabic conflict. 9 M. Meir, “Ideologya of Brith Shalom? To the paper of A. Shevadron9*, She’ifoteinu, Vol. 2, No. 6 (August 1931) p. 212. See also Shevadron, “Tguvot la-biqort (Response to Criticism), Shetyoteinu, Vol. 2, No. 8 (September 1932) pp. 375-383. He found in the critical and remedial tendency of Brith Shalom grounds for a unique political attitude. 10 Scholem, Gershom, “Emuna tama (Tsion le-dr. Santor)99, Devarim be-go (ed., A. Shapira), Tel Aviv, 1975, p. 499. 11 See the lecture of E. Simon of 16 May 73, Diaspora’s Archive, Tel Aviv University.

XU

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than a monolithic party. For example, Yosef Gomy pointed out two trends in Brith Shalom, based primarily on political criteria.12 These trends took shape, in his view, in the period between its establish* ment (1925) and the Events o f 1929. The latter constituted a kind of catalyst in the form ation and final shaping of these trends.13 However, while one trend did not diverge from the Zionist consen­ sus, the second dared to deviate from it by casting doubt on the national need for a Jewish majority in Palestine and on the politi­ cal rationale of the aspiration to become a majority.14 Gomy places among the outstanding representatives of this trend Gershom Scholem, Hugo Bergmann, Robert Weltsch, Shmuel Sambursky, Aqiba Ernst Simon, and Hans Kohn. In a study devoted to the history o f Brith Shalom betw een 1925-1928, Aharon K edar enum erated several groups that were active within its framework.15 Nevertheless, in his view, there were two central groups that shaped its policy; one was the “Anshei ha Yishuv” [Men of the Jewish Community in Israel]. The common ground of its members was practical and political Zionism, accom­ panied by the act of personal fulfillment. This group included intel­ lectuals and academics, mostly from eastern Europe, led by Arthur Ruppin. It was dominant in the first years of the society and was content to research and study the Arab Problem.16 Besides Ruppin, members of this group included Hayim Margalit-Kalvarisky, Yehoshua Radler-Feldmann Ha-Talmi (Rabbi Binyamin), Ya'aqov Tahon, and Yits’haq Epshtein. Making up the second group, which was of lesser im portance when the society was founded, were: Shmuel Hugo Bergmann, Hans Kohn, and Robert Weltsch (these three had been members of the Bar Kokhba Students Society in Prague), as well as Gershom Scholem, Aqiba Ernst Simon, Georg Landauer, and Shmuel Sambursky, natives of the Second Reich. In fact, this was the more radical group, and it was also the one that worked to change the character of the organization from being a research and study soci­ ety to that of an organization with independent political goals. 12 See Gomy, Yosef, Zionism and the Arabs, p. 189. 11 See ibid. pp. 191-200. 14 See ibid. 15 See Kedar, Aharon, “Le-toldoteia shel ‘Brith Shalom’ ba-shanim 1925-1928”, pp. 224-285. 14 About the position of A. Ruppin and the internal conflict in Brith Shalom on the political stance see ibid. pp. 271-279. See also Susan Lee Haitis, The Bi-National Idea in Palestine During Mandatory Times, pp. 47-51.

FOREWORD

Xlll

We can discern in this group a nucleus with a definite sociologi­ cal and cultural profile. It is worth noting that one of the impor­ tant characteristics of this nucleus was the fact that the group comprised a group of intellectuals from central Europe, most of whom were connected with the Hebrew University. Their link to the University, which was outside the domain of exclusive control by the Palestinian parties, helped to shape them as an opposition group and helped them to remain independent as far as their activities were concerned.17 To this general characteristic can be added the fact that while the members of the first group were practical-political Zionists who be­ lieved in the act of fulfillment, the members of the second group from central Europe were influenced by the teachings of M. Buber. It can be said that their concept of the values of Judaism was different, and as emigrants from Czechoslovakia and Germany their mental­ ity was also different.18 Another significant trait defining them as a group, which emerges from K edar’s discussion, is that, unlike the members of the first group, most of whom had emigrated from east­ ern Europe— which made it easier for them to identify with most of the Jewish population in the country— the men of the second group, due to the mentality of emigrants from Czechoslovakia and Germany, found it difficult to understand the Jewish population. This attitude was mutual: most of the Jewish population in the country did not understand them and did not identify with them. However, notwith­ standing all of these distinguishing features, we must not forget that for the radical group, some of whose members belonged to the Aliyah Shlishith, and for the “Anshey Ha-Yyshuv” group, the faith in the value of personal fulfillment was a common trait.19* Hagit Lavsky, like Kedar, sees the emigrants from central Europe in Brith Shalom as a nucleus possessing a distinguishing ideological contour. This profile ought to be seen, in her view, in the context of the specific developments of German Zionism in particular, and of central European Zionism in general. Although she agrees in prin­ ciple with Kedar's remarks quoted above, she stresses that the chal­ lenge of the rise of the Revisionist Zionism in the early twenties is

17 See Kedar, Aharon, “Le-toldoteia shel ‘Brith Shalom' ba-shanim 1925-1928'*, p. 238. 18 Ibid. pp. 236 237. According to Keder many strings tied some of them to the uAnshei ha-yishuv. He pointed out that H. Bergmann and G. Scholem resembled Anshei ha-yishuv in their attitude towards self-realization. Ibid.

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what led to the establishment o f Brith Shalom.20 This long process began, in her opinion, with the experience of the First W orld W ar and continued in the encounter with the aggressive German nationalism that the W ar had aroused. The Zionists were forced, as it were, to differentiate between their m oral hum anistic nationalism and chauvinistic German nationalism. The “Arab Question" was con­ ceived by a great many German Zionists, and especially by those who were inclined to the Left, as a touchstone for the possibility of com­ bining Zionism and humanism in particular, and nationalism and humanism in general. Therefore, Lavsky believes, the activity of Brith Shalom is to be linked to the struggle of various trends and currents o f German Zionism and the demand of the Revisionist camp to shift the center of gravity of the Zionist endeavor from internal activity to an external political offensive.21 In her opinion, these developments may help explain the links between the members of Brith Shalom and personalities who were close to the Democratic Faction or to other circles within German Zionism that leaned toward Cultural Zionism and centered the focus of their activity on internal activity.22 Shmuel Dothan also lists various circles that were active within the Brith Shalom framework. He singles out, on a sociological and cultural basis, the group of founders that included men of action from the Zionist establishment, like A rthur Ruppin and two of his previous assistants in the Palestine Office on the eve of W orld W ar II, Y. Tahon and Rabbi Binyamin.23 Next came a group of im portant scholars, most of whom had emmigrated from Germany or Prague to the Land of Israel in order to work at the Hebrew University.24 Among the latter he lists Samuel Hugo Bergmann, Gershom Scholem, and Hans Kohn. Joining them, either as members of the society or just as friends, were Orientalists, personalities close to the M andatory administration, and other personalities among the founders of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem , such as Judah Leon Magnes, Chan­ cellor of the University.25 Since this division was neither stable nor

30 Lavesky, Hagit, “Tsionci Germanya Ve-Reshita shel ‘Brith Shalom’”, Yahadut Znumnu 4 (1968), pp. 99-121 and particularly pp. 100-106. 31 lavesky, Hagit, Before Catastrophe, The Distinctive Path of German Zionism, Jerusalem, 1996, pp. 167 -170. 22 See also Kedar, Aharon, “Le-hshqafoteia shel ‘Brith Shalom’”, p. 98. 33 Dothan, Shmuel, Ha-ma'avq al erets Israel, p. 57. 24 Ibid. 25 The members or Brith Shalom were mosdy Erets Israel's citizens, and its friends

FOREWORD

XV

sufficiently clear, Dothan prefers, as does Gomy, the political crite­ rion. By this means, he distinguishes between “Maximalist Zionists” such as Rabbi Binyamin or Kalvarisky, and “Radical Minimalists”.26 And principally, he distinguishes between those who were content with the bi-national ideas as a perspective and those who wanted a bi-national political solution. It seems that even their contemporaries, those active in and close to the society, were aware of this distinc­ tion. For instance, Judah Magnes was aware of this reality, and he used it as his explanation for officially joining Brith Shalom. He was not ready to accept adoption of the aspiration for peace and the pacifist approach as merely a tactic. However, he felt very close to Bergmann, Scholem, and Hans Kohn, whom he saw as being close to, if not sharing, his Zionist conception.27 Therefore, Dothan’s description included Kohn, Bergmann, Scholem, Sambursky, and Simon in the Radical Minimalist group which saw the bi-national idea as both the only solution worthy in itself and as the most suitable solution for the national reality in Palestine. Like Kedar, he too points to the teachings of Buber, to the doctrine of integration into the East and to the myth of the Decline of the West—which pervaded central Europe due to Oswald Spengler’s book of that name— as one of the sources on which the members of the circle drew. And again like Kedar, he too believes that the origin of some of the men of the circle in the multi-national AustroHungarian Empire had a considerable impact on shaping their polit­ ical W eltanschauung.28 Thus, the group of men from central Europe in Brith Shalom made up a coterie in which radical minimalist trends combined with distinguishing moral, cultural and sociological traits. This circle was active on the basis of tendencies linked to their central European

were mostly residents of other countries like M. Buber. R. Weltsch who lived in Germany at this tíme and was at the same time a member of Brith Shalom was an exceptional case. See the list of the names of Brith Shalom’s members and friends and their addresses in Kedar, Aharon, “Le-toldoteia shel ’Brith Shalom’ bashanim 1925-1928”, pp. 281-285. M Dothan, Shmuel, Ha-ma’avq al erets Israel, p. 57. 27 See Arthur A. Goren (ed.) Dissenter m Zion, From the Writings ofJudah L Magnes, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1982, pp. 272-273; See also the lecture of E. Simon of 16 May 1973, Diaspora Archive, Tel Aviv University. n Dothan, Shmuel, Ha-ma ’avq al erets Israel, pp. 58-61; Kedar, Aharon, “Lehshqafoteia shel ‘Brith Shalom’”, p. 102.

XVI

FOREWORD

origin on the one hand, and the unique Zionist and Jewish world­ view of its members on the other. The range of sources—that the researchers have pointed to—from which the group drew its ideas was extremely wide. We find in this range Jewish traditional sources next to modem ones such as Ahad Ha-am, A.D. Gordon and Moses Hess, in addition to non-Jewish sources, especially the social and national theories that prevailed in central Europe at the fin-de-sikle, such as utopian socialism and national ideologies cast in moulds bor­ rowed from the organic-developmental theories. Combining with the distinguishing traits of the group is also the fact mentioned above that most members of the group immigrated to Palestine at the beginning of the 1920s, and for that reason they saw themselves as flesh of the flesh of the Aliya Shlishit (third).29 Even those among them who immigrated later (such as Akiba Ernest Simon, who arrived in Israel in 1928, during the Fourth Aliyah) were similar to them in the motivation for their aliya and in their mentality.30 For exam­ ple, the principle of self-fulfillment was common to them and to the members of the Third Aliya, as well as to the members of the Second Aliya, which was also represented in Brith Shalom. Although various researchers have insisted on the uniqueness o f the ideology fashioned by this radical coterie, they have contented themselves solely with intuitive allusions as to its sources. For exam­ ple, they do not really deal with the issue of the links of the mem­ bers of the coterie to the thinkers of Volk nationalism, which they became acquainted with at an age when a young man shapes his worldview. Further, the concrete meaning of their exposure to the fin-de-siède atmosphere has not often been the focus of research. Likewise, the scope and boundaries of their nexus to Ahad Ha-am or M artin Buber or Gustav Landauer, whose influence on the sec­ ond generation of Zionists in central Europe was notorious, has not been studied very often. It is striking that the researchers have been w See S.H. Bergmann, “Neum be-mesibat ha-preida sh-ne’erkha al-yedei ovdei beit ha-sfarim, le-regel ozvi et beit ha-sfarim”, Ba-mishol (ed. N. Rotenstreich). TelAviv, 1967, p. 89 and further. See also G. Scholem, Mi-balm li-yerushlaim, zikhrunot ne’ttrim, Tel Aviv, 1982, pp. 212-215; review with S. Samburski, Ikm77, no. 140-141 (January-February 1990), p. 31. 30 See A. Shapira, “Ha-morash ke-maqor li-thi’ya: le-zehuto ha-mhanit sel Gershom Shalom”, in Gershom Scholem (ed. A. Shapira), Od dam, Tel Aviv, 1989, p. 13. S.H. Bergmann, “Ne’um bemesibat ha-preida sh-ne’erkha al-yedei ovdei beit hasfarim, le-regel ozvi et beyt ha-sfarim”, pp. 89-90. See also Shapira, Anita, “Uri Zvi Greenberg; apoqalipsa akhshav”, -Zion, Vol. 56, No. 174-192.

FOREWORD

XVH

even less inclined to examine the ingredients of their national con­ ception or to describe it as an orderly Zionist doctrine, even though they felt its presence. This study seeks to fill the void in research described above. It does not intend to discuss the political activity or the organizational procedures or the social structure of the Ihud and Brith Shalom soci­ eties. These are subjects that have been dealt with many times before. The goal of the study is, on the one hand, to discover the “ideas” and the “ideals” of the men from central Europe who formed Brith Shalom, as members of the second and third generations of German Zionists—men who may be identified with Spiritual Zionism—and on the other hand, to elaborate on their attem pt to implant these ideas and ideals in Palestinian reality. And this effort too is carried out solely from the narrow perspective of several men who consistendy wresded with the set of problems involved in realizing utopian ideas and ideals on the hard ground of reality.

PART ONE

CULTURAL AND POLITICAL BACKGROUND

CHAPTER ONE

“IDEA”, “IDEAL”, AND “IDEOLOGY” AS UNDERSTOOD BY TH E CENTRAL EUROPEAN EMIGRANTS IN BRITH SHALOM A. “Afea” “Afea/” and “Ideology” A .l. From Idea to Ideal The terms “idea”, “ideal” and “ideology” are derived from the Greek term eidos, which means “mental picture”. However, in his exposi­ tion of this m atter, Ernst Simon pointed to the fact that despite their common root and in spite of their being frequently interchanged, they are not identical in all senses.1 It is well known that the the­ ory of ideas has its origin in the writings of Hato. In the famous allegory of the sun, Plato sought to explain the link between the good and the possibility of thought.2 The allegory rests on the exis­ tence of many things in the world of appearances, and on the exis­ tence of Ideas. The things are perceived by the senses. They are seen and not conceived, whereas the ideas are conceived and not seen. In order that the things be seen, it is necessary that there be the faculty of sight. However, this requires a pre-condition to make possible both the capacity to be seen and the faculty of sight which inheres in the eye. This condition is light. Yet this is not primary either, since it is an ofispring of the sun. For that reason, neither the eye nor the capacity to see is equal or identical to the sun. However, they bear a close resemblance to it, since they possess the most sun-like form.3 The allegory is meant to illuminate how the capacity to see is to be attributed to the eye, how the things that are seen and the capac­ ity to see are to be attributed to light, and how light is to be attributed

1 Simon, Ernst A., “Ha-adam ve-ha-tkhlit ha-hinukhit (Idea, ideal, ideology)”, ha­ rm odyehudim anafmu? Tel Aviv, 1982, pp. 69-103. 2 See Hato, The Republic (Translated D. Lee), London, 1987, pp. 245-264. * See B. Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, New York, 1951, pp. 123-126.

4

CHAPTER ONE

to the sun. The same applies to the relation to the Good. The Good is beyond truth and beyond what exists. Nevertheless, the truth, thought, and what exists are extremely close to the Good. This is because they are extremely similar to it, and in a certain sense they are its offspring. The Good is, in Plato’s view, the cause and the pre-condition for the truth, on the one hand, and for thought on the other hand. Hence, the Good constitutes a cause and pre-condidon for knowledge, just as the sun is the cause and pre-condidon for light and for sight. The sun, the source of light, is a m etaphor for “the Idea of Ideas”, for the “Good”. Things are characterized by the fact that each one has an essence and a definition of its own, whereas the sun has no definition or specificity. It is beyond things, but it is the cause of their being seen and the source of their being. In other words, we can know about it only through its activity and its results, yet never what it is like in itself. Likewise, the Idea of Ideas, the Good, constitutes the supreme condition for the Ideas, both in the essential sense and in the existential sense. We know about the Ideas, and they can be defined, since they can be broken down and reassem­ bled. And we can point out their components. In contrast, the Idea of Ideas, the Good, is a One. Therefore, it cannot be broken down and reassembled. And in any event, it cannot be defined. All we know about it is that without it, nothing would exist.4 Various approaches have been devised for understanding the Ideas in Plato’s theory.5 Herm ann Cohen and Paul Natorp conceive of the Ideas in an almost Kantian sense. They see them as a function of thought through which we unify and organize our knowledge. It is not the eternal Idea, in their view, which imparts the notion of unity. Rather, we who use consciousness im part the notion of unity. This latter force is, in their opinion, the Idea. Gauss, one of the out­ standing interpreters of Plato, also follows in their footsteps. He speaks about Platonic functionalism. According to this approach, the Ideas are a system, through which we organize experience and knowledge, whereas the Idea of the Good is a regulative Idea, that is, a focal point for our conscious searching and for our moral efforts.6*Like them, Zeller too holds that the Platonic Idea is the hypothesis of a

4 Sec Ha-czrahi Ppita, At ha-ytsh a-mushlam, Jerusalem, 1964, pp. 145, 158-159. ' Ibid. p. 160. 6 See R.H. Gauss, Philosophischen Handkommenlar z.u dm Dialogen Píalos, Bern, 1958, II/2, KAP. VII1-IX.

“IDEA”, “IDEAL", AND “IDEOLOGY”

5

notion. Supposedly, Plato took a notion and turned it into some­ thing concrete.7 However, contrary to this interpretation, some stress, as does Stenzel, that Plato held, out of loyalty to the intuitive-objec­ tive method of Greek philosophy, that one must not create the notion of an Idea unless the Idea existed as a concrete essence.8 The Idea, according to this approach, is the primary foundation, and in order that we may grasp it intuitively, it must exist, distinct and defined, unchanging and eternal.9 In his book on the history o f modem philosophy, S.H. Bergmann accepts the concept that sees the Platonic Ideas as entities in their own right.10I O n the other hand, he depicts the Idea in K ant’s crit­ ical doctrine in the spirit of Paul Natorp and Herm ann Cohen. Just as the category serves as an intellect’s tool in arranging phenomena so the Idea serves as a tool of reason in effecting definite comple­ tion of the infinite chain of phenomena, of which only part has been determined in the framework of the intellect, and the categories that serve the intellect." The Idea, according to this conception, diverges from experience, and is not a condition for experience, as is the cat­ egory. Nevertheless, it signifies the direction of the arranging of phe­ nomena and its purpose. And if this is not enough, Bergmann adds that it is precisely the goal that will not be reached that can and must serve as a guide to our scientific work.12 It seems that Natorp and Gauss’s explanations relate to the use o f the Idea and to its benefits alone. Yet, they are not able to extract the full meaning that Plato imparted to the concept. For that reason, Bergmann believed that we must understand that the Platonic Ideas are, from one point of view, separate entities, distinct, fixed, unchang­ ing, eternal, and unitary, while from another viewpoint, they serve as objects of consciousness. And in that sense, they receive their functional significance.13 These conceptions can teach us something

I See E. Zeller, Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy, London, 1950, p. 36. ' See Ha-ezrahi Ppita, Al ha-yesh ah-mushlam, p. 160. 9 See also Scwarcz, Moshe, Hagut yeudit nokh ha-tarbut ha-klalit, Tel Aviv, 1976, pp. 148-149. 10 Bergmann, S.H., Toldot hafilosofya ha-hadasha, me-tqufat ha-Haskalah ad manuel kant, Vol 2, Jerusalem, 1973, p. 137. " Ibid. 62. 12 Ibid. In relation to that which will not come to fulfillment see Shlomo Tsemah, “Mavo le-ltitvei A.D. Gordon”, in: Gordon, A.D., Ha-uma vt-ha-aooda, (eds. S.H. Bergmann and E. Shohat), Jerusalem, 1954, pp. 17-21. II See Ha-ezrahi Ppita, Al ha-yesh ah-mushlam, pp. 160-16).

6

CHAPTER ONE

about the respiration to get free to escape the bonds of subjectivism which had guided Bergmann since the beginning of his philosophic career in the first decade of the century,14 and which had also been expressed in his unified philosophy of science.15 Ernst Simon took a position similar to Bergmann’s when he stated that an Idea is essentially a notion of reason.16 However, as we may note from his discussions of the concepts “idea”, “ideal”, and “ide­ ology”, m atters are m ore complex. In principle, Simon accepts Stenzel’s approach concerning the essence and status of the Platonic Ideas. Relying on the famous allegory in Book Ten of Plato's Republic, Simon deduces that the Idea is a kind of source, the work of a craftsman is a kind of translation, and the work of an artist is a kind o f imitation of a translation.17 He presents the concept of the Ideas in K ant, basing himself on the understanding of “the Platonic Idea” as an entity. In K ant, he explains, the Ideas are merely things in the mind, and their applicability does not extend to the whole uni­ verse, to nature and its laws, or to man and his morality alike. Rather, they hold for the last named alone.18 So Simon sees Hermann Cohen as the successor of K ant in both senses. In K ant’s works, the Ideas are no m ore than fiction, that is, assum ptions that have influence but do not have existence.19 On the other hand, accord­ ing to Cohen’s system, the Ideas are not “fictions”, but “tasks”, com­ mands that impose their yoke upon us, which serve as a light unto our feet. And with a sort of sense of satisfaction, Simon points out that thus the world of Hato himself approached once again, although even in Cohen and his fiiend-come-pupil, Paul Natorp, the Ideas have still not gone back to their real existence, impalpable yet visi­ ble to the m ind’s eye.20 In Simon’s opinion, Edmund Husserl made an additional step in the process o f returning to the conception of the Idea in its Platonic sense.21 To be sure, in Husserl’s phenomenology, Ideas do not reside 14 See also Scwarcz, Moshe, “Filosofya me-tokh emuna: al mishnato shel Shmuel Hugo Bergmann”, Hagut y eudit nokh ha-tarbut ha-klalit, p. 149. 11 See Ibid. p. 154 and further. See also N. Rotenstreich, “Al ha-ish sh-halkh ba-mishool”. In Bergmann, S.H. Ba-mishol (ed. N. Rotenshtrich), Tel Aviv, 1967. 14 Simon, Ernst A., “Idea”, Entsiqlopedya hmukhit, Vol. I, p. 115. 17 Simon, Emst A., “Ha-adam ve-ha-tkhlit ha-hinukhit (Idea, ideal, ideology)”, ha-im od yehudim anahim? (Are We Still Jews?), p. 92. '• Ibid. p. 95. 19 Ibid. pp. 95-96. » Ibid. p. 96. 21 Ibid.

“IDEA”, “IDEAL”, AND “IDEOLOGY”

7

beyond the world of appearances as they do in Plato. Rather, they are located within the frame of the world of appearance, like a seed that is revealed only when the rind is peeled off.32 T hat is, by means of “phenomenological reduction” through which the eye, properly trained in phenomenology, can reduce away all the subsidiary accretions on the appearance until the principle is revealed”.23 The meaning of the Platonic Idea is to be grasped, in Simon’s opinion, as an entity in itself. The process through which critical philosophy has passed from K ant’s time up to the present is, therefore, a process of a kind of return to the Platonic Idea, although not in the sense of an entity, but of a regulative, directed notion. Indeed, on the basis of Husserl’s assertion that the Idea is located within the innermost center of things, Simon defines the meaning and function of both the “ideal” and “ideology”. For that reason, he can conclude as follows: Edmund Husserl places the Ideas not before the things or essences, in the manner of the medieval ’Realists’ and our modem Realists,. . . nor after them in the manner of the medieval ‘Nominalists’ and the modem pragmatists and their ilk. Rather, he places them in their innermost core, as does the school that takes the middle between these two extremes.. ,u T he Idea, according to these insights, is a notion of reason, “its men­ tal creature”, with a quasi-objective existence. Throughout history the ‘Idea’ has become a concept laden with endless connotations and meanings. Thus, for example, it also includes among its historical components the Platonic conception that sees an ontic entity in it which is beyond being. In this sense it bears within it some of the power of a concept laden with sentiments of holiness. Even the later conceptions, which identify it as a merely “mental notion”, cannot free it from the associative burden of meanings and characteristics which have their source in the Platonic theory of Ideas and its suc­ cessors in the Middle Ages and modem times. This is not said par­ ticularly about personalities like Bergmann who strives for “objective idealism”. The very depiction of the notion of the Idea as a func­ tion of consciousness contains entails, even if this is covered over, a surfeit of evaluation which does not make it possible to turn it into a value-free concept. This is because the Idea as a regulative concept

“ Ibid. « Ibid. pp. 96-97. " Ibid. p. 97.

8

CHAPTER ONE

that does not draw its validity from experience is not subordinate to experience. It is clear, therefore, that the claims made in the name of the Idea do not belong to the class of claims that are subject to experience [including experience through experimentation - tr.], or to any pragmatic or real concepts whatsoever. The special place of the concept of the “Idea” in this spirit is one of the traits that have characterized German thought since Kant. In order to come to realize this, it is sufficient to point to the doctrines of Fichte, Schelling and Herder, on the one hand, and to Cohen and N atoip on the other.25 The central European emigrants in Brith Shalom who were exposed to the influence of German philosophy,26 also maintained, knowingly or unknowingly, concepts and tenden­ cies that granted the Idea a status that was not exacdy derived from concrete reality. We get some notion of the importance of the con­ cepts “Idea”, “ideology”, and the “ideal” from the fact that many of the young intellectuals in the German cultural space at the end of the century, like the ideologues of the French Revolution, saw their concern as ideas and as the placing of “ideal” goals ahead o f “the material interests” upon which society is based. They found support for their inclinations in the German philosophic tradition. T hat was because these systems teach, in their opinion, that thought is superior to deed and reality. This tradition, which was expressed in the crystallization of the concept “idea” and “ideal”, was also what imparted persuasive and attractive force to their doctrine. This attraction was a widespread vision among young Jewish intellectuals too. Hence, Bergmann, for example, elaborated quite thoroughly on the influence of Herder and Fichte on the young Zionists of Prague, on himself and the other members of his circle.27 Like him, Hans

25 On Fichte's idealism see Bergman S.H., Toldot hafibsojya ha-hdasha, yaaqubi, fikhta, sheling, Jerusalem, 1977, pp. 27-100; on Shelling see ibid. pp. 102-240; on Harder see Bergmann, S.H., Toldot hafibsojya ha-hdasha, me-tqufat ha-Haskalah ad manuel kant, Vol. 2, pp. 46-98; about P. Natrop see Bergmann, S.H., Hogri ha-dor, Tel Aviv, 1935, pp. 208-218; and on the philosophy of Herma Cohen see ibid. pp. 219-243. For a comprehensive view of German idealism see Scruton, Roger, “Kant", in: German Phibsophers, New York, 1997, pp. 7-104; Singer, Peter, “Hegel". Ibid. pp. 109-214; Janaway, Christopher, “Schopenhauer”, Ibid. pp. 221-337. 26 About the influence of German idealism on the personalities of Brith Shalom see below chapter 3. 27 Bergmann, S.H., Toldot ha-fibsofya ha-hdasha, me-tqufat ha-Haskalah ad manuel leant, Vol. 2, p. 8; Bergmann, S.H., Toldot ha-fibsofya ha-hdasha, yaaqubi, fikhta sheling, p. 33.

IDEA", “IDEAL”, AND “IDEOLOGY"

9

Kohn, his comrade in the Bar Kokhba Zionist student society in Prague, pointed out the influence of Fichte’s speeches to the German people during the Napoleonic wars.28 Indeed, not a few intellectuals were impelled to reject both the bourgeoisie and Communism pre­ cisely by virtue of this heritage from the giants of German idealis­ tic philosophy.29 The above conception of the “Idea” was not a kind of “rule made to be broken”. Thus, for example, Simon judges the leaders of the workers’ movement in Palestine according to this con­ ception.30 In the same vein is his explanation that links the duty to constantly decree anew the concrete “command to action” with both maintaining “absolute values” on the one hand, and changing “indi­ vidual and social situations” on the other. Although he refers to the theo-political doctrine of Buber, there is something here that can teach us about the dominant place of the “Idea” in the politicalsocial concept of Simon himself and the members of his circle under discussion.31 W hereas the concept of the “Idea” goes way back to the begin­ nings of philosophy, the first use of “ideal”, as it is commonly used in modem philosophy, is found in K ant’s Critique ofJudgement. While discussing the ideal of beauty, K ant discriminates between idea and ideal. He defines the Idea in line with our discussion above, whereas he defines the ideal strictly on the basis of dependency on the for­ m er concept, since, he explains, the image of the particular object is to be grasped as a correspondence to the Idea of that object.32 Moreover, in this context, Kant goes further and presents the “Idea” as a necessary condition for the “ideal”.33 In addition, he claims that only man, who can determine his own purpose through reason, is capable of the ideal of beauty.34 The ideal is thus, “an object deter­ mined solely by the Idea”. However, “this link between the Idea * Kohn, living m a Revolution—My Encounters with History, New York, 1965, pp. 19-30. w On the importance of the idea see George L. Mosse, Germans and Jews— The Right, The Left aid The Search for a *Third Force’ in pre-Nazi Germany, London, 1971, p. 7; See also there from p. 213 on. “ Simon, Ernst A., Ha-sheela ha-arvit ke-she’la yeudit, in: A. Ben Ezer, En shan­ non be-^ion, Tel Aviv, 1986, pp. 143-144. *' Simon, Ernst A., Qao ha-tihum, Giveat Chaviva, 1973, p. 6. Even from the crit­ icism of Bergmann on Getz we can leam about his stance toward German ideal­ ism. See Bergmann, S.H., “Ha-tsvira ha-yotseret”, Motad, no. 46 (February 1952), pp. 236-239. M See chapter I, subchapter 17, in: I. Kant, Circle of Judgement, Oxford, 1952. » Ibid. 24 Ibid. p. 62.

10

CHAPTER ONE

and the ideal”, Bergmann adds, “we already find in regular use in speech, as when we juxtapose, for instance, the idea of wisdom with the ideal of the wise m a n . . . In this m anner the Idea provides the rule, and the ideal crystallizes this rule into a shape”.35 By means o f this juxtaposition, the Idea is translated into an operative rule. In this context, it is im portant to stress that the ideal in the Kantian doctrine, which is based on awe before man as an autonomous crea­ ture, relates only to man and to the image of man. This is because, Simon explains, “Only man as man, who serves as a purpose for him self.. . is entided to become the ideal of beauty and even the ideal of perfection”.36 In this spirit, Bergmann too stresses, while clas­ sifying the ideal: “only every time that the ideal is no more than an idea which has taken on an image, is it completely justified, since it serves as a criterion for determining things”.37 All this means that the idea is no more than a reasoning concept, or a mental picture. In this capacity, it cannot serve as a guiding principle or as a regulative element. Only when it takes on an image, and in realizing itself in this way, as the ideal, can it influence and direct reality and the behavior of man in his predicament. Thus, the ideal is the translation of the idea by means of imaginative force. Nevertheless, only the act of translating makes it possible for the idea to have exert influence on the concrete reality in which man lives. It is clear that these ideals, their place, and their importance are expressed in the areas of education on the one hand and in the fields of moral and political activity on the other hand. A. 2. Ideology and the Study of Ideology The term “ideology” as we commonly use it, was coined at the time of the French Revolution by the French thinker Destutt de Tracy.38 Its purpose was to lay a foundation for “the science of ideas” in order to preserve the ideas of the French Revolution. But during *

u Bergmann, S.H., Toldot hafilosoßa ha-hdasha, me-tqufal ha-hskala ad manuel tant, Vol. 2, p. 165. 16 Simon, Ernst A., “Ha-adam ve-ha-tkhlit ha-hinukhit (Idea, ideal, ideology)”, haim odyehudim anahnu?, p. 98. 17 Bergmann, S.H., Toldot ha-filosoßa ha-hdasha, me-tqufal ha-hskala ad manuel kant, Vol. 2, p. 166. * See Asher Idan, Ala-hi ideología (What is Ideology?), Tel Aviv, 1990, pp. 26-29.

“IDEA", “IDEAL”, AND “IDEOLOGY”

11

the progress o f history the concept took on negative connotations.39 T he beginning of the process was in the period of the French Revolution, and in Napoleon’s attitude to the philosophers and social thinkers whom he saw as opponents to his imperialist aspirations. He called these people, captivated by “ideas" and cut off from real­ ity, “ideologues".40 This negative attitude to both ideologues and ide­ ology sharpened in the wake of M arx critique of ideology. Marx saw the ideology developed by the bourgeoisie as no more than “a superstructure” that aided its users, that is, the rulers, while harm ­ ing the poor wretches who believed in it. Thus M arx wrote, for instance, that in every epoch, the ideas of the ruling class comprise the ruling ideas; that is, the class that governs the ruling material power in society also constitutes at one and the same time the spir­ itual power in society.41 M arx explained the decline of “ideology” as due to its conversion into apologetics. When the bourgeoisie assumed power, it correctly understood that every weapon that had weakened feudalism was being turned against it. From then on the question is no longer whether this theory is correct. R ather it is whether it is useful to Capitalist Society or if it harms it; if it is convenient for it or incon­ venient; whether it is forbidden by police laws or not. Instead of research for its own sake, there came the polishing of hired pens; instead of unbiased investigation, there came the bad conscience and the malicious intent of apologetics.42 The lack of faith in ideol­ ogy found its solid form in the assertion made by the “sociology of

39 Thus, for example, the author of The American Business Creed, despite his com­ forting words meant for the reader that “when one’s viewpoints are described as an ideology, one need not find this as a reason for feeling insulted or for distress”, they enumerate among ideology’s characteristics, emotional language, slick, empty phrases, an appeal to the emotions and prejudices of the target audience, and so forth. See F.X. Sutton & S.E. Harris, Ckaysen and Tobin, The American Business Creed, Cambridge Mass., 1958, pp. 3 6; 55. 40 On the link between the ideology and the enlightenment and the language in the thought of the French ideologies see Asher Idan, Ma-hi ideología, pp. 20-26. 41 See for example K. Marx, uHa-ideologya ha-germanit”, in Avineri, Shlomo (ed.), Karl Marx: Ktívei Shaharut, Tel Aviv, 1977, p. 251. 42 See also Lukacz, Georges, “Marx u-bayat ha-nivun ha-ideologi”, Ha-rializim ba-sifiut, Tel Aviv, 1951. To understand the Lukacz view on the development of the philosophy to ideology see Lukacz, Georges, Ekzistentsializim o marksizim?, (in Heb. translated by A. Ruveni) Tel Aviv, 1951, pp. 5-31. See also Asher Idan, Ma-hi ide­ ología, Tel Aviv, 1990, pp. 30-50.

12

CHAPTER ONE

knowledge”43 to the effect that every thinker, including even the Marxist, was conditioned by his particular place in his society. Hence, all ideas and ideals, including those of the proletariat, are no more than ideologies. In other words, they are no more than the intellectual expression of a very concrete situation from which the thinker cannot separate himself. Karl M annheim has described the process by which the concept o f “ideology” became the very flesh of the object about which it was instructing. This is the gist of his teaching: Socio-political thought does not sprout up from abstract thoughts. It is always connected with the conditions of existence of the person who does the think­ ing. Thus, the foregoing understanding besmirches this sort of think­ ing as being subordinate to one-sided interests and having the crude color of the struggle to attain advantages which it, socio-political thought, claims to rise above.44 As a result, the question arises, as a m atter of course, as to the nature, especially the sociological nature, of the time of the scientific examination of one ideology or another. T hat is, where does ideology end and science begin? For that reason, the sharpness with which the issue of the scientific time of “the study of ideology” stands out, is anchored in the pre­ vailing judgem ental attitude toward ideology. According to this view, every ideology is afflicted in that, psychologically speaking, it is dis­ torted by personal emotions, such as: hatred, yearning, anxiety, or fear. While the “sociology of knowledge” deals with the social com­ ponent of the search for truth and how truth is seen, and with the inevitable subordination to the limitations of a certain existential per­ spective, the study of ideology is an area set apart and absolutely inferior. It deals, as a result of the nature of ideology, with causes that bring about intellectual error.45 For this reason, Starck, the soci­ ologist of knowledge, could argue that notions and beliefs can relate to reality in two ways: either to the facts of reality, or to the aspi­ rations that reality arouses. In a place where the first relationship exists, the thought that we find is in principle correct; where the 43 Ibid. pp. 55-60; See also M. Horkheimer, “Ein neuer Ideologiebegrifl?” in: Archiv (Ur Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiter Bewegung, No. 15 (1930), pp. 33-56. 44 Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia—An Introduction to du Sociology of Knowledge, New York (n.d.), pp. 38-95. 43 Ibid. pp. 38-95. See also Starrk, W., The Sociology O f Knowledge, London, 1958,

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13

second relationship exists, we encounter ideas that may be true only by accident, and the chances are high that they will be vitiated by a self-serving inclination. So, if the first kind of thought is to be called theoretical we must define the second as a-theoretical. The first may also be described as rational thought, and the second as thought marked by an emotional stamp. The first ought to be seen as purely cognitive thought, whereas the second is value-laden thought.46 In a similar vein, Edward Shils sketches a portrait of the ideologi­ cal “outlook”. In his view, this outlook is founded first and foremost on the assumption that politics is to be conducted from a position of a comprehensive, coherent system of “beliefs and opinions”. This system, like a system of religious beliefs and opinions, must over­ whelm every other consideration. Like politics itself, this system of “beliefs and opinions” also creates an artificial contrast between the “we”, the sons of light, and the “they”, the sons of evil, the king­ dom of hell. Thereby, it declares that whoever is not with us is against us. Moreover, it demands for itself, absolute and exclusive possession of political truth and abhors any possible compromise.47 This means that an ideology and a system of beliefs based on it are totalitarian by nature. Hence, it is natural that ideology aspires to arrange all social and cultural life in an order corresponding to its ideals. As such, ideology is futuristic, that is, it strives toward a utopian apex of history. Only there the ideal order will be realized. Bacharach too sees the special character of ideology in the fact that one does not seek its roots in the aspiration to explain or to under­ stand what exists in history. The opposite is true. In his opinion, its roots can be brought to light only on the grounds of the “desirable”, “and if what is desirable does not fit reality, then we dress it in a myth and explain the actual facts according to what we seek”. This is because at the basis of ideology stands the “Idea” that has noth­ ing to do with the rough reality under study. Thus, the role of ide­ ology is “to serve needs and interests that may be social or political”.48* These outlooks are also expressed on extremely abstract and the­ oretical levels. Hence, for instance, in T alcott Parsons* thinking

46 See ibid. 90-91. Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, pp. 55-59. 47 Edward Shils, 'ideology and Civilization: on the Politics of the Intellectuals”, The Sewanee Review, (1958) No. 66, 450 -480. 48 Bacharach, Zvi, Ideologiyot ba-meah 20 (Ideology in the 20th Century), Tel Aviv, 1980, p. 9.

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about the question that arises in the wake of Karl M annheim’s his­ torical analysis of the concept of “ideology”, the claim emerges that it is precisely deviations from scientific objectivity that are the pri­ mary touchstones of ideology. Next to this claim is heard that the problem of ideology turns up in all its acuteness in the research car­ ried out by “the sociology of knowledge” whenever a gap opens up between what we believe and what we can determine to be correct from a scientific point of view.49 Because of this character of ideol­ ogy, the borders between it and religion are blurred. Both are inclined to be totalistíc in nature. Their purpose is not to subject their truths to empirical research, just as they do not aspire to lay down premises for the investigation of reality, but rather to supply answers, to depict and mark out a path towards the desirable.30 For that reason, even tests o f truth perform ed on them suffer from being incomplete. Besides, both are expressed in sets of symbols that embody values. And they are both inclined to arrange m an’s existence in a partic­ ular order. They do this while motivating him to behave according to pre-defined norms for the sake of bringing about a correct social order, or for the sake of realizing values that have a transcendental source. Therefore, what distinguishes them is merely the fact that in religion the focus is around a transcendental reality, while in ideol­ ogy the focus is mainly on social reality.31 Hence, the sources o f the creation of new ideology are to be sought in the situation of existential, political, spiritual and cultural tensions. Aware of this complex of problems, in his discussion on the relationship between “truth and ideology”, Ernst Simon pointed to the words of the philosopher Hans Barth. Simon saw here a pos­ sible way out of the problem of “truth”, insofar as “ideology” is con­ cerned.32 Like Barth, he too believed that precisely he who advances unflinchingly on the path of “comprehensive ideological suspicion” is liable to arrive at the discovery of the basic ideas that lie at the foundation of an ideology. And that, he argues, only through their verification as “truth” and “justice” might the ideology be justified.*51

* T. Parsons, “An Approach to the Sociology of the Knowledge”, Transactions of the Fourth World Congress of Sociology, Milan and Stress, 1959, pp. 25-49. M About ideology as propaganda and no more see also Hannah Arendt, Elemente und Ursprünge Totaler Herrschaft, Frankfurt and Main, 1962, pp. 508-537. 51 See also T. Parsons, The Structure of Social Action, Glencoe, 1951, p. 350. M Simon, Emst A., “Emet ve-ideologya”, Antsiqlopafya hinukhii, Vol. I, pp. 122-123.

“IDEA”, “IDEAL”, AND “IDEOLOGY”

15

As he explains, this is because only someone who is self-critical is not primarily influenced by polemics that have been uttered against him. He challenges himself without thinking about the benefit or harm that have been caused him and his struggle by the change or restriction of his position. In this case, once again his test is not ide­ ological, that is, utilitarian, but rather ideational, that is, purely a m atter of intellectual considerations. Furthermore, while accepting the insights of the sociology of knowledge that have been indicated above, Simon is aware that even if a critical person never succeeds in calming his doubts, he can achieve peace of mind at least in regard to his own absolute personal honesty.33 The same rule of self-criticism also applies, in Simon’s opinion, in respect of the idea of justice. The latter will be attained only if the issue is transferred from the domain of the individual to that of society. Indeed every one of the rival social, religious, political, and class groups among them ascribes general and exclusive validity to its own ideology. However, Simon claims, if exceptional individuals are found in these rival groups, individuals who are capable of see­ ing the relativity of the various positions, and who begin to criticize their own group and its ideology in the very heat of battle, they will eventually discover justice “which is located beyond and above all the rival camps, and which none of them possesses”.34 This means that an “ideology” is not simply a set of “distortions” that was basi­ cally made up for obtaining advantages, and for which reason we are to seek its sub-structure in mere narrow self-interest. In the view of the politician and educator Ernst Simon, we can discover in every ideology the basic ideas of justice and truth along “the path of com­ prehensive ideological suspicion” and untiring self-criticism. Moreover, since justice is located beyond all the camps, a new ideology is cre­ ated from time to time in the ceaseless process of suspicion and crit­ icism. Yet, it is probable that this ideology too will require correction. T he discovery of the idea of justice and the establishment and shap­ ing of new ideologies are, therefore, the duty of the intellectual, who is perforce capable of rising above the boundaries of his social, eco­ nomic, and national conditioning. The origin of these classless and, to a certain extent, supra-national political perceptions is to be sought•

•J Ibid. p. 122. M Ibid.

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in the framework of M annheim’s insights and in the idealistic tra­ dition of the German socialist intellectuals o f the first decades of the 20th century.55 In the spirit of this positive view of “ideology” as a coherent plat­ form of ideas and ideals, Simon points to three kinds of ideals that support the platform of each and every ideology.56 The first is: the static ideal which comprises a kind of average of the typical and the routine, “that which between it and its group there is no more than a small distance”. At the opposite pole lies the utopian ideal, which is embodied “by the figure of the classic pioneer, with a growing gap between him and the majority of the youth”. However, these two kinds of ideals are not, according to Simon, “realistic ideals” that must stand before us when we come to establish an ideology. The first because of its excessive proximity to the routine, ordinary type, and the second due to its paralyzing character because o f its remoteness. As a result of these educational considerations, Simon sets up “the realistic ideal” in contrast to them. This ideal is achiev­ able on the one hand, and on the other hand is not satisfied with the image of the ordinary and routine. This is because it must fulfill two conditions. O n the one hand it must direct and teach not only the individual, but also every individual in his group and his peo­ ple, how to arrive at self-realization while diverging from himself. O n the other hand it must direct that divergence towards an idea possessing validity and towards an ideal (or ideals) that in some way translate that idea into the conditions of the particular time and soci­ ety, while aspiring to improve and correct them.57 Hence one must seek the lack of confidence in “ideology” and even in the scientific value of “the study of ideology”, not in ideology itself, but in the weariness of thought after the two W orld Wars, in the cynical, ide­ ological use of ideas and ideals, and in verbal hypocrisy. This is next to the “change in value o f the signs and symbols o f language”. Therefore it is natural that Simon the educator is forced to add:

55 See for example K. Mannheim, “The Sociological Problem of the ‘Intelligentsia’”, in G.B. de Huszar (ed.), The Intellectuals, Glencoe, 1960, III, pp. 62- 68 See also Kedar, Aharon, “Le-Toldoteia Shel ‘Brith Shalom’ Ba-Shanim 1925-1928”, in Y. Bauar, Davis M., Kolatt Y., Pirqei Mehqar Be-Toldot Ha-Tsiyonut, Jerusalem, 1976, pp. 237. 56 Simon, Ernst A., “Ha-adam ve-ha-tkhlit ha-hinukhit: ‘Idiah’, ‘ideal’, ‘ideologya’, ha-im od yetouton anatom?", p. 101. ” Ibid.

“IDEA”, “IDEAL”, AND “IDEOLOGY”

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But if he [the teacher or educator - SR] really wants to save some­ thing from the conflagration, he will have to open his ears to the echoes of his own voice in the minds of his young observers and accus­ tom his tongue to using new or renewed signs.1*8 In this context, it is appropriate to also consult M artin Buber’s words in a speech he gave in New York in 1952.59 In this talk, he dwelt on the division of humanity into two blocs bearing clear, defined “ideologies”. However, he added, it is not only this, but that: “The human world is today, as never before, split into two camps, each o f which understands the other as the embodiment of falsehood, everyone and itself as the embodiment of truth”. In the past, Buber explained, we find the position of national groups and religious asso­ ciations have been so radically opposed that the one side denied and denounced the other. But, added Buber: Now however, it is the human population of our planet generally that is so divided, and with rare exceptions this division is everywhere seen as a necessity of existence in this world of o u r . . . Each side has assumed monopoly of the sunlight and has plunged its antagonist into night, and each side demands that you decide between day and night.60 So this state of affairs, Buber agrees, is not absolutely new. More than this, he believes that it was possible to foresee it immediately after the First W orld W ar. In any event, the meaning of this situation is, in Buber’s view, the deathblow to any possible dialogue. At the same time, despite his previous claim that one could foresee this state of affairs immediately after the First W orld W ar, he discerns in this that the suspicious way each side relates to the other has something new about it. This is so in that the suspicion is more comprehensive and total than the previous suspicion. The uniqueness of this new suspicion, Buber stresses, is its radicalism. The suspicion which becomes a new virtue— and M arx’s and Freud’s theories had given to this phenomenon a scientific appearance—penetrated all human fields. This is, according to Buber, reflected in two ways, not only the way * Ibid. p. 102. M Buber delivered this speech at the end of March 1952, when he had finished his visit to the USA. He delivered this speech again in October of that year to the Association of Hebrew Authors in Jerusalem. The speech was collected in M. Buber’s Printing the Way, Collected Essays (Translated and edited by M. Friedman), London, 1957, pp. 220-229 under the title “Hope for this Hour [= Buber, Martin, “Tiqva le-sha’ah zo”, Teuda ve-yeud (Mission and Destiny), Vol. 2, Jerusalem, I960, pp. 82-91]. 60 Ibid. p. 221.

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CHAPTER ONE

that places doubt on the truthfulness and integrity of the other, but the one that doubts the inner harmony in the whole essence of his being. It is not only that it uproots trustworthy discourse among men who oppose each other overtly or covertly, but that it vitiates the whole essence of the closeness of men to each other.61 However, Buber does not surrender to the total suspicion. Indeed, he thought, that every great culture was a culture of dialogue from a certain vantage point while the isolation of the individual is noth­ ing but a prelude to the discoveries of dialogue.62 In a world where suspicion is cast upon ideology, which is of the very essence of polit­ ical and social activity, Buber claims there is no room for true dia­ logue. At the same time, since he recognizes that it is impossible to get around the suspicion, which has already become for modem man a habit in his give and take with his fellows, he holds that man must adopt the position that one can call the critique of criticism.63 Buber says all this while not sparing his efforts to indicate the flaws of the various sociological and psychological theories that he calls: “the the­ ories of seeing-through and unmasking”.64 He claims that these the­ ories are mistaken when they see the man at every moment only upon a basis that has just been discovered.65 Thus, for example, in Buber’s view, the theory of the study of ideology focussed excessively on the social and economic status of men as a key to understand­ ing and deciphering ideology. However, he believes that man is set into a world that is a ramified system of links that cannot be deter­ mined one-dimensionally or simplistically. Further, delineating social stratification is only one of those links of influence.66 Therefore, Buber stresses: “We are commanded to get far away from it [the theory of the study of ideology - SR] and move onwards by adding preci­ sion in demarcating the domains of the critique of ideology and by imposing dimensions on it”.67 The understanding of the critique o f criticism,—which only through it can we ensure passage beyond the study of ideology—is thus, as Buber defines it, that we do not explore

w See ibid. pp. 223-224. w Ibid. pp. 223-224. b‘ Ibid. M Ibid. p. 226. 65 See ibid. pp. 226 227. ** See ibid. 67 Ibid. p. 227; see also Simon, Ernst A., Qav ha-tihum, Giveat Chaviva, 1973, pp.

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the man and that we do not test his heart. R ather we shall look at him and see him with constandy growing perfection in his out­ wardness and his inwardness, as well as in the nexus of the former to the latter. We seek to believe him, but not blindly shall we believe, but with open eyes, that is, we seek to know him in the multitude of his facets and in his totality, in the uniqueness of his nature.68 Indeed as it emerges from the above discussion, Simon adopted these main principles of “the critique of criticism” as a political and educational position. This is because they could serve nationalism in its positive sense and in its humanistic sense. This was so since, on the one hand, it was possible that identification with the people and the state might lead direcdy to totalitarianism, while on the other hand, criticism without identification ends up as cosmopolitanism without a grip on concrete reality.69 As early as the second decade of the 20th century, the young Gershom Scholem took a position similar to that expressed by Simon and Buber in his polemic with “the Jewish youth movement”, when he pointed to the importance of consciousness and ideology as factors shaping and directing human activity. This was in opposition to the stance of the “Jewish youth movement”.70 Neither did Geertz, it should also be said, accept the judgmental outlook in which, according to him, one must seek the prevailing lack of confidence in and suspicion of ideology, and consequently, feel the same way towards even the study of ideology. In his view, sociologists did not in fact have any notion about how metaphors, analogies, irony, ambiguity, wordplay, paradoxes, hyperbole, rhythm, and all the other factors of what we clumsily call “style”, function.71 In addition, in most cases they do not even consider that these styl­ istic devices have any role when it comes to giving public form to personal positions.72 Only for that reason, in his view, have the soci­ ologists seized jurisdiction over ideology and determined that the facts and assessments made by it are distortions, having their source

°* See Buber, “Hope for this Hour”, Pointing the Woy, p. 227. m Simon, Emst A., Pirqei Haim: Mayan be-tokh horban (Life’s Chapters: Building amidst the destruction), Tel Aviv, 1986, pp. 51-52. 7" Shatzker, Haim, Tnuat ha-noar ha-yehudit be-germanya bein ha-shanim 1900- ¡930, (unpublished dissertation), Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 1969. pp. 191-192. 71 See C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, New York, 1973, pp. 208-209. 7* Ibid.

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in a tendency toward over-simplification and toward describing and conceiving of reality from a narrow self-serving perspective. Instead of the conception that sees “ideology” as a self-serving distortion of reality, he believes that building an ideology means creating schematic images of the social order, through which man becomes—for better or worse—a political animal. Moreover, since the arrays of cultural symbols of various sorts are external sources of information, their activity has decisive importance precisely in those situations where information of the kind that they contain is lacking. T hat is, pre­ cisely when institutionalized guidance for behavior, thought, or feel­ ing, is absent or weak.73 According to this approach, ideology’s role in stable political communities is extremely marginal. Men act within such communities by virtue of innate feelings, and are guided by prejudices that are not checked by criticism. But when the most gen­ eral cultural orientations of the society, and even its pragmatic ori­ entations are incapable of supplying a suitable image for the political process, the role of ideology becomes extremely important. This is because ideology is a reaction to distress. Hence, the conditions that prepare the ground for the growth of systematic ideologies (politi­ cal, moral, and economic) are created when, hand in hand with the socio-psychological distress, the cultural resources, through which the explanation for the distress is provided, are also exhausted and the two factors exacerbate each other.74 Thus, the role of ideologies is to supply sources of information about realities and to make it possible for people to act in a polit­ ically purposeful manner. So beyond all that can be discovered in an ideology—such as the projection of repressed fears, the rational disguise for base interests and the emphatic, emotional expression of group solidarity— the ideology is first and foremost map of prob­ lematic social reality and structures for creating collective consciousness. Geertz points out that we are obviously not to deduce from this, that in every case these “maps of social reality” are accurate and that the consciousness behind them is trustworthy. Yet the question as to whether they are accurate or not, and the problem of the trust­ worthiness of the consciousness that contains them, are in fact ques­ tions that do not touch upon ideology and its importance.75 ” Ibid. pp. 218-219. 74 Ibid. 71 Ibid. pp. 218-220. On the question about the credibility of the Zionist con-

“IDEA”, “IDEAL”, AND “IDEOLOGY”

21

Ideology in the deep sense means, then, a coherent view of the world, which posits the “idea” and the “ideal” as fundamental and superior to m atter and to a given reality. This is because through the act of translating the “ideal” and the “idea” into an ideology, thought rules over m atter, as it also does over society, including the latter’s economic, political, and other institutions. Moreover, only through ideology do men read reality, especially in times of crisis, just as only through ideology, as a store of symbols and meanings, are they capable of imparting direction and meaning to political activity.76 It is appropriate to note that this understanding of the role and importance of ideas, ideals, and ideologies, as being the guid­ ing principles of political activity, also applies to intellectuals in gen­ eral, in the view of many sociologists. Thus, for example, Mannheim defines intellectuals as a non-class stratum. For that reason, accord­ ing to him, the political-social consciousness of the intellectual is not conditioned by the narrow interests of his class, while the American sociologist Talcott Parsons defines intellectuals as those who attach an importance to cultural considerations that goes far beyond con­ siderations of one’s own social role.77 These tenets, which are true as a rule, are especially valid when they relate to members of the circles who grew up and were edu­ cated in central Europe. To be sure, in the German idealistic tra­ dition from K ant onwards, the ideas, which are parallel to the “categories” of the intellect, do not have the same force, as the “cat­ egories”. However, their function and significance are still extremely powerful. This is because they fulfill a guiding role. For that reason, in Bergmann’s view, “We must conduct ourselves within theoretical science as if these Ideas possessed objective validity”.78 Further, the thinkers of the Prague School exercised influence on the circle while some of Bar Kokhba’s members, had recourse to, Bergmann’s teacher, M arty, and to the teachings of Bernard Bolzanos, in whose doctrine Bergmann had aroused renewed interest through an essay of 1909,

sciousness in the description of reality, Geertz answered that there is not one answer which would be sufficient in relation to Nazism and to Zionism. 16 Ibid. pp. 230-233. See also Lukacz, Georges, Ekzislentsializim o mariai&m? pp. 15-19. ” See also T. Parsons, “The Intellectual: A Social Role Category”, in: On Intdlatuak (ed. Philip Rieff), New York, 1970, pp. 3-26. 7* Bergmann, S.H., Toldot ha-filosojya ha-hdasha, mt-lqufat ha-hskala ad imanutl kant, Vol. 2, p. 63.

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“O n Bolzanos’ Philosophy”. This background too can contribute to our understanding of the need of these men to contemplate eternal values and the powerful force of facts.79 O n the basis of this con­ ception Bergmann later formulated what he saw as the central issue of our generation, which he postulated throughout the whole body of his work: Can we free ourselves from the bonds of subjectivism, from the isolation of the ego, which is an outcome of K ant’s phi­ losophy? Can men arrive at the truth after Kant, not the “truth” in K ant’s quotation marks, but the objective truth? This formulation cannot be improved upon to express his faith in absolute values.80 In a similar vein, in the above mentioned critique o f Geertz’s book, Bergmann indicates that if we do not succeed in overcoming nom­ inalism and relativism, and in establishing our culture on the basis of eternally solid values, then we and all our science will be paving the way to oblivion.81 And ideology after all, as we have seen above, is no more than the translation of values (ideas)—by reconciling ideals—into a coherent system of rules that can be implemented. B. Central European Emigrants in Brith Shalom as a

Group with Ideological Characteristics The personalities, upon whom we focus our interest, Hugo Bergmann, Hans Kohn, Gershom Scholem, Robert Weltsch, and Akiba Ernst Simon, came to live in Palestine in the 1920s.82 They saw them­ selves as belonging to the pioneering Aliya Shlisit and identified with its values.83 Their joint activity as a more or less defined coterie crystallized in the Brith Shalom society and continued with shifting membership and organizational frameworks almost until the end of their lives. It suffices to point out in this context the participation 79 See also H. Bergmann, Das philosophische Werk Bernard Bolzanos, (Halle a. S. Nie* meyer 1909), p. 9. See also Scwarcz, Moshe, Hagutycudil nokh ha-tarbut ha-klalit, pp. 152 159. 80 Bergmann, S.H., Anashim u-drakhim (Alen and Ways), Jerusalem, 1967, p. 90. 81 Bergmann, S.H., % 4Ha-tsvira ha-yotseret”, Atolad, no. 46 (February, 1952), p. 239. 82 H. Bergmann emigrated to Israel. 81 See Avraham Shapira, “Ha-morasha ke-maqor le-thiya: le-demuto ha-ruhanit shel Gershom Schalom”, in: G. Scholem, Od davery Tel Aviv 1989, p. 13; see also H. Bergmann, Ba-mishol, pp. 86-90. See also G. Scholem, Me-berlin leyerushalaim: zikhronot neurim (From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories from the Youth), pp. 167-224. See also Natan Ofeq & P. Mendes-Flohr, Review with Samburski, Iton77y nos. 120-121 (January-February 1990), pp. 28 31, 53.

“IDEA”, “IDEAL”, AND “IDEOLOGY”

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of many of them, such as Bergmann, Scholem, and Simon, in the H a-'ol [The Yoke] circle which was centered on the aspiration for a religious socialism, in the League for Jewish-Arab Understanding which was founded in 1939 and took the place of Brith Shalom in many aspects, and their later activity in the Ihud society.84 Those who study their lives and their Jewish-Zionist careers, as well as their words that have been published in various forums since the beginning of the 20th century, will discover that they have many similar traits. These can be explained, to some extent, by the fact that they were the offspring of central European Jewry, and had grown up in the lap of German culture in this region. The expla­ nation is reinforced if we recall, that even from a sociological stand­ point, they had more than a few common characteristics,85 such as their belonging to the Jewish middle class and their being the third generation after Emancipation (a fact that Scholem often stresses in interpreting his particular Zionist concept).86 To these traits can be added the higher education they all received in German universi­ ties, and their firm integration into the culture and general spiritual life of the German cultural zone in particular, and of the West in general. This integration was most clearly expressed in their link to German language and culture.87 They had all this in common with the second generation of Zionists in central Europe who were bom in the last two or three decades o f the 19th century, who had also mostly come to Zionism during their studies at gram m ar school or at university. They had lived through the experience of social anti-Semitism during their adoles­ cence and their time at university, and as a consequence they too had been forced to perform the same moral stock taking, and to reach the same conclusions that the founders of German Zionism had reached. Nevertheless, in contrast to their predecessors, they did M Some of these personalities succeeded in their activity in “Ihod” and in “Qedma u-mizraha” and some of them were members of the “Ol”, that was a small circle of scholars who wanted a Religious-Jewish Socialism. See S.H. Bergmann, “Y.L. Magnes mehapes et elohav”, Ha-arets, 17.10. 1949. 85 On their shared characteristic, see the preface. 06 Sec G. Scholem, “I’m G. Scholem—sihut sh-ntqaymu be-horef 1974”, Devarim be-go, pp. 11-12; idem. Me-berlm U-yerushalatm: zikhronot ne’urim, pp. 29-38. See also Simon, Ernst A., Pirqei Haim: Bmyan be-tokh barban, Tel Aviv, 1986, pp. 12-16. About his self-image before he became a Zionist see ibid. p. 42. 87 Scholem studied at a Berlin Grammar School and at the University of Berlin. I will deal with their affinity to German culture in chapter 2.

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not start out by seeing the Emancipation as a kind of intoxicating promise. They were free of the hopes that their predecessors had cultivated. The hopes that their forefathers had felt alongside the difficult trials that they had undergone at the birth of anti-Semitism, for that was also the time of the spread of Emancipation, and o f the increasing integration of Jews into general society. The members of the second generation had not witnessed the victory of Emancipation. T o them the most meaningful, most decisive experience was pre­ cisely the rise of the völkisch (populist) movements and the growing strength of anti-Semitism, which reached its peak, for many of them, when it penetrated the German youth movements in general, and the Wandervogel in particular.88 It was natural, then, based on their difficult experiences and contention with anti-Semitism in their for­ mative years that many of them drew more radical conclusions than their predecessors had, as to their personal future in Germany. Furthermore, the members of this generation came of age at the end of the 19th century and were the second or third generation to grow up in a time of assimilation. In contrast to their parents, who had a certain knowledge about Judaism and whose Judaism belonged to real life experience, shaped by living memories, they were cut off for the most part from the Jewish tradition. Their return to Judaism , even if only through Zionism, was not a simple transformation that entailed a return to a world they already knew. It was an extremely radical process. Nor could they see, in the shallow Judaism that they knew from home, any possibility of a Jewish spiritual existence.89 For that reason, their skepticism as to their future as Germans motivated them to seek another path to their people and their heritage. Hence, they joined the Zionist camp not only as a self-respecting response to anti-Semitism, as this step had been for their predecessors, but also from a desire to satisfy a deep need for Jewish identification.

88 Ser G.L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology, Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich, (New York, 1981), pp. 171 189 Judah Reinharz, Fatherland or Promised Land, The Dilemma of the German Jew (1893-1914), (Ann Arbor, 1975), pp. 145-146; Shatzker, Haim, “Le-Toldot Ha-Blau-Weiss: Darkha shel Tnu’at Ha-No’ar Ha-Yehudit HaRishona Be-Germania el Ha-Ziyonut”, 2Jm%Vol. 38, Nos. 1-2 (1973), pp. 137-168. See also G. Scholem, “Im G. Scholem, Sihut sh-nihtqyymo be-horef 1974”, Od davor, pp. 19-22, 91. 80 For more details of this youth movement and its ideology and motivation see Ismar Schorsch, Jewish Reactions to German Anti-Semitism 1870-1914, New York and Philadelphia, 1972, p. 192.

“IDEA", “IDEAL", AND “IDEOLOGY"

25

In Zionism they sought an alternative to assimilation, as even per­ sonalities like Kurt Blumenfeld and Richard Lichtheim attest Likewise, they sought a way to identify with traditional Judaism . Now this may explain why their Zionism was more radical in nature than that of their predecessors.90 They did not find a response to their problems in Political Zionism with its philanthropic character, which did not challenge integration into 20th century German society and culture. For them, Zionism had to be first and foremost a personal answer. T he spokesman for this radical position was K urt Blumenfeld in whose opinion, “the German [Zionist] had to stop seeing himself as a German, even if he was in fact still connected to Germany by culture and economics”.91 This dem and m eant uprooting oneself, (Entwurzelung), from one’s cultural and social attachment to Germany and taking root, (Verwurzelung), in the Jewish nation, society, and culture by resolving to plant roots in the national soil in the Land of Israel.92 Hence there emerged, as Lichtheim pointed out, two con­ clusions for the Zionist. First, the need to think about cutting him­ self off from Germany and making aliyah to the Land of Israel. And second, the need to drop all political involvement in Germany, that is, to willingly surrender all the rights of a citizen of the state.93* These young people could find this only in those Zionist trends that eschewed Herzlian Political Zionism. Counted among these at the beginning of the century were the teachings of Ahad Ha-am and the anthropological-Zionist writings of M artin Buber (most of whose activity was in the German cultural zone, in the values of which they had been educated), the “practical” and “synthetic” Zionist cur­ rents that had originated with the Hibbat Zion in Russia, and the workers’ organizations of the Second Aliya to Palestine. In the context of this complex of problems, the duty of helping to foster the vitality of Jewish nationality was imposed upon Zionism. 90 Blumenfeld, Kurt, Sheqelat hayhodim ke-htwma. Jerusalem, 1963, pp. 11-84. On the radical character of their Zionism see Lichteim, Richard, Shear yashuo: zikhrmot tsiyomt me-germattya, Tel Aviv, 1954. Pp. 31-51. On the definition of generation in the historiography of German Zionism see J. Reinharz”, Three Generations of German Zionism”, The Jerusalem Quarterly (November 9, Fall, 1978), pp. 95-96. 91 lichteim, Richard, Toldot ha-tsiyonut be-germanya, Jerusalem, 1951, p. 108. 91 “K. Blumenfeld, “Ursprünge und Art einer Zionistischen Bewegung”, Bulletin des Leo Baeck instituts 4 (1958), p. 136; for detailed discussion on the second genera­ tion of German Zionism see J. Reinharz, “Three Generations of German Zionism”, pp. 99-105; See also Eloni Yeuda, Tsiyonut be-germanya me-reshita ’ad 1918 (German Zionism From its Beginning to 1918), Tel Aviv, 1991, pp. 196-244. H. Lavsky, heb. p. 25. 41 Lichteim, Richard, Toldot ha-tsiyonut be-germanya (The History of German Zionism), Jerusalem, 1951.

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Therefore, Buber (like other members of his circle and other per­ sonalities among the young German Zionists) criticized the political activities of Zionism that, in his opinion, did not seem to touch upon the innermost feelings of the Jew . In their view, Zionism had to focus its activity on efforts to capture the heart and inner world o f the young Jew so that it suffused his whole personality.94 A neces­ sary condition for this was educational activity. Zionism had to edu­ cate the young to recognize, to respect, and to love every cultural manifestation of the Jewish spirit over the generations.95 Thus, despite Buber’s being well aware that the Jewish spirit could reach the heights of development only on its own soil, he believed that the “Zionist revolution” must encompass the personality, and this must begin with avodat ha-hove (which includes work that its aim was not Eretz Israel), that is to say with work that its concern is the all spheres of Jewish life.96 In this context, Weltsch pointed out that Buber was the man who, in 1909, had introduced hope and purpose into the heart of the European Jew who was surrounded by a non Jew ish society and who in his everyday life went about in the streets of non Jew s. Buber did this according to Weltsch when he explained how Judaism could be a living, active factor in the reality of the workaday world for this Jew.97 In this spirit, Scholem too sums up how Zionism was understood by the young Jew in the German cultural space in those years. In his view, it was the result of consciousness of the crisis in the tradition of rabbinical Judaism , of the loss of purpose and value in religion which had frozen and become a purely social framework; consciousness of the need to plant anew “a form of life” in which he could feel at home and which would respond to the demands of the young man for Jewish identity and loyalty; and last of all, Zionism was: the utopia of a permanent future, of the revival of the people in its land, that would be realized by virtue of creative changes in the form of his old image, and perhaps, precisely by a new, revolutionary beginning.98 Also in those years, from the end of the 19th century until the First W orld W ar, an approach was shaped which called for the making M M. Buber, “Das Jüdische Kulturproblem und der Zionismus”, Die Stimme der Wahreit—Jahrbuch fiir wissenschaftlichen Zionismus, I (Würzburg, 1905), pp. 210-211. 51 Ibid. p. 216. 96 Ibid. p. 215. 97 R. Weltsch, “Mavo”, in: Buber, Martin, Teuda ve-yeud. Vol. 1, Jerusalem, 1959, pp. 1-21. U1 See for example Buber, Martin, ‘Judaism and the Jew (1909)”, On Judaism, pp. 13-14. 104 Buber, Martin, “Judaism and Mankind”, ibid. pp. 22-33. ,0i Buber, Martin, “Renewal of Judaism”, ibid. pp. 34-35. IOb So for example Buber could speak about the significance of “this blood within us” (see ibid. p. 18) or declare that “The life-story of a people is, after all, basi­ cally nothing more than the life-story of any member of that people” (ibid. p. 24). 107 For the implication of these insights see ibid. pp. 54-55.

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takes place within the heart. This process can be realized only after a change that comes from within through creating a new reality out of the pangs o f creation in all its greatness and tragedy.108 The organic-developmental basis underlying Buber’s Zionist thought was also quite clearly expressed in Buber’s article, “The Spirit of the O rient and Judaism ” (1913).109 And this judgement refers first and foremost to assertions like the following: “All that I have said about the Oriental is especially true of the Jew. He represents the human type with the most motor faculties”.11012 Indeed Buber had already undergone the influence of German organic-developmental nation­ alism and shown the signs of its influence as early as the winter o f 1901-1902 when, in response to a questionnaire about the definition of Jewish nationalism, he wrote: I am a nationalist Jew in this sense too, that I aspire to the existence and exaltation of the national character of Judaism. This national Judaism awakened and fed in me, a non-religious man, a love for the religious customs of the people."1 Even many years later, he had not lost sight of the ties between his Jewish national concept and the world of Völkisch ideology. Thus, for example, after the Holocaust which had mercilessly exposed the dangers concealed within the concepts of any nationalism based on organic-developmental theories, Buber added the following note to the Hebrew translation of his lecture, ‘Judaism and the Jews”: Several years after these words were written the evilest of men arose and distorted the concept of ‘blood’ that I had used here. For that reason, I give notice that in every place where I have used the term blood, I was not referring by any means to the matter of race, which in my opinion is groundless, but to the continuities of births and deliv­ eries in a people, which is the backbone which holds up its essence."2

I#* See also the introduction in: Buber, Te’udah ve-Ye'ud. vol. I, Jerusalem, 1959, p. 10. 109 Buber, uThe Spirit of the Orient and Judaism”, On Judaism, 56-78. "° Ibid. p. 64. 111 “Eine Tendenz-Rundfrage vor zehn Jahren” Der Jüdische Student 1 (20 April 1911), p. 51. 112 Buber, Martin, “ha-yadut ve-ha-yudim (1909)”, Te’udah ve-Ye'ud, vol. I, p. 29. This note is in the Hebrew edition only. See also Shapira, Avraham, “Le-mekorot tfisahto ha-leumit shel Martin Buber, Ha-Tsiymuk Masef Le-toltod ha-tnoah kaziyonii ve-ha-ishuv be-arez israel 15 (1991), pp. 77-106.

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Hans Kohn too, who was aware of Buber’s links to the Volk ide­ ology, pointed on the one hand to Buber’s influence, and on the other hand to the direct influence of that ideology on the world out­ look of the young Zionists who made up the Bar Kokhba Society in Prague. He emphasized that the kind of nationalism in which he and his friends were caught up—in no small measure under the influence of the Germ an nationalism that had developed in the Sudetenland—was a kind of search for the people’s roots; they believed that only through these roots could they return to the people. Against this background it was natural that young Zionists be influenced by their German counterparts. They sought to grasp the distant past in which the Jewish people had created its spiritual creations in a state of freedom and mastery over its own fate. For that reason, H. Kohn explained, some were drawn to the ideal of the conquerors of Canaan, and in contrast, such as the members of Bar Kokhba Society, some were drawn to the ideals and vision molded by the prophets. In any event, Kohn points out that in Buber’s nationalist doctrine dangers were concealed that were bound up with concepts like “blood”, “soil”, and the like, just as they were concealed in the words of Lagarde, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and others. However, it was precisely in these irrational, vitalistic trends, mustered against the ideas of the Enlightenment that the secret of the magic of Buber’s teaching lay at the beginning of the century.113 Indeed, like Buber, like the “German Youth movement”, and its Jewish counterpart Blau-Weiss, the Bar Kokhba Students Society too called for revolt against routine and against the world that had been stagnating for generations. The expression of this revolt within the internal Zionist debate at the turn of the century was a call for revolt against the concept and the organizational path of the popular Zionist society that existed in Prague. From the point of view of the mem­ bers of Bar Kokhba, the question was: Should Zionist activity be adapted to the needs of “the here and now”, or should a stance of rebellion and cultural and mental vigilance towards the morrow be applied, as Buber demanded? The men of the Bar Kokhba did not in principle oppose work for the present, which included propaganda, raising funds, and other organizational activity. However, despite this agreement in principle, the Bar Kokhba Society advocated the 1 111 Kohn, H., Living in a Revolution—My Encounters With History, pp. 65 -66.

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second path. Nevertheless, the members of Bar Kokhba drew the logical conclusion from rejection of “the here and now” and from readiness for the morrow (in their words) only several years later. T hat conclusion was immigration to the Land of Israel.114 Underlying the demand of the members of the coterie was the demand to overcome the apathy of assimilation through consciously joining the masses of the Jewish people, on the one hand, and get­ ting in touch with the old culture of the Jews while making an effort to renew Jewish culture through changing values, on the other hand. For that reason, the discussions and the many published writings on the subject of the essence of Judaism in those years, the influence of which was quite noticeable in the anthology Vom Judentum, did not bear a speculative, metaphysical character at all. The question, despite its abstract philosophical garb, was mainly an issue of the personal, spiritual identity of the young Jews in central Europe, whose culture, language, and manners were European in all respects. This meant, as E. Tal comments, that the “essence” was viewed as a con­ cept actually deriving from historical research, but it played a publicideological role, and even fulfilled a spiritual-existential function.115 O n this basis of a search for links and a deepening of roots in the heritage of the people and its spirit, one is recommended to read Bergmann’s lecture of 1903 on Berdichevski. Bergmann described in detail Berdichevski’s teachings that advocated revolutionary, destruc­ tive acts in order to bring the Jewish people into the twentieth cen­ tury. The doctrines of Ahad Ha-am who also advocated change, although by way of evolutionary transference are also worth read­ ing. Yet, as it emerges from his lecture, young Bergmann was drawn inexorably to the revolutionary Berdyczwski. In contrast to the nos­ talgic clinging to the Jews of Eastern Europe and their authentic cul­ ture that characterized many Zionists in western and central Europe, he was not satisfied with a sentimental attitude toward the modem Jewish culture that had been created in Eastern Europe. He strove to seek precisely the truth of the man with a critical mind. At the same time, as a man raised on the Völkisch ideologies and devel­ opmental theories, he could not imagine an attachm ent to the peo-*1

1,4 See R. Gladstein-Kstenberg, “Athalot bar-kukhva”, in: Weltsch, Felix (ed.) Prag ve-Terushiaim, p. 94. 111 Tal, O., “Ahpolmus al ‘maut ha-yadut’ al-pi meqorot yudiim ve-notsriim bereshit hv-meah ha-aesrim” Al toldot Yhudei germanya ba-maah ha-19—ovdot u-bahyot, Jerusalem, 1971, p. 53.

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pie and its spirit, and even less so the recognition of truth, at sec­ ond or third hand. Therefore, in his view, true attachm ent to the people and coming to know its spirit and veracity could not be achieved except through steeping oneself in the culture, history, and language in which its experiences had been shaped and crystallized.116 Even many years later, Bergmann continued to argue for the impor­ tance of language and literature. In a memorial book for one of the most important activists of the Bar Kokhba Society in the first decade o f the century, he severely criticized western Zionism for not suc­ ceeding in being a decisive factor in shaping the world of Zionism and of the Jewish community in Palestine. O ne of the central fac­ tors that he blamed for the failure was “the position of western Zionism on Hebrew”. This was because, in his view, Hebrew con­ tained the key to the spiritual treasures of the people, and therefore, western Zionism, which had not adopted the study of Hebrew as a necessary part of its activity, “lacked the radicalism of self-fulfillment”, only through which could true exchanges of ideas take place between the Jewish youth of eastern and western Europe.117 Along with the importance of learning the language, and clearly linked to it as a factor in the weakness of German Zionism, Bergmann stressed the Jewish-religious aspect. In contrast to the rationalist superficiality characteristic of the Hebrew literature created by east­ ern European Jews, the central European Jews and the Prague Zionists, “who were educated in the shadow of the M aharal [Rabbi Ju dah Loew - tr.] and his tradition”, were far from intellectual superficiality, in his view. Their attitude toward religion was mainly positive. T o be sure, they were not devout, “but”, he added: they were far from unbelief. The book Al Ha-Yahadut [On Judaism, Jewishness, the Jewish people - tr.] is a memorial monument [erected] by the Jewish younger generation that sought a way back to religious Judaism . . . A positive, religious revolution within Judaism and the Jewish people was being prepared in it. It contained, on the one hand, a positive approach toward Jewish religiosity, and on the other hand, a rejection of any easy opportunistic solution that would identify the return to Judaism with a return to petrified lifeless forms.118 116 R. Gladstein-Kstenberg, “Athalot bar-kukhva”, in: Weltsch, Felix (cd.) Prag vtYtrsMatm, p. 98. 117 H. Bergmann, “ha-zyonut ha-ma’aravit, ruha ve-gorala”, ibid. pp. 204-206. See also F. Welitsch, “darkhei hgshama, e’arot le-mamaro shel bergman ‘ha-ziyonut ha-ma’aravit, ruha ve-gorala’”, ibid. pp. 208-213. "* Ibid.

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This attitude of theirs, Bergmann claimed, was also expressed in the anthology VomJudentum issued by the Bar Kokhba Society in Prague. However, their mystical, deeply exploratory attitude towards religion did not gain currency in Hebrew literature due to their ignorance of Hebrew. Yet only in that literature could the exchange of ideas and the spiritual struggles between East and West be actualized. T hat is to say, in his opinion, one of the most distinctively unique traits of Zionism in the West—and all the more so of the Bar Kokhba Society—was the search for “the way back to religious Judaism ”. However, this was not done without setting barriers and limits on it. These restrictions derived from the world oudook shaped in the context of German culture within which they had been reared. A thoroughgoing expression of this viewpoint can even be found in Adolf Böhme’s demand that religious Judaism provide a response to the individual spiritual distress of the modem Jew , on the one hand, while rejecting any opportunistic solution on the other."9 Searches for “the way back to religious Judaism ”, the recognition of the people’s culture, or the forming of a connection to the mass of the people, would take on their proper dimensions only if we recall that one of the traits of those who were attracted to the Völkisch ideology, was the insistence on vitality, realization, and the deed. In fact, these were crystallized in an article that the anarchistsocialist Gustav Landauer contributed to the anthology. Landauer, a friend of M artin Buber, pointed in his essay to “non-realization” as the most dominant expression of the weakness characteristic of the whole period. In his view, even the ideas and ideals of his con­ temporaries were not sufficiently formed. One ought to see in them more than regulative values, characters in a dram a presented in a void. They must serve at the same time as instruments for realiza­ tion and fulfillment.*120 W hat we are viewing therefore is a search for the sake of the deed. And not abstract academic searches for the essence of Judaism , or the abstract exposition of the spirit of Judaism . To use the lan­ guage of the time, we are dealing with an attem pt to expound prin­ ciples and ideals elicited from the manifest creations-embodiments of “the spirit of the nation”, principles and ideals that could supply guidelines for social and political action in daily life. One must under­ 1,4 Adolf Böhm, “Wandlungen im Zionismus”, Vim Judentum, pp. 139-154. Gustav tandauer, “Sind das Ketzergedanken?”, ibid., pp. 250-258.

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stand Gershom Scholem’s sharp attack on the Blau-Weiss against this background. He sharply attacked the neglect of Jewish content and the study of Hebrew in the Blau-Weiss, as well as their lack of seriousness and readiness for hard, concentrated Jewish work.121 And if that were not enough, he did not even accept the claim that “the youth movement" in its current format was likely to serve as a bridge for assimilated Jewish youth on their way to Judaism. In order for it to be able to serve as a bridge of this kind, it must, in his view, respond first of all to the questions: “Do bridges exist between the Zionists and the next generation? Broad bridges upon which hun­ dreds and thousands of our young men and women can cross on their way to Z ion. . . ?" This was because, in his opinion, “Everything depends on the answer to this question”.122* In the pretension of the Jewish youth movement to serve as a bridge to assimilated youth on their way back to Judaism , by means borrowed from the teachings of the German youth movement—such as through the help of “wandering” and the return to nature—he saw, on account of those means a satanic argument and an apol­ ogy for those who were incapable of going forward and therefore, raised their backwardness to the rank of “a duty”. In contrast to the positions of the youth movement, he acclaimed the demand for Jewish “wholeness” when it is accompanied by the demand for hard, stren­ uous labor having the exclusive purpose of ‘Judaism and Zion”. Everything must be subordinated to this single purpose, even “at the price of being limited”, in his words.'25 For that reason, when deal­ ing with “Young Judea”, he could claim even many years later that they were a new generation in the Zionist movement that advocated new slogans and demands: the knowledge of Hebrew, speaking Hebrew, and aliyah to the Land of Israel.124 The nexus between these demands and the neo-romantic demands of the Völkisch ideology, which we have dwelt on above, is obvious in everything having to do with deepening roots in the spiritual assets of the people over the generations, with regard to the language and 121 Blau-Wciss-Blättcr, Jahrg. I, Heft 1 (June 1917), pp. 28-29. Ibid. p. 27. 1.3 See Gershom Scholem, “Tnu’at noar yehodit”, Od davor, pp. 55-58. See also Weiner, Hana, “Qvuizat Ha-Noar ‘Tzirei Yehuda’ Be-Berlin Ve-Ha-Polmus shcl Gershom Shalom im Tenu’at Ha-Noar 1913-1918”, Ha-Tàyonul 9 (1984), pp. 157-178. 1.4 G. Scholem in interview with Muki Tsur, Shedamot, No. 55 (Summer 1974), pp. 8-9.

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the history, and in respect of the place of fulfillment and the deed. Therefore, we ought to see his intensive devotion to studying Hebrew and the religious literature of Judaism over the generations, as well as his joining the Agudat Israel, if only for a short while, as a con­ sequence of the demands he made on the youth movement.125 In this context, it is proper to add that even when he came to describe the process of development of his Jewish-Zionist Weltanschauung, Scholem used phrases the cultural depth of which we can come to comprehend only through the world of organic-developmental the­ ories. For instance, he related that what can be called “a moving experience” in his attitude toward Judaism and to his being put to the test by it, took place in the Spring of 1913, when he first learned a page of the Talmud in the original. He says this whilst pointing out: “This was my first traditional, direct encounter not with the Bible, but with the Jewish essence in the tradition”. W hat enchanted him in it was “the strength of a tradition thousands of years old”, according to him .126 The force of attraction of this almost uncen­ sored “strict tradition” lay, in his view, in its being “a dialogue of generations continuing ceaselessly for hundreds of years, for which the Talmud serves as the minutes”.127 Becoming acquainted with a tradition that had been lost to his social circle fascinated him by great magical force. Thus, the books of “the Early Sages” seemed to him immeasurably rich and full of liveliness. And if this were not enough, he added, “And it was my feeling that they could nicely stand comparison with the world of those German authors whose words had taken form on a different plane, of course”.128 T hat is, even in his leaning toward ancient Hebrew literature, we find, in the last analysis, the desire to satisfy the same needs as his non-Jewish contemporaries satisfied through early German literature. This means that despite Scholem’s opposition to and struggle against “the Jewish youth movement”, that were expressed in his demand to deepen the link to Judaism and its sources on the theoretical plane, and a demand for the deed and fulfillment on the practical level, we may seek the motivation for his Jewish-Zionist world out­

125 Aviv, '* m 128

Scholem, Gershom (ed. A. Shapira), Mi-berlm U-jtrusUaim, okhronot tu’orim, Tel 1982, p. 51. Ibid. p. 52. Ibid. p. 53. Ibid. p. 54.

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look in the identical foundation that he shared with the movement’s members. At the basis of this infrastructure were the concepts and assumptions of the Völkisch ideologies. This was so in all that was tied to the deed, to fulfillment and to the supremacy of absolute val­ ues, as well as the search for the spirit of the people.129 Hence, Scholem could write in the context of his struggle against the ide­ ology of the Blau-Weiss: Let him not be a Jew only of muscles alone and let him not be only a philosopher, but rather both a rebel and a scholar. May he do the deed that is a single deed; may he go to the Land of Israel and realize the insight which is multi-faceted, as are the differences between men.130 In a similar vein, he explained many years later that he had believed even then that without a return to the sources of Judaism , they would only create assimilation within Zionism.131 O n this basis, we may understand Scholem’s complex attitude toward the liberal Jew­ ish philosopher H erm ann Cohen, which he wrote in his article “Departure”.132 In this article he attacked the Zionist youth which, due to superficiality, was not capable of realizing the loss to the Jewish people and Judaism represented by Cohen’s death.133 Thus, Scholem did not accept the anti-intellectualism of the times, or the vitalism that had shaken off reason. However, neither did he accept the various components of the typical ideology of the Jewish youth movement or of the German youth movement, such as: education of the personality through nature, indirect education built on experience and feelings alone and not on the explicit message, group fellowship, and the like. At the same time, he too, like his contemporaries in the German cultural space, demanded that the fulfilling act be the result of the individual’s inner consciousness and a part of his expres­ sion. Likewise, he demanded the participation of an individual’s whole personality in the political act, which in the last analysis is no more than the operative manifestation of personal, moral responsibility. For details see also G.L. Mosse, “Gerschom Scholem as A German Jew”, Modem Judaism, 10 (1990), pp. 117-133. 130 G. Scholem, “Ideologie”, Die Blau-Weisse Brille (3 Tevet 5767 = December 1915]). m Scholem, Gershom, “Sihut shehtkyamo *im G. Scholem be-hoif 1974”, Devarim be-go, p. 20. m About Scholem’s inclination towards Hermann Cohen see Rivka Horwitz, “Franz Rosenzweig and Gershom Scholem on Zionism and the Jewish People”, Jewish History, Vol. 6, No. 1-2 (1992), pp. 99-113. ,M G. Scholem, “Abschied”, Jerubaaí, IV (Wien, July 1918), p. 129.

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Buber’s remarks in his autobiographical essay “My Path to Hasid­ ism” 134 can serve as an illumination for the searches, the moments of amazement, and the attempts at acquiring and becoming con­ nected with a Judaism with roots made by the personalities we are dealing with and members of their coterie. Buber describes in this essay the varied and contrasting influences that worked upon him, and as a result of which he felt “without a center and without a nucleus continuing to grow”. This existential situation, he claimed, was fully expressed only by the kabalistic concept “olam hatohu [world of desolation - tr.], the residence of souls that have strayed”. However, what was most severe in this situation was that he, Buber, was wandering “not only without Judaism , but also without the humane and without the presence of the divine element”. Supposedly, the Jewish individual was not allowed to become connected to god­ liness, or to arrive at a nexus with it and with the humane, with­ out a link to Judaism. Only Zionism was capable of furnishing him with a life buoy so that he might be rescued from “the world of chaos” where he was wandering. It could do this by signifying “the restoration of the link, striking roots once again in fellowship”. At the same time he was abstracting his personal, concrete experience into a truth valid for all humanity: You have no man who is so much in need of saving through con­ nection with a people as a young man who is caught up in a spirit­ ual search, who is raised up to the air by his intellect; and once again, among young men of this land and this fate no one needs this like the young Jew.135 In an article on the occasion of Buber’s fiftieth birthday, Hans Kohn stated that for Buber, “as for many others of his generation and o f the next generation”, Zionism was “a renewing force”. And in this context, he pointed to their special conception of Zionist propaganda as “internal propaganda” and not mere external, political propa­ ganda. Tsioni, according to this interpretation, is not a m atter o f another party but a worldview which is obliged to take care that this “exalted complex” of ideas “be developed in all its greatness and be crystallized in all its refinement”. Being a Zionist, Kohn con­ cludes with an absolute identification with Buber, is not, therefore,

114 M. Buber, Mein Weg zum Chassidissmus, Hinweise, Zürich, 1953. Ibid. pp. 186-187.

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voting for one party or another. And a man cannot be a Zionist the way people become conservatives or liberals. Hence, people become Zionists as they become men or artists.136 Blumenfeld and members of the second generation of German Zionism developed a similar conception when they argued, apparendy under the influence o f the German nationalist thinkers, that Zionism meant a turning point which determined the life of every Jew, “a strong desire for a fate of one's own and for an unconditional decision".137 D. Conclusion Since the personalities we have been considering, like their nonJewish contemporaries, were exposed through their education, to the fin de siècle atmosphere in which they had grown up, they were also exposed to the political culture and to the concepts and values that pervaded the German cultural zone. The main unique features of this influence were expressed in the following traits: a) Idolizing (deification) of values, ideas, and ideals, or at least turning them into regulative values. From this element derived the demand to subordinate reality and political activity to values, up to the point of disregarding real, material interests, and rejecting any pragmatic policy of realpolitik. b) Rejecting of political, social, and cultural reality, which they and their non Vol. II, pp. 77-81, “An Die Prager Freude”, ibid. p. 74; see also Mendes-Flohr, P.R., “Buber Ben Leumanut Le-Mistiqa”, lyyun, the Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 29, Nos. I -2 (JanuaryFebruary 1980), pp. 86-87. * Buber, M., “Heldenbuch”, Die Jüdische Bewegung, Vol. Il, p. 78. ” Ibid. M Ibid.

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of his body and his mind”.39 But, Buber added, the true hero, despite his resolute decision, opposes the “principle of force” and devotes himself to “the principle of the spirit”.60 In a similar anti-chauvinist vein in another essay of that year, Buber tried to distinguish between nationalism—that he too as a Zionist adhered to—and the aggressive nationalist movements that saw in economic cultural and political activides only means for supe­ riority over other nations. He thus perceived that the content and true meaning of nationalism had been corrupted by the power of recent events.61 At the same time, he promised his readers that a period was coming when the fruit of nationalism would be frater­ nity, not conflict among peoples. And he also added that now m ore than ever there was room “to look forward to the union of patriots from various peoples [that would be - SR] a union of those who had no interest in hegemony but in molding their own nations. . .”6’ Nevertheless, until then, Buber insisted, it was necessary to purify nationalism from the hobbles of chauvinism. And this puige, in his opinion, was the mission of the generation, and needless to say, he commented, “that it must be achieved without their having to pass through a road soaked in blood, a road strewn with the hindrances [of the war]”.63 Thus, before us is an attempt to shape a nationalism that would derive from inner wellsprings in the inner life of the nation, a nation­ alism not interested in shaping external political institutions. A link of continuity exists between this conception dating from the end of the First World War and the conception of nationalism that Buber and members of the coterie presented in the years before the war. Both now and before nationalism was confined to fostering the spir­ itual-cultural uniqueness of the people, and not to setting political goals. Indeed, on this basis, Buber could write in 1918 that true Zionism was beyond war and had nothing to do with it.64 Just as, on the grounds of the nationalism that strove only to mold the cul­ tural-spiritual and social profile of the nation, he could assure Stefan w Ibid. p. 79. Ibid. p. 80. 81 Buber, M., “Unser Nationalismus"', ibid. pp. 98-103. Ibid. p. 100. 84 Ibid. 84 Buber, M., “Ein politischer Faktor”, ibid. p. 114. The article was published in Der Jude (August 1917).

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Zweig that in no way did he have in mind a Jewish state with rifles, flags, and military decorations.65 Moreover, realpolitik, that is, a pol­ icy setting one group against another and resting on political intrigues, was dangerous for Zionism. However, he believed, what was even graver was that realpolitik was likely to distort its image. “The road to Zion”, Buber insisted, “cannot pass through this route of mad­ ness”.66 In this essay, Buber also indicated that now, when people were finding out the extent of the destruction due to the war and its associated phenomena, they were beginning to recognize that the war was “an atrocity resulting from their own foul creation”, and were beginning more and more to understand that it depended on them “whether it [the war] would be a hopeless hell or a crucible. . . ” Now, before the change in the quality of spiritual life—he stressed with quite a sense of urgency—a change in the real relations between people must come as a necessary and prior condition.67 The concentrated epitome of Buber’s disassociating himself from aggressive nationalism was expressed in a speech which he delivered at the Zionist Congress in 1921 at Karlsbad;68 he distinguished between two kinds of nationalism, and saw chauvinism as separate from them. The first kind of nationalism, the natural kind, was that of the Volk which grew organically out of nature and history, and which as yet lacked consciousness. The second kind was entirely neg­ ative consciousness, that is, consciousness due to a lack that must be satisfied, such as territory. In contrast, chauvinism is a pathological phenomenon of excessive consciousness that destroys the natural spontaneity of the people. Its typical expression is turning the means into the supreme goal of nationalism, such as the conception of the sovereign state as the supreme and final purpose of nationalism. Against the background of these distinctions, Buber argued that if the chauvinist state appears as a supreme purpose that determines criteria as to what is permitted and forbidden, that is, that defines M Buber to Zweig, February 4, 1918, in Buber, M., Hilufei igrot 1897-1918, pp. 490-491. w* Buber, M., “Ein politische Faktor”, Die Jüduthe Bewegung, Vol. U, p. 115. ,>7 Ibid. M See Buber, M., “Le-ha-karat ha-ra'ayon ha-tsioni”, Te’udah ve-Ye’ud. Vol. II, Jerusalem, 1960, pp. 196-201. As Buber affirms in his note to the article, the first part of this article was based on Buber's speech before the 12th Zionist Congress. See Buber’s note ibid. p. 1%. On the Twelfth Zionist Congress and Buber’s addresses during that period see P.R. Mendes-Flohr, A Land to Two Peoples: Martin Buber an Jews and Arabs, New York, 1983, pp. 47-67.

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“the good” as what is useful to it and “the bad” as what is harm ­ ful to it, it will eventually reach the totalitarian (or fascist) stage that will impose the rule of “the political principle” as possessing exclu­ sive and unlimited validity. T hat is to say, “nationalism” is a basis or a foundation stone of the nation. It is essentially a phenomenon o f consciousness origi­ nating in the people’s awareness o f a lack, whereas the people in itself is not a phenomenon of consciousness, but of life.69 “Chauvinism” on the other hand, appears only when the awareness of a lack and the definition of a lack entrenches itself as “the fixed principle”. This statement, Buber stressed, conceals a danger. Since the end o f this obsessive consciousness was that it would diverge from its role, it will burst beyond its proper boundaries and will uproot from exces­ sive consciousness the spontaneous life of the nation. This process meant a decline intertwined with the hues of nationalism.70 Moreover, he also believed that chauvinism of this sort would end up by remov­ ing its own basis. This was because nationalism was awareness o f a lack that turned towards the world with a call “to apply the unwrit­ ten rights of the nations with regard to the people, in order to enable it to realize its essence as a people and thus to fulfill its role in respect of mankind”.71 However, by becoming a criterion and by annulling the right of the next nation it indirectly nullified even its own rights. The point of these remarks was directed chiefly against “the realpolitik” that had spread in the Zionist camp too. The meaning o f this “realpolitik” was not non-recognition of the “morally proper”, but the claim that the world cannot be repaired by moral principles. In this vein, as stands out strikingly first and foremost with regard to the Arab Question that would comprise, according to Buber and the members of the coterie, the touchstone of Zionism, many Zionists— even those gifted with moral sensitivity no less than Buber— saw the duty of Zionist policy to serve first of all the needs of the Jewish people and its cause. T hat is, they placed a partition between the ideological level and the mere existential level. O n the existential level they were likely to feel confusion or even a sense of guilt when facing “the Arab Question”, on the ideological level, when coming to justify the demand for a “Majority” or when rejecting the pro69 Ibid. pp. 198-199. 70 Ibid. pp. 199-200. 71 Ibid. p. 199.

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posai for a legislative council. They therefore enlisted the broad van­ tage points—historical, social, and economic—that characterize ide­ ological analysis in evaluating a situation and in laying a foundation for the political preferences and decisions. For instance, in a speech that Berl Katznelson delivered at that same Congress he clearly rec­ ognized the character and dimensions of the moral problem, just as he recognized the gravity of the Arab Question. And he did this with especially high moral awareness. Nevertheless, at the same time, he stated firmly that one must not compromise on the Zionist order of priorities, and of course must not, in his opinion, condition the fulfillment of its goals on vain hopes of achieving Arab consent to these goals.72 Rejection of the “political principle” as a supreme principle orig­ inated in a conception the echoes of which we also detected in the polemics of the men of Brith Shalom and Buber in the 1930s.73 According to it, one ought not to see the nation as a purpose in itself, and certainly one ought not to find a criterion in nationalism and its goals. O n the contrary: A criterion according to which that distinction must be determined is not found in nationalism itself. It is found in the recognition that the nation has a duty that is more than simply a national duty.74 The roots of this ethical understanding too are found in the organicdevelopmental conception according to which mankind is a unitary organic structure, the organs of which comprise the various peo­ ples.75 Indeed, in the above lecture Buber repeatedly insisted that one might see peoples as a purpose in themselves, however this was only on condition that they are viewed as elements from which mankind is built. Every people is gifted with unique traits of its own and with a destiny. Therefore, the people must see its destiny as exalted and incomparable. Nevertheless, Buber stressed: Not because this destiny is greater than another destiny, but because it involves creation and mission. The roles of peoples have no scale of values. One people cannot be graded over another people. God wants to use the people that he has created as a tool in his work.7* 72 See Ptotokol stanograp she ha-kongtss ha-tsiyoni ha-¡2th sh-net'erakh bt-Kralsbad beSeptember 1921. ;i See also chapter 5, sub-chapter C.2. Buber, M., “Le-ha-karat ha-ra'ayon ha-tsiyoni”, T t’udah ve-Ye’ud. p. 200. 7S See also chapter 3, sub-chapter B. 16 Buber, M., “Lc-ha-karat ha-ra’ayon ha-tsiyoni”, Te’udah ve-Ye'ud. p. 200.

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For that reason, only a nationalism that remembers its part in the universal, supra-national structure is likely to be a fruitful national­ ism. In contrast, “the moment that a national ideology posits the nation as a purpose in itself it vitiates its right to live, it becomes barren”.*77 In this context, Buber added that if the principle that the nation must not see itself as a criterion and a supreme purpose is correct in respect of every nationalism whatsoever, then it is valid even more when it has to do with the nationalism of the Jewish people. Judaism, Buber wrote, “is a nation, but because of its own peculiar connection with the quality of being a community of faith, it is more than that”.78 Therefore, the Jewish people must, as more than a nation, be wary of adopting the political principle, as a supreme criterion for good and for bad, and the nation as a supreme purpose. Adoption of such a principle, he concluded, would not rep­ resent Jewish renewal and surely not a Jewish revival, but rather would mean collective assimilation.79 The link between this claim and the claims of Scholem, Simon, and Bergmann in polemics towards the end of Twenties and the beginning of the Thirties, as well as the arguments of Ihud, is strik­ ing.80*This is obvious just as the continuing link is obvious between these conceptions and the trends of Religious Zionism that Buber had sketched at the beginning of the century in Prague in his Three Addresses on Judaism.*' Noticeable in these arguments, however, is the influence of Herder’s humanistic doctrine. For example, in an arti­ cle of 1769 Herder wrote that there is no man, there is no coun­ try, there is no people, there is no natural history, and there is no state that is similar to another. Hence, he argued, the true, the good, and the beautiful in them are not similar.82 T hat means, each and every culture can be understood only on its own terms and one must not identify one culture with other cul­ tures. Therefore, no culture can claim superiority because superior” Ibid. p. 201. n P.R. Mendes-Flohr (ed.), A Land to Two Peoples, Martin Baber on Jews and Arabs, p. 54. See notes 68 ibid. ” See ibid. pp. 55-57. " See Shalom Ratzabi, Ishei merkaz exropa b’brith shalom’: ideología be-nœhanei metsuit, unpublished dissertation, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 1993, pp. 382-402. *' About Buber’s Three Addresses on Judaism see chapter 8. “ Herder, J.G., Reflections on the History of Mankind, Chicago, 1968, VX:2, 4. See also Shapira, Avraham, “Le-meqorot tphisahto ha-leumit shel Martin Buber, HaTsiyonuk MasefLe-toltod ha-tnoah ha-ziyonit oe-ha-ishuo be-artz istad 15 (1991), pp. 103-105.

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ity had to be measured by a criterion above the cultures under dis* cussion. It follows that a justified claim to superiority had to be based on a criterion that was not dependent on the various cultures. But such a criterion is impossible, since every criterion was created by the cultures themselves. Thus it emerges on the one hand, that the humanistic nationalism of the members of the coterie and of Buber used this idea to justify its opposition to assimilation. This was because if we are to understand the culture only out of and within the con­ text of its own terms, it seems that each culture is unique and pos­ sesses its own specific, unique traits, and that is where its contribution to humanity as a whole is located. But on the other hand, their humanistic nationalism used this idea when it claimed that the nation must not claim any superiority over another. Just as in the aforementioned essays, Buber absolutely shook off chauvinistic nationalism and realpoUtik, and set as an example nation­ alism that did not see the nation as a supreme purpose and that strove not for hegemony but to shape the face of the nation, so in his essays from this period he departed from the conception of the mystical experience. Instead, he focussed his attention on the real dialogue—on the concrete link of appeal and response between “I" and “Thou”.83 Parallel to these changes in his religious existentialist thought and direcdy connected to them, Buber exchanged the expe­ rience of fellowship and comradeship based on “the inner mystical experience” experienced by individuals—rather than on the common experience and on life in the primary sense—for “the experience of fellowship” that is lived among persons. Meanwhile he adopted the basic traits of central European religious socialism that had been for­ mulated by, among others, personalities such as his friend Landauer, Ragatz, Holmes, and others.84 In the context of this appeal to the concrete “experience of fel­ lowship”, four of his articles had special importance: “Fellowship”, “Zion and the Youth”, “The Way of Holiness”, and “Freedom”. However, while in “Fellowship” Buber’s new concept was presented in universally human terms, based on Tonnies’ sociological conception, 83 See also Mendes-Flohr, P.R., “Buber Ben Leumanut Le-Mistiqa”, lyyun%the Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 29, Nos. 1-2 (January-February 1980), pp. 89-92. 84 To understand Buber's relationship with these persons and his affinity with their religious socialism see Buber, M., “Shlosha praqim al sotsyalism dati”, jSetwot ba-'Utopy (ed. A. Shapira), Tel Aviv, 1983, pp. 180-182. See also Shapira, A., “Havrutot mithavot ve-tiqun 'olam”, ibid. pp. 276-234;

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in the other three articles, his conception was explained while he openly expounded his Zionist vision. In contrast to the previous con­ cept of “fellowship” that was based on “inner experience”, from now on Buber was to speak of “fellowships” in the context of plain and simple “fulfillment”.83 For instance, in the “fellowship” that he speaks of in these articles, a direct relationship must prevail among per­ sons.**86 This was because, Buber wrote elsewhere, “There is no new culture, no new wholeness of the world of the spirit that is to arise, unless a society of truth shall again arise, and people will live next to one another and with one another together while in living, direct contact”. It will take shape only on account of this link, according to him, just as the Covenant with God takes shape of itself. O n this path, he also made clear that in the concept “fulfillment” (or “real­ ization”) his intention was to fulfill God within the society, within the mass and the din of a crum bling society.87 After all, Buber stressed, in these fellowships alone is the chance contained that the community in the form of a union of cells of fellowships and mankind in the form of a union of communities are liable to take shape through an organic process.88 By way of generalization, one can say that prom inent in Buber’s essays cited above, are the basic ingredients of religious socialism that we have previously discussed. These include contrasting “fel­ lowship” to the way of life in society in the modem metropolis, a kind of organic development in contrast to rational, purposeful, mechanical organization.89 The basic situation that he had in m ind in his analysis was the crumbling of the fundamental cells of soci­ ety that had characterized the Middle Ages, and the rise of the abstract, social theories and rational arrangements of the state that underlie modem Western culture. The claim was that the renewal of society was possible only on the foundation of a new coalescence that would take shape through a process of organic growth. T hat is to say, the fellowships would coalesce through slow growth from small basic cells to broad social spheres while the reciprocal rela­ tions between them would always be direct like the relations between * Ibid. pp. 287-191. w For example see Buber, M., “The Holy Way: A Word to the Jews and to the Nations”, On Judaism (ed. by N. Glanzer), New York, 1967, p. 145. M See ibid. pp. 120-128, 145-148. ■ Ibid. p. 146. 89 Buber, M., “Havruta”, Netivol ba-’Ulopya, p. 164.

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and among friends.90 Nevertheless, what is more important is the fact that in the version of religious socialism that Buber adopted these processes could not exhaust his utopian vision. This was because Buber added the religious dimension to the social utopia as an extremely essential dimension. According to this dimension, “People who long for fellowship, yearn for God. The yearnings for true con­ tact lead to God and every longing for God leads to true fellowship”.9192 We will discuss the meaning of these interpretations from the social aspect later, but at this point we need to emphasize the nexus between this “religious socialism” and Buber’s conception of nationalism that we have sketched above. Like Paul Tillich, Leonard Ragatz, and other religious socialists, Buber too believed that the roots of the depression and separation that prevail in modem society should be sought in the severance of the religious sphere from the secular sphere, a severance that characterized m odernity in general, he claimed.93 This was because, according to the religious socialists, the realpolitik discussed above, which mainly meant turning “the political principle” into the supreme principle and the criterion of good and bad, was the inevitable result of this separation. And that meant splitting the ethical level from the political plane. Meanwhile, as they claimed, there is no ontological status for a division between the sacred and the secular-mundane. O n the contrary, man has the duty to make the secular-mundane into holiness, and the holy into the secular-mundane. After all, the whole world is God’s place. For that reason, human history, in their opinion, is a process carried out between polar axes, “The Kingdom of God” on the one hand, and “the Kingdom of Satan” on the other. Since “the Kingdom of God” is the hope of the Holy Scriptures, we are obliged, they claimed, to broaden the faith in God the Creator of the world and to also apply it to political activity, as well as to other areas of existence that have been abandoned to the rule of pragmatic goals.93 In this vein, Buber proclaimed: “We can act for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven only if we act in all the areas allotted to us”. Indeed, he rejected Messianic politics. However, at the very same time, Buber insisted, * Ibid. pp. 165-166. " Ibid. p. 169. 92 About Buber’s interpretation of the socialism and utopian socialism see Buber, M., “Havruta”, Netivot ba^Uiopya^ pp. 15-156. "J See also Bergmann, S.H., “Leonard Ragatz, ha-lohem lc-malkhut shadai”, Ogim u-mamintmyJerusalem, Tel Aviv, 1959, pp. 172 195.

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the rejection of Messianic politics does not mean removing polines from the zone of holiness.94 Moreover, he claimed, religious social* ism fitted in with the original theological*political conception of Judaism . For instance, Buber discerned its late-blooming expressions in the pan-sacramentalism of Hasidism, while he found the most original, most crystalline expressions of the original Judaism in the “Hebrew humanism” of the Bible. This was because in the Bible the people are sinners as we are, yet there is one sin that they do not commit. They do not demarcate divinity into a special depart­ ment that we call “religion”. This meant, they do not set up a bound­ ary for the divine command in order to tell us: Up till here your authority reaches and here begins the authority of economics, the society, or politics.95 From these premises of religious socialism, as also emerges from his speech at the 12th Zionist Congress discussed earlier, Buber tried to design the mission of Zionism as the herald of the renewal of “Hebrew humanism”. T hat is, Zionism is obliged to heal the rift between morality and politics. In these contexts, it appears that we may find the roots of his demand on Zionism to adopt what he was to later call prophetic realism, instead of reaipoUtik that in the spirit of his conception of Zionism was nothing but collective assimilation. These perceptions may also illuminate his approach towards defining from now on the true dilemma facing Jewish national existence. “On the one hand we are obliged”, he stressed, “to avoid limitation by our own essence in our relationship to the absolute, and not to pre­ sent a god that was made in our own national image instead of the deity that faces us. Yet on the other hand, we are obliged to pre­ serve that relationship in its organic and popular character so that the living divine will not vanish among our camp and will not become merely a lofty idea.”96

94 See Buber, M., “Gandhi: Die Politik und Wir” Werke I, München Heidelberg 1962, s. 1093f. (In English see Buber, M., “Gandhi, Politics, and Us”, Pointing At Way, pp. 126-138, and in particular pp. 137-138). 95 For instance see Buber, M., “Shlosha praqim al sotsyalism dad”, Mtwot bo’Utofrya, pp. 180-182; ibid., “The Holy Way”, On Judaism, pp. 108-148. “ See ibid. pp. 144-148.

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D.2. The Social Elements of the Utopian Socialism of A.D. Gordon, Gustav Landauer, and Buber If we intend to summarize this kind of socialism purely in general terms, then, according to its doctrine, the revolution that will bring about a change in the arrangement of society will not come about according to the laws of dialectical materialism of Karl Marx’s school. The doctrine of utopian socialism does not start from the premise that the revolution is an inevitable result of the development of cap­ italism, as Marxism holds. The basic premise common to the vari­ ous intellectuals who identified themselves with utopian socialism, either in its religious variant or otherwise, was that the revolution is not a result of historical necessity. Therefore, it is no more than a possibility that may be realized, or not realized. In their opinion, the practical meaning of the Marxist theory was granting approval to the world order as the womb of the revolution. Hence, they were even inclined to see Marxism as part of the existing culture and political reality. Thus it was natural that the Marxist camp could not constitute, in their view, an alternative to the modem regime, society, and culture. Joining one of the movements grounded on the Marxist theory was viewed by these young men as readiness to once again take part in the alien world. They wanted to solve their per­ sonal problem, that is, the problem of the alienation of man, of the individual, here and now, and without waiting for the development of conditions that would ripen the longed for revolution. Moreover, the historical determinism at the heart of the Marxist theory was viewed by them as one of the factors in the alienation of man and as a contributory factor in nullifying the importance of the person­ ality and the moral will of the individual in the historical process. This was because acceptance of historical determinism meant direcdy rejecting the free and willed activity of the individual. For that rea­ son, these circles believed that “an appeal for socialism” and for rev­ olution was required. The essence of this appeal was the proclamation that the revolution was possible, but only on condition that people wanted it and would be worthy of it. For example, Gustav Landauer unambiguously stated in A Call to Socialism: Capitalism will not necessarily transform into socialism, it will not van­ ish of necessity from the world, and socialism will not necessarily come about; even the proletarian-state-capitalist socialism of the Marxists will not necessarily come about, and one should not at all regret that. No

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form of socialism will necessarily come about. . . however, socialism can come about and must come about, if we want it, if we create i t .. ,97*9 Hence, instead of the inevitable class war, only as a consequence of which would “the Kingdom of Heaven” come about, according to the laws of dialectical materialism, these socialists pinned their hopes on a revolution starting from the individual and originating in his m oral will and m oral impulse. The religious socialists, such as Landauer, Buber, Holmes, and others, also shared the vision of this revolution that began in the individual and ended in establishing a network of organic cells in which the individual would find his place. At the same time, they sought the sources of socialism—as did Landauer—in “the teaching that man was created in the image [of God]” and in the repeated demands by the Prophets of Israel “for repair of the world into the Kingdom of God”. By their very nature, these beliefs did not allot an important place to the state. On the contrary, the modem state was, they claimed, an expression of the distancing of man from the basic organic cells that were the source of human solidarity. This conception received one of its classic for­ mulations from Landauer when he wrote: The states with their borders, the nations with their discords, are sub­ stitutes for the spirit of the people and the spirit of the community that does not exist. The idea of the state is a spirit and an artificial spirit, a hallucination; it took goals that have no connection among them, that are not connected to the soil, such as the beautiful mat­ ters in the common language and common customs, the matters in economic life, and coupled them together and bound them together with a certain territory.9" O r more sharply: In order to bring about arrangements or to give satisfaction to the continuation of life in the same situation of lack of spirit, in the same decadence, in the same disorder, distress and decline—for that the state exists. . . In a place where there is no spirit and no inner neces­ sity, there is external rule, constitutional arrangements and a state. In a place where there is spirit, there is a society. In a place where there is lack of spirit, there is a state. The state is a substitute for the spirit."

97 Landauer, Gustav, Qriah U-sozialism—ha-ma’hapekh, Tel Aviv, 1951, p. 79. * Ibid. p. 48. 99 Ibid.

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Instead of the state as a basis for the yearned for social change, these utopian theories posed, on the one hand, the society in the sense of a “fellowship” wherein the links between its members are primary and direct. On the other hand, they posed “the people” as that concept had been shaped in the ideological conceptions based on developmental theories. For instance, like Buber’s distinctions between “nationalism”, “nation”, and “people” that we considered earlier, Gordon distinguished between “a nation” that is a “collec­ tive body living and creating” and “a society” that is a “mechani­ cal body moving back and forth, doing”.100 According to these ideational approaches, “the people” or “the nation” is based on an inner necessity and not on external rule expressed through a cons­ titution, governmental structures, and means of coercion. These enti­ ties comprise, in the view of those holding this understanding, natural organic units starting in the individual. The unit’s continuation is the network of basic social cells, such as the family, and its conclu­ sion is the ramified system of basic cells that constitutes at the end of the process a spontaneous, natural joining together, “a man-peo­ ple” in A.D. Gordon’s expression.101 In this vein, Buber too—whose links to socialism I have already discussed—distinguished between the external, limited nature of a change in political arrangements and a change in the inner structure of society. That change, he argued, is not possible through institutions deciding or declaring: but through renewal of the fabric of cells that arises from within, through molding and constant joining of strong social cells . . . through formation and existence of relations between man and man, between group and group, and likewise between people and people.102 There is an overt nexus between these conceptions and the national concept of A.D. Gordon, that was developed in Palestine and was viewed among the members of the coterie, as well as among many others from the German Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir, as a doctrine reflecting l0U Gordon, A.D., Ha-tana ix-ha-avoda, (eds. S.H. Bergmann & E. Shohat), Jerusalem, 1954, p. 234. About the different meanings of this concept see Ofaz, Gad, “Yetsirat ‘am ahdam’; ha-autopya ha-leumit shel Aharon David Gordon” Ha-Tsiyomtt: Mase/ LtTollod ha-Tenuah Ha-Tsiyonit Ve-ha-t'shuv be-Arez Israel, 15 (1991), pp. 55 75, and espe­ cially pp. 61- 66. ,w Buber, M., “Die Revolution and Wir”, Der Jude (1918), p. 347, The text’s cita­ tion is according to Shapira, A., “Havrutot mithavot ve-tiqun 'olam”, in: Buber, M., .Sétivot ba- ’Ijtopya, p. 291.

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the ideology of the Palestinian Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir. In an article about Gustav Landauer, in an anthology edited by Hugo Bergmann and Hans Kohn to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Landauer’s murder, Bergmann discussed in detail the many contact points between their respecdve teachings. While expounding this proximity, he also related that when Gordon first read Landauer’s doctrine he was astonished at the close proximity between them .103 In order to realize this proximity, it is enough to mention the place and status of man the individual, in Gordon’s teachings. His argument against socialism, particularly in its Marxist variant, and due to which he also opposed the use of the term “socialism” on the platform of Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir, was that it based the correction and renewal of human life mainly on the correction of the social order rather than on “correction and renewal of man’s spirit”.104 Similar arguments, as we have seen, could be heard—and indeed were heard—from the utopian socialists as well as from members of the coterie, as we shall see later. In addition this argument, on the grounds of his definition of the nation as a living, creative organic entity, Gordon stated unambiguously: The individual is a member of the nation, and the nation is an unmedi­ ated part of nature. . . A man’s collective life begins with the couple, with family life; however human life in essence... necessarily begins with a more or less large collectivity, with the nation, with the large and extended family. . . Here it is like a kind of workshop of man’s spirit. . . From this link between the individual and the nation, it only remained for Gordon to conclude: . . . the place of the supreme life and of man’s supreme aspirations is essentially in the nation and not in the individual. . . because the indi­ vidual is necessarily a creature of the nation. . . because the nation is a sort of complete personality, a kind of world personality. . . that is likely to develop, to grow according to the special, essential way that the individual grows and develops; the personality is the cell, the per­ sonality is a member of the nation.1"6

"IS See Bergmann, S.H., “Gustav Landauer and A.D. Gordon”, Bergmann, S.H., Ba-mishol (ed. N. Rotenstreich), Tel Aviv, 1967, p. 29. Initially the article was pub­ lished in Bergmann, S.H. & Kohn, H. (eds.), ‘Am-Adam: divrei ha-matspun ha-moshi. Jerusalem, 1931. Gordon, A.D., Ha-uma vt-ha-amda. p. 235. Ibid. “Le-beirur ha-hevdel bein ha-yahadut ve-ha-natsrut”, Gordon, A.D., Haadam re-ha-trpa, (eds. S.H. Bergmann & E. Shohat), Jerusalem, 1951, pp. 281-282.

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This meant that the family in which a man is bom is not sufficient to clarify the individual's development as a human creature. However, it is the agent that transfers to the individual the national founda­ tion shared by it and by other families in the national sphere. At the same time, neither is mankind the source for the individual's humanity. This is because it is no more than a broad circle of rela­ tionships with which the individual has no direct contact. Only through the ethnic group, the nation, does he touch it. Thus, the ethnic group is not as broad as mankind nor is it as narrow as the family. It is no more than a combination of families that creates an organic whole. At the opposite pole from this organic society, Gordon saw before his eyes mechanical associations—to use his term—like the state, the class, and the party. A man does not enter into them in the full scope of his personality. Hence, these mechanical associ­ ations do not surround the individual with circles that widen out­ wards to the ethnic group. The roots of his opposition to “class” and the class struggle are located in these conceptions. The individual, Gordon stressed, does not join the class except on account of his being “a worker” or “a capitalist”, just as he does not join a party except on account of a political interest that does not comprehend all of his being. This applies too, and perhaps particularly, in regard to the socialist par­ ties which a man joins with an aspiration to rule for the sake of achieving an economic or social interest. Therefore, he believed that the possibility of changing society was tied solely to the return to nature. The society resulting from limited needs cannot renew itself through its own forces. Only a return to nature and drawing nour­ ishment from nature, of which the organic cells are an organ, will make renewal possible. In general, rational institutions, insofar as they are rational, are not, in Gordon’s view, any more than the outcome of weakness and a desire to overcome this weakness. They do not attest, in his opin­ ion, to a hidden inner wealth.106 Logically then, every purposeful creation is meant to complete something that does not exist in it. Hence, it comes into the world out of intention and decision. In contrast to this, a creation by a “nation” represents an expression 1(16 It is important to recall in this context that Ahad Ha-am thought that the state is the realization of the national spirit. About Buber's relationship to the state see Simon, A. Emst, Qao ha-tihum, Giveat Chaviva, 1973, p. 5 and further.

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of existing forces. For that reason, it cannot be the result o f weakness or the result of willed ascendancy that is meant to overcome the weakness. Therefore, when relating to the state and rule, G ordon will emphasize in cruder terms: The lust for power came into the world not out of an abundance of forces, but rather from the lack of the essential strength, the strength to live life in all its fullness, to live with all the world of creation, with all that is in it, to live the life of the world”.107 Thus Gordon transfers the arena of the revolution from society, the party, and the class to the world of the individual, which is the root of everything. In his opinion, only when each one of us creates him­ self as a new individual through work and natural life, will there be room to think of building a new society. Therefore, the requirement was turned not towards the class but to each and every individual, “Because completing what is lacking in the form must come from man, from the soul”. This was while socialism and the rest of the institutions built on purposeful interest made external life the principal m atter.108 They work mainly by the power of suggestion that is: . . . the action of public hypnosis that the masses, since they have been hypnotized once, already perform hypnosis on each one of themselves by their own strength, by the power of the masses. And this is the power of the individual who rose in some manner to stand in the line of hypnotizers against the masses.109 The rejection of the institutions of political governance as well as the rejection of all parties is only a natural conclusion, therefore, from these premises. An institution of rule aims at the opposite pole from a natural, organic order of life. Thus, it was only natural that the army symbolized—for Gordon—the clearest embodiment of the state oriented on power.

11,7 Gordon, A.D., “Qtsat 'iyyun be-shcla ptuha”, Ha-uma ve-ha-avoda, p. 389. This article was wrinen in the framework of the polemic about recruitment to the Hebrew Troop (Ha-gdudim ha-Tvrim"). |IW See also Bergmann, S.H., Aharon David Gordon: ha-ish u-deotav. Jerusalem, 1951, pp. 32-33. ,,N Gordon, A.D., “Qtsat 'iyyun be-shela ptuha”, Ha-uma ve-ha-avoda, p. 384.

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E. The Expression of Religious Socialism in the Activity and Thought

of the Members of the Coterie after the First World War In the spirit of Buber and Landauer’s conceptions, which base social* ism on the individual’s moral will rather than on historical neces­ sity, and even less on the state and its institutions, Bergmann formulated in his programmatic essay, “O ur Socialism”,110 the differences between official or ordinary socialism and the socialism that, in his opinion, characterized Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir. This was insofar as the socialism of the latter rejected “all state socialism”. That is, Bergmann explained, “We do not think that transferring the means of production to the state. . . will provide some sort of solution to the Social Question”. He immediately joined to this rejection a resolute rejection of “every materialistic outlook, whether in understanding history or in under­ standing the situation of the worker”. After all, Bergmann explained, a solution based solely on raising the wages of the worker without an essential change in the worker’s relationship to his work will not last. It is clear that from here it is only one step to rejection of every socialist conception that saw the main held of its activity on the political plane alone. This was because every political solution is in the last analysis no more than a materialistic solution, and in such capacity it is no more than a mere external solution. For that rea­ son, Bergmann stressed: Our socialism aspires, in contrast to all forms of Marxism, to fulfillment going from the bottom to the top. No true revolution will occur in man­ kind unless it first occurs in its cells; that is, in the family, in the group.111 There is an overt link between this conception and the religious socialism whose traits we have discussed earlier. Besides, since Bergmann did not believe in the revolution or in changes coming from above, it was only natural that instead of the revolution, he would pose evolutionary development. This meant, in his view, slow, directed growth while fostering “seeds of the future” that already existed in reality. Hence, instead of organizing a “labor army” from above, in the spirit of the proposals of Fuchs and Weltsch,112 Bergmann

"" Bergmann, S.H., “Ha-sotsyaliyut shlanu”, Ha-po’el ha-tza’ir 9 (1920). Ibid. 112 See also Bergmann, S.H., “Halomot u-mamashut”, Ha-artts (4 June 1920).

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pointed to the enterprises already existing in Palestine and to the pioneers. This was because, he argued, it was not direction from above and the establishment of institutions “according to any the* ory whatsoever” that would aid in building up the Land of Israel. Only help for the pioneers and fostering enterprises that they had set up, he claimed, was the right road to building up the country. After all, “every development is made step by step and the reality in the present is always pregnant with the future”.113 In this con­ cept, the utopian aspect too was overt, this was especially so the more it had to do with the overriding principle that the means must resemble the goal. The aspiration to “fellowship” (Gemeinschaft) and to “the fellow­ ship experience” was not missing from the context of this socialism that rejected politics and materialism. Fellowship and the experience of it had been an important feature in Buber and Landauer’s social­ ist teachings. This was because fellowship, as the antithesis of alien­ ated, bourgeois society, was identical to the true goal of socialism as seen by the members of the coterie as well as by those close to them in Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir. Like many of their contemporaries and mem­ bers of their social class, both Jews and Germans, they loathed ego­ tistic, materialistic capitalist society and its corruption. In the spirit of utopian socialism, they held that mankind could be saved only through basic change in man, and in the relationships between men. Therefore, they believed, instead of a society based on materialistic, interest-oriented relationships, fellowship based on an organic, human link among people must be established.114 Indeed, the loathing for European capitalist society and the yearn­ ing for fellowship appear in almost all the articles in which these young men described the future society that must arise in a Zionist Land of Israel. For example, Bergmann saw the contact point between the German Zionist intellectuals and the Jewish workers’ movement as “a common longing to reshape common human life” (in a sur­ vey that he wrote on the occasion of publication of a translation o f the book Tizftor). “The Jewish workers call this”, Bergmann observed, “socialism”." 5 In a similar spirit Ludwig Strauss wrote, “We need

Ibid. 114 See also Buber, M., “Lenin and the Renewal of Society”, Paths in Utopia, Boston, 1958, pp. 99 -128. ni H. Bergmann, “Yizkor”, Der Jude (1918-1919), pp. 243-244.

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to cast away the sins of the European-American environment when we go to Palestine”.116 The concept of “fellowship” is also the con­ cept that drove their conception of nationalism and socialism into a coherent doctrine. In their view, since a fellowship is contingent on the structure of basic organic bodies upon which society is based, then it will not arise among mankind in general, since a fellowship draws nourishment from links with the past, the blood, the culture, and history. For that reason, it must be national. The aspiration to oneness—that we have discussed earlier—is connected to this aspect.117 Thus the young Jew from the West sought fellowship not only in order to overcome his isolation in the mechanical capitalist society, but also for the purpose of repairing the rift in his inner being, as a son of the Jewish people by his origin who was living in another culture. Hence, in Weltsch’s opinion, nationalism and socialism derive “from almost the same roots”. The origin of nationalism was the need of a man to define his place in a fellowship, and nationalism was recognition of that fact. Meanwhile, socialism originated in the need to realize fellowship. Therefore, Weltsch believed that true nationalism must be socialist. Otherwise it was likely to become devoid of content. But socialism too must be national, so that it will not lack “the essential links without which true fellowship is not pos­ sible”." 8 Thus, only socialist nationalism is capable of creating a fel­ lowship of a people, a Volksgemeinschaft, that is bound together by ropes of love instead of by the egoism of individuals that is the basis of capitalism.119 Their loathing for bourgeois society was noticeably expressed in Bergmann’s definition of the socialism of Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir, and in their aversion to ordinary party politics. The way to the fulfillment of socialist society— the fellowship—was, as previously stated, edu­ cation of the individual and change of his spirit. Since that was so, in their view, one ought not to adopt the methods of class social­ ism which is based on interests, because interests are by nature the system of relationships in a society, but not in a fellowship. For that reason, it was impossible to establish a fellowship by the accepted

l,K L. Strauss, ibid. p. 741. 1,7 We have dealt with this subject in the context of Buber’s Three Addresses on Judaism. See chapter 8. "* R. Weltsch, “Nationalismus und Sozialismus”, DerJude (1919-1920), pp. 194-195. H. Bergmann, “Die Wahre Autonomie”, Der Jude (1919-1920), pp. 368-373.

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method of political party struggle. Hence, setting up a fellowship— which is “a union of lives”, in contrast to a society which is “a union of interests”—requires a different conception, more comprehensive and deeper than that of the conventional parties—whether socialist or non-socialist—that do not deviate from the concepts of existing society and its practices. The policy of the parties is pragmatic and interest-oriented, and it does not aspire to essential changes in m an and society. Conversely, a true revolutionary politics can only be based on meta-politics, that is, on a politics that flows from a sys­ tem of absolute values and is a means of realizing them .130 We find in these contexts the roots of the great emphasis that, in their view, had to be put on education and on molding the ideals that educa­ tion would focus on. Likewise, also embedded here is their opposi­ tion to or reservations about the formulation of party programs. Given these premises, their position is clear as to why Ha-po’el H atza’ir must not be a party in the conventional sense.131132 Moreover, partisanship seemed to these young men, who placed particular impor­ tance on the inner revolution, as preoccupation with supeifldal, exter­ nal matters, rather than essential ones. In this vein, Weltsch wrote: “In a place where partisanship dominates, a conflict that has no inner supporting logic can easily be aroused.133 And in this vein, he wrote elsewhere: “The youth is against party programs that ‘do not shape life.’”133 As a m atter of fact, he recognized that it was impos­ sible to totally give up on politics in the accepted sense. This was because it was one of the necessary means for the fulfillment o f ideals; however, at the same time it must not “determine the char­ acter of the movement, rather the movement must be built on con­ crete work and education in the broadest sense”.134 It was only natural therefore that most of them, such as the mem­ bers of the coterie that we are focussing on, found themselves close to the ideas of the non-Marxist Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir Party. This Party stressed the importance of constant education to deepen the link to manual labor, especially to working the soil, the need for a return 120 R. Weltsch, “Nationalismus und Sozialismus”, DerJude, (1919-1920), pp. 194-195. 131 For example see L. Strauss's thoughts in Die Arbeit 12 (20 June 1919). 132 Sec also R. Weltsch, “Nationalismus und Sozialismus”, Der Jude, (1919-1920), pp. 194-195. 121 R. Weltsch, “Jugend spricht”, Der Jude, (1918-1919) p. 340. 124 Weltch to Buber, 2 August 1921, In: Buber, Martin, Hiiufei jgmt 1918-1938. Jerusalem, 1990, p. 73.

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4 13

to the sources of Jewish-Hebrew culture, and for social justice. They found in Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir a movement that responded to their wishes for true socialism, particularly since it was not a political party in the accepted sense or as Goldschmidt defined it: “W hat is Hapo’el Ha-tza’ir for the young German Zionist?. . . An idea, an out­ look on life, but never a party outlook”.123 In a similar spirit, Arlosoroff too declared at the Prague Congress: Speeches by comrades. . . have demonstrated that our comrades are all becoming attached to the idea of our comrades in the Land of Israel. Nevertheless, we feel that in regard to clarification of the social question we have progressed more than our comrades. We have tried not so much to clarify the social problem for ourselves but rather to also penetrate into the situation. In our views as to building up our economy in Palestine and in the Exile the Weltanschauung of Gustav Landauer has served us as a foundation.126 In fact these ideas, fellowship, education of man for socialism, dis­ sociation from politics and from partisanship, and even opposition to them, were not unique to Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir. They reflected wide­ spread moods among the young intellectuals and many of the edu­ cated youth of the bourgeois strata in that period. The fulcrum in the socialist revolution that they envisioned was man, precisely as a concrete individual. Therefore, they saw educating man and devel­ oping his sense of justice as the bedrock foundation for their polit­ ical activity. O n this basis, Bergmann stated, while relating to the issue as to whether a change in conditions or a change in man was a necessary condition for the revolution, “We will not act against the methods of work of capitalism but against the capitalistic spirit”.127 Faith in the mind and an aspiration to foster it, that were expressed in their attitude towards education, and faith in social change that would begin with the individual, were extremely clearly expressed too in Bergmann’s critique of Fuchs’ program .128 Bergmann, who examined the program in detail, argued that—besides one or two mistakes in Fuchs’ program, which do not concern us—the principal weak point of programs of this kind was that they based everything V. Goldschmidt, “Zionistische Jugend und Hapoel Hazair”, Die Arbeit, (20 September 1919). Ve'idat Prag, Labor Achive V402. w H. Bergmann, “Die Wahre Autonomie”, Der Jude, (1918- 1919), p. 370. About Fuch’s program see Bergmann, “Halomot u-mamashut”, Ha-arets (4 June 1920).

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on the “prohibition and permission of the state”. Yet, reality in the world as a whole and in central Europe in particular had demon­ strated “that prohibitions of this kind have no force”. Therefore, Bergmann concluded in an unambiguous statement, “a social order can be based only on education of the people. The people have to be changed, not only the arrangements”.129 On the grounds of this socialist Weltanschauung, it is clear that when they came to contend with concrete demands, as with the issue of nationalizing the soil, or with the question of the place of private capital in building up the country, subjects that especially preoccu­ pied the German Zionists after the First World W ar, they felt that they were facing a dilemma—Was it not possible to demand a change in conditions before a change in man? There were those who tried to solve the dilemma like Ludwig Strauss who proclaimed in a kind of compromise: “We do not belitde the power of conditions at all. We know that the legal arrangements of the socialist regime were a shield from capitalist attacks for socialism in form ation__ However, our socialism will be realized only when once again there will be no need for legislation. . . when everything that it [i.e., legislation] requires to be done will be done out of free will”.130 And if indeed, until that time, “The socialist economic regime will not come into existence without the socialist spirit, just as the socialist spirit will not hold out without the formation of an economic regime”, then, in the last analysis, in Strauss’ opinion, as well as in the opinion of most of the other young intellectuals, the advantage was to the spirit “that penetrates matter” and in consolidating with it a single unity is formed.131 Robert Weltsch too, who related to this question in 1921, basically answered in an identical vein to that of Strauss. However, he did so while shifting the emphasis to the practical side. In his words, “The opposition between the two directions in the party is over the issue: Which of the two demands—that is, a change in man or a change in conditions and institutions—is primary and which is secondary”. Weltsch’s answer was unambiguous: A change in man is the primary thing, according to Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir.132

Ibid. 130 L. Strauss, “der Sozialismus und die Klasse1*, Die Arbeit (31 July 1919). 131 L. Strauss, “Unser Radikalismus“, ibid. (5 July 1919). 132 R. Weltsch, “Prolegomena“, ibid. (20 August 1919).

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It is proper to point out that this idealistic world oudook was not common to all members of Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir and not even to all members of the Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir Party in Germany. For instance, Arlosoroff who was one of the founders of the German Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir, did not accept the idealistic view as to the supremacy of the spirit. Instead, he stood for the reciprocal influence ( Wechselwirkung) of spirit and m atter.133 These differences of opinion may explain the criticism of ArlosorofFs essay, “The Popular Socialism of the Jews,’ by some members of Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir, who were close to mem­ bers of the coterie. This essay based the socialism of Ha-po’el Hatza’ir on “the special economic structure” of the Jewish people, just as the Eastern European Tse'irey Zion did. This essay seemed to be too Marxist to the members of the coterie and those close to them, and also excessively influenced by the reality of Eastern Europe and the Tse'irey Zion there. O n the one hand, the latter rejected the teaching of the class struggle, but since, whether they liked it or not, they were forced to fight for the interests of the Jewish work­ ers in Eastern Europe, but not in Western Europe, they were constandy broadening the framework of the class. The members of the coterie and those close to them claimed that T se'irey Zion and Arlosoroff had created an ardficial construction of a new “working” class. Yet, they objected, this was merely a local and temporary basis, and it was impossible to base a world oudook on it. In the context of the cridcism from these circles, the hope was also heard that another book, “perhaps by M artín Buber, will present the theory of Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir”.134 The differences between them flowed from various sources, as well as from various intellectual oudooks and positions and from attitudes grounded on various realities. But they also derived from differing social origins. As previously stated, at the beginning of the century the socialism of the young Western intellectuals was prevalent among various circles of the German intelligentsia. This was an ethical-anar­ chist socialism, emotional and without a goal or clear plan of action.135 On the other hand, ArlosorofFs socialism largely fitted the situation

1,1 V.Ch. A. “Antikritik", ibid. 1,4 H. Gugig, Der Jüdische Volkssozialismus, ibid. (20 July 1919). IU About the characteristic of this socialism see also H.H. Knuetter, Die Juden und die Duetsche Linke in der Weimarer Republik, Düsseldorf^ 1971, p. 46 and further.

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of the Jews in Eastern Europe, and came as an attentive response to their interests. In this context, one ought to point out that even among the intellectuals close to the members of the coterie, different views from those described above were sometimes heard, although they too brushed close to those of the basic anarchist conceptions. For instance, in W alter Preuss’s opinion, “the anarchistic-individual­ istic” views “of Landauer and the Bolsheviks” were indeed “a nec­ essary development but only after the conclusion of the class struggle”.136 This ethical-anarchist socialism was, in the view of the young intel­ lectuals, the most radical among all the socialist conceptions, since it demanded renewal of all life, and not only renewal of the econ­ omy and society. Indeed, as against those who believed that inter­ national, materialist socialism was the most radical, Ludwig Strauss stated: “Neither nationalism nor idealism is capable of removing the radicalism from our socialist will”.137*These young intellectuals could find in the enterprise of the Second Aliya and in the writings of its members, the embodiment of their own conceptions and wishes. In Gordon's work, for example, they could find a national concep­ tion with which they were ready to identify. His rejection of the class ideology to fit in with their own conception of socialism, and in the agricultural communes (kvutsot) they too saw a way to realize socialism as it was depicted in their social anarchist outlooks. Moreover, the Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir Party in Palestine was also close to them due to its reluctance to define itself as a party in the ordinary sense o f the word. Despite this, in contrast to Ha-po'el Ha-tza’ir, some o f them, such as Bergmann, Weltsch, and Kohn, who defined them­ selves as “socialists”, also demanded—despite their reservations—a socialist program and even the right to join the Socialist International. In this matter they found themselves very close to the Tse'irey Zion in Eastern Europe as it was developing in the years 1917—1918.,3B Bergmann, for example, who was close to the Tse'irey Zion's view of socialism, and even felt very sympathetic towards the social­ ist Ahdut Ha-avoda and its leaders such as Berl Katznelson,139 also ■a» w Prcuss, “Wohin gehen wir?”, Die Arbeit (7 August-September 1920). 137 L. Strauss, “Unser Radikalismus“, ibid. (5 July 1919). ,3B See also Shapira, Josef, Ha-po'el ha-tza'ir: ha-ra’ahym ve-ha-ma’ahse, Tel Aviv, 1967, pp. 336- 346; Geva Yishai, Ha-po’el ha-tza’ir be-shnut ha-'esrim ha-derkh le-mifleget ha-po’alim, (unpublished dissertation), Hebrew University Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 1986, pp. 45-60. 1:19 Bergmann to Buber, 19 September 1919, Buber, Martin, Hibtfei jgrot 1897 -1918, pp. 129-131. See also Weltsch to Buber, 9 October 1919, ibid. pp. 144-145.

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strove for more comprehensive unity than that which was established in the aftermath of the Prague Conference. For instance, he saw the establishment of Ahdut Ha-’avoda as an important turning point in the history of Jewish socialism. This was because, he believed that up till that point, Europe had exported its theories to the Land of Israel, and now the Palestinian worker was carrying his perception of the socialism of labor and of the revolutionary meaning of the Hebrew movement in Judaism to Europe. Against this background, in his opinion, one ought to see the Prague Conference as a pre­ lude to unity with Ahdut Ha-’avoda.140 These demands, which stood in apparent contradiction to their abhorrence for politics, should be seen as flowing from two sources connected to their existential situation. The fears of militarism and chauvinism that were aroused in them as a consequence of the First W orld W ar brought them close to socialism, as it were. Thus, on the one hand, these young men sought to overcome nationalism, whereas on the other hand, they sought to raise it to the level of an ethical ideal. In this context, they believed that ties to an inter­ national m ovem ent would also serve as a shield against the intensification of chauvinist moods. Weltsch, for instance, held that solidarity of this sort was needed primarily to prove that “our nation­ alism does not separate us from the rest of mankind”.141 For that reason, their friend Hans Kohn too demanded a positive position towards the Second Socialist International. He did so whilst express­ ing his dissatisfaction with Zionists who were embittered by the pogroms against Jews, yet at the same time “do not protest against the pogroms by the English in Ireland”.142 Likewise, Bergmann too aspired to see the Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir Party not as “a mere national movement”, but as “part of a world movement”. In his opinion, the Jewish National Home would be built only with support from the socialists of other peoples. “Indeed”, Bergmann declared, “they will not build our National Home but neither will we build it isolated by ourselves”.143 Hans Kohn went even farther than he did, as later proven by his withdrawal from Zionism and his emigration from

140 H. Bergmann, “Zur Gruendung der Hilachdut Ahaavoda in Palästina”, Die Arbeit (20 October 1919). 141 R. Weltsch, “prlegomena”, ibid. (20 August 1921). 142 See Kohn, H., Nationalismus, Wien, 1922, pp. 110-128. See also ibid. pp. 15-22. 141 Bergmann, S.H., “präg”, Ma abamt 9 (1920).

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Palestine to the United States after the Western Wall incidents. Kohn did not shrink from stating: A comprehensive, full solution to the Jewish Problem is possible only in the framework of a comprehensive, full solution to the Problem of Humanity.'44 In this context, one can also explain the apparently strange phe­ nomenon that precisely these personalities could see themselves as a bridge between the Eastern European Tse'irey Zion and the Palestinian Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir, whose members also came from Eastern Europe.145 The members of Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir in Palestine remembered the Tse'irey Zion from the time before the First World War, as a nation­ alist, non-socialist movement. As Gordon wrote, they believed that, “The Tse'irey Zion do not speak in the name of socialism but specifically in the name of nationalism”.146 But at this point they dis­ covered to their astonishment that even the Tse'irey Zion, who had been influenced by the great Russian Revolution, aspired to be an activist mass movement.147 Meanwhile, the members of Ha-po’el Hatza’ir in Palestine saw their organization not as a mass party but as “a circle of people who are brothers, linked one to the other by an intimate thread, in shared labor and in a search for ways and forms of collective life”.148 Against the background of this estrangement, the proximity between the Palestinian Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir, and the men whom we are focussing on and members of their circle who had joined the German Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir, automatically came to light. It was unquestionable verified in the proximity discovered between the thinking of Gordon and Landauer. The recognition o f this proximity was well formulated by Arlosorov, one of the out­ standing spokesmen of the German Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir Party, when he stated: The ideational development of the German Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir draws nourishment from the Land of Israel more than does the development*41 144 Kohn, H., “Perspektiven (1919)”, Nationalismus, pp. 17. I4i See also Shapira, Josef, Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir: ha-ra’ahjm ve-ha-ma’ahse, Tel Aviv, 1967, pp. 336-346; Geva, Yishai, Ha-Poet ha-tza’ir be-shruU ha-esrim: ha-derkh le-mifleget hapo’alim, (unpublished dissertation), Hebrew University Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 1986, pp. 45-60. 144 Gordon, A.D., Mikhtaoim ve-Reshimot. (eds. S.H. Bergmann & E. Shohat), Jeru­ salem, 1957, p. 79. 147 See also Shapira, Josef, Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir: ha-ra’ahyon ve-ha-ma’ahse, p. 333. 144 See “aharei ha-moa’atsa shel ha-Po’el ha-tza’ir”, Ba-derekh, Nos. 5-6 (1920/1921).

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of our popular socialists in Russia, and A.D. Gordon’s influence is especially strong. But their way led them automatically to the very same goals—in an independent manner and without it being caused by the influence of comrades from outside Germany.149* However, it seems that it was difficult to bridge the contrasts between the Palestinian Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir and the Tse'irey Zion. As against the demand for an inner revolution of the individual as a condition for the repair of society in the spirit of the Palestinian Ha-po’el Hatza’ir, of Buber and of the members of the circle close to him, the Tse'irey Zion emphasized the mass political struggle as the chief way to achieve socialism. “We do not want to solve the question of the individual, but rather the question of the Jewish masses”, one of their representatives declared.130 On the other hand, as to the demand for a socialist definition and a socialist program, the Tse'irey Zion and the Western intellectuals were of the same mind in supporting the proposal to insert the concept “socialism” into the program, while the Palestinian Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir led by A.D. Gordon vehemently opposed it. In his lecture on “Society and Fellowship”,151 Buber tried to explain the basic positions of the three components of The H itah’dut in order to disclose their unity. In his words, on the one hand stood the men of the Palestinian Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir who lived the ideas of “Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir as a whole”. In his opinion, their being cut off from what was happening in the world worked both to their advantage and to their disadvantage. The advantage was that their creative work flowed from reality itself, and was not influenced by ideas that did not fit this reality (i.e., Marxist socialism). The disad­ vantage was both that they did not know “the new ideas and con­ ceptions in world socialism [i.e., Landauer]”, and that they did not see that what they were fulfilling was now also the ideal of new cur­ rents in world socialism. In this context, he also commented: “This is a great thing that is happening n o w . . . not specifically the great official events, but what is occurring in the background. And what the Palestinians are living belongs to this in a m anner that they will

149 See Ariosoroff, Cheim, “ha-sotsyalizm ha-'amami ha-yehudi”, Kctavim, vol. 3, Tel Aviv, 1934, p. 86. 1511 Ha-Pb'el ha-Tza’ir, No. 28 (1920). 151 The citation is from the Buber Archive in the National Library in Jerusalem. There is an uncorrected version in Qontras 56 (10 Heshvan 5680).

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not yet be able to understand or know”. In contrast, the advantage of the T se'irey Zion originated in the fact that they were living within the masses, in close contact with them, whereas their disad­ vantage lay in their being excessively influenced by the Marxist the­ ories that did not fît the situation and needs of the Jewish people. Standing between these two poles, according to him, were the Western members of Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir who were “on a lonely tower, and from this tower we look out from a distance and see both sides as one”. This was because the W estern H a-po’el H a-tza’ir, Buber explained, represented the synthesis of nationalism and socialism based on the concept of fellowship. T hat is to say, the old socialism, the Marxist variety, was based on the existing, mechanical society, whereas the new, true socialism aspired to ’’organic fellowship”. Buber for his part, like Landauer, rejected the existing socialism not only because it was mechanistic, but also because it was centralized, whereas the society o f the social­ ist future must, in his view, be decentralized. This was because only thus, in the spirit of Gustav Landauer’s religious anarchist concept, was it destined to be ’’the fellowship of fellowships”, Gmemschqfl der Gemeinschaften. In fact, Buber confessed that the members o f the Palestinian Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir ”do not think about anything but work at the beginning—and righdy so”. But he had no doubt that their final goal was ’’building up the true society of the people in the Land of Israel, [a society] that is nothing but fellowship”. In an almost identical spirit, Bergmann too concluded, the Palestinian Hapo’el Ha-tza’ir embodies “creative socialism”, whereas the Tse'irey Zion embodies political socialism. Yet, both currents are in them­ selves, without a higher synthesis, “devoid of strength and cannot create and fulfill”.152 In the end, despite their efforts and in accordance with the demand of the Palestinians, and especially due to Gordon’s uncompromising posidon, no program was adopted at the Prague Conference. What was approved was only the common goal that united them all. This goal was creating a Hebrew society in the Land of Israel on the foun­ dations of self-labor without exploiters or exploited. In contrast, as to a program, it was decided to discuss it only at the coming world conference.153 Therefore, it seems that the various currents o f The 152 Bergmann, S.H., “präg”, Ma'abarot 9 (1920), p. 220. ,iJ See Ha-Po’el ha-tza’ir, Nos. 30-31 (1920).

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H itah’dut “did not constitute a definite unity in advance” and that the movement was in a process of formation. Nevertheless, there is no doubt at the same time that it had “a clear nucleus of ideas” on account of which the members of the Western Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir could continue to play the role of mediator between the Palestinians and the Eastern European Tse'irey Zion.154 Subsequent to the Prague Con­ ference it became clear to the members of the Palestinian Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir that precisely those among them who were extreme in their demands, like Gordon and Eliezer Jaffe, were close to the members of the Western Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir, because “the Westerners too arc extreme”.153 In that way it became wondrously clear that the West­ erners—and this mainly applies to members of the coterie like Berg­ mann, Weltsch, and Kohn—were also extremist from another point of view. This was because, “Precisely they were the closest to the Left Tse'irey Zion in regard to highlighting socialism”.156 In fact, Shimon Ravidowitz too, who was a shrewd observer, discerned imme­ diately that Buber indeed appeared as “a supportive teacher to the T se'irey Zion, but actually he opposed them and surreptitiously undermined the whole foundation of their outlooks”. Buber, Ravidowitz understood, did demand a socialist program, but his conception was essentially identical to that of the Palestinian Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir.157 Nevertheless, even if there was great proxim ity between the Palestinian Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir and its Western counterpart on the conception of man and society, the contrasts—conscious or uncon­ scious—separated them as to the very concept of Zionism. For most members of the Palestinian Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir the aspiration for a Jewish majority in Palestine was on the order of an axiom that one did not question. “Because the Land of Israel is not permitted to be merely a national center, but it is the perfect solution to our prob­ lems”.158 Meanwhile, the members of the coterie, like other young intellectuals who joined the German Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir, leaned toward Ahad Ha-am’s conceptions as to a spiritual center without making it depend on achieving a Jewish majority in the country. The con­ ception of the men whom we are focussing on was expressed in1 1’* Wchsch, F., “Rundscreiben der zentralen Vaad”, Die Arbeit (5/6 April 1920). m Rabinowitz, J., “ al ha-ve'ida”, Ha-Pb’el Ha-Tza’h, Nos. 30 -31 (1920). ,5ft Ibid. ■'7 Ravidowitz, J., “ha-ve'ida be-prag”, Ha-miqlat 2 (1922), p. 130. “ha-ve'ida ha-'olamit shel Ha-Po’el Ha-Tza’ir ve-ts‘irei tsion”, Ha-Po'el Hatza’ir No. 28 (1920).

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Hans Kohn’s remarks when defining Zionism as an attem pt to revive a people. “The creation of a Jewish center in Palestine”, he w rote, “is only a means for that purpose. . . W hether this is the only means—one may dispute that; we do not believe so. We have too deep trust in the elementary forces of the organism of our blood and our culture, four thousand years old. It will persist even with­ out the Land of Israel”. Hence, he concluded, “We cannot view the setdement of Palestine by the Jews as a final goal”.139 This concept should be seen in the wide context that we have been discussing, that is: rejection of the partition between the polit­ ical field and the moral-religious field. For instance, fears were heard among Ha-po’el Ha-tza’ir circles starting with the Balfour Declaration and more intensely after the war with the beginning of the Fourth Aliyah, of a mass aliyah of Jews that was likely, in their view, to blur the Hebrew pioneering character of the new Jewish community in the country. Fears of this sort were also expressed by members of the coterie, yet they did so for absolutely different reasons. Voices were heard among them that were interpreted—like their statements in the Brith Shalom and Ihud polemics160—as readiness to concede on a Jewish majority in Palestine, if achievement of this majority were bound to a policy that would not fit in with the universalisdc, moral principles that were not to be abandoned under any condi­ tions. In this context, we ought to comment that at the Prague Conference Jacob Rabinowitz too was impressed that the W estern Zionists had deduced from Buber and Ahad Ha-am ’s demands—to make Palestine into “a center for humanity”, rather than “a new Albania”, for “the salvation of peoples”, rather than a plaything for the great powers—that “without a moral renewal. . . the whole m at­ ter of the Land of Israel is not worthwhile”.161 These personalities feared a Zionism that aspired to a great Jewish Palestine and they feared the desire to become a majority. Thus in 1918, Bergmann burst out to those who advocated “a Jewish major­ ity” in Palestine: “No, we say, this policy is Satanic; we do not want to enter as rulers”.162 After all, the whole reason for Zionism was

IW Kohn, H., “Aufgaben der Stunde (February 1921)” Nationalismus, p. 96. 1611 Shalom Ratzabi, Ishei merkaz tiropa b’brith shalom': ideología be-mivhanei metsiut, unpublished dissertation, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 1993, pp. 365-375. M *1 J. Rabinowitz, “'al ha-ve'ida”, HaPo'el Ha-tza’ir, Nos. 30-31 (1920). ,M Bergmann, S.H., “Die wahre Autonomie”, Der Jude, (1918-1919), p. 372.

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contained in the aspiration for a model society. So he wrote in his aforementioned article: It is true we want to infuse our spirit into the country, we want to be the decisive spiritual force there. But this is not a question of quantity.161 Further, Hans Kohn came to his support, making it clear that the maximal Zionist program of the members of his circle in respect to Palestine was not quantitative, but qualitadve.164 For that reason, it is obvious that in their view, aliya to the Land of Israel must be selective and productive. This was because, as Bergmann stated clearly as early as 1918: If we implant mass pauperism in the Land of Israel as in Europe, through accelerated settlement, if we exploit the possibilities of tourism and we go to the Land of Israel as peddlers touting their wares, as merchants, and perhaps as swindlers, we will be a majority in a few years, but precisely for that reason the Land of Israel will be absolutely non-Jewish.. It is superfluous to add that there is an extremely obvious, continuous link between these arguments and the sharp reactions of many mem­ bers of the Third Aliya—such as members of the coterie, Arlosoroff, Uri Zvi Greenberg, and others—to the crisis of the Fourth Aliya.166 This position of theirs was not solely based on a foundation of idealistic argumentation. Evaluation of the economic conditions of the country and the possibilities of absorption also had a part in forming it. From this point of view, their thinking ran like the pat­ terns of the teachings of Ahad Ha-am, as they were interpreted in Western Europe. Since they were not subject to the factors com­ pelling emigration, they lacked the sense of urgency that gripped most of the Eastern European Zionists. Therefore, they were ready to agree to limits on immigration; and this was also on account of the difficult economic reality in Palestine in those years and also because of the political conditions there. “It is not enough”, Robert Weltsch wrote to Eliczer Kaplan, the leader of the Tse'irey Zion, that “we have as a single solution one answer in our mouths: Aliya”.167

"•* Ibid. H., Kohn, “Aufgaben der Stunde (February 1921)" Nationalismus, p. 96. Bergmann, S.H., “Die wahre Autonomie”, Der Jude, (1918-1919), p. 373. Iw* See chapter 4, sub-chapter 3. "’7 See Weltsch to A. Kaplan, 23 May 1920, CZA.

C O N C L U S IO N

The political and social worldview of the members of the radical coterie in Brith Shalom was shaped and formed at the end o f the First World War. The ingredients of this worldview can be under­ stood as a coherent doctrine based on their connection to religious socialism, rather than on the basis of reality in Palestine from the time of their aliyah until the establishment of the State. This was because their doctrine was principally concerned with their concep­ tion of the nexus between Zionism and Judaism and between Zionism and socialism, with their repetition of politics in the ordinary sense, and with their definition of the meaning and goals of Zionism as a revival movement of the Jewish people. Therefore, scrutiny of their worldview reveals prom inent trends in it that from many points of view should be seen as a consistent con­ tinuation of a process that began in their exposure to fin-de-siède moods. T heir worldview was based on the organic-developmental conception and on faith in absolute values.' This led to the motivation that fed their attem pt to set up a bulwark against moral relativism on the one hand and their protest against the absolute dom ination of society by political values on the other hand. Their rejection o f rtalpolitik, which meant separation between the political domain and the theological, moral domain, took on its concrete form in the context of these trends. As in the political teachings of Buber, Landauer, and Ragatz, so in the view of the members of the coterie, separation between theology and politics meant liberating the individual from political responsibility and preparing the way for growth of a nation­ alism that sanctified political Messianism or social class Messianism.12 Resonating in these tenets, as we have seen, are more than a few echoes of the dispute over the link between politics and morality that took place among the intellectuals of the W eimar Republic after the First W orld W ar.3 Like the socialist intellectuals of the W eimar

1 See chapter 3. 2 About Messianic thought and its implication and dangers in this context see also Tal, “Le-berur ha-musag ‘thcologya politit’”, Teologya politil ve-ha-raikh ha-shlishi, Tel Aviv, 1991, pp. 49-71. 3 Otto Baumgarten, Politik und Moral, Tübingen, 1916; Heinrich Scholz, Politik und Morak Eine Untersuchung über den sittlichen Charakter der modernen Realpolitik, Gotha, 1913.

CONCLUSION

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Republic, the men we have focussed on here strove, through their utopian goals, for a deeper reality that would defeat the empirical reality of the politicians. O r as Buber put it: "I hear the fictitious politicians who call themselves realpoätiker, because they scarcely see the reality of one day, (but see instead - tr.] the ephemeral reality of entanglement”. Indeed, unlike the “fictitious politicians” who set their goals and appraised political activity from the viewpoint of pol­ itics in the ordinary sense, Buber foresaw the full realization of Zionism as being precisely its success in rescuing “O ur Land of Israel” from the political methods of the Western countries, from the Western economic system, and from the other dominant ways of life of “Western culture”.4 Thus, the Zionist ideology of the members of the coterie was a kind of Zionist version of the socialism of the socialist intellectuals who had reached political maturity around the time of the W eimar Republic. The First World W ar with its accompanying destruction and slaughter, was the decisive experience shaping their worldview in general and their attitude to nationalism in particular. They envi­ sioned a non-political society as the final goal of their political activ­ ity, a society without government and without power struggles or interests. Only in such a society would it be possible, in their opin­ ion, to heal the rift between nationalism and “humanism”. Thus, they claimed, man, the individual, could act in accordance with his conscience and rise above the bounds of the national society with­ out abandoning it.5 Among the outstanding exponents of this com­ plex of aspirations and idea trends were personalities like Buber, Landauer, and Ragatz, who imparted to it its theological-political character. Indeed, in this spirit, in a lecture he gave on Dutch Radio in 1947, Buber asserted that the Jewish-Arab conflict in Palestine should be viewed as first and foremost the result of an illness from which all humanity is suffering today, and that no one is trying to extirpate. “I am referring”, he said, “to the current exaggeration, indeed glorification, of the politics in our world, of its absolute dom­ ination, out of all proportion to what is truly im portant in life”.6 In this context, we ought to read the attitudes of the radical coterie in Brith Shalom towards the Arab Question. Towards the end of 4 Buber, M., Die Jüdische Beilegung, II, Berlin, 1929, pp. 194-195. Mcier-Cronemeyer, “Die Politik der Unpolitischen”, Kölner Zeitschrifl fur Sozio­ logie, 1965, pp. 833 -854. ’’ Mendes-Flohr, P.R. (ed.), “Two Peoples in Palestine (June 1947)”, A Land to Two Peoples: Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs, New York, 1983, p. 194.

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CONCLUSION

the second decade of the century this was not the central issue around which parties and trends crystallized. However, due to their sensi­ tivity to the national problem, they were among the first to discern the existence of an Arab national movement in Palestine. At the same time, in contrast to other circles and movements, such as the Revisionists, they believed that it was necessary and possible to reach understanding and agreement with that movement. Their sensitivity to the national problem was sharpened in the wake of the First W orld W ar, in which they saw an outbreak o f chauvinism th at resulted in slaughter and destruction. Hence, they discerned earlier than others strident chords of chauvinism in the Zionist camp as well, and they devoted their strength and energy to the battle against it. For example, as early as 1918, Bergmann perceived that the test of fire of the true Jewish character of their community would be their attitude to the Arabs.7 Likewise, in response to the Zionist pro­ grams emerging after the Balfour Declaration, Robert Weltsch had noticed that harsh Zionist imperialism was being felt.8 The members of the coterie imagined an exemplar of national­ ism liberated from aspirations of sovereignty and expansion, in con­ trast to the ordinary Western conception of nationalism. They believed in the mental maturity of the nations fighting for their freedom from European imperialism. In the spirit of the doctrine of integration and return to the East, on the one hand, and in view of the upsurge of aggressive-imperialistic nationalism in the European states on the other, they judged that Zionism must bring to the East the message of true nationalism that strives to shape the life of the nation, rather than aspiring to some sort of hegemony. They were inclined to think that the peoples of (