Jewish political movements
Jewish political movements refer to the organized efforts of
Jews to build their own
political parties or otherwise represent their interest in politics outside of the Jewish community. From the time of the
destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans to the foundation of
Israel the Jewish people had no territory, and, until the 1800s they by-and-large were also denied equal rights in the countries in which they lived. Thus, until the 19th century effort for the
emancipation of the Jews, almost all Jewish political struggles were internal, and dealt primarily with either religious issues or issues of a particular Jewish community.
Since Jews were excluded as outsiders throughout Europe, they were mostly shut out of politics or any sort of participation in the wider political and social sphere of the nations in which they were involved until the Enlightenment, and its Jewish counterpart,
Haskalah, made popular movements possible. As long as the Jews lived in
segregated communities, and as long as all avenues of social intercourse with their
gentile neighbors were closed to them, the
rabbi was the most influential member of the Jewish community. In addition to being a religious scholar and clergy, a rabbi also acted as a civil
judge in all cases in which both parties were Jews. Rabbis sometimes had other important administrative powers, together with the community elders. The rabbinate was the highest aim of many Jewish boys, and the study of the Torah (first five books of the Bible) and the Talmud was the means of obtaining that coveted position, or one of many other important communal distinctions. Haskalah followers advocated "coming out of the
ghetto," not just physically but also mentally and spiritually. The example of
Moses Mendelssohn (
1729–
1786), a [Prussian] Jew and grandfather of the great composer Felix Mendelssohn, served to lead this movement. Mendelssohn's extraordinary success as a popular philosopher and
man of letters revealed hitherto unsuspected possibilities of integration and acceptance of Jews among non-Jews.
 |
Moses Mendelssohn, the founder of the Haskalah movement. |
The changes caused by the Haskalah movement coincided with rising revolutionary movements throughout Europe. Despite these movements, only France, Britain, and the Netherlands had granted the Jews in their countries equal rights with gentiles after the
French Revolution in 1796. Elsewhere in Europe, especially where Jews were most concentrated in Central and Eastern Europe, Jews were not granted equal rights. It was in the revolutionary atmosphere of the mid-19th century that the first true Jewish political movements would take place.
During the early stages of
Jewish emancipation movements, Jews were simply part of the general effort to achieve freedom and rights that drove popular uprisings like the
Revolutions of 1848. Jewish statesmen and intellectuals like
Heinrich Heine,
Johann Jacoby,
Gabriel Riesser,
Berr Isaac Berr, and
Lionel Nathan Rothschild busied themselves with the general movement towards liberty and political freedom.
Still, in the face of persistent
anti-semitic incidents like the Damascus Blood Libel of 1840, and the failure of many states to emancipate the Jews, Jewish organizations started to form in order to push for the emancipation and protection of Jews. The
Board of Deputies of British Jews under
Moses Montefiore, the Central consistory of Paris, and the
Alliance Israelite Universelle all began working to assure the freedom of the Jews throughout the middle of the 1800s.
Frustration with the slow pace of Jewish acceptance into European society, and a revolutionary
utopianism, led to a growing interest in proto-socialist movements, especially as early socialist leaders, like
Saint-Simon, preached the emancipation of the Jews.
Moses Hess played a role in introducing
Karl Marx (who grew up Christian) and
Friedrich Engles to
historical materialism. The Jewish
Ferdinand Lassalle, founded the first actual workers' party in Germany, the
General German Workers' Association (which ultimately merged with other parties to become the
Social Democratic Party of Germany) and made Jewish emancipation one of his goals.
The more intellectual socialist movements of the Jews in Western Europe never gathered steam as emancipation took hold. In Eastern Europe and Russia, however, the
Bund founded in 1897, became a key force in organizing Jews, and, at least initially, the major opponent to the most important of the Jewish political movements, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people - Zionism, or the return to Zion.
The aims of Zionism are as follows: The unity of the Jewish people and the centrality of their ancestral and Biblical homeland in Israel. The ingathering of the Jewish people in its historic homeland, the Land of Israel. The strengthening of the re-born Jewish state based upon the prophetic vision of justice and peace. The preservation of the identity of the Jewish people through the fostering of Jewish and Hebrew studies and of Jewish spiritual and cultural values. The protection of Jewish rights everywhere. Zionism, or the idea of a restored national homeland and common identity for the Jews, had already started to take shape by the mid-1800s, with Jewish thinkers such as
Moses Hess whose 1862 work
Rome and Jerusalem; The Last National Question argued for the Jews to settle in
Palestine as a means of settling the
national question. Hess proposed a socialist state in which the Jews would become
agrarianised through a process of "redemption of the soil" which would transform the Jewish community into a true nation, in that Jews would occupy the productive layers of society rather than being an intermediary non-productive merchant class which is how he perceived European Jews. Hess, along with later thinkers such as
Nahum Syrkin and
Ber Borochov, is considered a founder of
Socialist Zionism and
Labour Zionism and one of the intellectual forebears of the
kibbutz movement.
As the 19th century wore on, the persecution of the Jews in Eastern Europe where emancipation had not occurred to the extent it did in Western Europe (or at all) only increased. Starting with the state-sponsored massive
anti-Jewish pogroms following the assassination of
Tsar Alexander II and continuing with the
Dreyfus Affair in
France in
1894, Jews were profoundly shocked to see the continuing extent of
anti-Semitism from Russia to France, a country which they thought of as the home of enlightenment and liberty. In reaction to the first, [Judah Leib Pinsker]] published the pamphlet
Auto-Emancipation in
January 1,
1882. The pamphlet became influential for the
Political Zionism movement. The movement was to achieve momentum under the leadership of an Austrian-Jewish journalist,
Theodor Herzl, who published his pamphlet
Der Judenstaat ("The Jewish State") in
1896. Prior to the Dreyfus Affair, Herzl had been an assimilationist, but after seeing how France treated its loyal Jewish subjects, he became ardently pro-Zionist. In
1897 Herzl organised the
First Zionist Congress in
Basel,
Switzerland, which founded the
World Zionist Organisation (WZO) and elected Herzl as its first President. By the middle of the 20th century, Zionism, in its various forms, would become the major Jewish political movement that transcended national boundaries, although many more Jews would come to participate in the national politics of the countries in which they resided.
In the aftermath of the 1905 pogroms in Russia, the historian
Simon Dubnow founded the
Folkspartei (Yiddishe Folkspartay) which had some intellectual audience in Russia, then, in independent
Poland and
Lithuania in the 1920-1930s where it was represented as well in the Parliaments (
Sejm,
Seimas) as in numerous municipal councils (incl.
Warsaw) till in the late 1930s. The party didn't survive the Shoah, the Holocaust.
Zionism continues to be the central trans-national political movement of most Jews, although it has split into a variety of branches and philosophies that span the political spectrum from left-wing to right-wing. Jews are also active in government in many of the countries in which they live, as well as in Jewish community organizations that often take political positions.
In Israel
See Politics of Israel and List of political parties in IsraelOutside of Israel
Even in religious Judaism there is much room for a range of political or moral views; this is only more so for secular Jews. However, even Jewish secular culture is often strongly influenced by moral beliefs deriving from Jewish scripture and tradition. Over the past century, Jews in Europe and the Americas have traditionally tended towards the
political left, and played key roles in the birth of the
labor movement as well as
socialism. While Diaspora Jews have also been represented in the
conservative side of the political spectrum, even politically conservative Jews have tended to support
pluralism more consistently than many other elements of the
political right. Some scholars [
1] attribute this to the fact that Jews are not expected to proselytize, and as a result do not expect a single world-state, which differs from the beliefs of many religions, such as the
Roman Catholic and
Islamic traditions. This lack of a universalizing religion is combined with the fact that most Jews live as minorities in their countries, and that no central Jewish religious authority has existed for over 2,000 years.
(See list of Jews in politics, which illustrates the diversity of Jewish political thought and of the roles Jews have played in politics.)There are also a number of Jewish secular organizations at the local, national, and international levels. These organizations often play an important part in the Jewish community. Most of the largest groups, such as
Hadassah and the
United Jewish Communities, have an elected leadership. No one secular group represents the entire Jewish community, and there is often significant internal debate among Jews about the stances these organizations take on affairs dealing with the Jewish community as a whole, such as antisemitism and Israeli policies. In the United States and Canada today, the mainly secular
United Jewish Communities (UJC), formerly known as the
United Jewish Appeal (UJA), represents over 150
Jewish Federations and 400 independent communities across
North America. Every major American city has its local "Jewish Federation", and many have sophisticated community centers and provide services, mainly health care-related. They raise record sums of money for
philanthropic and
humanitarian causes in North America and Israel. Other organizations such as the
Anti-Defamation League,
American Jewish Congress,
American Jewish Committee,
American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Zionist Organization of America, Americans for a safe Israel, and the
B'nai B'rith represent different segments of the American Jewish community on a variety of issues.
*
Jewish Question*David Vital, A People Apart: A Political History of the Jews in Europe 1789-1939, Oxford University Press, 2001.
*
My Jewish Learning on Jewish Political Movements*
URJ Emancipation information
