Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By simmons on October 27, 2016

Zionism as an organized movement is generally considered to have been founded by Theodor Herzl in 1897. However, the history of Zionism began earlier and is related to Judaism and Jewish history. The Hovevei Zion, or the Lovers of Zion, were responsible for the creation of 20 new Jewish settlements in Palestine between 1870 and 1897.[1]

Before the Holocaust, the movement's central aims were the creation of a Jewish national home and cultural centre in Palestine by facilitating Jewish migration. After the Holocaust, the movement focused on creation of a Jewish state (usually defined as a secular state with a Jewish majority), attaining its goal in 1948 with the creation of Israel.

Since the creation of Israel, the importance of the Zionist movement as an organization has declined, as the Israeli state has grown stronger.[2]

The Zionist movement continues to exist, working to support Israel, assist persecuted Jews and encourage Jewish emigration to Israel. While most Israeli political parties continue to define themselves as Zionist, modern Israeli political thought is no longer formulated within the Zionist movement.

The success of Zionism has meant that the percentage of the world's Jewish population who live in Israel has steadily grown over the years and today 40% of the world's Jews live in Israel. There is no other example in human history of a "nation" being reestablished after such a long period of existence as a diaspora.[citation needed]

The precedence for Jews to return to their ancestral homeland, motivated by strong divine intervention, first appears in the Torah, and thus later adopted in the Christian Old Testament. After Jacob and his sons had gone down to Egypt to escape a drought, they were enslaved and became a nation. Later, as commanded by God, Moses went before Pharaoh, demanded, "Let my people go!" and foretold severe consequences, if this was not done. Torah describes the story of the plagues and the Exodus from Egypt, which is estimated at about 1400 BCE, and the beginning of the journey of the Jewish People toward the Land of Israel. These are celebrated annually during Passover, and the Passover meal traditionally ends with the words "Next Year in Jerusalem."

The theme of return to their traditional homeland came up again after the Babylonians conquered Judea in 641 BCE and the Judeans were exiled to Babylon. In the book of Psalms (Psalm 137), Jews lamented their exile while Prophets like Ezekiel foresaw their return. The Bible recounts how, in 538 BCE Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylon and issued a proclamation granting the people of Judah their freedom. 50,000 Judeans, led by Zerubbabel returned. A second group of 5000, led by Ezra and Nehemiah, returned to Judea in 456 BCE.

In 1160 David Alroy led a Jewish uprising in Kurdistan that aimed to reconquer the promised land. In 1648 Sabbatai Zevi from modern Turkey claimed he would lead the Jews back to Palestine. In 1868 Judah ben Shalom led a large movement of Yemenite Jews to Palestine. A dispatch from the British Consulate in Jerusalem in 1839 reported that "the Jews of Algiers and its dependencies, are numerous in Palestine...." There was also significant migration from Central Asia (Bukharan Jews).

In addition to Messianic movements, the population of the Holy Land was slowly bolstered by Jews fleeing Christian persecution especially after the Reconquista of Al-Andalus (the Muslim name of the Iberian Peninsula). Safed became an important center of Kabbalah. Jerusalem, Hebron and Tiberias also had significant Jewish populations.

Among Jews in the Diaspora Eretz Israel was revered in a religious sense. They thought of a return to it in a future messianic age.[3] Return remained a recurring theme among generations, particularly in Passover and Yom Kippur prayers, which traditionally concluded with "Next year in Jerusalem", and in the thrice-daily Amidah (Standing prayer).[4]

Jewish daily prayers include many references to "your people Israel", "your return to Jerusalem" and associate salvation with a restored presence in the Land of Israel, the Land of Zion and Jerusalem (usually accompanied by a Messiah); for example the prayer Uva Letzion (Isaiah 59:20): "And a redeemer shall come to Zion..."[citation needed]Aliyah (immigration to Israel) has always been considered a praiseworthy act for Jews according to Jewish law and some Rabbis consider it one of the core 613 commandments in Judaism.[5] From the Middle Ages and onwards, some famous rabbis (and often their followers) immigrated to the Land of Israel. These included Nahmanides, Yechiel of Paris with several hundred of his students, Joseph ben Ephraim Karo, Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk and 300 of his followers, and over 500 disciples (and their families) of the Vilna Gaon known as Perushim, among others.

Persecution of Jews played a key role in preserving Jewish identity and keeping Jewish communities transient, it would later provide a key role in inspiring Zionists to reject European forms of identity.

Jews in Catholic states were banned from owning land and from pursuing a variety of professions. From the 13th century Jews were required to wear identifying clothes such as special hats or stars on their clothing. This form of persecution originated in tenth century Baghdad and was copied by Christian rulers. Constant expulsions and insecurity led Jews to adopt artisan professions that were easily transferable between locations (such as furniture making or tailoring).

Persecution in Spain and Portugal led large number of Jews there to convert to Christianity, however many continued to secretly practice Jewish rituals. The Church responded by creating the Inquisition in 1478 and by expelling all remaining Jews in 1492. In 1542 the inquisition expanded to include the Papal States. Inquisitors could arbitrarily torture suspects and many victims were burnt alive.

In 1516 the Republic of Venice decreed that Jews would only be allowed to reside in a walled-in area of town called the ghetto. Ghetto residents had to pay a daily poll tax and could only stay a limited amount of time. In 1555 the Pope decreed that Jews in Rome were to face similar restrictions. The requirement for Jews to live in Ghettos spread across Europe and Ghettos were frequently highly overcrowded and heavily taxed. They also provided a convenient target for mobs (pogrom). Jews were expelled from England in 1290. A ban remained in force that was only lifted when Oliver Cromwell overthrew the monarchy in 1649 (see Resettlement of the Jews in England).

Persecution of Jews began to decline following Napoleon's conquest of Europe after the French Revolution although the short lived Nazi Empire resurrected most practices. In 1965 the Catholic Church formally excluded the idea of holding Jews collectively responsible for the death of Jesus.

The Age of Enlightenment in Europe led to an 18th- and 19th-century Jewish enlightenment movement in Europe, called the Haskalah. In 1791, the French Revolution led France to become the first country in Europe to grant Jews legal equality. Britain gave Jews equal rights in 1856, Germany in 1871. The spread of western liberal ideas among newly emancipated Jews created for the first time a class of secular Jews who absorbed the prevailing ideas of enlightenment, including rationalism, romanticism, and nationalism.

However, the formation of modern nations in Europe accompanied changes in the prejudices against Jews. What had previously been religious persecution now became a new phenomenon, Racial antisemitism and acquired a new name: antisemitism. Antisemites saw Jews as an alien religious, national and racial group and actively tried to prevent Jews from acquiring equal rights and citizenship. The Catholic press was at the forefront of these efforts and was quietly encouraged by the Vatican, which saw its own decline in status as linked to the equality granted to Jews.[6] By the late 19th century, the more extreme nationalist movements in Europe often promoted physical violence against Jews who they regarded as interlopers and exploiters threatening the well-being of their nations.

Jews in Eastern Europe faced constant pogroms and persecution in Tzarist Russia. From 1791 they were only allowed to live in the Pale of Settlement. In response to the Jewish drive for integration and modern education (Haskalah) and the movement for emancipation, the Tzars imposed tight quotas on schools, universities and cities to prevent entry by Jews. From 1827 to 1917 Russian Jewish boys were required to serve 25 years in the Russian army, starting at the age of 12. The intention was to forcibly destroy their ethnic identity, however the move severely radicalized Russia's Jews and familiarized them with nationalism and socialism.[7]

The tsar's chief adviser Konstantin Pobedonostsev, was reported as saying that one-third of Russia's Jews was expected to emigrate, one-third to accept baptism, and one-third to starve.[8]

Famous incidents includes the 1913 Menahem Mendel Beilis trial (Blood libel against Jews) and the 1903 Kishinev pogrom.

Between 1880 and 1928, two million Jews left Russia; most emigrated to the United States, a minority chose Palestine.

Proto-Zionists include the (Lithuanian) Vilna Gaon, (Russian) Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk, (Bosnian) Rabbi Judah Alkalai[9] (German) Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, and (British) Sir Moses Montefiore.[10] Other advocates of Jewish independence include (American) Mordecai Manuel Noah, (Russian) Leon Pinsker and (German) Moses Hess.

In 1862 Moses Hess, a former associate of Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, wrote Rome and Jerusalem. The Last National Question calling for the Jews to create a socialist state in Palestine as a means of settling the Jewish question. Also in 1862, German Orthodox Rabbi Kalischer published his tractate Derishat Zion, arguing that the salvation of the Jews, promised by the Prophets, can come about only by self-help.[11] In 1882, after the Odessa pogrom, Judah Leib Pinsker published the pamphlet Auto-Emancipation (self-emancipation), arguing that Jews could only be truly free in their own country and analyzing the persistent tendency of Europeans to regard Jews as aliens:

"Since the Jew is nowhere at home, nowhere regarded as a native, he remains an alien everywhere. That he himself and his ancestors as well are born in the country does not alter this fact in the least... to the living the Jew is a corpse, to the native a foreigner, to the homesteader a vagrant, to the proprietary a beggar, to the poor an exploiter and a millionaire, to the patriot a man without a country, for all a hated rival."[12]

Pinsker established the Hibbat Zion movement to actively promote Jewish settlement in Palestine. In 1890, the "Society for the Support of Jewish Farmers and Artisans in Syria and Eretz Israel" (better known as the Odessa Committee) was officially registered as a charitable organization in the Russian Empire, and by 1897, it counted over 4,000 members.

Ideas of the restoration of the Jews in the Land of Israel entered British public discourse in the early 19th century, at about the same time as the British Protestant Revival.[13]

Not all such attitudes were favorable towards the Jews; they were shaped in part by a variety of Protestant beliefs,[14] or by a streak of philo-Semitism among the classically educated British elite,[15] or by hopes to extend the Empire. (See The Great Game)

At the urging of Lord Shaftesbury, Britain established a consulate in Jerusalem in 1838, the first diplomatic appointment in the city. In 1839, the Church of Scotland sent Andrew Bonar and Robert Murray M'Cheyne to report on the condition of the Jews there. The report was widely published[16] and was followed by Memorandum to Protestant Monarchs of Europe for the restoration of the Jews to Palestine. In August 1840, The Times reported that the British government was considering Jewish restoration.[13] Correspondence in 184142 between Moses Montefiore, the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and Charles Henry Churchill, the British consul in Damascus, is seen as the first recorded plan proposed for political Zionism.[17][18]

Lord Lindsay wrote in 1847: "The soil of Palestine still enjoys her sabbaths, and only waits for the return of her banished children, and the application of industry, commensurate with her agricultural capabilities, to burst once more into universal luxuriance, and be all that she ever was in the days of Solomon."[19]

In 1851, correspondence between Lord Stanley, whose father became British Prime Minister the following year, and Benjamin Disraeli, who became Chancellor of the Exchequer alongside him, records Disraeli's proto-Zionist views: "He then unfolded a plan of restoring the nation to Palestinesaid the country was admirably suited for themthe financiers all over Europe might helpthe Porte is weakthe Turks/holders of property could be bought outthis, he said, was the object of his life...." Coningsby was merely a feelermy views were not fully developed at that timesince then all I have written has been for one purpose. The man who should restore the Hebrew race to their country would be the Messiahthe real saviour of prophecy!" He did not add formally that he aspired to play this part, but it was evidently implied. He thought very highly of the capabilities of the country, and hinted that his chief object in acquiring power here would be to promote the return".[20][21] 26 years later, Disraeli wrote in his article entitled "The Jewish Question is the Oriental Quest" (1877) that within fifty years, a nation of one million Jews would reside in Palestine under the guidance of the British.

Sir Moses Montefiore visited the Land of Israel seven times and fostered its development.[15]

In 1842, Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saints movement, sent a representative, Orson Hyde, to dedicate the land of Israel for the return of the Jews.[22] Protestant theologian William Eugene Blackstone submitted a petition to the US president in 1891; the Blackstone Memorial called for the return of Palestine to the Jews.

In the late 1870s, Jewish philanthropists such as the Montefiores and the Rothschilds responded to the persecution of Jews in Eastern Europe by sponsoring agricultural settlements for Russian Jews in Palestine. The Jews who migrated in this period are known as the First Aliyah.[23]Aliyah is a Hebrew word meaning "ascent", referring to the act of spiritually "ascending" to the Holy Land and a basic tenet of Zionism.

The movement of Jews to Palestine was opposed by the Haredi communities who lived in the Four Holy Cities, since they were very poor and lived off charitable donations from Europe, which they feared would be used by the newcomers. However, from 1800 there was a movement of Sephardi businessmen from North Africa and the Balkans to Jaffa and the growing community there perceived modernity and Aliyah as the key to salvation. Unlike the Haredi communities, the Jaffa community did not maintain separate Ashkenazi and Sephardi institutions and functioned as a single unified community.

Founded in 1878, Rosh Pinna and Petah Tikva were the first modern Jewish settlements.

In 18811882 the Tzar sponsored a huge wave of pogroms in the Russian Empire and a massive wave of Jews began leaving, mainly for America. So many Russian Jews arrived in Jaffa that the town ran out of accommodation and the local Jews began forming communities outside the Jaffa city walls. However the migrants faced difficulty finding work (the new settlements mainly needed farmers and builders) and 70% ultimately left, mostly moving on to America. One of the migrants in this period, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda set about modernizing Hebrew so that it could be used as a national language.

Rishon LeZion was founded on 31 July 1882 by a group of ten members of Hovevei Zion from Kharkov (today's Ukraine). In 1887 Neve Tzedek was built just outside Jaffa. Over 50 Jewish settlements were established in this period.

In 1890, Palestine, which was part of the Ottoman Empire, was inhabited by about half a million people, mostly Muslim and Christian Arabs, but also some dozens of thousands Jews.

In 1883, Nathan Birnbaum, 19 years old, founded Kadimah, the first Jewish student association in Vienna and printed Pinsker's pamphlet Auto-Emancipation.

The Dreyfus Affair, which erupted in France in 1894, profoundly shocked emancipated Jews. The depth of antisemitism in the first country to grant Jews equal rights led many to question their future prospects among Christians. Among those who witnessed the Affair was an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist, Theodor Herzl. Herzl was born in Budapest and lived in Vienna (Jews were only allowed to live in Vienna from 1848), who published his pamphlet Der Judenstaat ("The Jewish State") in 1896 and Altneuland ("The Old New Land")[24] in 1902. He described the Affair as a personal turning point, Herzl argued that the creation of a Jewish state would enable the Jews to join the family of nations and escape antisemitism.[25]

Herzl infused political Zionism with a new and practical urgency. He brought the World Zionist Organization into being and, together with Nathan Birnbaum, planned its First Congress at Basel in 1897.[26]

During the First Zionist Congress, the following agreement, commonly known as the Basel Program, was reached:

Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law. The Congress contemplates the following means to the attainment of this end:

"Under public law" is generally understood to mean seeking legal permission from the Ottoman rulers for Jewish migration. In this text the word "home" was substituted for "state" and "public law" for "international law" so as not to alarm the Ottoman Sultan.[28]

For the first four years, the World Zionist Organization (WZO) met every year, then, up to the Second World War, they gathered every second year. Since the creation of Israel, the Congress has met every four years.

Congress delegates were elected by the membership. Members were required to pay dues known as a "shekel", At the congress, delegates elected a 30-man executive council, which in turn elected the movement's leader. The movement was democratic and women had the right to vote, which was still absent in Great Britain in 1914.

The WZO's initial strategy was to obtain permission from the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II to allow systematic Jewish settlement in Palestine. The support of the German Emperor, Wilhelm II, was sought, but unsuccessfully. Instead, the WZO pursued a strategy of building a homeland through persistent small-scale immigration and the founding of such bodies as the Jewish National Fund (1901a charity that bought land for Jewish settlement) and the Anglo-Palestine Bank (1903provided loans for Jewish businesses and farmers).

Herzl's strategy relied on winning support from foreign rulers, in particular the Ottoman Sultan. He also made efforts to cultivate Orthodox rabbinical support. Rabbinical support depended on the Zionist movement making no challenges to existing Jewish tradition. However, an opposition movement arose that emphasized the need for a revolution in Jewish thought. While Herzl believed that the Jews needed to return to their historic homeland as a refuge from antisemitism, the opposition, led by Ahad Ha'am, believed that the Jews must revive and foster a Jewish national culture and, in particular strove to revive the Hebrew language. Many also adopted Hebraized surnames. The opposition became known as Cultural Zionists. Important Cultural Zionists include Ahad Ha'am, Chaim Weizmann, Nahum Sokolow and Menachem Ussishkin.

In 1903, the British Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, suggested the British Uganda Programme, land for a Jewish state in "Uganda" (in today's Uasin Gishu District, Eldoret, Kenya). Herzl initially rejected the idea, preferring Palestine, but after the April 1903 Kishinev pogrom, Herzl introduced a controversial proposal to the Sixth Zionist Congress to investigate the offer as a temporary measure for Russian Jews in danger. Despite its emergency and temporary nature, the proposal proved very divisive, and widespread opposition to the plan was fueled by a walkout led by the Russian Jewish delegation to the Congress. Nevertheless, a committee was established to investigate the possibility, which was eventually dismissed in the Seventh Zionist Congress in 1905. After that, Palestine became the sole focus of Zionist aspirations.

Israel Zangwill left the main Zionist movement over this decision and founded the Jewish Territorialist Organization (ITO). The territorialists were willing to establish a Jewish homeland anywhere, but failed to attract significant support and were dissolved in 1925.

In 1903, following the Kishinev Pogrom, a variety of Russian antisemities, including the Black Hundreds and the Tsarist Secret Police, began combining earlier works alleging a Jewish plot to take control of the world into new formats.[29] One particular version of these allegations, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" (subtitle "Protocols extracted from the secret archives of the central chancery of Zion"), arranged by Sergei Nilus, achieved global notability. In 1903, the editor claimed that the protocols revealed the menace of Zionism:

....which has the goal of uniting all the Jews of the whole world in one uniona union that is more closely knit and more dangerous than the Jesuits.[30]

The book contains fictional minutes of an imaginary meeting in which alleged Jewish leaders plotted to take over the world. Nilus later claimed they were presented to the elders by Herzl (the "Prince of Exile") at the first Zionist congress. A Polish edition claimed they were taken from Herzl's flat in Austria and a 1920 German version renamed them "The Zionist Protocols".[31]

By 1904, cultural Zionism was accepted by most Zionists and a schism was beginning to develop between the Zionist movement and Orthodox Judaism. In 1904, Herzl died unexpectedly at the age of 44 and the leadership was taken over by David Wolffsohn, who led the movement until 1911. During this period, the movement was based in Berlin (Germany's Jews were the most assimilated) and made little progress, failing to win support among the Young Turks after the collapse of the Ottoman Regime. From 1911 to 1921, the movement was led by Dr. Otto Warburg.

Under Herzl's leadership, Zionism relied on Orthodox Jews for religious support, with the main party being the orthodox Mizrachi. However, as the cultural and socialist Zionists increasingly broke with tradition and used language contrary to the outlook of most religious Jewish communities, many orthodox religious organizations began opposing Zionism. Their opposition was based on its secularism and on the grounds that only the Messiah could re-establish Jewish rule in Israel.[32] Therefore, most Orthodox Jews maintained the traditional Jewish belief that while the Land of Israel was given to the ancient Israelites by God, and the right of the Jews to that land was permanent and inalienable, the Messiah must appear before the land could return to Jewish control.

While Zionism aroused Ashkenazi orthodox antagonism in Europe (probably due to Modernist European antagonism to organized religion), and also in the United States, it aroused no such antagonism in the Islamic world.[citation needed]

Prior to the Holocaust, Reform Judaism rejected Zionism as inconsistent with the requirements of Jewish citizenship in the diaspora.[33] The opposition of Reform Judaism was expressed in the Pittsburgh Platform, adopted by the Central Conference of American Rabbis in 1885: "We consider ourselves no longer a nation but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the administration of the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state."[34]

Widespread pogroms accompanied the 1905 Russian Revolution, inspired by the Pro-Tzarist Black Hundreds. In Odessa, Leon Trotsky provided arms so the Zionists could protect the Jewish community and this prevented a pogrom. Zionist leader Jabotinsky eventually led the Jewish resistance in Odessa. During his subsequent trial Trotsky produced evidence that the Police had organized the effort to create a pogrom in Odessa.[35]

The vicious pogroms led to a wave of immigrants to Palestine. This new wave expanded the Revival of the Hebrew language. In 1909 a group of 65 Zionists laid the foundations for a modern city in Palestine. The city was named after the Hebrew title of Herzl's book "The Old New Land" - Tel-Aviv.

Tel Aviv had a modern "scientific" school, the Herzliya Hebrew High School, the first such school to teach only in Hebrew. All the cities affairs were conducted in Hebrew.

In Jerusalem, foundations were laid for a Jewish University (the Hebrew University), one that would teach only in Hebrew and that the Zionists hoped would help them prove their usefulness to the Turks (this did not come to fruition until 1918). In Haifa, the cornerstone was laid for a Jewish Technical school, the Technion Israel Institute of Technology.

Jewish migrants and organizations began making large land purchases, in particular buying malarial swamps (of which there were many) and draining them to produce highly fertile land.[36]

In 1909 a socialist commune was given some land near the Sea of Galilee, forming the first Kibbutz, Degania. There were nine members, two of them women. One of the women was a former Narodnik who had volunteered as a nurse during the Balkan Wars and witnessed maltreatment of Jews by Russian troops.[37][38] Her son, the second child to be born on the Kibbutz, was General Moshe Dayan, who commanded Israeli troops in the 1956 war then was Minister of Defence during the Six Day War.

In Eastern Europe the General Jewish Labour Bund called for Jewish autonomy within Eastern Europe and promoted Yiddish as the Jewish national language. Like Zionism, the Bund was founded in 1897 and it was one of the largest socialist movements in Europe, however it did not grow as fast as Zionism. The Bund campaigned for Jewish autonomy and recognition of Jewish (non-territorial) national rights within a post-socialist Russia. Initially the Bund included Zionist Socialist parties but over time the leadership came to oppose Zionism and Orthodox Judaism. The socialist movement recognized various national groups, but the Jews were not one of them. The socialist movement was generally unwilling to combat worker anti-Semitism and often failed to publicly condemn pogroms. [39]

Socialist Zionists believed that the Jews' centuries of being oppressed in anti-Semitic societies had reduced Jews to a meek, despairing existence that invited further antisemitism. They argued that Jews should redeem themselves by becoming farmers, workers, and soldiers in a country of their own. Socialist Zionists rejected religion as perpetuating a "Diaspora mentality" among the Jewish people and established rural communes in Israel called "Kibbutzim". Major theoreticians of Socialist Zionism included Moses Hess, Nachman Syrkin, Ber Borochov and A. D. Gordon, and leading figures in the movement included David Ben-Gurion and Berl Katznelson. Socialist Zionists rejected Yiddish as a language of exile, embracing Hebrew as the language that was common to all Jewish communities and which originated in Israel.

Gordon believed that the Jews lacked a "normal" class structure and that the various classes that constitute a nation had to be created artificially. Socialist Zionists therefore set about becoming Jewish peasants and proletarians and focused on settling land and working on it. According to Gordon "the land of Israel is bought with labour: not with blood and not with fire." He called on Jews to embrace a "religion of labour" as opposed to their existing religion. Socialist Zionism became a dominant force in Israel, however, it exacerbated the schism between Zionism and Orthodox Judaism.

Socialist Zionists formed youth movements that became influential organizations in their own right including Habonim Dror, Hashomer Hatzair, Machanot Halolim and HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed. During British rule the lack of available immigration permits to Palestine led the youth movements to operate training programs in Europe, which prepared Jews for migration to Palestine. As a Socialist-Zionist immigrants arrived already speaking Hebrew, trained in agriculture and prepared for life in Palestine.

The Zionist movement never restricted female suffrage. Women were active in Zionist parties in many countries before women gained the franchise, and ran for office in Poland where Zionist and other Jewish parties won seats in parliament. In 1911, Zionist activist Hannah Meisel Shochat established Havat Ha'Almot (lit. "the girls' farm") to train Zionist women in farming so as to assist in the Zionist program of developing the land for mass settlement. The famous poet Rachel Bluwstein was one of the graduates. Zionist settlers were usually young and far from their families so a relatively permissive culture was able to develop. Within the Kibbutz movement child rearing was done communally thus freeing women to work (and fight) alongside the men. The second child to be born on a Kibbutz was Moshe Dayan and his mother was a former Narodnik who moved to Israel after being disgusted by the anti-Semitism she found among the peasants.

The Zionist Roza Pomerantz-Meltzer was the first woman elected to the Sejm, the Parliament of Poland. She was elected in 1919 as a member of a Zionist party.[40][41] In Mandatory Palestine women in Jewish towns could vote in elections before women won the right to vote in Britain.

The 1911 edition of the Jewish Encyclopedia noted the movement's spread: "not only in the number of Jews affiliated with the Zionist organization and congress, but also in the fact that there is hardly a nook or corner of the Jewish world in which Zionistic societies are not to be found."[42]

Support for Zionism was not a purely European and Ashkenazi phenomenon. In the Arab world, the first Zionist branches opened in Morocco only a few years after the Basel conference, and the movement became popular among Jews living within the Arab and Muslim world where Jews generally faced religious discrimination, prejudice and occasional violence. A number of the founders of the city of Tel Aviv were early Moroccan Jewish immigrants and Ottoman Salonika had a vigorous Zionist movement by 1908.[43]

Before 1917, Palestine's Arab population mostly saw themselves as Ottoman subjects. They feared the objectives of the Zionist movement, but they assumed the movement would fail. After the Young Turk revolution in 1908, Arab Nationalism grew rapidly in the area and most Arab Nationalists regarded Zionism as a threat, although a minority perceived Zionism as providing a path to modernity.[44]

While Zionist leaders and advocates followed conditions in the land of Israel and travelled there regularly, their concern before 1917 was with the future of the small Jewish settlement. A Jewish state seemed highly unlikely at this point and realistic aspirations focussed on creating a new centre for Jewish life. The future of the land's Arab inhabitants concerned them as little as the welfare of the Jews concerned Arab leaders.

The Jewish population of the USA increased about ten times between 1880 and 1920, with the immigration of poorer, more liberal and radical, "downtown", Eastern European immigrants fleeing persecution. It was not until 1912, when the secular "people's lawyer" Louis Brandeis became involved in Zionism, just before the First World War, that Zionism gained significant support.[45] By 1917, the American Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs, which Brandeis chaired had increased American Zionist membership ten times to 200,000 members; "American Jewry thenceforth became the financial center for the world Zionist movement".[46]

As in the US, England had experienced a rapid growth in their Jewish minority. About 150,000 Jews migrated there from Russia in the period 18811914.[47] With this immigration influx, pressure grew from British voters to halt it; added to the established knowledge in British society of Old Testament scripture, Zionism became an attractive solution for both Britain and the Empire.

In the search for support, Herzl, before his death, had made the most progress with the German Kaiser, joining him on his 1898 trip to Palestine.[48] At the outbreak of war in 1914, the offices of the Zionist Organization were located in Berlin and led by Otto Warburg, a German citizen. With different national sections of the movement supporting different sides in the war, Zionist policy was to maintain strict neutrality and "to demonstrate complete loyalty to Turkey",[49] the German ally controlling Palestine. Following Turkey's entry into World War I in August however, the Zionists were expelled from Tel Aviv and its environs.

Although 500,000 Russian Jews were serving in the Russian army, the Russian leadership regarded all Jews as their enemies and assumed that most were avoiding the draft. In 1914-1915 500,000 Jews were ordered to leave their homes in the Pale of Settlement, mostly with less than 24 hours notice. An estimated 100,000 died of starvation and exposure and their plight contributed to the disintegration of the Russian army.[50]

In the United States, still officially neutral, most Russian and German Jews supported the Germans, as did much of the largely anti-British Irish American community. Britain was anxious to win US support for its war effort, and winning over Jewish financial and popular support in the US was considered vital.[51] With Tsarist Russia on the Allied side, most Jews supported Germany and in much of Eastern Europe the advancing Germans were regarded as liberators by the Jews. Like the Germans and the Russians, the British assumed that most Jews were avoiding the draft, these beliefs were groundless, but the Polish Zionist, Ze'ev Jabotinsky was able to exploit it to promote a Jewish division in the British army. For the British, the Jewish Legion, was a means of recruiting Russian Jewish immigrants (who were mostly Zionists) to the British war effort. The legion was dominated by Zionist volunteers.

In January 1915, two months after the British declaration of war against the Ottomans, Zionist and British cabinet member Herbert Samuel presented a detailed memorandum entitled The Future of Palestine to the British Cabinet on the benefits of a British protectorate over Palestine to support Jewish immigration.

The most prominent Russian-Zionist migrant in Britain was chemist Chaim Weizmann. Weizmann developed a new process to produce Acetone, a critical ingredient in manufacturing explosives that Britain was unable to manufacture in sufficient quantity. In 1915, the British government fell as a result of its inability to manufacture enough artillery shells for the war effort. In the new Government, David Lloyd George became the minister responsible for armaments, and asked Weizmann to develop his process for mass production.

Lloyd George was an evangelical Christian and pro-Zionist. According to Lloyd George when he asked Weizmann about payment for his efforts to help Britain, Weizmann told him that he wanted no money, just the rights over Palestine.[52] Weizmann became a close associate of Lloyd George (Prime Minister from 1916) and the First Lord of the Admiralty (Foreign Secretary from 1916), Arthur Balfour.

In 1916 Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca (in Arabia), began an "Arab Revolt" hoping to create an Arab state in the Middle East. In the McMahonHussein Correspondence British representatives promised they would allow him to create such a state (the boundaries were vague). They also provided him with large sums of money to fund his revolt.

In February 1917 the Tsar was overthrown and Alexander Kerensky became Prime Minister of the Russian Empire. Jews were prominent in the new government and the British hoped that Jewish support would help keep Russia in the war. In June 1917 the British army, led by Edmund Allenby, invaded Palestine. The Jewish Legion participated in the invasion and Jabotinsky was awarded for bravery. Arab forces conquered Transjordan and later took over Damascus.

In August 1917, as the British cabinet discussed the Balfour Declaration,[53]Edwin Samuel Montagu, the only Jew in the British Cabinet and a staunch anti-Zionist, "was passionately opposed to the declaration on the grounds that (a) it was a capitulation to anti-Semitic bigotry, with its suggestion that Palestine was the natural destination of the Jews, and that (b) it would be a grave cause of alarm to the Muslim world".[54] Additional references to the future rights of non-Jews in Palestine and the status of Jews worldwide, were thus inserted by the British cabinet, reflecting the opinion of the only Jew within it. As the draft was finalized, the term "state" was replaced with "home", and comments were sought from Zionists abroad. Louis Brandeis, a member of the US Supreme Court, influenced the style of the text and changed the words "Jewish race" to "Jewish people".[45]

On November 2, the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, made his landmark Balfour Declaration of 1917, publicly expressing the government's view in favour of "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people", and specifically noting that its establishment must not "prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country".

On November 7, five days after the Balfour declaration, the Bolsheviks took over Russia. The Bolshevik seizure of power led to civil war in Russia and the collapse of the Western part of the Russian Empire. Poland, the Ukraine and the Lithuanian states became independent. The collapse of central authority led to an eruption of pogroms across Russia and all the new militias were happy to attack the defenceless Jews. The exception were the Bolsheviks, who (usually) took measures to stop their forces massacring Jews and this led to Jews siding with, and volunteering for the Bolshevik's Red Army which came under the command of Trotsky, who was of Jewish origin.

Half the world's Jews lived within the confines of the Russian Empire in 1917, and of these, a third lived in the Ukraine. Simon Petlyura became commander of the Ukrainian Nationalist forces and these forces, as did the anti-Bolshevik White Russian troops, took to systematically massacring Jews. Between 1918 and 1921, when the Bolsheviks assumed control of the Ukraine, over 50,000 Jews were killed, a further 100,000 were permanently maimed or died of wounds and 200,000 Jewish children became orphans.[55]Israel Zangwill wrote:

It is as Bolsheviks that the Jews of South Russia have been massacred by the armies of Petlyura, though the armies of Sokolow have massacred them as partisans of Petlyura, the armies of Makhno as bourgeois capitalists, the armies of Grigoriev as Communists, and the armies of Denikin at once as Bolsheviks, capitalists and Ukrainian nationalists.[56]

At the time of the Russian revolution, the Bund had 30,000 members in Russia, compared to 300,000 Zionist members of which about 10% were Marxist-Zionists.[57]Joseph Stalin was the first People's Commissariat of Nationalities and in this role disbanded the Bund. Most of its members joined the Yevsektsia, a Jewish section of the Bolshevik organization created by Stalin which worked to end Jewish communal and religious life.[58]

Members of the Marxist Zionist movement, Poale Zion led by Ber Borochov, returned to Russia (from Palestine) and requested to form Jewish Brigades within the Red Army. Trotsky supported the request but opposition from the Yevsektsia led to the proposal's failure.[59] Poale Zion continued to exist in the USSR until 1928. The future Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion was a member of the Israeli branch of the movement.

In 1921, following a personal request to Stalin by the Soviet author Maxim Gorky, the Hebrew poets Bialik and Shaul Tchernichovsky were allowed to emigrate to Palestine.[60] Bialik became the Israeli national poet. Despite opposition from the Evsektsiya, Stalin also permitted funding of a Hebrew theatre troupe in Moscow, called Habima. Konstantin Stanislavski attended the first night and the group put on a historic play called The Dybbuk, which they were allowed to take on tour in Europe.[61] The tour terminated in Tel Aviv, and Habima never returned to Moscow, becoming instead the Israel National Theatre. The Revolution was accompanied by a brief flowering of Yiddish arts before being decimated by censorship and by 1950 a significant number of prominent Yiddish intellectuals had been sent to the Gulag.[62] A Soviet census found that 90% of Belorussian Jews and 76% of Ukrainian Jews gave Yiddish as their mother tongue.

Between 1922 and 1928, the Soviets embarked on a plan of moving Ukrainian Jews to agricultural communes, mainly in the Crimea, the plan was encouraged by donations from US Jewish charities trying to protect and help Jews and the a number of Zionist agricultural collectives were established in Crimea in preparation for Kibbutz life. Soviet leader Mikhail Kalinin considered creating a Jewish state in the Crimea which had a large Karaite population who had been exempt from Tsarist persecution (Karaites are Jews who reject the authority of the Talmud).[63]

In 1924 Stalin became the ruler of the USSR. In 1928 a Jewish Autonomous Oblast was created in the Russian Far East with Yiddish as an official language and Hebrew was outlawed: The only language to be outlawed in the USSR.[64] Few Jews were tempted by the Soviet Jewish Republic and as of 2002 Jews constitute only about 1.2% of its population.[65]

The Yevsektsiyas were disbanded in 1927 and many their leaders perished during the Great Purge. The Bund survived in independent Poland until the Second World War, when its membership was exterminated by the Nazis.

In late 1921, the 12th Zionist congress was held in Carlsbad, Czechoslovakia; it was the first congress to be held since 1913, because of World War I. Four hundred-fifty delegates attended, representing 780,000 fee paying Zionist members worldwide.[66] Weizmann was elected its president in recognition of his role in obtaining the Balfour Declaration. The conference passed a proposal for an "Arab-Jewish Entente",[67] which called on Zionist leadership to "forge a true understanding with the Arab nation".[66] Weizmann led the movement until 1931. From 1931 to 1935 the WZO was presided by Nahum Sokolow (who had also spent the first world war in Britain). Weizmann resumed presidency of the WZO in 1935 and led it until 1946.

After the defeat and dismantling of the Ottoman Empire by European colonial powers in 1918, the League of Nations endorsed the full text of the Balfour Declaration and established the British Mandate for Palestine (Full text:[68]).

In addition to accepting the Balfour Declaration policy statement, the League included that "[a]n appropriate Jewish agency shall be recognised as a public body for the purpose of advising and co-operating with the Administration of Palestine...." This inclusion paralleled a similar proposal made by the Zionist Organization during the Paris Peace Conference.[69]

The Zionist movement entered a new phase of activity. Its priorities were encouraging Jewish settlement in Palestine, building the institutional foundations of a Jewish state and raising funds for these purposes. The 1920s did see a steady growth in the Jewish population and the construction of state-like Jewish institutions, but also saw the emergence of Palestinian Arab nationalism and growing resistance to Jewish immigration.

The success of Zionism in getting international recognition for its project led to growth in the membership and development of new forms of Zionism. The period 19191923 saw migration by Jews escaping the civil war in Russia, the period 19241929 migration by Jews escaping antisemitic regimes in Poland and Hungary.

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