Alan Wolfe is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. He is the author and editor of more than 20 books. Professor Wolfe attended Temple University as an undergraduate and received his doctorate in political science from the University of Pennsylvania in 1967. He has honorary degrees from Loyola College in Maryland and St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. Professor Wolfe writes often for different publications including The New York Times, Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Washington Post. He served as an advisor to President Clinton in preparation for his 1995 State of the Union address and has lectured widely at American and European universities. He has twice conducted programs under the auspices of the U.S. State Department that bring Muslim scholars to the United States to learn about separation of church and state.
The following exchange will focus on Professor Wolfe's new book, At Home in Exile: Why Diaspora Is Good for the Jews (Beacon Press, 2014).
***
Dear Professor Wolfe,
In the very first chapter of your new book – which defends the idea that the diaspora is a viable and even attractive option for Jewish existence in the 21st century – you start presenting a case against a basic view shared by quite a few of the most revered figures in Zionist history. You point out that many of Israel’s founding fathers (including Weitzman, Ben-Gurion, Jabotinsky, Gordon, Brenner, and Bialik, just to name a few) had no qualms about voicing their contempt toward the diaspora and making disparaging remarks about any attempt to cultivate Jewish life outside of Israel.
My introductory question: How inseparable do you think the ‘negation of the diaspora’ is from the core Zionist ethos Israel was founded on, and would you say that your book is meant to challenge any basic tenets of this ethos?
Yours,
Shmuel.
***
Dear Shmuel,
Thanks for making this interchange possible. I appreciate your interest in my book.
You are quite correct that the first chapter of my book is devoted to the theme of the negation of the diaspora. The furious language and violent imagery of some of the early Zionist thinkers is actually worse than your question suggests; as others before me have pointed out, the difference between their comments on diaspora Jews and those of prominent anti-Semites is difficult to detect. Even worse, from my point of view, such attitudes, if in attenuated form, continue to the present time. A. B. Yehoshua, Hillel Halkin, and others, whose eloquence and humanism cannot be denied, are saying similar things similar to the ideas of the early diaspora negators.
There are many other diasporas in the contemporary world, and none of them possess to such a degree contempt for those who live outside the home country as the Jewish one. Ireland was, like Israel, under the control of the British, but the Irish in Liverpool and Boston were seen as allies of the Irish who fought for statehood. India became a state around the same time as Israel, yet Indian novelists in Toronto and London are as praised at home as they are abroad.
I think it’s also important to point out that the second chapter of my book tries to show that Zionism also contained thinkers who strongly negated the negation of the diaspora. Simon Dubnov was one; no one can question his commitment to Jewish peoplehood, even if he had qualms about Jewish statehood. Dubnow is better known than Simon Rawidowicz, yet the latter, who was born in Lithuania and died in Massachusetts, is in many ways more interesting. The exchange of letters between Rawidowicz and Ben Gurion is well worth reading. Ben Gurion told his old friend that because he did not live in Israel, his life was incomplete. Rawidowicz reminded him that God called all of his followers children of Israel; by adopting Israel as the name of a state, Zionists, he pointed out, divided Jews into first and second class citizens.
The real question, I believe, is not where Jews live but what they live for. It is common to divide Jews into two camps: universalists concerned with the Jewish message for all mankind and particularists focused on Jews and Jews alone. Negation of the diaspora added a third category, which I call selectivism. Selectivists are people who are concerned with only some Jews, those they believe to be strong and militant rather than meek and subservient. Selectivism is even more restrictive than particularism. It is a product of a Darwinian struggle for survival that made it possible for those involved in the early years of building the new state look with hostility toward Holocaust survivors. It remains alive in some quarters but what it really negates is the idea of an Israel that can survive as a democracy.
So to answer your question, I view my book not as anti-Zionist, but as an effort to reclaim the universalistic spirit that moved some, but not all, early Zionists. There is a very conservative American Jewish writer named David Horowitz who, while defending Israel’s every military action, denounced Herzl as a utopian no different than the socialists of his day. In this I believe Horowitz is correct; Herzl was an idealist, and so was the form of Zionism he imagined. Negation of the diaspora, in that sense, was only a part of Zionism’s history. Moreover, there is no reason it has to be a part of contemporary Zionism.
Sincerely,
Alan.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.