Homeland for the Jewish people

The book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State, 1896) by Theodor Herzl.

The term "Jewish state" is sometimes used to describe the State of Israel and refers to its status as a nation-state for the Jewish people. This concept of a national Jewish homeland is enshrined in Israeli national policy and reflected in many of Israel's public institutions. The concept was codified in the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948 as well as in the Law of Return, which was passed by the Knesset on 5 July 1950, and stated "Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh."^[1]

Jewish state or a state of Jews?

There has been ongoing debate in Israel on the character of the state, if it should enshrine more Jewish culture, encourage Judaism in schools, enshrine certain laws of Kashrut and Shabbat observance within Israel. This debate reflects a historical divide within Zionism and among the Jewish citizens of Israel, which has large secular and traditional/Orthodox minorities as well as a majority which lies somewhere between the two.

Secular Zionism, the historically dominant stream, is rooted in a concept of the Jews as a people and in a concept of international law as premised on the self-determination of peoples through the nation-state structure. Another reason sometimes submitted for such establishment was to have a state where Jews would not be afraid of antisemitic attacks and live in peace, although such a reason is not a requirement of the self-determination right and therefore subsidiary to it in secular Zionist thinking.

Religious Zionists, who believe religious beliefs and traditional practices are central to Jewish peoplehood, counter that assimilating to be a secular "nation like any other" would be oxymoronic in nature, and do more to harm than to help the Jewish people. They seek instead to establish what they see as an "authentic Jewish commonwealth" which preserves and encourages Jewish heritage.^[2] Drawing an analogy to diaspora Jews who assimilated into other cultures and abandoned Jewish culture, whether voluntary or otherwise, they argue that the creation of a secular state in Israel is tantamount to establishing a state where Jews assimilate en masse as a nation, and therefore anathema to what they view as Jewish national aspirations. Zionism is rooted in a concept of the Jews as a nation, in this capacity, they believe that Israel has a mandate to promote Judaism, to be the center of Jewish culture and center of its population, perhaps even the sole legitimate representative of Jews worldwide.

Partisans of the first view are predominantly, though by no means exclusively, secular or less traditional. Partisans of the second view are almost exclusively traditional or Orthodox, although they also include supporters who follow other streams of Judaism or are less traditional but conservative and would not object to a more prominent state role in promoting Jewish beliefs -- although not to the point of creating a purely Halachic state.

The debate is therefore characterized by significant polarities. Secular and religious Zionists argue passionately about what a Jewish state should represent. Anti-Zionists and Zionists argue about whether a Jewish state should exist at all. Having been created within the sphere of international law as the instrument for Jewish self-determination, the question of whether Israel is to maintain and strengthen its status as a state for the Jewish people, or transition to being a state purely for "all of its citizens", or identify as both — and, if both, how to resolve any tensions that arise from their coexistence — captures these polarities. Israel has, to date, steered a course between secularism and Jewish identity, usually depending on who controls the Israeli High Court of Justice.

A Jewish commonwealth

Advocates of Israel becoming a more narrowly Jewish commonwealth face at least the following practical and theoretical difficulties:

How to deal with the non-Jewish Arab minority in Israel (and the non-Jewish majority in the West Bank and Gaza).^{[citation needed]}
How to alleviate concerns of Jews in Israel who favor a relatively secular state.^[3]
What relationship should official Judaism hold vis-à-vis the Government of Israel and vice versa?^[4]
What role do schools play in supporting Jewish heritage, religion, culture, and state?^[5]
How will the government be organized (theocracy, constitutional theocracy, constitutional republic, parliamentary democracy etc.)?^[6]
Should the Justice system be based on secular common law, secular civil law, a combination of Jewish and common law, a combination of Jewish and civil law, or pure Jewish law?^[3]
On what mandate or legal principles should the constitution of a Jewish state be based?^[4]
How to integrate the economy of the state in line with Jewish law.^{[citation needed]}

Theorists who grapple with these issues focus on the future of the State of Israel and realize that although the sovereign political state has been established, there is still much work to be done in relation to the identity of the state itself. [1]

Criticism

The notion that Israel should be constituted in the name of and maintain a special relationship with a particular group of people, in the case the Jewish people, has drawn much controversy vis-à-vis minority groups living within the country — in Israel, the large number of Muslim and Christian Palestinians residing in Israel and, to the extent that those territories are claimed to be governed as part of Israel and not as areas under military occupation, in the West Bank and Gaza. For example, the Israeli National Anthem, the Hatikvah, refers to Jews by name as well as alluding to the concept of Zionism, and it contains no mention of Palestinian Arab culture. This anthem therefore excludes non-Jews, including the Palestinians, from its narrative of national identity. Similar criticism has been made of the Israeli flag which resembles the Tallit (a Jewish prayer shawl) and features a Star of David, generally acknowledged as a symbol of Judaism.

Critics of Israel as a Jewish nation state have suggested that it should adopt more inclusive and neutral symbolism. Their opponents point out that in most other nation-states, national anthems and flags signify a particular ethnic or religious group, and both the flag and anthem of Israel derive from the Zionist struggle to create a Jewish nation state as a safe haven for Jewish refugees, a struggle in which Arabs who were opposed to such creation therefore figure as defeated opponents rather than as active participants.

In the course of the Cold War, the Soviet Union, its satellite states and agencies, as well as many Arab states, adopted the rhetoric presenting the concept of Zionism and the Jewish state as an embodiment of racism, imperialism and colonialism. International anti-Zionist campaign reached its height in 1975 with the passing of the UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 which equated Zionism with racism. It was revoked by UN General Assembly Resolution 4686 in 1991 after the USSR collapsed.

A linguist and a political commentator Noam Chomsky makes a distinction between the concept of "a Jewish ethnic homeland in Palestine" and "a Jewish state" in his interview on C-SPAN:

"I have always supported a Jewish ethnic homeland in Palestine. That is different from a Jewish state. There's a strong case to be made for an ethnic homeland, but as to whether there should be a Jewish state, or a Muslim state, or a Christian state, or a white state — that's entirely another matter."^{[citation needed]}

Opponents of this view often hold that singling Israel out from or uniquely excluding it from laws supporting self-determination is antisemitic.^[7] Some Jewish nationalists further base this line of argument on the Balfour Declaration and historical ties to the land, both of which play particular roles as evidence under international law, as well as a fear that a hostile Arab world might be disrespectful of a Jewish minority — alleging a variety of possible harms up to and including genocide — were Israel to become a post-national "state for all its citizens."

Opponents to this view who argue on the basis of Jewish religious arguments, on the other hand, are less concerned with international law, and therefore found their assertion on the Torah's promises of Israel to the Jews.

Jewish self-governance throughout history

While nowadays the concept of a Jewish homeland means almost always the State of Israel under some variation of its current borders, in the course of the Jewish history after ancient Israel and Judah there have been other proposals. While some of those have come into existence, others never came to be implemented:

Adiabene - an ancient kingdon in Mesopotamia with its capital at Arbil was ruled by Jewish converts during the first century.
Anilai and Asinai - Babylonian-Jewish chieftains.
Council of Four Lands - the central body of Jewish authority in Poland from 1580 to 1764. Seventy delegates from local kehillot met to discuss taxation and other issues important to the Jewish community. The "four lands" were Greater Poland, Little Poland, Ruthenia and Volhynia.
Khazar kingdom - during the Middle Ages Khazaria had Judaism as its official religion.
The British Uganda Program was a plan to give a portion of British East Africa to the Jewish people as a homeland, first made by Joseph Chamberlain to Theodore Herzl's Zionist group in 1903. He offered 5000 square miles of the Mau Plateau in what is today Kenya.

Location of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in the Russian Federation.

Jewish Autonomous Oblast - a region created by the Soviet Union. It has been in existence from 1934 to the present.
Before and during World War II, Japanese officials proposed to attract Jewish refugees to Manchukuo, a puppet state created in Manchuria by the Japanese occupation.
Nazi authorities studied deporting the Jews of Europe to Madagascar.
Krasnaya Sloboda - The town is the primary settlement of Azerbaijan's population of Mountain Jews, who make up the population of approximately 4,000. It is the world's only Jewish town outside of Israel.
Nehardea - the seat of the exilarch in Babylonia.

References

^ Text of Law of Return
^ Ahavat Israel
^ ^a ^b Halacha and Democracy (haGalil)
^ ^a ^b Israel as a Jewish State by Naomi Goldstein Cohen (WZO)
^ Education and Ideology by Lawrence Kaplan (WZO)
^ Halacha and Democracy by Joseph Grunblatt (WZO)
^ Dateline Durban: U.N. World Conference Against Racism. The Draft Declaration: Unfair Charges of Racism Against Israel (ADL)

External links

Israeli Jewish scene from ynetnews
Israel as a Jewish state from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

[1] Text of Law of Return

[2] Ahavat Israel

[hagalil-3] Halacha and Democracy (haGalil)

[NGC-4] Israel as a Jewish State by Naomi Goldstein Cohen (WZO)

[5] Education and Ideology by Lawrence Kaplan (WZO)

[6] Halacha and Democracy by Joseph Grunblatt (WZO)

[7] Dateline Durban: U.N. World Conference Against Racism. The Draft Declaration: Unfair Charges of Racism Against Israel (ADL)

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