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When Zionism emerged in the 1890's, it offered itself as an alternative to Socialism, which in one form or another had the allegiance of most Jewish workers -- and most Jews then, in Europe and the US, were workers.

The largest Jewish community at that time was in the former lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Community - i.e. Galicia (part of Austria-Hungary) and the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire. If you define 'worker' as someone working in a mid to large factory - i.e. classic proletariat, then yes, most Jewish workers were socialists, but most Jews were not workers under that definition. If you define worker as poor, manual labourer or bottom rung tradesman - peddlers etc. - then most Jews were indeed workers, but only a minority were socialists.  

This was at a time when official Socialism took a very hostile attitude toward nationalisms of all kinds

Very misleading because the most popular variant of socialism among poor Jews in the ex Polish-Lithuanian lands at the turn of the century was Bundism, a rather peculiar form of socialist Jewish nationalism. After that you had strong allegiances both to the more or less anti-nationalist Russian SD's as well as Roza Luksemburg and Feliks Dzierzynski's strongly anti-nationalist SDKPiL, and the nationally oriented PPS and its Galician equivalent.  

by MarekNYC on Fri May 12th, 2006 at 03:50:47 PM EST
[ Parent ]
thank you Marek for very relevant info...  I suspect rootless' comment was biased towards urban populations.  I'm gonna shunt your comments off to him (a nonblogger type) and see whether he adjusts his position or offers more detail to defend it.  my gut feeling from reading about the period is that he's onto something with the theme of Zionism being offered as a substitute project for communist/socialist activism -- a project which would not threaten the property and position of elites in the countries where "those darned uppity Jewish intellectuals" were causing trouble in the Labour and social justice movements (Jewish women were quite active in the early feminist movement in Germany for example).

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Fri May 12th, 2006 at 04:07:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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