This special issue of The Journal of Israeli History reflects on the development of complicated relationships between the yishuv, and later, the State of Israel, with Jews worldwide, including those who identify with the Zionist movement while mainly residing outside of Palestine and Israel. The characterization of such relationships were (and are) frequently couched in emotionally-charged terms, ranging from ardent love and a fervent embrace, to cold distance suffused with contempt and rejection. In a great deal of Zionist and Israeli discourse, “diaspora,” the term most frequently used for Jewish communities beyond the yishuv and Israel, infers that the Land of Israel is the center, and the Diaspora, the periphery. Those living outside of the exalted center are denigrated as spiritually diminished, purportedly endemic to galut and exile. In Zionist mythology, individual and collective redemption is exclusively attained by making aliyah and settling in the Land of Israel. Such vague and quasi-mystical hyperbole has long been inextricably bound with the earthly politics of Zionism and the vicissitudes of approaches to Israel.
But while Zion as a messianic utopia, the shape of which depends on one’s variety of Jewishness, remains an abstract ideal, the Zionist movement and the State of Israel has played a variety of roles with regard to Jews and their communities. And since its creation in 1948, Israel has stimulated and helped shape the perceptions and self-perceptions of Jews around the world. These communities have simultaneously influenced Israeli culture, society and politics. Population movement in both directions is a key element of these relations as migrants serve as agents of transcultural exchange and considerably determine mutual perceptions. These complex and multilayered relations and their representations were the common theme of a workshop held at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich in May 2016. Most of the contributions to this volume were, in their earlier incarnations, presented at this workshop. Each of them, however, have been expanded and revised according to the stipulation of the editors and anonymous readers for the journal, to whom the editors express their gratitude.
The first article, “Early Danish Zionism and the Ethnification of the Danish Jews,” by Maja Gildin Zuckerman, explores the early Zionist movement as an agent of change in the entire Danish Jewish community. The scrutiny of Danish Zionism, despite being a distinct minority-within-a-minority phenomenon, enhances our understanding of the impact of incipient Zionism precisely through the organizational means by which the movement’s adherents gradually came to unsettle the very foundation of Danish Jewry. These changed the self-understanding of the Jewish community from one resting on Enlightenment notions of Judaism and Jewishness – individualized, private, and religious – to alternate forms implicitly building on Zionist ideals, such as notions of interconnected Jewish peoplehood, ethnicity, and public self-affirmation.
Next, Julie Grimmeisen addresses the diaspora images of the New Israeli Woman in the 1950s and 1960s. The image of the New Israeli Woman was contested and ranged from the ideal of the modest socialist pioneer to the glamorous and beautiful actress. Interestingly, both images were used on international stages to represent Israel as a modern and progressive state. In its struggle for international recognition, women’s roles played an important part demonstrating Israel’s Western character, although geographically situated in the Middle East. Also vital in the struggle for Jewish diaspora support, women were presented as carriers of Western modernity and as a seductive allure. At times, the image of the courageous Western pioneer and the beautiful girl from the East blended into an image of erotic attraction.
In “Highway to the battleground: Jewish territorialism and the State of Israel, 1945–1960,” Laura Almagor explores the relationship between the Territorialist movement and Israel during the first decade of the Jewish state’s existence. It uncovers the little-known connections between the Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonization, first organized in 1905, and such heterodox Zionists as Hans Kohn, Martin Buber and Nathan Hofshi. Even after the foundation of the state in 1948, Almagor argues, alternative political approaches to Jewish political behavior continued to shape and be shaped by particular circles of Zionists and non-Zionists alike – even those who were often seen as the arch-opponents of Zionism.
Comparative studies on homeland-diaspora relations have explored parallels between the Zionist project and other classic diasporas, particularly the Greek and the Armenian case. In contrast, Johannes Becke, in “Saharan Zion: state evasion and state-making in modern Jewish and Sahrawi history” looks at a relatively unknown form of diaspora nationalism and diasporic state formation. While Sahrawi nationalism was initially modeled after the PLO, the Sahrawi state project nonetheless displays a number of intriguing parallels to the Jewish-Israeli experience. The common denominator between the Zionist project and the ‘Saharan Zion’ of Sahrawi nationalists consists especially in the shared historical experience of prolonged statelessness or systematic state evasion, resulting in ongoing tensions between nation-building and the fission/fusion dynamics typical for segmented societies.
The final article, by Michael Berkowitz, reveals “unintended benefits and squandered opportunities” surrounding the nexus of Jews and photography with regarded to Zionism and the place of photography in the State of Israel. Zionism and the emergence of the State of Israel accrued a great deal of good will and benevolent publicity due to the historical confluence between Jews and rise of photojournalism in the 1930s and 1940s. The first part of the article focuses on Robert Capa, Chim (David Seymour), and Alfred Eisenstaedt, who were far more important, Berkowitz argues, than expressly Zionist photographers. The piece furthermore explores little-known attempts to establish the history of photography as a discipline in Israel under the tutelage of (photographer) Arnold Newman and (photographer and photo-historian) Helmut Gernsheim. Despite the immense overrepresentation of Jews among eminent photographers, and the pioneering roles of Jews in photography, the Hebrew University and Israel Museum could have – but did not – become significant centers for the history and practice of photography.