Article | The Origin of Zionism in Conservative Judaism

Article by Rabbi Alan Silverstein, Ph.D. MERCAZ Olami, President

The European roots of Zionism in Conservative Judaism commenced with an emphasis on Jewish history and peoplehood as espoused by Rabbi Zechariah Frankel in the mid-19th century. Rabbi Frankel had withdrawn from the German rabbinical conferences of the 1840s due to emerging receptivity to replacing Hebrew as the language of Jewish prayer.

For Frankel, writes Dr. Neil Gillman in his 1993 book “Conservative Judaism: The New Century,” “Hebrew represented kinship, a sense of belonging, a tie to the Jewish past and to every Jewish community. That is precisely why Frankel’s pro-emancipation colleagues wanted to weaken its position in the synagogue service and why Frankel wanted to strengthen it.” Frankel’s appeal, writes Gillman, “was to history and tradition, to the wishes of the community, clearly expressed since antiquity…; it has been ‘sanctified by millennia,’ …the tie that binds Jews in widely different cultures.”

In “From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism” (Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry series), Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, elaborated upon Frankel’s commitment to the national element in Jewish practices: “To mediate the commands of Halacha and history, Frankel introduced the novel idea of the volk as a formative agent in defining Jewish practice.… The elaborate rituals of Jewish life were not just partitions erected to shelter Jews in hostile climes; for countless Jews, they remained the vital means of experiencing the divine.”

The great historian Heinrich Graetz, Frankel’s colleague at the Jewish Seminary in Breslau, helped shape Frankel’s commitment to Jewish peoplehood as Zionism. Chancellor Schorsch said that Graetz ended a “deeply felt declaration on Jewish survival with a veiled allusion to the future possibility of a renaissance of Jewish life in Palestine… Graetz was steeped in Jewish national sentiment.… He never ceased to regard Judaism as anything but a national religion.… Graetz had first articulated his national conception of Judaism in 1846, and his final reply to [extreme German nationalist] Heinrich von Treitschke in 1883 confirms that he could not be intimidated to relinquish it. German pressure could only force him to mute and disguise it.”

Shlomo Avineri’s “The Making of Modern Zionism” also calls attention to Graetz’s contribution to the evolution of modern Zionism. Avineri wrote that to Graetz, “the historical subject of Judaism…is not only the religious consciousness of the individual Jewish person…; it is also the historical context for the realization of these regulations…. This leads Graetz to focus on the political and geographical aspects of Judaism; that is, the Jewish people, and the Land of Israel. ‘The Torah, the nation of Israel, and the Holy Land…are inseparably united….’ Graetz argues that ‘Judaism without the firm soil of national life resembles…a half-uprooted tree, which still produces foliage at the top but is no longer capable of sprouting twigs and branches.’”

The rise of Conservative Judaism’s Zionism in the United States, 1886-1902

In Rabbi Robert Fierstien’s “A Different Spirit,” which assesses the history of the initial era of the Jewish Theological Seminary (1886-1902), he identifies “the involvement of seminary personnel, at every level, with the fledgling Zionist movement.” Although JTS president Sabato Morais longed for a “more religious component in Zionism…, almost every major figure associated with the early Seminary was an active Zionist.”

Rabbi Fierstien provides a roster of committed Zionists: “Bernard Drachman, Gustave Lieberman, Joshua Joffe, were extremely active in Zionist affairs, with the latter serving for a time as the president of the Federation of American Zionists…. In addition, “Marcus Jastrow, Benjamin Szold, Henry Pereira Mendes, L. Napoleon Levy [a trustee], Solomon Solis-Cohen, Aaron Friedenwald, and Harry Friedenwald were all extremely active in Zionist affairs, with Harry Friedenwald serving for a time as president of the Federation of American Zionists, and Mendes, Jastrow, and A. Friedenwald serving as vice presidents.”

In “The Emergence of Conservative Judaism,” Moshe Davis documents that “the Zionist Association of Baltimore — probably the first Zionist society in the US, organized in 1893 by Hebraists,…was encouraged by members of the ‘Historical School’ [JTS supporters] such as Harry Friedenwald, Benjamin Szold, and his daughter Henrietta.”

Dr. Davis adds that even Sabato Morais associated himself with the Hovevei Zion organization in Philadelphia. Although not yet an advocate for Jewish statehood or political Zionism, Morais “fully accepted the promise of the ultimate restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land. He believed that the entire world would come to recognize Palestine as the center of spiritual truth and that the Jews would return to Zion and spread ‘words of peace and truth’ to all corners of the earth. But a prerequisite condition of that Return was a religious revival of the Jewish people. Settlement and cultural work and religious commitment could pave the way.”

Davis also singles out H.P. Mendes for praise as a “most eloquent spokesman” for religious Zionism. To Mendes, “the idea of restoration…meant more than the physical possession of Palestine. It meant making Palestine for the world at large what Rome was for the Catholic world — its spiritual center. This would bring mankind to a new stage of development, ‘the realization of the prophetic ideals for the benefit and blessing of the world at large.’”

Dr. Davis pointed out that Bernard Drachman and Gustave Lieberman, respectively dean and Talmud instructor at the Seminary, had been involved with the Hovevei Zion movement prior to arriving at JTS. Subsequently, the JTS students “followed their example.”

Consequently, Fierstien assessed that “most seminary students also shared their professors’ zeal for Zionism, helping to found, along with students from CCNY, the Young American Zionists in 1896 and ZBT in 1899…. ZBT [Zion BeMishpat Tipadeh] was ‘a Zionist fraternity composed of college, university, and professional men….’ Of its thirteen original officers and board members, eight of them were Seminary students, including the president, David Levine, and the vice president, David Liknaitz, as well as board member Julius Greenstone, who went on to become a vice president of the Federation of American Zionists.”

In Davis’s words, “The purpose of ZBT was to further the Zionist movement and thus to ‘benefit the welfare of the Jews in general.’ By fashioning a body of Zionists who were educated university men, the organization hoped to bring the respect of the world to the Zionist movement.”

Fierstien concludes that “from its very inception, the Seminary was deeply, albeit unofficially, committed to the Zionist movement. So it can truly be said that when Solomon Schechter [chief architect of what became Conservative Judaism] first announced his acceptance of the principles of Zionism in 1905, he was not blazing a new trail, but was rather following in the paths of the Seminary founders.”

Originally published on The Times of Israel