Stateless Zionism: Old traditions, new ideologies

Abstract

Abstract This essay aims at exploring Zionist currents that resisted the establishment of a Jewish nation-state, their non-statist vision of Zionism and its roots in Jewish conditions and political traditions, as well as in European anti-statist ideologies and national patterns. First, the non-Zionist diaspora nationalism of Simon Dubnow will be examined, as an important point of reference of non-statist Zionisms; then, the reservations of Ahad Ha’am, founder of “spiritual Zionism”, from the vision of a nation-state and the Marxian anti-statism of Ber Borochov and his socialist followers will be observed. Thereafter, the anarchism of Martin Buber and his followers in the binational factions “Brit Shalom and Ihud” will be discussed; here anti-statism is manifestly theological. Lastly, the current manifestations of non-statist Jewish nationalism will be succinctly explored, focusing on two religious-Zionist rabbis, the late Menachem Fruman and Shimon Gershon Rosenberg, and the American historian David N. Myers.