In this depressing post- October 7th era, we have seen the emergence of an old-new phenomenon —- Jews and their allies writing polemics in the face of intense Palestinianism and the takeover of Western institutions by the far-left. Contrary to the cowardice expected by our enemies, we are standing strong against the industry-grade lies and speaking out in defiance of The Great Genocide Blood Libel. As Eli Kavon teaches us in the latest chapter of his book, this literary resistance is nothing new. It predates the October massacre and it predates modern Zionism. Instead it forms an uninterrupted chain with the polemicists of the medieval era. Enjoy the chapter and remember: your Substack articles are part of a very old Jewish tradition. - Daniel Clarke-Serret (Editor of Guerre and Shalom)
RECENT POLEMICS:
Jacob’s Voice, Esau’s Hands: A Zionist Polemic
by Eli Kavon
The previous chapter can be found here.
Chapter 2: Triumph of the Jewish Polemic
Jacob’s synthesis of voice and hands became, centuries later, the inheritance of the Zionist movement itself — with one notable exception. Nearly every major Zionist thinker imagined the Jewish State as something more than merely normal, a vessel for the same sense of exceptionalism that had sustained Jews throughout exile. Jacob Klatzkin broke from this consensus, but his view was ultimately rejected.
When we think of the Zionist pantheon, we think of Herzl, Nordau, Ben-Gurion, Jabotinsky, Ahad Ha-am, Weizmann, Katznelson, Rav Kook, Golda Meir and many other luminaries and thinkers who crafted the movement to found a Jewish State in the Land of Israel. But Jacob Klatzkin does not come to mind immediately and for good reason: Klatzkin’s vision was brilliant, but limited.
Arthur Hertzberg, in his landmark study of the Zionist idea, describes Klatzkin as “the most devastating antitraditionalist of all the rebels within Zionism.” Klatzkin not only stated that “the Galut is unworthy of survival” (perhaps his prediction for the “negation of the Diaspora” will be fulfilled within 50 years), he also was a firm believer that the Jewish state would ease its way into a state of normalcy that would in no way be Ben-Gurion’s “light unto the nations”, but simply a third-rate entity based on language and land. This is the primary reason that Klatzkin’s vision—or lack of it--does not resonate with Jews. Until the onset of modernity, Jews believed themselves to be exceptional as compared to the majority cultures that surrounded them, tolerated them and persecuted them. In this way, Zionism is very much a Jewish movement in that its luminaries could not imagine the revival of the Jewish nation to be anything less than inspiring.
How do we explain Jewish survival in the ancient, medieval and early modern Diaspora—and the failing of American Jewry and Jews outside of Israel to maintain continuity today? In a span of three generations the descendants of the great wave of Jewish immigration to America from Eastern Europe are assimilating at an alarming rate. This is usually explained as the result of ignorance of Jewish tradition, being “loved to death” by Christian America, rejecting the poverty and pogroms of the Pale of Settlement, and the failure of synagogues and rabbis to inculcate a sense of spirituality that would keep Jews within the fold. This is true, in part, but there is something else going on.
