Show description

This equation of national collectivity with a sovereign polity would fuel enduring strife between nationstates committed to their particular concerns. From an ethical perspective, remapping the globe in accordance with nation-state boundaries would impede progress toward the spread of universal justice and equality by erecting boundaries rather than promoting integration through education, social interaction, and economic cooperation. ” A brief, albeit significant and overlooked, synthesis developed between internationalism, with its vision of a commonwealth of nationalities, and Zionism during the first third of the twentieth century.

The extensive vocabulary that would develop in the second half of the twentieth century to include Jews as an ethnic group, or as one of the three core religions of American nationalism, did not yet exist. ”25 Jewish intellectuals faced the challenge of inventing new conceptual vocabulary that would both counter the claims 36 zionism and the roads not taken of American nationalism and promote an alternate category to define “otherness” in the American context. Projecting the existence of a categorical distinction between American civic and European ethnic nationalisms in the early interwar period overshadows the existence of shared concerns and Jewish responses across the Atlantic.

31 Jewish nationalism introduced a more ethical alternative to the nation-state model that celebrated the Jews’ ability to thrive without sovereignty. The shared culture and language linking the Jewish people exemplified the most progressive grounds for collective solidarity. Dubnow’s attempt to partner with the liberal Kadet Party failed—he remained frustrated by the high degree of Russification and conformity that they demanded from minority groups. Moreover, the entire project of liberal reforms in Russia became increasingly unlikely after the failed revolution of 1905.