To the person who wants us to differentiate the modern political movement that came to be called Zionism, and the Zionist nature of Judaism, I'll address you politely, even though your assertion that I must be a teenager (quick search of my blog would show you that I work at a Holocaust museum, education and research center, that also studies the history of the Jewish people in general, so... not a sound assumption) is very insulting and condescending.
Sure, we can distinguish the thousands of years old Zionist nature of Judaism from the modern political movement that came to be referred to as Zionism.
But do you understand that the modern political movement wouldn't exist without the fact that Judaism has ALWAYS been Zionist? That the distinction is, to a degree, an artificial one, especially in the context of anti-Zionists claiming that Judaism is incompatible with Zionism, which is a lie. With that claim, they mean to deny the very right of Israel to exist as a liberation and land back movement of the Jewish people, and while they're at it, they are de-legitimizing every Zionist movement ever, whether modern or not, they're de-legitimizing every Jew who had returned to Israel, even just as an individual, because they are denying the very Zionist nature of Judaism.
I'll attach at the end an attempt at demonstrating why the distinction is somewhat artificial in this context.
But before that, I'll address some of your other claims. You said that Zionism is a secular movement, and religious Jews are opposed to it. While some ultraorthodox Jews are indeed opposed to active Zionism, and prefer a passive wait for the Mashiach, they too are Zionist in the non-modern-political-movement sense (they still believe and pray for the Mashich to bring all Jews back to Israel and re-establish Jewish sovereignty in this land, not to keep them in the diaspora). And they do not represent all religious Jews. The modern political Zionist movement was very much joined by religious Jews, such as a political organization called "Ha'Mizrachi," which was established in 1902. Their Zionism was connected to the actions and writings of rabbis who preceded many secular Zionist leaders like Herzl (first published a Zionist pamphlet in 1896), such as Rabbi Shmuel Mohilever (first established Ha'Mizrachi as a spiritual and educational pro-Zionist center in 1893), Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai (published "Minchat Yehuda," a Zionist call for Jews to return to Israel in 1840, and established the Society for the Settlement of Eretz Yisrael in 1852), and Rabbi Zvi Kalischer (asked Mayer Amschel Rothschild to help with the purchase of land in Israel for Jews to return there in 1836, and published the Zionist book Drishat Zion in 1862). Even among ultraorthodox Jews, there are Zionist ones. Some of them were a part of Ha'Mizrachi organization. During the British rule in Israel, there were ultraorthodox Jews who actively helped the Zionist underground movements, the Etzel and the Hagana, and in a 2022 poll, 76% of Chassidic Jews defined themselves as Zionist.
You also made the assertion that the modern political movement of Zionism is European. Again, while many of its founders were from Europe, many Jews from Arab and Muslim countries came to Israel as a part of the modern Zionist movement. Please don't erase them. And why would they be a part of this movement? Because of the intrinsically Zionist nature of Judaism. Yemenite Jews didn't need to be a part of the founding fathers of the modern political movement, in order to be a part of the movement, and to see it as a fulfilment of ancient Jewish prophecies, when they were brought to Israel in a special operation in 1952. In fact, there was a Zionist Yemenite movement of return in 1881, following a verse in the Bible, in the Song of Songs book, that they believed told them they had to return to Israel during this year. Many of them settled in a village close to the Temple Mount, which the Arabs refer to as Silwan, a mispronunciation of the ancient Hebrew name Shiloach (that can be found in the Bible). These Yemenite Jews were ethnically cleansed by the Arabs during the 1936-1939 anti-Zionist, anti-Jewish riots. And when Jews tried to return to Kfar Ha'Shiloach, anti-Zionists attacked that as "colonization," too. Anti-Zionists make NO distinction between Jews returning to Israel from Europe, and Jews returning to it from Arab and Muslim countries. We're all just "Zionists" and "incompatible with Judaism," no matter how much our Zionism is derived from our Jewish identity, and no matter that we are native to this land, not colonizers.
You asked, "how can judaism be 'inherently zionist' when the idea of a jewish state has only existed for less than 200 of those years?" and I will ask you, what's unclear when I say that Zionism is about Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish ancestral homeland, which is an idea that I showed was inherent to Jewish tradition and religion? There were Jewish kingdoms here (the unified kingdom, the Kingdom of Israel, the Kingdom of Yehudah, and the Hasmonean Kingdom), that fulfilled that idea long before there was a Jewish state, and the Jewish state is a direct (and yes, modern) continuation of those ancient Jewish kingdoms (I mean, of course that's the modern reincarnation, we're not going to build a Jewish kingdom now, just so no one can use the accusation that a Jewish state is a modern concept... and I'm sort of weirded out by the fact that I have to defend the right of Jews to implement modern reincarnations of their traditional notions... Also, pretty sure that if we went with the old version and tried to set up a Jewish kingdom, we'd be crucified for being backwards), because it is founded on the same exact principle, that we get to self rule in our own ancestral land. Denying that is erasing Jewish history and parts of Jewish identity.
You said, "our connection to the land does not need to be mediated through a political body the majority of us have absolutely no say in," and I wanna ask you, does every German in the world (or at least most) have to live in Germany, and have a say in it as a citizen, for the nation state of the German people to have the right to exist? Same for every other nation state out there.
You called Israel, "a country younger than our grandparents, and for that matter any other country too," which is untrue on several levels. The state might be younger than some grandparents, but its right to exist is an ancient one, connected to those thousands of years old kingdoms, and in that sense, the modern state of Israel being founded in 1948 is no different to the modern state of India being founded in 1947. Would you tell Indians that their state has no right to exist, erasing its connection to previous forms of Indian self rule in that land, just because those weren't a modern state? Would you offend them by suggesting that the age of their modern state is a factor in its legitimacy? No. But for some reason, you feel comfortable doing that when it comes to the modern Jewish state. While we're at it, whether the current self rule of Palestinians constitutes a state is a matter of debate, but let's say that it counts, and that a Palestinian state started existing when they began self ruling in 1994 following the Oslo accords (the first time ever in history when Arabs in Israel self ruled, rather than be a colony serving a metropole situated in some other Arab or Muslim country), that would make their state not only younger than our grandparents, it would make it younger than quite a few Tumblr users. But I bet you wouldn't say that this de-legitimizes the right of a Palestinian state to exist. Yet you feel it's perfectly okay to say such things about Israel. You should ask yourself why can you accept others, but not a Jewish state. For the record, here's some modern states younger than Israel, that you would never dream to de-legitimize based on their age: Malaysia (1957), Singapore (1965), Zimbabwe (as Rhodesia, 1965), Bangladesh (1971), Guinea-Bissau (1973), Comoros (1975), Lithuania (1990), Latvia (1990), Belarus (1990), Armenia (1990), Georgia (1991), Croatia (1991), Slovenia (1991), Ukraine (1991), Moldova (1991), Uzbekistan (1991), Macedonia (1991), Azerbaijan (1991), Slovakia (1992), Montenegro (2006).
Okay, a small demonstration of how artificial the distinction between modern political Zionism and historical Zionism is...
Where do we put the start of the modern political movement of Zionism, what is the date when it began?
A lot of people would suggest that it started with Herzl. He's often referred to as "the father of Zionism" (that's incorrect. It would be more accurate to refer to him as "the father of diplomatic Zionism"). Herzl was actually an assimilationist Jew, who believed Jews in Europe should aspire to be like all other Europeans, erase the difference between them and the non-Jews (relinquishing our tradition, culture, religion, everything that makes us unique and a contribution to the richness of the human experience), and rely on the equal rights that Europeans would grant us. He believed in this, but experiencing antisemitism in the cosmopolitan Vienna, as well as covering the Dreyfus trial (when a Jewish officer was convicted of treason, and shamefully exiled, despite his many years of loyal service to his country, just because he was a Jew), he came to publish (as I mentioned) a Zionist pamphlet in 1896.
So, shall we count the start of the modern political movement of Zionism as 1896?
But the term "Zionism" as the name of the movement was actually coined in 1890, by Nathan Birnbaum!
So, shall we count the start of the modern political movement of Zionism as 1890?
But for the term to be coined, it had to describe something that already existed. And in fact, many Zionist groups, counted as a part of the modern political movement, were already active by that time. For example, some people start counting the new Yishuv in Eretz Yisrael as starting with the arrival in Israel of the Zionist Bilu group, in 1882 (they were established in January of that year, and despite being secular Jews, they were drawing from Jewish tradition, naming themselves after a biblical verse from the book of Isaiah. Because like I said, modern political Zionism wouldn't exist without the ancient Zionist nature of Judaism).
So, shall we count the start of the modern political movement of Zionism as 1882?
But that doesn't work either, because by the time the Bilu group arrived in Israel, the first Jewish moshava (a Zionist form of settlement based on values of agriculture and communality), Petach Tikva (sometimes nicknamed "the mother of moshavot"), was already established in 1878.
So, shall we count the start of the modern political movement of Zionism as 1878?
But how did this new movement of Zionists know to work the land, if in the diaspora, for hundreds of years, Jews were prohibited from being farmers, so they would have no claim to the land they worked? Well, many young Zionists learned how to do this work thanks to a Jewish agricultural school called Mikveh Yisrael, which was founded in 1870.
So, shall we count the start of the modern political movement of Zionism as 1870?
But a part of why Mikvah Yisrael was established, was the poor condition of Jews in Jerusalem. By the time demographic surveys were conducted in the 1840's, Jews were the biggest religious group in the Old City of Jerusalem, and so overcrowded that it made their lives much harder, sometimes even endangered (like when a plague would break out). The Jewish minister Moshe Montefiore started building neighborhoods for Jews outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem in 1860, moving Jews out of the old Yishuv and into a new form of settling in the land of Israel, outside the "protecting" walls of the four cities holy to Judaism, and into the idea that they can and should use agriculture to sustain themselves outside these cities, and re-connect with their land.
So, shall we count the start of the modern political movement of Zionism as 1860?
But the first victim of anti-Zionist terrorism in the land of Israel is actually considered to be Rabbi Shlomo Avraham Zalman Zoref, who was murdered by Arabs in 1851 for his Zionist efforts to help in the settlement of Jews in Israel and in the restoring of Jewish religious life in the Old City of Jerusalem through diplomatic efforts vis a vis Muhamad Ali Pasha, the Egyptian occupier of the Land of Israel at the time, and by enlisting the help of the consuls of Russia and Austria (by the way, one of his grandsons was among the founders of Petach Tikva).
So, shall we count the start of the modern political movement of Zionism as 1851?
But his diplomatic Zionist efforts, for which he was murdered, didn't start at the time of his death, they go back to when he managed to get that permit from Muhamad Ali Pasha in 1836 for Jews to re-build the Ashkenazi community in the Old City of Jerusalem, which had been destroyed by Muslims over a hundred years earlier.
So, shall we count the start of the modern political movement of Zionism as 1836?
But where did that Ashkenazi Jewish community, which Rabbi Zoref tried to restore, come from? Rabbi Yehuda Ha'Chassid successfully called Jews to return to Israel, and he did manage to inspire many to follow him as he started his own journey to Israel in 1697, and managed to buy land for his community in the Old City of Jerusalem, which was joined by Jews already living there. This WAS a form of a semi-modern Zionist movement. And it IS quite connected to what came later, in more modern times.
Or another example. Dona Garcia Nassi was a crypto Jew from Portugal, whose family had fled the Spanish Inquisition, only for the Portuguese Inquisition to grow stronger and harsher, driving her and a part of her family to Istanbul. There, they could stop pretending to be converts to Christianity, they got to publicly return to their Jewish identity. She did a lot for Jews, and in 1561, she used her financial and political ties to ask the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the First to lease land in Israel, for Jews to self rule there. She first asked for land in Jerusalem, was refused, and so she ended up leasing land in Tiberias instead, helping to re-build the city and the Jewish community there, and allowing for a movement of Jews to return to Israel and settle in Tiberias. It's another type of semi-modern Zionist movement striving for Jewish sovereignty in Israel, in whatever form they could get it.
So where do we draw the line? How do we say, these Jews returning to Israel count as Zionist, but those don't? One of my best friends is a Jew from Morocco, his family was religious and fiercely Zionist, and your ask erased them. How do we accept a narrative that looks at thousands of years of Jews returning to Israel, from all sorts of backgrounds, and from all sorts of countries, and yet doesn't recognize that they all returned for the same reason, drawing from the same Jewish foundation? How do we not see that the separation is an artificial one?
Anti-Zionism is antisemitic in so many ways, and one of them is exactly what this narrative does to so many Jews who were proud, and wanted to be counted as Zionist, precisely because to them it was an expression of their Jewish identity.
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