Zionism, Territorialism, Race, and Nation in the Thought and Politics of Israel Zangwill

Abstract

Soon after the Balfour Declaration was announced in November 1917, Israel Zangwill wrote to his good friend, the poet and translator Nina Davis Salaman, ‘You will see that the ITO & Z have joined — perhaps IZ stands for both.’1 This rather gleeful announcement of the reunion of Zangwill’s Jewish Territorial Organization (the ITO) with the larger Zionist movement reflects a sense of personal optimism that would be short-lived. It also reflects Zangwill’s characteristic egoism, his sense of himself so tied up with his work as a Zionist (as with his other endeavours) that he could look at the two movements seeking a homeland for the Jews and come up with his own initials. But while Zangwill’s Territorialist activism both promoted and was facilitated by his status as an Anglo-Jewish celebrity, his insistence on looking for a homeland outside Palestine separated him from the mainstream of Zionism and ultimately contributed to the eclipse of his reputation in the Jewish community. His Territorialism needs to be revisited, however, in the context of his experience as a turn-of-the-century English Jew, which shaped his understandings of the world situation and the place of the Jewish people within it. The rhetoric through which he enunciated his versions of Zionism reveals a figure who understood the ambiguous position of the Jews in a world obsessed with race, religion, and nationality, an impassioned defender of Jewish rights who at the same time sought to convince his listeners — in the Jewish as well as the non-Jewish public — of the normalcy of Jewish aspirations, the universality of Jewish ideals, and the inherent continuity between Jewish and Christian religious beliefs.KeywordsJewish CommunityJewish PeopleJewish LifeJewish StateJewish SettlementThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.