Zionist Discourse and the Rabbinic Genre

Abstract

The Zionist movement saw the Bible as the main source of the Jewish political tradition, national symbols and political terminology. Rabbinic literature, which was associated with exilic eras, was largely disregarded. This article focuses on the possible influences that rabbinic tradition nonetheless had on early Zionist political discourse. Using Bakhtin's genre theory and his dialogical perspective, I analyse statements made by Herzl, Nordau, Sokolov, and others, and argue that there is evidence of an explicit awareness among the Jewish elite of the influence of rabbinic discourse on the communication patterns and characteristics of the Zionist discourse in eastern European communities. References to rabbinic influence on the political sphere usually arose in response to what was seen as the application of religious derash and pilpul perceptions of text—perceptions that aim to uncover the concealed truths within the text—to secular political Zionist discourse. These references posited that Zionist debates in eastern Europe were characterised by a tendency towards circuitous argumentation, negation and opposition.