Zionism in the Early 1900s ｜ A Critical Compass Clip
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
125.75529
Summary
In this episode, we discuss the origins of the concept of zionism and what it meant to be a Jew in the pre-Zionist world, and how it led to the creation of the state of Israel.
Transcript
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to sort of summarize what the situation was between uh what happened with the the british
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and the ottoman and promises made and promises broken what what was happening in that time
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well to understand that time we have to actually understand um well we had the first wave of
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russian jews settling into there between like 1881 and 1903 but during this time we also had
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um zionism as a concept uh emerge in response to kind of the persecution of jewish people throughout
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europe and 1897 that's when zionism started forming and theror herschel was that's when the term isn't
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is uh coined yeah it's coined and that's where it was starting to be understood and these ideas
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are being spread around still very much in its infancy this was not something that like all
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orthodox jews even like recognized not everybody was on the same page uh of this so um when you
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will look at zionism you could and this is relevant to kind of the promises that were made
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and the way that this unfolded um if you look at the different types of zionism uh some of this
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overlaps but you could split three main types into like political zionism a cultural or a spiritual
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zionism and a practical zionism and you differentiate like political is all about trying to achieve the
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goals of a jewish state a jewish home through political means through leveraging political power
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and trying to get the legitimacy through being recognized on the international stage the cultural
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or spiritual zionism was the path to establishing a jewish state was through revitalizing the culture
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and creating like a spiritual hub for jewish people and also reinvigorating and like re-establishing
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hebrew as a language and kind of telling the story and lighting that fire within individuals
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uh and then there's a practical zionism of like saying that well goals can only be achieved by
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building infrastructure and setting up good relationships with people and basically you're
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creating the value and you'd be welcomed with open arms that you wouldn't have to buy political
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favors you'd be creating the kind of like warm relations that that you would naturally be
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accepted so um with it's interesting that's kind of the context it's interesting how uh you you
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mentioned how when zionism is first um conceptualized most jews throughout the world would not have been
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privy to this and would not have had um necessarily access to this idea that well now we need to
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to form a homeland we need to or or more more accurately we need to rediscover our ancestral
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homeland settle there and move you have disparate groups of people that generally share religion
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generally share certain uh lifestyle choices things like that that that culturally make them jewish
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and then you also have uh in the same kind of way you have in the in the area that would become israel and
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palestine the same thing you have disparate groups of arabs who wouldn't necessarily identify all as the same
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members of the same nation state generally sharing a lifestyle generally sharing cultural traits
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then um the british and the ottoman they go at it yeah that was world war one ottoman empire being