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Article: The meaning of Zionism for the Diaspora.
- Article from:
- CrossCurrents - The Journal of Addiction and Mental Health
- Article date:
- December 22, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Association for Religion and Intellectual Life. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Jews in the multi-ethnic future will need to redefine themselves in the larger society, as Theodor Herzl did for political Zionism.
The modern Zionist movement has never been at peace with the Diaspora. In all of its versions, it has taken its measure of the Diaspora and found it wanting. I need hardly mention the most incendiary assertion of modern Zionism, the "denial of the Diaspora" - that is, the insistence that the Diaspora must now come to an end so that the Jews could become a "normal people." The cultural Zionists had their own troubles with the Diaspora. The most radical of them, like Micah Yosef Berdichevski and Yosef Chaim Brenner, wanted the ...