Herzlian

For all my disdain for Herzlian liberalism, religious Zionisms (those that combine statism with religion, whether Orthodox or not. e.g., blood and soil mysticism of the Right and Left) are even more problematic to me and. given the actual situation of the populations of Pelestine/Israel today, more delterious.

Reflecting on the weaknesses of the nation-system in central and eastern Europe, Arendt saw in Herzlian Zionism a recipe for repeating these follies in Palestine.

Resistance to Herzlian political Zionism in Russia displayed the familiar dichotomy between Jewish existence in the East and the West: a dichotomy between an almost intact community with living traditions and a Westernized, relatively emancipated Jewish culture that engaged in political action to substitute for its vanishing national identity.

There exists a vast literature advancing this criticism of Herzl's activities and of the Herzlians.

Like the Herzlians, they wanted to reform Jewry and alter the Jewish condition; but the target that presented itself to them was the Diaspora which they distinguished in their minds from Jewry and Judaism in some proper, unencumbered, pristine state.

For the Herzlians, anti-Semitism constituted the central problem to be confronted, and a Jewish state was the one honorable solution.