Brenner is a serious scholar who writes elegantly and dispassionately, attempting to present a balanced, scholarly book on what he defines as “the history of an idea.” The idea he ventures to explore is what he describes as a contradiction between the desire of Zionism to return the Jewish people to normality, to be achieved through the establishment of a state in Palestine, and the goal of this state to be “a light unto the nations.”
There exists a difference between themes that interest scholars of Israel outside Israel and Israeli scholars, namely that Israelis prefer to write about the history of the Zionist movement, Jewish settlement in Palestine and Israel, and Jewish-Arab relations, and are much less interested in the history of Zionism as a concept. In contrast, scholars abroad are interested in the history of ideas and tend to unearth marginal or forgotten thinkers and scholars, usually those whose works illuminate an alternative Zionist or non-Zionist approach to Jewry and its history in the past 150 years. Brenner belongs to this trend.
What is normality, and how are we supposed to measure it? Was normality the elimination of the Jews’ pariah status, or was it the creation of a rejuvenated people that would shed anomalies that were the result of life as a despised and persecuted minority?
One of the major assumptions of Zionism was that the creation of the Jewish state would end antisemitism. This assumption was wrong; antisemitism is thriving, sometimes camouflaged as anti-Zionism. According to some of the scholars and polemicists Brenner mentions, the existence of Israel is endangering Jews in the Diaspora because they are identified with the Jewish state. Is antisemitism the result of Jews being unique, or is it the result of Jews being a weak and vulnerable minority? I believe it is the latter. Brenner thinks it is the former. The categories are not contradictory, but when they are juxtaposed, as they are in this book, the question arises of whether there is an inherent clash between the idea of normality and the idea of uniqueness.
Israel's Declaration of Independence proclaims the natural right of Jews, “like all people,” to a state of their own. It does not say anything about a unique state. The state was built by immigrants who came from all over the world, not by a native people. This is not unique, as all immigrant states were created by nonnatives. The problem of the Jews was that ownership of this land was and is still claimed by two peoples. But even in this, Israel is not unique. Territorial disputes and conflicts exist in other countries as well.
In what way should Israel be unique? At one time, the ideal was social justice, then it was liberalism, and today many Israelis embrace Messianism, an idea supported by Christian evangelicals. However, every state is unique in its own way and has its own conflicts. The mix of religion and secularism, of ethnicity and nationalism, can be found all over the world, and in this regard, Israel is very “normal.” An additional claim to uniqueness is that Israel considers itself responsible for the Jewish Diaspora. In this, too, Israel is not unique. The Greeks, Armenians, and today Syrians, Palestinians, and even Russians have a Diaspora. Israel is unique in the attention it draws and the criticism it evokes. Is this the result of its uniqueness, or maybe of old antisemitism that denies Jews what is permissible to other people?
I have stated all this not so much to contest the uniqueness of Israel, but to contest the claim that there is an inner tension between the ideal of “a light unto the nations” and the yearning for normality. While Brenner's book soundly presents the changes in the character of Israel's so-called uniqueness, Brenner accepts the yearning for normality as static. What does “normality” mean in the twenty-first century? The wandering Israeli, whom Brenner describes, is an accepted phenomenon in Israel today, and despite the panic over young Israelis leaving the country, emigration from Israel is no higher than from other developed countries, as pointed out by the author.
In my opinion, taking Altneuland at face value, as Herzl's blueprint of the future Jewish state, tends toward exaggeration. Herzl was well aware of the clash between universalism and particularism, as portrayed by his heroes, Littvak and Geiger. He never gave a thought to culture, either Jewish or Arab, or women's equality, not to mention defense, education, and other mundane matters. I would not have taken the utopian portrayal of the future state so seriously, no more than other utopias that were never realized.
I found hilarious the seriousness with which Brenner treats Philip Roth's satirical description in Operation Shylock of the welcome extended by Poles to Jews returning to Poland. There can be no doubt about Roth's irony, bordering on parody. Brenner refers to it literally, which is strange considering that even the small number of Jews who currently live in Poland are deeply concerned about antisemitism.
Brenner believes that until 1945, Zionists did not aim for an independent state and accepts at face value the fervent denials of some Zionist leaders. Jews denied their wish for statehood because it was not wise to agitate the Arabs about something that was not yet achievable. But in reading the internal documents, the discussions that were not open to the public, there is no doubt that this was the ultimate goal, agreed on by both Left and Right, with differences between them merely tactical. Small minorities presented a different approach, but their influence was limited. Since 1937, when the British first proposed partitioning Palestine and establishing two states, it was clear that the Jews would accept nothing less, and this determination was only reinforced by the traumatic events of the 1940s.
Brenner capably describes Zionism's ambivalent relationship with religion. Zionism was founded on the yearning and images imbued in the national imagination for millennia. However, it was a secular movement; how to express attachment to tradition without relinquishing secularism was a question Aḥad Ha-ʿam, for instance, struggled with, with only partial success. “Jewish culture” is undefinable and has been contested for the past 150 years. The growth of the ultra-Orthodox sector in Israel, especially the messianic stream, is cause for concern. Nevertheless, the state's secular character is still very much alive.
Israel is both unique and not unique. It is not a normal state, given its disproportionate role among the nations. But this nonnormality is very different from the nonnormality of Jewish existence a hundred years ago.
