There is probably no single factor that has kept the concept of zionism at the forefront than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In fact, we basically do not examine zionism other than how it relates to Jew and Arab.

That is unfortunate and highly misleading because in the long run, Israel will have to grapple with the issue of zionism in a way that does not necessarily relate to the demographics of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs.

That issue would be globalization.

It is obviously a factor in Israel as it is in the US, western Europe, or any advanced part of the world. The high standard of living in Israel has created the same type of immigration that it has in the United States: Israel "guest workers" come in and fill jobs that educated Israelis will not fill themselves, just as Mexican and Central American labor does in the US. These guest workers aren't going anywhere; they're staying in Israel and they are not Jewish. They are rarely discussed in the demographic issues that examine Jewish and Arab populations.

The world today, particularly the advanced world, sees people traveling where jobs are located (often high paying, technically oriented jobs). It sees countries like the US encourages brain power from around the world to come to our shores. Without such similiar ability to attract the brightest and the best (who likely will not be Jewish immigrants), Israel needs to examine zionism and its role in its society. It may, in fact, have to choose between zionism and the ability to live as a modern state.

We are moving into an era where the nation-state concept is weakening, where multi-national companies are calling the shots, and that people within a given nation are not there because they represent one (or two) etnicities; they're there because they want to be there in a highly mobile world.

The irony of post WWII zionism is that it created a super form of nationalism, a litmus test few other countries had, just at the time that nationalism was not on the upswing, but heading into decline. Israeli zionism, that appeared so relevant and beneficial due to the Holocaust, has, in fact, been a noose around Israeli Jews' necks. IMHO, the needs of Israeli Jews to live in the Holy Land will be far better served in a state that recognizes no religion with any form of special status. The world of the 21st century just doesn't work the way the world of 1948 worked.

Vary interesting.

Israel was created as a Jewish state to benefit the Jews and serve as a shelter because Zionism perceived that a nation can’t live among another one. Maybe its not correct today as it was before, but still, Jews are a vary small nation (even smaller than it was 100 years ago) and its interest can be realized only in Israel that will be functioning as a one-national country. I think it is true to say that jews have a deep frear of putting their faith in others people hands, but it is proven to be justified. Where would the jews from the USSR (like me) go if not to Israel? America didn’t accepted many them, and the situation in Russia for Jews is simply awful.

The other reason why Israel is needed is as a stronghold of Judaism it self. Who knows how long the Diaspora Jews will keep their identity.. why do they need it anyway in a
multicultural world? Personally I think that 4000 years of preserving history should just disappear.. we outlasted many empires and we need to continue existing – only in Israel it is insured for ages.

As for being a modern country and a one national one:
First of all in Israel, thank god, we have enough clever people that we produce so we have no need in “imports”.
Second of all economically Israel can be among the 10 strongest economies easily.
Israel has as I said a big ‘brain pool’ even though we are a small nation. We are a world superpower in electronics, software, medicine and biotechnology.
Your computer is running on a Pentium 4 probably and its based on Israeli technology as Intel has its biggest r&d center outside the US here.
We need peace and stability so we could realize our entire potential including enormous potential in tourism. We can reach an annual arrival of many millions of tourists.
Admit it.. besides being modern, cool with sandy beaches we are the holiest piece of land In the world. Every man should come here to see where David and Jesus lived and where Muhammad went to heaven. We have maybe the most fascinating history and well.. I rest my case.

Shohad,

thanks for a great response.

The place where I disagree with you most is that I believe that you see the world as far more static than I do.

Change happens faster and faster, the incremental time between changes drops enormously.

We will see far more changes in Israel (and the world) in its second half century than we did in its first.

Let me give an analogy here. You represent one of the world's two great Jewish communities (in Israel). I represent the other (the US). If I look at the changes in the US Jewish community in the last 50 years, I am astounded. If, in the era directly after the Holocaust, you were to have told an American Jew that intermarriage rates would rise above 50% in just a half century, many would have found that ridiculous.

Yet those changes are there, and the large US Jewish community has assimiliated into the US in ways that would have been impossible in more nationalistic eras. The fact is, a country like US couldn't have existed in the past: a country where there is no majority....just various minorities.

And the US is indicative of other nations, as well, nations like Canada, Australia, and amazingly,more and more Western Europe where unpresidented movements of peoples are taking place.

Truth is, the following is NOT the formula for the current nation state:

Ethnicity=Nation. It's an old paradigm.

Neither you nor I (nor anyone) can predict the ways that Israel would be hurt if it clings to a zionist structure of government in an era when people are "free agents" and move freely throughout the world.

In a technologically advanced age, Israel needs to have a nation that is well educated and capable of advanced jobs more than a nation that is Jewish.

Like I said before, Shohad, none of what I'm suggesting here is remotely connected to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In fact, that conflict masks the real issue of whether Israel (or any such structured nation) can succeed in the mission impossible of controlling demographics (they never could be controlled.....and even less so today) and have a technologically advanced state with a controlled population.

Even if there was not an Arab in sight, Israel would still have to grapple with these issues. Maybe even more so, because without the Arabs as foil (and the need to protect life), a more open examination of belief of how a state should be structured and if any of its citizens receive a special status would be more readily discussed.

Please understand I would always want to see a strong Jewish presence in what is today Israel and am happy a place like Israel exists to allow those who want to live a very Jewish life close to where our peoplehood began and flourished is a good thing. I have relatives in Israel and I come from a family that was very zionistic. My issue is: would these people be far better served by a state that is not attached to any one group of people (like the US). My sense is, in the long run and in absence of a Palestinian issue, they definitely would be.

I'd love to hear from other Israeli Jews on how you see the future of zionism in Israel in an increasingly technological and global era.

Gentlemen, if the question is specifically about the nation-state called Israel, then perhaps the State as it is really isn't necessary. However, the entire basis for the Jewish people's claim to our land is the Torah. The UN's declaration for the 1948 ceation of Israel was simply a method to bring about the creation of what has always been intended. The future success and longevity, if it is in our hands to control at all, is through closer ties with Torah, not less.

You are correct that ethnicity is not equal to state. That is the bluff of the Zionist promise. So, many Jewish people in Israel strive to be like all the other nations of the world. Why not? The Zionst education was set up to encourage the defeat of the very ethnicity upon which it was created. They do not want to be constrained by ethnicity. However, the reality is that Jews are only defined by Torah. And the closeness with Torah is the only commonality the Jewish people have throughout the ages. Those who abandoned Torah were lost and integrated into other nations.

So the question, in the long run is, we must choose between being Jewish or not being Jewish. Zionism cannot sustain a Jewish identity, as has been pointed out in this thread. Only Torah sustains Judaism because Torah is the only beacon to which we gather age after age. It is the very thing, and the only thing, that defines and creates such a thing as Judaism and Jewish people and the Land of Israel. Whether the State of Israel, as it is now comprised, continues as a Jewish state or not is not relevent in the long run. Ultimately there will be a Jewish nation in the Land of Israel that fulfills the objectives of why we are here, and why the creation is created. Those objectives are congruent with Torah, not the opposite.

edsg25, I understand what are you saying and yet I find some things hard to accept.
It all depends if you care about preserving Judaism as a major force in the world or you don’t mind integrating completely to the other ethnicities.
You say that intermarriage is over 50%. That suggests both that Jews are a well integrated part of the US society and that there will be less and less Jews. On the long run Judaism won’t be a major force in the US anymore.
Call me old fashioned, but that is against what I believe in.

everythingisone – there is no need to underestimate the importance of Zionism.
Zionism can’t sustain the Jewish identity, but I think no one reasonable has ever planed it to. I see Zionism at list as a tool to defend Jews, and I think Israel is a perfect setting for Judaism to evolve and flourish.
When Jews were devoted solely to the study of Torah it didn’t saved them from hundreds of years of suffering in exile.

everythingisone – there is no need to underestimate the importance of Zionism.
Zionism can’t sustain the Jewish identity, but I think no one reasonable has ever planed it to. I see Zionism at list as a tool to defend Jews, and I think Israel is a perfect setting for Judaism to evolve and flourish.
When Jews were devoted solely to the study of Torah it didn’t saved them from hundreds of years of suffering in exile.
I would say it differently. There is a danger is overstating the importance of Zionism.
One of the problems with Zionism is that it portrays itself as a means to save Jews while all the while destroying the very foundation of what it is to be a Jew. The modern state has moved even further from its Jewish roots than Ben Gurion insisted upon.
The purpose of Torah is not to end exile. There was never an exile, by the way, when Jews were devoted solely to living Torah. Studying Torah is one of the ways required for living Torah. The purpose of Torah is to live a life you are meant to live.
I agree with you that Israel is a perfect place for jews and Judaism to flourish. The people of Israel, the Land of Israel and Torah are inseparable.

OK everythingisone - that’s a religious perspective which I respect deeply, even though I won’t agree with everything you have said.

OK everythingisone - that’s a religious perspective which I respect deeply, even though I won’t agree with everything you have said.
Peace

I believe there is an issue that future Judaism will deal with that other major religions (i.e. Chrisitanity, Islam, Buddhism, Hindu, etc.) do not.

It is something that will be dealt with in the United States, in Israel, and in the world's smaller Jewish centers.

No major religion is so connected with "peoplehood", with a sense of etnicity as is Judaism. We speak of a relationship our ancestors had with God from biblical times. For millennia, we talked about "next year in Jerusalem". We used Jewish presence in modern day Israel as the root of our claims to land in what is today Israel. In shetls and ghettos through two thousand years of Diaspora, there were many a Jew who had no religious beliefs but who were part of the cultual/ethnic/undefinable mix that was part of being Jewish.

People don't say, "You don't look Christian" or "You don't look Muslim".

Our religion is different.....a sense of peoplehood that traces its ancestry to biblical times in the middle east, a religion that is about a convenant between a people and their God.

So, what's the problem then?

The problem is this and I do not believe that American Jewish or Israeli Jewish leaders have come close to grappling with it:

the world's most "people based" major religion is in the process of losing its people. Please note I did not say "losing its religion". I said "losing its PEOPLE"

At no time in Jewish history have Jews intermarried and integrated into so many world cultures. In no time has conversion to Judaism (once anatoma) become so encouraged....to the point where, in the US, we have not only black Jews, but Hispanic Jews, and Asian Jews as well.

How does a religion based on peoplehood survive the fact that the gene pool is mixing up that people and others (spouses, converts, etc.) are being mixed in?

I am not making any demographic prediction here. All I am saying is, that's one big matzoh ball hanging on the future of world Jewry based on the fact that we are becoming ethnically less and less "a people" but having a religion that continues to look at us as being one.

What I am saying here is that this is an issue we should very much be grappling with. And personally, I don't see us doing so.

Wow edsg25, that’s an entirely new issue.
Look what I wrote you before:

edsg25, I understand what are you saying and yet I find some things hard to accept.
It all depends if you care about preserving Judaism as a major force in the world or you don’t mind integrating completely to the other ethnicities.
You say that intermarriage is over 50%. That suggests both that Jews are a well integrated part of the US society and that there will be less and less Jews. On the long run Judaism won’t be a major force in the US anymore.


I can tell you that’s a major problem.
Saying anything in that field will automatically make me racist, but this is true.
If Jews want to stay Jews they need to marry Jews.
In the future I think many of our people will be “lost”, especially in the US.
Anyway – only religious Jews care about it nowadays.

If you are believer its written:
"כה אמר יהוה נתן שמש לאור יומם חקת ירח וכוכבים לאור לילהרגע הים ויהמו גליו יהוה צבאות שמו: אם-ימשו החקים האלה מלפני נאם יהוה גם זרע ישראל ישבתו מהיות גוי לפני כל-הימים"

ירמיהו לא פס' לד-לה.

If you don’t know Hebrew it basically says that the nation of Israel will exist forever, like the laws of nature such as the sunshine and the waves. When they will sees to existing so does Israel.

Saying anything in that field will automatically make me racist, but this is true.
If Jews want to stay Jews they need to marry Jews.

Shohad, I get the feeling that this is one of those situations where you have to say "Jews are people, too"....and, as such, individual Jews will make those decisions individually (and 99 out of a 100 times, the choice will be more based on mate than on religion).

You know, I was by no means suggesting that Judaism is the only religion that is grappling with major issues in a global age, a time when information is open to all of us instanteously and transportation brings us to each other immediately. Look at the Catholic Church: no matter what dictates come from Rome, American Catholics will be basing issues on their own life that the pope totally condemns....and make those decisions in comfort and without guilt.

All mainstream religions are affected in one way or the other. As I said with Judaism, we are in an era when whatever ethnic roots we saw in our religion are weakening through assimiliation, intermarriage, and, yes, as I said, even conversion (to Judaism).

What will the way we suffered in Egypt, Jerusalem, Massada, Babaylon, or even Auschwiecz have on new Jews who may be Hispanic, Asian, black, or non-Jewish white in ancestory and who are looking for a personal relationship with God as opposed to being part of a group of people who collectively had a relationship with God.

If the old joke that goes: What is a nine word name for everry Jewish holiday? They-tried-to-kill-us.-They-failed.-Let's-eat

has any element of reality, what will Judaism have to offer to future adherents at a time when ethnicity/peoplehood/common Middle Eastern roots is no longer relevant?

what will Judaism have to offer to future adherents at a time when ethnicity/peoplehood/common Middle Eastern roots is no longer relevant?

I think that when Jews will stop feeling that there’s a necessity in keeping the heritage of our nation – there will be no need in its continuance.
I say it with ease because I just don’t see it happening, even though all you have mentioned in your posts about the processes of globalization is correct.

Those new-Jews are phenomena that can happen only in the US. You have the largest reformist movement there which is responsible for it. It’s not an issue here.

Israel, as long as it stays the Jewish land will continue to be the fortress of Jews many of which religious. This assures us that the culture, peoplehood and the nation at list won’t be exterminated even though I am sure the religious population would love to see a Jewish state and not a state for Jews like it was suggested here before.
As you can see it brings us back to our first discussion about staying a Zionist state among a multicultural world.

Israel, as long as it stays the Jewish land will continue to be the fortress of Jews many of which religious. This assures us that the culture, peoplehood and the nation at list won’t be exterminated even though I am sure the religious population would love to see a Jewish state and not a state for Jews like it was suggested here before.
As you can see it brings us back to our first discussion about staying a Zionist state among a multicultural world.

Shohad, my response here has little to do with Israel. Instead it is a far more general statement.

The amount of change this planet is going to see in the next 50 years, compared to the last, will not only be mind boggling, but quite frankly incomprehensible. The rapidity of change is such that we just cannot get a clear picture of exactly where it is going.

I firmly believe that multicultural issues, diversity, a global economy, the easy flow of communication and transportation will thoroughly alter all the nations of the world, or at least those that wish to survive economically.

I can't believe that Israel or any other nation will not be seriously altered by demograpic and technological changes that are not even in our stream of consciousness.

Could Israel have created the type of Jewish state you describe if it were 1805 or even 1905? Undoubtedly. But 2005 and all the years of change in front of us is another issue. It won't come from governmental decress but throught the forces of a free market place and interconnectiveness, but the demograpics of Israel and all the world's nations will be dramatically shaken up by powers that cannot be controlled by any individual or nation.

So, yes, I believe that Israel needs to realiza that like the US, Canada, Britain, France, etc., that its mix of people will continue to change, to alter, and to be less "Jewish" in the traditional sense.

So, yes, I believe that Israel needs to realiza that like the US, Canada, Britain, France, etc., that its mix of people will continue to change, to alter, and to be less "Jewish" in the traditional sense.

OK edsg25, I would like to ask you what in your mind are the consequences of Israel “realizing” it?
There is an objective reason to the emigration waves those countries experience. They are a solution to their problems, its not an unstoppable force of nature like you portrait it, you just exaggerate a bit i think.
But I guess that we will see what is happened for ourselves.

OK edsg25, I would like to ask you what in your mind are the consequences of Israel “realizing” it?
There is an objective reason to the emigration waves those countries experience. They are a solution to their problems, its not an unstoppable force of nature like you portrait it, you just exaggerate a bit i think.
But I guess that we will see what is happened for ourselves.

truthfully, shohad, israel experienced the same thing. Israel is in the same boat as the US, western Europe: a developed and affulent nation with a relatively low birth rate outside of elements in the Orthodox community. When Palestinian labor became an issue due to fear of violence, Israel basically did the same thing that the US and western Europe did: it looked to poorer areas in the world for "guest workers" to fill jobs that Israelis (and Americans, French, British, Germans, etc.) won't take themselves. No advanced society can fill those necessary basic labor jobs without foreign workers. Do I believe that the "guest workers" will leave Israel and go home? It's as likely to happen as the Mexican popuation abandoning southern California and heading home.

Look, Shohad, this isn't a philosophical disagreement. It is more related to my perception that the forces of the future, bulldozing towards us at record speed, will totally change the way we see nations, ethnicity, groups of people. I know you don't see this happening the way I do.

My perspective: Israelis (and Jews) are people like anybody else and they (we) are subject to the same forces that dominate the world as everybody else is. It's not that I don't believe that Israel can pull off the concept of a nation state attached to a group of people; it's that I believe nobody will be able to achieve that in the coming age. The forces released by this very internet on which we are talking pretty well dictates that.