Anarchism in Israel
Encyclopedia
Anarchism has been an undercurrent in the politics of Palestine
and Israel
for over a century.
at the beginning of the 20th century, carried by a big wave of emigrants from Eastern Europe (Russia
, Lithuania
, Ukraine
, Poland
). The ideas of Peter Kropotkin
and Leo Tolstoy
had remarkable influence on famous exponents of some Left Zionists, such as Yitzhak Tabenkin
, Berl Katznelson
, and Mark Yarblum. The organizer of the Jewish self-defense movement, Joseph Trumpeldor
, who later became a hero of the Israeli right, was very close to anarcho-syndicalism
and even declared himself an anarcho-communist. Anarchism has also had some influence on the constitution of socio-political movements such as Poalei Zion, Tzeirei Zion, HeHalutz
, and Gdud HaAvoda
. The early kibbutz
movement was libertarian socialist in nature. At that time, many Left Zionists rejected the idea of establishing a Jewish nation-state
and promoted Jewish-Arab solidarity.
The anarchists in Palestine at the beginning of the century, nearly all coming from Eastern Europe
, did not have connections with the powerful Yiddish anarchist movement and had adopted the Hebrew language
, which was unpopular among the European Jewish anarchists, many of whom opposed all forms of Zionism
and supported the grassroots Yiddish culture of the Ashkenazi Jewry. In the 1920s and '30s all lived on the kibbutz: for example, the famous anarchist Aharon Shidlovsky was one of the founders of the kibbutz Kvutzat Kinneret.
During the Spanish revolution
many anarchists of Palestine rushed to Spain
in order to fight against Franco
and fascism
in the ranks of the libertarian CNT
-FAI
militia.
The Austrian-Jewish anti-authoritarian philosopher Martin Buber
settled in Jerusalem in 1938. Buber considered himself a "cultural Zionist". He rejected the idea of Jewish nationalism and was a staunch supporter of a bi-national solution in Palestine.
While many Jewish anarchists
were irreligious or sometimes vehemently anti-religious
, there were also a few religious anarchists and pro-anarchist thinkers, who combined contemporary radical ideas with the traditional anarchistic trends in Kabbalah
and Hasidism (see Anarchism and Orthodox Judaism
. The Orthodox
Kabbalist rabbi Yehuda Ashlag
, who moved to Palestine in 1921, believed in voluntary communism, based on the principles of Kabbalah. Ashlag supported the Kibbutz movement and preached to establish a network of self-ruled internationalist communes, who would eventually annul the brute-force regime completely, for “every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”, because there is nothing more humiliating and degrading for a person than being under the brute-force government http://www.kabbalah.info/eng/content/view/full/3811. However, most of the contemporary followers of Ashlagian Kabbalah seem to ignore the radical teachings of their rebbe
.
, educated in Yiddish, and among them, anarchism had a specific and visible presence. Between the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the '50s, Polish immigrants formed an anarchist group in Tel-Aviv whose main exponent was Eliezer Hirschauge, author of a book on the history of the Polish anarchist movement published in 1953. Beginning in the 1950s, Israeli anarchism makes reference to Abba Gordin (1887-1964), writer and philosopher, one of the more remarkable representatives of the Yiddish anarchist movement. Gordin had been the inspirer of the pan-Russian anarchist movement and one of the organizers of the Anarchist Federation of Moscow (1918). From 1925, he lived in New York, where he had emigrated and where he published a literary philosophical review, Yiddishe Shriften (1936-1957), as well as being a habitual contributor to the most long-lived anarchist periodical in the Yiddish language, the Freie Arbeiter Stimme
(1890-1977).
In 1958, Abba Gordin moved to Israel, and in Tel Aviv, founded a Yiddish anarchist circle, "Agudath Schochrei Chofesh" (ASHUACH), with a library of classic anarchist works in Yiddish, Hebrew, and Polish, and with a large hall for meetings and conferences. He also began to publish a bilingual monthly review (in Yiddish and Hebrew), Problemen/Problemot, which he directed from 1959 to 1964. During this period, ASHUACH had approximately 150 members and drew hundred of people to conferences on the philosophy of anarchism. Among the more debated topics: the spiritual roots of anarchism and the connections between anarchism, the Book of the Prophets (Neviim), and the Kabbalah
. Problemen published stories and articles on the history of anarchism, Hasidic legends, medieval Jewish literature and the current problems of Yiddish literature.
After the death of Abba Gordin, from 1964 to 1971 the review was directed by Shmuel Abarbanel. In 1971, Joseph Luden (born in Warsaw, 1908) took his place and affiliated the review with a publishing house that published fifteen or so books and pamphlets of fiction and poetry, all in Yiddish. Therefore, since Problemen came to be solely in Yiddish, it lost the Hebrew half of its title. The number of pages went from 24 to 36.
ASHUACH and Problemen were in permanent contact with the Yiddish anarchist movement and in particular with Freie Arbeiter Stimme of New York and Dos Freie Wort of Buenos Aires
. In the meantime Problemen was becoming less philosophical and more literary. The readers of the review belonged to every field of the Israeli society. The writer Leonid Podrydchik defined Problemen as the best Israeli publication in Yiddish language.
ASHUACH came to a halt in the 1980s. The old anarchists died one after the other and none of the young ones knew Yiddish. The last issue of Problemen was published in December 1989 (it was the one-hundred-and-sixty-fifth issue). Subsequently Joseph Luden tried to share with one new review, Freie Stimme, in order to continue the tradition of Problemen, but only printed a single issue in September, 1991. This was the last Yiddish anarchist periodical publication
in the world.
Uri Gordon
, the Israeli activist, lecturer and author of Anarchy Alive: Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory (Pluto Press), has written a supportive article on Israeli anarchists in The Jerusalem Post, Right of Reply: Anarchy in the Holy Land!, published June 12, 2007, in response to an anti-anarchist item by Jerusalem Post writer Elliot Jaeger, Power and Politics: Anarchy has its place, published on May 23, 2007.
One Struggle (Ma'avak Ehad) http://www.onestruggle.org is a social anarchist affinity group
in Israel.
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
and Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
for over a century.
Early Kibbutz movement
The anarchist ideology arrived in PalestinePalestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
at the beginning of the 20th century, carried by a big wave of emigrants from Eastern Europe (Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
, Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
). The ideas of Peter Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, economist, geographer, author and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between...
and Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
had remarkable influence on famous exponents of some Left Zionists, such as Yitzhak Tabenkin
Yitzhak Tabenkin
-External links:...
, Berl Katznelson
Berl Katznelson
Berl Katznelson was one the intellectual founders of Labor Zionism, instrumental to the establishment of the modern State of Israel, and the editor of Davar, the first daily newspaper of the workers' movement.-Biography:...
, and Mark Yarblum. The organizer of the Jewish self-defense movement, Joseph Trumpeldor
Joseph Trumpeldor
Joseph Trumpeldor , was an early Zionist activist. He helped organize the Zion Mule Corps and bring Jewish immigrants to the Land of Israel. Trumpeldor died defending the settlement of Tel Hai in 1920 and subsequently became a Zionist national hero...
, who later became a hero of the Israeli right, was very close to anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labour movement. The word syndicalism comes from the French word syndicat which means trade union , from the Latin word syndicus which in turn comes from the Greek word σύνδικος which means caretaker of an issue...
and even declared himself an anarcho-communist. Anarchism has also had some influence on the constitution of socio-political movements such as Poalei Zion, Tzeirei Zion, HeHalutz
Hehalutz
Hechalutz was an association of Jewish youth whose aim was to train its members to settle in the Land of Israel, which became an umbrella organization of the pioneering Zionist youth movements....
, and Gdud HaAvoda
Gdud HaAvoda
G'dud HaʿAvodah VeHaHaganah ʿAl-Shem Yosef Trumpeldor , commonly known as Gdud HaAvoda, was a socialist Zionist work group in Mandate Palestine.The group was established on 8 August 1920, with the three focuses of work, settlement and defence...
. The early kibbutz
Kibbutz
A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...
movement was libertarian socialist in nature. At that time, many Left Zionists rejected the idea of establishing a Jewish nation-state
Nation-state
The nation state is a state that self-identifies as deriving its political legitimacy from serving as a sovereign entity for a nation as a sovereign territorial unit. The state is a political and geopolitical entity; the nation is a cultural and/or ethnic entity...
and promoted Jewish-Arab solidarity.
The anarchists in Palestine at the beginning of the century, nearly all coming from Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
, did not have connections with the powerful Yiddish anarchist movement and had adopted the Hebrew language
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
, which was unpopular among the European Jewish anarchists, many of whom opposed all forms of Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
and supported the grassroots Yiddish culture of the Ashkenazi Jewry. In the 1920s and '30s all lived on the kibbutz: for example, the famous anarchist Aharon Shidlovsky was one of the founders of the kibbutz Kvutzat Kinneret.
During the Spanish revolution
Spanish Revolution
The Spanish Revolution was a workers' social revolution that began during the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and resulted in the widespread implementation of anarchist and more broadly libertarian socialist organizational principles throughout various portions of the country for two to...
many anarchists of Palestine rushed to Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
in order to fight against Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
and fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
in the ranks of the libertarian CNT
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo is a Spanish confederation of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions affiliated with the International Workers Association . When working with the latter group it is also known as CNT-AIT...
-FAI
Federación Anarquista Ibérica
The Federación Anarquista Ibérica is a Spanish organization of anarchist militants active within affinity groups inside the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo trade union. It is often abbreviated as CNT-FAI because of the close relationship between the two organizations...
militia.
The Austrian-Jewish anti-authoritarian philosopher Martin Buber
Martin Buber
Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....
settled in Jerusalem in 1938. Buber considered himself a "cultural Zionist". He rejected the idea of Jewish nationalism and was a staunch supporter of a bi-national solution in Palestine.
While many Jewish anarchists
Jewish anarchism
Jewish anarchism is a general term encompassing various expressions of anarchism within the Jewish community.- Secular Jewish Anarchism :Many people of Jewish origin, such as Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Martin Buber, Murray Bookchin, Noam Chomsky, Murray Rothbard or David D. Friedman have...
were irreligious or sometimes vehemently anti-religious
Antireligion
Antireligion is opposition to religion. Antireligion is distinct from atheism and antitheism , although antireligionists may be atheists or antitheists...
, there were also a few religious anarchists and pro-anarchist thinkers, who combined contemporary radical ideas with the traditional anarchistic trends in Kabbalah
Kabbalah
Kabbalah/Kabala is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the esoteric aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It was systematized in 11th-13th century Hachmei Provence and Spain, and again after the Expulsion from Spain, in 16th century Ottoman Palestine...
and Hasidism (see Anarchism and Orthodox Judaism
Anarchism and Orthodox Judaism
-Background:This article describes some views of notable Orthodox Jewish figures who supported anarchism, as well as various themes within the scope of the Orthodox Jewish tradition or among the practicing Orthodox Jews that are generally considered important from the anarchist worldview...
. The Orthodox
Orthodox Judaism
Orthodox Judaism , is the approach to Judaism which adheres to the traditional interpretation and application of the laws and ethics of the Torah as legislated in the Talmudic texts by the Sanhedrin and subsequently developed and applied by the later authorities known as the Gaonim, Rishonim, and...
Kabbalist rabbi Yehuda Ashlag
Yehuda Ashlag
Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag or Yehuda Leib Ha-Levi Ashlag also known as the Baal Ha-Sulam in reference to his magnum opus, was an orthodox rabbi and kabbalist born in Łódź, Congress Poland, Russian Empire, to a family of scholars connected to the Hasidic courts of Porisov and Belz...
, who moved to Palestine in 1921, believed in voluntary communism, based on the principles of Kabbalah. Ashlag supported the Kibbutz movement and preached to establish a network of self-ruled internationalist communes, who would eventually annul the brute-force regime completely, for “every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”, because there is nothing more humiliating and degrading for a person than being under the brute-force government http://www.kabbalah.info/eng/content/view/full/3811. However, most of the contemporary followers of Ashlagian Kabbalah seem to ignore the radical teachings of their rebbe
Rebbe
Rebbe , which means master, teacher, or mentor, is a Yiddish word derived from the Hebrew word Rabbi. It often refers to the leader of a Hasidic Jewish movement...
.
Anarchism in the State of Israel
Until the 1940s, there were no anarchist organizations in israel. A little before and immediately after the constitution of the State of Israel, in 1948, there was an influx of western European anarchist survivors of NazismNazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
, educated in Yiddish, and among them, anarchism had a specific and visible presence. Between the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the '50s, Polish immigrants formed an anarchist group in Tel-Aviv whose main exponent was Eliezer Hirschauge, author of a book on the history of the Polish anarchist movement published in 1953. Beginning in the 1950s, Israeli anarchism makes reference to Abba Gordin (1887-1964), writer and philosopher, one of the more remarkable representatives of the Yiddish anarchist movement. Gordin had been the inspirer of the pan-Russian anarchist movement and one of the organizers of the Anarchist Federation of Moscow (1918). From 1925, he lived in New York, where he had emigrated and where he published a literary philosophical review, Yiddishe Shriften (1936-1957), as well as being a habitual contributor to the most long-lived anarchist periodical in the Yiddish language, the Freie Arbeiter Stimme
Freie Arbeiter Stimme
The Freie Arbeiter Stimme was the longest-running anarchist periodical in the Yiddish language, founded initially as an American counterpart to Rudolf Rocker's London-based Arbeter Fraynd . The early Yiddish spelling, פֿרייע אַרבייטער שטיממע , reflects the early 20th century fashion to Germanize...
(1890-1977).
In 1958, Abba Gordin moved to Israel, and in Tel Aviv, founded a Yiddish anarchist circle, "Agudath Schochrei Chofesh" (ASHUACH), with a library of classic anarchist works in Yiddish, Hebrew, and Polish, and with a large hall for meetings and conferences. He also began to publish a bilingual monthly review (in Yiddish and Hebrew), Problemen/Problemot, which he directed from 1959 to 1964. During this period, ASHUACH had approximately 150 members and drew hundred of people to conferences on the philosophy of anarchism. Among the more debated topics: the spiritual roots of anarchism and the connections between anarchism, the Book of the Prophets (Neviim), and the Kabbalah
Kabbalah
Kabbalah/Kabala is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the esoteric aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It was systematized in 11th-13th century Hachmei Provence and Spain, and again after the Expulsion from Spain, in 16th century Ottoman Palestine...
. Problemen published stories and articles on the history of anarchism, Hasidic legends, medieval Jewish literature and the current problems of Yiddish literature.
After the death of Abba Gordin, from 1964 to 1971 the review was directed by Shmuel Abarbanel. In 1971, Joseph Luden (born in Warsaw, 1908) took his place and affiliated the review with a publishing house that published fifteen or so books and pamphlets of fiction and poetry, all in Yiddish. Therefore, since Problemen came to be solely in Yiddish, it lost the Hebrew half of its title. The number of pages went from 24 to 36.
ASHUACH and Problemen were in permanent contact with the Yiddish anarchist movement and in particular with Freie Arbeiter Stimme of New York and Dos Freie Wort of Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
. In the meantime Problemen was becoming less philosophical and more literary. The readers of the review belonged to every field of the Israeli society. The writer Leonid Podrydchik defined Problemen as the best Israeli publication in Yiddish language.
ASHUACH came to a halt in the 1980s. The old anarchists died one after the other and none of the young ones knew Yiddish. The last issue of Problemen was published in December 1989 (it was the one-hundred-and-sixty-fifth issue). Subsequently Joseph Luden tried to share with one new review, Freie Stimme, in order to continue the tradition of Problemen, but only printed a single issue in September, 1991. This was the last Yiddish anarchist periodical publication
Periodical publication
Periodical literature is a published work that appears in a new edition on a regular schedule. The most familiar examples are the newspaper, often published daily, or weekly; or the magazine, typically published weekly, monthly or as a quarterly...
in the world.
Contemporary anarchist movement
The contemporary anarchist movement in Israel is small, but sectors of it are very active. A good proportion of these anarchists actively participate in Palestinian solidarity, peace and environmentalist movements.Uri Gordon
Uri Gordon
Uri Gordon is an Israeli anarchist theorist and activist.He is a lecturer at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Ketura, Israel...
, the Israeli activist, lecturer and author of Anarchy Alive: Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory (Pluto Press), has written a supportive article on Israeli anarchists in The Jerusalem Post, Right of Reply: Anarchy in the Holy Land!, published June 12, 2007, in response to an anti-anarchist item by Jerusalem Post writer Elliot Jaeger, Power and Politics: Anarchy has its place, published on May 23, 2007.
One Struggle (Ma'avak Ehad) http://www.onestruggle.org is a social anarchist affinity group
Affinity group
An Affinity group is usually a small group of activists who work together on direct action.Affinity groups are organized in a non-hierarchical manner, usually using consensus decision making, and are often made up of trusted friends...
in Israel.
External links
- http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/journals/anarchiststudies/articles/UriGordon.pdf An article on Israeli anarchism today by Uri GordonUri GordonUri Gordon is an Israeli anarchist theorist and activist.He is a lecturer at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Ketura, Israel...
- It's All Lies - Israel anarchist and radical scene
- Anarchism in the Kibbutz Movement by Yaacov Oved. Kibbutz Trends 38, Summer 2000
- Anarchism Eight Questions on Kibbituzim - Answers from Noam Chomsky, Questions from Nikos Raptis, from Znet Commetnaries, August 24, 1999
- Yiddish Anarchist Bibliography at Kate Sharpley Library
- Les Anarchistes, le sionisme et la naissance de l'État d'Israël, by Sylvain Boulouque
- Indymedia in Israel
- East Mediterranean Libertarians
- Jerusalem Post article