ABSTRACT
Zionism – as an idea and as a movement – was an amalgam of diverse and sometimes conflicting currents. What virtually all shared was a sense of profound existential crisis that seemed to have afflicted Jewish life. The root of the “Jewish problem,” as most Zionists saw it, was to be found in the Jews’ unhealthy state of Exile and could only be solved when the Jews would (re)gain a territorial base. A need for physical refuge for persecuted Jews was one motivation, but it was only a first step toward the more ambitious goal of undoing exile. Based on a diagnosis that held that national death was otherwise imminent, this would mean a transformation of Jewish life, culture and society so as to give them a new lease on life. The goal of Zionism, then, as often articulated, was a national renaissance, often understood as constituting part of a broad vision of national and human redemption. Through immigration and settlement, wide-ranging cultural and educational activity, political and diplomatic action, and in the face of challenges and conflicts from within and from without, Zionists of differing stripes sought to give their respective visions concrete form.
