ABSTRACT
Zionism is one of the success stories of the twentieth century—a century not strong on success stories. Judaism as it existed in the late nineteenth century, when Zionism was born, was a religion of exile. A yearning for return to the long-lost homeland played an important part in that religion; the idea of political independence played no part at all. The Jewish people have forgotten, wrote Leo Pinsker in Auto-emancipation, what political independence is. Among contemporary Jewish thinkers, David Hartman comes closest to describing a Judaism that is the dialectical product of an engagement with secular Zionism. Once Zionism has succeeded in creating a Jewish state, which rightly claims membership in the society of states, "covenantal passion cannot be poured only into those mitzvot that separate Israel from the rest of humanity". Since Zionism is a political movement, the most obvious area of engagement is politics itself.
