Between Zionism and Liberalism: Oscar Janowsky and Diaspora Nationalism in America

Abstract

Of all the varieties of modern Jewish politics, none has experienced a more curious fate than Diaspora Nationalism. This nonterritorial strain of Jewish nationalism, also known as Autonomism, was once widely regarded as “together with Zionism the most important political expression of the Jewish people in the modern era.” From its fin-de-siècle origins in the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, it spread rapidly across Eastern Europe, sprouting various movements for Jewish national-cultural autonomy. After World War II, however, Diaspora Nationalism vanished almost overnight. So too was its intellectual afterlife marked by silence, as postwar historians of Jewish political thought largely ignored its legacy. Recently, however, Diaspora Nationalism has emerged as a growing field of scholarship. The results are impressive: a striking new wave of studies on its intellectual leadership, political parties, cultural projects, and various interwar East European Autonomist experiments. This abundance of fresh research promises to reframe not only the history of Diaspora Nationalism, but also that of Zionism and Jewish nationalism more generally.

State Patriotism and Jewish Nationalism in the Late Russian Empire: The Case of Vladimir Jabotinsky’s Journalist Writing on The Russo–Japanese War, 1904–1905

“…In particular, one can compare the case of young Jabotinsky to those later American Jewish thinkers, such as Simon Rawidowicz, Mordecai Kaplan, Horace Kallen, Israel Friedlander, and Oscar Janowsky, who developed broad models of nationhood and political sovereignty in order to balance dual commitments to American civic nationalism and Zionism. See Myers 2008;Pianko 2008;Pianko 2010;Loeffler 2010. 5 See Walder 1973;MacKenzie 1999;Nish 2007. 6 For a thorough criticism of the separation between "authentic" and "external" elements of Jews' identities see Funkenstein 1995.…”

The Particularist Pursuit of American Universalism: The American Jewish Committee’s 1944 ‘Declaration on Human Rights’

“…65 For Zionists, human rights were an extension of national minority rights, rather than a cosmopolitan rejection of all nationalism. 66 Not surprisingly, Zionist reactions to the AJC Declaration centered on the political valences of the putative universalism. 'Once more an attempt is being made to disguise Jewish demands under the mask of general ones,' wrote political leader Jacob Robinson, 'This is not only a self-deception but also shows a lack of dignity and self-respect.'…”