Archive for the ‘Israel’ Category
- In: Israel | Israeli politics
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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Israeli Elections, Pt. 2
Welcome once again.
Since we last spoke there have been weekend polls. Remember that 2-3 seat lead challenger Zionist Camp was enjoying over incumbent Likud? Gone. Polls show the two either tied at 26 or Likud leading 27-26. It’s way early, but we report the heartbeat of the campaign as it happens. The slim sliver of light in the polls for the left side lies not in Meretz’s court, as the Jewish left-wing party now seems closer to 5 seats than to 6. However, Zionist Camp has not lost any strength, and is rather solidifying at 26 across all three weekend polls.
Likud’s gains come mostly at the expense of its own flanker, right-wing Bayit Yehudi (“Jewish Home”), and at the expense of the two secular right-wing parties, former Likudnik Moshe Kahlon’s “Kulanu” (“All of us”) and former TV pretty-boy Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid (“There is a future”). BY is down to 15, 14, and 12 – bad news for what was supposed to be the juggernaut of this election cycle. (See more below.)
Both Likud and Bayit Yehudi are attacking “the left” (this btw seems to be the gist of both their campaigns in general – we hate the left! We hate ’em more! etc,) this time for the existence of a nefarious group of donors (mostly American) and receivers (in Israel) named “V15”, plotting to effect democratic regime change against Bibi. (“Foreign money to sway the elections!!!” is the charge).
This is particularly rich coming from Bibi, whose donor list is massively tilted outside the country he’s fighting to stay in charge of. His sugar daddy is US multi-billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who burns $3 mil a month to run a free daily mass-circulation newspaper dedicated to support of one single politician. Bayit Yehudi also get tons of their money from rich American and French Jews.
Used to be the right would claim the problem was that, unlike the right’s private (mostly Jewish, with the odd antisemitic “Pro-Israel” evangelist) donors, the left’s civil society foundations took money to influence Israel’s business from foreign governments (such as arms of [or mainly supported by] the European Union that exist to support causes outside Europe).
This time that dog won’t hunt, so they’re trying to cry that some of the political machinery that works for President Obama’s campaigns is suddenly helping the dastardly dread Left here in Israel. This would fly a tad better if the Prime Minister crying foul hadn’t just recently been seen in the process of letting the Republican Speaker of the House use his magen-david-tattooed dick to piss on said Democratic President…
Welcome to Jamaica, have a nice day... 
Besides, ain’t nothing new about the political help either. Clinton’s team of Stanley Greenberg and Jimmy Carville (I love Jimmy) worked for Ehud Barak against Bibi in 1999. Republican super-adviser Arthur Finkelstein worked for Bibi since 1996.
Another scandal currently rocking the so-called start-up nation is known as BOTTLEGATE. Bibi’s wife, Sarah Netanyahu, has a long history of allegations of unstable and abusive behavior. With this scandal, for the first time, the claim is surfacing that the problem is alcoholism (rather than, as was suspected before, a mental-health condition she was refusing to take medication for).
Now this is gonna sound bizarre, but it’s true: Apparently the Prime Minister’s house buys a shitload of alcohol (in addition to large amounts of soft drinks of course). That’s not the point, although the numbers (spent mostly on one type of $22/bottle red wine) are kinda staggering ($25K over two years, but a peak of $12.5K over a 3-month period with no unusual entertaining patterns). Now the vino was bought on the taxpayer’s dime and in principle that’s fine. Point though is she’d have the staff collect the bottles, take them to the recycling plant like a good citizen – and pocket the cash.
I mean, the bottle deposit refund should go back to the actual payer, right? Not like the public coffer, but the Official Residence budget. At least that’s the way I (and the law, apparently) figure.
I’m sure it’s nice, but that comes out to quite a bit of wine.
Bibi and Sarah are rich. Their declared net worth is slightly over $10 million. That’s more here than it is in the US. He’s not the richest politician, but he’s done well for himself for someone who for most of the past 30 years has been earning a government salary and enjoys the high life. The idea of his wife scheming to cheat on bottle refunds seems outlandish – but we know that she “voluntarily” returned about $1,000 (4,000 shekels) worth of back deposit money. A guy who used to work at the residence (and is currently suing her for treating him like crap) claims that the real figure is probably closer to six time that amount over a 4-year period. Some would call it petty cash but, you know, WTF?
The other big story was Bennett’s scoring into the wrong goal. Twice. Bayit Yehudi were getting rave reviews (professionally-speaking) from knowledgeable observers for their campaign until last week, and Chairman Naftali Bennett apparently decided he could pull stuff from his backside and people would call it a rose. He decided to wink to the low-class, low-income, low-brow electorate by using one of his reserved seats in his party’s list to guarantee a Knesset seat at the 11th spot for former local soccer god and shampoo model Eli Ohana. Ohana was one of Israel’s greatest on the field, but absolutely mediocre both as a coach (where he got jobs either through politics or because it was his old team Beitar Jerusalem) and as a TV analyst.
Eli Ohana
When it was first announced some would-be-shrewd observers praised the move, saying it would sway some of Likud’s die-hard electorate. We’ll never know cause the BY base was not having it. The base threw a shitfit, replete with gems like Knesset Member Ayelet Shaked trying to placate hundreds of irate activists over whatsapp with: “look, we needed someone who’s Mizrachi and grew up poor”. In US-speak, that’s “we needed a token ghetto candidate”. One prospective MK actually quit over it and another turned down an additional reserved seat (over a slightly different political blunder by Bennett).
Despite accepting and recording a campaign video (“I grew up poor, but I was proud of my country, when I wore its colors on the field and now…”) Ohana withdrew after a couple of days, saying “Hey, I didn’t know y’all would have such a conniption…” The party came out of the whole affair looking both inept politically and kinda racist (towards Mizrachi Jews and not just Arabs), as evidenced by the polls.
Lastly, there was some shooting up north as you may have heard, and that may have helped Likud in the polls in a “rally ’round the leader” kind of way. Israel had recently killed a senior Iranian officer scouting the border on the Syrian side with some Hizballah people. This week Hizballah killed two Israeli soldiers with an anti-tank missile at a patrol jeep. Bibi huffed and puffed but quickly reached a tense “neither of us wants blood right now” understanding with Hizballah. Zionist Camp Leaders Herzog and Livni didn’t cover themselves with any glory in the response, but rather went to pose near the border in leather jackets and shades along with their shadow-Minister of Defense. Meretz tried to mend fences with its hardcore base by taking a clear stand against any escalation, but got hit by a TV expose on its connections with the corrupt National Jewish Fund (controls 13% of the country’s land).
Speaking of the polls, we’ll wrap up with a quick breakdown of what they (average of last 3) mean in the big picture:
Right-wing bloc: 40
Left-wing bloc: 31
Center secular: 21
Ultra-religious: 15
Joint Arabs: 12
While both blocs could conceivably persuade all of the secular center and both the religious parties to form a coalition with them, the 12 seats of the Joint Arab List will only be used against Bibi. They don’t want to sit in the coalition (that’s too much complicity in Israel’s actions for all of them and in its very existence as Israel for some), but they will join a blocking formation against the right and generally support a left-wing government against a vote of no-confidence. So in some ways it’s Left bloc 43, Right bloc 40, 37 in play for both sides. The whole Arab vote issue deserves a post of its own, which I know I promised. Coming up real soon. Until then, thanks for hitching and hitch me up with a comment so I know you made it this far. Most obliged.
* Polling data courtesy of the excellent polling collation and analysis “Project 61“, by my right-wing, religious* twitter buddy Nehemia (The Wunderkind) Gershuni.
* Abhorrent views, but hell of a nice guy other than that…
- In: Israel | Israeli politics
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Friends, Americans*, Countrymen, lend me your ears (eyes, minds, work with me here). I come not to confuse y’all but to break it down. To tell the truth, I wasn’t even feeling terribly inspired to tell you folks all the ins and outs of the Israeli election, but ole @johnboehner decided to force our PM on your politics and himself and y’alls domestic strife on our politics, so I guess y’all interested parties now and deserve an explanation on what in tarnation all the ruckus be about. Settle in, grab a sip and a bite, this’ll take a few.
* I'm American by birth. I get to say that. Non-Americans welcome along for the ride, of course. Apologies in advance for the yankee-centric imagery
Israel, which in the spirit of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy can be termed “mostly a democracy**, is having general elections.
** (that it to say, it is a democracy to most - not all - of those it controls)
Q: When?
A: March 17
Q: Who’s up for election and re-election?
A: Everyone. The entire legislature (Knesset), the majority of which appoints the government and the Prime Minister (so that job’s up for grabs as well).
Q: Who’s running?
A: Lots of folks. A dizzying, GameofThrones-like array of characters and allegiances, but I’mma break it down for y’all. (let it be broke, mofo!***).
*** (This is an invitation to play "place that quote")
The two main, and practically sole contenders for Prime Minister are the incumbent, Binyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu (you can call him that), and the challenger, Labor Party Chairman Yithak “Boujie” Herzog (but don’t call him Boujie! He’s trying to brand as serious and PM-worthy, and that’s too cutesy and soft a nickname his momma tagged him with).
Who are they? Well, if you don’t know (and have some opinions about) Bibi chances are slim you’re reading this, but see here (reference link under construction) for a summary of him (and others) as candidate and PM.
Quick bio recap:
Netanyahu (65) is the son of a world-famous expert on Medieval Jews in Muslim and Christian Spain. Eternally Bereaved Brother of mythological ground commander of the legendary Entebbe hostage rescue, Yoni Netanyahu.
Bibi (who also served in the fabled Matkal commando unit, but at lower rank) was living at the time in the US, under an American name, with a non-Jewish wife. The death of his brother, whom their father had always groomed for public greatness, summoned Bibi back to the fold to take the mantle upon himself, which required among other things getting rid of the shiksa spouse. Bibi, with polished English uncommonly good in Israel (especially back then) and fine debating skills, climbed quickly in Likud, rising from UN Ambassador, through Deputy Foreign Minister, to win control of the party in 1992, first becoming PM in 1996 (till ’99, then again from 2009 to now).
Herzog (54) is the son of Israel’s sixth President, Chaim Herzog, who had also been a military general and Ambassador to the UN, where he won undying fame for contemptuously ripping the Assembly General’s 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism on the UN podium. His son Boujie served in the military as well, rising to Major, and then became a lawyer, inheriting a partner’s position in one of Israel’s most powerful law firms.
His first national political exposure came in 1999, as campaign manager to a victorious Ehud Barak and Labor campaign, and immediately thereafter as Secretary of the Cabinet under Barak. He came into the spotlight in unflattering circumstances, when he refused to cooperate (basically taking the fifth, in US terms) with a police investigation regarding campaign violations. He has since served in four consecutive Knessets (since 2003) and served as Minister of various departments on behalf of Labor as a junior coalition partner (including in Bibi’s 2009-2013 administration.) He has been Housing, Tourism, and Welfare Minister, as well as holding lesser portfolios.
Early elections were called in early December after Bibi and his main coalition partner, centrist Finance Minister Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party (19/120 Knesset seats), each lost the ability to work with the other at all. Lapid was joined by Justice Minister Tzipi Livni with her 6-seat party in leaving the coalition (well, technically being fired by Bibi, but deliberately bringing things to that pass). Since then the twists and turns have been thick and heavy, but I’ll try to pick a minimum of crucial ones to the big picture.
Remember Tzipi Livni? Leaving the coalition with her 6-seat party? Well, after polling at the edge of survival**** for a week or two, she made the first splash of the election by negotiating a very favorable (for her) deal to unify with Labor (15 seats/120 in the outgoing, polling a tad better at this point). Usually when a party A unites into a single list (that is, not merging parties, but running as a single unit in a given election) with party B, and party A is 2.5 times bigger, the head of party B gets the number 2 spot and a few reserved seats in the unified list for their people, and consider themselves to have done pretty well. Livni not only got the number 2 spot in the unified list (and guaranteed spots for 5 more people under the 25th spot), but an agreement that should Herzog form the next coalition, he would rotate with her after two years. If Herzog did not prove terribly sharp bargaining skills (always a must for leadership in the land of bazaars) he did prove he was fully willing to put ego aside in order to maximize any possibility of actually winning the elections and switching the course of the country after 6 years of Likud and right-wing policies.
**** (there's an electoral threshold, currently set at 3.25% of all votes, which translates to 4/120 Knesset seats)
However, a deeper reading of this deal will show that while Livni drove a fantastic bargain, it’s mostly a prestige paper achievement. Sort of similar to a pro athlete’s bombastic new contract: “100 million for 6 years!!! – of which 2 years and 25 million are guaranteed.” The athletes are not that dumb. They know this, but there is symbolic capital in signing a 100 million dollar contract, even if you won’t actually get most of that. Livni is not likely to get to be PM even if Herzog gets to be PM for two reasons:
a) After two years he can refuse and dare her to take her 6 seats and leave the coalition. Chances are he’ll still have a slim majority in Knesset if he managed to form a coalition in the first place.
b) Now that Livni got such a deal, any prospective coalition partner with the most seats behind him (a number bound to be greater than 6) will settle for no less. So even if there is a rotation, it won’t be with Livni. But hey, props on your 100 mil contract, playa.
The practical upshot of all this is that as of this writing, the gamble Herzog and Livni took has paid off pretty resoundingly. They Labor and livni’s “Hatnua”party held 21 combined seats in the outgoing Knesset and never polled higher between the calling of the election and the deal. They immediately polled at around 22 following the deal and have been averaging 25 over the past few weeks – maintaining a slim 2-3 seat lead over Likud.
So, why are the headlines not screaming “upset!” yet? Glad you asked. In the Israeli system (a parliamentary one as opposed to a presidential one like in the US), there is no separation in elections between the legislative and executive branches. You don’t vote once for the guy in charge and once for you personal rep to look after your share of the pie. You vote for your favorite party. If it’s the largest one it normally (but not always) gets to be at the head of an alliance of parties called a coalition, that form a majority in Knesset (i.e 61 or more/120). If you voted for the second smallest party you normally (again, not always) get to spend the term rooting for the team on defense that’s trying to cause a turnover and regain possession of the ball.
This leads us to the second crucial difference between the systems: In the US, short of praying for a President from the other party to die or trying to cook up grounds for impeachment, there’s nothing for the party out of power to do but wait 4 years for the next round (it can form a majority in the legislature and use that to impede the President, but it can’t seize the executive branch). In a parliamentary system where power depends (always has here) on coalitions, the party out of power can spend its time trying (as Sun Tzu recommended) to break up its opponent’s alliances. Once you convince enough coalition members to defect, the government no longer has a majority in Knesset. When that happens a “vote of no confidence” is called. If such a vote passes by absolute majority, new elections must be held. The shortest-lived coalition in Israel’s history was Ehud Barak’s Labor-led administration from 1999-2001 (lasted 20 months). Several lasted the full four years or close enough to it. Sometimes the main party in power will engineer a fight with its coalition partners in order to call for early elections when it believes it will gain more seats in a new election than it has without them. Sometimes it’s the junior ally who makes that calculation and picks an issue to split over.
Why am I explaining all this? Because even if the election results match the current polling, Bibi will have a better chance at a stable coalition (one with as few partners as possible, to minimize the different vectors pulling it apart with their different demands and interests). Bibi and Herzog each have one natural ally to the radical end of them – Bibi a right-wing ally (the mostly religious Bayit Yehudi party, under high-tec rich guy Naftali Bennet) and Herzog a left-wing ally (the mostly-white-bread liberal Meretz party, under career politician and activist Zehava Galon). Even if Bibi finishes with three seats or so fewer than Herzog, he has the stronger basic building block for a coalition with Bayit Yehudi, which is polling at 15-16/120 seats, compared to 5-6 for Meretz.
Is all lost for those hoping for a change in government? No, but at current results, it will be an uphill battle for Herzog to be the first to complete a puzzle with 61 pieces or more. Here’s how it works:
The President chooses who will be the first to “get the ball” so to speak and receive two weeks to attempt to score by putting together a coalition that will pass a vote of confidence in Knesset. (President is a mostly ceremonial position. This is his most influential role.) The process is that after the votes are counted and the seats in the new Knesset are assigned, the President calls the heads of the parties and asks for their recommendation as to who should be chosen to form a coalition. If a clear majority of the Knesset recommends one guy, it’s over and that person will, barring bizarre developments, quickly conclude coalition deals with enough partners and be PM. If there is no clear majority it’s completely at the discretion of the President, who still has to take into consideration who has the more realistic shot to get it done so as not to waste the nation’s time.
Now, if a candidate gets the first shot but doesn’t have a majority already agreeing to form a government with him, he has to negotiate with each partner he can possibly work with and give them a piece of the pie. This is where the other party can play active defense: It can also negotiate with all the other (or any of) the other parties and try to persuade them NOT to sit with the party that got the first crack. If they succeed in putting together a majority in Knesset that refuses to sit with the other guy, they have created what’s known as a “blocking bloc” (sounds bad in English, I know. Call it a blocking alliance or whatever). Having managed to cooperate on denying the leading candidate the job, such a blocking coalition will usually manage to form an actual ruling coalition together and enter into power. This is Herzog’s most realistic path to the crown. Bibi will get the first nod because he has a solid 38-40 seats (at current poll numbers) whereas Herzog will only have 30-32 (again, at current numbers. Lotta football to be played here yet). The rest of the parties mostly lie generally in the middle between the two, be they center-secular or religious parties.
The one exception to the above is the secret ace up Hetzog’s sleeve – the Joint Arab List. This list, a new election-specific union of the three Arab (or Arab-majority) parties is a huge story in itself, and one which will wait till the next chapter in this series*****.
***** This takes time to write and format and upload. If you found this content helpful and want more you have to let me know, or more pressing (and remunerating) demands on my time will inevitably win out. Speaking of which - if you really dug it and want more, there's a "donate" button, but a share and even more so a comment are no less important. (of course, if a bunch of you silently donated I'd say thank you and live with that too, but a rolling discussion is half the fun...).
Thanks for reading.
Update: Fixed the comment problem. Donate button’s stuck at the top of the page. You may also comment on my facebook page or hit me up on twitter.
- In: Israel
- Comments Off on A Short History of Zionism, Chapter 1
Following is an excerpt from the book “A Short History of Zionism” I am currently writing. If you wish to support this endeavor, please contribute here. If you are unable to contribute but wish to show your support, please spread the word on social media, your own blog and anywhere else you see fit. Thank you.
A famous story, now debunked, tells of Chinese premiere Zhou Enlai, who was asked during US President Richard Nixon’s famous visit to China in 1972 what he thought about the French revolution. Zhou, the story has it, said that it was “too early to tell,” thus encapsulating the difference between Occidental and Oriental historical perspectives in four pithy words.
Zhou, it appears, was asked and answered about the much more recent 1968 student uprisings throughout the Western world, but the story has stuck; not least, because the French revolution really was an event of momentous, far-reaching implications, far beyond the question of who would rule over the French, some of which took many decades to unfold.
The uprising of the French bourgeoisie against their decrepit monarchy, and the subsequent Napoleonic wars, did more than shatter the walls and castles of the feudal way of life. They also served to bring down the walls, half forced from without and half self-erected, of the Jewish ghettos throughout western and central (and, to a lesser extent, eastern) Europe.
Although they were fighting for an autocratic ruler who would soon crown himself Emperor, the soldiers of Napoleon fought in the name of the democratic, humanist ideals of the revolution, and they brought that spirit to the lands they conquered throughout the continent of Europe. Even when they ultimately lost, as in Napoleon’s ill-fated invasion of Russia, they penetrated deep enough to ensure that the ideas they carried would infect the local populations to irrevocable effect.
This development was accelerated, like a fire by drought conditions, due to a process internal to Jewish communities known as the Haskalah, which took place in the from the mid 1700’s into the early 19th century. This word, literally meaning “education”, is more commonly translated in this context as “enlightenment”, as it sought to incorporate into Jewish life and Jewish thought the values of the European enlightenment movement of the 17th and 18th centuries. This movement, however, was limited at first to a small part of the Jewish population that had both the education and means to interact with the general public and study the European thinkers. Most of the Jewish population of Europe was slowly rebuilding from the massive death-count of the 1648-9 pogroms in Eastern Europe (and the coincident general vicissitudes of the Thirty-Year War in the center and west of the continent, which ended at the same time).
Ideas do take time to seep through the populace, more so in times predating our modern forms of mass communication. But within two generations of Napoleon’s fall, thanks to the new ideas of freedom, equality and the relation between the individual and the state, Jews were granted equal rights under the law in the vast majority of western and central Europe, in a process known as “Emancipation.” The walls of the ghetto could no longer stem the flood of new ideas into the Jewish community, or the flow of talented Jews rushing to take their place in the intellectual life of the continent, internalizing its latest ideas and applying them to their own circumstances.
***
The first new idea the newly liberated Jews had to internalize – or rather, process and find a way to counter – was that their very identity was passe’ and that Judaism had outlived its historical usefulness. Of course, this wasn’t really a new idea, as Christians had been proclaiming it ever since they began distinguishing themselves from Jews some 1800 years earlier, but since Hegel the claim had a philosophical veneer, and not just a religious one.
The first person to take up the challenge was a man named Rabbi Nachman Krochmal. He was born in 1785 in the town of Brody, in the region historically known as Galicia, then considered part of Poland and now in current-day Ukraine. Krochmal was born to a religious family and his early education consisted of religious studies and Jewish philosophers, such as Maimonides and Ibn Ezra. However, at a young age he met a group of “Enlightenment” types, and through them was exposed first to Jewish Enlightenment thinkers, such as Moshe Mendelssohn and Salomon Maimon. Then he learned German, so as to study the great thinkers of the age – Fichte, Schelling, Kant and Hegel – in the original. He soon became one of Polish Jewry’s leading lights and gathered a significant following. However, his great work, “Moreh Nevochei HaZeman” (Guide for the Perplexed of the Time) was only published posthumously in 1851 (Krochmal having died in 1840), by his student Yom Tov (Leopold) Zunz.
Like Maimonides before him, (and like Philo of Alexandria, who wrote around the time of Jesus), Krochmal attempted to reconcile Judaism with the leading philosophical currents of his day, hence the title of his book, which is very similar to the great Maimonides work “Guide to the Perplexed” and not at all by coincidence. Krochmal attempts to use the Hegelian method and toolbox, so to speak, while countering Hegel’s specific claim that the historic relevance of Judaism – and, by extension, of the Jewish people – has expired. He accomplishes the first part by accepting the model, ascribed to by Hegel and others, which holds that every civilization has three eras: that of growth and development, that of endeavor and great deeds, and that of degeneration and decay. However, he argues, the Jewish people are unique in that they have not one but at least three distinct such cycles (the first being from Abraham to the destruction of the first temple, the second coinciding roughly with the existence of the second temple, and the third from the writing of the Talmud to the devastating pogroms of 1648-9, with a fourth cycle about to begin). This uniqueness, Krochmal argues, is due to Jewish nationality being rooted in spirituality, in fact deriving directly from the “absolute spiritual” of Hegelian thought.
Whether or not one agrees with this somewhat self-congratulatory analysis, it was presented in a deft and nimble enough manner to enable Jewish intellectuals to embrace the core of European thought, while holding on to their own group identity, and it got the ball rolling.
***
Meanwhile, Jews throughout Europe were discovering several unpleasant truths regarding the supposed blessings of the emancipation. The first was that being allowed to mingle in general society, and compete with gentiles for jobs, significantly increased tensions and antisemitism. The second was that in return for being afforded legal equality under the law, Jews were tacitly being required to renounce any and all group identity beyond that of a religious community. Ironically, just as many Jews were shaking off the reins of religion, they discovered that they didn’t really want to do that – that there was something, beyond the commandments they were no longer keeping, that connected them to one-another.
But it wasn’t just how they saw themselves. A famous political science quip holds that a nation is a group of people with a common misconception as to their origins and a common dislike of their neighbors. By this measure, the Jews, emancipated or not, didn’t really fit in with the societies in which they lived. They didn’t share the much of the common culture (religion, holidays, etc.), had their own language, and also their own origin story. Plus, they felt much the same about Gentiles of “their” nation as the ones across the border. The Gentiles knew this and never really accepted the Jew as “one of them.”
Some, like the new Reform Judaism movement, which was founded in Berlin in the 1840’s (and even included the aforementioned Leopold Zunz), welcomed this line of thought, which viewed Judaism and Jewishness as nothing more than a religious identity (and a diluted one at that). They insisted that they were as German as any Junker, just “Germans of the faith of Moses”, but many others rejected both Reform Judaism itself and its disinterest in Jewish group-identity.
One of the most prominent standard-bearers of this rejection was a man named Heinrich Hirsch (Zvi) Graetz (1817-1891). He received a religious education at Wollstein Yeshiva, and taught himself languages and secular studies. At first his attempt to enter a general university was rejected by the authorities, but Graetz showed great tenacity, arranging a sort of apprenticeship for himself under one of the great rabbis of the day, and finally gained admittance to the University of Breslau (current day Wroclaw, Poland), where he studied philosophy, history, physics and oriental studies. In 1845 he completed his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Jena (now known as Friedrich Schiller University). His thesis, on “Judaism and Gnosis”, was written in Latin.
After acquiring said degree he began teaching at various Jewish schools, and busied himself with fierce attacks on Reform Judaism, as well as the composition of his magnum opus – The History of the Jews, in 11 volumes. The composition, which is riddled with inaccuracies, methodical deficiencies and downright sloppiness, was nonetheless heralded as a seminal work at the time (and served as the basic text on the subject for decades afterward), being the first ever attempt at authoring a national history of the Jewish people – or at least the first since Josephus, 1800 years prior. It set the foundation for looking at the Jewish people as a nation with a unified culture and an ongoing history, rather than just a religious group. This was in keeping with the new vogue in Europe following the French revolution, where nationality was becoming the foremost frame of reference for the individual and for groups.
These two, and particularly Graetz, were to set the stage for the appearance of the first truly Zionist text, written by a man who has the distinction of being heralded as the founding father of two great historical movements. We shall introduce him in Chapter 3.
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