The most eloquent spokesman of this position was Abraham Isaac Kook,
also known simply as Rav Kook. Kook, a mystic in addition to being an
accomplished rabbinic scholar, believed that secular Zionists were performing
a religious act without realizing it. Kook was able to bridge the gaps between
the various Zionist camps and foster a sense of solidarity across seemingly
irreconcilable positions.
In a sense, Gordon’s call for the amelioration of the status of Jewish women
in matters of marriage and divorce paralleled similar efforts by Jewish women
themselves. Unable to find recourse within the framework of a male-dominated
Jewish community, Jewish women appealed to Russian courts to intervene.
Periodically the latter did intervene and helped liberate Jewish women from
recalcitrant husbands.
Each of the varieties of Zionism embraced some practical strategy and pro-
gram for settling the land, building a state, and transforming the Jews. There
were limits as to how far this transformation progressed during the early years
of the movement. The experiences of women in the Zionist movement, and
especially in the settlements of the Yishuv, attest to these limits. Some
women, for example, were dismayed by the contrast between the utopian
egalitarianism that pervaded Zionist activities in Russia and the sexist divi-
sion of labor on the settlements in the Land of Israel. Often, women who had
been inculcated with a romantic notion of reclaiming the land and making
the desert bloom were assigned instead to the kitchen and the kindergarten –
the very gender roles they had hoped to evade by becoming Zionists in the
first place. A generation would pass before traditional gender roles would be
eviscerated on the New Yishuv.
Diaspora nationalism: Autonomism and the Bund
Zionism was not the only form of Jewish nationalism that appeared after
- There were also two forms of diaspora nationalism: Autonomism and
the Bund. In retrospect, diaspora Jewish nationalism may seem silly and
short-sighted in light of the destruction of European Jewry during the
Holocaust, and the eventual triumph of Zionism. Until the end of the 1930s,
though, these political movements were extremely popular.
Autonomism was a political ideology propounded by Simon Dubnow
(1860-1941). Born into a traditional Jewish family in Mstsislavl, Belorussia,
Dubnow received a traditional Jewish upbringing before rebelling as a young
man. From 1880 to 1906, he traveled between his hometown, St. Petersburg
(where he lived illegally), Vilna, and Odessa, where he joined Asher
Ginsberg’s circle of intellectuals. Odessa was especially important in his intel-
lectual and political development. Since the early nineteenth century, Odessa
had been the great Russian exception, and a city of contradictory experiences
for Russian Jews. Odessa was part of Novorussia, but not part of the Pale of
Settlement. It was a port city that was open, multiethnic, and multinational.
196 Anti-Semitism and Jewish responses, 1870–1914