I was in the World Bank "InfoShop" bookstore on Friday and happened upon a copy of Bernard Avishai's new book, The Hebrew Republic: How Secular Democracy and Global Enterprise Will Bring Israel Peace At Last
. Reading the jacket blurb, I thought Avishai's thesis sounded very familiar. I realized that I had already heard a similar proposal from Peter Bergson (Hillel Kook) and Samuel Merlin in the 1970s. They had handed me a copy of their manifesto calling for an Israeli constitution--promised to them as members of the first Knesset. The failure to write a constitution, Merlin and Bergson argued at that time, was at the root of Israel's insecurity in the world. Israel had to define herself first politically, before peace would be possible. At the time, I didn't understand what they were saying. It seems that Bernard Avishai did, and has taken Bergson and Merlin's message to heart in the mission of his new book. On page 12, Avishai notes his meeting with Bergson in 1975 to discuss the concept. As Bergson explained, an Israel with a constitution that separated religion and the state would look more like America, less like England. It would be Jewish in the way America is Christian, for historical, cultural and demographic reasons--and Israeli Arabs would be truly equal citizens, in the way that American Jews can be equally American. Israelis could be Israelis, Jews could be Jews, Arab Jews would be able to achieve full equality in Israel, while American Jews would not be made to feel guilty about living in the Diaspora. Such a vision should equally appeal to many Russian immigrants, who are not officially Jewish, yet form a significant part of today's Israeli immigrant class. Just as descendants of Mayflower pilgrims do not constitute the majority of the American population, descendants of Zionist pioneers need not be a demographic majority in Israel to maintain the values of the founders. Israeli nationalism, not Jewish religion, would become the driving force in national development. Israel would transform into a Hebrew Republic, more than merely a Jewish State--in the way that the Republic of Ireland replaced the Irish Free State. Today, the Republic of Ireland is booming, no longer fighting England in Protestant-Catholic warfare. A Hebrew Republic of Israel could develop a similar relation with her Arab neighbors.Maybe it wouldn't work, but in this age of religious fanaticism, recasting Israel as a secular nation along Herzl's original Zionist principles deserves serious consideration and debate. To get started, heres' a link to Avishai's interview with himself on his blog:
Q: As opposed to a Jewish state, why do you espouse a Hebrew republic?
BA: The Hebrew Republic is the Jewish state as the most original forces in the Zionist movement conceived it. It is a democratic country whose language is Hebrew, much the way the French Republic is French. I am not proposing anything terribly original here. I’m just trying to bring Israel up to code. In a way, I’m trying to imagine what Israel would look like if it accepted the charter of the European Union and became a member, as I hope it eventually will be.
Zionism originally grew out of the insight that to survive in the modern world Jews would have to transform themselves into a nation. Jews would embrace scientific doubt, tolerance, individualism, and get out from under the suffocating power of rabbinic orthodoxy. They conceived of a Hebrew enlightenment. Many Zionists, is true, were appalled by the growing power of anti-Semitic movements in Europe. But Jews who were mainly concerned about that went to America, not to Palestine. The Hebrew Republic is merely a retrieval of Zionism’s original vision, that Jews should ask modern questions, from technological to erotic questions, in Hebrew.