Kings in the Holy Land?

DaHound22

Banned
In 1896, Theodor Herzl published the book that is widely considered the foundation of political Zionism, Der Judenstaat. From Herzl's message spawned the Zionist movement, and as Herzl himself was an atheist and a socialist, so Zionism became a relatively socialist and incredibly secular movement. Among the fathers of Zionism was Rabbi Avraham Yitzhack Kook, who's conservative version of Zionsim was centered around Theocracy and Monarchy. The question? What if by a random stroke of luck Rabbi Kook came up with a foundation for Zionsim before Herzl did in 1896. How would Zionism change with its founder being a staunch Halakhist?
 
That's a fascinating change where if Israel is established in this timeline it might be a monarchy. The question becomes is this version of Zionism as popular as its secular atheist version in OTL?
 
That's a fascinating change where if Israel is established in this timeline it might be a monarchy. The question becomes is this version of Zionism as popular as its secular atheist version in OTL?

Perhaps this version of Zionism could be tied to a religious revival, like a Jewish great awakening? This also brings up the question of just who would be King of Israel in such a scenario. After all, an Israeli monarchy hadn't existed in nearly 2,000 years, so there's no pretender to crown or noble line that could assume the throne. I did find this article (http://www.peerage.org/genealogy/exilarch.htm) that seems to imply a traceable line of descend from the last known Exilarch (head of the Jewish diaspora and King in waiting) but I can't find any more details.
 
If we push the publication of the book and the Jewish home state awakening to happen 20 to 30 years earlier, it can be an issue at the congress of Berlin. And like in all previous congresses the heads of state, being mostly kings and queens themselves, might push for the new state to be a parliamentary democracy ruled by one of the own. In fact, they would probably insist on a non-Jewish - though probably also non-Catholic - king as a balance to keep any overtly religions parliament in check. I don't know how many cousins-once-removed of the house of Saxony-Coburgh-Gotha are available at that time, but there should be more then enough to find one that everyone present, even the Jewish Homestate delegation could agree on.
 
This entire thread is ASB.

Explanation: Zionism wasn't the invention of one person. It came about as a result of historical process affecting European Jews, namely the combination of emancipation in the first two thirds of the 19c and the rise of anti-Semitic romantic nationalism in the last third. Herzl was himself deeply affected by the Dreyfuss trial, and so were other European Jews.

This process affected the most integrated, educated, and secular Jews. Kook himself was reacting to the irreligious nature of Zionism, and was forced to come up with a romantic vision in which the State of Israel had a religious purpose, which vision remained a fringe minority until maybe ten years ago. (The recent growth of romantic nationalism in Israel is a result of the Gaza disengagement plan, which was popular in the Israeli public, proving to the religious settlers that nobody gave a crap about their Whole Land of Israel vision. This forced them to start mainstreaming their views, via secular allies like Netanyahu, more palatable religious leaders like Naftali Bennett, and PR people like Moshe Klughaft.)

The more traditional Jews in Eastern European shtetls did not care much for Zionism. They would not have become Zionists if Kook had decided a Jewish state would be a good idea a few years before Herzl. Petah Tikva was in fact founded by Orthodox Jews, in 1878, predating the Dreyfuss trial and Herzel by nearly 20 years. But the vast majority of subsequent Zionist settlement was secular, because modern nationalism is the domain of the middle class and not of religious traditionalists.

The notion of Israel being founded by a king is lolzy. The state can't even agree on a single chief rabbi. There are two chief rabbis, one Ashkenazi and one Sephardi. There are people calling for a halachic state now and for abolition of democracy, but a) they're fringe voices, and b) their vision is more like the Islamic Republic of Iran or the American far right and less like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or ISIS.
 

DaHound22

Banned
Perhaps this version of Zionism could be tied to a religious revival, like a Jewish great awakening? This also brings up the question of just who would be King of Israel in such a scenario. After all, an Israeli monarchy hadn't existed in nearly 2,000 years, so there's no pretender to crown or noble line that could assume the throne. I did find this article (http://www.peerage.org/genealogy/exilarch.htm) that seems to imply a traceable line of descend from the last known Exilarch (head of the Jewish diaspora and King in waiting) but I can't find any more details.

I love the religious revival idea. As for your question in regards to who would be king, I think with no Davidic or Hasmonean line to claim the throne the new Israelis might convert the position of Chief Rabbinate to Melek Ysrael (King of Israel). This would make it an elective monarchy, kinda like the pope. They could also use any of the major Rabbinic families of the time. In this TL, with Rabbi Kook as founder of Zionsim, it could be that his son, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, could be considered a legitimate claimant to the new throne.
 
I love the religious revival idea. As for your question in regards to who would be king, I think with no Davidic or Hasmonean line to claim the throne the new Israelis might convert the position of Chief Rabbinate to Melek Ysrael (King of Israel). This would make it an elective monarchy, kinda like the pope. They could also use any of the major Rabbinic families of the time. In this TL, with Rabbi Kook as founder of Zionsim, it could be that his son, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, could be considered a legitimate claimant to the new throne.

Eh.

Two things:

1. There certainly are rabbinical families, but a lot of them were only founded recently. Ovadai Yosef grew up in a poor family.

2. Why would there be a religious revival? Certainly in the late 19c and throughout the 20c, the mentality among most Jews was that the nation needed to progress by jettisoning religious traditions and replacing them with secular and ethnic ones.
 

DaHound22

Banned
Eh.

Two things:

1. There certainly are rabbinical families, but a lot of them were only founded recently. Ovadai Yosef grew up in a poor family.

2. Why would there be a religious revival? Certainly in the late 19c and throughout the 20c, the mentality among most Jews was that the nation needed to progress by jettisoning religious traditions and replacing them with secular and ethnic ones.

Well considering the 2000 years of exile and oppression that culminated in the Holocaust, I think a religious revival would be almost expected. In my opinion the only reason there wasn't was because of Herzl and the secular Zionists, but in the the last 19th century the majority of Jews were simple (by which I mean poor and agrarian) and devoutly religious. If Kook could head Zionsim first, he'd be speaking to a population that thinks like him. Herzl was the oddball in his time, not the other way around, which is part of the reason his theory didn't catch with the populace
 
Well considering the 2000 years of exile and oppression that culminated in the Holocaust, I think a religious revival would be almost expected. In my opinion the only reason there wasn't was because of Herzl and the secular Zionists, but in the the last 19th century the majority of Jews were simple (by which I mean poor and agrarian) and devoutly religious.

It doesn't matter what the majority is. Nationalism is never about the majority of the population. It's about the majority of the urban middle class, and among European Jewry, it was decidedly secular.

Zionism was ultimately a movement of Westernization. It was the culmination of assimilation of Jews to European values. In Early Modern Britain and the Netherlands, and in the 19c in the rest of Western Europe, the Jews learned to become more like their neighbors. The rise in anti-Semitism starting in the 1870s did not halt this trend, but on the contrary continued it in a new direction: Jews would become like the Europeans by founding a nation-state like the ones the Europeans had. The revival of Hebrew was not a turn away from European values, but rather a turn toward them: one nation, one state, one language. Early-20c Zionists constantly compared their fledgling nation to a pan-European yardstick, and wanted Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem to be like the major European cities.

This means that we should look at Zionism through the same lens as reform movements in non-European areas that were deeply affected by Europe: Meiji Japan, the May Fourth Movement in China, Ataturk's reforms in Turkey, postcolonialism in former colonies. The direction of all three named movements was a rejection of traditionalism and assimilation of European knowledge, and in China and Turkey it was also accompanied by overt secularization. In Japan, the emperor remained nominally supreme, but the autocracy of the shogun was replaced with democratically-elected prime ministers, and overusing imperial edicts was considered to cheapen the post of the emperor when one prime minister resorted to them too much.

Expecting Zionism to advocate a monarchy or a theocracy makes the same amount of sense as expecting late-19c Japan to advocate a return to the shogunate.

Of note, we do see some romantic religious revivals today, of which the most common in the news is ISIS... but this is in response to the failure of secularism. The Arab world first developed Baathism, a secular modernizing ideology, and only turned to the Muslim Brotherhood or Salafism after the nationalist leaders failed.

If Kook could head Zionsim first, he'd be speaking to a population that thinks like him. Herzl was the oddball in his time, not the other way around, which is part of the reason his theory didn't catch with the populace

No, he'd be speaking to a population that would reject him, because the shtetl Jews saw no reason to emigrate. You're under the impression that because under contemporary Israeli-Jewish definitions of religiosity the shtetl Jews were Orthodox, they'd be a good fit for religious Zionism. This is not the case. Religious Jews in turn-of-the-century Europe spoke Yiddish, and reserved Hebrew for liturgy; Zionists, including religious Zionists, revived Hebrew in secular usage. They based their life on small-town existence, and if they wanted more, they aspired to become like the urban middle class; Zionists came up with the idea of muscular Judaism, in which Jews would shed their middle-class intellectualism and become people of the land. Nationalism is all about urban middle-class romanticism for the peasantry; the actual peasantry's opinions are never relevant to the urban romantic. The easiest way to see the difference between the shtetl mindset and the religious Zionist mindset is that in Eastern Europe there was an entire tradition of draft dodging among Jews, whereas religious Zionists today fetishize the military and the men make a point of serving in combat units.

Ultra-Orthodoxy bears more similarity to how the Jews lived in the shtetls, and remains non-Zionist... but even it has evolved a lot in the last hundred or so years. In the shtetls, the men worked, and only the best student in each generation would get to stay in the yeshiva and become a rabbi. Nor was there much spatial segregation between men and women. Nor is there much of an agrarian tradition anymore, what with Israel having a) close to 100% urbanization, and b) a farm sector that's still dominated by the kibbutz and moshav movements, which are almost exclusively secular and (pretend-)socialist.

Of note, there was such a thing as religious Zionism. It wasn't just Kook; he didn't invent this movement, but was speaking to a current of middle-class urban Jews who remained religious, and disliked the secular direction that mainline Zionism was taking.
 
Zionism has always been controversial among some religious Jews because they believe that there is not to be a Jewish state in the Holy Land again until the messiah comes. A zionist monarchy would make any Jewish state less likely and a harder sell to non-Zionist religious Jews whose support was crucial historically to the achievement of a Jewish national home in Palestine. This idea, though not uninteresting, is ASB.
 
This is about the time that Sauniere was stomping around Rennes le Charteau.
Did he actually have a monarch in mind at that time?
 
Zionism has always been controversial among some religious Jews because they believe that there is not to be a Jewish state in the Holy Land again until the messiah comes. A zionist monarchy would make any Jewish state less likely and a harder sell to non-Zionist religious Jews whose support was crucial historically to the achievement of a Jewish national home in Palestine. This idea, though not uninteresting, is ASB.

There was like 50 years between the emergence of Zionism and the establishment of modern Israel, so couldn't the Jewish people be brought around to the idea of a monarchy?
 
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