Everyday Zionism in East-Central Europe: Nation Building in War and Revolution, 1914–1920

Jan Rybak's Everyday Zionism in East-Central Europe: Nation Building in War and Revolution, 1914–1920 is a refreshingly expansive, richly suggestive study. Its superb analysis complements those of his contemporaries, Brendan McGeever and William Pimlott, for the respective cases of Jewish support for Bolshevism in the early Soviet Union and the vitality of the Yiddish press in London's East End. Each of them reveals that Zionism penetrated Jewish consciousness with greater depth, breadth, and flexibility than often is admitted. Rybak's work, furthermore, helps to explain the Zionist consensus that emerged in the wake of the Second World War among Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs) as discussed in Avinoam Patt's Finding Home and Homeland (2009). Perhaps critical elements of what was “found” by young survivors, women as well as men, was not so foreign or distant from the experience of their parents. A truly brilliant book, Everyday Zionism in East-Central Europe casts new light over an entire field.Everyday Zionism reveals that the preeminent “Zionist concept of acquiring agency for the Jewish nation was reflected in increased grassroots activism. Many who had not hitherto played a central role in the movement, notably young women, began to assert themselves more forcefully not only towards society at large but also against their older male peers who represented the Zionist traditions of older generations” (p. 298). That these “traditions” were formidable enough to serve as a springboard for successive generations also is worth considering. Locating what was specific about East Central Europe, Rybak explains that “From optimistic pioneers in Lithuania, to Zionist youth clubs in Galicia, to revolutionaries on the streets of Vienna and Warsaw, everyday grassroots activism gained an ever-increasing importance” (p. 298). Perhaps understating his strong thesis, Rybak concludes that this “was not limited to Jewish society and to Zionist movements” but the activity depicted “would shape Jewish society and politics in the following decades” (p. 298).Rybak reveals, more effectively than any scholars since Ezra Mendelsohn and Jonathan Frankel, the evolution of what Zionism meant to the Jewish masses—and that “the Land of Israel was only part of the story” (pp. 3, 5). Zionist activists, compared to some of their counterparts in Central Europe and elsewhere, did not experience their movement as “contradictory” (pp. 15, 34). “What all of the Palestine offices had in common,” Rybak writes, “was that they operated in a highly ambiguous and uncertain space, professing confidence in the possibility of mass immigration to Palestine, and insisting on the viability of this perspective, while at the same time trying to hold people back from going there individually. They were effectively confined to mere ‘preparatory’ work” (p. 269). As opposed to David Vital and others who contend that Zionism, focused on Palestine, was the correct alternative, Rybak sees Palestine has having a different function. Zionists did not attain their leadership because they “put forward a programme that was convincing in itself; rather, because Zionist activists proved themselves in their engagement for the communities, their political programme became convincing” (pp. 295–296). They achieved this through helping to provide essential childcare (pp. 112–113), politically socializing young people (pp. 134–136), caring for refugees (p. 206), and in organizing Jewish defense against violent threats (pp. 94–95, 176)—to name just a few of their significant measures.As opposed to focusing on diplomacy and Zionist organization-building writ large, Rybak shows how the movement offered “concrete proposals” for ‘improving the condition of the Jews.’ In transforming the ethno-national identity of Jews, they exemplified, to a great many, “the best response to the precarious situation of the Jews” (p. 1). “In this time of radical change,” Rybak argues, “Zionists often proved that theirs was the movement that could really make an impact on people's lives.” The author also is careful to explain that these efforts did not always take shape “in the ways Zionists themselves had imagined” (p. 3). In the end, it was a voluntary movement which did not possess the means for the enforcement of its objectives as practiced by normative governments or political parties. While centering on “four distinct spaces”—two zones of German occupation in the former Russian empire (including Warsaw and much of Lithuania), Hapsburg Galicia (including parts of Ukraine), and the urban centers of Vienna and Prague—Rybak's study “does not aim to summarize and retell ‘what happened’ in these regions, but instead” seeks to render a complex portrait “about the dynamics of Zionist activism,” (p. 7) that is, the “methods and strategies” that were “best suited for facing the radical changes that European society had undergone and that so severely affected the Jewish population” (p. 288).There is, however, an underplayed tension that I believe is present in the phenomena so expertly presented by Rybak—but it is extremely difficult to address. Zionism, besides being shaped by other forms of Jewish politics and the larger environment, also was influenced by the general current of Jewish immigration particularly to western countries (see pp. 271–272). Gur Alroey has argued that emigration to Palestine was more ‘normal,’ as opposed to exceedingly politicized, as it often is portrayed. The problem for Rybak and other historians is that this elephant in the room—that is, immigration to the United States—isn't always talked about even when it weighs heavily on the words and deeds of those who are rooted in Europe, and seem most committed to resolving the dichotomy of staying put or going to Palestine. Yet a reality historians of modern Jewry incessantly confront is the fact of migration—not only to the distant shores of America, but to the attractive metropoles of Berlin, Paris, and London, in particular. I do not believe that any historian, yet, has managed to accommodate Zionism and immigration, more generally, into a comprehensive narrative and analysis. Whether or not an individual or family acted upon it, the pull to the west was a palpable factor of Jewish life.What seems most conspicuously absent from the book, however, are Zionism's many and important manifestations of material culture—the signs and symbols of the movement. Certainly, this was a significant part of “everyday Zionism.” One photograph, which is utterly striking, appears unique, as opposed to a representative sample of a larger phenomenon of Zionist realistic imagery: a carefully staged portrait of “Arrested Zionists from Lwów (Leon Reich, Alexander Hausmann, Michael Ringel, Modechai Anshel Tennenblatt) and their guards, early 1919” (p. 214).But these are minor quibbles. Everyday Zionism contains an extraordinary measure of wisdom and good sense, interweaving highly specific information, broader historical currents, and relevant historiography. I would encourage those who teach European and Jewish history to consider using this book in their class presentations, and to assign chapters for reading. The opening summary of the changes wrought on the Jews by the Great War is stunning. The entire book is exceptionally well-presented and supported, and should immediately be accorded status as a classic.