Great. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Peter Bergman, and welcome to this third.
Well, in fact, really, in reality, the second seminar for the reconsidering Zionist early Jewish Nationalist Ideology Seminar,
which we probably should have renamed the victory of Human Perseverance in the Face of Technological Adversity seminar.
But anyway, here we are. It's really my pleasure today to introduce to our speaker my argued and Zuckermann,
who is the postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School.
Meyer was the Jim Josef Postdoctoral Fellow at Education and Jewish Studies at Stanford University.
Her research centres around questions related to modern and contemporary Jewish citizenship.
The Civil Sphere and National Inter Exclusion Relations.
She is co-editor of a book called New Perspectives on Jewish Cultural History Boundary's Experiences and Sensemaking
that was published by Routledge and 20 19 year old from the University of Southern Denmark in the Middle Eastern.
Studies on Amancio Theology and Anthropology from Tel Aviv University.
Maya, over to you. Thank you very, very much for speaking to us today. Thank you so much.
Thank you for spending the afternoon here. And so I would have loved to be in Oxford right now.
I will stay here in Copenhagen. So it seems like almost surreal pleasure and honour to be grounded.
Forty five minutes to actual practise. What I don't generally just have time to preach as I've been acting for some years now.
I contend that early scientism should be studied and understood as a range of manifold ongoing processes rather than discrete events or entities.
However, the thing about manifold processes is that it takes some time to unfold an outline them in front of an audience.
Moreover, it's often an incomplete task as processes infinite in both time and space.
So nevertheless, I'll use my time today to give you an extended example of how scientist emergence can be seen.
It's a fragmented, ongoing,
fluid process that was always negotiated through practises and meaning making to state my purpose as concisely as possible.
I want in this lecture to show scientist emergence as a cultural process of meaning making.
So let me now flesh out what I mean with these times.
One by one, so that it becomes clear what added value this perspective can have for the study of early Jewish nationalism.
And after this brief conceptual mapping, and I promise it will be brief.
I will move on to the fun part of bringing us all back to the spring of eighteen ninety seven,
where we'll travel with a group of Jews to Palestine in order to understand what virtual
Palestine and Jewish national collectivity could mean for Western identified Jews.
At the end of the century. So I want to briefly address three concepts and that are important to this lecture.
I tie these concept to the general framework of cultural and pragmatic sociology.
Following the lead, amongst others, of Yale Professor Jeffrey Alexander.
So the three concepts, a process meaning making and cultural structure.
And if you could go to next. Thank you.
The emphasis on seeing scientist emergence as process is based on the conviction that we need to pay more attention to the
ongoing unstable ways in which a movement a scientism became rather than seeing it as a defined entity that was already settled.
So to, quote, shoot and to engage with the world by.
Sorry, I quote, to engage with the world by seeing process as fundamental does not imply to deny the existence of state events, entity, other things.
It does, however, draw attention to the ways in which any object can be unpacked to reveal the complex processes involved in the objects institution.
End of quote.
So thus, rather than seeing scientism as an idea or personal pamphlet, that is as an entity that moved around without being moved itself.
Unmoved mover. If you want the process perspective attempts to trace the many activities and trends actions
that continuously had to be in place for scientism to become a force that could create,
coordinate and transform Jewish lives around the world.
So the second concept is meaning making. So the canon of Jewish nationalist historiography outlines the set,
central text and pantheon through which we are taught to understand Jewish nationalist emergence.
So this Canham most famously assembled in Oslo, a hedge book, The Scientist Idea it displays house.
How thinkers and politicians articulated and fought for different version of Jewish nationhood, hatchback and other historians.
Then provide the context to show us how these ideas and strategies either failed or succeeded.
And as they were played out, how. A very big gap still exist in which we see and learn through ethnographic descriptions how Jews came
to make sense of science and what prevented the processes through which Zionism was seen as relevant,
meaningful, pressel important are the opposite in ordinary Jewish lives.
So what I'm asking is both a call for bottom up history, but sort also wish to see meaning and meaning,
making as crucial historical players in how change and process come about when the final concept is cultural structure.
I find this particularly important in the context of scientist historiography as the
concept of culture here carries its own rather confused meaning and trajectory.
So in a semiotic anthropological sense, culture is paraphrasing goods, webs of significance that people are suspended it in yet have spun themselves.
So Jeffrey Alexander has restated the importance through which we should understand how
cultural codes of significance and cultural negotiation dominate the social order.
We need to see cultural structures as the normative meaning, making historically embedded yet future oriented navigation code.
That are all in different ways and times informed by it and reacting to it.
So Jewish historical culture studies have the last decade shown us how different national,
social, racial and cultural code coach would need negotiated by Jewish citizens.
However, these approaches have not been fully used or explored within the study of Jewish politics.
I contend at least so in this field, we still seem to believe that culture and meaning making belonging in another disciplinary subdepartment.
But nothing I hope to show you today could be further from the truth.
The webs of significance that the early scientists and explorers were spun in and continue to spin should not be
seen as political because they were central meanings through which these people read and acted in the world.
An intern will read and interacted with so enough conceptual outlining for now.
Let's jump into the thrust of the matter. For the rest of the lecture,
I want to unfold an example of how we can understand early Jewish national emergence as a process that centres on meaning making and cultural coding.
So let me bring you back to the renowned year of 1897. It's not dead almost.
The first sign is Congress does not. Even the horizon for the twenty nine year old thing is Jewish physician Louis Hemen Klingel and a next light.
He's living in Copenhagen. And here I'm fortunate I don't have a picture of him as a 29.
Yo, you will see some in a moment, but here's the more standard pictures of him.
So he's living in Copenhagen at the time where he was born, raised and educated.
Louis Tankel is in many ways, in many ways, a product of his time.
His father, Nathan Spangle, was a textile and silk most merchant who inherited the business from his father before him.
During the second half of the 19th century,
Nathan succeeded in developing his father's more humble business into a thriving textile enterprise that serves the Danish upper middle class.
So when Stingley was born in 1868, Nathan's business was going well.
The family that eventually would count three kids had moved into a butcher his apartment in the centre of Copenhagen.
So in back in 1814, Denmark allowed Jews to enter guilds and gave them more rights as citizens,
which was confirmed and expanded with the Constitution of 1849 and which, amongst other things, stressed freedom of religion.
After Denmark lost the war to Germany in 1864, Nathan Franco continued to do business in Germany and visit the family in the region.
But he also made sure that his sons received a good Danish education and understood the importance of dedicated national allegiance.
And Single went on to study medicine at Copenhagen University. But he did us also volunteer to Danish Army.
And he developed the National Ambulance Service to rural part of the country, the first in the country.
So the single family was just like many other things, Jewish urban families.
At the end of the 19th century,
they were working hard at securing and reaffirming themselves as assertively Danish as ingroup members of the Danish society.
However, as one of the few in the younger post 1860 fourth generation swankier,
also insisting on educating, educating and engaging himself in Orthodox Judaism.
As a physician, he helped articulate and reform the procedure of circumcision so that it aligned with the medical discourse at the time.
And he took private classes with the chief rabbi, David Simonsen.
Whenever he had a break from the hospital, so think was interested in discussing Talmudic questions,
thinking about interpretation of rituals relating to historical Jewish events as bridges and signposts for the present day.
While these theological question. Interested Finckel.
And they did not push him to reorganise or challenge accepted the social values or social relations in the community.
So prior to 1897, he could make perfect sense of his Jewishness within this, that this community norms and practises of his time.
OK. So 80, 90, seven rolls around. Unthankful has just passed this final medical exam and is not planning to open his own clinic in Copenhagen.
He's not yet married and is left feeling rather free to explore the world before settling down.
An invitation arrives from London to travel to Palestine with the Maccabean pilgrimage, which ignites something in him.
We have a document. We are so lucky to have a document. And that testifies as to how Franklin interprets this invitation because he communicates
its content to Rabbi Simonsen as he tries to convince the rabbi to come along.
So the letter, which was written March eight, 1897. And you can go to the next like AM.
So I will quote in part of the letter that we see written in the right.
And it's also part of the letter on the backside we have on the picture is Rabbi Simonson and his wife.
And this is from his house. His apartment. OK, I will quote.
Hi, Justine. Mr. Chief Rabbi, can I tend to use openings and decorum, my setting him so the children of Israel when onward and all their journeys.
Don't you feel like doing just that on April six? A splendid opportunity offers itself.
It go from London, Riyadh, Dover, Calais,
Paris to Marseilles on April eight from here to Alexandria and tracks from there to Cairo and Ismailia and with the ship,
which we again will encounter in Port Said each week.
Yes, well, the colonies will be visited and then you'll go with Train to Jerusalem Hotel Jerusalem to stay here until Monday morning.
From here, you will again hold from Jerusalem to Damascus, which will be between 30 to 40 miles.
The trip will pass first bettles kilo shift.
And you saw said mountable to the leg of Tiberius, where will arrest the last two days of Pista Sunday 25th.
We will continue the ride to Damascus and from there to buy route from where the ship takes the group to smear and Maputo's and back to Mercy.
So then Stangl quotes directly in English from the itinerary on your own.
You don't have that here. So we quote in English. What I've read so far wasn't Danish with my translations being this kosher food
will be provided throughout unbolt the steamer at the hotels and on camping,
too, and in Palestine. And the Jewish cook of shuffle will accompany the party.
And I think that continues. And we've added to this. And he goes back to English.
Washing is done at the hotels, but not in Cannes. I would say that it all looks very tempting and this has probably not ended.
The purpose of the tour is to arouse interest amongst the Jews for Palestine.
And there's this hope that the tour will be basis for literary works. So end of quote,
without wrapping up the suggested further single in the letter immediately moved on to mention
the edit he had been doing on the recent proposal to reform the procedure of circumcision.
And he asked the rabbi to confer more on this matter when we return home from the medical visit at the Royal Farm Clinic in Drayson,
where he's currently at. He ended the letter noting that there wasn't much to say about placement.
He writes, quote,
The Jews were living an odd secluded life and there was not much life in the other residents except when they burn off their churches.
End of quote. So as we just heard,
Single framed the trip to Palestine with this biblical quote from Exodus and thus from the outset and cast Endeavour with
purpose and meaning related to the theological ambiguous meaning of a Islam that is as a promised land and a group of people.
The trip in this context speaks to some of the core values of Judaism,
namely the idea of a nexus in which the chosen people and promised land come together to form a sacred unity.
That it is disputable whether this next war should be carried out in the specific and
mundane forms that the rest of the let us suggest is initially a subordinate point.
So, in fact, would suggest in the letter that it was the many exciting stops and the comfortable
amenities of the travel that would bring the Israel of the children of Israel onwards.
The letter seemed to express an excitement of the synergy between these elements, which made it all look very tempting.
Palestine. The grand tour and luxury amenities. Only at this point in the letter did the thinking mentioned a supposedly larger
purpose behind the tool to evoke interest for Palestine amongst Jews and inspire.
Literary works based on the journey so well, Stengel noted that these were the purposes.
He did not act at excitement or expand further on these purposes.
Instead, they appeared rather isolated from the rest of the described synergy and newness.
So the purpose was mentioned there, but not part of a cycle. What got excited about going?
And presumably also what not what he thought would get Rabbi Simonsen going.
So more one spangle grounded the letter in mundane and immediate matters,
namely a discussion surrounding the question of reforming or editing the legislation related to circumcision.
And finally, there was the observation of the withdrawn Jewish life of Leysen.
But fill that list. Thankful, unimpressed and somewhat disdainful about the local Jewish community.
So why does this matter? How can this letter be seen as a fresh cue in the tracing of the cultural process of science meaningly?
So first and foremost, let us offer us a quite unique and thick description of the situated circumstances in
which the suggestion to travel on a Jewish tour to Palestine in 1897 inserted itself.
The letter juxtaposed different issues that doughnut related and immediate concern are related to certain cultural coding of collective Jewish life.
In early 1897. So sad and backwards to what's the physical presence of West Bengal was currently situated the City of Lights.
When Single chose to convey to Simonsen what he chose to convey to Simonsen
about the city was that the Jews were not asserting themselves in public life.
He did not speculate.
And the reason for why this withdrawal, but just noted that their choice of life seemed odd off not to be Jews living their life in the public sphere.
Secondly, he mentioned the ongoing world of work about editing the circumcision recommendation.
This was important work work for Franco as he apologised to Simonsen for the
minute edits he had offered and his wish to continue to work further on it.
For Finkel, who stood in the beginning of his medical career and who was extremely curious about the latest medical developments.
He was also deeply invested in getting circumcision to be accepted and fit into modern medical discourse and government regulations.
And there was no dichotomy, the hesitation mentioned here. These thoughts and practises belong in the same room of present day urban Jewish life.
Then comes the very spectacular reason for the letter.
The opportunity to travel to Palestine as part of a group of European Jews.
So this journey belonged in the same real time of circumcision efforts and disdain of placing Jews in the intersection
between practising modern European life and exploring and valorising specific Jewish path and meanings within it.
So what we learnt from the letter is that Sikelel was a man who in early 1897 was aware and engaged in some of the challenges in European Jewish life.
And a man interested in experiencing the excitement of a Europe that was opening up for Jews.
From his perspective, Palestine seemed like a thrilling destination,
both through a religious lens and an explorative tourist lens, which for him at the time was not mutually exclusive.
To make a long story short of this point, Stangl joined the two months later in London while Chief Rabbi Simonsen stayed back home.
Now let's unravel some of the circumstances of the Maccabean pilgrimage and how it
became the supposedly first scientist to achieve Palestine and change like that.
And the Maccabean pilgrimage has been mentioned and several scientists to help Rafi's ladies.
Perhaps most well known and obvious, Shavitz promised land as it was his great grandfather, Herbert Benn, which would help organise it.
And what's its two Leedham push a bit. The trip took place from the trip, which took place from April to May 1897,
was a manifestation of the Jewish nation state dream that was at the core of Hurtfully and Zionism.
It was a living attempt to connect the ideas of Hertel with the territory of Palestine and thus lay the groundwork for the state in the making.
This was the perspective in that I should be present in this book, however, and there is a very big.
However, this was not the purpose of the two at the time, and this was not what was really taking place.
Doing to him. So she'll shove it does not unfold the complex meaning making that was taking
place at the time and he does misses out on a fantastic opportunity to see what
and how this first group of Jews who set out to assess Hurtles idea vis a vis
the reality of Palestine and how they would engage themselves in this project.
So it overlooks the web of meanings that they try to make sense of navigate in.
And this becomes clear already when we look at the public discussion between Hertel and bandwidths about the very purpose and framing of the tool.
So just a brief background into how the pilgrimage came about in the first place.
So in their Uden stop, which Hetal had published a year earlier,
Hadsell explicitly stated that he believed that a group of Western Jews should be in charge of materialising what he termed the scientist idea.
He called this body the Society of the Jews and hope the Anglo Jewish intellectuals would comprise the bulk of this society.
He had therefore presented his ideas for the Maccabean Club, a forum he identified as fitting the bill.
The Maccabean Club was created in 1891 and whose official aim was to form a, quote,
social intercourse and cooperation amongst its members with a view to the promotion of the interests of the Jewish race.
So indeed, it was a club that aimed at creating an intellectual Jewish Monier without expressing affiliating with any political,
religious or economic parties or interests. Its interests in Palestine was explicitly intellectual.
It had invited Hadsell into its club in the summer of 1896. As a Jew of letters, not politics, as it was mentioned in its programme.
So doing his talk in the club, Hadsell spoke passionately about the need for British Jews to engage in the future
of European Jews and the need for creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
The Maccabee ends hesitantly decided to establish a commission to enquire into Capsule's
plan and subsequently and to send an expedition to Palestine to explore its potential.
However, these were kind of empty or lofty meeting decisions that basically postponed the action to undefined future.
It was to be, but no one really put it into practise how it was to be.
Most of the Maccabees wanted to silence Purtell, but not but not generate any further action.
However, community activist,
lawyer and Maccabean member Herbert Banbridge wanted a different tree and was in fact very keen on exploring the validity of Hertz's ideas.
So Benowitz had been a founding member of the London tent of Holovaty and was Orthodox Jews
with a big hat and interest in strengthening both local and international Jewish communities.
So together with the travel company Thomas Cook, he single handedly managed to organise what became known as the Maccabean pilgrimage to Palestine.
He gradually began to see that the Maccabean members were neither going to help organise the tour nor going to participate.
They made it clear to Benwood that a Jewish expedition to Palestine was not who they were and wanted to be.
Bentwood soon began adjusting the Palestine to accordingly. He named it a pilgrimage instead of an expedition.
He downgraded any political motive and finally invited queues from around the world to join him so that
the notion of a commission or society of British Jews were replaced with a broader Jewish community.
So in the itinerary, it was stated in the U. Could we go to the next slide, please?
And I quote. And here's the picture of which in the pilgrimage is going to be one.
And the Pilkey, it is going to be one of more than local.
A personal concern. Not that we're going for any specifically religious, much less for any political purpose.
Nor are we going as prospect, us or philanthropist and yet another man.
Curiosity on hundreds of sites use. We shall go as Western Jews, evidencing only by our participation in the pilgrimage.
The great truth for feeling of identity and brotherhood between our people, whatever they may be, speck of interest in our lands.
However far we may be removed from it. And the quote.
So bentwood here distinguish what the purpose, first of all was not before he came around to define the purpose in more positive terms.
He laid out a whole series of dichotomies to which he carved out the two.
And here we can move on to the next. Just so we can see in the more affirmative sight.
The pilgrims were briston Jews.
They had a relationship between their sense of peoplehood and their interest in their land, and they had a feeling of identity and brotherhood.
They were not prospectors, philanthropist, curiosity, hundred sites.
So, yes, they did not have any local personally concern in Palestine and they did not have any religious or political,
religious or political purpose there. So that was a binary list of binaries that were listed from this description.
We can learn quite a lot about the cultural codes that were underpinning the two leaders understanding of the travelling Jews and their mission.
The binary is listed here stress the point that Western Jews stood above all the petty and particular concerns and
purposes that non Western Jews and Western non Jews might have in their luggage when they travelled to Palestine.
And what seems to be the key sexualising feature of these Jews were their affiliation with the West as Western Jews.
They could have feelings of Jewish identity and brotherhood, which made them interested in the land of Israel without this being of a
religious or political nature and without losing any of the Western affiliation.
So in other words, travelling as Western Jews would not change their national or civic status,
which is native Western, as apparently was unchangeable.
The travel would instead simply allow them to strengthen a specific subquery to which was their Jewish identity.
It seemed so paramount to bend which to flesh this point out Jews travel to Palestine would not change inch
of the core Western values and would obviously not interfere with the national political affiliation.
So these were clearly not up for grabs as the two began at least.
So before we turn to the travel itself, let's look at how Hertel percent this journey.
He was very invested in the idea that this travel would be a significant endeavour for the scientist movement.
And here we can move on to the next leg under the title, The Return to Palestine.
He wrote in the Jewish Chronicle on January 22nd, 1897, I quote, political scientist and sets to work Ahmad with all the means of the present day.
In this sense, the pilgrimage of Mr. Bent, which is of significance, which cannot be underrated for the first time, a band of modern culture,
Jews of all confession with a disturbing leading idea, make their way to the land of our fathers in order to personally explore it.
It is a national enquiry commission singler of its kind.
One calculated to raise our hopes and Hurtsville emphasis emphasised that this form of travel wasn't deemed a political act,
since the group in Hurtles Eyes constituted a national unity entity.
He insisted that the travelling Jews represented a national Jewish collectivity, that while being modern and cultured as it also bent,
which states also had their own distinct political agenda about the Jewish future in Palestine.
So to avoid these meanings would simply make the tour an empty gesture from Herschel's perspective.
So, in other words, insisted on seeing the travel and its purpose as an entity which the Jewish
community should see should see as part of the emergent scientist movement.
The organising itself showed that there was no entity and there was no unified political agenda behind it.
In order to actually organise a tour to Palestine in early 1897, Bentwood had to adapt and adjust to.
And the. To outline in a way that resonated with enough Jews who were willing and ready
to set out and could afford it to set out to Palestine as a Jewish pilgrimage.
He needed to find the Frankel's in Jewish communities around the world who could identify and project their feelings and understanding of Jewish past,
present and future in a way that makes signing up and going to Palestine a move, a meaningful and an exciting endeavour.
So now let's find this zoom in on some of the stops on the journey where we see
some of these negotiations of what Jewish nation would meant for these travellers.
So in the end of logical literature on pilgrimage, we generally see studies divided into three parts.
We have this we have the travelling, the journey, the destination and the return.
Right. And while thankful has it, that has had his eye solidly focussed on Palestine,
the twenty one participant who ended up going quickly seem much more in miss in the travelling itself.
The American Jewish pilgrim Fennimore wrote. And here we can go to next book.
So I quote. So that small incongruence. Body was made up of so many salts, and yet in the few weeks that we shared all with each other,
there was nothing but kindness on the part of one and all the six days and the beautiful blue Mediterranean with it,
with its very short of Italy and Sardinia, were most delightful part of our journey.
We were all well acquainted by this time, having been together more in those days than years of ordinary life.
Thank you. Throughout the whole trip.
Wrote one to two letters home to his mom and wrote diaries which we have which I found in the Danish state archives.
So frankly, it was even more enthusiastic about being in motion with a group of international Jews.
And we can move on to the next slide. I quote, It is a pleasure to be part of this trip where everyone, men and women, are such good friends.
It would have been impossible to get 20 people from Denmark on a tour like this without
some of them choking and eating Thai food on another table or smoking on Shabbas.
One does not have room for homesickness.
One is completely at home here, and that in the middle of the sea where we see no living creature other than ourselves.
And of course, so as prescribed in the anthropological pilgrimage literature,
the travelling itself creates an intense sense of community and a temporary ratio of social differences.
Commune communities is the anthropological concept for this phenomenon.
So but what is interesting in this part of the process of the Jewish pilgrimage is that the space created amongst the travellers was not,
in fact a classic to turn in case of a. structure.
That is a liminal space liberated from normal structural conditions.
As Franco enthusiastically noted, the space was in fact structured around Jewish time and Jewish meanings for Franco.
This was my idea of a Jewish ritual practise that made it tangibly different than non Jewish spaces.
The second remarkable aspect of this tool was that it felt like a Jewish home, though it had no territorial attachment is right.
Fennimore went as far as to call the time on the boat itself. Homecoming.
So when they come to the boat, when they have been on show and come back to the boat, she said, I'm coming home.
So almost identical to what Hertzel later wrote in Neulasta.
I wonder whether he has he had read that if any more writing.
So what he wrote in an island when he described Western travellers coming to Palestine declaring unbolt the ship, that that was in fact, Siân itself.
And these views expressed, in other words,
a Jewish belonging to each other and the non territorial community that had taken shape and meaning before the group went ashore in Palestine.
This group feeling was not expressed in political terms submission, but it was noted as a new experience of Jewish collectivity.
It was marked as a different Jewish community sensation than they had hitherto hitherto engaged
in with social and religious differences were put aside and geographical attachments forgotten.
Arriving to Palestine, however, and here you can take the next picture.
Arriving to Palestine, however, generated much more conflictual feelings for Palestine, was not a shrine or organised, formalised, sacral destination.
At the end of pilgrimage traditionally entails the feeling of intake of elevated Jewish collectivity that was generated along the way quickly
began to disintegrate as the participants tried to make sense of the things they experienced in Palestine and connected these with the past.
They embodied in the future they imagined. So just like the travel itself proved to generate a lot of unexpected feelings of
Jewish collectivity that were not irrelevant for the Latvian nationalist project.
The actual seeing and being in Palestine proved paramount.
A new layer of feelings amongst the pilgrims, as we shall see now.
These feelings did not, however, align neatly with hurtles image of a new Jewish homeland.
So Fanni, ma'am, the excitement and joy about the whole pilgrimage so far that ended almost as soon as they went ashore in Palestine.
In her own words, I quote, So ended those quiet, peaceful, happy times.
End of quote. So in rather oh, in complete Orientalists time, she described the arrival to Yaffa as follow.
I quote the arrival on shore where eastern life in all its degrading aspect, met.
In reality, the walk through the town amidst great filth happened to be maggoty.
The human beings, animals, vegetables, meat and fruit formed one mass that reviewing it from the balcony of the hotel was entire punk liberation.
The streets is narrow and as I said, very filthy.
End of quote. In this perspective, Palestine was immediately identified as the backward east that represented all the values and social
forms that the West and thus also these Western Jews had either rejected or progressed away from.
For these pilgrims, Palestine could hardly be distinguished from from the landscape.
Jewish Palestine could not be distinguished. British Jewish writer Samuel Levy Bensoussan turned into the most Palestine critical pilgrim.
After the visit, which can be read in his description of Jerusalem, which was published in Jewish in the Jewish Chronicle on May 14, 1897.
So yeah, quote, The people who pray for the return to Jerusalem, who hope that Israel may again become a nation,
who are enthusiastic about the city of our forefathers, would do well to spend a short time in the city.
Jerusalem and through the medium of a first impression is a city hopelessly sad and sadly hopeless.
And though there is a perceptible quiver of new life in the younger generation,
it is as yet too faint to justify an anticipation of the return of ancient glories and of, quote, another British Jewish writer more known.
Israel sang. Will echoed some of these sentiments when he described Jerusalem as, quote,
a ruined country in which one road for hours admit rocks and stones then made him feel himself in the presence of the rip of Mother Earth.
End of quote. However, for single, there was a silver lining in the whole Palestine experience.
Unlike Bensoussan saying will go strong to some of the Jewish inhabitants that he met, which he described as, quote,
fascinating types of both kind of dreamers, those who dream with their eyes shut and those who dreams with their eyes open.
And though Singles' encounter with these people through saying Wiltse encounter with
these people he engaged with rather than rejecting part of his own Jewish self.
It gave him food for thought. Though he did not sign him up unequivocally for the scientist course, fulfilling Flagel and Benowitz.
However, two Jews who shared an Orthodox background and both worked in the liberal professions.
The experience of Palestine became key to the future commitment to scientism.
Unlike many of the other pilgrims, what Finckel and Ben, which saw and perceived during their stay in Palestine,
added further layers to the Jewish community or commonality, their solidarity and the homeliness that they experienced on the journey so far.
And Finkel expressed this in organic, sedentary nationalist terms when he wrote home, and I quote.
Even though we have not yet seen milk and honey flow,
I don't believe that I've ever seen such a fertile country, nor have been in such a lovely climate.
You feel that you belong here, and I can almost compare us with flowers that have been standing in a pot, but now a planet where they're taken from.
The comparison is not mine, but it's pretty and it's true. End of quote Banbridge Road and Jewish Chronicle and Jew.
June 4th, 1897. That my quote The Pilgrims found the land, a garden, the path for days etched by a very garland of flowers.
It wasn't a country with might be said to flow with milk and honey and the scenery to which they passed.
Had every verity of charm in it, from the imposing grandeur of the Alps to the softness and diversity of our English place.
Jerusalem, the much maligned, was still a beautiful city and of gold.
So while Thankful expressed an identification of true and authentic Jewish roots in the country,
a nativist kind of belonging bent which rather depicted how you could see European and European topography in Palestine.
Palestine would thus align with the Western Jewish values through association between these two places.
So these were rather different interpretation of the relationship between Palestine and the Western Jewish pilgrimage.
Though both of these reasserted some aspect of the Hurtles scheme.
So returning to the question of Zionist emergence.
I'll begin by noting that the various experience, feelings and opinions that the pilgrims develop about Palestine and such a.
About scientism was it was not there prior to the trip.
This might seem very banal and that's a self-evident point,
but it relates to a key matter in the study of scientist emergence and its later consolidation into different camps and oppositional movements.
The words and thoughts of Hadsell and any of the other early scientist thinkers
were not in themselves enough for these Jews to develop any deep or life changing,
changing commitments to scientism. Rather, it became the travel itself, both to and in Palestine,
that made a string of differences appear relevant and important for the pilgrims to relate to and make sense of
that individual and collective Jewishness changed form and meaning doing the trip as these differences were felt,
expressed and reflected upon. However, as long as the trip was on and the group remained together, the participants seemed to stay in a friendly mood.
Their sense of togetherness overrode their different experience interpretations of Palestine.
So as the final horseback ride from Jerusalem to Damascus, which lasted several days,
it also foregrounded physical breadth rather than ideological differences, right?
So as if they followed eternal symbolic model of pilgrimage, the sense of community has lasted, in other words,
until the pilgrims left the group and returned home to a different Jewish communities and countries.
It is from this point the return from Palestine and the Jewish pilgrimage and to the Jewish communities.
This from this point that we can begin to identify the crystallisation of different
collective agreements and disagreement related to Palestine and Western duty.
We can begin to identify not just divisions of perspective,
but organised Mac differences that would that would eventually be further organised into recognisable Zionist territorial and nonsense stance.
So I'll show now in my final part. So let's return to thank you and the Danish Jews for as is known in Scandinavian Jewish history.
Following the trip to Palestine,
Finckel actually became the dominant figure within the region to promote and organise scientism in both formal and informal ways.
In 1983, he established and chaired the Danish Scientist Association,
and 10 years later he was a key force behind the creation of the Scandinavian Science Association.
However, in this historiography,
these attempts have generally been described as futile and thankful himself as a one man powerhouse that made a lot of things happen
but never really managed to create any change or not succeed in turning 20th century Scandinavian Jews into alyea oriented scientist.
The question always comes up how many Jews ended up immigrating?
So he's seen as some kind of a failure in this perspective, thankless travel and his many experience along the way.
Died out in his return to Denmark. Scientism was this idea that he sent it to the Danish Jews.
They rejected it. End of story, though. However,
if we refrain from seeing scientism scientist emergence as something that consisted of fixed entities that could either be accepted or received
and instead look for cultural processes where meaning making in cultural codes or practise experience negotiating means made sense of,
we can actually see that both the travel and science and came to play significant roles and they need Jewish meaning making in the following decades.
So Justice Bend, which early on had realised that the Maccabean Jews did not want overt political symbols connected with the travel to Palestine.
We'll use the next decade testing, developing,
adjusting and reasserting how different versions of Jewish national collectivity related to Palestine, how that sat with the Danish Jews.
While Feingold became a paying and dedicated member of the scientist organisation and publicly identified with
Hertz's political vision of Jewish homeland of a Jewish homeland in Palestine and Panopto wanted to be in Palestine.
He also realised that he needed to engage and reshuffle some of the core values
with the debt within the Danish Jewish community for them to follow his lead.
The distance from formal and its commitment to communal Danish Jewish affairs and
engagement was simply too far for Frankel's simply two percent scientism as the truth.
God not only realise this in incongruence,
but he also found the task of renegotiation in these cultural codes absolutely central for the future of Danish jewellery.
And he took this task upon him. So, I mean, here we can go to less like them.
These are pictures of some of his activities and I won't have time to go over all the.
Activities that Finckel initiated in this effort to try to change.
They need to Jewish community without foregrounding any explicit scientist agenda.
But I will give you an example of one of his most popular ways.
That is the illustrated lectures. His most popular lecture was titled And Here Comes The Big Surprise of Palestine Journey,
and was held for the first time in early eighteen early, eighteen ninety eight.
And it was repeated over and over again over the next ten years and also revised, attracting each time hundreds of people.
It was organised not as a scientist event, though. Sometimes it was also a scientist event.
But many, most of the time it was not a scientist event but an event for the Jewish and non Jewish cultural public of Copenhagen.
Finkel invited the audience to join him on a trip to Palestine. And he I quote, ladies and gentlemen, he opened the lecture.
We are going on a pretty long journey and are going to see quite a lot in a very short time.
The largest Mediterranean steamer, she'll bring us to Palestine.
And with more than one hundred pictures of Palestine accompanying him, which he had received from his scientist contacts in Berlin,
he took the Jewish and non Jewish audience through a highly selected tour of what he evoked as a Jewish Palestine.
An example of this can be seen in his evocation of Jerusalem.
I quote, Finally, we are in Jerusalem. What unique sound has the word Jerusalem?
We have heard about it from childhood. There has always covered something mystic about it, something eternally distant in time and space.
And now here we are to describe the impression one gets.
The first time one puts his foot down on the ground here is impossible.
It has to be felt. One is both happy and overwrought at the same time.
And of course, so the lecture was one long evocation of a Palestine that was contemporary, alive.
Accessible Western and yet distinctively Jewish.
At no point did Frankel mention Zionism. Instead, he placed people,
the audience in this performative place where they were there with their senses and could
experience what it was like to travel and be a part of a Jewish homeland in the making.
Rather than try to convince Copenhagen Jews to sign up for the movement,
he tried to change their immediate feeling and perception of contemporary Palestine and Jewish belonging.
So in this process, Finckel needed over and over again.
Some of the core values of Danish Chewey that, amongst other things,
defined the Danish Jews through privatised religious belonging and Danish territorial nationality.
To continuously place modern Jewish Palestine in the middle of the Danish Jewish public was in fact a major accomplishment.
That gradually gave way to a more expansive, expansive understanding of Danish Jewish belonging.
While the vast majority of Danish Jewish Jews prior to World War Two never identified a scientist,
many in practise began an act of Jewishness that allowed for an ethnic identification with Jewish others, both inside and outside the Danish borders.
So Palestine, Jewish immigrants, Jewish politics and Jewish Walti affair gradually ceased to be seen as something antithetical to Danish Jewishness.
Instead, it became the real of what they need to. Jews could and sometimes even did relate to join disgust and sometimes appropriate.
So just to round up now, did the travel to Palestine in eighteen ninety seven really cause all this can
thankful and don't accurately be attributed as a central force behind these changes.
No, from the cultural sociological perspective that I unfolded doing this lecture process,
a meaning making rather than individual events, a person should be seen as central.
As I've outlined over the last 40 minutes, many processes intersected for Franco to change his perspective and for him to
manage to translate to some of these experience to a Danish Jewish audience.
However, in the context of enriching our understanding of scientists, the merchants,
we need to construct more empirically thick descriptions like the one that I presented you
with that represent the thrust of meaning making that was happening for scientism to evolve,
create, change and get Jews mobilised both for and against its main ideas.
Thank you. I think I read somewhere that you're still on mute, it's been like the most quoted sentence of 20, 20 anyway.
And I'm happy to embody that sense and kind of own it. Maya, thank you so much for a really interesting and quite new, actually.
You didn't take on all of this stuff. I have a fair few questions.
I'm not sure how erudite some of them are. I think I was going to start off, if you don't mind.
I'll take the advantage of taking the first question and maybe I should go to the chat just to see our questions already published.
OK, so I can't see anything. Hold on.
I just hope this is doesn't take my screen off. It does take my screen off.
OK. Right. OK. So I don't know.
I've got it open anyway. All right.
So much so. I can't. I can't get I can't see any of the questions yet.
Oh yes. I see it anyway. Sorry about Sowmya. I'm you talk about this this idea of the process, which I totally agree with you,
that we we speak so much of kind of, you know, the teleological idea of Zionism.
Of course, a team has changed over time.
And we just think I'm not even sure we differ on the Telos at the beginning or that, you know, kind of, as you say,
the protest on into the early Zionist defined as Tila's had a few few could have come up kind of things that I noticed as you were talking.
Kercheval, 1897 is not really the beginning of Zionism.
Immigration's beginning and perhaps had in Zionist immigrant rights.
It's a bit we would talk. It takes place already 17 years into what we might call the first Daliyah.
I think that's just something I just would notice and maybe you could comment about that.
But I guess going back to Dame Denmark, which is something we hear almost nothing about, which is why are so interested in having you speak for us.
You know, there's this I suppose the one thing we didn't talk about too much and I wanted to maybe
if you could comment on this is so much of what informed Zae is designed as more of the
embrace of Zionism or the rejection of Zionism had something to do with the tension in
each part in each particular European country between assimilation and anti-Semitism.
I would say. And I just wondered if you could comment about that in the Danish context, please.
If that's not too crazy. And so, I mean, that has been when I started studying scientism in Scandinavia.
The West is obvious. I mean, I'm saying obvious.
There was this very accepted framework of how we understand the development of the Scandinavian what's the specific Danish community development.
And there was this obvious that the Danes during the 19th century became more assimilated.
Immigrants, Jewish immigrants came at end of 19th century and that faded.
They they brought Zionism. So to say. And there was this crash.
There was this conflict. And this Emulex story kind of approach dominated.
And so even though Stangel and his activities was noticed, there was like assimilation, that the safer assimilation was just too heavy or too.
And so we we don't that's kind of what we don't see.
All that negotiation and meaning taking that action is taking place.
What I mean, I almost stopped using the term assimilation because it just becomes this cloud.
What we don't see all the movement actually happening. OK. And this is really where I want to integrate cultural and political studies,
because there a lot of the self understanding of changing the fact that people meeting in different
ways how the established Danish Jewish community had to meet the immigrants that first I mean,
the the established Jewish community really wanted just to get the immigrants
moving on like they all that they and they think they funded a lot of money,
which simply which used as train tickets, also bought tickets to I mean, to London or to further on.
And the immigrants were like, thank you. We didn't want to come to Copenhagen. We wanted to go to London all to us.
So everyone was kind of happy. But thank you.
He was like, no, no, no. This is a potential. This is we can widen the Jewish community actively engaged with the immigrants.
But he told them Danish. He also sometimes signed them up for his courses.
He called the Danish class a status like there was a lot of things going on at
the same time where the term assimilation really doesn't cover all the many,
many processes that were happening where where my and my argument is.
Things change, like how you saw themselves, even though they didn't sign up in full for scientism and things were changing.
So I found that the this assimilated every kind of approach a little bit unhelpful.
OK, so we've a question from Marcus, which I've not been able to access.
So Marcus has fantastic presentation story. Many thanks. When will your book be published?
So. So I guess. Not ready to give us any additional information about meetings or encounters of any between
the pilgrims and the leaders of the Jewish communities that they encountered in Palestine, who I assume were mostly Sephardim.
Oh, no. I mean, they met with the I mean, they as you were saying, like scientists had.
I mean, scientists people had already scientist oriented people and people had already come there.
So when they landed in UFO, Hendricks flew from Germany, was already there.
He welcomed them. And then you, Hooda, they met with Ben.
You who did? They also met with the Sephardic, but they met with also all the people, the younger people,
the colonists, they called them and they also called them the Jewish cowboys in.
And where did where did they go? They went to, of course, the arms and the agricultural school.
And they met and they went to some of the colonies around. So they did definitely meet a in like they had many meetings a day with with the Jewish.
And the issue that was there was a Jewish cowboys.
It's quite funny that Mr. Hote Cinema Centre's cinematographer.
But I know that was one would think later he said this is really just the whole cinema genre.
We could have had this sort of the spaghetti western. We could have the night like Western and something like that.
So so Mark Sullivan. So Ya'akov you're going to say something about it.
Yes. About the book. Sorry Mark. It's in the making.
I do. I do. It's yeah it is in the book.
So Mark Sullivan asks. Very interesting to see how Frankel developed his approach.
Just before Hertz's eight, 1887 conference to move my mouth down but quickly became a follower of Hartzell,
an advocate of Hertz's ideas, as I understand the dates in this lecture.
I guess that's not just a comment. Why do you want to comment further on that by heart?
I think that's why I fell in love with this. I mean, this was not to be. This is my from my speech, the studies.
And I wasn't simple. I was supposed to do like a 50 year any scientist development.
And then I just found, you know, I started finding letters and finding this pilgrimage.
And I mean, as a historian who believes as a logical historical it and a story inspired by anthropology, understanding this timeliness,
understanding that time before 1890, like, you know, I have always started my scientist historiography with August.
What is it, thirty or twenty nine in 1897. So I found it extremely interesting to see the time before.
And to understand what was crystallised. I mean, what positions were already there?
What was in the making. How I mean that's really what I'm interested in.
How does how do one develop your political positions?
Right. And so I mean, it's I'm definitely, you know, find it fascinating.
Exactly. That it's half a year before, while some know what is day Kanata sized dates of 1897.
I mean, I would almost argue than 1897 kind of scientism becomes Western, you know.
I mean, we have that kind of at the beginning was on immigration 1880, which is very much Eastern.
But I wanted to ask I would have kind of lost something else that I was struck by.
So you mentioned you quote Hartzog writing in the Jewish Chronicle. And I can remember exactly what he said, but I think it's not even not important.
I think it's quite interesting to note that, you know, the just before the first sign, as Congress from Hertzfeld written, kind of,
you know, the Jewish state, which is to a certain degree very much informed by his situation and Hapsburg as a Hapsburg Jew.
And he you know, the first the first conference would take place in Basel, which I suppose is was I think was really supposed to be Munich, wasn't it?
But he appeals to an English audience when he's talking about about the about would you call it a pilgrimage?
It's quite interesting to me. And I'm wondering I mean, it's I suppose if I forget to talk about meeting like him in this appeal to England,
it's very interesting to me, obviously, because it has very much take it where it becomes very, very important later on.
But I just wanted to maybe it just struck me that this is rather interesting.
So I wondered if you could comment or maybe suggest reasons, you know, perhaps his appeal to an English audience and the Jewish Chronicle.
And so, I mean, there several questions. So it's no doubt who was like who is in?
I mean, this is quite a few years back where I was sitting with these papers.
So I have to if I'm mistaking some of the chronology, please excuse me.
But as I remember, it is NORDO who suggested he goes meet to meet Ishmael single.
And I mean, first, it's not like Etzel is on one horse.
He's trying his luck several places. So I think, you know, as I remember.
He was rejected in Paris. I mean, the French Jews were not interested in him.
So he goes there. And what I mean, England, it's the colony. I mean, it's the empire.
I mean, that is where he sees the potential.
And what I find so fascinating and why I kind of just described a little bit the Maccabean Club, like these intellectual British Jews,
like they just insisted, insisted, insisted on being described themselves as non-political,
like the very you know, I went I think they're the the act.
The archive of the Maccabean is in Southhampton at the Southampton Library.
I went there and just to read to read up on what? And they just to form the club was kind of like, you know,
to be Jews in a group was almost controversial for them because they did not want to be identified in any collective Jewish sense.
So they were very careful about that.
So I I'm just so struck about Hertzel coming there and having these ideas, what he can use, these British Jewish law and the British doing.
They were just so far away from that sense that he did not want.
It wasn't that they didn't want to be part of that project. They didn't even want to be defined in political terms.
So that's really what we see, like how far some of these positions were from each other.
And, of course, people change. Like Ben, which change and some very pragmatic reasons and some out of commitments.
Right. But it was really within a few years, we see a lot of change happening.
And yeah, but I was also very and in my in my book, because it's not in my book,
I am spending much more time on the English context because it is relevant to understand both Churchill's idea of why this group.
And also how it formed the idea of the pilgrimage. I have another question.
Nobody else. I have a few questions. Want Target is not with my questions.
My but I'm I suppose I could you just give a little bit more context as to the decision to to include Frenkel on the tour?
I mean, which way did it come from?
You know, I might have missed this, by the way, but I've never found the first initial invitation, as I understand.
And Benbrika, after realising that I think there was three Maccabean signing up, it will saying Bill was one of them.
He he wrote he wrote out to Jewish communities around the world.
I mean, those people from there was some Americans. There was Italian.
There was Klingel. So he said, just like, I need a community.
I need I need I need participants. Yeah.
So he I mean, and it was upper middle class and Jews who were, as I was saying, I mean, it's interesting to think who wanted to go on this too.
Of course, you have to have the economical means. You had to have the ability to like, you know, it was not in the context of today,
like I think he said it out in December and the trip was gonna be in April to take two months off.
That's what they said about the people who could do that.
Yeah. But also understanding something about like.
The group of Jews at this point who was interested in both understanding Palestine or like identifying, understanding and exploring Palestine.
Something about this mix of wanting to be proud of this openness and exploring not just Palestine, Europe.
Right. And also being part of a Jewish chool.
And that was I don't think it was that big group who actually fit that bill.
But I haven't done the full I think I've seen six travel diaries.
And I mean, I still have like I'm still waking up in the middle of night and thinking they're still 15, 16.
But I have quite a lot of material. I think it'd be interesting to find out.
I don't actually know myself, but it'd be interesting to find out if this was kind of the first non Christian Victorian kind of expedition.
And when you said they didn't want to call an expedition, I think that's it. That's very notable, actually.
But, you know, there were there were a couple before that just before. And I you know, I should have should have looked this up before.
I can think of the name of the group that undertook it. There's both an American and a British kind of Palestine exploration.
So Ya'akov, you've got there's a note of caution from Mark if you can.
So I don't, I'm sorry I, I don't have a I'm sorry about that.
I just don't have to scroll down.
So can I ask my to say how Louis Frankel and his supporters in Denmark responded to the Balfour Declaration of 2nd November 1917.
Was his activity after 1917 in Denmark and other Scandinavian countries?
Danish Jews seem to have followed the much larger British Jewish community in its approach, so referred to benefit senior father.
Norman, obviously, and Weitzman was the key figure after 1917. And so Mark Zandi just I got to put the two together.
Mark notes also that Denmark was a neutral country in 1914 in a certain First World War and kept links with Britain through World War One.
Yeah. So I think there's a few questions in there.
I mean, first of all, so the scientist headquarters doing World War One were in Copenhagen, right?
So you had to sign it. So there was quite a lot of activities, activity in those years.
And frankly. I mean, he's connected with these.
You put it. He's I mean, as a doctor, he starts working more.
He's travelling around in First World War trying to figure out what he can as a medical professional do.
But in the Balfour Declaration and the Jewish community was actually quite like embraced.
So I'm saying Jewish community. It was dominated, not dominated.
But there was a big group of Jewish immigrants and the scientists headquarters and so on.
So then there was the descriptions I read was that there was kind of, you know, flags and so on.
So. So that was the first question.
The second question was that how it developed after World War II getting into war years?
Yeah. Yeah. What was his activity after 1917 in Denmark and other Scandinavian countries?
So that really becomes a much. I mean, I haven't fully mapped that.
I mean, I haven't mapped that into war years because there's many different kind of narratives going on.
One is, you know, just building on the first saying, like, you know, fascism was rejected.
It was such a similar story, country and only when with and job with the refugees started coming.
And later on, like the Jewish communities decided taking care.
But that's I'm not convinced by that narrative because I see many of the Yiddish speaking.
I mean, the East European Jews who ended up settling in Copenhagen. They created a subculture.
I wouldn't say a subculture parallel where there was future. There was many more journals.
There was a cultural life there. There were some I mean, at some point eight.
I think it's 1960 17. And Copenhagen was one of the biggest centres of Yiddish theatre before it moved to a shelter.
My friend was there before we moved to New York.
So there was a small you know, there was a lot of happening in the in the war period, which I don't think has been properly like, you know,
it hasn't been properly mapped out because we keep on focussing on the established like the Danish Jewish institution didn't change almost.
There was very little changed. The official policies wasn't that different.
But what you do see is sports club coming scientist, sports club coming small.
Like there was the football club and there was other things where you see that it doesn't seem like a,
you know, major change because, you know, I say and I keep on repeating, it's just seen as culture.
But it changes completely the identification of the difference between a Jewish middle kid actually playing soccer with others.
That is not, you know, that is has something to do with myself understanding.
And as a Jew, where it's OK to to not.
OK. But it's part of his kind of habits to actually sign up to social groups.
So this was a long and sad to say more research needed.
So Jaco's got his hand up. Sorry, I got the question. Yes. So I started to scroll down.
This is. Sorry, guys. That's the logical Amarjit said yes, OK.
That's right. So I suppose I just have what maybe one comment that Michael.
Probably a final comment. Now, that question. Yakup, go, please.
Thank you. Thank you, Peter. Thank you, IRA, for this really thought-provoking to of different strands that go into an outside of
your talk that I'm sure a book would be the necessary volume for considering this.
And I'm tempted to speculate on so many different things. For example, and this is not a question.
It's just that it's interesting to think about this. First of all,
this Western European Oriental is discussed from Palestine of this dreamer's it sounds very much like the Hertz's on their impressions of failure.
Jerusalem would need Iraq to adjust and just couldn't get to it,
couldn't wait to get out of it where it was for the real pilgrimage of the of the Kaiser.
And it's also interesting to note the how burgeois own experiences.
You noted that. Right.
It's not just taking all the money and the luxuries that are promised by Thomas Cook was still selling travelling packages today,
but but also the whole experience of visiting in order to return.
And to compare this to to other kinds of visitations of Palestine of the time, they are obviously well, maybe not exactly the same point,
but intent in 10 years time, 20 years times, the East Europeans would start coming allegedly to stay, most of them not.
But those of them who stayed came to do something completely different.
And not only class wise, but ideologically speaking, actually taking over the Zionist project.
So to think about speculation, what would have happened to design this project?
Were it not those East Europeans who took. Who was taken over the project?
But this you are Western travellers who are looking for some excitement and some.
And also, obviously, to compare this to Middle Eastern Jews who have been coming and going regularly as part of doing,
you know, travelling in their own spaces.
But that's just the comment that instead of question, I know I have two questions if you allow me, and I think we might exhaust our time together.
The first is an obvious question that I'm sure many people are asking in the back of their mind.
So have they met Palestinians? Have they had Arabs in. I mean, because you mentioned they met the of the Cowboys and some of the colonisers.
But did anyone? Stop to think about the inhabitants of the land.
And second, more specifically about Frankel.
I find it interesting that he invites the rabbi.
B, he invites him while writing about circumcision. See, and I am doing it.
I've read nothing. I mean, you're introducing him to me first time.
So I don't know if I'm completely missing the point, the picture.
But also when he writes this diary, he's complaining about it's assimilated or non observant Jews that they would run, you know?
So it's clear that for him, this this fascination with the land has to do with a certain more traditional understanding of of Jewishness.
How did he feel with the secular dominance of listed Eastern European Zionists?
So there's nobody on the.
So let me just begin with the inhabitants of the land, as you said, the Palestinians.
I mean, this is when you reap these, although most of the travel diaries that I've read,
they describe to you some of the Jews that they meet as inhabitants of the land as well.
Like. So they don't. But of course, they distinguish Arabs.
And then they do they call them either just Jews or Palestinian Jews or something like that.
So there's the you know, the they reckon I would not recognise they see these people even like a man like in Kloof who's been there for four years.
You know, he's not really a part of this. And. And Professor Michael Berkovich from UCLA, UCL has written in.
Actually one of some of his early work executives description.
I mean, he has seen many of the different descriptions of some of the Jewish travellers before World War One,
who there was this group of of travelled Jewish travellers who really distinguished especially.
I think he analyses the arrival to Yaffa. So those are the Gafoor.
There is the Orientalists where that is seeing as a arop. And then comes the colonies.
And then there's the whole description. I think it's I mean, I think really also it's the scientist canonical work where we make sure that
there is this distinguish between the Jewish Palestine and the Palestine.
Right. And that becomes very important to see in the filth and the chaos versus the orderly road into the orderly road into into the.
For instance, to the colonies. Right. It's being described as older and productive, the Jews.
So that becomes one line. And this is where it's interesting to see that these pilgrims have not yet been schooled.
Right. They have not yet been schooled into seeing. No. No. You shouldn't see.
Yeah. For as a picture of the all of all of Palestine.
You should distinguish it. So just to say that there's a fine I have been very inspired by Professor Beck.
Which work. And what did I wanted to learn.
So. And what was Finckel and the secular. And I mean, he was brought up in this.
I mean, this was not a surprise for him. The Jewish community in Copenhagen wasn't that big.
He was actually the exception. And so he was used to in the more Scandinavian secular form, the East European scientism of a secular.
I think that's I mean, that Atum. I mean, I know there's been written a lot about the fights, but I'm actually also like both Banbridge and.
And single. And and and Movea and Hammon's Fluke, who was also often they were writing together.
They all were. All of them identified quite with Orthodox Judaism and ended up establishing their own site,
then stuffing scientist organisation, which I try to reach their archives in Jerusalem.
But it has it's kind of quite chaotic. And so I haven't fully gone down that path yet.
But there is something in that. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm giving you very a half.
And so there. But I mean, what is so fascinating, which would let us in, all of them thinking that these keeps on seeing that he is not he's dead.
He's experienced in Palestine and also on a travel that the distinctions at home between the religious and secular.
It's different and it's different now because we had we are all Jews.
There's some things in the process that makes that the religious secular divide less important.
OK. He's seeing some elevated Jewish connectivity, which, of course, you know, Hatzolah would be happy to.
Exactly. To you know, that is part of the. Yeah.
But there we have more one more question. OK, I'll get that in part.
So Anonymous says it so famously wrote that it was only by colonising Palestine that Jews could could become fully European.
To what extent that those figures recognise themselves as colonisers. You mentioned just now that there was a reference to them as colonists.
And obviously there was a Jewish colonial colonisation fund. How did the discourse of colonialism figure into this group's communications?
And was there any connexion to Dutch colonialism? Oh, no.
No connexion to Dutch colonialism. But they would definitely like that was the discussion.
I mean, if we take it completely out of a contemporary but and instead go back to the 19th century, had to like,
yes, we want to be cologne like that would be a dream if we could, like, colonise that mean we would have power.
That means the British would kind of have our back. That means where a bent which was like not out of, you know, obviously not out of it.
What do you call it. Like that he didn't you know, he would love to have the power as the British colonialists,
but he didn't want the British Jews to be seen as kind of independent unity.
Right. That was the fear. So he was more like fully identifying with the English colonial project.
Of course, he just didn't want these British Jews to be seen as some kind of independent.
And that's why they went away from the language of exploration.
Oh, expedition and all these colonial ways of life.
Let's go out see this territory. I mean, the whole idea was a colonial idea.
Right. Let's go and see the territory and see if we can build something.
I mean, that was the Hertel, but that's where we see Ben Twitch saying like,
no, I think if we stop doing that, we stop being associated with like that.
We want to distinguish ourself from the English, from the British.
And we don't want to you know, we don't want to at this point be seen as, you know, having a political agenda of its own.
So at this point, it was definitely seen as a, you know, a wonderful thing to be a part of the British Empire.
And British colonialism at this point was completely accepted also by most of these Jews, normal middle class Jews.
You know, it was Britain was part of the dream and the British Empire.
Definitely so. Yeah. That's what I mean.
You talked about, you know, the whole idea of process, which is is a very good case in point.
Given that I think Zukerman. Thank you so much. I felt the need.
Say all of your names anyway. Thank you so much for reading.
Reading, do really interesting reading. I'll just remind everybody else that next week we pick up again with the Israel Study Seminar.
And two weeks will be the final reconsidering early Jewish Nationalist Ideology seminar.
It will be a lot of Shapiro from the University for ungiven to coincide can embrace the applied arts.
Sariego in Vienna. Who would be speaking on Berta Zuckerkandl and wienies nationalism and modernism.