American Zionism

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anti-Semitic acts such as the Dreyfus Affairs (1890's to early 1900's) and the rise of the Vienna mayor Karl Lueger (1897-1910) we are under the assumption that Herzl's work was directed towards European Jewry which would seem irrelevant to American Jews of that time. So, we must ask the question of why Herzl's ideas where foreign to most of American Jewry and furthermore what was happening in America during that time and why it was so opposed to Zionism's original format. From these answers we will see how these American Jews internalized Herzlian theory and in thus Zionism.

America Late 1800's

The American community was in a state of flux, its numbers were increasing annually by the scores of thousands as more and more Eastern Europeans made their way to America. From 1880 until 1914 Jewish immigrants totaled about two million.
Some were Zionists when they came, others were socialists or cultural nationalists, secularists or religious, most were instilled with the sense of ...

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would be rebuilt. Reform Judaism rejected the biblical notion that the Jews were in exile from Israel. Instead, they suggested that dispersion of Jews among the nations was a necessary experience in the realization and execution of the people's duty. Instead, the people of Israel were viewed as the Messianic people, appointed to spread by its fortitude, and loyalty, the monotheistic truth and morality over all the earth, to be an example of righteousness to all others. For Reform Jews, all forms of Jewish law and custom were seen as bound up with the national political conception of Israel's destiny, and thus they were dispensable.
Reform Judaism ceased to declare ...

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