Some Jews Really Aren't That Clever - Cont'd

From a book review of Far From Zion:-

...London's ambition is bigger than simply chronicling the quirky Jewish Diaspora. In chasing Jews around the world, he is slowly building the case for a kind of alternate Zionism—a spiritual and humanistic Zionism of the kind developed by Jewish intellectuals like Ahad Ha'am and Martin Buber. There's only one thing standing in his way: actual Zionism in its political form—which is to say, the state of Israel. "I wanted to find a place where another narrative was being lived out ... I wanted to find the stories of peaceful coexistence ... I wanted to find a Judaism that was meaningful without politics, and grounded without dominating ground."

By the end of the book, it appears he has found what he's looking for. Invigorated by the relentless capacity of isolated Jewish communities to persevere by "creating a culture of respect" with their neighbors, he concludes that "the greatest achievement of the Jewish people was not the long struggle for their own state but the richness of their Diaspora. The state of Israel was necessary, for the time being, as a haven."

In other words, London, looking beyond the conventional borders of the modern nation-state, is convinced that those same humanistic principles so prevalent in the Diaspora—and not the state of Israel—are what will ultimately ensure the collective survival of the Jewish people.

There's a serious problem, though, with this idealized approach: it overlooks the fact that political Zionism (that is, Israel) arose because of the catastrophic failure of the Diaspora to preserve itself. And then London fails to consider the possibility that these communities continue to survive not in spite of the Jewish state, but because of it...