Proposals for a Jewish state

There were several proposals for a Jewish state in the course of Jewish history between the destruction of ancient Israel and the founding of the modern State of Israel. While some of those have come into existence, others were never implemented. The Jewish national homeland usually refers to the Land of Israel. [The Land of Israel and Jerusalem have been embedded into Jewish national and religious consciousness since the 10th century BCE:
*"Israel was first forged into a unified nation from Jerusalem some three thousand years ago, when King David seized the crown and united the twelve tribes from this city... For a thousand years Jerusalem was the seat of Jewish sovereignty, the household site of kings, the location of its legislative councils and courts. In exile, the Jewish nation came to be identified with the city that had been the site of its ancient capital. Jews, wherever they were, prayed for its restoration." Roger Friedland, Richard D. Hecht. "To Rule Jerusalem", University of California Press, 2000, p. 8. ISBN 0520220927
*"The centrality of Jerusalem to Judaism is so strong that even secular Jews express their devotion and attachment to the city and cannot conceive of a modern State of Israel without it... For Jews Jerusalem is sacred simply because it exists... Though Jerusalem's sacred character goes back three millennia...". Leslie J. Hoppe. "The Holy City:Jerusalem in the theology of the Old Testament", Liturgical Press, 2000, p. 6. ISBN 0814650813
*"Ever since King David made Jerusalem the capital of Israel 3,000 years ago, the city has played a central role in Jewish existence." Mitchell Geoffrey Bard, "The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Middle East Conflict", Alpha Books, 2002, p. 330. ISBN 0028644107
*"For Jews the city has been the pre-eminent focus of their spiritual, cultural, and national life throughout three millennia." Yossi Feintuch, "U.S. Policy on Jerusalem", Greenwood Publishing Group, 1987, p. 1. ISBN 0313257000
*"Jerusalem became the center of the Jewish people some 3,000 years ago" Moshe Maʻoz, Sari Nusseibeh, "Jerusalem: Points of Friction - And Beyond", Brill Academic Publishers, 2000, p. 1. ISBN 9041188436
*"The Jewish people are inextricably bound to the city of Jerusalem. No other city has played such a dominant role in the history, politics, culture, religion, national life and consciousness of a people as has Jerusalem in the life of Jewry and Judaism. Since King David established the city as the capital of the Jewish state circa 1000 BCE, it has served as the symbol and most profound expression of the Jewish people's identity as a nation." [http://www.adl.org/israel/advocacy/glossary/jerusalem.asp Basic Facts you should know: Jerusalem] , Anti-Defamation League, 2007. Accessed March 28, 2007.] Jews and their detractors have both put forth plans for Jewish states.

Ararat city

In 1820, in a precursor to modern Zionism, Mordecai Manuel Noah tried to found a Jewish homeland at Grand Island in the Niagara River, to be called "Ararat," after Mount Ararat, the Biblical resting place of Noah's Ark. He erected a monument at the island which read "Ararat, a City of Refuge for the Jews, founded by Mordecai M. Noah in the Month of Tishri, 5586 (September, 1825) and in the Fiftieth Year of American Independence." Some have speculated whether Noah's utopian ideas may have influenced Joseph Smith, who founded the Latter Day Saint movement in Upstate New York a few years later. In his "Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews" Noah proclaimed his faith that the Jews would return and rebuild their ancient homeland. Noah called on America to take the lead in this endeavor.Selig Adler and Thomas E. Connolly. "From Ararat to Suburbia: the History of the Jewish Community of Buffalo" (Philadelphia: the Jewish Publication Society of America, 1960, Library of Congress Number 60-15834)]

British Guyana

In March 1940, the issue of an alternative Jewish Homeland is raised and British Guyana discussed in this context. The British Government decides, however, that "the problem is at present too problematical to admit of the adoption of a definite policy and must be left for the decision of some future Government in years to come". [http://www.archiveeditions.co.uk/titledetails.asp?tid=124 Zionist Movement And The Foundation Of Israel 1839–1972, The - Archive Editions ] ]

British Uganda Program

The British Uganda Program was a plan to give a portion of British East Africa to the Jewish people as a homeland.

The offer was first made by British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain to Theodore Herzl's Zionist group in 1903. He offered 5000 square miles of the Mau Plateau in what is today Kenya. The offer was a response to pogroms against the Jews in Russia, and it was hoped the area could be a refuge from persecution for the Jewish people.

The idea was brought to the World Zionist Organization's Zionist Congress at its sixth meeting in 1903 meeting in Basel. There a fierce debate ensued. The African land was described as an "ante-chamber to the Holy Land", but other groups felt that accepting the offer would make it more difficult to establish a Jewish state in Palestine (the historical land of Israel). Before the vote on the matter the Russian delegation stormed out in opposition. In the end the motion passed by 295 to 177 votes.

The next year a three man delegation was sent to inspect the plateau. Its high elevation gave it a temperate climate making it suitable for European settlement. However, the observers found a dangerous land filled with lions and other creatures. Moreover it was populated by a large number of Maasai who did not seem at all amenable to an influx of Europeans.

After receiving this report the Congress decided in 1905 to politely decline the British offer. Some Jews, who viewed this as a mistake, formed the Jewish Territorialist Organization with the aim of establishing a Jewish state anywhere.Schreiber, Mordecai. "The Shengold Jewish Encyclopedia", 2003. Page 291.] A few Jews did move to Kenya, but most settled in the urban centers. Some of these families remain to this day.Fact|date=March 2007

Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Russia

On March 28, 1928, the Presidium of the General Executive Committee of the USSR passed the decree "On the attaching for Komzet of free territory near the Amur River in the Far East for settlement of the working Jews." The decree meant that there was "a possibility of establishment of a Jewish administrative territorial unit on the territory of the called region". [http://www.eao.ru/eng/?p=361 Establishment and Development of the JAR] Jewish Autonomous Region official government website. Accessed 2007-08-30]

On August 20, 1930 the General Executive Committee of RSFSR accepted the decree "On formation of the Birobidzhan national region in the structure of the Far Eastern Territory". The State Planning Committee considered the Birobidzhan national region as a separate economic unit. In 1932 the first scheduled figures of the region development were considered and authorized.

On May 7, 1934, the Presidium of the General Executive Committee accepted the decree on its transformation in the Jewish Autonomous Region within the Russian Federation. In 1938, with formation of the Khabarovsk Territory, the Jewish Autonomous Region (JAR) was included in its structure.

According to Joseph Stalin's national policy, each of the national groups that formed the Soviet Union would receive a territory in which to pursue cultural autonomy in a socialist framework. In that sense, it was also a response to two supposed threats to the Soviet state: Judaism, which ran counter to official state policy of atheism; and Zionism, the creation of the modern State of Israel, which countered Soviet views of nationalism. The idea was to create a new "Soviet Zion", where a proletarian Jewish culture could be developed. Yiddish, rather than Hebrew, would be the national language, and a new socialist literature and arts would replace religion as the primary expression of culture.

Stalin's theory on the National Question held that a group could only be a nation if they had a territory, and since there was no Jewish territory, per se, the Jews were not a nation and did not have national rights. Jewish Communists argued that the way to solve this ideological dilemma was by creating a Jewish territory, hence the ideological motivation for the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. Politically, it was also considered desirable to create a Soviet Jewish homeland as an ideological alternative to Zionism and the theory put forward by Socialist Zionists such as Ber Borochov that the Jewish Question could be resolved by creating a Jewish territory in Palestine. Thus Birobidzhan was important for propaganda purposes as an argument against Zionism which was a rival ideology to Marxism among left-wing Jews.

Another important goal of the Birobidzhan project was to increase settlement in the remote Soviet Far East, especially along the vulnerable border with China. In 1928, there was virtually no settlement in the area, while Jews had deep roots in the western half of the Soviet Union, in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia proper. In fact, there had initially been proposals to create a Jewish Soviet Republic in the Crimea or in part of Ukraine but these were rejected because of fears of antagonizing non-Jews in those regions.

The geography and climate of Birobidzhan were harsh, the landscape largely swampland, and any new settlers would have to build their lives from scratch. SomeWho|date=August 2008 have even claimed that Stalin was also motivated by anti-Semitism in selecting Birobidzhan: he wanted to keep the Jews as far away from the centers of power as possible.Fact|date=August 2008 On the other hand, it must be said that the Ukrainians and Crimeans were reluctant to have a Jewish national home carved out of their territory, even though most Soviet Jews lived there, and there were very few alternative territories without rival national claims to them.Fact|date=August 2008

By the 1930s, a massive propaganda campaign was underway to induce more Jewish settlers to move there. Some of these incorporated the standard Soviet propaganda tools of the era, and included posters and Yiddish-language novels describing a socialist utopia there. Other methods bordered on the bizarre. In one instance, leaflets promoting Birobidzhan were dropped from an airplane over a Jewish neighborhood in Belarus. In another instance, a government-produced Yiddish film called "Seekers of Happiness" told the story of a Jewish family that fled the Depression in the United States to make a new life for itself in Birobidzhan.

As the Jewish population grew, so did the impact of Yiddish culture on the region. A Yiddish newspaper, the "Birobidzhaner Shtern" ( _ru. Биробиджанер Штерн, _yi. ביראָבידזשאַנער שטערן, "Star of Birobidzhan"), was established; a theater troupe was created; and streets being built in the new city were named after prominent Yiddish authors such as Sholom Aleichem and Y. L. Peretz. The Yiddish language was deliberately bolstered as a basis for efforts to secularize the Jewish population and, despite the general curtailment of this action as described immediately below, the "Birobidzhaner Shtern" continues to publish a section in Yiddish.

Valdgeym is a Jewish settlement within the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. [http://www.traveleastrussia.com/jewish.html] The settlement was founded in 1928 and was the first collective farm established in the oblast. [http://www.swarthmore.edu/Home/News/biro/html/panel13.html] In 1980 a Yiddish school was opened in the settlement. [http://books.google.com/books?id=52Ew77pZsNUC&pg=PA272&lpg=PA272&dq=waldheim+birobidzhan&source=web&ots=59ePnekVgd&sig=WSkb_3rku-AYgt8hqfmgvFIsuiU] Amurzet also has a history of Jewish settlement in the JAO. [http://www.travelpost.com/AS/Russia/Birobijan/Amurzet/1408075] [http://www.travelpost.com/AS/Russia/Birobijan/Amurzet/1408075] [http://www.fjc.ru/news/newsArticle.asp?AID=225680] For the period 1929 through 1939, this village was the center of Jewish settlement south of Birobidzhan. [http://www.fjc.ru/news/newsArticle.asp?AID=170388&cid=84435&media=80392&NewsType=80052&origMedia=80392&scope=3806&start=30] The present day Jewish Community members hold Kabalat Shabbat ceremonies and gatherings that feature songs in Yiddish, Jewish cuisine, and broad information presenting historical facts on Jewish culture. Many descendants of the founders of this settlement, which was established just after the turn of the 20th century, have left their native village. Those who remained here in Amurzet, especially those having relatives in Israel, are learning about the traditions and roots of the Jewish people. [http://www.fjc.ru/news/newsArticle.asp?AID=267005] The population of Amurzet, as estimated in late 2006, is 5,213. [http://population-of.com/en/Russia/89/Amurzet/] Smidovich is another early Jewish settlement in the JAO.

The Birobidzhan experiment ground to a halt in the mid-1930s, during Stalin's first campaign of purges. Jewish leaders were arrested and executed, and Yiddish schools were shut down. Shortly after this, World War II brought to an abrupt end concerted efforts to bring Jews east.

There was a slight revival in the Birobidzhan idea after the war as a potential home for Jewish refugees. During that time, the Jewish population of the region peaked at almost one-third of the total. Efforts in this direction ended, however, with the Doctors' plot, the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state, and Stalin's second wave of purges shortly before his death. Once again, the Jewish leadership was arrested and efforts were made to stamp out Yiddish culture—even the Judaica collection in the local library was burned. In the ensuing years the idea of an autonomous Jewish region in the Soviet Union was all but forgotten.

Some scholars such as Louis Rapoport, Jonathan Brent and Vladimir Naumov assert that Stalin had devised a plan to deport all of the Jews of the Soviet Union to Birobidzhan much as he had internally deported other national minorities such as the Crimean Tatars and Volga Germans, forcing them to move thousands of miles from their homes. The Doctors' Plot may have been the first element of this plan. If so, the plan was aborted by Stalin's death on March 5, 1953.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and new liberal emigration policies, most of the remaining Jewish population left for Germany and Israel. In 1991, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast was transferred from under the jurisdiction of Khabarovsk Krai to the jurisdiction of the Federation, but by that time most of the Jews had gone and the remaining Jews now constituted less than two percent of the local population. Nevertheless, Yiddish is once again taught in the schools, a Yiddish radio station is in operation, and as noted above, the "Birobidzhaner Shtern" includes a section in Yiddish.

Fugu plan

The nihongo|Fugu Plan or Fugu Plot|河豚計画|Fugu keikaku was a scheme created in the 1930s in Imperial Japan, centered around the idea of settling Jewish refugees escaping Nazi-occupied Europe, in Japan's territories on the Asian mainland, to Japan's benefit. The Plan was first discussed in 1934, and solidified in 1938 at the Five Ministers' Conference, but the signing of the Tripartite Pact in 1941, along with a number of other events, prevented its full implementation. The plotters believed that the Jews could be quite beneficial to Japan, but also quite dangerous. Therefore, the plan was named after the Japanese delicacy "fugu", a puffer-fish whose poison can kill if the dish is not prepared exactly correctly.

At its core, the Fugu Plan was a scheme to convince thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Jews to settle in the puppet state of Manchukuo (Manchuria) –or possibly Japan-occupied Shanghai–, thus gaining not only the benefit of the supposed economic prowess of the Jews but also convincing the United States, specifically American Jewry, to grant their favor and investment to Japan. The plan was based on a naive acceptance of European anti-Semitic mythology, as found for example in "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion".

Madagascar plan

The Madagascar plan was a suggested policy of the Third Reich government of Nazi Germany to forcibly relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar.Browning, Christopher R. "The Origins of the Final Solution." 2004. Page 81]

The evacuation of European Jewry to the island of Madagascar was not a new concept. Henry Hamilton Beamish, Arnold Leese, Lord Moyne, German scholar Paul de Lagarde and the British, French, and Polish governments had all contemplated the idea. Nazi Germany seized upon it, and in May 1940, in his "Reflections on the Treatment of Peoples of Alien Races in the East", Heinrich Himmler declared: "I hope that the concept of Jews will be completely extinguished through the possibility of a large emigration of all Jews to Africa or some other colony."

Although some discussion of this plan had been brought forward from 1938 by other well-known Nazi ideologues, such as Julius Streicher, Hermann Göring, and Joachim von Ribbentrop, it was not until June 1940 that the plan was actually set in motion. Victory in France being imminent, it was clear that all French colonies would soon come under German control, and the Madagascar Plan could become reality. It was also felt that a potential peace treaty with Great Britain, which in a few weeks' time was about to experience German aerial bombardment in the Battle of Britain and whom the Germans fully expected to capitulate as quickly as the French, would put the British navy at Germany's disposal for use in the evacuation.

Other attempts of Jewish self-governance throughout history

Ancient times

*Adiabene - an ancient kingdom in Mesopotamia with its capital at Arbil was ruled by Jewish converts during the first century.
*Anilai and Asinai - Babylonian-Jewish chieftains.
*Nehardea - the seat of the exilarch in Babylonia.
*Khaybar - a self-governed oasis in Arabia.
*Himyar - there were many Jewish kings at this region of Yemen since 390 CE when a local chieftain named Tub'a Abu Kariba As'ad formed an Empire.

Middle ages to 19th century

*The Resh Galuta or Exilarch exercised considerable authority over the Jewish community in the Persian Empire and later the Caliphate
*Khazar kingdom - during the Middle Ages Khazaria had Judaism as its official religion. Jewish scholars and refugees were actively invited to settle within Khazar territory, particularly in Tmutarakan and the Crimea.
*Makhir of Narbonne and possibly his descendents were acknowledged by the Carolingian emperors as ethnarchs of western Jewry, with their seat at Narbonne
*Council of Four Lands - the central body of Jewish authority in Poland from 1580 to 1764. Seventy delegates from local "kehillot" met to discuss taxation and other issues important to the Jewish community. The "four lands" were Greater Poland, Little Poland, Ruthenia and Volhynia.
*Principality of Malabar from the eighth century to 1524 the Cochin Jews had an ethnarch ruling over them.
*The Mountain Jews of remote parts of Daghestan were self-ruling for much of the medieval and early modern period.
*Jarawa Berber tribe on the Maghreb in the seventh century, believed to be Jews, and resisted arabicization under the leadership of Queen Kahina.
*Jodensavanne: an attempt to establish a safe haven for Jews in Surinam

Modern times

*In the early 20th century Cyprus and El Arish and its environs were proposed as a site for Jewish settlement by Herzl.
*Jewish Autonomous Oblast was a region created by the Soviet Union in the Russian Far East. It has been in existence from 1934 to the present.
*The Kimberley Plan was a failed plan by the Freeland League, led by Isaac Nachman Steinberg, to resettle Jewish refugees from Europe in the Kimberley region in Australia before and during the Holocaust. [http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A160362b.htm Steinberg, Isaac Nachman (1888 - 1957)] by Beverley Hooper, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 16, Melbourne University Press, 2002, pp 298-299. Online Ed. published by Australian National University]
*Krasnaya Sloboda - The town is the primary settlement of Azerbaijan's population of Mountain Jews, who make up the population of approximately 4,000.
*Kiryas Joel, New York - a town composed largely of Yiddish-speaking Hasidic Jews.
*Sitka, Alaska - a plan for Jews to settle the Sitka area in Alaska, the Slattery Report, was proposed by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes in 1939 but turned down. ["Novel involving Alaska Jewish colony is rooted in history," Tom Kizzia, Anchorage Daily News. http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/8828757p-8729539c.html] An alternate history of the proposal where Jews do settle in Sitka is the subject of author Michael Chabon's novel "The Yiddish Policemen's Union".
*Vietnam - Vietnamese government officials in 2005, told Israeli officials of a plan discussed between Ho Chi Minh and Moshe Dayan to invite Jews to live in the country. No documentation of the offer and discussion has yet been made available. There is currently a small expatriate community of Jews in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, intermarrying with Vietnamese, with the first Bar Mitzvah in Vietnam held in 2004, in Hanoi. There are currently no synagoges in Vietnam. Though there were French Jews in the country before 1954, there is no confirmation of any synagogue in Saigon. [ Reported by David Lempert, researcher in Vietnam, 1998-2006 ]

References