JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

Not only Herzl in his Judenstaat (1896) but others, such
as Bodenheimer, had expressly advocated a Jewish state, but
the commission regarded it as prudent to refrain from using
the word “state” in the official Zionist program. They felt that
it was liable to antagonize Turkey, from which Herzl hoped
to obtain the charter, and might also frighten certain Jewish
circles. They therefore employed the term “Heimstaette”
(home, or more exactly, homestead), suggested by Nordau,
who submitted the draft proposal of the program to the Congress.
This draft spoke of a “home secured by law” (rechtlich
gesicherte Heimstaette).
Representatives of the younger generation, such as Fabius
Schach and Leo *Motzkin – who spoke on this subject in the
plenary session of the Congress – took exception to the term
and proposed replacing it by “secured by International Law”
(“voelkerrechtlich gesicherte Heimstaette”), wishing to emphasize
the political character of the World Zionist Organization
and to distinguish it clearly from the Ḥibbat Zion, whose cautious
approach and exclusively philanthropic methods they
strongly resented. It was Herzl himself who provided a compromise
formula, which he had already used in his speeches –
“oeffentlichrechtlich gesicherte Heimstaette” (“home secured by
public law”) and this formula met with universal approval.
With this amendment the commission’s draft proposal was
unanimously passed by the Congress and became the official
program of the World Zionist Organization for more than
half a century. Parts of the first sentence of the Basle Program
were incorporated into the *Balfour Declaration (1917) and the
League of Nations Mandate over Palestine (1922).
After the declaration of Israel’s independence (1948), it
was felt that the Zionist program should be adapted to the new
situation created by the establishment of the State of Israel,
which had fulfilled the main postulate of Zionism. The most
important among the proposals for a new Zionist program
were those drafted by a committee established by the Zionist
Organization of America and headed by the jurist Simon Rifkind,
and another put forward by the American Section of
the Jewish Agency Executive (both in 1949). These proposals
assumed that the establishment of the state was a step toward,
rather than a full realization of, the Zionist goal.
The question of the Zionist program figured high on
the agenda of the 23rd Zionist Congress (Jerusalem, 1951), the
first to meet after the proclamation of the state. The Congress
committee charged with reformulating the Zionist program
was headed by Ezra Shapiro (U.S.). Rather than abolishing the
Basle Program and replacing it by a new one, the committee
proposed completing it by a declaration that was officially
styled “the task of Zionism.” Generally known as the Jerusalem
Program, this document reads as follows: “The task of
Zionism is the consolidation of the State of Israel, the ingathering
of the exiles in Ereẓ Israel and the fostering of the unity
of the Jewish people.” The Basle Program was retained and its
first sentence – as well as the whole Jerusalem Program – was
incorporated into the new constitution of the World Zionist
Organization of 1960. There were several reasons for the affir-
basman ben-hayim, rivke
mation of the Basle Program. First, a majority could not be
found at the Congress for an entirely new reformulation of the
goal and aim of Zionism. There were differences of opinion
between the delegates from the United States and other English-speaking
countries on the one hand and Israel and some
Diaspora countries on the other, concerning the “Redemption
of Israel through the Ingathering of Exiles” and other
propositions. Further, it was felt that, at a time when little
more than 10% of the Jewish people were living in the State
of Israel, the “home” mentioned in the Basle Program could
not be regarded as fully established. The desire to observe a
time-honored tradition and to emphasize the continuity of the
Zionist movement also played a part in the decision to retain
the original platform of the Zionist Organization.
After the Six-Day War in 1967, when the Jewish people all
over the world had shown its solidarity with embattled Israel,
at least two points of the Jerusalem Program – those regarding
the consolidation of the state and the unity of the Jewish
people –had become common ground for the overwhelming
majority of all Jews. It was felt, therefore, by many Zionists
that the Jerusalem Program had lost much of its distinctive
Zionist character, precisely because it was so widely accepted.
The demand was increasingly voiced to keep the Basle Program
unchanged but to revise the Jerusalem Program by making
it more outspokenly Zionist. This revision, prepared by the
Zionist Executive, was accomplished at the 27th Zionist Congress
(Jerusalem, 1968). The Revised Jerusalem Program read
as follows: “The aims of Zionism are: the unity of the Jewish
people and the centrality of Israel in Jewish life; the ingathering
of the Jewish people in its historic homeland Ereẓ Israel
through aliyah from all countries; the strengthening of the
State of Israel which is based on the prophetic vision of justice
and peace; the preservation of the identity of the Jewish people
through the fostering of Jewish and Hebrew education and of
Jewish spiritual and cultural values; the protection of Jewish
rights everywhere.” This Revised Jerusalem Program was not
merely an amplification and elaboration of the 1951 version;
it introduced new points, some of which had been included
in minority proposals at the 23rd Congress but had not been
passed by the Plenary Session. These are the postulates of immigration
from all lands; of Jewish and Hebrew education, as
well as emphasis on the centrality of Israel in the life of the
Jewish people and, consequently, of every Zionist.
Bibliography: H.H. Bodenheimer, Toledot Tokhnit Basel
(1947); A. Bein, Theodor Herzl (19622), index; B. Halpern, Idea of the
Jewish State (19692), index; L. Jaffe (ed.), Sefer ha-Kongress (19502).
[Aharon Zwergbaum]
BASMAN BEN-HAYIM, RIVKE (1925– ), Yiddish poet.
One of the leading Yiddish poets of the post-Holocaust period,
she was born in Vilkomir (Lithuania) and survived the Vilna
Ghettto and the forced labor camps of World War II. In 1947
she immigrated to Palestine and participated in the War of Independence.
After training as a teacher, she studied literature
at Columbia University in New York and was a co-founder of
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