Israel, "a light unto the nations"? Hannah Arendt, Gershom Scholem and the founding of the Jewish state.

Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, two of the 20th century's greatest German Jewish thinkers, are commonly regarded as antagonists. This perception reflects their diverging views on the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961, but represents a fundamental misreading of their political thought. While important ideological differences did indeed divide Arendt and Scholem, both shared a commitment to political radicalism and specifically regarded the Zionist movement as a revolutionary movement par excellence whose national-revolutionary potential could not, and, indeed, should not be exhausted in the creation of a state. In emphasizing the revolutionary dimension of Zionism, Arendt and Scholem thus both defined Zionism as a transformative form of politics, and consequently challenged both the liberal emphasis on individual rights and the nationalist emphasis on sovereignty. The task of Zionism, Arendt and Scholem argued against both paradigms, was not to adapt Jewish liberalism to its new transplanted surroundings in the Middle East, but to fundamentally transform the Jewish people from a victim of failed liberal assimilation in Europe into a "nation." While Scholem eventually accepted the idea of a Jewish state as a practical necessity, Arendt opposed it as a goal that was incongruous with the revolutionary mission of Zionism. Notwithstanding these differences, however, Arendt and Scholem's radically transformative understanding of Zionism represents a groundbreaking common effort to articulate a new theory of nationalism, and ultimately a new theory of politics.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Yale University, 2004.School code: 0265