Exclusionist nationalism (though usually not in the most extreme form) predominated in Central Europe in the late 19th century, and the response it evoked was Zionism. If Jews could not quite be Germans or Poles, they could move to a Jewish state: Jewishness and Israeliness would not be in tension, but be one and the same. It was indeed widely supposed among early Zionists that Jews who did not emigrate would instead assimilate, and gradually and quietly cease to be Jews. The tension between Jewishness and nationalism would thus evaporate: there would be Germans in Germany, Poles in Poland, and Jews in Israel. The real challenge to American Jewishness comes from openness and mobility, leading to assimilation in general and intermarriage in particular. What 19th century Zionists took for granted has become to American Jews a matter of concern: will American Jewry slowly evaporate into a population of Americans who no longer remember that they had a Jewish great-grandparent? The same applies, in varying degrees, to Jews throughout the Diaspora. In Hungary (as in Central Europe generally), the coalescing factor in second-wave nationalism was language. Until the late 18th century, the official language of the Austrian Empire was Latin; it was changed to German as a sheer matter of administrative convenience. The effect was to leave Magyar-speaking Hungarians feeling reduced to second-class status--even though, in fact, large numbers, especially of the elite and even of the nascent middle class, did not speak Magyar as an everyday language until a generation or so before Hungarian nationalism emerged as a force. The growth of a Magyar-language press and readership led almost to Hungarian national feelings and demands. not only physically close ... to [the people of Malaysia], but they are ethnically related, understand each other's speech, have a common religion, and so forth. These same Sumatrans share neither mother-tongue, ethnicity, nor re |
