The headline on Haaretz's July 12 front page to the effect that, for the first time since the period of the Second Temple, the largest concentration of Jews in the world will be in the State of Israel, arouses the question as to whether the era of Zionism has ended. This is because there has been no Zionist leader, not even Herzl, who believed that all the Jews, or the vast majority of them, would immigrate to Eretz Israel from Europe and the United States. Their "out of this world" desire, which had utopian elements, was to reach 2 million Jews, according to Chaim Weizmann, Israel's first president, and 5 million, according to the ambitions of Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky and David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister.
The fact that the number of Jews in Israel has passed the utopian borderline, and that starting this year the community here will constitute the largest concentration of the Jewish people, cannot be credited only to Zionism. Three processes led to it. One was tragic - the Holocaust, which destroyed a third of our people. The second is related to achievement - the extraordinary success of the Jewish immigrants in the Western countries, which is causing an intermarriage rate of 40 to 50 percent and a decline in the birthrate. The third is constructive - the establishment of the Jewish-Hebrew nation in its sovereign state by the Zionist movement, which has led to the immigration of thousands of Jews since the founding of the state.
As a result of these processes, the historical Jewish community in exile has been eliminated. It no longer suffers from the mass distress that characterized Jewish existence in its large concentrations in Eastern Europe, and the Jewish communities in free countries are not considered part of an ethnic group without a homeland. From now on, Jewish status is equal to that of the Poles, the Italians, the Armenians, et al. Moreover, the State of Israel, by means of the Law of Return, has turned the Jews into the freest nation in the world, whose members can choose between citizenship in their native land and free aliyah (immigration) to their homeland. Apparently, masses of people will not take advantage of this freedom. On the other hand, the process by which many are becoming distant from the Jewish community, due to intermarriage and a decline in the birthrate, will become increasingly dominant.
Therefore, the question arises: Has Zionism concluded its historical role? The answer to that depends on how we understand Zionism. Those with a positive post-Zionist viewpoint, who consider Zionism a legitimate national movement, believe that as a result of its achievements, it has concluded its historical role. On the other hand, in the opinion of those who see Zionism as a way to ensure the continued existence of the Jews as an "eternal nation" in their state and in the Diaspora, the historical role of Zionism has not yet ended, and it will even increase over time. This is because Zionism, in accordance with its worldview, addressed klal yisrael, the entire Jewish community, as opposed to other modern movements among the Jews, such as the Reform Movement and the Conservative Movement, and on the other hand, the sectarian Bund. From this point of view, Israel as a Jewish state with the Law of Return is preserving the historical role of Zionism. And from this state, in the new conditions that have been created, should emerge the idea of renewing the historical "Love of Zion" movement, which more than 100 years ago placed the question of Jewish nationalism at the center of public discourse.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/602724.html
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