The purpose of this research is to examine the work of Samson Raphael Hirsch and Nachman Krochmal with reference to the political realities of the State of Israel. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context in which the views of Hirsch and Krochmal emerged vis-a-vis the concept of a Jewish state, and then to discuss nationhood, culture, and human experience that mark that concept and provide relevance for their views in the modern period.
To discuss Hirsch and Krochmal with regard to a modern Israel is to note that their intellectual work must be regarded as foundational. Much that is now presumed to be philosophically sound and generally accepted by Jewish tradition regarding the rationale for a Jewish homeland was by and large unthinkable in the early 19th century, when they were elaborating their views of Judaism. Indeed, neither Hirsch nor Krochmal can be discussed without special reference to the Emancipation, the name given to the laws that formally opened the Jewish ghettos throughout Europe in 1791, as an indirect consequence of the French Revolution.1 This did not bring a complete end to Jewish persecutions, and it was not until 1870 that the first Zionist settlement was made in Palestine at Petah Tiqwa.2 Nevertheless, by examining the views of Krochmal and Hirsch, and even while noting the antipathy toward Zionism either expressed or implied in their work, one may come closer to the philosophical underpinnings of Zionist culture in its earliest elaboration and of the modern state of Israel itself.
The concepts of nationhood and nation building in the period of the Emancipation are very much a feature of cultural and intellectual history. This is particularly apparent in the work of Krochmal. Krochmal's authority in the so-called Historical School identifies him with the view that modern relevancies can be adduced from the ancient texts of the Torah. In discussing the Torah as a way of life for modern Jews...