"Negation of the Diaspora" (Hebrew: שלילת הגלות Shlilat ha-Galut or שלילת הגולה Shlilat ha-Golah) is a concept in Zionism that asserts that the Diaspora—that is, all Jews dispersed outside of the Land of Israel—is a state of being that inherently causes Jewish assimilation, particularly through discrimination and persecution, and thereby must be repudiated to ensure the survival and the cohesion of the Jews as a people.
[2] According to Eliezer Schweid, in the early 20th century, Yosef Haim Brenner and Micha Josef Berdyczewski advocated an extreme form of the concept.
In his literary work, Brenner describes Jews in the Pale of Settlement as poor; mentally, morally, and spiritually disfigured; panicky; humiliated; disoriented, with no realistic view of life; depressed; despised; slovenly of dress, lacking taste; unwilling to defend themselves against violence, desperate; and simultaneously feeling inferior and part of a Chosen people.
According to Schweid, Brenner thought that that despair was good, as it would leave Jews with Zionism as their only option for ethnic, cultural, and religious revitalization.
As he thought the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine would take several generations, Ha'am wanted to improve life in the Diaspora by creating a "spiritual centre" in Palestine, where Jewish civilization and Judaism could be revived, giving Jews more self-confidence and helping them resist foreign assimilation, which he saw as a deformation of the personality and as a moral failing with regard to family and people.
[6]The poet Hayim Nahman Bialik wrote: And my heart weeps for my unhappy people ... How burned, how blasted must our portion be, If seed like this is withered in its soil.
According to Schweid, Bialik meant that the "seed" was the potential of the Jewish people, which they preserved in the Diaspora, where it could only give rise to deformed results.
[7] Schweid says the concept of the organic unity of the nation is the common denominator of Ha'am's, Gordon's and Bialik's views, which prevents them from completely rejecting life in the Diaspora.
wrote about Polish Jews who were living in regions that had been conquered by the Soviet Union: "[They] are unable to fight even for a few days for small things like Hebrew schools.
For him, to work the soil in the Land of Israel, to settle the country and to defend the settlements, was a complete break with the exile and meant picking up the thread where it had been dropped after the Jewish national defeat to the Roman Empire.
[15] According to Itamar Even-Zohar, in the late 19th century, secular Jews in Eastern Europe saw Jewish culture as in a state of decline or even degeneration.
The Zionists sought a return to the "purity" and "authenticity" of the existence of the "Hebrew nation in its land", a pastoral vision reflecting contemporary Romantic ideals.
This extreme negation of both the Diaspora and Judaism would not become popular among even secular Zionists, but it would continue to resurface in nationalistic thought to the present day.
[19] In 2007, the Israeli government began a campaign to encourage Jews from the former Soviet Union who were living in Germany to emigrate to Israel, in order to "counter [their] dangerous assimilation.