Nachman Syrkin

Who was Nachman Syrkin?

Nachman Syrkin was a political theorist, founder of Labour Zionism and a prolific writer in Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, German and English language.

Born in the Russian Empire, Syrkin was influenced by Hovevei Zion and socialism in his youth and dedicated himself to synthesising the two concepts. In this task he was joined by Ber Borochov, although, unlike Borochov, Syrkin was no orthodox Marxist. He was one of the leaders of the socialist Zionist faction at the First Zionist Congress in 1897 and was an early proponent of the Jewish National Fund. He was also the first person to propose that emigrants to Palestine form collective settlements.

Unlike many other socialist thinkers of the time, Syrkin was quite comfortable with his Jewish heritage and, although he does not spell it out explicitly in his essay "The Jewish Problem and the Jewish Socialist State", it is clear that he had in mind the biblical emphasis on strict social justice, irrespective of wealth, power or privilege. However, he saw Zionism as a replacement for traditional Judaism:

The new, Zionist Judaism stands in complete contrast to the Judaism of exile … Zionism uproots religious Judaism in a stronger way than Reform or assimilation, by creating new standards of 'Judaism' which will constitute a new ideology that can be elevated to the status of a religion.