Abstract

As honorary president and first speaker at the First Zionist Congress, Dr. Karpel Lippe of Romania embodied continuities in the history of the Jews and of Zionism, but his address also heralded transformations occurring in the movement as its delegates assembled in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897. The speech, given in German, is analyzed with respect to its multiplex audience and other aspects of the rhetorical situation. Lippe declares the Congress to be a gewaltiger Sprung (mighty leap): the “leap” refers to the reinvention of Zionism as a solidly modern, middle-class movement, as shown by its leadership, language, repertoires of action, and values. Those values—positivism with respect to social and historical knowledge; individual self-reliance, secular work, and “civilization”; deprecation of indolence and dependency; and a respectful but assertive engagement with the established political-economic order—are set over against the social and ideological equivocations, administrative paternalism, and political timidity that caused its predecessor, Hibbat Zion, to falter.

Journal
Rhetoric & Public Affairs
Published
2020-01-01
DOI
10.14321/rhetpublaffa.23.4.0675
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References (87)

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  2. 2. Lippe's address is given in Zionisten-Congress in Basel (29., 30., und 31. August 1897): Offizielles Proto…
  3. it had been previously printed in the Zionist organ, Die Welt, Sept 10, 1897, 15:4-5. All translations from t…
  4. 3. As he states in his memoir, Meine 25-jährige zionistische Agitation (Jassy: H. Goldner, 1902), 6. See "Lip…
  5. this was slightly emended and appeared again in my The First Zionist Congress: An Annotated Translation of th…
Show all 87 →
  1. 4. Lippe’s speech was enthusiastically received by delegates to the Congress. During his oration, he was inte…
  2. 5. Historical revisionism is an important approach within rhetorical scholarship. In the words of Martin Medh…
  3. 6. Jürgen Kocka, Industrial Culture and Bourgeois Society: Business, Labor, and Bureaucracy in Modern Germany…
  4. 7. While there were some important differences between Zionism and many colonial ventures of the same era, no…
  5. 8. On the decisive nature of the 1880s pogroms and the emergence of Hibbat Zion, see David Vital, The Origins…
  6. 10. Vital, Origins of Zionism, 286-287; see also Alan Dowty, “Much Ado about Little: Ahad Ha’am’s ’Truth from…
  7. 11. The position of the Sultan and the Ottoman elite is elaborated in two articles by Neville Mandel: "Ottoma…
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  14. 17. Marc Volovici, “Leon Pinsker’s Autoemancipation! and the Emergence of German as a Language of Jewish Nati…
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  20. 23. Indeed, upon his death, Die Neue Freie Presse assessed many of his journalistic pieces as veritable works…
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  24. 26. Lacking a common language, Slavic nationalists addressed one another in German, just as the Jews did at t…
  25. 27. Shimoni, Zionist Ideology, 392. In this context, one should bear in mind Herzl’s willingness to collabora…
  26. 28. Somewhat surprisingly, Jassy was home to a Reform temple from 1865, presided over from 1897 by Rabbi Iaco…
  27. 29. Proceedings-Cowen, 6; Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism (New York: Schocken Books, 1978), 99. Herzl’s …
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  30. 32. As indicated above, the social profile of Congress participants has been studied by Shimoni, Zionist Ideo…
  31. 33. This and the following observations are based on an analysis of the proceedings of the 1897 Congress: see…
  32. 34. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire: 1875-1914 (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 174; cited in Watenpaugh, Be…
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  36. 38. Kury, “Jüdische Lebenswelten,” 145. This was not an isolated phenomenon: on Christian support for a Jewis…
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  39. 41. According to Herzl, Lippe had been allotted ten minutes and took thirty, and made so many mistakes that t…
  40. 42. The terminology here is Habermasian, but I draw more particularly on Gerard Delanty’s analysis of the con…
  41. 43. Dowty-Ahad Ha’am, “Truth,” 172-173: “After a decade’s work and the composition of thousands of articles a…
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  55. 56. He concurs here with Pinsker, since the opening paragraphs of Autoemancipation! emphasize the futility of…
  56. 57. My commentary here is not a tacit endorsement of Lippe’s assertions regarding desolation before the new Y…
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  81. 82. Luz, Parallels Meet, 37, 105.
  82. 83. Luz, Parallels Meet, 137-158. An intriguing problem for Zionism was the management of a relationship betw…