Editing Zionism (section)

==== Jewish nationalism and emancipation ====
{{see also|Haskalah}}
Ideas of Jewish cultural unity developed a specifically political expression in the 1860s as Jewish intellectuals began promoting the idea of Jewish nationalism. This emerged amid the late [[Rise of nationalism in Europe|19th century European]] trend of [[national revival]]s.{{sfn|Beinin|Stein|2006|p=157}}{{sfn|Kagarlitsky|2014|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=cf3pAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA294 294]}}

Zionism emerged towards the end of the "best century"{{sfn|Avineri|2017|loc=Introduction}} for Jews who for the first time were allowed as equals into European society and gained access to schools, universities, and professions that were previously closed to them.{{sfn|Avineri|2017|loc=Introduction}} By the 1870s, Jews had achieved almost complete [[Jewish emancipation|civic emancipation]] in all the states of western and central Europe.{{sfn|Shimoni|1995}} By 1914, Jews had moved from the margins to the forefront of European society. In the urban centers of Europe and America, Jews played an influential role in professional and intellectual life.{{sfn|Avineri|2017|loc=Introduction}} During this period as [[Jewish assimilation]] was still progressing most promisingly, some Jewish intellectuals and religious traditionalists framed assimilation as a humiliating negation of Jewish cultural distinctiveness.<ref>{{harvnb|Shimoni|1995}}: "While assimilation was still progressing most promisingly, and also quite independently of antisemitism when it later arose, not only religious traditionalists but also part of the Jewish intelligentsia decried the humiliating self-negation that assimilation exacted and rose to the defense of Jewish cultural distinctiveness."</ref> The development of Zionism and other Jewish nationalist movements grew out of these sentiments.{{sfn|Shimoni|1995|loc=Ethnicity and Nationalism}} In this sense, Zionism can be read as a response to the [[Haskala]] and the challenges of modernity and liberalism, rather than purely a response to antisemitism.{{sfn|Avineri|2017|loc=Introduction}}

Emancipation in Eastern Europe progressed more slowly,{{sfn|Goldberg|2009|p=20}} to the point that Deickoff writes "social conditions were such that they made the idea of individual assimilation pointless". Antisemitism, pogroms and official policies in Tsarist Russia led to the emigration of three million Jews in the years between 1882 and 1914, only 1% of which went to Palestine. Those who went to Palestine were driven primarily by ideas of self-determination and Jewish identity, rather than just in response to pogroms or economic insecurity.{{sfn|Avineri|2017|loc=Introduction}} Zionism's emergence in the late 19th century was among assimilated Central European Jews who, despite their formal emancipation, still felt excluded from high society. Many of these Jews had moved away from traditional religious observances and were largely secular, mirroring a broader trend of secularization in Europe. Despite their efforts to integrate, the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe were frustrated by continued lack of acceptance by the local national movements that tended toward intolerance and exclusivity.{{sfn|Rabkin|2006|loc=Orientations}} For the early Zionists, if nationalism posed a challenge to European Jewry, it also proposed a solution.{{sfn|Shlaim|2001|loc=Introduction}}