Golus nationalism

Golus nationalism (Yiddish: גלות נאַציאָנאַליזם, romanized: Golus natsionalizm; Hebrew: לאומיות גלות, romanized: Leumiyút gālūṯ), or diaspora nationalism, is a national movement of the Jewish people that advocates the furtherance of Jewish national and cultural life in centers of large Jewish communities throughout the world and simultaneously seeks recognition of a Jewish national identity from world powers. The term golus has been understood to mean both "Jewish diaspora" and "exile".

Origins

Golus nationalism was conceived of by Nathan Birnbaum (1864–1937): the Austrian philosopher who had given Zionism its name. Although Birnbaum was an early Zionist theorist who participated in the First Zionist Congress (1897), he broke with the movement shortly thereafter. Birnbaum began to develop a form of pan-Judaism (Alljudentum) that embraced Jewish life in the Diaspora.

Birnbaum studied Yiddish, and he was interested in the degree to which Eastern European Jewry preserved its internal culture relative to the Western European Jewish culture in which he was raised. Birnbaum was a co-founder of the Jewish-nationalist group Kadimah, and he also founded and wrote articles in the first Zionist emancipation journal, Selbst-Emancipation. Some of his thinking is represented in two articles entitled "The Jewish Renaissance Movement" and "Jewish Autonomy."

Birnbaum did not believe that Jewish assimilation was inevitable. Instead, he was inspired by the Jews of Eastern Europe who had retained Yiddish as a language, had a robust folk culture, and banded together in recognizably distinct communities.

Seeking recognition for the existence of a Jewish nationality

Birnbaum made several attempts to convince state powers to recognize the existence of a Jewish national identity.