Negation of the Diaspora

The negation of the Diaspora (Hebrew: שלילת הגלות‎‎, shlilat ha'galut, or Hebrew: שלילת הגולה‎‎, shlilat ha'golah) is a central assumption in many currents of Zionism. The concept encourages the dedication to Zionism and it is used to justify the denial of the feasibility of Jewish emancipation in the Diaspora. Life in the Diaspora would either lead to discrimination and persecution or to national decadence and assimilation. A more moderate formulation says that the Jews as a people have no future without a "spiritual center" in the Land of Israel.

According to Schweid, in the early twentieth 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 feeling at the same time inferior and part of a Chosen People. According to Schweid, Brenner thought that that despair was good, as it would leave Zionism as their only option.

Yehezkel Kaufmann saw Jews in the Diaspora as territorially assimilated, religiously segregated and in other matters semi-assimilated, with even their languages often a mixture of Hebrew and the local language. Kaufmann viewed this Diaspora culture as flawed, misshapen, poor and restricted. Although Diaspora Jews could assimilate more easily now that the Jewish ghettos had been abolished and the larger cultures were becoming more secular, European cultures remained essentially Christian.

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