This chapter describes the many-sided aspects of Jewish life in Imperial Germany, in parallel to its general history up to 1914. Following an economic crisis 1873 and a decline of liberal faith, a wave of anti-Jewish sentiments spread – seemingly from Berlin – across the entire country. It brought about the establishment of new political parties with antisemitic programs, just when legal emancipation had been completed. This tension would become characteristic of Jewish life in the following era. It brought about extreme achievements in all spheres of life, but also daily confrontation with antisemitism. The latter deeply disappointed many Jews, but on the whole did not stop their integration and acculturation. Their fight against discrimination, moreover, strengthened their Jewish identity, despite further acculturation. The chapter describes Jewish cultural achievements as part of the period’s academic and artistic blooming, and the life of the Jewish bourgeoisie leading some of its members to disregard the dangers inherent in their situation.

Chapter 1 considers the accounts of law offered by early Zionist utopian works and clarifies the distinction between the cultural and the meta-cultural debate in Zionism; that is, between the disputes over culture and identity, and the debate whether a cultural dispute over modern Jewish identity would be worthwhile and wise. In light of the emotional Jewish and Zionist cultural debates, the question inevitably arose as to whether such culture wars were advantageous or detrimental to the realization of Zionism’s goal, the establishment of a Jewish national home. To avoid a Kulturkampf, Zionist leaders decided to stress the common and consensual elements of national culture, while stifling the religious, cultural and identity differences over the definition of Judaism, Jewish state and Jewish law, and block their entry into the Zionist movement’s official documents and projects.