Q&A: The Uganda Plan
The Uganda Plan
Question
Suppose it had been possible to establish a sovereign Jewish state in Uganda, and suppose that in Uganda we would have enjoyed quiet borders and a reality with no wars or terror attacks. In such a hypothetical case, would it have been preferable to establish the Jewish state in Uganda rather than in the Land of Israel, in light of the consideration that the value of the sanctity of life overrides the value of settling the land?
Answer
Since the founders of the state and most of its residents are not religious and are not committed to Jewish law, it is clear that from their perspective Uganda is preferable. For a Jew who is committed to Jewish law, there is a commandment to conquer and settle the Land of Israel, which by its nature comes with bloodshed (as the Minchat Chinukh wrote).
Discussion on Answer
Zionism saw itself as the continuation of the historic Jewish people (unlike, for example, the Bund), and therefore the goal was the Land of Israel for everyone, religious and secular alike. The Uganda Plan was more a declaration of Zionism’s seriousness on the one hand, and a way to create a track to the decision-makers in the British Empire, which later paid off with the Balfour Declaration.
This Zionist self-conception as the continuation of the historic Jewish people also found expression in accepting the Chief Rabbinate as responsible for the ongoing aspects of Jewish identity (personal status and the like).
If the whole goal is only a safe refuge for the Jewish people, then seemingly the other proposals were preferable.
It’s not clear that at the time of those proposals they imagined that blood would be flowing here, that we would kill and be killed for more than 100 years,
and still not manage to reach peace with the surroundings.
Only in Israel are there, from the whole world, already more than 650 days of hostages being tortured.
Only in Israel is Jewish blood being spilled on a scale that no collection of Jews in recent decades has known.
By the way, there were about 10 different proposals over the decades before the establishment of the state; Uganda was just one of them, it simply came to a vote in the national institutions.
When it comes to religious people, it’s of course not black and white as our teacher Rabbi Michi indicates.
The rabbis in the Zionist Congress voted with Herzl in favor of Uganda; the secular delegates, who were the overwhelming majority, voted against it, and unfortunately the proposal fell.
Bearing in mind that the main establishment of Zionism was a start-up for saving the Jews, and its purpose was to prevent the Holocaust, that goal failed. The state was established 10 years too late for the Jewish people, a third of whom were destroyed.
After the Holocaust they continued to want and demand a state despite the failure, and maybe because of it, and they got one.
It’s not clear that we were commanded to conquer and inherit at the price of endless bloodshed over generations,
while in the diaspora people sit quietly and relatively at ease compared to the blood spilled here.
It’s not clear that we are commanded to conquer the Land of Israel at this time.
It’s not clear that gathering Jews here, even from countries where they had been living quietly and securely, was in the final analysis a successful idea.
(Some saw this as the ingathering of the exiles.)
It’s not clear that after Bibism, corruption, messianism, and the regime coup, in some time the whole Zionist enterprise won’t be wiped out and we’ll weep for the slain of my poor people…
and it will turn out that whoever remained in the Jewish diaspora saved himself and his family and preserved the upright and clear-headed Jew within him.
So the religious aspect of the matter is not clear-cut.