Constructions of Jewish Identity and the Spectre of Colonialism: Of White Skin and Black Masks in Early Zionist Discourse

Early Zionist discourse proliferated with constructions of a new Jewish identity. Discussing responses to the so-called Uganda plan of 1903–5 and notions of Jewish colonisation in Africa and elsewhere, the article investigates demarcations of Jewishness from, and identifications with, ‘blackness’ in the early twentieth-century German Zionist press and literature and their impact on the Zionist imaginary vis-à-vis the colonial paradigm. Particular attention is given to Max Jungmann’s ‘Briefe aus Neu-Neuland’, published in the satiric journal Schlemiel between 1903–7. It is argued that with his fictitious account of the Zionist settlement of East Africa (which historically never happened) and with the creation of the black African Mbwapwa Jumbo and his conversion to Judaism Jungmann articulates an intricate and critical response to colonial aspirations, Jewish or otherwise, and formulates a scathing and highly perceptive commentary on the convergence of Zionist, racial, and colonial discourses.