Jabotinsky valued monotheism as a marker of racial pride, not religious faith

Evidence

It is important to note that while Jabotinsky celebrated the pagan heritage of the Philistines, he did not undermine the importance of monotheism in the development of Jewish identity. In 1935, he included a religious paragraph in the Hatzah’s official platform. This emphasis on the role of monotheism in the development of Jewish identity, however, can be attributed to Jabotinsky’s perception of the notion of racial superiority. As Shlomo Avineri has pointed out, the feeling of racial superiority, which, according to Jabotinsky, is critical in the development of a healthy collective consciousness, is dependent upon the cultivation of those very elements that the group itself developed while rejecting alien values and ideas. Therefore monotheism, which is a Jewish innovation, should be cultivated and cherished by the collective, not for its intrinsic values (Jabotinsky certainly lived his life as a secular Jew) but for its nationalistic attributes, as a cause of national pride. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 1152

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader study of how nationalist movements instrumentalize religious heritage — parallels what scholars note about Zionism’s selective appropriation of Jewish religious symbols.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does Jabotinsky’s racial-nationalist justification of monotheism compare to contemporary right-wing religious nationalism in Israel today?