Title: On the Eve of Redemption
Author: Melamed, Samuel Max
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "On the Eve of Redemption" ***


  Transcriber's Notes:

  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by
  =equal signs=.

  Small uppercase have been replaced with regular uppercase.

  Blank pages have been eliminated.

  Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the
  original.

  A few typographical errors have been corrected.



                             On _the_ Eve
                            _of_ Redemption


                         S. M. Melamed, Ph. D.


                    Alpha Omega Publishing Company,
                               New York



                            COPYRIGHT, 1918

                   ALPHA OMEGA PUBLISHING CO., INC.



       The following pages comprise a number of editorial leaders
       discussing questions and problems pertaining to Jewish
       nationalism and Zionism which were published in the _American
       Jewish Chronicle_ in the years 1916-17-18.



FOREWORD


The war has caused an upheaval of the whole world; vast changes have
been wrought in many peoples. Destruction of life and treasure has
brought about a revolution of national assets and resources, and there
has been stock taking of the spiritual no less than of the material
possessions. We have confident hope that the material losses will be
balanced by the moral progress of the peoples of the world, great and
small.

No people has felt the upheaval more than have the Jews. None has had
a greater share in its sorrows. None has had more reason to examine
carefully its past and its present and to define its future plans; and
none can look with clearer purpose or with firmer courage into the
future. For none has better ground than have the Jews for confident
hope in the moral progress of the world,--that people which has been
the constant witness of the course of civilization throughout the ages
and has never lost its faith in the ultimate victory of Justice and
Right.

We need not speak in generalities. The smaller nations are assured
that their rights will be safeguarded in the future, and that these
rights will embrace not only protection from attack and aggression, but
equally the right of development along the lines of their own national
bent, the right of self-government, the right to cultivate their own
spiritual possessions. There is no other people to whom this is so
full of deep meaning as to the Jews. During the many centuries of the
Dispersion our people has ever looked forward to its Restoration in
its ancestral home. During these many centuries there has never been a
day that the prayers for the Return have not ascended in every country
of the world in which the Children of Israel have been dispersed.
This undying hope has been the factor in the unique, the miraculous
preservation of a small people scattered among all the peoples of the
globe.

The national movement of the past generation, which has led to the
rejuvenation of the Hebrew language, to the founding of prosperous
Jewish colonies in Palestine, to the establishment of the Zionist
Organization with its branches throughout the world, this national
movement has trained us to think politically and to act with
statesmanlike grasp of present conditions and of plans for the future.
A part of our people has been prepared to deal with the great national
problems which obtrude themselves upon us today. Large numbers are
still confused by the new outlook and must find guides to direct them
in the new paths.

The Essays which Dr. Melamed presents to us in this volume are
therefore most welcome at this time. He has applied his vast knowledge
of history, philosophy and literature, and his intimate acquaintance
with Jewish life in many parts of the world, to answer many of the
questions about which there has been confusion, and to point out
the direction of progress and development in the future. In clear
and forceful language he has analyzed Jewish conditions in the past
and studied the needs of the future, so as to point out what the
present demands of us. We may not agree fully with all the views and
conclusions expressed, but we shall find them original, suggestive and
illuminating. The publication of these Essays is therefore opportune
and timely, and the Jewish public is deeply indebted to Dr. Melamed for
their presentation.

                                            HARRY FRIEDENWALD.

  Baltimore,
      December 23, 1917.



JUDEA AND ROME


Even history has its reasons that reason often fails to understand.
When news reached Rome in August 70 C.E. that Judea was conquered, the
temple burned and the Jewish people subjugated, the Roman populace
greeted it with the infamous cry, "Hierosolyma est perdita"; there
was rejoicing at the downfall and humiliation of the Jewish state.
Eighteen hundred and forty-seven years later, after the deafening
cries "Hierosolyma est perdita" were shouted in the streets of the
eternal city, an Italian army leaves Rome with Palestine again as
its objective; but this time it marches not with the object of
annihilating Judea, but, as an official message puts it--to enable the
allied powers to wrest the Holy Land from the Turks, to turn it over
eventually to the Jews, and thus to rebuild Judea. Even if there should
be little to the Roman announcement, it is not lacking a pathetic
touch; it testifies to the grim irony of history. The same Rome that
once destroyed Judea is making public its intention today to help
rebuild it. Our ancestors, who were the tragic witnesses of the cruel
destruction of Judea, would surely not think of the possibility that
after a lapse of nearly two thousand years, an army should leave Rome
for Palestine with the object of helping to reinstate the Jewish people
in the land of its forefathers; nor could anyone have foreseen that
the Rome of old, that aimed at the subjugation of small nationalities,
would be succeeded by a new Rome that pronounces its stand for
the rights and political re-establishment of small and oppressed
nationalities.

Of course, people will say that modern Rome can in no way be compared
to ancient Rome and that the two have nothing in common. However, those
who have read Montesquieu and Hegel on the deeds of ancient Rome and
those who have followed the development of modern Rome, will recognize
the close similarity between the two. As far as power and political and
strategic genius go, modern Rome, it is true, cannot be compared to its
predecessor of two thousand years ago; but if traditions, surroundings
and other sociological factors that give a people shape and form count
for anything, the Roman of today is bound to have a good deal in
common with the Roman of two thousand years ago, even if the one is not
racially the offspring of the other.

Present-day Rome has much in common with ancient Rome. The main
difference between them is, of course, this: While ancient Rome,
dominating the entire world then known to humanity, and forming the
centre of the Mediterranean civilization, was the world power of the
time, modern Rome holds neither the political position of ancient
Rome nor is it the representative and bearer of the Mediterranean
civilization. The predominance of Mediterranean civilization has gone
with the last great Doges of Venice, and modern Rome is no longer the
centre of gravitation of civilized humanity that ancient Rome was two
thousand years ago. In the course of the last millenium, the centre of
civilization has shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. It is
the Atlantic civilization that is supreme today. The whole terrible
fight that is going on today in all parts of the world is not a fight
about the Mediterranean and its supremacy, but it is a struggle for the
Atlantic and its predominance--and, in this struggle, Rome is no longer
playing a leading part.

In the course of the fight about the Mediterranean, Judea was destroyed
and the whole Semitic race nearly annihilated. The wars of Rome against
Carthage, the people of which spoke Hebrew and formed a branch of
the Aramaic family of nations, were fought with the only object of
preserving Roman supremacy in the Mediterranean. The fight for the
Atlantic, however, has already resulted in the re-establishment of
one Semitic nation--the Arab--and will probably also result in the
re-establishment of old Judea. That is where the difference between the
fight for the Mediterranean, fought by ancient Rome, and the fight for
the Atlantic, in which modern Rome participates, comes in.

The ancient Mediterranean Rome was not only imperialistic to the core,
but universalistic as well. The chief aim and plan of ancient Rome was
to subjugate the whole world, then known to humanity, with a view to
dominating it. The idea of a universal monarchy at the expense of the
independence and freedom of other nations first originated in ancient
Rome. Rome of today, which takes part in the fight for the Atlantic, is
imperialistic, although no longer striving for political universalism
and world domination; it announces that it stands today for the
preservation of the individuality of the small nations.

The prospective re-establishment of Judea, as one of the consequences
of the present war, cannot be a blind chance of fate. There is
historical logic in this development. Palestine, as a Mediterranean
country could not maintain its independence in the face of a rising
Mediterranean world power that strove to master not only the
Mediterranean but all the other parts of the globe then known to
mankind. Our sages of old found a thousand and one moral and political
reasons for the downfall of ancient Judea and for its destruction
by Rome. They ascribed the downfall of ancient Judea not only to
political, but even to moral causes and to the growth of individual
hatred and dissensions among the Jews themselves. The internal
political and moral reasons advanced by our sages for the downfall of
Judea may have contributed to the destruction, but the main reason was
the determination of Rome to master all the shores of the Mediterranean
and to dominate the entire ancient world. In the face of this fact,
even an internally solid and strong Judea would have finally succumbed
as did Carthage, which produced greater generals and gave a better
military account of itself than did Judea. The destruction of Judea was
a tragic historical necessity and could only have been avoided if Rome
had, by a miracle, suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth.
Were present Rome what ancient Rome was, the centre of civilization
that strove for the mastery not only of the Mediterranean countries but
also of the entire world, the prospective re-establishment of Judea
today would have as little chance as ancient Judea of surviving or
resisting Roman aggression. The prospective re-establishment of Judea
is only possible because the centre of civilization has been shifted
from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.

Why did the Jewish people suffer two thousand years under the
dispersion and why did they not try during this long period to
re-establish their political sovereignty in the land of their
ancestors? Even the best of our thinkers ascribe this national default
and political apathy to a sort of lethargy of which the Jews were
apparently the victims. To many a Jewish thinker, Ahad Ha'am not
excepted, the past two thousand years of Jewish existence appears
to be planless and one great historic confusion; but on looking
closely at developments, one will come to recognize that not because
of lethargy, but because of given historical conditions, the Jewish
people could not up to our times have attempted to re-establish their
national sovereignty in the land of their forefathers. More than a
thousand years after the downfall of western Rome, Mediterranean
civilization, though degenerated, remained supreme and was identical
with civilization at large. The chief move of its centre from the
Mediterranean to the Atlantic and the consolidation of a new center was
accomplished only after a struggle of nearly five hundred years. So
long as Atlantic civilization was not supreme and so long as the fight
for its supremacy was not finished, the political re-establishment
of Judea, closely connected with the settlement of the solution of
questions arising out of the fight for the Atlantic and all that
there is to it--the individualization of international politics, the
preservation of the small nationalities, their political restoration,
etc.--could not be taken up and no serious attempt to re-establish the
Jewish nationality in Palestine could be made by the Jews or other
nations interested in the settlement of the Jewish question.

For these reasons, the re-establishment of Judea, as one of the
post-bellum problems, is as historically logical now as was the
downfall of Judea a historical necessity two thousand years ago.

There are no blind chances in history, nor are there stagnant moments
in history. History has its reasons, which, however, reason often fails
to understand.



LAND AND PEOPLE


Ever since the Jewish people lost its national independence and
sovereignty and began to live in dispersion among the nations of the
earth, it has lost the opportunity and possibility of continuing the
work of its national civilization and has had to be satisfied with
producing cultural values only. Everything that individual Jews have
achieved in the past two thousand years in the domain of civilization
has been an enrichment of the civilization of the peoples among whom
they have lived. Jews have always been prominent in commerce and
industry, but there was no national Jewish commerce and no national
Jewish industry, even when those who created and developed certain
branches of commerce were all Jews. Their commercial and industrial
activities and accomplishments strengthened the other nations among
whom the Jews lived, but not themselves. In many cases they have
endangered and imperiled the Jewish people, because they became the
arsenal of anti-Semitic weapons. The individual has profited by Jewish
industrial and commercial achievements, but not the Jewish collective
body. In short, all our work and energy in the domain of practical
civilization has reached not the Jewish people, but other nations, and
only a few have given us credit for these achievements.

Often enough have we been blamed for them. The Dutchman is full of
envy of the Jew to the present day for having monopolized the diamond
cutting industry; the Turks are still angry when they remember that
Baron de Hirsch built their railroads. In Switzerland people are
blaming the Jews for having monopolized the silk and watch industries;
the Russians antagonize them because of their big share in the
development of the petrol wells in the Caucasus and in the lumber
business in western Russia. A famous German professor, Werner Sombart,
has written a voluminous book of five hundred pages in which he indicts
us for having developed capitalism, while others are accusing the Jews
of having produced anti-capitalistic forces. In short, not only have
the activities of individual Jews in the domain of civilization not
been of profit to them as a people, but they have in too many cases
served as a basis of attack.

The cause of these peculiar phenomena was our diaspora life. We had
no homeland of our own. We had no national soil beneath us and no
national sky above us. We were a wandering people and as such could
not produce a national civilization, which involves and presupposes a
static and not a dynamic order of things. But as soon as the Jews can
lead a normal national life, all this, unhappy and tragic, will change
radically and an entirely new order of things will arise. Not the
Jewish individual, as heretofore, but the Jewish people at large, will
be the agency of the Jewish genius and whatever the Jewish individual
has to contribute to civilization he will contribute through the Jewish
people. While his achievements in this domain will serve humanity,
as heretofore, they will at the same time enrich the life of his own
people and become a source of strength instead of weakness; when the
Jews have an opportunity to be active for civilization as Jews, Jewish
individualism, the curse of our racial life, will gradually disappear.

Only a few of us realize the fact that this individualism, which finds
its unpleasant expression in petty factionalism, communal strife, party
quarrels and lack of discipline among the rank and file, is in the main
to be ascribed to the fact that the Jews have no national civilization.
If we had one, many an unpleasant phenomenon in our public life would
be impossible. If the Jews had common political responsibilities, if
they had all to look to the safety of their country, if they had all to
look after their national economic interests, the national intellect
would be more uniform and two Jews would not have three different
opinions. It is the lack of a national Jewish civilization that makes
the Jewish intellect queer and misshapen. The mind of a people can
only be trained by its national civilization, and is orientated by
it. But since the Jews have lacked national civilization for the
last two thousand years, the intellect of the nation has lost its
uniformity, has become atomized and has in many cases gone astray.
This has added to our inner misery and has driven many an idealistic
Jew to despair. At the moment when the Jews begin to lead a national
life on national soil and under their own sky, which give out line
and color to the soul of a nation, many negative energies which are
active in our life because of the effects of diaspora existence must
necessarily disappear. The intellectual discipline of the nation will
be re-established and the life of its soul will again assume normal
proportions. There will be a Jewish public opinion in the best meaning
of the term, not merely the opinion of individual Jews.

It is generally asserted that, though the Jews as such have not
produced a civilization during their life in diaspora, they have
produced a culture. This is sincerely believed by all Jews, by
believers and disbelievers, orthodox and reform, nationalists and
assimilationists. Though one lays more stress on the spiritual and the
other more on the secular aspect of the so-called Jewish culture, the
outstanding fact is, however, that the belief in the Jewish culture
produced in the diaspora is general. But if it is true that culture is
a superstructure of civilization and has civilization as its basis, it
is hard to see how it is possible to assume for one moment that the
Jews have produced anything like a culture during their diaspora life.

It is true that Jews have written books among which some are famous
in world-literature. It is true that the Jews have painted good
pictures. It is also true that the Jews have composed good music. But
the question is often more than justified whether or not the Jewish
genius has drawn the material from Jewish sources and Jewish life. Are
all the good books Jews have written Jewish books? Are all the good
pictures Jews have painted Jewish art? And is the good music Jews have
composed Jewish music? In some cases they are partly Jewish. In the
overwhelming majority of cases they are not Jewish at all. Neither
Spinoza nor Bergson, neither Heine nor Hoffmannsthal, are Jews in the
sense that they have been inspired exclusively by Jewish motives and
that they have drawn their inspiration from Jewish sources alone. But
we can go even further and maintain that even those great Jews from
Philo of Alexandria to Maimonides and from Maimonides to Herman Cohen,
who were always conscious of their Judaism and who thought that they
were working as Jews and that their creations were Jewish, stood much
more under the spell of alien than Jewish influence, and in their work
were less Jews than is generally supposed. In spite of their racial
enthusiasm, their intellect was hyphenated. Philo was at least as much
Greek as he was Jew, Maimonides at least as much Greek and Arab, and
Cohen is at least as much German as he is Jew, if not more.

We are quick in our condemnation of those who wrote on the tombstone of
Maimonides, "Heretic and Disbeliever." We are angry at the "fanatics"
of Amsterdam who excommunicated Spinoza, and we are often angry at
those who utter severe criticism of Herman Cohen as a Jew. But these
fanatics, wrong as they may be in their methods, are not entirely
wrong in their motives and ideas. They are Jews in whom strong Jewish
instincts are alive and these Jews, gifted with more original instincts
than the average Jew, see more quickly what is Jewish and what is not
in the work of a great Jew; it is the un-Jewish motive in these works
by which they are repulsed.

Even the Jewish religion has been largely influenced, not only by
non-Jewish surroundings, but also by non-Jewish religious motives. The
truth of the matter is that national Jewish culture ceased to be with
the destruction of the Jewish state. From that time on, individual
Jews have cultivated Jewish thoughts and Jewish feelings, but they
could not prevent their thoughts and feelings from being so mingled
with and darkened by non-Jewish thoughts and feelings as to lose
their original strength. Much of our so-called national literature is
not organic, but consists of a number of books written by individual
Jews who were only too often inspired by motives more non-Jewish than
Jewish. The same is true of Jewish art, Jewish music, etc. Only when
our culture touches upon our classical past or upon our national
future, that is to say, when it is not influenced by the chaos of the
present, is it truly Jewish.

When the Jews return to Palestine and begin to develop a national
civilization, their culture will be built up not only on the past or
the future, but also on the present. It will grow with the growth
of civilization and it will not be a culture of individuals who are
inspired by one thought appearing in different colors as the result
of various influences; it will be the culture of a nation, an organic
essence produced and developed with the help of the entire nation.

This will be the consequence of a national Jewish homeland in
Palestine.



PALESTINE'S ROLE IN THE WORLD'S HISTORY


Even territories are subject to the incalculable caprice of Fate.
Palestine, a small territory in Western Asia, forming the southern
third of the province of Syria, excelled in natural beauty by
Switzerland or the Tyrol, has nevertheless been touched by the Spirit
of Humanity and has exerted a greater influence upon the development
of the human mind than any other country in the world, not excepting
ancient Hellas and Rome. There is hardly another land that has
witnessed as great historic events as has Palestine; there is surely
no other land that has seen so many invading conquerors on its soil.
No other spot on the globe has so kindled the magnetism of the great
nations throughout the ages as Palestine. Today, when an army of the
mighty British Empire is fighting hard to conquer Palestine, the land
of eternal mystery and miracles, it is well to remember that throughout
the ages every great power has fought for the possession of the Holy
Land. In the early days of our civilization Babylonians, Egyptians,
Assyrians and Persians in turn tried to conquer the country. At a
later time, the Greeks and the Romans made the attempt; in the middle
ages the great nations of Europe were organized by the Church to wrest
Palestine from the Mohammedans. All the great conquerors in history,
from Nebuzaradan and Titus to Napoleon, have commanded invading armies
on Palestine soil.

This small land of Palestine, drenched with human blood since time
immemorial, has become the holy centre of three great religions, and
witnessed the birth of two great religions, Judaism and Christianity.
From the purely religious point of view the land is as holy to Islam
as it is to Christendom or Jewry. Politically, it has always been and
still remains the goal of many a great power. The Turk holds it, the
British are anxious to conquer it, the French have politico-historical
claims on Syria, which includes Palestine, the Roman Church considers
it its special domain and aspires to possess it; the Emperor of Austria
still bears the title King of Jerusalem, and the King of the Belgians,
on the assumption that he is an offspring of the Crusader Prince who
ruled over Jerusalem for a while, asserts historic claims on the Holy
Land which, however, he does not press. Palestine has seen many a
change of masters and has been inhabited in turn by many peoples. But
among all the peoples that have lived in Palestine there is only one,
the nationhood and culture of which has grown and developed there--the
Jewish people.

The Judaism originating in Palestine has become one of the driving
powers in history; it continues to fructify the human mind of the
present day. Mankind bears in mind that just as in modern philosophy
there is scarcely a single thought that was not already known
either to the Greeks or to the Romans, so in modern social ethics,
humanitarianism and countless branches of modern political life
there is scarcely an idea or thought that was not propounded by the
representatives of the ancient Jewish mind. Many a radical idea
commonly supposed to be a product of the civilization of the 19th
century is found on close examination to be the embodiment of an
ancient Jewish idea born on Palestinian soil. The kernel and sum total
of Marxism is of ancient Jewish origin; Karl Marx added a modern garb
to an ancient Jewish thought.

But Palestine has witnessed not only the birth and development of
Judaism but also of Christianity. Christianity is, reduced to its
original components, a synthesis of Eastern and Western Aryan thought,
consisting of the universalism and pessimism of ancient India and the
individualism and optimism of the Greeks and Romans. Christianity
is therefore not only not a continuation of Judaism, but its very
antithesis, despite the fact that there is nothing in Eastern Aryan and
Western Aryan thought, when looked at separately, that cannot also be
found in Judaism.

The fight for Palestine by the great nations of ancient times, the
origin and growth of two historic religions on Palestinian soil, the
subsequent struggle for Palestine by united Christendom against the
Islam and the constant attention that humanity pays to Palestine does
not explain why Palestine is held sacred. Another explanation must be
found why Palestine, a strip of coast land on the Mediterranean, has
become the land of wonders, the cradle of European spiritualism.

Palestine has become the very well and centre of the spiritual life
of humanity because she was so placed geographically as to be in a
position to mediate between the Eastern and the Western Aryans and
because Jewish thought, born in Palestine, the mediating centre, was
later to act as the spiritual mediator between both wings of the Aryan
race without giving up its own position and independence.

The geographical position of the region where Judaism arose is located
just between the settlements of the West and East Aryans. Just as
Palestine is the geographical centre between East and West Aryans, so
also does the Jewish mind born in Palestine mediate between Tibet and
Greece.

The East Aryans believed in the universal, the infinite--the West
Aryans in the individual, as expressed in classic mythology. The
Jewish God-concept comprises both of these extremes. The Jewish God
is the highest individuality, but he is also God who has created
the universe, the God of all mankind. The Biblical cosmogony shows
combination of this individuality with universality. As the Biblical
metaphysic mediates between the extremes of Aryan thought, so does
the Jewish mind born in Palestine hold the middle between Greek and
Indian thought. The Jewish mind lacks both the cold, analytical
intellectuality of the Greek and the mystic, fantastical tendency of
the Indian mind. With the Jew, however, reason is praised and knowledge
highly valued, while feeling is given its due and is not mortified.
The prophet is not an individualist nor is he a hazy universalist,
but a self-sacrificing patriot who for the love of his people suffers
martyrdom, and yet a cosmopolitan who in his heart full of love
embraces all mankind.

When the two Aryan culture thoughts met in Alexandria and Rome, the
Jewish thought intervened and acted as mediator between the two
extremes. Of course it was not done by conscious design, but we cannot
disregard the influence men like Philo exercised on the course of
events. While many momenta and causes co-operated in making the Jew the
mediator between these two extremes, the main cause no doubt was the
middle position occupied by Judaism. It was related to both sides and
could therefore effect a reconciliation.

This, to our mind, explains in the main the place of Palestine and
Judaism in the world's history. The Jews, a small Asiatic people,
owing to a remarkable concatenation of events and chances, have set
in motion a circulation of ideas, which later on cemented other great
cultures. Christianity is not, as Christian theologians would have the
world believe, a continuation of Judaism. What Judaism in the main did
contribute to Christianity was the form, the architecture, and the
cohesive power of its various elements. If there be any truth in the
assertion that the Jews are the "everlasting middlemen," it is not
because they have been for the last two thousand years the economic
or political middlemen among the nations who forced them into a
parasitical life, but because they, a Palestinian people, have brought
about a union between worlds of thought which were arrayed against each
other. By reason of this mediation, they have impregnated other peoples
with their own mind.



JUDAIZING PALESTINE


In spite of the political and diplomatic events of the two months
preceding the Baltimore Zionist Convention, not one of the responsible
Zionist leaders uttered a word with regard to the political situation
pertaining to Palestine. The various rumors concerning a Jewish
republic in Palestine have been answered by the representatives of
American Zionism with--silence. This attitude on the part of the
responsible Zionist leaders testifies to their political ability
and tact, for nothing would be more dangerous today than to discuss
Palestine at a Zionist assembly in as careless a manner as persons
have done for the last few months. The situation is still fraught
with difficulties, dangers and uncertainty; and the less it is spoken
of the better for all parties concerned. The question on the lips of
every delegate to the convention: What have we to expect? has been
well answered by the representative of the Provisional Committee for
General Zionist Affairs--We expect to be able to create after the war
such conditions in Palestine as to enable us to carry out our program.
To those delegates who are not able to think in terms of statesmanship
the answer of the official representatives of the Provisional Committee
must have appeared to be unsatisfactory, but the better politically
trained Zionists appreciated the answer as the only one possible under
the present circumstances and it convinced them that the leaders in
this country are politically on the right track.

All the talk about a speedy establishment of a Jewish republic in
Palestine in which even a part of the general press indulged is pure
fancy if we consider things in the light of reality. A republic or
any form of state cannot be made--it must grow naturally from certain
given conditions, it must develop organically. So long as the people
and the people's land are separated physically from one another, how
can the synthesis of the state be won? It is, therefore, clear that
the very first condition for the realization of the Zionist program is
a settlement of Jews in Palestine en masse, which settlement is not
possible unless certain economic conditions are created to enable the
settlers to organize their life speedily and acclimatize themselves
as quickly as possible. But this creating of conditions is not as
easy a task as many persons imagine. It not only presumes a favorable
political situation, but also a display of organizing genius, important
financial transactions and almost heroic deeds. If Palestine were an
industrial country where new industries could be created or the old
ones so developed as to give sustenance to masses of new settlers, the
task would not be difficult. Palestine, however, is at present not an
industrial country, there are no mines and consequently no factories
of importance; it is altogether an agricultural country, the soil of
which, though potentially very productive, has been neglected for
centuries and must be regenerated before it can produce enough to feed
a large population. But even if Palestine were an industrial country
it would be an unwise policy to make industry the economic basis of
the future population. If the Jewish people are going to be reborn not
only politically but also physically, mentally and morally, the masses
of the Jewish people must return to agriculture and to country life.
For the last two thousand years we have been a city-population and
we have acquired all the habits and qualities of one. City life has
wrought havoc among us. If Zionism has a philosophy then the return
of large numbers of the Jews to country-life is part and parcel of
that philosophy by which we must abide if we do not mean to deceive
ourselves. Besides, agriculture is a much sounder basis for a state
than industry. The agricultural country is peaceful, conservative,
moderate, while the industrial country is always restless, upset,
radical and bellicose. If an individualistic--and because of a long
life in the dispersion--nervous people like the Jews should build its
entire future on industry, it would be built on sand. For this and
many other good reasons, we must make agriculture the main economic
basis of Jewish life in Palestine. But to create favorable agricultural
conditions to enable an immigration en masse to Palestine is much more
difficult than to create favorable industrial conditions, especially in
view of the fact that the Palestinian soil has been neglected.

The economic future of Palestine rests to our present knowledge on
agriculture and trade. For the past ten years Palestinian trade has
been increasing from year to year, especially that of commerce in
fruit and wine. Palestine can, if its soil is properly tilled and
modern agricultural methods used, produce such quantities of fruits
and grain as not only to feed the native population but also to supply
other countries. The same holds true of wine and tobacco and probably
cotton. Industries can be established which have the home products
as a main basis, such as canning and packing industries, manufacture
of soap, perfumes, etc. The possibilities of pastoral industry in
Palestine are enormous, and industrious Jewish ranchers may turn
Eastern Palestine into a second Texas.

There are altogether vast possibilities and should a favorable
political situation enable us to revive and to create the necessary
economic conditions for a Jewish settlement en masse in the land,
Jewish industry and Jewish financial strength combined with Jewish
idealism would within a few years of hard work prepare the ground for
a realization of the Zionist program. This is what the Zionist leaders
have in mind when they speak of creating such conditions in Palestine.
It is further understood that next to the preparing of economic
conditions, something must be done in the field of social and cultural
preparation. When a group of Jews is sent to Palestine, it must find
there such social and cultural preparations as to make civilized life
possible. One cannot, of course, build communities, schools, social and
charitable institutions in Palestine before large masses of our people
have settled in the country. The ground for the establishment of such
institutions must be prepared before the actual immigration takes place
for we will not send our people to a wilderness. The Jewish groups
that will emigrate to Palestine may not find actually erected all the
schools and hospitals they need, but they must find everything that is
necessary for re-establishment of such institutions and the men needed
to conduct them. This is not an easy task but it can be accomplished
if we centre our organizing genius on it. In this way we can _Judaize
Palestine_ in a relatively short time and when this is done the
geographic and economic position will be used for a strengthening of
all the sociological factors which are necessary for the creation of
a Jewish homeland. Palestine, on account of its geographic condition
can again be developed to a mighty trade centre and it can become the
great commercial roadway between Europe, Africa and Western Asia. This,
together with its solid economic and social organization, will give
Palestine political strength and position among the civilized countries
in the world.

It can thus be seen that it is futile at present to talk of the
immediate establishment of a Jewish republic in Palestine. The very
best that can be done and will be done is to prepare the ground
economically, socially and culturally for the settlement of great
masses of our people in the Holy Land. And it will be for the settlers
to shape the future and to strive to realize the Zionist Ideal: A
permanently secured homeland for the Jewish people in the land of its
ancestors. Unless this big work is done, no power on earth can help us
carry out our national political program, because states cannot be made
but must develop organically.



NATIONAL EXISTENCE AND NATIONAL HISTORIC LIFE


What is the essence of the historic life of a people? This question
has been on the program of the sociologist ever since society began to
free itself from the hold of the state. Prior to the French Revolution,
when society and the state were interlinked by thousands of strands,
the belief was current that the national state--particularly, the well
organized, centralized state--is the essence of the historic life of
a people. It was thought that as soon as a special form of government
was overturned the people would turn loose like a herd of wild men.
Then came the French Revolution and laid the prestige of the state low.
A national society began to organize, outside the state, and became a
historic factor of its own account. It then became evident that the
state was not the only essence of the historic life of a people, that
there were other factors equally, or even more important, and that
no national historic life could exist without them. Only a short
time before the French Revolution, a French historian said that the
Chinese nation, despite its living a national life, is only _existing_
in a historic sense, because it has no influence upon the historic
process, and plays no part in the production of cultural values for
the human race. In short, the Chinese nation lives outside the pale of
history. Now then, if a people like that of China, numbering hundreds
of millions of souls and living on its own soil under the auspices of
its own government, is placed in the category of nations that merely
_exist_, other nationalities of smaller numbers and having no national
government are certainly not to be classed as historically living
nations.

Liberal-minded thinkers, whose thought was influenced directly by the
events of the French Revolution endeavored to minimize the historic
glory of the state and reduce it to only one of the factors in the
historic life of a people. The conservatives on the other hand
endeavored to restore to the state its old glory. The controversy
was especially intense in Germany. Hegel, the father of conservative
philosophy in Germany, raised the state to the pedestal of a deity,
characterizing it as the aim and substance of historic development,
in general, and as the most significant phenomenon in history. Johann
Fichte, Hegel's contemporary and opponent, the father of the national
doctrine in Germany gave society the first place, and looked upon the
state as a necessary evil. He regarded culture, with the exception of
art, as opposed to the state. The essence of historic life was to him
not the political life of the people but its ethics, science, religion
and art. The state can have a positive attitude towards art alone--all
the other elements, such as science, religion and ethics, must enjoy
the freedom and independence which the state can not always grant to
them. According to him, therefore, not political acts but scientific
cognition and intellectual development are the driving forces in the
historic life of a people.

Even Kant himself--who gave preference to the state--recognized a
certain antagonism between ethics and the state. The state is the
realm of law, while ethics has its origin in conscience. The romantic
philosophy, which attempted to solve this problem from the standpoint
of esthetics culminated in the extreme individualism which found its
highest expression in the doctrines of Nietzsche. The superman, the
great personality which a people produces is according to this doctrine
the aim and end of history, and, naturally, that of the historic life
of a people. Herder hinted at this conclusion, Schelling developed
the doctrine and Nietzsche--the extremist of romanticists--perfected
it. But this historic personality of the romantic philosophers is not
only, as many are inclined to believe, an intellectual being. The great
philosopher or the great artist is not the historic personality, but
the man of great deeds; for history is first and foremost the realm of
action and not that of thought. Nietzsche's "blond beast," that is, the
man of great passions and great deeds, is the historic personality,
that motive power in historic life, in general, and the life of the
nation in particular.

       *       *       *       *       *

If we look upon Jewish history in the Diaspora in the light of classic,
or romantic, or even modern philosophy, we are bound to come to the
conclusion that the Jewish people ceased to live a historic national
life when it was exiled from its land. We have not lived a political
life during the past two thousand years; hence we could not contribute
to the civilization of mankind, for a national civilization is
possible only in a national state. True, we have produced many great
personalities, but the Jewish great personality in the Goluth is not
a great Jewish personality--in the majority of cases it is merely
an intellectual personality: a poet, an artist, a philosopher, etc.
Lord Beaconsfield certainly was a great historic personality; but who
would dare claim this statesman as a Jewish historic personality--the
product of Jewish culture? His deeds are chronicled in the history
of the English people; his historic accomplishments are the historic
accomplishments of the English people. It was not the Jew Disraeli
who procured the Suez Canal for the Jewish people, but the English
statesman, the Lord Beaconsfield who acquired it for the English people.

The Jewish great personality displayed its talent in various
intellectual fields, but did nothing in the political field, for which
it lacked the necessary conditions. For two thousand years, we have
lived an unhistoric life--the life of Chinese, with the exception that
the Chinese live on their own soil and were spared the persecutions
that fell to our lot. We eked out an existence; but we did not live.
Hence the entire history of the Jewish people for the past two thousand
years is a history of Jewish literature. Since the deterioration
of the Jewish state, Judaism has been a mere literary tendency in
general history; an interesting tendency, to be sure, occasionally
even original, but not more than a literary tendency. Not our historic
deeds but the abstract thought alone aided us in continuing our
existence--our philosophy, poetry, ethics, and religious cravings kept
us alive. We the bearers of that literary aspiration have been going
a-begging for thousands of years. We wandered from land to land and
from sea to sea without an end in view. All our political achievements
have been concentrated in our memory for the past two thousand years.
We remembered that we once were a people like every other people,
and by the mere force of these memories we went wherever we were
directed. Thus in our long travels we have become spiritualized, we
have converted a system of national culture with laws and regulations
about the state and its rulers to a system of theology. The ancient
Hebrew culture which is essentially a secular culture became to us a
sacred thing. The Hebrew prophets, who were historic personalities in
the full sense of the word, because they were men of action, statesmen
and warriors of political battles, were raised by us to the category of
saints in the theological sense. Thus the Hebrew culture was reduced to
a mere theological system.

We lived in a Roman environment, that is, in an environment which draws
its strength from ancient Rome, whose program was the state, practical
civilization, wars, conquests, revolts, political reorganization, etc.
In such an environment with its peculiar culture, there was no room for
the ancient Jewish culture based on ethical teachings, which, in order
to be able to maintain its existence, was compelled to confine itself
within the walls of the synagogue. In short, it is not only impossible
to create new cultural values in the Diaspora but even to continue the
thread of the ancient Hebrew idea, in essence an idea of civilization.
In exile, more so in Roman exile, there was no past and no future for
Judaism. Ancient Judaism was a historic and not a literary phenomenon;
hence, since it has been the destiny of the Jewish people for the past
two thousand years _to exist_, and not to live a normal national life,
it is even unable to preserve the memories of a historic past.

Then came Zionism. The nationalistic trend in history has influenced
the Jewish people too. Zionism came not from the East, but from the
West--from the centre of modern nationalism. Modern nationalism,
unlike that of ancient peoples, is not a cultural nationalism; modern
nationalism is nationalism in the sense of civilization and can be
understood only in connection with the industrial revolution and
the colonial expansion of the great nations. Zionism could not have
come from the East; for the East is politically and industrially not
sufficiently developed to produce a movement which is both national and
civilizing.

The Zionist platform is known to all: A publicly recognized and legally
secured home in Palestine for the Jews. What is the historic meaning of
this program? It is to convert an unhistoric people, that is, a people
that does not live a historic life, to a normal historic people and to
create for it all the factors necessary for a national civilization:
a Hebrew administration, a national Hebrew economic life, a Hebrew
education, a Hebrew social organization. The Zionist genius realized
that there cannot be even national Hebrew culture without a national
Hebrew civilization, for the culture of a people is only the roof on
the edifice of a national civilization, and woe to the culture which
lays its foundation upon personalities and does not draw from the wells
of the nation's civilization. At present there are only atoms connected
to one another by the ties of national remembrances, spirit, tradition,
and poetry. Zionism purports the building out of these atoms, which
are scattered throughout the world, of a national organism in the
land of the Hebrews. And since every national polity and civilization
is secular, with the exception of papal Rome and theocratic Tibet,
the function of Zionism is to create those conditions which will
again secularize Judaism, and raise it to the pedestal of its ancient
glory--to make it a historic force.

Goluth means: a scattered existence, and one of misery and affliction.
Zionism means: a national historic life. And he who prefers a national
life to a miserable existence has no other choice than to join the
Zionist ranks.



DRIVING FORCES: NATIONAL OR SPIRITUAL?


The days of religious wars have gone. The Inquisition is dead and
theocracy is dying even at Tibet. The modern man, be he Gentile or
Jew, no longer thinks _more theologico_ as in the Middle Ages, but
rather _more sociologico_. The time when a given religious dogma, a
categorical philosophic principle, or some definite spiritual force
was the driving power in history is far gone. Law and order in our
political and social life are not derived from books and principles,
but from life itself. Any attempt to return to the status quo ante
1789, is an assault on modern civilization, an attempt to re-establish
theocracy in its various forms.

In the life of our own people the process of secularization is going
on with the same rapidity as in the life of any other nation. Within
five decades we have created a secular literature in Hebrew as well as
in the other languages spoken by Jews, and all the forms of our modes
of life, public as well as private, have gone through the process of
secularization. Even the modern orthodox Jew, who observes all laws and
rituals, differs quite in his disposition of mind from the orthodox Jew
of the seventeenth or eighteenth century. In worldly affairs he is a
man of his time and thinks in the terms of his time. To the credit of
our people be it said that they have understood how to adapt themselves
to the conditions of the time.

It often happened that during the process of adaptation, Jews lost
their way and became separated from their people, but the bulk of
the nation has passed through the crisis caused by the process of
transition and made itself at home in the new conditions without
disintegration.

Though fanatics have profaned the tombstone of Maimonides by writing
on it: "Infidel and Heretic," Judaism ratified the peace which
Maimonides concluded in its behalf with Aristotelianism. All the hue
and cry against Maimonides was in the end of no avail, because at that
time the deed of Maimonides was a step forward towards progress. At
a time when the Roman Catholic Church fought Copernicus and Galileo
no representatives of Judaism participated in this fight, though the
Synagogue had an older historic reason to oppose Copernicus than had
the Roman Catholic Church.

In short, Judaism has never resisted real progress and has always
known how to make peace with the tendencies and currents of the time
without weakening its own position. As it has reconciled itself to new
conditions in the past so today it is making peace with the tendencies
of our own time. Separation of state from church and the overthrow
of theocracy and secularization of life are strong currents in our
contemporaneous history. In the life of our people, these tendencies of
the time have taken the form of nationalism and Zionism. Neither mean
alienation from the religion of our ancestors, as many misled rabbis
argue, but only imply that the Jewish religion has a definite place in
Jewish life, but cannot and should not rule our lives altogether.

This is a general human tendency which we should not and ought not
oppose; unfortunately, there are leading Jews who deem it their duty
to resist the forces of progress and to display medievalism at the
expense of our people and its prestige, and to the exclusion of all
modern and intellectual forces. This resistance we find represented in
two schools of thought, in the school of _old-fashioned Reform_ and in
that of the _semi-nationalistic spiritualism_. The representatives of
the one school argue that we are only a spiritual people and that we
are violating the spirit of Judaism if we strive to become a secular
people. The others do not go so far, but they also maintain that Jewish
nationalism is above all spiritual in nature and that, if Jewish
nationalism has a duty to perform, this duty consists in establishing
a Jewish _spiritual_ centre in Palestine. Both schools of thought may
be characterized as utterly reactionary, because they imply that we
should stand still, where humanity stood two or three hundred years
ago; that we should continue to submit to the law of the book instead
of submitting to the law of life, and that we should continue to live
as a spiritual people and give spiritualism the first place, while the
basis of present day civilization is secular in nature.

With regard to the philosophy of Judaism as represented by
old-fashioned Reform, it suffices to remember that every people on
earth had a period in its history when it considered itself a spiritual
people. And to the present day every civilized people firmly and
sincerely believes that it has a special mission to perform. The author
of "Oraisons Funèbres" formulated such a spiritual mission for the
French, Fichte did it for the Germans, and Katkov for the Russians.
But neither the French nor the Germans nor the Russian people clung
to their mission-theory. While appreciating these spiritual values,
they have outgrown spiritualism as the all embracing guide of the
nation's life and have settled down to work out their salvation in a
very prosaic and profane way. Either the Jewish people are subject to
the laws of historic progress, and then we have to keep pace with that
historical progress, or else we miraculously form an exception to the
rule and laws of history--we are an island in the ocean of life--and
then we ought to be today what we were two, three, five or twelve
hundred years ago.

Reform Judaism of today is surely not the Judaism of the year 1700 or
1500. It is a modern Judaism adapted to modern life. The same Jews,
who are arguing that we cannot give up spiritualism as the prime
factor of Jewish life and that we cannot stick to the old conception
of Judaism, have deemed it advisable to introduce reforms into a field
of Judaism that was considered the very stronghold of spiritualism in
the Jewish religion. That is where the contradiction and confusion come
in. So far as religion is concerned, these reformers conform to the
requirements of the time, but on the other hand they still cling to
the spiritualistic supremacy in Jewish life, to the theory of Israel's
mission, as if they were Jews of the seventeenth century.

Either Judaism cannot undergo a change and must remain what it always
was--and then reform is unjustifiable--or Judaism can adapt itself to
modern life and make peace with the tendencies of the time--and then
why stick to the fictitious supremacy of the spiritual side of Judaism?

No less contradictory and confusing is the philosophy of the other
school of thought that preaches spiritual nationalism as the only
solution of the Jewish question. If spiritualism is no longer the prime
factor in life, and if it is no longer in a position to maintain its
hold on the peoples of the earth as it did in the days gone by when
men thought _more theologico_, how can it hold its grip on the Jewish
people? And how can a purely spiritual centre even in Palestine answer
the Jewish question?

Did Mecca, the centre of Mohamedan spiritualism, prevent the conquest
of Egypt, Morocco, Tunis and Tripoli by the Christian nations? (And
Mecca is the spiritual centre not of a people of fourteen but of a
religious community of two hundred millions.)

Despite Mecca and despite the pan-Islamic movement, the holy war
proclaimed by the Caliph two years ago was a failure. Instead of a
united Islam we have today an independent Mecca, an Egypt that is loyal
to England, and an Algeria and a Morocco that are loyal to France.
If Mecca could not contain Islam politically and could not save the
Islamitic nations from being conquered, how could a much smaller Jewish
_spiritual_ centre in Palestine save the Jewish people politically and
nationally? This is the question which we would like to submit to these
"spiritual" nationalists.

These Neo-Ahad-Ha'amists are by no means better than the adherents
of old-fashioned Reform; both cling to the spiritualistic supremacy
in Jewish life, and both oppose the necessary gradual secularization
of Judaism. Both would have us stand still, or, if possible, draw us
back to a medievalism that has no room in modern life, and both are
reactionaries in the full meaning of the term. They are our "dark
forces" and the time seems very near when we will have to rise against
both and overcome them. There is reason to fear that in the hour of
fate they will put obstacles in the way of our redemption.



THE ETERNAL CYCLE


Every revolutionary phenomenon in life, every political catastrophe,
upsets men's minds and shakes old rooted opinions to their very
foundations. The sudden break with tradition affects both the mind
of the individual as well as that of the collective body. It brings
about a radical change in views and sentiments and often in the whole
world-concept. The gloomy pessimist may suddenly become a joyous
optimist and vice versa. The earthquake of Lisbon of 1755 not only
shook the belief in Providence of the young Goethe, but turned numerous
orthodox circles into agnostics. The French Revolution broke the
conservative spirit that was prevailing in Western Europe and put an
end to the mediaeval conception of the state, just as the appearance
of Bonaparte brought about the revival of the longing for Caesaric
splendor and the cult of the superman.

The Russian Revolution, successful till now, has naturally greatly
affected the minds of our contemporaries, and compelled them to revise
their attitude on many historical forces and to consider the course of
recent history in an entirely new light. Men who never believed in the
political ability of the Slavonic race and, therefore, thought that
Russia was doomed as a political power, are now admiring the political
genius of the Russian people and the tactfulness of its leaders. Many
Jewish contemporaries, who considered the Jewish case hopeless because
of the terrible oppressions directed against our brethren in Russia by
the representatives of the old regime, are now joyous optimists and
think that since millions of Russian Jews have been freed the Jewish
question is completely solved. To the minds of these men the Jewish
question will sink into forgetfulness within a short time because
the Jews will enjoy everywhere freedom and liberty and will live in
complete happiness.

This is the attitude of just those people who but the other day were
convinced of the hopelessness of the Jewish cause and were worried
over the sufferings that the future had in store for the Jews. This
radical outburst of optimism, understandable at the present juncture,
nevertheless betrays a naive intellect and a lack of historical
intelligence. We all hope that the successful Russian Revolution,
next to the world war the most important event in the history of the
twentieth century, will open a new era for our people, an era of
happiness and peaceful development but, at the same time, we should
never lose sight of the fact that there is so far nothing new under the
sun. There is only a definite number of forces and energies prevailing
in history and each and every one of these forces has in turn its term
of domination. History is only a continuation of biological nature plus
human intelligence. There is only a certain definite amount of matter
and energy in the realm of nature as well as in history, and energy
in history can be destroyed as little as energy in nature. And just
as there is always a substitution and constant change of forms in the
realm of nature, so there is in history. Progress never assumes the
shape of a straight line but that of a curve. The most glorious period
in human history may be followed by a period of decay and misery. The
golden era may be followed by an era of iron, to use a parable of Ovid.

There is in the realm of history as well as in the realm of nature
an eternal cycle. The old Graeco-Roman historian, Polybius, already
recognized the eternal cycle in the development of the state when he
graphically described this development from despotism, monarchism and
feudalism, and from republicanism, democracy and ochlocracy back again
to despotism.

We, as Jews, have too often experienced ups and downs to believe
that a happy era will last forever. The Jews in Spain not only saw
golden days of complete happiness and freedom, but formed for a time
the vanguard of human civilization. Yet within one hundred years the
Spanish Inquisition annihilated 200,000 Jews while the other 400,000
were compelled to leave the country. Today, Spain is again inviting the
Jews to settle in the land, promising them complete liberty and freedom
where Torquamada's rule was supreme.

There was a time when the Jews of Poland lived in happiness. Today, the
Poles are harassing the Jews in every possible way and are scheming and
devising plans to break up Judaism in Poland. In Rome, where the Jews
only one hundred years ago were humiliated and depressed, a Jewish
mayor dared to criticize the Pope openly and to challenge all the
forces of mediaevalism in the Eternal City. England, that invented the
ritual murder accusation, has today a Jew as its Lord Chief Justice. On
the other hand, the Jews of North Africa, who were politically supreme
in the Atlas countries, are today the most oppressed human beings on
God's earth.

All these ups and downs which we have experienced ever since we have
lived dispersed warrant a certain reserve in our judgment on phenomena
in life, even when these phenomena be of the most revolutionary nature.
Too much optimism and too much overstating of matters must subsequently
lead to disappointment, to despair, even to ruin. Our age as a people,
our historical and general intellectual experience, do not warrant too
much optimism even at present.

The Jews are a force in history. The other historical forces must take
an attitude to and judgment from Judaism. This attitude and judgment
are likely to change. The change that is necessary to take place from
time to time is not always a product of malice, but a product of
certain factors which the individual, be he even the most powerful, is
often unable to control. If an oppressed people is set free, all the
suppressed energies in it begin to pour out suddenly; this may lead to
the reaction against the Jews. The people sheltering us may often need
a scapegoat and it will without fail take the Jews for that purpose.
National as well as international crises may often affect the attitude
of a people to the Jews or the attitude of the dominating class to
the Jews. In this case we will always be the sufferers. Because of
the hostile encounter between clericalism and liberalism in France
the Jews had to suffer. The Dreyfus affair is still in the memory of
every contemporary. When the liberal forces in France finally emerged
victors from the struggle, another Jewish group--the Hungarian--felt
the effects of this struggle in a very unpleasant way. The Clericals
not being in a position to do any more harm to the French Jews began
to awaken the anti-Semitic instincts of the Hungarians, and set about
to create an anti-Semitic movement in Hungary. Even the Polish Jews
had to suffer because of the victory of liberalism in France, for
the Clericals in Poland took revenge on the Jews for their defeat in
France.

As to the future of the Jews in Russia, it is hard to predict whether
or not it will be a happy one. The mind of the Russian people is still
a blank. The Russian people have been kept in ignorance; their will is
not domesticated and their mind not trained. The Russians themselves,
or, to be correct, the Great Russians do not know the Jews. They have
never lived together. On account of the emancipation the Jews of the
Pale will emigrate to the interior of Russia and will settle in the
midst of the Great Russians, and they will become active in various
spheres and fields.

How will the presence and the activity of this new neighbor react on
the Russian mind? Will the presence of the Jews in the midst of the
Great Russians result in the development of friendship or will the
reverse be the case? And if a new crisis should break out in Russia,
and a Russian Government should need a scapegoat to save its neck, will
it or will it not pick out the Jews to serve as the scapegoat? Russia
is a land of unlimited possibilities for good and for bad; there are no
prophets nowadays to predict future happenings, especially since the
mind of the Russian people is still a question mark.

Thus, besides the eternal cycle and besides the necessary ups and downs
in history, we have now a special reason to be careful in our judgment
and to moderate our optimism. But even taking for granted that the
Jewish development in Russia will be unhampered, does it already mean
that the Jewish question is solved? Does the Jewish question consist of
bread and butter and human rights? Can the ideal of a people as old as
the Jews be satisfied with just being permitted to live as individuals?
Can it be the meaning and aim of 4000 years of Jewish history that the
zenith of our development as a people should consist in being permitted
to live among the people with mere civic equality? Is that what we have
struggled for during the centuries?

Greater and more civilized people than the Russians have not succeeded
in solving the Jewish question. Why then should we expect that from
Russia will come the salvation, especially as only one-quarter of our
people is today living in Russia?

The Jewish question can become simplified when we are liberated by
the one people or the other, but it can be solved entirely only by
the Jewish people itself. The Russian Revolution means for the Jews
freedom to breathe and to move, freedom from prison and captivity, but
even the free man has his own problem to solve. Life only begins when
the prison-doors open.



JEWS AND RACE CONSCIOUSNESS


At the beginning of the war there were many who ascribed the world
conflagration to a conflict of races. At present there are many who
would either belittle the rôle of race as a factor in history or
eliminate it altogether. These people describe the theories of race as
"race mythology" and consider them the invention of scholars rather
than facts of objective reality.

Among a certain section of the Jewish people this negation of race
theories is very popular. If there are not races in this world, then
assimilation is the easiest and best way to solve the Jewish question.

It may or may not be true that race is a biological category, but
it is true beyond a doubt that the consciousness of race among all
peoples always was and will be an historic factor of prime importance.
Therefore, it matters little whether or not race is a biological fact.
History and its interpretation are concerned only with consciousness of
race.

If consciousness of race were to be recognized only because it exists
and has always existed, people might say: "So other superstitions have
likewise existed." The fact, however, is that the consciousness of race
has a definite psychological basis, although we know next to nothing
about its biological foundation. We see that the co-existence of like
individuals in a definite place and during a long period of time,
who are held together by a common ancestry, by a common destiny and
interest, and the interaction resulting from such co-existence produces
new phenomena and radiates creative energies which cannot be simply
reduced to the qualities and forces of the individual minds. These
energies radiating from the co-existence of a group of individuals
are new, original and creative. They are more than actualized
potentialities, and are to the individuals sharing in the co-existence
as are sounds which the great artist draws from the violin to the
violin itself. The energies emanating from this co-existence often
assume shape and form which differ from the energies of the separate
individuals. They appear rather one-sided and unbalanced. For instance,
the separate individuals have about an equally large or small amount
of religious or æsthetic desire, an equally large or small sense of
justice or morality.

If the energies radiating from the co-existence would comprise and
express the will of the individuals only, the culture of the ethnic
group would necessarily consist of equal portions and exhibit a
proportionate amount of logic, aesthetics and ethics. But we see that
every great culture gravitates in a certain direction. Hellenism
tends towards the artistic-philosophical, Judaism towards the
religious-ethical, and Romanism towards the political-legal. We thus
see that the manifestation of the mind of the race being one-sided is
more than the sum total of the expression of all the individual members
of the race, and as soon as we recognize a certain psychological or
psychical unity, of a certain group of people, we must also recognize
that this unity is modeled and shaped by time. In course of time this
psychological or psychical unit becomes enveloped in traditions and
experiences which make it stronger from day to day. As in biology many
think that the function in time creates an organ, so the new energies
radiating from the co-existence of a group of people become in course
of time something organic in the mind of those people. This is the
psychological basis of race consciousness and since earliest time the
various peoples, all of whom had an outspoken race consciousness except
those savages who cannot count, have recognized or felt that their
consciousness of race was more than belief--that it was a psychological
reality.

Of all the ancient peoples none had more marked race consciousness and
racial feeling than the Jews and Greeks. It is very characteristic
of Greek race consciousness that Greek philosophers, when discussing
ethical or political subjects, have only the Hellenic people in mind.
Their notions of justice and peace were applied only to the Hellenic
people. The ancient Jews were not so one-sided. Yet they, too, had
a well developed race consciousness which showed not merely in the
religious idea that they were the chosen people, but in a very general
acceptance of the belief that they were a distinct unit. Even the
call to righteousness uttered by the prophet is colored by racial
motives: "Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness; ye that
seek the Lord. Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn and to the hole
of the pit whence ye are digged." Another of the prophets, Ezekiel,
even speculated as to the origin of the Jewish race. All the terms,
_ger_, _nakhri_, _akum_ and others used by ancient Jews to describe
non-believers characterized non-Jews with reference to race also. The
feeling of racial consciousness among Jews to the present day and the
consciousness of the isolation of that race are best expressed in
the popular Hebrew term, "Umoth ha-Olam," the people of the world.
The "Umoth ha-Olam" are the non-Jews, as the "barbaroi" were the
non-Greeks. This throws light on the mental disposition of the Jews.
While, in the eyes of the Greek, the non-Greek is an inferior, being a
"barbaros," in the eyes of the Jews the non-Jew is simply different and
not necessarily inferior. Even the term _goy_, which is so much abused
by anti-Semites, means only non-Jew. But while the Jew never held the
non-Jew in contempt merely for differences of race, he had always and
still has intense feeling for his own race.

In theological periods of history the fight against Judaism was perhaps
a conflict of theologies only. Today, however, a fight against Judaism
is inevitably a fight against the Jewish race. In times of old the
religious motives of Judaism seem to have been the prime factors in
Jewish life. Today the driving powers in Jewish history are not so
much religious as race and national consciousness. It is, therefore,
characteristic of those Jews whose Jewish backbone is broken to deny
the existence of the race and to scoff at race consciousness in general.

Race consciousness is not a myth invented by the professors, but a fact
of life.



AHAD HA'AM


The sixtieth anniversary of Ahad Ha'am, the foremost Hebrew thinker of
his time, is a notable event in Hebrew literature, and will no doubt
be celebrated by Hebraists all over the world in a manner worthy of
the man and of the thinker. Next to Bialik, the great Hebrew poet,
Ahad Ha'am is today the most popular Jew among the Jewries of the
East and the best known representative of Hebrew thought among Jewish
intellectuals in the West. His name is identified with the formulation
of the program of Hebrew nationalism and the creation of a Hebrew
cultural centre in Palestine. Unlike other thinkers who consider their
convictions their own private affair, Ahad Ha'am had the courage of his
convictions and defended them against great odds. He had the courage to
take his stand against the giant, Herzl, and the powerful dialectician
and publicist, Max Nordau. He knew that the fight against Herzl, when
the great leader of Zionism was at his height, would not win him
friends, but he had the daring to take up the fight.

For Ahad Ha'am the question of political Zionism and that of cultural
Zionism as represented by himself, were matters of principle and had to
be fought out sooner or later. While Ahad Ha'am fought against Herzl
and Nordau and against the other powerful representatives of political
Zionism, he had no personalities in mind and fought for principles
only. The whole position of things was such that Ahad Ha'am could
at that time have had no hope to win the struggle because political
Zionism was at its height and because Theodor Herzl was the shining
star in the firmament of Jewish political life. But disregarding
the disadvantageous position in which he found himself, he fought
courageously until he believed the danger was passed.

We mention this fight against Herzl and Nordau because it best
characterizes the man, Ahad Ha'am. Though his philosophy of life is a
philosophy of abstract ideas, he is at the same time a man full of life
and temperament, a hard public worker and a political Jew in the best
sense of the term. A great deal of his popularity must be ascribed not
only to his philosophy and his system of Jewish politics, but also to
his manliness and wonderful qualities of character.

As a Hebrew thinker, Ahad Ha'am represents the last point in the line
of Jewish thought which can be characterized as Hebrew intellectualism
as distinguished from Hebrew irrationalism and mysticism, which found
its expression in the teachings of the Hassidic sect.

Since the rise of the theoretical Kabbalah in Spain in the thirteenth
century, which must be considered a reaction against the system of
intellectualism as laid down by Maimonides, we can observe in Jewish
history two spiritual tendencies striving for dominance: Irrationalism
in all its forms and Intellectualism in all its aberrations. Ahad
Ha'am represents the line of development, of Maimonides, the Gaon of
Wilna, Krochmal. The parallel line to the theoretical Kabbalah is the
practical Kabbalah which began in Palestine in the sixteenth century
and Hassidism which originated in Poland in the eighteenth century.
The intellectualists maintain that the prime essential of the soul is
intellect and that Judaism is based not on metaphysical will but on
intellectual cognition. For our mediaeval intellectualists and those
of the eighteenth century, this premise resulted in the conception
of a Judaism which lays more stress on knowledge (Torah) than on the
practice of the religious ceremonies (Avodah). It is, of course,
understood that the older representatives of Jewish Intellectualism
were as God-fearing and observing as their mystical opponents. But
basing Judaism on knowledge and cognition, they maintained that the
first thing a Jew should do is to study and accept the advice of old:
Thou shalt recognize the God of thy fathers.

In opposition to these teachings is the conception of Judaism as
represented by Kabbalists and Hassidim. These lay more stress on the
practice of Judaism, claiming that Judaism is primarily a matter of
will and not of knowledge. It is not a coincidence that while among
Jewish intellectualists in the East (Mithnagdim) the knowledge of the
Talmud and of Rabbinic Judaism is widely spread because they consider
this the first duty of the Jew, there prevails among the Hassidim
ignorance of the Talmud and of Rabbinic Judaism.

Ahad Ha'am is today the representative of Intellectual Judaism as
conceived by his time, as the Gaon of Wilna was in his day the
representative of intellectual Judaism. It is very characteristic of
this Jewish school of thought that a man like the Gaon of Wilna has
written a system of geometry and was interested in mathematics and
logic. With his logical mind he created a new method of studying the
Talmud which is marked by simplicity and clearness. Ahad Ha'am achieved
in the domain of Hebrew thought and literature what the Gaon of Wilna
had achieved in Talmudic methodology. As the Gaon of Wilna did away
with "Pilpul" sophistry, so Ahad Ha'am did away with the confusing and
unproductive "Hakira," unsystematic discussion of abstract thought, and
introduced economy of thought and of expression--a clear terminology
and a systematic formulation of principles and ideas. That is what has
given him the leading position in modern Hebrew literature.

Ahad Ha'am's greatness does not consist of these formal innovations
only. He has enriched Hebrew literature with a philosophic ideology
of his own which has greatly influenced modern Hebrew thought. Ahad
Ha'amism, as this system is called, was not less productive at the
beginning of the twentieth century than the Yeshibah of Volozhin, the
work of the Wilna Gaon, at the start of the nineteenth century. As a
matter of fact Ahad Ha'amism is the modern development of the ideas
which came from Volozhin. Without Volozhin there would be no modern
Hebrew literature, no modern Hebrew thought and no Ahad Ha'am.

While the Jewish teachings of Ahad Ha'am can easily be explained as
the continuation of a certain historical tendency in Judaism, the
philosophy of Ahad Ha'am consists of many different systems and cannot
be so readily surveyed. His own disciples claim that he is following
in the footsteps of Krochmal and that he is thus a disciple of Hegel.
This, however, is only partly true. One finds, moreover, in the
philosophy of Ahad Ha'am elements of Kant, Spencer, of modern French
sociology and even of Nietzsche. The unifying and productive mind of
Ahad Ha'am has absorbed these various philosophic elements and turned
them into an organic unit. For this reason Ahad Ha'am cannot be called
an eclectic. Even Kant had his predecessors, was influenced by various
philosophers and took up their suggestions.

Ahad Ha'am is one of the few modern Hebrew leaders who is as much
European as Jew, and who is not on less intimate terms with European
thought than with Jewish. Owing to these facts he succeeded in
Europeanizing Hebrew literature and in raising it to the high level it
now holds.

In the last few years Ahad Ha'am has made peace with Zionism because
he thinks that Zionism has accepted his views on Palestine. His
appearance at the 11th Zionist Congress at Vienna was thought by friend
and opponent alike to mean that he had made peace with the Zionist
organization. He has in any case supported the Zionist organization
in its efforts in Palestine and has approved the plan to establish a
system of Hebrew educational institutions in the Holy Land. But whether
Ahad Ha'am became more political or whether the Zionist organization
has come nearer to Ahad Ha'amism remains a question. The many pupils
of Ahad Ha'am, however, and the Zionists in all lands, are happy that
the uncontested leader of modern Hebrew thought and literature is to be
found today with the rank and file of Zionism.



THE TRANSVALUATION OF VALUES


Even a language is subject to the force of fate. Its value in life and
its meaning for the life of a people change constantly with the great
changes of life. Only one hundred and twenty years ago there were those
who believed in the possibility of the realization of the medieval
idea that a day would come when all the peoples of the earth would
speak one language and all linguistic barriers would soon disappear.
Today language stands next to the state as the most important factor
in the life of a nation; in many cases it is as strong a factor as
the economical and political forces. This is especially true of the
so-called nationality states where the various peoples can show their
line of national demarcation chiefly by the language they use. Today
language is not only one of the strongest factors in the national
life of a people, but is also of great weight in universal politics.
The future historians, in describing the ups and downs of the present
war, will not fail to observe that one of the causes that threatened,
for a time, the existence of the Hapsburg Empire was the apparently
unimportant fact that the people in Germany and Bohemia could not come
to terms about the linguistic barrier. The language quarrels in Bohemia
were the cause of so many political upheavals that they shook the very
foundations of Austria; they have influenced, to a large extent, the
international crisis during the last three years.

Since language has developed into such a tremendous force, all the
meditations and calculations of the philosophers of the eighteenth
century about the possibility of one language for the entire human
race have proven to be empty visions--soap bubbles of philosophic and
humanitarian dreamers. If the living provincial languages of small
peoples, the Bohemians, Lithuanians, Armenians, and so forth, have
become important political factors in the lives of the nations, and,
in consequence thereof, an important momentum in international life,
the so-called dead languages, such as Hebrew, Gaelic, Welsh and many
others, have become driving forces in the lives of their peoples
and may even decide their fate and future. The development of these
dead languages during the nineteenth century is as interesting and
fascinating as the growth in political importance of such living,
provincial languages as Bohemian, Lithuanian, and so forth. Most
remarkable of all is the development of the importance of Hebrew during
the nineteenth century.

One hundred years ago, Hebrew was a purely philological and theological
proposition. The knowledge of Hebrew had quite a different value from
what it has today. To the Eastern Jew, Hebrew had the meaning of a holy
tongue only; to the Western Jew, Hebrew was a sort of a cultural luxury
which was very much appreciated as such, but had no national value. The
love for Hebrew in the West, which, by the way, was stronger than we
today imagine, smelled faintly of a museum. These conditions prevailed
in the West for several centuries. In the East, however, conditions
changed with kaleidoscopic rapidity. With the spread of the Haskalah
eastward, Hebrew achieved another value altogether; it had a different
function to perform. The adherents of the Haskalah used Hebrew not as a
holy tongue, as did the orthodox, nor as a theological proposition, as
did many of the Western Jews, but as a medium to spread culture among
the Jews and to introduce European ideas in the ghetto. The Hebrew
writer of the middle of the nineteenth century considered himself a
sort of cultural missionary. The best means to enlighten the people
and to counteract superstition was, at that time, Hebrew literature.
By the end of the Seventies and the beginning of the Eighties, Hebrew
experienced another transvaluation, chiefly because of the failure of
the Haskalah and the awakening of the national spirit among the Jews.
The writers of that time considered Hebrew no longer a means to an
end--that is to say, an agency to spread culture among the Jews--but
an object in itself. People began to realize that Hebrew is not only a
linguistic theological proposition, as was thought at the beginning of
the nineteenth century, but that it is the woof and warp of national
culture. The Hebrew writers of the last third of the nineteenth
century, consequently, began to speak of the Hebrew tongue as a certain
culture and Hebrew ideas as the ideas of the Jewish people. In short,
Hebrew became the national cultural force in contradistinction to the
humanitarian cultural force that it was thought to be in the middle of
the nineteenth century.

The Hebrew writers of the Eighties and Nineties no longer considered
themselves cultural missionaries of the Jews, as did the writers of
the preceding generation, but rather as the representatives of Hebrew
thought and Hebrew culture. The most conspicuous representative of this
school of thought is Ahad Ha'am, the father and systematizer of Hebrew
cultural nationalism. Ahad Ha'am himself witnessed the transition from
cultural Hebrew to political Hebrew. Although about twenty years ago
he was the embodiment of Hebrew thought, his school had to make room
for another conception of Hebrew, a conception to which, we think, the
future belongs. It is the national political conception of Hebrew in
opposition to its purely cultural conception.

To the modern Hebraist, Hebrew is neither a holy tongue nor a medium
to spread culture among the Jews, nor yet a national cultural idea, as
it is to the disciples of Ahad Ha'am, but a national political force;
accordingly, he strives to secularize Hebrew and to introduce into it
all the elements of secular civilization and to make it the expression
of the movement of life of his people. The modern Hebrew writer
would think in Hebrew not only on subjects Jewish, would not only
philosophize in Hebrew on Jewish cultural and theological problems,
but would write in Hebrew on all secular subjects and try to find
the Hebrew expression for all the movements of life, especially the
life of our people. This striving to secularize Hebrew has enriched
our national tongue enormously. We now know more Hebrew than did
our forefathers one hundred years ago. Because of our striving to
secularize Hebrew we were compelled to go to all the Hebrew sources of
antiquity and to find Hebrew terms for things which, for the last two
thousand years, have not been described in Hebrew, because the writing
of Hebrew was concentrated on theological and philosophical subjects. A
few years ago a Russian Jew wrote an agricultural text book in Hebrew,
which created a sensation among Hebrew circles because the author
re-created Hebrew agricultural terminology. Since the ancient Jews
were agriculturists, they had of course an agricultural terminology
of their own which had, however, been forgotten during our Diaspora
life. The author of the above mentioned book re-established that
Hebrew agricultural terminology. Other Hebrew writers have produced
similar results in other literary and scientific endeavors. A small
booklet by the late Dr. Schereschevsky, for instance, surprised the
Hebrew public by the abundance of Hebrew scientific terms and by his
re-establishment of a Hebrew scientific terminology. The modern Hebrew
writer is conscious of the fact that Hebrew is bound some day to become
a concrete political force and that, to gain that end, it must admit
all the elements of life and establish the life of our people as the
only agency of our general and Jewish education. This necessitates the
secularization and, one might say, the humanization of Hebrew. The
real modern Hebrew writers are, therefore, not those who can write a
treatise in Hebrew on medieval Jewish philosophy but those who can
write a Hebrew essay or Hebrew book on scientific or sociological
topics.

The tendency to secularize Hebrew is spreading all over the world; it
is to be hoped that the day is near when a considerable section of our
people will use Hebrew with the same ease as any other people uses its
national tongue. The secularization of Hebrew is a clear sign of our
approaching national liberation.



A TURNING POINT IN JEWISH HISTORY


In ancient times, nationality and state were identical. The destruction
of the state always involved the destruction of the nationality. This
was, in fact, the case with many peoples whose states were destroyed
by conquerors. Only the Jews are an exception to the rule. The
Jewish state was destroyed, the Jewish nationality was not. Even the
dispersion of the Jews all over the globe could not destroy and did
not destroy the Jewish nationality. On the contrary, the diaspora life
of the Jews, with all its evils and troubles, woes and tribulations,
sorrows and pains, only served to intensify the national consciousness
of the Jews and to strengthen their hopes of national redemption. But
the chancellors of the governments, always in the habit of dealing
with concrete facts, did not take the sentiments of Jewish individuals
into consideration. Seeing that the Jews have no homeland, no national
sovereignty and not even an intellectual and spiritual centre, they
pronounced the Jewish nationality dead forever. From the point of
view of this now antiquated conception of nationality, the European
governments could not be blamed for their attitude toward the Jews as a
people, for the orthodox notion of nationality always implies an ethnic
unit that enjoys national sovereignty, or, at least, is living on its
own land, even though it may be dominated by others. The governments,
in their attitude toward the Jews as a people, followed a certain
principle that had to be maintained as long as no substitute could be
found for it. Today it seems that the old principle of nationality has
been replaced by another and that the present notion of nationality
does not necessarily imply that an ethnic group must either enjoy
national sovereignty or live on its own soil. The Jews, who have now
been recognized as a nationality not only by Great Britain but, as we
have been informed, by several other great powers, are still living in
dispersion and have none of the characteristics of the concrete makeup
of other nationalities.

This change was brought about both by the Jews themselves, who for the
past thirty or forty years have begun to assert their nationality and
to claim the right to which every nationality is entitled, namely, a
national homeland, and by the peculiar discrepancy between principle
and life. The European governments, following a certain principle,
refused to consider the Jews a nationality, but in practical life the
Jews were always considered a nationality of their own. While the
modern state emancipated the Jew on the condition that he emancipate
himself from Judaism, modern society, on the other hand, refused to
admit him just because he was a Jew, and thus counteracted and opposed
the emancipation policy of the government. Modern society is intensely
nationalistic and will only recognize those as its true members who
belong to it, not only socially and economically, but also nationally
and racially. Since the Jews are not Slavs or Teutons or Anglo-Saxons
but Jews, they simply were not admitted as full-fledged members in the
society of these races and nations, and whenever they made an attempt
to penetrate into society by force and _en masse_, they were only too
quickly ejected by a wave of anti-Semitism. So that while the states
emancipated the Jews, on the condition that they become full-fledged
Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, Austrians, etc., because it considered
the Jewish nationality dead and done for, the nations themselves, being
nearer to life and its movements than the bureaucrats of the government
chancelleries, felt that the Jews do form a national society of their
own and are by no means nationally dead. The official recognition of
the Jews as a nationality on the part of a modern state will, we are
convinced, put an end to this difference in attitude and policy towards
the Jews on the part of the government and of the nation.

Besides the national self-assertion of the Jews during the past thirty
years, we find that their rôle as intellectual and spiritual factors in
history led to the present change of mind of the European governments
in regard to Jewish nationality. It is by no means pure accident that
two mighty Anglo-Saxon nations and governments, Great Britain and the
United States of America, should be the first among the great powers to
recognize the right of the Jews to a national homeland of their own and
thus to recognize publicly the nationality of the Jews. If the ancient
Jewish mind, as it expressed itself in the Bible, ever influenced
a great race and helped to shape its destinies and policies, it was
the Anglo-Saxon race that it influenced. For the past four hundred
years the greatest production of Jewish genius, the Bible, has been a
powerful factor in the life of the Anglo-Saxon race, and as soon as the
Anglo-Saxons freed themselves from medievalism, they began to treat the
Jews living among them with consideration and fairness, even before
they were officially emancipated.

Besides, the American Government is the only government of the Great
Powers that never pursued any hostile policy against the Jews, because
its very establishment was based on emancipation from medievalism. Of
all the powers which have now come to recognize the Jewish nationality
and its right to a homeland, America is, we dare say, the only one that
is inspired solely by motives of pure idealism. For America surely has
no political interests or ambitions in the Near East and is led only by
the unselfish wish that the Jews, after a life of exile of two thousand
years, should return to a normal national life and enter the great
family of nations on equal terms. In saying this, we by no means wish
to imply that the other great powers who have recognized the Jewish
nationality have done so from political motives only, and that politics
only were instrumental in bringing about their decision to help the
Jews establish a homeland in Palestine. We are, moreover, convinced
that England and Italy, Russia, and probably France, which, as we have
been informed, are now taking a very favorable attitude toward the
establishment of the Jewish homeland in Palestine, have done so because
they recognized that the Jews are a people in themselves and that they
are entitled to be given the possibility of living a normal national
life. These powers, inspired by noble motives, now say to the Jews, "Go
and build up a national life of your own and we shall help you. Go and
be Jews as much as you like and we shall not interfere with your Jewish
affairs and your national happiness."

We are, however, afraid that many Jews themselves misunderstand or
misconstrue the meaning of the decision of these powers. If the Jews
go to Palestine, they must live there with the object of building up
in the country of their forefathers a new Jewish life and establishing
a Jewish homeland there; they must do it as Jews only, not as Russians
or Germans, not Britons, Austrians or Italians, but as Jews. They
must consider themselves an object in themselves. They must, first
of all, look after their own affairs and their own happiness. While
always having the welfare of humanity in mind, they must not consider
themselves the protégé of a certain state or race or nation, and they
must not be under the impression that, when given the possibility of
living a national life of their own, they are called upon to defend
interests other than their own.

No British or American statesman believes that the establishment of
the Jewish homeland in Palestine is possible without the consent of
all the great powers, irrespective of their present mutual relations,
and as soon as one power or group of powers finds out that the Jewish
Palestine is not primarily looked upon as the homeland of the Jewish
nation, but the political stronghold of another power or group of
powers, there will be no unanimity in regard to the Jewish Palestine
when peace is discussed; and without unanimity of the powers there will
be no Jewish Palestine, because no belligerent power will continue
the war one day longer, only because it is anxious to establish a
Jewish state in Palestine. But as a matter of fact the powers which,
led by noble motives, have expressed their willingness to favor the
establishment of the Jewish homeland in Palestine, have only uttered a
noble desire. There can be no talk of anxiety on their part, but only
of consent to permit us to rebuild our nation. These powers, because
they are not led by motives of war politics only, but by political
foresight and idealism, do not want us to serve other purposes than our
own, because they know that unless we look only after our own affairs
we will not succeed.

For the time being, the Jewish people are divided into various
groups, each group serving the country in which it lives to the best
of its ability. Today there is not, and cannot be, a supreme Jewish
leadership, a Jewish national assembly or a general Jewish congress.
Each and every Jewish group is entitled to work for the future of the
Jewish people under given conditions only. The English Jews can ask
their government to do something for the Jewish cause and so can the
French, Italian, Russian, German, Austrian and American Jews; every one
of the respective governments can extend its sympathy and help, can
promise its help in establishing the Jewish homeland in Palestine only
to the Jews of their respective lands, but not to the Jewish people at
large, for the Jewish people are today divided into hostile camps, just
as is civilized humanity.

Our assimilationists in every country, here as well as in Germany,
in England as well as in France and Austria, have been telling their
respective governments that those Jews who aspire to establish a
Jewish homeland in Palestine are disloyal citizens and are conspiring
against their own country. In England and in America, where the
governments follow a broad-minded and liberal policy, no attention is
paid to such hypocritical talk. But in Austria, Germany and Turkey,
conditions are different. There the influential assimilationists are
still _personae gratae_ with their governments, and since they are
capable of every crime, if they can only see their way clear to break
Jewish nationalism, they will no doubt lose no time in pointing out
to their governments that Jewish nationalists, though they displayed
heroism on the battle-field, are not loyal to their countries and are
crossing the plans of the Central Powers in the Near East. They will
tell the governments that the Jewish nationalists are conspiring with
the enemies of their governments against the interests of the Central
Powers in the Orient; the result may be that the government of the
Central Powers, listening to this misleading talk, may embark on a
Jewish policy opposing that of the Entente and may start to persecute
Zionists and all who sympathize with Jewish nationalism, thus making
the life of eastern European Jewry, now greatly under the control of
the Teutonic Powers, still more bitter.

Therein lies the danger of our misconstruing the high-minded
declaration of the British Cabinet. The statesmen of the Entente Powers
certainly do not wish to imperil the existence of European Jewry, nor
do they wish to have their policy misconstrued by the Central Powers.
These statesmen want the liberation of small nationalities and not
their oppression. These statesmen also know that if the Jews in the new
Palestine will not be, first of all, pro-Jewish, there will not be the
Jewish Palestine which they wish to see established. By misconstruing
the declaration of the British Government, we are implicitly acting
against the spirit and noble motives of this declaration and, needless
to say, we are acting against our own elemental interests. A Jewish
Palestine is only possible with the consent of all the powers, and
since it is desirable that it should be a product of the consensus of
opinion among all the powers, every act on our part must be avoided
that may create the impression that in the anxiety to build up a
national homeland in Palestine the Jewish people are becoming political
tools of any power or group of powers. This will, in the end, spell
ruin for us and might, besides, endanger the life of millions of our
people in central and in eastern Europe. We have been told on good
Zionist authority in this country, that the American Government,
appreciating the present complicated international situation, is
anxious to remain in the background with regard to the establishment of
the Jewish homeland in Palestine, though it is a noble and unselfish
champion of the cause. We wish that the Jews everywhere would take
an example from the wisdom and forbearance displayed by the American
Government.



THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK


No one has characterized the Jews better than did Mohammed when he
called the Jews The People of the Book. In fact, nearly all that
the Jews have achieved during their existence as a people they have
achieved in the domain of literature. Even at the time when the Jews
lived in Palestine and were at the height of their power, their
achievements in the field of practical civilization were relatively
poor. When the Jews disappeared as a sovereign nation from among the
nations of the earth they did not leave behind them a highly developed
civilization as did ancient Rome, nor did they leave behind them a
highly developed science and art, as did the Greeks, but they did leave
a book that subsequently became _the_ book of humanity. The economic
structure of ancient Judea was primitive, and only the tribes living
on the borderland and communicating with the peoples across the border
succeeded in developing trade and commerce. The interior of Judea was
an agricultural country and its inhabitants pious and simple-minded
people without ambition to create values of civilization and without
pretence. Just as the economic structure of ancient Judea was primitive
and simple, so was the political fabric.

The ancient Jewish state never succeeded in entirely subduing the
individual and making him respect the supreme authority of the State.
The prophets repeatedly exhorted the people to abide by the law and to
respect the authority of the State. This would go to indicate that,
even in the best days ancient Judea has seen, individualism was supreme
and the authority of the State thus considerably weakened. We have
no record of the ancient Jews ever having built great roads, or ever
having been a great seafaring nation, or having done other things that
would testify to their creative genius in the field of civilization.

But, on the other hand, they have created great books and have always
been active in the field of literature, as have no other people on
earth. It may be that their literary genius and activity absorbed
all their energies, so that the literary values they created were
created at the expense of the creation of values of civilization.
From time immemorial to the present day, the Jews, first as a nation
and then as individuals, have been busily engaged in writing books,
and, besides the Bible--that became _the_ book of humanity and that
has influenced the mind of humanity more than any other book in world
literature--they have written a number of books at various times and
in various languages which had a striking effect on the human mind and
were instrumental in shaping and framing it.

The appearance of Philo of Alexandria puzzled and amazed the entire
ancient world. The Greeks themselves considered him a wonder and
expressed their admiration for him by saying that they did not know
whether Plato Philonized or Philo Platonized. How Philo's writings have
influenced the course of spiritual development in Europe and how they
contributed shape and form to the philosophy of Christianity is known
to everyone who is acquainted with the history of the European mind.
Christian authors have often asserted that part of the success of St.
Paul is to be ascribed to his literary genius, his striking style and
to the concise form of his literary expression. And how can we think
of Christianity without Philo and St. Paul, though the former did not
consciously contribute anything to the makeup of Christianity?

When, during the chaos following the disintegration of the Roman
Empire, the Jews disappeared from the arena of European literature, the
best Jewish minds were busy creating books and literary styles, which
remain unique to the present day. We refer to the Talmud and Midrash
or, to be more precise, to Halakhah and Hagadah. The day will come when
European scholarship will pay more attention to these two marvelous
books. A famous German scholar, Professor Strack, declared a few years
ago that "for the last four hundred years the European peoples have
studied the Bible and have worked very hard to understand it. Now,
since we are better acquainted with the Bible, we will have to take up
the study of the Talmud and the Midrash. Only then will we understand
Judaism." Whatever place the Talmud may hold in the history of law and
no matter how it is valued by great jurists, it is certainly unique in
its literary style. The Talmudic style may or may not be a beautiful
one, but it is certainly peculiar, striking and original to the core.
Literature is first of all style; what is true of the originality of
the Talmudic style is also true of the strikingly original style of the
Midrash.

At the time when the style of these two books was created the greatest
representative of European literature of that period, St. Augustine,
appeared and gave to Christian humanity the best book of its time,
the _Confessiones_. The _Confessiones_ is a striking book powerfully
written. Its style is both soft and forceful; because of that it became
one of the best books of the Church. Wherein, however, lies the secret
of that book? What made it a success? It is the attempt to imitate
the Bible, just as Nietzsche's _Zarathustra_ took up the style of the
Bible and became the best-known book of the nineteenth century. But how
does St. Augustine's _Confessiones_ compare with the Bible? In certain
places it is an artificial imitation of the Bible, pure and simple, or,
to be more accurate, a poor imitation of the Psalms; only very rarely
does Augustine reach the height of the true Biblical style. Because
St. Augustine succeeded in imitating the style of the book which we
created he became the literary master-mind of Europe of his time.
The entire literature of confessions from Augustine to Rousseau and
from Rousseau to Tolstoy has its inspiration in the Bible; as long as
humanity will produce poets who think in terms of eternity and who feel
at one with the cosmos they will have to fall back on the Bible, as did
Dante and Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe and Nietzsche.

Just as our national book, the Bible, became the inexhaustible source
of inspiration to the great representatives of world literature, just
so have many books written by Jews within the last five hundred years
influenced and affected the European mind. The books of Spinoza in
the seventeenth, of Mendelssohn in the eighteenth, of Heinrich Heine
and Karl Marx in the nineteenth and those of Bergson in the twentieth
century were all cornerstones in the realm of the literature of modern
times. Only recently has attention been called by the admirers of
Spinoza to the exquisite and truly artistic style of the lonely Jew
of Amsterdam. Mendelssohn was certainly not a first-rate philosopher,
but he is considered by his admirers and opponents alike a first-rate
writer and literary master-mind; next to Lessing he was the greatest
German stylist of his time.

The deep impression that Karl Marx made on his contemporaries we
understand less by reading his minor writings. As an economist of
genius he could appeal to a small community of scholars, but as a
literary man of rare qualities, as a powerful writer who wrote with
blood and venom, he succeeded in greatly infuriating his opponents and
enthusing his adherents.

Heine has been called by Nietzsche the wonder of world literature. The
conservative Germans, the Prussians especially, hate him thoroughly,
but they cannot help singing his "Lorelei" and "Die zwei Grenadiere"
when they feel truly German or truly patriotic. This Düsseldorf
Jew, who received a convent education and who, according to his own
testimony, did not master the German language before he was sixteen,
became _the_ lyrical poet of the German nation and discovered the tune
of the German soul.

Five decades after Heine's death there appears a Polish Jew in the
firmament of French literature who acquires for himself the name
of the _maître écrivain_. The French, with their great literary and
artistic traditions and with their own exquisite literary taste, are
not so hasty in bestowing upon one of their writers the honor of the
title of _maître écrivain_. But they lost no time in giving that honor
to the Polish Jew, Bergson. Educated Frenchmen agree that even if all
the philosophic teachings of Bergson should prove to be false or should
be refuted he would nevertheless remain a great figure in the gallery
of French literature. He may die as a philosopher, but he will remain
immortal as a litterateur.

We have mentioned only the principal great books written within the
last three hundred years, which have caused true revolutions in the
literary world and for which most other peoples have no match. If an
historian of literature were to study the subject of the influence of
the Jews on world literature, especially of modern times, he would have
to write not one, but five volumes, and even then he would not exhaust
the subject, not because of the multitude of the books the Jews have
written, but because of the creative values of these books and of the
influence exercised on their contemporaries. It is a remarkable fact
that the best piece of German literary eloquence was written by a Jew,
Ludwig Boerne, and every German schoolboy has to know his piece of
eloquence, "Denkrede ueber Jean Paul," by heart. Of Israel Zangwill the
English say that he comes nearest to Dickens. Hugo von Hoffmannsthal,
the offspring of a Galician Jew and a relative of the late Graf von
Aehrenthal, today holds such a unique position in German literature
that even the wildest anti-Semites do not dare to attack him. The
French Academy has recognized another German Jew, Ludwig Fulda, as
the best German metrician of his time. And there are such powerful
publicists as Maximilian Harden and Max Nordau, such men as Wasserman
and Schnitzler, who have contributed to the literary glory of the
Jewish people in recent times.

The Aryan peoples will seldom concede that the Jews are one of the most
capable literary peoples that have ever lived, but there are many signs
that would go to indicate that they are fully conscious of it. The
French never forget to mention the fact that the mothers of Rabelais
and Montaigne were Jewesses and there is a German folksong that begins
with the verse:

    "Er hat wie Börne geschrieben
    Er hat wie Heine gedichtet."

The humorous papers in Italy, when taking Luigi Luzzatti to task, are
always cartooning him as a little Jew buried in books, and it is a
current expression in Italy today that "he eats books like Luzzatti."

A Jew and a book are nearly synonymous. We were and we are to the
present day a bookish people. The book has been until now our greatest
glory. For thousands of years we have been dreamers and writers.
The book was our shield and our weapon and the only outlet for our
energies. Now it seems that a great and radical change is going to
take place in our lives. We may and will probably never abandon the
book altogether, but we are on the verge of becoming an active people,
instead of being solely a bookish people.



THE FUTURE OF THE JEWISH RELIGION IN THE DIASPORA


Preceding and during the religious crisis in France, which resulted in
the Separation Law, a great number of books on the future of religion
appeared in Paris. The largest number of writers denied that there was
a future for religion, maintaining that modern economic conditions
are undermining the spiritual and religious basis of the life of the
masses. A minority, upholding Clericalism, foresaw a promising future
for religion.

A similar discussion on the future of the Jewish religion arose with
the advent of Zionism. In the first decade of our century scores of
books appeared in Europe, dealing with the nature and future of the
Jewish religion. As in France, during the crisis, so in European Jewry,
during the inception of Zionism, two distinct views were held as to the
future of the Jewish religion. One view saw that Judaism could hope for
no future in the Diaspora and that, if only to avert the destruction
of the Jewish religion, a homeland in Palestine was needed. The other
view was that Judaism, being non-political in nature, would continue to
exist indefinitely and that, as a matter of fact, it was created for a
Diaspora existence.

Today, when the Jewish people is once more at the parting of the ways,
the same question comes up again. Those who oppose Zionism hastily
affirm that the Jewish religion not only does not need a homeland in
Palestine, as a source of new inspiration, but that the very idea of
this homeland is incompatible with the Jewish religion. The spokesmen
of Zionism who, as a rule, do not worry much over questions of theology
and religion, have so far failed to take a definite attitude towards
the rabbis who oppose Zionism on religious grounds.

We think it high time to approach this question and to try to answer it
from a purely objective point of view.

Before we ask whether the Jewish religion has any future in the
Diaspora, let us see whether it has had any development in the past.

It is known to every intelligent Jew that since the appearance of
Maimonides, with the exception of the pathological phenomenon of
"Sabbathai Zevi" and of Hassidism, the Jewish religion has not
developed in the least. The rabbinic literature of the last 800 years
consists mainly of legal responses to which nobody will attribute
religious significance, because religion and legalism are two different
things. The rabinnic Jew has the same views on God, on the relations
between God and man, and on immortality, as prevailed among Jews 800
years ago. Even the synagogue and the Jewish ritual have undergone
few changes in this period. Many attribute this fact of religious
stagnation to the predominant legal element in the Jewish religion,
while others maintain that, even without this element, the Jewish
religion would not have undergone changes because of its existence in
the Diaspora. Religion, like any other phase of spiritual life, must
draw from life itself and if the source is polluted stagnation must set
in.

Many people seek to prove that the Jewish religion is capable of
development in the Diaspora, and as proof they point to Hassidism.
But even they must agree that Hassidism itself failed to develop and
that it resulted finally in a form of Judaism which is objectionable
even on æsthetic grounds. Hassidism, which claims to have a greater
freedom of movement than Mithnagdism, is today even more stagnant than
Mithnagdism. In addition, it is questionable whether the pantheistic
element in Hassidism is altogether compatible with the traditional
Jewish conception of God. All in all, Hassidism affords no proof that
the Jewish religion has developed in the last 800 years. It would be
no exaggeration to say that ever since Jewish religious philosophy
chose the path of Aristotelianism, it has been favored only with the
slightest development.

One must bear in mind that in the past the Jewish religion, though
more persecuted than at present, had better chances of development
than in our own day. The Gentiles surrounding the Jews lived a more
intense spiritual life than is the case today and in addition they
thought in terms of religion as the mediaeval philosophers thought
_more theologico_. Judaism and Christianity were absolutely separated
and regarded each other with hostility. The intense religious feeling
of the Middle Ages, the thinking in terms of religion on the part of
the Gentile masses, the hostility of the Church to the Synagogue,
the isolation of Jewish life and the persecution which must have
intensified the religious feeling, were all factors conducive to
religious development. However, the fact remains that since Maimonides,
the Jewish religion has not undergone notable development.

Is it capable of development in the future?

Today humanity does not think in terms of religion; modern philosophers
do not think _more theologico_ but _more biologico_; the synagogue in
the country where Jews are free is not isolated as was the case in
the past, nor is Jewish life isolated. Unlike the Jews of the past,
the modern Jew in these countries is actuated not by religious but by
economic and social motives and he has little time to give thought to
Judaism. To the average Jew in the liberal countries, Judaism is either
an unwelcome heritage or at best a synagogal duty. In eastern Europe
there are two sorts of Jews, as far as religion is concerned. There
are either rabbinic Jews, who are pious and naive, or there are Jews
whose views practically amount to a superficial atheism. Under these
conditions, it is hard to tell how the Jewish religion is to develop in
the Diaspora, or what its future may be.

The Reformers, of course, would point to the work of Geiger and
Holdheim. But is the work of these men really proof of organic
development in Jewish religion? Does the destruction of the bases of
a religion indicate development? Reform Judaism not only did away
with rabbinism, but it would also deprive the Bible of its religious
character, denying the divinity of its source and in addition
arbitrarily abolishing fundamental biblical laws for the convenience of
its practioners. Is there any intelligent Jew, with a fair knowledge of
Judaism, perhaps with the exception of a few Reform rabbis, who will
maintain that in these changes there is a trace of development? If
Reform Judaism can do no more than destroy what others have built, it
is not progress in Jewish religion, as its leaders assert, but merely a
ruthless iconoclasm.

We do not say that Reform Judaism is created by malice or by the wanton
desire to destroy, but only that it serves as proof that from present
conditions the Jewish religion seems to have no future in the Diaspora,
once it has come into contact with modern life.

The Jewish religion, a product of national genius, can live and thrive
only on its own soil. It can live and thrive only if it is part and
parcel of the whole life of the nation, because the Jewish religion, in
contradistinction to the universal religions, is distinctly national in
character and wherever the Jewish nation is hampered in its movements
(as it is, everywhere, in the Diaspora), the Jewish religion is also
hampered and condemned to stagnation.

The stronger and more intense the life surrounding the Jews, the weaker
becomes their own religious impulse.

This is well known to the Reform rabbis. We do not know how they
conceive the future of Judaism in the Diaspora, but we do know that the
only possibility for a Jewish religious revival lies in a national life
for the Jewish people.



THE MIGRATIONS OF JEWISH LITERATURE


Among all the literatures of the world the Jewish literature is the
only one that did not develop in any one land and the destinies
of which are not connected with any one country. It has neither a
certain local odor nor a certain local color, and it has seldom been
the product of local conditions. There are a good many scholars who
go so far as to say that the Jews had litterateurs only and not a
literature, because the conception of a national literature involves
national territory, a national political organization, and national
traditions. A people, these scholars say, may produce a great numbers
of writers and poets and may still be said not to possess a national
literature. Formerly scholars who argued to that effect may have been
right. If we take into consideration the psychological continuity of
Jewish literature ever since the Jews began their career as a wandering
people, we are justified in doubting the wisdom of this conception.

Although Jewish literature has undergone many radical changes (the
change in language being only one prime fact) and although it has
been as restless as the Jewish people, compelled to wander from one
country to another, it has still succeeded in preserving certain prime
qualities and characteristics which entitle it to bear the proud name
of national literature. It is easy to recognize the age of a Jewish
literary document, but it is not so easy to ascertain the place and
locality where it was produced. The Hebrew-Italian school of the
eighteenth century resembles in many respects the Hebrew-Spanish school
of the Middle Ages, and the Russian-Hebrew school of the present time
has much similarity not only to the various Hebrew schools of the
twelfth and the eighteenth centuries but even to the Biblical period.
It suffices only to mention the name of Bialik to show how near we are
today to the spirit of the Biblical period.

This is true of Hebrew poetry but not of Hebrew prose. Here the
results of migration are very noticeable. The Jewish literature of
the Alexandrian period has hardly anything in common with Babylonian
Jewish literature, and the literature created in the Provence is
quite different in character from that created in Central Asia or in
Africa. In other words, while the contemplative Jewish mind succeeds
in preserving its chief original qualities, the meditative Jewish mind
was subject to certain degrees of assimilation. As long as the Hebrew
language was the means of expression for the Jewish literary spirit
the effect of migration from one country to another was to make Jewish
literature more picturesque and more interesting. But it did not fill
the literary mind with new contents. Sometimes the effect of the new
surroundings was not felt at all. This is due to the fact that, with
the Hebrew language as cultivated by the Jews, there goes a certain
philosophy of life and of things. The fate of the Jews throughout the
ages, more or less similar in every land, contributed also to the
psychological continuity of the Hebrew literary mind. This expresses
itself best in the Hebrew elegy. When one reads Bialik's "Poems of
Wrath," one thinks at once of Hebrew poems of a similar kind written
hundreds of years ago. Hebrew prose on the other hand underwent slight
changes during the Jewish migrations.

Since the Jews have entered modern civilization and have adopted
the language of the Gentiles as a medium of literary expression,
the effects of migration on the Jewish literary mind have begun to
make themselves felt in a rather unpleasant way. This unpleasantness
consists not in the variety of languages in which modern Jewish
literature is so rich, but in the variety of ideas and conceptions
which the Hebrew language imposed on the individual. The works of
Jewish writers who write in European languages, even if they deal only
with Jewish subjects, do not belong to Jewish literature alone; we
cannot proclaim these works as our national possessions because of the
very non-Jewish elements which characterize them.

On another occasion we have already shown how Jewish historiography and
our history of Jewish literature have been influenced by non-Jewish
elements. It goes without saying that all the other branches of our
prose literature, as far as they have not been written in Hebrew, are
strongly influenced by non-Jewish elements to a very great extent.
Very often it is difficult to recognize what is Jewish and what is
non-Jewish in these works. Everyone acquainted with the theological
developments of Judaism within the last hundred years knows how
Jewish theology in the west has gradually become alienated from its
Jewish origin and come nearer to a Christian point of view. No less an
important theologian than Schleiermacher characterized so-called modern
Judaism as being very similar to modern Christianism. It will readily
be understood that it was not Christianity that came nearer to Judaism
but, on the contrary, Judaism that came nearer Christianity. It would,
of course, be wrong and historically untrue to say that only in modern
times has a non-Jewish element begun to creep into Jewish literature.
It is moreover a fact that ever since the Jews have used foreign
tongues for literary expression, they have been compelled to admit
non-Jewish elements into their works. This is true of Philo and to a
certain extent even of Maimonides' "Moreh." Is it not peculiar that all
the great mediators between Judaism and the Gentile world have written
their philosophical works either in Greek or in Arabic or in some
modern language, and that those Jewish philosophers who have written
their philosophical works in Hebrew have never tried to play the rôle
of mediators? Philo, who wrote in Greek, tried to mediate between
Platonism and Judaism. Maimonides, who wrote the "Moreh" in Arabic,
tried to mediate between Aristotelism and Judaism, and Herman Cohen
tries to mediate between Kantianism and Judaism. There are, of course,
exceptions to the rule. Nachman Krochmal was a thorough Hegelian and
wrote his "Moreh" in Hebrew. But this is just the exception which
proves the rule. Most of our philosophers who wrote in Hebrew developed
a more or less purely Hebrew philosophy and contributed to the
development of the Hebrew mind which found its purest expression in the
Bible, the Talmud and the Haggaddah.

All this would go to show that the psychological continuity of the
Hebrew literary mind and the true development of the Jewish mind can
best be safeguarded through the medium of Hebrew. Hebrew is to the
Jews and to the literature of the Jewish people more than a language.
It replaces the many elements required for the sound development of
a national literature which we have not, such as a country, local
traditions, a national political organization, and so on. As long as
Hebrew is the medium of literary expression among the Jews, Jewish
literature deserves the name of a national literature and is a
national literature. If, however, the Jewish mind does not express
itself any more through the medium of Hebrew, the productions of this
mind do not solely belong to us and are not part and parcel of our
national property. They belong to the others as well as to us and
probably more to them. Herein lies the importance of Hebrew for the
development of Judaism and the Jewish mind.



ARE THE JEWS A COMMERCIAL PEOPLE?


The reputation of the Jews for being a business people has done them
more harm than good, and has, in fact, retarded their emancipation in
many countries. But nowhere has this reputation done them so much harm
as in Russia. Even the Russian liberals, who are not anti-Semitic,
seem to believe that the Jews, if emancipated, would ruin the Russian
peasantry and completely monopolize Russian commerce. They are
therefore not eager to take up the cause of the Jews, though they may
be liberal in every other respect.

The Russian and Roumanian anti-Semites, however, base their theories
of the need for oppressing the Jews on the belief that the Jews are
too shrewd in business and that they will exploit the Russians and
Roumanians if they are given freedom to move about and to utilize all
their commercial energy and intelligence. This view is not restricted
to those countries alone. We find traces of it even in America.

Has this belief any foundation in fact or is it only a myth? The
question is interesting enough to be discussed. There are two methods
of considering this question, the _historic_ and the _pragmatic_. Have
the Jews always been a business people? Are they today a business
people? Instead of answering these questions in the affirmative or in
the negative, we think it wiser to lay the facts before the public and
to let it answer the two questions.

In ancient times--as confirmed by the Bible--the Jews were not much of
a business people. The bulk of the people were devoted to agriculture.
There are thirteen terms for rain in Hebrew while there is only one for
commerce. The number of agricultural laws in the Scriptures exceeds
by far the number of laws and regulations relating to commerce. The
attitude of ancient Jews to commerce was similar to the attitude of the
ancient Greeks to labor. Indeed the ancient Jews, in contradistinction
to the Greeks, respected labor and despised business and commerce.
Josephus Flavius in his book against Apion, says clearly: "We Jews do
not find much pleasure in commerce." The Talmudic sages warned the
people against commerce again and again, and represented the business
man as an ignoramus and a sinner. Rabbi Meir ruled: Trade less and
study more. Rabbi Johanan exclaimed: There is no Torah among tradesmen
and business people.

Taking all these facts into consideration, we fail to see how any
intelligent person can say of the Jews that they were always a business
people. Indeed, it is interesting to observe that the word used in
Hebrew for commerce is not of Hebrew but of Greek origin.

But what about Diaspora Jewry? The Diaspora Jew was not allowed to
become an agriculturist. He was forced to live in the city and as
he was excluded from all artisan guilds he was obliged to become a
tradesman or a money lender. How did the sturdy agricultural Jew
become a business man, when business was never his ideal? To answer
this question we must learn the attitude of the early mediaeval
Christian Church to commercialism. The slogan of the Church was "Nullus
Christianus debet esse mercator" (No Christian dare be a merchant), for
commerce turned the Christian from the Church. This hostile attitude
of the Church toward commerce had its origin in the influence of Greek
culture on Christianity. The Greeks, as is well known, despised the
merchant and considered him a necessary evil. The social status of the
merchant in ancient Greece was very low and the representatives of
Greek thought, Plato and Aristotle, contributed largely to lowering
it still further. According to Plato the merchant class is to the
intellectual class what the stomach is to the brain and the raison
d'être of the merchant class is only to be found in its feeding the
warrior class. Plato describes the merchant as belonging to the third
and lowest class of society. The early Church had taken over these
views of commerce and made them its own. Even Thomas Aquinas, who lived
in the 13th century, when commercial life still flourished, adhered
still to the early Christian ideas about commerce. But as commerce is
necessary to the existence of organized society, the Church made the
Jews the bearers of commerce by forbidding Christians to trade and
inducing the Jews to do so.

The Church had another reason for making the Jew the business man. The
representatives of the Church--fine psychologists that they were and
still are--knew that as long as the Jew confined himself to agriculture
he would continue to be "stubborn and stiff-necked," and no Christian
propaganda would induce him to give up his religion. The peasant is the
conservative element of society. The tradesman, however, whose business
it is to make bargains and compromises in his business life, is always
inclined to make compromises in morality and religion. If the Jews were
made tradesmen, so the leaders of the Church thought, two aims could
be achieved at one stroke. First they would be made to do the "dirty
work" for the Christians, and secondly, their conservative Jewish
spirit would be broken. These were the reasons why the Christian world
consciously forced the Jews into commercialism. On the other hand,
political conditions in the Middle Ages actually compelled the Jews to
take to commerce.

Thus a people, originally agricultural, became commercial. It is clear
that the Jews are not a business people by nature but out of necessity
and by reason of historical developments.

But now another question arises: Are the Jews clever as a business
people and do they really show an inherent business genius? The
anti-Semites and many of our friends believe that every Jew is
potentially a business genius. Is this true? This question is also best
answered by facts.

In Eastern Europe, where industry and commerce are not developed, and
where Jews live in masses, the ordinary Jew is not a business man. On
the contrary, the ordinary Jew in the East is a skilled or unskilled
laborer. Out of the million Eastern Jews, who emigrated to this country
from 1899-1908, about 60 per cent were laborers. The great masses or
Eastern Jews in America are, in the main, laborers. As Eastern Jewry
forms the bulk of the Jewish people, there is no reason to think that
the modern Jew is _eo ipso_ a business man, or a tradesman. The great
Jewish Socialist movement likewise testifies to the fact that the Jews
are not a business people in the sense used by our enemies and by many
of our friends, because a Socialist movement cannot rise and flourish
among business people.

The Jews, in individual cases, may be sharper in business than their
non-Jewish fellow business men of the same station in life. Belonging
to an Oriental, passionate race, they have a more vivid imagination and
can see things in brighter colors than the non-Jews. This is, however,
true only of individual cases. The ordinary Jewish business man is
as clever or as stupid as the Gentile business man. A mediocrity,
whether a Jew or a Gentile, is a mediocrity, and the Jewish mediocrity
is no more productive or creative than the non-Jewish mediocrity. It
is interesting that in the Levant, where Greeks, Armenians and other
Oriental people are active in business, the Jew cuts a relatively poor
figure as a business man. There are in Salonica great Jewish merchants
but the vast majority of Salonica Jews are artisans and laborers. The
Jews of the East when settled in the West, be it in Western Europe or
America, have seldom achieved a great success as merchants or business
men.

The fact is that the Jew is no more shrewd as a business man than
the Englishman, Frenchman, or American. It is true, however, that in
exceptional cases the Jews produce commercial geniuses as they also
produce literary and artistic and scientific geniuses. We are an old
and relatively pure race and our experience is far-reaching. We
have more productive powers than many other peoples, and we produce
proportionately more great men than other peoples. Some of these great
men are great in business, but that does not mean that the Jews are a
business people and a clever business people.



OUR NATIONAL BUDGET AND BRIBERY


All peoples who live under normal conditions live economically,
that is, on a systematized budget in which expenditure is adjusted
to income. The Jewish people, not living under such conditions, do
not live economically. Their budget is not systematized nor are its
expenditures proportionate to the income. The lack of a systematized
budget, however, does not mean that we have no fixed annual
expenditures, although it is true that we have no fixed annual income.
The truth is that we, as a people, spend as much as any other people of
equal numbers who live a normal life. The only difference is seen in
this: while other peoples spend money for national organization and on
national institutions, we have to spend our money either in bribery or
to help pogrom victims.

On the eve of the Jewish New Year it is proper that we draw up and
take account of our annual budget. The biggest sum in this budget is
the item marked "bribery." Few realize how many millions are spent
annually by Russian and Roumanian Jews who seek to mollify their
oppressors with bribe or gift offerings. Few realize that the many
millions spent by wealthy Assimilationists in non-Jewish philanthropies
are also bribe offerings. The Jew has learned that if he means to be a
Jew he must pay bribery and that if he does not want to be a Jew, he
must also pay bribery.

When a few years ago a Jewish lord in England bequeathed his fortune
of $10,000,000 to non-Jewish institutions, he made it clear that this
gift should be taken as proof of his sincere Anglicism, which meant
the repudiation of Judaism. When the French Jew, Meurts de la Deutsch
spends 2,000,000 francs annually to encourage aviation in France, it
is for no nobler purpose than to deny that he is a Jew, and that he
has embraced all French interests. The same is true of innumerable
wealthy Jews who give millions for non-Jewish and often for anti-Jewish
purposes. It might prove interesting to an economist to discover how
many millions are spent annually in such bribery.

It is not difficult to estimate in round figures the sums spent
annually by those who want to remain Jews.

There are six million Jews in Russia. For every move he makes, the
Russian Jew must bribe the authorities. If he wants his son admitted
to the schools, he must bribe the education officials. If he wants to
open a store and obtain a license, he must bribe the village or town
officials. If he builds a house he must bribe the building inspectors.
If he seeks a passport, he must bribe the police. The whole run of
human activities is accompanied by an endless flow of bribes, gifts,
presents, etc. It is no exaggeration to say that every Jew in Russia
must spend an average of ten rubles annually in bribing officials. This
is 60,000,000 rubles, or $30,000,000 a year. The total budget of the
Swiss Confederacy falls within this amount. In return the Russian Jews
are paid in exceptional laws and pogroms. These laws and pogroms lead
to emigration which costs us, on an average, $10,000,000 a year.

In the last decade Jewish emigration from Russia has been at least
100,000 persons a year. The cost to every immigrant is at least 120
rubles. This totals $7,200,000 a year. Economists have calculated and
discovered that the incidental expenses of each immigrant amount to
about 100 rubles. These expenses are caused by the loss entailed in
breaking up business, selling out below cost, etc. This in turn totals
up to 12,000,000 rubles, or $6,000,000 a year. In addition to these
sums there are extraordinary losses resulting from pogroms, fire and
boycott.

We are not taking into consideration the hundreds of millions lost by
Jews in the war owing to the malice of the Russian Government. These
losses are not recurrent. But we must consider the losses of the Jews
in Russia as a result of pogroms. In the pogroms of 1905 and 1906 the
Russian Jews lost 20,000,000 rubles. Pogroms on a minor scale are
yearly events in Russia. All in all, the sum which the Russian Jews
spend annually in bribes or in expenses in connection with emigration,
or which they lose in pogroms or other upheavals, reaches the gigantic
sum of $50,000,000, a sum which exceeds the annual budget of Bulgaria
or of Switzerland. For less than this sum these two peoples enjoy
national independence and sovereignty while we enjoy--pogroms.

What is true of Russia is true of Roumania, partly true of Galicia and
of the Jews in northern Africa, Persia and Afghanistan. That these
million and a half of oppressed Jews living outside of Russia also
spend millions annually in bribery and emigration goes without saying.

As the emigration from the countries of oppression does not diminish
the number of Jews, because of the high birth-rate there, and as
conditions of life grow worse daily, the emigrants have to support
their families and friends who stay behind. The Russian Ministry of
Post and Telegraph published statistical tables a few years ago, which
show that the Russian immigrants in the United States, mostly Jews,
send annually to their relatives and friends from $15,000,000 to
$18,000,000 a year. A good part of this sum goes to the Russian post
office officials. This fact became known four years ago when a group
of Jews in Petrograd and Moscow started a movement with the purpose of
founding a Jewish immigrants' bank.

When speaking of necessary and incidental expenses of immigration one
must not overlook the losses accruing from re-immigration and from
a decrease of productive energy of many immigrants because of their
inability to adapt themselves to new surroundings.

These are expenses caused by the decision of Jews to remain Jews. We
maintain that the sums of money paid by Jews who are determined to have
the world think them non-Jews, or to have the world forgive them for
being Jews, are at least as large.

When, a few years ago, the Jewish millionaire Efrussi died in Paris,
the French press without exception paid high tribute to his French
patriotism and omitted all mention of his Jewish origin. Efrussi
used to spend 2,000,000 francs on French national sports, races,
etc. This was also the case with the French Jew, Osiris, who left
his fortune of 60,000,000 francs to the French people and French
institutions, and 60,000 francs to the Jewish people in the form of
a copy of Michael Angelo's Moses erected in the court of the Jewish
Teachers' Seminary of the Alliance Israelite in Paris. An Austrian Jew,
Taussig, gave 1,000,000 kronen to the Catholic Eucharist Congress in
Vienna, while a relative of the same name left 500,000 kronen to the
Catholic church with the request that on his Jahr-Zeit two Franciscan
monks visit the synagogue to pray for his soul. The new university
in Frankfort-on-Main, which cost many million marks, is a Jewish
university in so far as large parts of this sum were contributed by
Jews. Most of the contributors were Jews who in no way support Jewish
institutions. A Prussian statistician discovered a few years ago that
not only do Jews contribute to funds for the building of monuments to
national heroes, but also to funds for Catholic cathedrals and other
institutions that are anti-Semitic in character.

In England there are hundreds of wealthy Jews who make annual
contributions to the Church of England, refusing at the same time to
support any Jewish institutions. Lord Rothschild, who is by no means
the richest man in England, spends more in New Year's gifts to various
non-Jewish classes in London than ten other rich lords combined.
Another English Jew, Sir Ernest Cassel, the son of a Hebrew teacher
in Germany, has spent in the last decade £1,500,000 in the support of
non-Jewish institutions. Their contributions to Jewish institutions
have been insignificant in comparison.

The gift of these large sums is always made public, but the sum total
of smaller gifts, which are not made public, exceed by far the amounts
given by very rich Jews to non-Jewish institutions. If we compare
the sums given by so-called Jewish philanthropists to Jewish and
non-Jewish institutions we discover that they give at least five times
as generously to the non-Jewish as to the Jewish. Mr. Jacob H. Schiff's
gift of $500,000 to Barnard College is a striking instance. At a time
when his own people experienced the greatest calamity in its history,
when millions of Jews were starving, and when Jewish blood was being
shed freely, Schiff gave $100,000 for Jewish relief purposes and five
times as much to a single institution for the erection of one building
in New York. This is the usual proportion that marks the giving of Jews
to Jewish and non-Jewish institutions.

We think that the form of bribery which the oppressed Jews practice to
mollify their oppressors is sad enough as a commentary on Jewish life.
But the more ostentatious form of bribery--a form of gift bestowal
which seeks to hide the giver's identity as a Jew or at least to
purchase pardon for his Jewishness--is the greater tragedy. These Jews
spend millions to make the world forget they are Jews, but the world
remembers and laughs up its sleeve.



THE TRUE MEANING OF JEWISH UNIVERSALISM


In the course of the long controversy between Jewish nationalists and
opponents of Jewish nationalism many have come to believe that those
who oppose nationalism stand for universal Judaism, especially since
the anti-nationalists call themselves Jewish universalists. After the
publication of the declaration of the British Government with regard
to Palestine the main anti-nationalistic spokesman in America, Dr.
Philipson of Cincinnati, summed up his negative attitude to Zionism
with the short sentence, "I stand by my Jewish universalism." One even
hears people from the radical camp of the left proclaiming their Jewish
universalism. The impression has thus been created that while the
nationalists stand for a petty, provincial conception of Judaism, they,
the anti-nationalists, advocate a broad-minded universalism.

We deem it opportune to examine this Jewish universalism, which is
played up today against the nationalistic efforts of our people to
re-establish a Homeland in Palestine and to see how far it is sincere
in its motives and compatible with Jewish tradition, and how far it
is intellectual camouflage. We think it rather curious that those
who claim to be Jewish universalists--the radical Reform rabbis and
assimilationists from other camps--always lay stress on American,
German, French or English Judaism, and often speak of the American
Jewish Church or the English Jewish Church, and so forth. It is
also remarkable that these Jewish universalists have always worked
for a "readjustment" of Judaism to local conditions and have tried
to Americanize Judaism in America, to Germanize it in Germany, to
Anglicize it in England, to Magyarize it in Hungary, and so forth.

On the other hand, those who were considered as standing for a petty,
provincial conception of Judaism, the nationalists, have not only
never tried to do anything of the sort but have always defended the
interritoriality and catholicity of Judaism. One never hears a Jewish
nationalist here or abroad speaking of an American Jewish Church or
an English Jewish Church, and so forth. It seems to us that in view
of these facts the sort of universal Judaism as proclaimed by the
assimilationists is of rather doubtful origin and character and that
it is everything but universal, for it is territorial and provincial
to the core. As a matter of fact, Reform Judaism as established
by the Reform rabbis in the middle of the nineteenth century, and
developed by American rabbis at the end of the nineteenth century
and the beginning of the twentieth, is the first gigantic attempt to
break the catholicism of Judaism and to territorialize it, that is
to say, to annihilate its organic unity. Reform Judaism is in fact
nothing else but territorialism in religious terms, just as Yiddishism
is a territorialism in linguistic terms. Those who divide Judaism
geographically and claim that each part has little or nothing to do
with the other, and that each part is organically connected only with
its surroundings, that there is such a thing as American Judaism,
English Judaism, German Judaism, French Judaism, and so on, stand for
the same policy as do the Yiddishists, who divide the Jewish people
into ten or fifteen separate groups, claiming that every group is
a unit by itself and has nothing to do with the others. According
to Yiddishists the Ladino-speaking Jew has scarcely anything in
common with the Judeo-German-speaking Jew, just as the Arabic or
Greek-speaking Jews have little or nothing in common with the Ladino
or Yiddish-speaking Jews. Some express their Jewish territorialism and
provincialism in terms of religion, the others in terms of language.
Both are opponents of Jewish unity and Jewish catholicism, both are
opposed to traditional Judaism, both are opposed to Jewish nationalism
that is organically connected with Hebrew, and both are, of course,
opposed to a Hebrew Palestine.

Why these people, who, as we have seen, stand for territorialistic
Judaism instead of universal, should call themselves Jewish
universalists, we are at a loss to understand. The fact that their
notion of God is as colorless and pale as that of the Unitarians, and
the fact that their conception of ethics, especially of Jewish ethics,
is as bloodless and vague as that of the rationalists of the eighteenth
century, gives them scarcely any right to call themselves Jewish
universalists and to assert that they stand for universal Judaism. Our
only consolation is that this sort of territorialistic Judaism that
goes under the false mark of universal Judaism is not the invention
of the Reform rabbis, nor that of the Yiddishists, but is as old as
Judaism itself. All who have carefully paged the history of our people
know that there always was a Jewish minority from time immemorial that
stood for a territorialistic Judaism, and if there is any difference
in principle between the Judeans and Israelites this difference
consists in that the Judeans always stood for universal Judaism, while
the Israelites stood for a territorialistic Judaism. The Judeans
were what the nationalists are today--traditional, conservative and
nationalistic, while the Israelites were reformers, assimilationists
and territorialists. The Judeans advocated a Palestinian and Hebrew
Judaism, while the Israelites always opposed it and were satisfied even
with the Temple outside of Palestine.

The first radical reformer, assimilationist and territorialist was
not Abraham Geiger, but Jeroboam Ben Nebat. The Judeans, advocating
a Palestinian and Hebrew Judaism, produced the true, great prophets,
the prophets of truth and justice, while the Israelites produced the
false prophets, who misled the people and displayed religious and
moral camouflage. The notion of a universal God, of a universal
morality and of the brotherhood of man, the fundamental teachings of
Jewish universalism, have not been created by the prophets of the
Israelites, the false universalists, but by the prophets of Judea,
the nationalistic prophets. These great nationalistic prophets, who
alone made Judaism that tremendous force in history and who, by their
genius, secured immortality for our religion and ethics, must turn in
their grave when they hear the false prophets of today claiming them
as their witnesses. The teachings of our great prophets have been
distorted and falsified by many of our enemies and opponents, but none
has falsified and distorted them more than the representatives of the
so-called universal Judaism of today, because our great prophets, who
were at the same time great Jewish statesmen, taught the doctrine of
the indestructible Jewish nation and the immortality of our people as a
people, and they were so extreme in their nationalism and nationalistic
conception of Judaism that they dreamt of the Jewish nation to be the
glory of all the peoples of the earth and the center of all that is
good and great and beautiful in humanity.

We doubt whether there are many Jewish nationalists today whose
nationalistic feelings run as high as did those of our great prophets
whom Jewish universalists claim as their chief witnesses for their
falsified Judaism. It was the great Hebrew prophets of old who first
fought against territorializing Judaism and who fought against the
attempt to Yiddishize it in one form or another. They all stood for
the pure, traditional, Palestinian and Hebrew Judaism. They were
bitter against Ephraim, because Ephraim stood for what the Israelites
stand for today: "Ubi bene, ibi patria"--Where I do well there is my
fatherland.

That the Judeans and not the Israelites were right in their conception
of Judaism can be seen from the fate of both. Israel disappeared, swept
away by the storm of history, while Judea remained. It is only a pity
that all of the Israelites did not disappear also for, if they did,
we would have no Israelites today in our midst, and God knows that
the Israelites of today are unnecessary Jews and that those who claim
a mission for Israel have no mission at all. The Jewish universalism
advocated today by all those who stand for the disintegration and
deterioration of Judaism is not universalism, and if its advocates
are anything, they are Jewish nihilists, because Judaism is nihil to
them--no people, no race, no nation, no religion, no tradition, but----



THE BURDEN OF TRADITION


The phenomenal tempo made by the United States in preparation for the
war is a very interesting phenomenon of our time. What England did in
many years of struggle America has achieved within a few weeks. It
took England more than a year and a half before she saw her way clear
to resort to compulsory service, and it required many weary months to
organize the administrative branch of the war service and to place
the country on a solid war footing. Even countries with long military
traditions, such as France, Italy, Austria, and even Germany, had to
struggle long before they were in the war with both feet. America,
though unmilitaristic, did all that within a very short time. Over
night there was a national army in America. The economic life of the
country adapted itself to war conditions, and everything to conduct
a war on an unheard-of scale was created within a few months. That
a non-militaristic country like America could adapt itself to war
conditions within such a short time must puzzle every observer, and
it will be a puzzle to the historian of the future, also, unless he
recognizes the touchstone of American genius as displayed at present.
This touchstone is the absence of long historical traditions.

We Jews, who are preparing ourselves to start a new life as a nation,
ought to learn in this respect. We have old traditions of our own and
we are burdened with a great many non-Jewish traditions in addition,
for we have lived in the last two thousand years in the Diaspora and
among those people whose life has been shaped by thoughts and the
spirit of ancient Rome. The European state that is today undergoing
a crisis as never before is the inheritance of old Rome. The entire
system of European politics is Roman in origin. International political
relations can be traced to ancient Roman origin. A comparison between
the history of the international relations of ancient Rome and that
of any European state during the last five hundred years will clearly
show that the international political movements in Europe for the last
centuries have their parallel in international political movements of
ancient Rome. All the severe criticisms leveled by Montesquieu against
ancient Rome are still timely today. All branches of the activities
of the European state, civil administrations, jurisdiction, matters
military, foreign affairs, and so on, are more or less remnants of
ancient Roman civilization.

In short, we have to be conscious of the fact that the life of the
Jewish people in Europe was lived amid a system of Roman civilization.
The old Jewish preachers, who characterized our present Diaspora life
as Goluth-Rome, knew what they were talking about, though they could
not exactly explain why they characterized our present Goluth as Roman
in nature. Since we have lived for two thousand years in this system
of civilization, it goes without saying that we have been greatly
influenced by it and that we ourselves are definitely subject to Roman
traditions in addition to our own. Traditions sometimes strengthen a
nation, but they also may weaken it. The most traditional people in
the world, the Chinese, are practically the weakest, while the most
non-traditional people, the Americans, are today the best fitted for
modern life.

National traditions, of course, cannot be cast away over night. In the
Diaspora old and genuine Jewish traditions were the life-giver of our
people. They were the main force that preserved us from annihilation,
as long as we were facing the problem, "How can we best preserve our
national existence?" Today, however, we are not only facing the problem
of preserving our national existence, but also that of rebuilding our
nation and reorganizing our people so as to make its future safe. Since
the entire Jewish problem has changed so radically, our attitude to
the complex Jewish traditions must change. We cannot possibly use the
same methods in rebuilding our national existence as in preserving our
nation. The two different problems need two different positions. Just
as China is a terrifying example of what slavery to tradition can do to
a nation, so is America an edifying example of what traditions can do
in strengthening a nation. A nation does not live to uphold traditions
only; and where, instead of helping a nation, traditions handicap it,
they will be superceded by new traditions to be created by national
deeds.

We do not want to describe our future life in Palestine, for we are
today unable to do so. We are only anxious to lay stress upon the fact
that what we have called our traditions in Diaspora life will probably
have to be revised in a Jewish Palestine. Life is much stronger than
the Book and the principle derived from the Book. In the Diaspora it
was the principle of the Book that shaped our life, because it helped
to preserve it. In Palestine, where there will be an active Jewish
life, Jewish life itself must work out its own principles. This is what
we should bear in mind, whether we are orthodox or free-thinkers. We
must go to Palestine with the consciousness of freedom and not with the
feeling that we are the creatures of traditions. We will have to free
ourselves not only from many Roman traditions that was most worthy in
the Diaspora, but will be superfluous in Palestine.

The future Jewish State in Palestine will draw its strength from Jewish
life and not from principles of the Book; it will be free from all
inorganic traditions which we have acquired during our long life in the
Diaspora, and from those traditions which were un-Jewish in nature.



WHAT IS THE JEWISH MISSION?


In view of the rise of Jewish nationalism during the last decade,
especially during the war, it is understandable why the fancy of the
Jewish masses should be directed to the future of the Jewish State
in Palestine and that quite premature questions as to the form and
character of the Jewish State should be asked.

There are no prophets nowadays. No serious-minded man would even dare
to anticipate the development of many generations and attempt to
foresee the character of the time which is deeply enshrouded in the
bosom of the future. Sociology has not yet discovered laws with the
help of which one can predict future material happenings. Nevertheless,
serious-minded Jews, especially nationalists, should give a thought to
the question of possible future developments and should ask themselves
in which direction they have decided to go.

An unequivocal answer to this question will help to clarify matters and
will deprive the enemy of many of the weapons which he is always ready
to use against us.

When Theodor Herzl appeared before the Zionist Congress in 1906 with
his famous Uganda proposition, the Jewish people was amazed. How could
a man like Theodor Herzl, whose love for Palestine was beyond doubt,
propose to the Jews to settle in East Africa, on a stretch of territory
not only outside the pale of Jewish traditions but even outside the
pale of civilization? If it had been a question only of enabling the
then badly persecuted Russian Jews to emigrate to other countries where
they could live in relative freedom and happiness, were there not
plenty of civilized countries where the Jews could find a refuge? These
and similar questions were raised after Herzl brought forth the Uganda
proposal. But those who were on intimate terms with the great leader
later explained this apparently strange mood.

It was in 1903 that von Plehve began his policy of pogroms, and from
1903 to 1906 hundreds of pogroms were perpetrated against the Jews in
Russia and Poland. Theodor Herzl, who witnessed the development of
the tragic Dreyfus affair and who had some experience with western
European anti-Semitism, knew perfectly well the prevailing hatred
against the Jews everywhere, but he could not imagine that a Christian
State, forming a member of the family of nations, should in the
twentieth century resort to such barbarities as pogroms, in order to
carry out its anti-Semitic policy. Man of delicate and fine feelings as
he was, he became so disgusted with the situation and so downhearted
on account of these pogroms that, in a moment of despair, he said to
himself, "We would rather live among the Hottentots and other savages
in Africa than among the civilized Christian nations in Europe." The
entire Uganda proposition can be understood as an expression of disgust
with European civilization on the part of our great Jewish statesman
and artist. In short, Uganda was a loud protest against Christian
civilization and Christian political methods.

In a lesser degree Zionism, also, is partly a protest against European
Christian civilization, which is an inheritance of ancient Rome.
We want to go back to Palestine not only because we want to live
a national life of our own there, but also because we are utterly
repelled by European civilization and because we do not believe in a
civilization that leads to the murder and pillage of entire nations
and the reign of horror and brutal might. We are disgusted with this
civilization because we do not believe that "might is right," because
we do not believe in the political heritage of ancient Rome.

We cannot say whether or not every nationalistic Jew is conscious of
this fact, but the conscientious historian who does not believe in
the inheritance of Rome will certainly ascribe the revival of Jewish
nationalism not only to the national memories of the Jews, but also to
the radical difference between Jewish and Roman political ideas and
ideals and to the difference in the concept of life of the Jew and
those who live on the political inheritance of ancient Rome. We, for
one, firmly believe that Zionism, in spite of its purely political
aspects, has the ethical consciousness of the Jewish nation as its
basis and as its driving power; Zionism is thus to our mind not only a
_political_, but also _an ethical movement_--or even a revolutionary
movement, in the sense that the Jewish people revolts against a system
of civilization from which not only entire humanity has suffered, but
from which it has suffered most. Now, since Zionism is also an ethical
movement, one can easily see to what its realization should lead.

Though the Jewish people lived in a Europe dominated by Roman ideas
for two thousand years, it did not become an adherent of the Roman
school of thought. We have remained Jews, still cherishing Jewish
ideals of justice and equity, and we mean to go back to Palestine
not as "Europeans," but as Jews pure and simple. It cannot possibly
be our desire to erect in Palestine such a system of civilization
and to establish there such an order of things as have created the
present state of affairs in Europe. _We are going to Palestine not
only to begin a new national life, but also to create a new system
of civilization._ This is the justification of Zionism from a broad
ethical point of view. We are going to realize there not the old Roman
inheritance but the old Jewish inheritance. We have for the last 2,500
years had a political philosophy of our own, a political philosophy
that is just the opposite of the Roman political philosophy. We believe
that the political philosophy of the old prophets is just as human
and at least as near to reality as the political philosophy of the
ancient Romans, and we believe that our national political philosophy,
which considers men not only as physical beings but also intellectual
and spiritual beings and urges them to live up to their spiritual
and intellectual nature, is at least as sound as the one-sided Roman
political philosophy, which takes into account only the physical nature
of man and hence teaches that "might is right."

It is our firm conviction that Jewish national ideals of old, though
buried in books for the last two thousand years, can be turned into
reality and be applied to life. This is what we are going to do in
Palestine. But, people will ask, if the Jewish ideals are based on
life's reality, why did not the Jewish people succeed in making its
ideals a force in life when it lived on its own soil and enjoyed
independence? To this we reply that the ancient Jewish genius, which
devised such grand plans of life, failed, for reasons which we cannot
enumerate here, to create the technique and methods, with the help of
which these grand plans could have been carried out. The Romans, on
the other hand, invented a wonderful technique of life, but failed to
devise a plan of life which would make life more worth living than
it is now. We have lived under the system of Roman civilization for
nearly two thousand years. We have not been imbued with Roman ideals.
We have not accepted the Roman doctrine of life, but we have learned a
great deal from Roman technique, and we are therefore now equipped with
both--with the Jewish idealistic traditions and with the experiences
of Roman civilization and Roman technique. Now we are in a position to
apply our ideals of old to life, because we possess the methods and
the technique of the application. We know today a great deal about
administrative and constitutional technique, of which our ancestors
knew next to nothing. We know today a great deal about organization,
of which our ancestors had not the slightest idea. Having gone through
the Roman school, we today know something about organization and this
knowledge of organization we are going to apply to our political
traditions, to our philosophy of life; we are going to create in
Palestine that synthesis of civilization which will be Jewish to the
core in its contents and Roman in shape and form. Might will not be
right, because man is not only a physical but also an intellectual and
spiritual being. Justice and equity will be thoroughly organized and
will not be left to the conscience of the idealistic individual only,
as was the case in ancient Judea.

Whether the future Jewish State in Palestine will be a republic or a
monarchy does not matter. The form of government never testifies to the
soundness of the state; there are good monarchies and bad republics.
One thing is as clear as day: If there is going to be a Jewish
Palestine, it will be a land of justice and freedom, where right will
prevail and where the demands of the spirit will be complied with. All
forms of life will have to be different from what they are in the pale
of Roman civilization. "Thou shalt be a light unto the nations." This
must be our ambition.

Jews as individuals can accomplish very little for Judaism, cannot help
to realize its ideals and cannot possibly make it a force in life. For
two thousand years we have lived in the Diaspora as individuals, and
what did we accomplish for the realization of our old ideals, of which
we are so proud? Nothing. Only feeble-minded rabbis, who are constantly
talking of the mission of Judaism without knowing what they are talking
about, can speak of the mission of the Jews in the face of the present
catastrophe. Jews as individuals cannot have any Jewish mission in
life, but a people can, if it is inspired by ideals.

What we have failed to do as individuals for two thousand years--to
make humanity recognize that the political philosophy of the old
prophets is much stronger than that of the old Romans--we may be able
to realize in Palestine as a people. It is only with reluctance that we
use the much abused phrase, "Jewish mission," but if there is such a
thing as the Jewish mission, it will only be realized when the Jews are
reorganized as a people on the soil of their ancestors and lead such a
life as to justify the prediction of the prophet of old: "Thou shalt
be a light unto the nations." This is the true meaning of the Jewish
mission. This and nothing else.



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "On the Eve of Redemption" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.