TEN ESSAYS ON ZIONISM AND JUDAISM
Printed in Great Britain by
St. Stephen’s Printing Works, Bristol, England.
TEN ESSAYS ON ZIONISM AND JUDAISM
BY
ACHAD HA-AM
TRANSLATED FROM THE HEBREW BY
LEON SIMON
Author of _Studies in Jewish Nationalism_
LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LTD.
BROADWAY HOUSE, 68-74, CARTER LANE, E.C.
1922
CONTENTS
TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION vii
THE WRONG WAY (1889) 1
THE FIRST ZIONIST CONGRESS (1897) 25
THE JEWISH STATE AND THE JEWISH PROBLEM (1897) 32
PINSKER AND POLITICAL ZIONISM (1902) 56
THE TIME HAS COME (1906) 91
“WHEN MESSIAH COMES” (1907) 114
A SPIRITUAL CENTRE (1907) 120
SUMMA SUMMARUM (1912) 130
THE SUPREMACY OF REASON (1904) 162
JUDAISM AND THE GOSPELS (1910) 223
INDEX 254
TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION
The present volume of translations from the Hebrew of Achad Ha-Am[1]
differs in character from the volume of _Selected Essays_ published in
1912 by the Jewish Publication Society of America. The earlier selection
was confined, by the express desire of the publishing Society, to essays
dealing with the broader aspects of Judaism and Jewish thought; essays
of a more polemical character, in which the author has defined his
attitude to the modern Jewish national movement, were designedly
omitted. Of the ten further essays included in the present selection,
only two belong to the former category, and these have been placed, out
of their chronological order, at the end. The other eight essays all
deal with one aspect or another of Zionism, and they form a series which
will enable the English reader who is interested in the Zionist movement
to follow its history under the guidance of one who is at the same time
among its staunchest pillars and its most unsparing critics. The
first[2] of the eight—which is also the first essay written by Achad
Ha-Am—belongs to the early years of the Jewish national movement, when
the Zionist Organisation was unborn, and the very name “Zionism”
uninvented. The last of the eight—and the most recent of Achad Ha-Am’s
essays, for the war and ill-health have made him silent of recent
years—records his impressions of the practical results achieved by
Zionism in Palestine up to 1911.
As the background of these essays is for the most part unfamiliar to
English readers, it will not be out of place to give here a brief sketch
of the phases through which the Zionist movement has passed, in so far
as that is necessary for a proper understanding of the criticisms and
allusions in the essays themselves.
The first organised form of Zionism took shape in Russia under the
stress of the pogroms of 1880-81. Those pogroms, following a period
during which the Russian Government had seemed to be working sincerely
towards the emancipation of the Jews, and themselves followed by a whole
code of restrictive legislation known as the May Laws, awoke into a
blaze the national sentiment which had slumbered but had not died in the
Russian Ghetto. They revealed the evils of _galuth_—exile, life outside
Palestine—in all their hideousness, and turned men’s minds to the active
accomplishment of that escape from _galuth_ for which during many
centuries the Jew had only prayed. _Chibbath Zion_ (Love of Zion) became
an organised movement, and throughout Russia groups of _Chovevé Zion_
(Lovers of Zion) began to work for the settlement of Jews on the land in
Palestine. At the head of the movement stood Dr. Leo Pinsker, who in his
pamphlet _Auto-Emancipation_ had outlined an ambitious scheme for the
emigration of Jews _en masse_ to some territory (not necessarily
Palestine) where they could be their own masters. His proposal found no
response among the emancipated Western Jews, to whom it was addressed;
and as its realisation was obviously beyond the power of the oppressed
and persecuted Russian Jews, its author turned to _Chibbath Zion_ as the
only means open to him of working for a national regeneration of Jewry.
Events soon showed that _Chibbath Zion_ was as yet unable to achieve so
large an aim. The difficulties in the way of settling Jews on the land
in Palestine were enormous, and the resources of the _Chovevé Zion_ were
painfully limited. The national sentiment was not sufficiently alive in
the Jewish masses to induce large numbers of them to brave the hardships
and privations of life in Palestine for the sake of a national ideal.
Any Jew whose primary object was to escape from pogroms and May Laws and
to better his individual position would naturally prefer some country,
like the United States, where economic life was already developed. The
_Chovevé Zion_ attempted, rather unwisely, to make Palestine attractive
to the less idealistically minded by exaggerating the possibilities of
individual self-advancement which it held out. The natural result was
disappointment and disillusion; and the Palestinian agricultural
settlements (or colonies, as they are generally called) would have faded
away altogether but for the generous assistance of Baron Edmond de
Rothschild, of Paris. Thanks to him the first colonies pulled through,
and after many vicissitudes were set on the road to independence. But
the whole colonisation movement remained small and poor, and any hopes
which might have been entertained of its bringing about even the
beginning of a solution of the material problem of _galuth_ were
dissipated at an early date. Meanwhile, however, the _Chovevé Zion_
contributed to a national work of the first importance by helping to lay
the foundations of a revival of the Hebrew language, especially in
Palestine—a development which, while it had nothing to do with the
solution of any material problem, had very much to do with the
stimulation of that national sentiment which is the only possible basis
of a national as distinct from a purely philanthropic or economic
movement.
In 1895, when the colonisation work was at a low ebb, the Jewish world
was startled by the appearance of _Der Judenstaat_, a pamphlet in which
a brilliant Viennese journalist and playwright, Dr. Theodor Herzl,
advocated, as a solution of the Jewish problem, the establishment of an
autonomous Jewish State in some suitable territory (not necessarily
Palestine). Herzl’s scheme was (unconsciously) more or less a
reproduction of that of Pinsker; but it met with a different fate,
largely, no doubt, thanks to the silent growth of the national sentiment
which had been brought about during the intervening years by the
awakening—albeit to little purpose from a purely practical point of
view—of Jewish interest in Palestine. While the Western Jews were for
the most part as deaf to Herzl’s call as they had been to Pinsker’s,
many of the _Chovevé Zion_ found in his pamphlet a new inspiration, and
their pressure induced him to take in hand himself the practical
realisation of a scheme which he had meant to leave others to carry out.
The result was the Zionist Organisation, which was founded at the first
Zionist Congress at Basle in 1897. This organisation, though the great
body of its supporters was drawn from the ranks of the _Chovevé Zion_,
reflected the outlook and ideas of Herzl and his handful of friends and
supporters from the West. There was to be no more waste of time and
effort on “petty colonisation.” Instead, there was to be a political
organisation of Jewry, with a large National Fund, which would first of
all buy Palestine from the Turk under a Charter guaranteed by the
European Powers, and would then proceed to settle in Palestine all those
Jews who could not be happy where they were. This beautiful dream roused
the Jewish masses for a time to a kind of Messianic fervour; it was so
much more alluring than the hard realities which the _Chovevé Zion_ had
had to face. But after a few years the inevitable awakening came.
Realities remained realities, and the Charter remained a distant vision.
Herzl passed away untimely in 1904, and with him and his wonderful
personality passed the only force which could make the dream-world
appear for a time real. He had, indeed, obtained from the British
Government an offer of a territory in East Africa (commonly, though
incorrectly, located in Uganda) for a quasi-autonomous settlement of
Jews; but this triumph of the Zionist Organisation only served to bring
out the essential difference, hitherto more or less successfully kept in
the background, between the head of the Organisation and its body. The
_Chovevé Zion_, however they may have erred in attempting to further the
colonisation of Palestine by appeals to individual self-interest, had at
any rate remained sufficiently nationalist to feel that a national
Jewish settlement could by no possibility have any other home than
Palestine. They had seen to it that the Zionist Organisation put
Palestine and no other country into its programme. Now, when they found
their trusted and beloved leader attempting to divert them to East
Africa—though he averred solemnly that East Africa was only intended as
a temporary refuge, a _Nachtasyl_, and Palestine remained the real
goal—they felt that they had been betrayed. Herzl’s enormous influence
averted, at the Congress of 1903, a direct refusal of the British
Government’s offer: a Commission was appointed to study the proposed
territory. But when the next Congress met, in 1905, Herzl was no more,
and the opponents of East Africa—the _Zioné Zion_, “Zion-Zionists,” as
they were called—carried the day. There was of course a violent
reaction: the masses swung away from Zionism, now that it no longer held
out to them the hope of a refuge from persecution and poverty, and some
of the minority party founded a new body, the Jewish Territorial
Organisation, to search the globe for a home of refuge. This was all to
the good, for the Zionist Organisation was purged of Messianism and was
able to face realities again. The framework, and to a large extent the
phraseology, created by Herzl were retained, but essentially the Zionist
Organisation became perforce an instrument for the realisation of the
national ideal along the two lines on which alone real advance is
possible—the lines of Palestinian development and national education. It
was only during the war, which brought on the one hand the Balfour
Declaration, with its promise of a National Home for the Jewish people
in Palestine, and on the other hand untold suffering and loss to the
Jewish masses in Eastern Europe, that Messianic hopes were again
aroused—again to be followed by the inevitable disillusionment and
reaction.
On the position created by the recent developments of Zionism Achad
Ha-Am has commented in a brief introduction, written in June, 1920, for
a new edition of his collected essays in Hebrew. As the question of the
scope of the Balfour Declaration is still much debated, and has a
special interest for English readers, I reproduce here the greater part
of that Introduction.
“When,” he writes, “I returned from Palestine in 1912, and my _Summa
Summarum_ aroused violent anger in various quarters, I wrote an
explanatory note by way of supplement to that essay; and I should like
to remind my readers on this occasion of some of the things that I said
then, because they seem to me relevant at the present time. ‘There must
be,’ I wrote, ‘some natural connection of cause and effect between an
object and the means by which its attainment is sought: we must be able
to show how this object can be attained by these means. So long as that
connection does not exist, so long as we cannot attempt to justify our
choice of means except by such vague phrases as ”Perhaps ... you never
can tell ... times change ...”—we may speak of cherished hopes and an
ideal for the distant future, but we cannot speak of a _practical_
object which can serve as a basis for a systematic plan of work. For
every systematic plan of work must necessarily be based on a clear
conception (whether intellectual or imaginative) of the chain of cause
and effect which connects the various activities one with another, and
all of them together with the object.... No doubt, we cannot foretell
the future; no doubt it is possible that unforeseen things may happen
and may change the face of reality. But a possibility of that kind
cannot be made the basis of a systematic plan of work, and we are
dealing no longer with an objective of immediate activity, but with a
vision of the future.’
“About two years after these words were written and published the
world-war began, and led to those results which we know: ‘unforeseen
things happened and changed the face of reality.’ Our own life, too, was
caught in the maelstrom of world-happenings; and the face of our own
reality, too, was changed as a consequence. Much might be said, and has
already been said, about the character of these changes, about their
good and their bad side, about their significance both for the Diaspora
and for Palestine. I cannot now deal with this subject fully, and I wish
for my part only to say a word or two on one of the principal features
of the changed situation—I mean the widening of the horizon of our work
in Palestine through the famous Declaration of the British Government,
which has recently been confirmed by the Supreme Council, and thus has
ceased to be merely the promise of a single Government and has become an
international obligation. This Declaration has provided a new ‘basis for
a systematic plan of work,’ and has set up ‘an objective of immediate
activity’—activity on a large scale, such as has been hitherto only a
theme for the anticipations of orators and essayists, with no real basis
in the present. But at the same time the Declaration has winged anew the
imagination of those who were already accustomed to build castles in the
air, without regard to the realities of this earthly life. That is, I
fancy, one of the reasons why there is still a demand for this book,
though much of its contents does not fit the realities of to-day. It is
not so much the contents that matter as the point of view from which I
have tried to deal with the various questions as they arose. I have
tried to judge not on the basis of that ‘you-never-can-tell’ attitude
which shrouds itself in the mists of the future, but on the basis of
present realities, or of impending realities which can be prognosticated
from existing conditions. Even to-day this point of view needs
reiteration. For once it has happened, as by a miracle, that what was
wildly improbable a short time ago has become to a certain extent
actual: and this ‘miracle’ has led those who were always waiting for
miracles to claim a victory, and to insist on maintaining their attitude
for the future also, and on laying down as the one principle of policy
this perverted axiom—that if such a thing has happened once in
exceptional circumstances, its like may happen again, and we can
therefore construct our world as we please, regardless of present
realities, and relying on a repetition of the miracle when we need it.
There is a Jewish proverb which says: ‘A mistake which succeeds is none
the less a mistake.’ So a plan of work which turns its back on
realities, and relies on the possibility that something out of the
ordinary may turn up and change realities to its advantage, is a
mistaken plan, even if it succeeds for once in a way. And if it goes on
banking on the element of chance, which does in fact interfere
occasionally with the normal course of events, and continues to act
accordingly, it will end in disaster, despite its initial success.
“All the details of the diplomatic conversations in London which led to
the Declaration have not yet been made public; but the time has come to
reveal one ‘secret,’ because knowledge of it will make it easier to
understand the true meaning of the Declaration.
“‘To facilitate the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for
the Jewish people’—that is the text of the promise given to us by the
British Government. But that is not the text suggested to the Government
by the Zionist spokesmen. They wished it to read: ‘the reconstitution of
Palestine as the National Home of the Jewish people’; but when the happy
day arrived on which the Declaration was signed and sealed by the
Government, it was found to contain the first formula and not the
second. That is to say, the allusion to the fact that we are about to
_re_build our _old_ national home was dropped, and at the same time the
words ‘constitution of Palestine as the national home’ were replaced by
‘establishment of a national home in Palestine.’ There were some who
understood at once that this had some significance; but others thought
that the difference was merely one of form. Hence they sometimes
attempted on subsequent occasions, when the negotiations with the
Government afforded an opportunity, to formulate the promise in their
own wording, as though it had not been changed. But every time they
found in the Government’s reply a repetition of the actual text of the
Declaration—which proves that it is not a case where the same thing may
be put equally well in either of two ways, but that the promise is
really defined in this particular form of words, and goes no further.
“It can scarcely be necessary to explain at length the difference
between the two versions. Had the British Government accepted the
version suggested to it—that Palestine should be reconstituted as the
national home of the Jewish people—its promise might have been
interpreted as meaning that Palestine, inhabited as it now is, was
restored to the Jewish people on the ground of its historic right; that
the Jewish people was to rebuild its waste places and was destined to
rule over it and to manage all its affairs in its own way, without
regard to the consent or non-consent of its present inhabitants. For
this rebuilding (it might have been understood) is only a renewal of the
ancient right of the Jews, which over-rides the right of the present
inhabitants, who have wrongly established their national home on a land
not their own. But the British Government, as it stated expressly in the
Declaration itself, was not willing to promise anything which would harm
the present inhabitants of Palestine, and therefore it changed the
Zionist formula, and gave it a more restricted form. The Government
thinks, it would seem, that when a people has only the moral force of
its claim to build its national home in a land at present inhabited by
others, and has not behind it a powerful army or fleet to prove the
justice of its claim, that people can have only what its right allows it
in truth and justice, and not what conquering peoples take for
themselves by armed force, under the cover of various ‘rights’ invented
for the occasion. Now the historic right of a people in relation to a
country inhabited by others can mean only the right to settle once more
in its ancestral land, to work the land and to develop its resources
without hindrance. And if the inhabitants complain that strangers have
come to exploit the land and its population, the historic right has a
complete answer to them: these newcomers are not strangers, but the
descendants of the old masters of the country, and as soon as they
settle in it again, they are as good as natives. And not only the
settlers as individuals, but the collective body as a people, when it
has once more put into this country a part of its national wealth—men,
capital, cultural institutions and so forth—has again in the country its
national home, and has the right to extend and to complete its home up
to the limit of its capacity. But this historic right does not over-ride
the right of the other inhabitants, which is a tangible right based on
generation after generation of life and work in the country. The country
is at present their national home too, and they too have the right to
develop their national potentialities so far as they are able. This
position, then, makes Palestine common ground for different peoples,
each of which tries to establish its national home there; and in this
position it is impossible for the national home of either of them to be
complete and to embrace all that is involved in the conception of a
‘national home.’ If you build your house not on untenanted ground, but
in a place where there are other inhabited houses, you are sole master
only as far as your front gate. Within you may arrange your effects as
you please, but beyond the gate all the inhabitants are partners, and
the general administration must be ordered in conformity with the good
of all of them. Similarly, national homes of different peoples in the
same country can demand only national freedom for each one in its
internal affairs, and the affairs of the country which are common to all
of them are administered by all the ‘householders’ jointly if the
relations between them and their degree of development qualify them for
the task, or, if that condition is not yet fulfilled, by a guardian from
outside, who takes care that the rights of none shall be infringed.
“When, then, the British Government promised to facilitate the
establishment _in Palestine of a national home_ for the Jewish
people—and not, as was suggested to it, the reconstitution of Palestine
as the national home of the Jewish people—that promise meant two things.
It meant in the first place recognition of the historic right of the
Jewish people to build its national home in Palestine, with a promise of
assistance from the British Government; and it meant in the second place
a negation of the power of that right to over-ride the right of the
present inhabitants and to make the Jewish people sole ruler in the
country. The national home of the Jewish people must be built out of the
free material which can still be found in the country itself, and out of
that which the Jews will bring in from outside or will create by their
work, without overthrowing the national home of the other inhabitants.
And as the two homes are contiguous, and friction and conflicts of
interest are inevitable, especially in the early period of the building
of the Jewish national home, of which not even the foundations have yet
been properly laid, the promise necessarily demands, though it is not
expressly so stated, that a guardian shall be appointed over the two
homes—that is, over the whole country—to see to it that the owner of the
historic right, while he does not injure the inhabitants in their
internal affairs, shall not on his side have obstacles put in his way by
his neighbour, who at present is stronger than he. And in course of
time, when the new national home is fully built, and its tenant is able
to rely, no less than his neighbour, on the right which belongs to a
large population living and working in the country, it will be possible
to raise the question whether the time has not come to hand over the
control of the country to the ‘householders’ themselves, so that they
may together administer their joint affairs, fairly and justly, in
accordance with the needs of each of them and the value of his work for
the revival and development of the country.
“This and no more, it seems to me, is what we can find in the Balfour
Declaration; and this and no more is what our leaders and writers ought
to have told the people, so that it should not imagine more than what is
actually there, and afterwards relapse into despair and absolute
scepticism.
“But we all know how the Declaration was interpreted at the time of its
publication, and how much exaggeration many of our workers and writers
have tried to introduce into it from that day to this. The Jewish people
listened, and believed that the end of the _galuth_ had indeed come, and
that in a short time Palestine would be a ‘Jewish State.’ The Arab
people too, which we have always ignored from the very beginning of the
colonisation movement, listened, and believed that the Jews were coming
to expropriate its land and to do with it what they liked. All this
inevitably led to friction and bitterness on both sides, and contributed
much to the state of things which was revealed in all its ugliness in
the events at Jerusalem last April.[3] Those events, in conjunction with
others which preceded them, might have taught us how long is the way
from a written promise to its practical realisation, and how many are
the obstacles, not easily to be removed, which beset our path. But
apparently we learned nothing; and only a short time after the events at
Jerusalem, when the British promise was confirmed at San Remo, we began
once more to blow the Messianic trumpet, to announce the ‘redemption,’
and so forth. The confirmation of the promise, as I said above, raised
it to the level of an international obligation, and from that point of
view it is undoubtedly of great value. But essentially it added nothing,
and the text of the earlier promise remains absolutely unaltered. What
the real meaning of that text is, we have seen above; but its brevity
and vagueness allow those who so wish—as experience in Palestine has
shown—to restrict its meaning much more—indeed, almost to nothing.
Everything, therefore, depends on the good will of the ‘guardian,’ on
whom was placed at San Remo the duty of giving the promise practical
effect. Had we paid attention to realities, we should have restrained
our feelings, and have waited a little to see how the written word would
be interpreted in practice.
“I have dwelt perhaps at undue length on this point, because it is the
fundamental one. But in truth we are now confronted with other
questions, _internal_ questions, which demand a solution without delay;
and the solutions which we hear from time to time are as far from
realities as are the poles asunder. It will not be long, however, before
these visionary proposals, which are so attractive, have to make way for
actual _work_, and we have to show _in practice_ how far we have the
material and moral strength to establish the national home which we have
been given permission to establish in Palestine.
“And at this great and difficult moment I appear before my
readers—perhaps for the last time—on the threshold of this book, and
repeat once more my old warning, on which most of the essays in this
book are but a commentary:
“Do not press on too quickly to the goal, so long as the actual
conditions without which it cannot be reached have not been created; and
do not disparage the work which is possible at any given time, having
regard to actual conditions, even if it will not bring the Messiah
to-day or to-morrow.”
* * * * *
It is because Achad Ha-Am has consistently driven home the lesson
reiterated in these last words, and because that lesson is so strikingly
apt at the present time, that one feels justified to-day in producing a
translation of some of his essays which, as regards their actual
subject-matter, are somewhat out of date. The point of view from which
he approaches Zionist questions—that of an idealism guided but not
subdued by a sternly objective apprehension of realities—is not out of
date, and never will be until either human beings or external realities
change very much. And that point of view is capable of a wider
application than is expressly given to it by the Lover of Zion,
concerned primarily with the problems and the destiny of his own people:
for it is true of any other ideal movement no less than of Zionism that
it is endangered not alone by those who oppose it, but also by those who
adhere to it only because they expect it to work miracles.
* * * * *
The translations in this volume, like those in its predecessor, have had
the advantage of revision by Achad Ha-Am. The few foot-notes which the
translator has added are enclosed in square brackets.
I am much indebted to Mr. Fisher Unwin and to Messrs. Paul Goodman and
Arthur D. Lewis for permission to include in this volume the translation
of “A Spiritual Centre,” which first appeared in _Zionism: Problems and
Views_, and to the Union of Jewish Literary Societies for permission to
reprint that part of “The Time has Come” which appeared in the _Jewish
Literary Annual_ for 1907. My best thanks are due to the Editors of the
Jewish Review, Messrs. Norman Bentwich and Joseph Hockman, who have
kindly allowed me to include “Judaism and the Gospels” and “Summa
Summarum” from the _Jewish Review_. I have also to thank the _Jüdischer
Verlag_, which now owns the copyright of the Hebrew original, for
consenting to the publication of this volume of translations.
LEON SIMON.
Footnote 1:
Achad Ha-Am (= “one of the people”) is the pen-name of Asher Ginzberg,
a famous Hebrew thinker and essayist, born in Russia in 1856, who has
lived in London since 1908. His biography (up to 1902) is given in the
_Jewish Encyclopædia_. For some account of his teaching I may refer to
the essay called “One of the People” in my _Studies in Jewish
Nationalism_ (Longmans, 1920).
Footnote 2:
This essay (“The Wrong Way”), when first published, had to be
expressed somewhat obscurely so as to pass the Russian Censor. It was
altered subsequently, when the first collection of Achad Ha-Am’s
essays was published in book form, but it still lacks somewhat of the
absolute clarity which distinguishes his usual style.
Footnote 3:
The anti-Jewish riots of April, 1920, in which many lives were lost.
In a footnote at this point the author recalls that as far back as
1891 he drew attention to the Arab question, and pointed out the folly
of regarding the Arabs as “wild men of the desert,” who could not see
what was going on around them.
THE WRONG WAY
(1889)
I
For many centuries the Jewish people, sunk in poverty and degradation,
has been sustained by faith and hope in the divine mercy. The present
generation has seen the birth of a new and far-reaching idea, which
promises to bring down our faith and hope from heaven, and transform
both into living and active forces, making our land the goal of hope,
and our people the anchor of faith.
Historic ideas of this kind spring forth suddenly, as though of their
own accord, when the time is ripe. They at once establish their sway
over the minds which respond to them, and from these they spread abroad
and make their way through the world—as a spark first sets fire to the
most inflammable material, and then spreads to the framework of the
building. It was in this way that our idea came to birth, without our
being able to say who discovered it, and won adherents among those who
halted half-way: among those, that is, whose faith had weakened, and who
had no longer the patience to wait for miracles, but who, on the other
hand, were still attached to their people by bonds which had not lost
their strength, and had not yet abandoned belief in its right to exist
as a single people. These first “nationalists” raised the banner of the
new idea, and went out to fight its battle full of confidence. The
sincerity of their own conviction gradually awoke conviction in others,
and daily fresh recruits joined them from Left and Right: so that one
might have expected them in a short time to be numbered by tens of
thousands.
But meanwhile the movement underwent a fundamental change. The idea took
practical shape in the work of Palestinian colonisation. This
unlooked-for development surprised friends and foes alike. The friends
of the idea raised a shout of victory, and cried in exultation: Is not
this a thing unheard-of, that an idea so young has strength to force its
way into the world of action? Does not this prove clearly that we were
not mere dreamers? The foes of the movement, on their side, who had
hitherto despised it and mocked it, as an idle fancy of dreamers and
visionaries, now began grudgingly to admit that after all it showed
signs of life and was worthy of attention.
From that time dates a new period in the history of the idea; and if we
glance at the whole course of its development from that time to the
present, we shall find once again matter for surprise. Whereas
previously the idea grew ever stronger and stronger and spread more and
more widely among all sections of the people, while its sponsors looked
to the future with exultation and high hopes, now, after its victory, it
has ceased to win new adherents, and even its old adherents seem to lose
their energy, and ask for nothing more than the well-being of the few
poor colonies[4] already in existence, which are what remains of all
their pleasant visions of an earlier day. But even this modest demand
remains unfulfilled; the land is full of intrigues and quarrels and
pettiness—all for the sake and for the glory of the great idea—which
give them no peace and endless worry; and who knows what will be the end
of it all?
If, as a philosopher has said, it is melancholy to witness the death
from old age of a religion which brought comfort to men in the past, how
much more sad is it when an idea full of youthful vigour—the hope of the
passing generation and the salvation of that which is coming—stumbles
and falls at the outset of its career! Add to this that the idea in
question is one which we see exercising so profound an influence over
many peoples, and surely we are bound to ask ourselves the old question:
Why are we so different from any other race or nation? Or are those of
our people really right, who say that we have ceased to be a nation and
are held together only by the bond of religion? But, after all, those
who take that view can speak only for themselves. It is true that
between them and us there is no longer any bond except that of a common
religion and the hatred which our enemies have for us; but we ourselves,
who feel our Jewish nationality in our own hearts, very properly deride
anybody who tries to argue out of existence something of which we have
an intuitive conviction. If this is so, why has not the idea of the
national rebirth succeeded in taking root even among ourselves and in
making that progress for which we hoped?
Writers in the press give us two answers to this question. Some blame
the _Chalukah_[5] with its Rabbis and scribes, others “the Baron”[6]
with his agents and administrators in Palestine. All alike try to fasten
the blame on certain men, as though but for them the Jewish problem
would have been solved for all time; and the only point at issue is
whether it is A. and B. or X. and Y. who stand in the way of that
consummation. But such answers are not at all satisfying. They simply
raise a further question: How is it that certain individuals, be they
who they may, are in a position to obstruct the progress of the whole
nation? Must it not be a sorry “national movement” which depends for its
success on the generosity of a philanthropist and the kindness of his
agents, and cannot withstand the miserable _Chalukah_, which is itself
fighting for its existence with what strength it has left?
We must look, then, for the cause of all the evil not in isolated facts,
in what this man or the other does, but much deeper. If we do that we
shall find, I think, the true cause to lie in the “victory” which the
idea has achieved prematurely through the fault of its champions. In
their eagerness to obtain great results before the time was ripe, they
have deserted the long road of natural development, and by artificial
means have forced into the arena of practical life an idea which was
still young and tender, neither fully ripened nor sufficiently
developed; and thanks to this excessive haste their strength has failed
them, and their labour has been in vain.
This judgment will certainly not be widely acceptable, and I will
therefore endeavour in what follows to explain it so far as I am able,
and so far as the nature of the subject permits.
Every belief or opinion which leads to action must necessarily be
founded on the following three judgments: First, that the attainment of
a certain object is felt by us to be needed; secondly, that certain
actions are the means to the attainment of that object; and thirdly,
that those actions are not beyond our power, and the effort which they
require is not so great as to outweigh the value of the object in our
estimation. The first of these judgments is based on feeling, and needs
no proof; the second and third are based on knowledge of facts and
phenomena outside ourselves, and therefore need the assent of reason.
When, therefore, a new idea summons us to a new course of action, it may
be simply discovering new methods of attaining an object which we valued
before, and may at the same time be able to demonstrate by conclusive
proofs, whether theoretical or practical, that these methods really lead
to the attainment of the object, and are commensurate with its value and
with our resources. A new discovery of this sort belongs entirely to the
sphere of reason, and therefore its sponsors need put their case only
before people of intelligence and good judgment. If such men pronounce
the new idea right, and proceed to act as it bids, its victory among the
masses is assured: for gradually the masses will follow in the right
course. But it will be different if one of these conditions is
lacking—if, that is, the object which the new idea sets before us is one
that we do not already value, or one not valued proportionately to the
difficulty of its attainment; or again if it cannot compel reason, by
convincing arguments, to admit the correctness of its judgment as
regards the connection between the means and the object, and as regards
the resources and the effort necessary for the attainment of the object.
In either of these cases the new idea must rely for its success not on
reason, but on sentiment. For the growth of a feeling of affection and
desire for the object will carry with it not only a strengthening of the
determination to strive after its attainment, no matter how great the
effort required, but also an increasing intellectual belief in the
possibility of its attainment, in spite of the absence of conclusive
evidence that it is attainable. Hence those who originate an idea of
this kind have not, at the outset of their activity, any concern with
the intellectuals, the men of dry logic and cold calculation: it is not
in that quarter that they will find support. They must turn only to
those whose sensibilities are quick, and who are governed by their
feelings; they alone will listen. And for that reason the originators of
the idea must themselves be above all things men of keen sensibility,
temperamentally capable of concentrating their whole spiritual life on a
single point, on one idea and one desire, of devoting their whole life
to it and expending in its service their last ounce of strength. By
doing their work competently and with absolute devotion they will show
that they have themselves boundless faith in the truth of their idea,
and infinite love for its service; and that will be the only sure means
of awakening faith and love in others. In that way, and not by mere
talk, will they gain wide support for their idea. And if they appeal in
this way to sentiment, then there is a chance for the idea (provided
that it does in some way correspond to a current need) to spread
gradually and to win many adherents who will be devoted to it heart and
soul. It is true that such adherents, being strong mainly on the side of
feeling, are not generally fitted, for all their good will, to carry out
a difficult undertaking, which needs strength, discernment, and
experience; but that matters not at all. For in course of time, as the
idea strikes root more and more firmly in the heart of the people, and
makes its way into every house and every family, it will at last capture
the great men, the leaders and the thinkers. They, too, will begin,
whether they like it or no, to feel the workings of the new force which
envelops them on every side. Their opposition will grow feebler and
feebler, until at last they will succumb and take their place in the
van. Then the idea will become a force to be reckoned with in practical
affairs, and its originators, setting out on the task of its
realisation, with the confidence born of strength, and with the
necessary equipment of knowledge and skill, may achieve brilliant
results, and have the laugh of the intellectuals and the sceptics who
used to scoff at them as dreamers.
The history of ideas and beliefs afford actual examples of all that has
been said above. But it is time to return to our immediate subject.
The idea which we are here discussing is not new in the sense of setting
up a new object of endeavour; but the methods which it suggests for the
attainment of its object demand a great expenditure of effort, and it
cannot prove the adequacy of its methods so conclusively as to compel
reason to assent to the truth of its judgments. What it needs,
therefore, is to make of the devotion and the desire which are felt for
its ideal an instrument for the strengthening of faith and the
sharpening of resolution. Now the devotion of the individual to the
well-being of the community, which is the ideal here in question, is a
sentiment to which we Jews are no strangers. But if we would estimate
aright its capacity to produce the faith and the resolution that are
needed for the realisation of our idea, we must first of all study the
vicissitudes through which it has passed, and examine its present
condition.
All the laws and ordinances, all the blessings and curses of the Law of
Moses have but one unvarying object: the well-being of the nation as a
whole in the land of its inheritance. The happiness of the individual is
not regarded. The individual Israelite is treated as standing to the
people of Israel in the relation of a single limb to the whole body: the
actions of the individual have their reward in the good of the
community. One long chain unites all the generations, from Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob to the end of time; the covenant which God made with
the Patriarchs he keeps with their descendants, and if the fathers eat
sour grapes, the teeth of the children will be set on edge. For the
people is one people throughout all its generations, and the individuals
who come and go in each generation are but as those minute parts of the
living body which change every day, without affecting in any degree the
character of that organic unity which is the whole body.
It is difficult to say definitely whether at any period our people as a
whole really entertained the sentiment of national loyalty in this high
degree, or whether it was only a moral ideal cherished by the most
important section of the people. But at any rate it is clear that after
the destruction of the first Temple, when the nation’s star had almost
set, and its well-being was so nearly shattered that even its best sons
despaired, and when the elders of Israel sat before Ezekiel and said:
“We will be as the heathen, as the families of the countries,” and “Our
bones are dried, and our hope is lost”—it is clear that at that time our
people began to be more concerned about the fate of the righteous
individual who perishes despite his righteousness. From that time date
the familiar speculations about the relation between goodness and
happiness which we find in Ezekiel, in Ecclesiastes, and in many of the
Psalms (and in Job some would add, holding that book also to have been
written in this period); and many men, not satisfied by any of the
solutions which were propounded, came to the conclusion that “it is vain
to serve God,” and that “to serve the Master without expectation of
reward” is a fruitless proceeding. It would seem that then, and not till
then, when the well-being of the community could no longer inspire
enthusiasm and idealism, did our people suddenly remember the
individual, remember that besides the life of the body corporate the
individual has a life peculiarly his own, and that in this life of his
own he wants pleasure and happiness, and demands a personal reward for
his personal righteousness.
The effect of this discovery on the Jewish thought of that epoch is
found in such pronouncements as this: “The present life is like an
entrance-hall to the future life.” The happiness which the individual
desires will become his when he enters the banqueting-hall, if only he
qualifies for it by his conduct in the ante-room. The national ideal
having ceased to satisfy, the religious ordinances are endowed instead
with a meaning and a purpose for the individual, as the spirit of the
age demands, and are put outside the domain of the national sentiment.
Despite this change, the national sentiment continued for a long time to
live on and to play its part in the _political_ life of the people:
witness the whole history of the long period which ended with the wars
of Titus and Hadrian. But since on the political side there was a
continuous decline, the religious life grew correspondingly stronger,
and concurrently the individualist element in the individual members of
the nation prevailed more and more over the nationalist element, and
drove it ultimately from its last stronghold—the hope for a future
redemption. That hope, the heartfelt yearning of a nation seeking in a
distant future what the present could not give, ceased in time to
satisfy people in its original form, which looked forward to a Messianic
Age “differing from the life of to-day in nothing except the
emancipation of Israel from servitude.” For living men and women no
longer found any comfort for themselves in the abundance of good which
was to come to their nation in the latter end of days, when they would
be dead and gone. Each individual demanded his own private and personal
share of the expected general happiness. And religion went so far as to
satisfy even this demand, by laying less emphasis on the redemption than
on the resurrection of the dead.
Thus the national ideal was completely changed. No longer is patriotism
a pure, unselfish devotion; no longer is the common good the highest of
all aims, overriding the personal aims of each individual. On the
contrary: henceforward the _summum bonum_ is for each individual his
personal well-being, in time or in eternity, and the individual cares
about the common good only in so far as he himself participates in it.
To realise how complete the change of attitude became in course of time,
we need only recall the surprise expressed by the Tannaim[7] because the
Pentateuch speaks of “the land which the Lord swore to your ancestors to
give _to them_.” In fact, the land was given not to them, but only to
their descendants, and so the Tannaim find in this passage an allusion
to the resurrection of the dead (_Sifré_). This shows that in their time
that deep-rooted consciousness of the union of all ages in the body
corporate of the people, which pervades the whole of the Pentateuch, had
become so weak that they could not understand the words “to them” except
as referring to the actual individuals to whom they were addressed.
Subsequent events—the terrible oppressions and frequent migrations,
which intensified immeasurably the personal anxiety of every Jew for his
own safety and that of his family—contributed still further to the
enfeebling of the already weakened national sentiment, and to the
concentration of interest primarily in the life of the family,
secondarily in that of the congregation (in which the individual finds
satisfaction for his needs). The national life of the people as a whole
practically ceased to matter to the individual. Even those Jews who are
still capable of feeling occasionally an impulse to work for the nation
cannot as a rule so far transcend their individualism as to subordinate
their own love of self and their own ambition, or their immediate family
or communal interests, to the requirements of the nation. The demon of
egoism—individual or congregational—haunts us in all that we do for our
people, and suppresses the rare manifestations of national feeling,
being the stronger of the two.
This, then, was the state of feeling to which we had to appeal, by means
of which we had to create the invincible faith and the indomitable will
that are needed for a great, constructive national effort.
What ought we to have done?