for those Western Jews who have long since almost forgotten Judaism, and
have no link with their people except a vague sentiment which they
themselves do not understand. The establishment of a Jewish State by
their agency is at present but a distant vision; but the idea of a State
induces them meanwhile to devote their energies to the service of their
people, lifts them out of the mire of assimilation, and strengthens
their Jewish national consciousness. Possibly, when they find out that
it will be a long time before we have policemen and watchmen of our own,
many of them may leave us altogether; but even then our loss through
this movement will not be greater than our gain, because undoubtedly
there will be among them men of larger heart, who, in course of time,
will be moved to get to the bottom of the matter and to understand their
people and its spirit: and these men will arrive of themselves at that
genuine _Chibbath Zion_ which is in harmony with our national spirit.
But in the East, the home of refuge of Judaism and the birthplace of
Jewish _Chibbath Zion_, this “political” tendency can bring us only
harm. Its attractive force is at the same time a force repellent to the
moral ideal which has till now been the inspiration of Eastern Jewry.
Those who now abandon that ideal in exchange for the political idea will
never return again, not even when the excitement dies down and the State
is not established: for rarely in history do we find a movement
retracing its steps before it has tried to go on and on, and finally
lost its way. When, therefore, I see what chaos this movement has
brought into the camp of the Eastern _Chovevé Zion_—when I see men who
till recently seemed to know what they wanted and how to get it, now
suddenly deserting the flag which but yesterday they held sacred, and
bowing the knee to an idea which has no roots in their being, simply
because it comes from the West: when I see all this, and remember how
many paroxysms of sudden and evanescent enthusiasm we have already
experienced, then I really feel the heavy hand of despair beginning to
lay hold on me.
It was under the stress of that feeling that I wrote my Note on the
Congress, a few days after its conclusion. The impression was all very
fresh in my mind, and my grief was acute; and I let slip some hard
expressions, which I now regret, because it is not my habit to use such
expressions. But as regards the actual question at issue I have nothing
to withdraw. What has happened since then has not convinced me that I
was wrong: on the contrary, it has strengthened my conviction that
though I wrote in anger, I did not write in error.
Footnote 20:
[One of a series of three essays on “Political Zionism.”]
Footnote 21:
[_Die Welt_, the German organ founded by Herzl.]
Footnote 22:
[The first Secretary of the _Chovevé Zion_, and an opponent of the
“spiritual” ideas of Achad Ha-Am.]
Footnote 23:
See my essay _Imitation and Assimilation_. [Selected essays by Achad
Ha-Am, pp. 107-124.]
Footnote 24:
[_Galuth_—“exile”—is the word commonly used by Jews to denote the
condition of the Jewish people so long as it is not in its own land,
Palestine.]
Footnote 25:
The “political” Zionists generally think and say that they were the
first to lay it down as a principle that the colonisation of Palestine
by secret and surreptitious means, without organisation and in
defiance of the ruling Power, is of no value and ought to be
abandoned. They do not know that this truth was discovered by others
first, and that years ago the _Chibbath Zion_ of Judaism demanded that
everything should be done openly, with proper organisation and with
the consent of the Turkish Government.
Footnote 26:
[After the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., Titus asked Rabbi Jochanan,
one of the leading Jews of the time, what he wanted. The reply was,
“Give me Jabneh and its scholars.” The Rabbi understood—though the
Roman conqueror did not—that in the conditions then existing a centre
of Jewish learning would do more to preserve Israel than political
institutions.]
Footnote 27:
In _Imitation and Assimilation_.
Footnote 28:
[The reference here is to the schools of the _Alliance Israélite
Universelle_, which were French in spirit. Many years after this essay
was written, in 1913, the Germanising tendencies of the schools
maintained by the _Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden_ in Palestine led
to an acute conflict between that body and the Zionists.]
Footnote 29:
The phrases in inverted commas are taken from my note on the Congress.
As my critics have misinterpreted them, I have taken this opportunity
of explaining their true meaning.
Footnote 30:
The fact mentioned is familiar to many _Chovevé Zion_ in all the towns
which the emissary visited with a letter from the headquarters of the
movement. In my Note I only alluded to it briefly, and I am sorry that
the denials of my opponents have compelled me here to refer to it
again more fully.
PINSKER AND POLITICAL ZIONISM
(_To the memory of Dr. Pinsker, on the tenth anniversary of his death_)
(1902)
The 21st of December last (1901) was the tenth anniversary of the death
of Dr. Leo Pinsker.
A decade is a long time in our days, when everything keeps changing with
extraordinary rapidity; when events come pell-mell, pushing and jostling
one another, with a new sensation every day; when men rise and fall one
after the other, famous to-day and forgotten to-morrow, rising to the
top in an hour, and going under in the next; when the tumult of to-day
is so loud that men have no time to pause and look calmly back on
yesterday.
Pinsker is one of those men of yesterday, whom the men of to-day have
already had time to forget. He died ten years ago, and in these ten
years things have changed, and we with them. New birds have come and
brought new songs. They pipe in a loud and strident chorus, in the din
of which who shall remember the forlorn lay of a lonely songster whom
earth knows no more?
In his day Pinsker was head of the _Chovevé Zion_, and he worked hard
for Palestinian colonisation. But in the interval _Chibbath Zion_ itself
has given place to Zionism. Petty colonisation, the result of the
“infiltration” policy, which absorbed the time and energy of Pinsker and
the _Chovevé Zion_ of yesterday, is to-day a source of merriment even
for the merest tyro in Zionism. Everybody knows that Herzl has enlarged
the narrow horizon of his predecessors by basing the Zionist ideal on a
broader foundation—on politics and diplomacy, on the Bank and the
Charter.
Twenty years ago Pinsker wrote a small pamphlet of thirty-six pages,
called _Auto-Emancipation_. In its day this pamphlet made a certain stir
and evoked some response. But who pays attention now to a little
pamphlet that dates from before the new dispensation? Have we not now
the _Judenstaat_, and Reports of four Congresses, full of debates and
speeches, as well as a heap of pamphlets and leaflets in every language,
explaining and expounding Zionism in every aspect and every detail?
Yes—Pinsker was a great man in his day; he was one of the “precursors”
of Zionism—so much even the new Zionists admit. And when they have
occasion to recount the history of the Zionist idea to non-Zionists,
they begin, in the most approved scientific manner, with the “embryonic”
period. Here they commend in one breath all the worthy men who came
before the birth of Zionism and prepared the way for it, not forgetting
Pinsker and other leaders of the _Chovevé Zion_ who were contemporary
with him. But all this is for them simply by way of introduction to the
main theme, which enters with the year 1896—the year when Herzl revealed
himself in his pamphlet _Der Judenstaat_. Here they draw a line, as who
should say, “Thus far the embryonic period of Zionism, the period of its
preparation for birth. Now behold Zionism itself in all its glory and
magnificence.”
How is it, then, that many people have now suddenly remembered that
Pinsker died ten years ago, on the 21st of December; and that in so many
places there have been prayers recited for the peace of his soul, and
memorial addresses delivered in his honour, on this sad anniversary?
Truth to tell, it is only because the work of the “petty colonisation”
movement still maintains its existence, and there is still a Society
which works for the support of the colonies. For that reason, and for
that reason alone—because he stood at the head of those who worked for
the Palestinian Colonies, and afterwards of the Society formed for their
support—Pinsker is remembered by his colleagues, the original _Chovevé
Zion_ of his own country, whose privilege it was to know him personally
and to work with him. It is they who have made the anniversary a matter
of public interest. If not for this, the new Zionists, whose calendar
begins with the birth of political Zionism, would not have remembered
the man who, fifteen years before Herzl, worked out the whole theory of
political Zionism from beginning to end, with a logical thoroughness and
an elevation of style unequalled by any subsequent work.
How indeed should these new Zionists remember him, seeing that they know
nothing at all of Pinsker as the author of the theory of political
Zionism? And whence should they know of him, if their leaders have never
yet told them, explicitly or by implication, in print or on the
platform, in Zionist Congresses or outside them, who was the true author
of that theory, the real if unacknowledged fountain from which all who
came after him have drunk?[31] Pinsker’s pamphlet in the original German
is already out of print and rare. While a stream of new pamphlets,
mostly poor and tasteless _rechauffés_, is daily poured forth and spread
among the people with the assistance of the Zionist organisation and
with the concurrence of its leaders, for propaganda purposes, this
pamphlet of Pinsker’s, which is uniquely capable of attracting
intelligent Jews in every country to the Zionist idea, has not been
honoured with a new edition to this day;[32] and many of the new
Zionists, especially in the West, have never seen it, nor even heard of
its value.[33] All that they hear is that there were Zionists even
before Herzl, but they were poor, simple-minded dreamers, who—incapable
of comprehending a great political idea—thought to solve the Jewish
problem by founding a few colonies in Palestine and supporting them with
halfpence; and as for Pinsker—well, he was the leader of these poor
visionaries.[34]
I doubt whether the time has yet come to restore to Pinsker the place of
honour in the Zionist movement that belongs to him of right. We are in
the thick of the tumult and the shouting, and as yet there is no room
for a true and unbiassed judgment. That must be left for later history,
for the time when “the tumult and the shouting dies,” and the influence
of personality and fleeting circumstance gives place to a national
_motif_ more general in scope and more permanent in character. But as
the memory of Pinsker is now in the public mind—be it but for a
moment—we may not improperly take advantage of the opportunity to recall
the message which Pinsker brought to his people, but for which he has
not yet received the credit.
That message is, as I have said, the message of _political_ Zionism.
Pinsker was the first to lay down a clear theoretical basis for
political Zionism. He was also the first to work out—though only in
outline—a definite practical programme for the realisation of the idea.
It is this programme, or the fundamental points in it, that the new
Zionists have laid hold on; it is because of this programme that they
call themselves “political,” denoting thereby, as they believe, the
original feature which distinguishes them from their predecessors.
Pinsker compressed all his teaching, theoretical and practical as well,
into his one small pamphlet, which is characterised by conciseness of
style and absence of systematic arrangement. His outraged feelings were
too strong for the cold processes of thought, and did not allow him to
arrange his ideas systematically. Pinsker did not write a scientific
treatise; he uttered a loud, bitter, heart-felt cry, fraught with
indignation and grief at our external and internal degradation. For that
reason he must be studied with close attention before one can put
together the scattered fragments of ideas—some repeated time and again
with a wealth of poetic eloquence, others no more than briefly hinted at
by the way—and discover the full import of his teaching.
This is what I propose here to attempt. But first of all I must point
out—what might not be self-evident to all my readers—that my object is
only to explain Pinsker’s teaching in its relation to present-day
political Zionism. I am not here giving a statement of my own views on
political Zionism in general. What I had to say on that subject has been
said in various essays, which will be familiar to many of my readers;
and these previous utterances absolve me, I think, from the necessity of
commenting here on every point with which I am not in agreement. In this
essay I take for granted the fundamental standpoint of political
Zionism, which was Pinsker’s standpoint also, though, as we shall soon
see, he gave it a peculiar turn, making it approximate more to that
Zionist ideal which is nowadays called “spiritual Zionism.”
Pinsker, like all subsequent political Zionists, arrived at the idea of
Zionism not through the problem of Judaism—through the necessity of
seeking for a new foundation for our national existence and unity, in
place of the old foundation, which is crumbling away—but through the
problem of Jewry—through a definite conviction that even emancipation
and general progress will not improve the degraded and insecure position
of the Jews among the nations, and that anti-Semitism will never cease
so long as we have not a national home of our own. But it is worth while
to examine particularly the way in which he arrived at this conviction
of the eternity of the feud between Israel and the nations, because it
is a different way from that of the later Zionists, and it is this
difference that gives a peculiar colouring to Pinsker’s message.
Pinsker finds three principal causes which lead to our being hated and
despised more than any other human beings; and for each of the three
there is no remedy except a separate Jewish State.
The first cause is a national one, and its roots lie deep in human
psychology. We cannot know whether that great day will ever arrive when
all mankind will live in brotherhood and concord, and national barriers
will no longer exist; but even at the best, thousands of years must
elapse before that Messianic age. Meanwhile nations live side by side in
a state of _relative_ peace, which is based chiefly on the fundamental
equality between them. Each nation, that is, recognises and admits the
national existence of the other nations, and even those which are at
enmity or even at war with one another are forced to recognise each
other as equals, standing on the same plane of nationhood, and therefore
entertain each for the other a certain feeling of respect, without
distinction between large nation and small, strong and weak. But it is
different with the people of Israel. This people is not counted among
the nations, because since it was exiled from its land it has lacked the
essential attributes of nationality, by which one nation is
distinguished from another—has lacked “that original national life which
is inconceivable without community of language and customs and without
local contiguity.” It is because we lack these attributes that the other
nations do not regard us as on the same plane with themselves, as a
nation equal to them in integral value. True, we have not ceased even in
the lands of our exile to be _spiritually_ a distinct nation; but this
spiritual nationality, so far from giving us the status of a nation in
the eyes of the other nations, is the very cause of their hatred for us
as a people. Men are always terrified by a disembodied spirit, a soul
wandering about with no physical covering; and terror breeds hatred.
This is a form of psychic disease which we are powerless to cure. In all
ages men have feared all kinds of ghosts which their imaginations have
seen; and Israel appears to them as a ghost—but a ghost which they see
with their very eyes, not merely in fancy. Thus the hatred of the
nations for Jewish nationality is a psychic disease of the kind known as
“demonopathy”; and having been transmitted from generation to generation
for some two thousand years, it has by now become so deep-rooted that it
can no longer be eradicated. The primary object of this hatred is not
Jews as individuals, but Judaism—by which is meant that abstract
nationality, that bodiless ghost, which wanders about among the real
nations like something apart and different, and arouses their latent
faculty of demonophobia. Hence we see on the one hand that individual
Gentiles live in peace and amity with their Jewish acquaintances, while
retaining their deep-seated animosity against Jews as a people, and on
the other hand that, throughout all the periodical changes of national
tendencies and international relations, all nations remain at all times
the same in their hatred of the Jews, just as they remain always the
same in their hatred of the other kinds of ghosts in whose existence
they believe.[35]
What, then, must we do to escape from this national hatred?
Assimilate with the nations? If real assimilation be meant—the
assimilation that reaches to the very soul and ends in annihilation—that
is a kind of death which does not come of itself, and we do not wish to
bring it on by our own efforts.[36] But the surface assimilation which
is the panacea advocated by a certain section of Jews can only make
matters worse for us. Pinsker himself does not draw this conclusion in
so many words; but it is a necessary consequence of the idea just
mentioned. For, seeing that the source of anti-Semitism lies in our lack
of a concrete national existence, which would compel the other nations
to recognise in us a nation equal to themselves in status, it follows
plainly that the more we assimilate—the more we imitate our surroundings
and whittle away our national distinctiveness—the less concrete and the
more spiritual will our national existence become; and the more,
therefore, will the ghost-fear which begets anti-Semitism grow in
intensity.
There remains, then, but one means of destroying anti-Semitism. We must
become again a real nation, possessed of all those essential attributes
of nationality by virtue of which one nation is the equal of another.
These attributes are those mentioned above—a common land, a common
language and common customs. It is the combination of these that makes
“an original national life.”[37]
The second cause of our degradation is political in character.
“Generally speaking,” says Pinsker, “we do not find any nation over-fond
of the stranger. This is a fact which has its foundation in ethnology,
and no nation can be blamed for it.” Now since the Jew is everywhere
regarded as a stranger by the native population, we should have no right
to grumble if our hosts in the various countries treated us like other
strangers who settle permanently among them. But in fact we find that
people everywhere dislike Jews much more than other strangers. Why is
this? For the same reason—replies Pinsker—for which men behave in
different ways to a well-to-do guest and to a penniless beggar. The
first comes as an equal; he too has a house in which he gives
hospitality—no matter whether we ourselves or others enjoy it—and
therefore we recognise it as our duty to give him a welcome, even if we
are not altogether delighted with his company; while he on his side is
conscious that he has a right to demand such treatment as the
conventions of polite society dictate, just as in his own house he
extends that treatment to others. Not so the homeless mendicant. He on
his side is free from the obligations of hospitality, since he has no
opportunity of fulfilling them. Hence his request for our hospitality is
a request for pure charity. It is not the appeal of an equal to the
principle of equality of rights and duties; it is the appeal to
compassion of one weaker and humbler than ourselves, who can receive but
cannot give. Hence, even if we are so compassionate as to welcome the
poor man and treat him with affection and respect, like one of
ourselves, the equality is only one of external appearance. In our heart
of hearts we feel, and he feels too, that we are doing him a kindness,
that we are treating him well out of our goodness of heart, and doing
something that we might have forborne doing if not for our charitable
and benevolent disposition. This feeling alone suffices to create a wide
gulf between us, and to lower his worth in our estimation and his own.
Which picture represents Israel among the nations? Not that of the
well-to-do guest; for Israel has no place of his own where he can fulfil
the obligations of hospitality towards other nations. Israel is like the
mendicant who goes from door to door, asking others to give him what he
does not give to others. And therefore the other nations do not regard
the Jew as their equal, and do not recognise any duty to show him that
decent behaviour which they practise towards all the other foreigners
who live among them. If, then, they are kind enough to make room for
him, it is only by an act of charity, which degrades the recipient. When
their generosity goes to the furthest extreme, they give the poor
visitor the greatest boon that they can give—that of equal rights. But
the mere fact that the grant of equal rights is an act of generosity,
and not a duty based on the real equality of the two parties, robs the
boon of its moral value, and makes it merely a piece of legislative
machinery. The giver can never forget that he is the giver, nor the
receiver that he is the receiver. For this reason Jewish emancipation in
all countries has been and must always remain political only, not
social. The Jew enjoys equal rights as a citizen, but not equality as a
man, as one who takes his part in the intimate life of society. The
non-Jew and the Jew alike are conscious of this fact, and so, despite
his equal rights, the Jew remains an inferior even in his own
estimation, and in non-Jewish society he endeavours to hide his Judaism,
and is grateful to non-Jews when they do not remind him of his origin,
but behave as though it were a matter of indifference to them.
The conclusion is that the Jews can never attain to true social equality
in Gentile countries unless they cease to be always recipients and rise
to the rank of respectable visitors, who can give to others what they
ask for themselves. In other words, the Jews must once more possess
themselves of a native land of their own, where they will be masters and
hosts. Then their place in the estimation of other nations will improve
automatically, and wherever they set foot they will be regarded as
equals by the natives, who will consider themselves in duty bound to
treat the Jews with the same respect which they show to other strangers
who come to stay among them.[38]
Besides the two causes explained above, there is a third cause, economic
in character, which gives a practical turn to Gentile hatred of the Jew,
and brings it into actual operation in the form of physical restriction
and persecution.
In the life of civilised nations the struggle for existence assumes the
form of peaceful competition. In this sphere every State distinguishes
to a certain extent between the native and the stranger, and gives the
native preference where there is not room for both. This discrimination
is practised even against the honoured stranger, whom the native regards
as his equal; and it stands to sense that there will be a vastly greater
amount of discrimination against the poor vagrant, whose existence in
the State is tolerated only out of kindness and charity. If you have a
large house, with room enough and to spare for your family and for
respectable visitors, you do not begrudge the beggar his corner, but let
him live with you as long as he likes. But when the family grows and the
house begins to feel cramped you will at once look askance at the
beggar-guests, whom you are under no obligation to respect or to feed.
And if you see that they do not squeeze up and make room for you, but,
on the contrary, endeavour to get more elbow-room for themselves,
regardless of the fact that they are crowding you, then you will resent
the impudence with which they forget their place, and in the heat of
anger you will turn them out neck and crop, or at least drive them back
into their own corner, make it as small as possible and confine them
rigidly to it for the future. But the respectable guests will still be
treated with deference, and though you may secretly dislike them for
occupying valuable room, you will not permit yourself to overstep the
limits of politeness and to turn them out into the street, save in
exceptional cases where they themselves overstep the mark and your
patience gives out.
Thus we find that even where the number of Jews is small, they bring
down on themselves the resentment and hatred of their neighbours because
of their success in the struggle for existence, and the advantage which
their ability and pertinacity gain for them over their competitors in
the various walks of life; and where the Jewish settlement is
considerable, anti-Semitism finds its food—even without any success on
the Jewish side—in the mere fact of their existence: for their existence
is bound, poor and cramped though it be, to lead to competition which
their neighbours will feel. In either case the native population does
not consider itself obliged to restrain its feelings and behave with
perfect politeness to a miserable nation which is allowed to live among
the other nations only on sufferance, and is so ungrateful as to jostle
its benefactors without shame.[39]