spirit, whether by means of a national centre in Palestine or without
it, is not numerous, taken all together, at the present time. But this
fact need not make us despair, as though in truth the death of our
spirit were at hand, because it has no people to make it manifest in the
world. The Hebrew spirit never sought its strength and power in numbers.
“The Lord did not ... choose you because ye were more in number than any
people; for ye were the fewest of all people.” The God of this nation,
when He saw it “turn quickly from the way,” did not fold up His Law and
get Him gone, but said to the one man who remained faithful to Him: “Let
Me alone ... that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great
nation.” It is a mistake to think that the national spirit is an
abstract idea, which designates the sum of all the spiritual principles
that manifest themselves in the life of the people in each generation,
and that when this manifestation ceases it no longer exists. The
national spirit is in fact a collective idea only in relation to the
manner in which it came into being, as a result of the common life of a
body of individuals closely connected with one another, and continuing
through generations under certain conditions. But when it has once come
into being, and has found root in men’s souls by virtue of a long
history, then it becomes part of the psychology of the individual: its
truth is vindicated in the individual, and does not depend at all on
anything external to him. If I feel the Hebrew national spirit in my
heart, and it gives a distinctive form to my inner life, then that
spirit does exist in me, and its existence does not cease even if all
the other Jews in my time no longer feel its existence in their own
hearts. I assert, therefore, that if the majority of our people are
unconsciously becoming more and more estranged from the national spirit,
and if its children born in exile have made for themselves new gods like
the gods of the peoples around them, and only a few remain faithful to
our national idea in its historic form, and desire for it freedom and
development: then these few are the heirs of our national possessions at
the present time; it is they who hold the thread of history, and do not
allow it to be broken. So long as there is a single Jew who holds the
thread, we cannot tell what its end will be. Perhaps the conditions of
life will change, and the small remnant will again become “a great
nation.”
But how is it possible that the conditions of our life in exile should
change in the manner necessary for the revival of the Jewish spirit?
What power has a small party to strengthen and hasten this possibility?
What security have we that the change, if it come about, will be firm
and lasting?
These questions demand an answer not in words, but in deeds. Verbal
answers we have given times without number. There is only one way, we
have said, to change the conditions of our national life fundamentally,
so that it shall become _our_ life indeed, and not a passing shadow of
the life of other people; and that way is the foundation of a centre for
our national spirit “on its own native soil.” Further, we have promised
more than once that this way of ours, like every new path, will be made
and prepared by the few for the many, who will afterwards follow of
their own accord. But when we came to turn our words into deeds, then it
became clear that there was still chaos in the depths of our spirit,
although the light of the idea played on the surface.
Whoever knows by experience how dear Palestine is still to every plain
Jew, how his heart swells—sometimes even to the point of joyful
tears—when he reads or hears of the revival of the Hebrew language among
the children in Palestine, or of the success of the Hebrew colonies
there—whoever knows this cannot deny that the actual work of building up
a centre in Palestine, even before it approached its goal, could have
had a wonderful influence on the spirit of the people in the lands of
our exile. The truth is, that even now the majority of our people
cherish their national inheritance, and desire its eternal preservation;
but the bondage of _galuth_, material and spiritual, cramps the heart,
and renders the national feeling and will incapable of becoming an
effective force in action. And yet, if our work in Palestine had been
such as to show clearly that there is really a prospect and a fair hope
for the life of our spirit and our national possessions in the land of
their birth; if the people had seen the foundations of the building laid
by expert hands, one complete stone upon another, though the stones had
been but small: then the people would have sought and found here a new
source of life for its dormant national sentiment, and a new strength of
will to protect more effectively its spiritual possessions in exile.
But as things are, how can we prove the correctness of our answer? What
are the results of our twenty years and more of work in Palestine? With
regard to material work, we have only unsuccessful attempts to show; and
as for spiritual work, we cannot even show such attempts (except,
perhaps, the school at Jaffa),[66] for in fact scarcely anything has
been done. Those who desired the “ingathering of the exiles” have
laboured all these years, first of all in founding philanthropic
colonies, and then in political talk; they have had neither the time nor
the will to meddle in spiritual matters. Those, again, who desired the
“revival of the spirit” have also dissipated all their time and their
strength in spiritual work in the Diaspora; in all this time they have
not created in Palestine one single spiritual product that could awake
an echo in the nation’s heart. It is as though they had forgotten the
first principle of their own faith, that the revival of the spirit in
exile can come about only through the influence of a national centre in
Palestine. They have, indeed, _said_ a great deal about the need for
founding universities and schools, and other such needs, the
satisfaction of which is beyond their power at present. But they have
not done that which was both necessary and possible.
Here, for example, is an attempt to found a small literary organ in
Palestine. I ask myself: Why was this not done long ago? In the Diaspora
a large number of literary plants have bloomed and faded during the
Zionist epoch; they have borne fruit, and have left some good behind
them, whether it was much or little. In Palestine, meanwhile, since the
beginning of the movement there has not been published a single literary
miscellany which has made its mark in our literature. Yet we did not
feel that something was lacking. We constantly told the people that only
in Palestine could our national spirit flourish and produce fruit after
its kind; yet at the same time we were not ashamed to think that the
people did not see in Palestine even a shadow of the fruit of its
spirit, and that the little fruit that did grow was growing in other
countries.
It is true that Palestine is still poor in spiritual forces generally,
and in literary forces particularly; but that simply proves the truth of
my contention. If we had always had a full and clear conception of the
nature of our object, if we had always remembered that what we are
seeking to build in Palestine is a refuge for our spirit, we could never
have refrained from doing all that was possible to increase the
spiritual wealth of Palestine, and to increase, little by little, its
moral influence on the people. In that case we should undoubtedly have
striven among other things to establish in Palestine a literary organ,
an altar on which all our best national writers would have felt it their
duty to offer their best, in order to win for it affection and honour in
Jewry. An organ such as this, though it would have been at first an
artificial creation, would certainly have uplifted the spirit and
fostered literary talent in Palestine itself; perhaps also it would by
now have become a true, natural literary centre for us, drawing
sustenance from the forces which it had called to the land and developed
there.
But it is as I said: in the human mind no idea springs from darkness
into light at one bound. It was necessary for experience to teach us how
slender is the thread on which hangs all our spiritual work outside
Palestine, before we could be made to remember that in reality we had no
need of such experience, since it only taught us that which was implied
in our idea from the very first.
It is just at this moment that you come and tell us: “The time has come
to begin planting our literature in the land of its birth.” Need I
express my feelings when I read these words?
Yes, the time has come to begin planting, and planting not alone our
literature, but also our spirit in all its aspects. All that now runs to
waste in exile, voluntarily or involuntarily, must be gathered together
and planted “on its own native soil,” and every man in whom the Jewish
spirit lives is bound to help in this planting to the utmost of his
power, because therein lies our life and our last hope.
“Romanticism,” our young men will say with a smile.
Let them smile—until they grow old enough to understand life as it is,
and not as it appears through the glasses of a ready-made doctrine. Then
they will understand that what they contemptuously call “romanticism” is
the crown of life and the source of man’s superiority over the brute.
They will understand, too, that this very anti-romantic doctrine has its
attraction principally because of its romantic element—because it offers
scope for devoted service in the cause of a distant ideal. But if ever
there comes a day when that ideal is realised, and romanticism
disappears entirely, then there will arise a new generation, which will
curse that day for the hunger it has brought—a hunger not for bread, but
for romanticism, for some ideal striving which can once more give scope
for exaltation, for sacrifice, and so fill the emptiness of a life of
peace and plenty.
Footnote 57:
[A letter to the editors of _Ha-Omer_, a Hebrew miscellany which began
to appear in 1907—the first of its kind in Palestine.]
Footnote 58:
[From the preliminary announcement of _Ha-Omer_.]
Footnote 59:
This Essay was written at the end of the period of the movement for
freedom in Russia, which attracted almost all the educated Russian
Jews, with the result that our national work and Hebrew literature
were greatly impoverished. [Footnote added in 1913.]
Footnote 60:
[_i.e._, in 1889.]
Footnote 61:
[An allusion to an old Jewish legend.]
Footnote 62:
[1905. It was at this Congress that the split on the question of East
Africa (often loosely referred to as Uganda) took place. Some of the
minority seceded and formed the Jewish Territorial Organisation.]
Footnote 63:
[Russia.]
Footnote 64:
Sombart, _Socialismus und sociale Bewegung_ (1905), p. 61.
Footnote 65:
[S.D. = Social Democrats; S.S. = Zionist Socialists.]
Footnote 66:
[_i.e._, the _Chovevé Zion_ Hebrew School.]
“WHEN MESSIAH COMES”
(1907)
“_When Messiah comes, impudence will be rife._”
This ancient saying has been used so often as a weapon of controversy,
that familiarity has robbed it of its sting. For this reason let me say
at the outset that I quote it here for no controversial purpose, but
wish, on the contrary, to point out that it really draws attention to a
natural and permanent connection between two phenomena of human life,
whereof the one is an inevitable consequence of the other. And like
every objective truth, it neither censures nor reproves, but simply
states a fact.
What we call “impudence” is not as a rule an original, inborn vice, but
a quality which develops after birth out of a man’s exaggerated belief
in his own worth, strength, wisdom or what not. This exaggerated opinion
of himself makes a man hold himself more proudly than he ought before
his betters, and censure and decry everybody who will not accept him at
his own valuation. Now most men, in times of normal tranquillity, cannot
help seeing that knowledge and experience are necessary for the conduct
of human affairs, and that not all men have attained an equal degree of
development or an equal level of ability and judgment. And so this
“impudence” comes to be regarded as a bad thing, because it indicates
either an excessive conceit of oneself—as though one were superior to
the whole world in learning and experience, and were above criticism—or
an excessive stupidity—as though one were unaware that there is anything
in life which calls for learning and understanding, and that not
everybody is equally competent to pronounce judgment on everything.
But this quality wears a different aspect “when Messiah comes”—that is
to say, when a certain body of men, no longer able to submit quietly to
life’s tribulations, find or invent some Messiah who is to release them
from all their troubles. Whether the Messiah is conceived by them as an
individual, or as a collective body, or even merely as a new theory—the
result is the same. Believing firmly in their Messiah, seeing in him the
fountain of salvation, and consequently also the symbol of truth and
goodness, and regarding themselves simply as his followers and his
disciples, they naturally cease to recognise distinctions between man
and man, or to admit any superiority in wisdom over folly, or in age
over youth. For all alike are as dust compared with the Messiah, and all
alike receive (or ought to receive) his teaching with passive
acquiescence and unquestioning faith. No need any longer for superior
knowledge or long experience in order to be able to distinguish between
truth and falsehood, between good and evil. All can come in on equal
terms and take truth and good ready-made from the Messiah’s storehouse.
Whoever disagrees with what comes out of the storehouse, be he never so
old and learned, is obviously a fool, an old heretic whom any stripling
is entitled to despise. Those who stand outside the Messianic camp are
astonished at this sudden decay of morals, at this upsetting of the
proper relation between young and old, between the nobodies and the
somebodies. “Impudence,” they cry indignantly. But the Messianists
themselves do not, and cannot, see anything wrong in their conduct. For
it is in truth only an inevitable consequence of their fundamental
belief that the Messiah puts great and small on one level, and that
there are no longer high and low, but only brothers in Messiah and
enemies of Messiah.
Thus the appearance of a Messiah and the growth of impudence are
naturally and inevitably connected; and we therefore find that they have
always appeared together, in every country and at every time, from the
earliest days until the present. When an individual Messiah arose in
Israel at the end of the period of the Second Temple, his first
devotees—mostly very simple folk—rejected their national leaders and
sages with scorn and contempt: precisely as did later the devotees—not
less unlearned—of that corporate Messiah which was revealed to them in
the form of the _Tsaddikim_, who, as intermediaries between Israel and
his God, were to lighten the burden of _galuth_ and hasten the
redemption.[67] Both have their parallel in this present generation,
which also has its Messiah, or rather Messiahs. But the modern Messiahs
and the modern impudence are rather different in form, as is only
natural, seeing that times have changed.
The Messiah of old was above reason and above nature, and faith in the
redemption which he was to bring about was based not on logical
demonstration, but on miracles, like the confounding of destiny and the
upsetting of natural laws. Hence his followers needed no great
cleverness in order to meet criticism. They met every possible objection
by a single argument. “He who can overthrow nature is not precluded from
accomplishing a supernatural redemption, and therefore any difficulty
based on natural laws is out of court.” Any child can master this simple
argument in a trice—and straightway he is of Messiah’s company, one of
his followers and evangelists, like all the other believers. For this
reason the “impudence” of the Messianists of old was similarly simple
and obvious, and had no need to force itself into an artificial mould.
So-and-so denies the truth or the power of the Messiah: is there any
room for discussion? The fellow, be he who he may, is a scapegrace, and
all honour to whoever is first with an insult or a stick.
To-day things are different. Four centuries of free thought and the
unravelling of nature’s mysteries have left their mark on the human
race. To-day even a Messiah cannot defy reason and nature, but is
compelled to base his redemption on logical demonstrations, and to put
his message in the form of a system founded on nature and experience.
Essentially, indeed, everything is as it used to be: the real basis of
Messianism, now as then, is faith in a speedy redemption, a faith which
has its roots not in reasoned demonstration, but in the craving to be
redeemed. But the exigencies of our age do not allow faith any longer to
ignore the demands of reason and nature. Even faith is compelled to
speak their language if it would satisfy the modern man. So we get
scientific systems of a Messianic character, which, differing one from
another, have all this much in common, that their scientific soundness
is very much open to question, but leaves no doubt in the minds of the
believers, who really need nothing more than the phraseology of science,
as a seemly outer cloak for their faith. As the necessary phraseology is
there, and the cloak is ready to hand, the believers hold on to the
cloak with the utmost tenacity; every one of its threads is sacrosanct,
and woe to him who disturbs a single one. They seem to feel
unconsciously that if there is too much handling of their cloak, too
much examination of its threads in the light of reason and genuine
science, it will not be long before it is torn to tatters—and then what
will become of their faith? Whence we find in all Messianic camps,
to-day no less than of old, a fierce hatred of any attempt at criticism
from within, and unlimited impudence towards those who stand without:
but whereas this hatred and this impudence used to appear undisguised
and unashamed, to-day they cloak themselves in reason and science, and
so appear to be different. You must not think that X. is pilloried and
jeered at because he has attacked their Messiah. Heaven forbid! Freedom
of opinion is their first principle. No: his crime is that he has an axe
to grind, and perverts scientific truth—which is, of course, solely and
only that which is set forth for all time under hand and seal in this
Manifesto or that Programme, and beyond it there is nothing.[68]
Have we a right to complain of the Messianists for all this? Can we
blame them because their yearning for redemption is so deep that it
begets this blind, all-conquering faith? No: we ought not to complain of
them, but to envy them. Happy men—be their name Political Zionists,
Social Democrats, or any other of the familiar names! Happy indeed, for
Messiah stands on their threshold, and redemption knocks at their door,
and truth is crystal-clear to them all, great and small alike. But how
hard is life in our days for one who is not of their number; for one who
cannot follow blindly after one Messiah or the other; for one who does
not hear the voice that announces redemption and complete salvation,
either close at hand or far away, either for his own time or for the
days when his grand-children shall lie in their graves; for one who
still looks upon Science and Reason as divine powers, which stand above
all sects and judge them all impartially, and not as standard-bearers
and trumpeters in the service of a Messiah!
Footnote 67:
[The Hebrew word translated above “devotees” is _chassidim_ = “pious
ones.” This name is specifically given to a mystical sect which arose
early in the 18th century. The Rabbis of this sect were called by
their followers _tsaddikim_ (= “righteous ones”) and were credited by
them with supernatural powers.]
Footnote 68:
As I write these words some of the best German Social Democrats are
making public confession that by sins of this kind their party has
alienated many of its supporters, and that to this cause is due in
part the great defeat which it suffered in the last elections. But
this repentance will not save them from the same sin in future,
because the sin is inherent in every Messianic movement. We Jews have
only to look at what is happening around us, to be convinced that the
characteristic in question is not peculiar to Germany or to the Social
Democratic Party.
A SPIRITUAL CENTRE
(1907)
It has been observed that if men always remembered the true meaning of
every word that they use or hear, disputes would be infinitely rarer.
The truth of this remark is known by experience to anybody who happens
to have promulgated some idea which the contemporary “reading public”
did not like, and to have had his “heresy” exposed by the literary
mouthpieces of that public. The hapless creature’s first feeling is one
of incredulity and astonishment. How, he thinks, is it possible so to
pervert things, so completely to confuse ideas and to advance arguments
which so fail to touch the point? He puts it down to the malevolence of
his opponents, believes that they are purposely twisting his words, and
complains bitterly to that same reading public in the name of truth and
fairness. But later, when he finds that complaint is unavailing, and
that the same thing happens time after time, so that malevolence alone
cannot be responsible—then he is driven to the conclusion that there
must be some more universal explanation of what he has experienced. The
explanation is that the connection between a word and the idea contained
in it is not so strong in the human mind as to make it impossible for a
man to hear or to utter a word without immediately having a full and
exact conception of the associated idea. Hence, when a man hears an
opinion which runs counter to his way of thinking, he is apt
unconsciously to grasp the novel opinion in an incorrect form: he will
change the meaning of this or that word until it becomes not difficult
for him to refute the opinion by unsound arguments, in which again one
word or another is used incorrectly. And all this counterfeiting is done
by the thinking apparatus automatically, without the knowledge of its
owner, by virtue of its inherent tendency to work at any given moment in
accordance with the dominant requirements of the subliminal self at that
moment.
I doubt whether there is any contemporary Jewish writer who is more
familiar with this experience than myself. Were I to count up all the
disputes with which, for my sins, our literature has been enriched—most
of them simply glaring instances of the phenomenon in question—the
account would be long indeed. But I wish here to adduce only one
instance of a dispute which began fifteen years ago[69] and has
continued to this very day.
Fifteen years ago there appeared for the first time an idea that
afterwards occasioned endless expenditure of ink. “In Palestine,” I
wrote, “we can and should found for ourselves a _spiritual centre of our
nationality_.” My literary experience was not yet extensive, and I
overlooked this important consideration: that in putting before the
public an idea which does not accord with the general view, one must not
merely put it in a logically clear and definite form, but must also
reckon with the psychology of the reader—with that mental apparatus
which combines unrelated words and ideas according to the requirements
of its owner—and must try one’s utmost to avoid any word or expression
which might afford an opening for this process of combination. I confess
now that in view of this psychological factor I ought to have felt that
the formula “a spiritual centre of our nationality” would afford a good
opportunity to those who wished to misunderstand, although from the
point of view of logic it is sufficiently clear and is well adapted to
the idea which it contains.
“Centre” is, of course, a relative term. Just as “father” is
inconceivable without children, so is “centre” inconceivable without
“circumference”; and just as a father is a father only in relation to
his children, and is merely So-and-so in relation to the rest of
mankind, so a centre is a centre only in relation to its own
circumference, whereas in relation to all that lies outside the
circumference it is merely a point with no special importance. When we
use the word “centre,” metaphorically, in connection with the phenomena
of human society, it necessarily connotes a similar idea: what we mean
is that a particular spot or thing exerts influence on a certain social
circumference, which is bound up with and dependent on it, and that in
relation to this circumference it is a centre. But since social life is
a complex of many different departments, there are very few centres
which are universal in their function—that is, which influence equally
all sides of the life of the circumference. The relation between the
centre and the circumference is usually limited to one or more
departments of life, outside which they are not interdependent. Thus a
given circumference may have many centres, each of which is a centre
only for one specific purpose. When, therefore, the word “centre” is
used to express a social conception, it is accompanied almost
always—except where the context makes it unnecessary—by an epithet which
indicates its character. We speak of a literary centre, an artistic
centre, a commercial centre, and so on, meaning thereby that in this or
that department of life the centre in question has a circumference which
is under its influence and is dependent on it, but that in other
departments the one does not exert nor the other receive influence, and
the relation of centre and circumference does not exist.
Bearing well in mind this definition, which is familiar enough, and
applying it to the phrase quoted above—“in Palestine we can and should
found for ourselves a spiritual centre of our nationality”—we shall find
that the phrase can only be interpreted as follows:—