Previous chapters explained only how the emigration scheme might be
carried out without creating any economic disturbance. But so great a
movement cannot take place without inevitably rousing many deep and
powerful feelings. There are old customs, old memories that attach us
to our homes. We have cradles, we have graves, and we alone know how
Jewish hearts cling to the graves. Our cradles we shall carry with
us--they hold our future, rosy and smiling. Our beloved graves we must
abandon--and I think this abandonment will cost us more than any other
sacrifice. But it must be so.
Economic distress, political pressure, and social obloquy have already
driven us from our homes and from our graves. We Jews are even now
constantly shifting from place to place, a strong current actually
carrying us westward over the sea to the United States, where our
presence is also not desired. And where will our presence be desired,
so long as we are a homeless nation?
But we shall give a home to our people. And we shall give it, not by
dragging them ruthlessly out of their sustaining soil, but rather by
transplanting them carefully to a better ground. Just as we wish to
create new political and economic relations, so we shall preserve as
sacred all of the past that is dear to our people's hearts.
Hence a few suggestions must suffice, as this part of my scheme will
most probably be condemned as visionary. Yet even this is possible and
real, though it now appears to be something vague and aimless.
Organization will make of it something rational.