(_Concluded_)
[Sidenote: _This Essay was awarded the Menorah Prize at the University
of Wisconsin last year. In the first part, printed in our April issue,
the author reviews the status of the Jews in medieval Europe and
describes the effects upon the Jews of the razing of the Ghetto walls
and the play of the modern forces of Emancipation, Enlightenment,
Nationalism, and Anti-Semitism. In the situation resulting, the author
distinguishes between the "Jewish problem" ("an immediate concrete
maladjustment where life and property are imperiled"), existing
chiefly in Eastern Europe, and the "Jewish position" ("a social,
cultural, or spiritual disharmony or repression"), prevailing in
Western Europe and America. After rejecting Reform Judaism and the
"palliative measures" of philanthropy as answers to the situation, the
author proceeds in this concluding instalment to a consideration of
the third alternative, namely, "re-establishment of a national center
where, perhaps not the entire people, but a remnant can be saved."_]
That the effort to ameliorate the conditions through charity,
and the effort to assimilate and yet keep the essentials apart,
are ineffectual has been shown. There remains the third
possibility--Zionism. To a consideration of its theoretic background
this section will be devoted. Although a natural commingling is
unavoidable, Zionism presents three distinguishable aspects--as (1) a
creative vision, (2) a solution, (3) a fulfillment.
_The National Ideal_
In its first aspect, Zionism applies the sauce of the proverbial goose
to the proverbial gander. Nationalism is the partial cause, or at
least the excuse, for making the modern position of the Jew in Europe
untenable; nationalism for the Jew becomes a means of evacuating the
position. Europe has intimated to the Jew that it can get along
without him; the Jew now proposes to show that he can get along
without Europe. Nationalism is nothing new to the Jew; from the final
dispersion in 70 C. E., through the universalism of the Roman Empire
and later of the Roman Church, the national ideal, as indicated in our
introduction, was religiously preserved; but its modern practical form
first arose among the leaders of the Chovevei Zion movement in the
middle of the last century. The "Rom und Jerusalem" of Moses Hess
(1862), "Die Verjüngen des Jüdischen Stammes" of Graetz, the Jewish
historian (1864), the "Hashachar" of Smolenskin (1869), the
"Auto-Emancipation" of Dr. Leo Pinsker (1882) clearly foreshadowed
the final and effective expression of political Zionism--namely, "The
Jewish State," published by Herzl in 1896.
_The Vision of a Jewish State_
Basing its structure on the formulas of the prophets,[1] who
proclaimed that polity was indispensable for effecting the true
mission of Israel--for the realization of the religious, social, or
ethical ideal; conceiving Israel, as did Reform Judaism, to be its own
Messiah, not fated, however, to remain a minutely scattered leaven
among nations who condemned or destroyed it, but destined according to
the prophetic promise to re-establish itself upon Zion;[2] convinced
that a true assimilating of the fruits of emancipation in
contradistinction to an imitating of Gentile culture could only be
effected by an emancipation from within, by an auto-emancipation;[3]
the vision of a Jewish State grew into outline. To the consummation of
the picture, a wealth of economic, scientific, and cultural
inspiration has been devoted. Herzl and his predecessors selected the
stone which had been rejected by the philanthropists and the earnest,
but mistaken, builders of Reform Judaism in their efforts to create a
fit habitation for the European Jew; and lo! it has become the chief
corner-stone.
To assure the foundation, to justify the conception of a Jewish State,
a number of powerful arguments other than above indicated have been
brought to bear. The problem of race was attacked,[4] and a consequent
demolition of the basis of Reform Judaism undertaken, whereby the
racial identity of the Jew became demonstrated and a comparative
racial purity established. In turn, the claim of the anti-Semites that
the Jewish race indeed existed, but to the peril of Western
civilization, received scientific annihilation. At the most, the Aryan
race was proclaimed a myth and Teutonic superiority a lie;[5] at the
least, a justification of the Jewish race was achieved upon its
contribution to civilization: in metaphysics, of the vision of reality
in flux; in morals, the conception of the value of the individual; in
religion, the conception of Jehovah as a moral-arbiter; in culture, a
literature of basic inspiration for the western world.[6]
_The Moral Right of the Jewish Race to Survival_
That this race, definable in identity and valuable in content, is
being either crushed by force or dissipated by freedom, raises on one
hand the next question for creative Zionism, and constitutes on the
other the problem which Zionism in its aspect as a "solution" assails.
The question: Has this race, facing destruction, a moral right to
survival? is in the instinctive, Darwinian sense unnecessary. Every
race has a right to survive if it can prove its right by surviving;
however, like most evolutionary thinking, this is tautological.
Nevertheless, an affirmative answer[7] has been advanced, based on the
conception of values recognized since Aristotle; whereby was
demonstrated the intrinsic value of the Jews as witnessed by their
virility and capacity for an intelligent enjoyment of life, which
their social customs, religious ideals, and cultural ethos have
created for them, and which have won for them the title "_Am Olam_,"
the perpetual people; and their instrumental value in the preservation
and enrichment of life for the Western world at large, as witnessed by
their contributions to civilization outlined above.
To the final question: How may the destruction facing a race, worth
the saving, be averted? the Zionists, as already shown, answer: Let us
establish a Jewish State. It now remains to explain how this answer
can be made effective.
_The Program of the First Zionist Congress_
Although Herzl, like Pinsker, at first was indifferent as to the
location of the State, Palestine was decided upon at the First Zionist
Congress for the following practical reasons:[8]
1. Palestine is, of inhabitable and sufficiently uninhabited lands,
the nearest to Russia and Roumania, where the greatest number of Jews
are undergoing physical suffering.
2. It is not ruled by Christians, and penal discriminatory laws
against Jews are not there in force.
3. Conditions of Oriental life are in accord with the stage and
condition of life reached by Jews in Eastern Europe.