WE are the people of the Messiah. We feel, we think Messianic. In all
situations of life, and particularly in the critical ones, we hope for
a miraculous event which will fulfill all our yearnings, and in this
hope we feel delivered of the manly duty to work for the realization
of our ideals, to prepare our salvation by our own efforts.
At this moment a large portion of Israel dreams once more a
particularly lively Messianic dream. Hundreds of thousands, millions
of Jews, indeed, have abandoned themselves to the expectation that at
the conclusion of the peace which will put a stop to the world's war,
the destiny of the Jewish people must take a miraculous turn. The
plenipotentiaries of the belligerent powers will assemble in a
conference or a congress to treat of the conditions of peace. The
conquerors will exact of the vanquished the price of their sacrifices
and return home with their booty in the shape of territorial
acquisitions and indemnities. And in the course of these transactions
the miracle will happen that a share will be apportioned to the Jewish
people too. Palestine will be offered them, either as an area for
colonization or, still better, as a full property under the
protectorate of a great power. They will be accorded also entire
equality of rights in Russia and Roumania.
_The Basis of Jewish Hopes: (1) The Self-Interest of the Powers_
WE may plead reasons or excuses for indulging in this dream.
Utterances of leading personalities of the big nations which will
necessarily be represented at the peace conference have become
publicly known which permit the conclusion, without intentional
self-beguiling, that some governments at least, if not all of them,
are occupying themselves earnestly with the Jewish problem and
examining the question whether it might not be worth trying to settle
the Jews in search of a homestead in Palestine, under international
and local legal conditions vouchsafing them full freedom of economic,
intellectual, and moral development.
On the other hand, there is no doubt that the situation of the six
millions of Russian Jews occupies a certain place in the thoughts and
cares of the governments. Several countries have an interest in
turning away from their frontiers the ever more violently swelling
stream of Jewish emigration, and doing so otherwise than with the
brutal method of locking up their boundaries and posting a police
watch before them. Others have the well-being of Russia at heart; they
understand that the sufferings and the despair of her six millions of
Jews are a source of dire evils and that the emancipation of this
hard-working and highly gifted population will bring about the
material prosperity, the general progress, and the powerful
strengthening of Russia. Other countries again, the statesmen of which
are more farseeing than the average and have been able to rise to the
conception of a political world hygiene, are aware that the systematic
crushing of six millions of intellectual and strong-feeling people
driven to despair must create a hotbed of the most dangerous
anarchistic and revolutionary epidemics, the spreading of which
cannot easily be limited to the spot of their origin. Lastly, even the
most irreclaimable pessimist will admit at least the possibility that
governments may not be entirely inaccessible to purely humane
sentiments of pity and justice, and may regard the treatment of the
Jews of Russia and Roumania as an indictment against the civilization
and the ruling religion of white mankind.
_(2) The Precedent of 1878_
THE hope of the peace conference resulting in great achievements for
the Jewish people, moreover, can evoke an historical precedent. The
Berlin Congress of 1878 which brought the Russo-Turkish war to an end,
created the Bulgarian state, raised Roumania to the rank of an
independent kingdom, and gave Bosnia and Herzegovina to
Austria-Hungary, found time to occupy itself with a Jewish matter and
to introduce into the treaty condensing its decisions the well known
article obliging the new kingdom of Roumania to bestow on her Jews
equality of civil franchises. It is not the fault of the Berlin
Congress that this article has remained to this day a dead letter. The
case, at any rate, is of a nature to encourage Jewish optimism against
those sceptics who sneer: "A diplomatic conference distributes no
presents; complacency and liberality play no part there; there are
only such interests enforced which are backed by a victorious army or
at least by an army which still inspires some fears." Well, in 1878,
too, the Jewish people had no country, no army, no government, no
accredited ambassador, and yet two of the most influential members of
the Berlin Congress, the representative of Great Britain, Earl
Beaconsfield, and that of France, Waddington, were ready to step
forward as advocates of the Jewish cause, and the president of the
Congress, Prince Bismarck, evidently favored their action.
_But We Ignore a Valuable Lesson_
I HAVE produced everything capable of justifying the expectations with
which many Jews look forward to the future peace congress. But I do
not notice that the Jewish people keep in view the lessons taught by
the historic example of 1878. Beaconsfield and Waddington did not
plead for the Roumanian Jews at the Berlin Congress from impulses of
their own or in consequence of a sudden inspiration from on high. The
Paris Alliance Israelite Universelle, the London Anglo-Jewish
Association, the Berlin Verband der deutschen Juden, had done serious
and efficient preparatory work, memorialized their several
governments, informed them of the facts, solicited their intervention.
It was due to their efforts that the position of the Roumanian Jews
came up for consideration at the Berlin Congress. They showed the way
the Jewish people must follow if they wish to obtain anything of
governments in congress. What are the Jewish people waiting for in
order to act now as their fathers acted thirty-seven years ago?
The war is raging, in a hundred battlefields uncounted brave men shed
their blood for the future of their nation, Jewish soldiers fight and
fall side by side with their non-Jewish countrymen and comrades, but
their heroic sacrifices are utterly useless for their own people. In
every country, even in Russia, the military excellence, the
patriotism, the contempt of danger and death of the Jewish soldiers,
will be rewarded more or less lavishly and liberally with distinctions
and preferment, but experience teaches us that their glorious conduct
is forgotten very soon after the war by everybody but themselves and
their brethren, and that it certainly does not change in the least the
status of the Jewish people among the nations. At any rate the
consideration of the merits and military virtues of the Jewish
soldiers will not by itself stimulate to action the diplomatists at
the peace congress, unless they are insistently recalled to their
memory. All this requires preparation and arrangements, of which as
yet there is scarcely any trace to be seen.
_Who Could Accept Palestine for the Jews?_
THERE is another point to which attention must be drawn. Let us admit
the most favorable case: the congress will really open up Palestine to
the Jewish people for colonization with self-government and autonomous
local institutions. To whom will it be in a position to make such a
concession? To whom will it deliver Palestine? The Jewish people is a
concept, but it is not a political and administrative individuality,
it is not a body with a head and vital organs. There is actually not
one man who could present himself to the governments assembled in
congress, receive Palestine from their hands, and offer them the
guarantee that he will lead into the land of their ancestors those
Jews that yearn for a new home and national life on an historic soil,
and that he will undertake the implanting of modern culture, the
maintaining of order, and the economic development of the country. An
offer of the congress would fall flat, nobody having the moral right
and the material capacity to accept it in the name and in behalf of
the Jewish people.
_Let Dreaming Give Way to Organizing! The Task for American Jewry_
ALL this points to the necessity of an adequate preparation for coming
events. The Messianic dream does not suffice. Mere wishes and hopes
are vain. We must work. We must organize ourselves without further
loss of time. We must create a body with men of authority at its head,
and the living forces of the Jewish people, or at least a considerable
portion of them, at its back. The forces and the men do exist. They
have only to be gathered, united and grouped.
Who is to do this organizing work? My reply is unhesitating: American
Jewry. I should be happy to say: here is a task for the Zionists'
organization which exists, which lives, which is prepared for work of
this kind, and which has to consider its carrying out as its natural
function; but I shrink back from giving this near-lying answer. Many
pre-eminent and influential Jews whose good Jewish sentiments no one
has a right to doubt, persist in considering Zionism as a party
tendency against which they raise objections. Now the representations
of the Jewish people before the governments must not be a party
affair, but ought to be the cause of the entire people and must
embrace all its parts. The invitation must therefore be issued by
personalities who repel nobody at the outset by their pronounced party
color. Moreover, these personalities must necessarily belong to a
neutral country, so as to leave no room for the argument that
according to the political definition of the hour they are enemies and
to co-operate with them would mean disloyalty to one's own country.
Only in the case, which I hope will not be realized, of the United
States also precipitating itself into the whirlpool of the war, would
they be bound to transfer their initiative to the Swiss or the Dutch
Jewry. The first labor of the initiators should consist in inviting
the existing Jewish organizations of all countries to have themselves
represented by a delegation on a permanent board or committee. It
would be a matter of regret if they refused, but this ought by no
means to be a reason for discouragement nor for discontinuing further
endeavors. In this case the initiators would simply have to do
fundamental work and try to fall back on elements that at present
stand outside, or intentionally keep aloof from, existing
organizations. It would be the business of the permanent board to
secure financial co-operation that could be called upon under given
circumstances, and to cause Jews of standing in every great country to
approach their government, to submit to it in time the aspirations of
the Jewish people, and to procure its approval and sympathy for them.
"_Not an Instant to Lose if We Wish to Prepare_"
OUT of the peace which must follow the present horrible war, a new
Europe, a new world will be born. It depends on us whether in this new
world there is to be a place, "a place in the sun," for the Jewish
people. We have not an instant to lose if we wish to prepare for the
grand opportunity. Should we miss this occasion we should have to
resign all our national hopes, I am afraid, for a very long time, if
not for ever. We may, of course, continue to dream our Messianic
dream, but this will then ever remain a dream till the dreamer
disappears and his dream with him.
[Illustration: Signature: Dr M. Nordau]