DR. LEO PINSKER
His life and experiences――His _Auto-emancipation_――The old
idea of self-help in Jewish teaching――Individual and national
self-help――The revival of an old doctrine――An analysis of
_Auto-emancipation_――The results of Pinsker’s idea.
LEO PINSKER (1821‒1891) was the son of the well-known Jewish scholar
Simchah Pinsker (1801‒1864), the celebrated author of _Lekute
Kadmonioth_ (Wien, 1860), an important work on the history of the
Karaites, and of other valuable Hebrew works. Pinsker was educated
at Odessa, where he studied law at the local Richelieu Lyceum. Law,
however, was not to his liking, and he went to Moscow, where he
studied medicine and took the degree of M.D. He returned to Odessa
and took up practice as a medical man. Shortly afterwards the Crimean
War came to an end, and Odessa was full of soldiers suffering from
typhoid fever. There was danger of an epidemic. Pinsker gave up his
practice and devoted himself entirely to the stricken soldiers. This
self-sacrifice was not overlooked by the higher officials, who brought
it to the notice of the _Czar_ Alexander II. (1818‒1881), and Pinsker
received a generous reward. Pinsker, besides being an authority
on medical matters, was one of the editors of the Russian-Jewish
paper _Zion_. Educated as he had been in the dark days of the reign
of Nicholas I. (1796‒1855), and witnessing the somewhat improved
conditions brought about for the Jews by the accession of Alexander
II., Pinsker believed for a time in emancipation and amalgamation;
but after long years of observation and experience he came to take a
different view. He was an eye-witness of the anti-Jewish riots in 1859,
1871, and 1881; and in the latter year, he issued a pamphlet in German,
under the _nom de plume_ “Ein Russischer Jude,” in which he most
forcibly expresses the conclusions he had arrived at. It was entitled
“Auto-emancipation,” of which an English version appeared in London
some ten years later.¹ Self-emancipation was Pinsker’s great idea.
Not that the idea did not exist before he preached it: as a matter
of fact it is as old as Judaism. But Pinsker started his career as
a Jewish nationalist by giving renewed expression to this idea of
self-help, and from that moment he kept it in the very forefront of
his aspirations and activities. Electricity is a comparatively recent
discovery; it is only within the last half-century that it has come
to be fully understood and harnessed for man’s purposes. But this
mysterious power is not of recent birth; although unknown to man it
was latent in the universe from the beginning. In the fullness of time
inquiring minds discovered it and gave us our modern triumphs of power,
of lighting and of communication. The analogy, though weak, may convey
to us in a certain degree what happened in the case of the idea of
self-help. It had permeated the Jewish nation from the beginning of
the ages. The importance of free will and independent action had been
a leading Jewish principle from time immemorial. But it needed the
“Lovers of _Zion_” and the advent of a great interpreter to bring home
the lesson to the Jewish people.
¹ Self-Emancipation! The only Solution of the Jewish Question.
Translated from the anonymous German original, by Albert
A. L. Finkenstein.... London, E. W. Rabbinowicz, Printer
and Publisher, 8 Little Alie St., E., 1891 (_8vo._ 51 _pp._
[I. S.])
“Dedicated to Lieutenant-Colonel A. Goldsmid as a token
of esteem for his zealous championship of Palestine
colonisation.”
Self-help implies the duty of the nation to be on its guard and to
use its own endeavours to secure its position. It implies the moral
obligation of self-defence and of self-salvation by one’s own efforts
and sacrifices, without the assistance and protection of others. The
principle comes to the surface over and over again in the Bible, where
we catch glimpses of a doctrine that is to be fully worked out only
in the development of a national movement. The author of the Book of
_Joshua_ strikes the keynote of _Israel’s_ duties when he says:――
“Be strong and of good courage;...” (Joshua i. 6).
“Only be strong and very courageous, ...” (_Ibid._ 7).
Phrases similar to those in Deuteronomy xxxi. 6, 7, 23. _Joshua_
obeyed the precept, and abundantly realized the promise with which
it was accompanied. The historical sections of the Bible are filled
with this idea――every deliverance is attributed directly to the moral
integrity of the Jew and to the help of his God. It is remarkable how
large a place exhortations to courage hold in the Bible; we cannot
easily count the “fear nots” of the Scriptures. And these are not
merely soothing words to calm, they are quickening words, calling to
conflict and to victory. This is the lesson which the individual as
well as the nation had to learn. In the light of it may be read the
whole history of Israel. The course of ages reveals a thousand ways
in which Israel vainly tries to remedy the disaster into which it
has brought itself by relying on the aid of others. Now it was Egypt
(Isaiah xxx. 2, xxxvi. 6), now Assyria (2 Kings xvi. 7), now their own
kings and nobles. When threatened by the Syrians, they made treaties
with the Assyrians; when threatened by the Assyrians, they tried to
strengthen themselves by the support of Egypt. The proved uselessness
of reliance on others brought the nation at last to recognize the
virtue of entire and obedient trust in God.
“Trust in the Lord with all thy heart,...” (Prov. iii. 5),
was a protest against self-sufficiency, self-conceit and vanity, and
also against relying on others. Entire reliance upon God, implied
in the words “with all thy heart,” is here appropriately placed at
the head of a series of admonitions relating especially to God and
man’s relations with him, inasmuch as such confidence or trust is a
fundamental principle of all religion. The admonition does not mean
that men are not to use their own understanding, i.e. to make plans
and to employ legitimate means in the pursuit of their ends; but that,
when they use it, they are to depend upon God and his directing and
overruling providence. For there is a true and a false self-reliance:
that which forgets God is ignorant and impious; that which recognizes
Him as the source of all true intelligence is genuine and blessed.
“If thou art wise, thou art wise for thyself;
And if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it”
(_Ibid._ ix. 12).
This was a proclamation of the principle of personality, the
great truth that each individual, in his single personality, has
been endowed with full and equal rights of self-determination and
self-control. The old civilizations annihilated the rights of the many
in the privileges of the few, and put the manhood of the masses under
the heel of power. The very idea of common rights had scarcely dawned
upon the minds of men. The grandeur of human personality, as complete
and inviolably sacred in every individual, was not discerned. The
idea, now so familiar to every civilized human being, that every man
is entitled to all the rights of manhood on his own responsibility was
originally Jewish. The meaning of the verse quoted above is clear: our
wisdom or folly is our own affair, both in origin and consequences.
We must reap as we sow, must bear the brunt of the conflict we have
provoked.
This principle concerns nations as well as individuals. The book of
Proverbs contains many maxims with regard to nations:――
“Righteousness exalteth a nation;...” (_Ibid._ xiv. 34).
National righteousness consists in the possession of a reverent
spirit and the practice of justice, purity, and mercy. In this is a
nation’s strength and superiority, for it will surely lead to physical
well-being, to material prosperity, to moral and spiritual advancement,
and to estimation and influence among surrounding nations. The Pagan
view of an eternal, inevitable force coercing and controlling all
human action was in conflict with the Jewish conception of a free
human and national will: man is not a helpless creature, borne along
by destiny. Man’s moral freedom and responsibility is at the very root
of all Jewish teaching, and is most strongly emphasized with regard to
the nation:――
“Is Israel a servant?
Is he a home-born slave?...”
(Jeremiah, _chap._ ii. _v._ 14.)
A slave can be emancipated only by others, a free man emancipates
himself. Hope comes to those who rouse themselves from dejection,
and “power to him that power exerts.” History proves the practical
folly, as well as the ingratitude and rebelliousness, of “Israel
forsaking God.” When trust is placed in other powers they prove like
Egypt――inactive, do-nothing (Isaiah xxxi. 7). The “captive daughter of
Zion,” which is a poetical image for the Jewish nation, brought down
to the dust by suffering and oppression, is commanded to rise and
shake herself from the dust.
“Awake, awake,
Put on thy strength, O Zion;...”
(Isaiah lii. 1).
“Shake thyself from the dust;
Arise, and sit down, O Jerusalem;
Loose thyself from the bands of thy neck,
O captive daughter of Zion” (_Ibid._ 2).
In these words _Zion_ was exhorted to do her part, to put on her own
strength. What we term in modern language “self-emancipation,” the
Prophet, in his simpler phraseology, calls “Loose thyself.” When the
bonds can be broken, break them; when the door can be opened, unbar
it; when the way is clear, take it without hesitation and delay; and
if this seems to be impossible, try and try again. God’s providence
requires of men, as a condition of his assisting them, their own
efforts. When the Jews were delivered from Babylon, those only were
delivered who braced themselves for a great effort, left all that they
had, confronted peril (Ezra viii. 31), undertook the difficult and
wearisome journey (_Ibid._ ♦xliii.) from Chaldea to Palestine, and
made all sorts of sacrifices. They saved the nation. A small beginning
was facilitated to some extent by the favourable decree of Cyrus, but
the most important and essential part was left for the people to do
itself.
♦ This is an incorrect reference. There is no chapter 43 in
Ezra, and I cannot identify what verse is actually meant.
“Put not your trust in princes,
Nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.”
(Psalm cxlvi. 3.)
This psalm was evidently composed at a time of great national
depression, when the community, sick of dependence on the favour of
foreign princes, turned more and more to the thought of self-help
coupled with a strong belief in the eternal righteousness and
faithfulness of the “God of Jacob.” It bears evident traces of
belonging to the post-exilic period, and the subsequent verses:――
“... The Lord looseth the prisoners;” (_Ibid._ 7)
“... The Lord raiseth up them that are bowed down;...”
(_Ibid._ 8)
are an appropriate expression of the feelings which would naturally
be called forth at a time immediately subsequent to the return from
Captivity.
This idea was handed on as a legacy from the prophets and psalmists
to the men of the Great Synod, and from the latter to the Jewish
philosophers and teachers of the Middle Ages. No doubt it had vastly
changed in form and in content; but in essence it was the same.
Political independence was lost in course of time; and the place of
the political state was taken by national unity and an unshaken belief
in the Restoration of the people to its old land. In substance it was
a combination of consciousness of the past and hope for the future
that made Jewish life in the present worth living. The sluggard was
still inert, the credulous man still trusted “in man in whom there is
no help,” and had need of a live coal from the altar. But now it was
not an angel that brought to man the purifying agency. The sufferings
of the nation had been exalted far above the coal of the altar.
National martyrdom had assumed a more intense and vivid meaning.
It was more insistently set over against the thoughtlessness of a
materialistic life.
When we read the maxim of Hillel _the elder_ (112? _b.c.e._‒8?
_c.e._) which Pinsker used as the motto of his pamphlet:
¹הוא היה אומר אם אין אני לי מי לי וכשאני לעצמי מה אני ואם לא עכשו אימתי׃
פרקי אבות א׳ יד׳
¹ He used to say, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
And being for my own self, what am I?
And if not now, when?”
(_Ethics of the Fathers_, _chap._ i. _v._ 14.)
We cannot help thinking that this aphorism, as well as the rule:――
¹”...ובמקום שאין אנשים השתדל להיות איש׃“ ב׳ו׳
¹ “... and in a place where there are no men, strive to be a
man.” (_Ibid._ ii. 6.)
refers not only to individual matters, but also to national duties.
Several centuries later, Bahia _ben_ Joseph Ibn Pakuda (_fl._
1000‒1050), who devoted a whole chapter of his _Duties of the Heart_
to the exaltation of trust in God, wrote:――
“Trust in God should not prevent man from doing his utmost in the way
of human effort and enterprise. Likewise it is folly to put too much
trust in benefactors, however powerful.”
The self-emancipation of the Jewish people is, accordingly, not
simply _a_ Jewish idea, it is _the_ Jewish idea. This idea is not
of the _Ghetto_, it is truly _Hebraic_; it may be opposed to some
superstitious notions, but it is religious in the highest sense.
Belief in predestination tended to make many Asiatic nations lethargic
and indolent. Fatalism killed their energy and stopped all their
progress. Relying on others was essentially fatalism. This doctrine
was Babylonian; it was never Jewish.
“Ethiopia and Egypt were thy strength, and it was infinite;
Put and Lubim were thy helpers” (Nahum iii. 9).
This was the burden concerning Nineveh, but _Israel_ trusted in God,
_i.e._ in its Genius, in its own moral power, in its self-sacrifice
and faithfulness to its ideals.
“That walk to go down into Egypt,
And have not asked at My mouth;
To take refuge in the stronghold of Pharaoh,
And to take shelter in the shadow of Egypt!”
(Isaiah xxx. 2).
“Therefore shall the stronghold of Pharaoh turn to your shame,
And the shelter in the shadow of Egypt to your confusion”
(_Ibid._ 3).
“Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help,...”
(_Ibid._ xxxi. 1).
“... Both he that helpeth shall stumble, and he that is helped
shall fall,
And they all shall perish together” (_Ibid._ 3).
In the period of the Second Temple, the Hellenists again made frantic
efforts to be emancipated by the Greeks. The Jewish Law, which was the
life and progress of the nation, was for them the stronghold of Jewish
unity and the obstacle in their path. But the more they strove after
equality with the Greeks, the more futile seemed their strivings. It
was the loss of their faith in God and their nation that made them
cast about for another power to deliver them. They preferred the
attractions of Hellenic culture to _Hebrew_ morality; Syrian power to
the Divine Spirit; the material army of the Seleucides, whose forces
they could count and whose weapons they could handle, to the unseen
moral power of their nation. This was the sin of the Hellenists. When
their success was at its height, they gave themselves with savage
energy to the persecution of those of their brethren who remained
faithful to their own nationality. With a zeal that far excelled
that of the enemy, they hunted to death the innocent followers of
the old prophets. But just when this persecuting fury was burning at
its hottest, the _Maccabeans_ came forward and exhorted the “captive
daughter of _Zion_” to shake herself from the dust. Henceforth they
became the blessed messengers of national self-help, and it was their
chief joy to sing the glories of the Divine grace which enabled them
to be more abundant in works than all others.
Was not _Rabbi_ Akiba (50?‒132?) _ben_ Joseph the spiritual hero and
martyr, a preacher of self-emancipation? Did not the same idea inspire
Judah Halevi [Abu al-Hassan al-Lawi] (1085(6)‒_post_ 1140), Moses
_ben_ Nachman Gerondi [RaM-BaN]: Nachmanides: [Bonastruc _da_ Porta]
(1194‒1270?), Obadiah (Yareh) (_circa_ 1475‒1500?) _ben_ Abraham
Bertenoro, and that splendid host of scholars who endeavoured to
re-establish the ordination in Palestine, and to encourage the Jewish
settlement, in that country, amidst terrific troubles and dangers,
as well as _Don_ Joseph Nasi [João Miguez]――(_circa_ 1510‒1579), Duke
of Naxos, who spared no effort to help his brethren to settle in the
promised Land?
This same idea lies at the root of Pinsker’s conception. A
clear-minded and quiet thinker, he was deeply impressed by the events
of 1880‒1881. The grave anxieties through which the Russian Jews
passed, and the awakening of anti-Jewish feeling in Western Europe,
particularly in Germany, led him to reconsider the conventional
Emancipation doctrine, in which he, like all highly educated Russian
and Polish Jews, had formerly believed. Being a medical man, he may
have seen the tortures of the victims; as an old inhabitant of Odessa,
he no doubt remembered the anti-Jewish riots of 1859 and 1871; and
now the eighties, with all their horrors, began. He then enunciated
“the message of political Zionism.”¹ “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.” Pinsker discovered
that the root causes of “our being hated and despised more than any
other human beings ... lie deep in human psychology.”²
¹ Zionist Pamphlets. Second Series ... _Pinsker and Political
Zionism_, by Achad Ha’am (Translated by Leon Simon), London,
1916, _p._ 7.
² _Ibid._, _p._ 8.
“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.... 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.... 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.”¹
¹ _Ibid._, _pp._ 8‒9.
The great value of Pinsker’s doctrine does not lie in the fact of its
originality in literature. Original to him――he undoubtedly came to his
conclusion by his own reflection――it was not a discovery in the usual
sense of this word: views of this kind had been expressed before him.
Neither does its great value lie in its possessing the indisputable
character of a scientific axiom. It may be said that although the
Jews are perhaps the most perfect example of a spiritual existence
in dispersion, still they are not quite unique in that respect. Other
disinherited nations have existed more or less spiritually for many
centuries in a degraded state of national homelessness, “lacking
the essential attributes of nationality,” dispersed or dependent on
other nations, and yet have not produced, even in a smaller degree,
that fear which is evoked by a “disembodied spirit.” It may also be
urged that the Jews were hated and branded by all sorts of calumnies
and malicious accusations [Apion (_fl._ 15‒54 _c.e._), Tacitus
(55?‒_post_ 117 _c.e._)], mainly on account of their distinctiveness,
their isolation, their different views and customs, and the inveterate
prejudices of others――even when they had a land of their own. And
although they may, and probably will, meet with the sympathy of
some nations, which are not entirely blinded by prejudice, and whose
interests may not clash with theirs, if they succeed in establishing
their own home, still the supposition that they will no longer
be hated by others, plausible though it may be, cannot claim
any scientific certainty. It must be remembered that, apart from
“demonophobia,” which is undoubtedly an important motive, hatred
of the Jews is continually stimulated by a deep-rooted religious
fanaticism, by economic competition and jealousy, by racial prejudice,
and that it is rather a _mixtum compositum_ of causes, conditions,
passions, and interests too numerous to be destroyed by the removal
of a few of them, and perhaps too various to be focussed in any single
formula.
But that is not the main point. The psychology of anti-Semitism,
as Pinsker formulated it, may be from a scientific point of view
absolutely true, or it may be open to some criticism: the finest and
most original achievement of Pinsker is rather that he was one of
the first Russian Jews to treat the Jewish problem as a whole, and to
treat it scientifically, while others deal only with fragments of it,
and always in an apologetic spirit. The new synthesis, the new line
of thought, foreshadowed by great minds in the past, but now fully
disengaged and standing clearly revealed as the beacon-light of the
future, was, to our mind, not his formulation of the causes of the
problem, but his formulation of the programme――self-emancipation.
Perez Smolenskin had voiced the demand of the Jewish conscience
to maintain its historic tradition, and its condemnation of all
that spirit of assimilation that betrays it with new formulas or
deliberately denies it. Superior to Pinsker’s in being independent of
the way in which the Jewish people is treated by others――to Smolenskin
the fact of anti-Semitism was not one of fundamental importance――his
message, eloquent as it was, suffered from being expressed in many
different books, mixed up with other subjects, and confined to
_Hebrew_ readers, and thus cannot be compared with Pinsker’s concise
and definite teaching. There were, however, many imperfections
in that teaching. “Our great misfortune is that we do not form a
nation――we are merely Jews.... And where shall we find this national
consciousness?”¹ How different Smolenskin and others, who spoke from
a secure tower of faith! “When he wrote his pamphlet Pinsker did not
yet regard our historic land as the only possible home of refuge; on
the contrary, he feared that our ingrained love for Palestine might
give us a bias and induce us to choose that country without paying
regard to its political, economic and other conditions, which perhaps
might be unfavourable. For this reason he warns us emphatically not
to be guided by sentiment in this matter, but to leave the question of
territory to a commission of experts.”² He evidently saw in Palestine
no more than a fraction of Asiatic earth, peopled by a certain number
of inhabitants, while Smolenskin, David Gordon, and many others looked
on it as the sanctuary of the nation, the historic centre, whence came
the Jewish message to men, and the Jewish initiative in the world.
Pinsker, like many others after him, had not yet realized at that time
that one’s country is not merely a territory. Territory is only its
basis; country is the idea that rises on that basis, the thought of a
common history that draws together all the sons of that territory. But
in spite of all these imperfections, Pinsker’s pamphlet necessarily
led to faith in a national revival and to Palestine――not because of
its arguments, but because it was a wonderful human document. Earnest,
true, without a trace of affectation, Pinsker’s appeal bore the stamp
of great sincerity, and if there was in his pamphlet some of the
spirit of the prophets,³ this was essentially in his cry for self-help,
in his warnings not to trust in others, in his appeal to national
dignity and energy. To superficial minds, the idea of this modern
scientist unconsciously re-echoing the warnings of the prophets not to
trust in Egypt or in Assyria may seem exaggerated, but the apparently
far-fetched comparison is absolutely sane, for it is based on the
sanest of all conceptions――the unity of the Jewish national idea
throughout hundreds of generations.
¹ _Ibid._, _p._ 19.
² _Ibid._, _p._ 21.
³ _Ibid._, _p._ 21.
“He came to take part in the work of the _Chovevé Zion_.... He
understood perfectly well that their work was very far removed from
the great project of which he dreamt ... but when he saw a small group
of men, with insignificant means, putting forth every possible effort
to carry out a national project, small and poor though it was in
comparison with his own ideal, Pinsker could not help lending a hand
to those who were engaged in this work, seeing in them the nucleus of
an organization, and the small beginning of the national resolution.”¹
He encouraged and supported the work of the _Chovevé Zion_ (Lovers of
_Zion_) as the first President of the Odessa Committee, and paved the
way for modern Zionism. He died at Odessa, his native town, at the age
of sixty-nine, on the 21st of December, 1891.
¹ _Ibid._, _p._ 24.