CHAPTER XXIV

ZIONISM

THE persecution of the Jews in Russia, their oppression in Roumania

and the revival of the old prejudice against them in Western Europe

during the last quarter of the nineteenth century have, as has been

pointed out, arrested the gradual denationalisation of Judaism, which

had commenced in the latter part of the eighteenth under Mendelssohn’s

impulse, and, in proportion as they have widened the hostility between

Jew and Gentile, they have tended to tighten the links of sympathy

between the Jews scattered in various parts of the world. Under the

benign influence of persecution Jewish patriotism has again blazed

up into flame. This sentiment has found a practical expression in

many movements set on foot for the relief and rescue of the suffering

race. One movement of the kind, prompted by the anti-Jewish agitation

in Russia and the resuscitation of the blood accusation against the

Jews of the Near East in the ’fifties, resulted in the birth of a

society the object of which it is to watch over the interests of the

Jews in the countries where they are exposed to danger, to protect

them against persecution, to promote their material welfare, and

to encourage their intellectual development. This is the _Alliance

Israélite Universelle_, founded in Paris, in 1860. Its funds are

derived from thousands of subscribers all over the world, and its

work is carried on by branch establishments in many countries. The

educational activity of the _Alliance_ is especially directed to the

Near East and the coast of North Africa--Bulgaria, Turkey in Europe and

Asia, Persia, Egypt, Tripoli, Tunis, Algeria, Morocco. In all these

countries it maintains numerous schools at an annual expense which in

1903 amounted to 1,200,000 francs. In connection with the _Alliance_

there was established, in 1871, in London the Anglo-Jewish Association,

and in Vienna the _Israelitische Allianz_, whose principal aim is the

elevation of the Jews of Galicia. It was mainly through these societies

that the cause of the Roumanian Jews was advocated in 1872 and that

the members of the Congress of Berlin, in 1878, were induced to take

the ineffectual steps already described for the improvement of the

condition of the Jews in Roumania and Servia. Foremost among these,

and many other organisations for the succour of Jewish victims of

persecution, stands Baron Hirsch’s gigantic fund of £9,000,000 for the

settlement of emigrants in new countries.

But all these efforts can only be described as palliatives. They aim

simply at a temporary alleviation of the sufferings of Israel; they do

not attempt to provide a radical remedy for the evil. The only remedies

that history points out as worthy of the name are either assimilation

of the Jews in various countries to the Gentiles among whom they dwell,

or separation from the latter, geographical as well as political. The

first alternative, as we have seen, has from time to time appeared

within a certain distance of partial realisation, reaching its nearest

approach in the years following on the emancipation of the race under

the influence of the broad principles of humanitarianism which reigned

during the latter half of the eighteenth and the beginning of the

nineteenth century. Whether this approach would ever have developed

into a general absorption of the Jews is a speculative question which

admits of more answers than one. The fact that is of greater value to

the historian is that such a development was checked by the reaction

already described under the name of anti-Semitism. Hence the other

remedy has come more and more to the front under the name of Zionism.

The movement combines in itself two aims, a practical and a sentimental

one. Its practical aim is to provide a solution of the Jewish problem

by bringing about the geographical and political separation of

the Jews from the Gentiles. Its sentimental aim is to satisfy the

traditional attachment of the Jews to the land of their origin. In

neither of its two aims can the movement, under its modern aspect,

claim to be original. Attempts to restore the Jewish State, in some

form or other, have repeatedly been made in the past. In the middle of

the sixteenth century--the age of the Ghetto--Tiberias was proposed

by a Jew as the seat of a new Jewish State. In the middle of the

seventeenth--the age of Sabbataï Zebi--three more schemes of the kind

were advocated: one for a settlement of the Jews in the Dutch West

Indies, another for their emigration to Dutch Guiana, and a third

recommended French Guiana. In the middle of the eighteenth century

South America was again proposed, and North America in the middle of

the nineteenth. But none of these proposals succeeded in evoking any

enthusiasm among the Jews. On the contrary, the orthodox Jews--and

such are the majority of Eastern European Jews--led by their Rabbis,

strenuously opposed the last suggestion of emigration to America which

was made by their more advanced brethren of the West; and the plan

perished still-born.

The Zionist movement, on the other hand, differs from all former

movements, except the first, inasmuch as it strives to enlist in its

favour the heart as well as the head of Israel. In selecting Palestine

as the future home of the race, the leaders of the movement have

endeavoured to gratify a craving, the force of which it is easy to

exaggerate, but impossible to ignore. If there is in Jewish history

one event that has exercised a lasting influence over the fortunes

of the nation, it is the destruction of Jerusalem and the consequent

dispersion. If there is one sentiment that has bound the branches of

the Jewish family together through the ages, more strongly than any

other, it is the hope of ultimate rehabilitation. For eighteen hundred

years the children of Israel have wandered over the earth, insulted,

oppressed, persecuted, without a country, without a home, with scarcely

a resting place, strangers in every realm in which they pitched

their tent. But, though banished from the land of their birth and far

from the tombs of their forefathers, the vast majority of them have

preserved, amidst all trials and temptations, their traditions, their

usages and their faith unimpaired. Without the hope of restoration such

constancy would have been impossible and meaningless.

The destruction of Zion cast its shadow over the soul of the Jewish

people throughout the Middle Ages, and the mourning for it is the

most picturesque, the most pathetic, and the most prominent feature

of their public and domestic life. In the synagogues, as well as in

many private houses, a space on the wall was always left unpainted to

recall the national humiliation. The Jews of every country in token of

grief wore black, whence they were called “Mourners of Zion.” In memory

of the same calamity gold and silver ornaments were banished from the

bridal wreath, and ashes were strewn over the heads of the bride and

the bridegroom at weddings. In Germany the bridegroom wore a cowl of

mourning and the bride a white shroud. A mediaeval table-hymn, sung

after the meal on Friday evenings, or Saturday mornings, ran as follows:

“Build, O rebuild Thou, Thy temple,

Fill again Zion, Thy city,

Clad with delight will we go there,

Other and new songs to sing there,

Merciful One and All-holy,

Praisèd for ever and ever.”

Similar examples might be cited from every side--all showing that the

sad memories of the past and the belief in ultimate triumph were the

two poles between which revolved the spiritual life of the nation. The

Prophets who had predicted the dispersion and the captivity of the

children of Israel had also predicted their repatriation. “Behold, I

will gather them out of all countries whither I have driven them in

mine anger, and in my fury, and in great wrath; and I will bring them

again unto this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely.”[297]

This hope was the life-belt which enabled the Jew to float amidst

the wrecks of so many storms during eighteen centuries. In the night

of their darkest desolation the Jews kept their eyes fixed to the

East, and said to themselves and to one another, “Courage, the day is

at hand.” Attachment to Faith and Fatherland--the religious and the

national ideals--are the two strands, indissolubly entwined, of that

great Messianic dream which runs like a golden thread through the black

web of Jewish history. The Holy Land never ceased to be regarded as the

true home of the race. Benjamin of Tudela, writing about the middle

of the twelfth century, testifies to the tenacity with which many of

the Jewish communities in Europe, which he visited in his tour, clung

to the belief that they were destined to be redeemed from captivity

and be gathered together in the fulness of time. The various Messiahs

whose rise and failure have been narrated in the foregoing pages would

never have attained their wonderful popularity but for this belief.

But even in normal times it was the ardent desire of every good Jew

to die in Jerusalem, and the longing of some to live there. This

desire was nursed by the poets and thinkers of Israel. We have seen at

the beginning of the twelfth century Jehuda Halevi addressing Zion,

in accents full of tenderness, as his “woe-begone darling,” and in

fulfilment of a life-long vow ending his days among her ruins. ♦1211♦ A

century later three hundred Rabbis from France and England set out for

Palestine.

♦1260♦

In 1267 Nachmanides, faithful to his own teaching, performed the

pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and found the city, owing to the ravages of

the Mongols, a heap of ruins--a devastation which was considered to

indicate the near approach of the Messiah. Nachmanides, in a letter to

his son, thus describes the melancholy sight: “Great is the solitude

and great the wastes, and, to characterise it in short, the more sacred

the places, the greater the desolation. Jerusalem is more desolate

than the rest of the country: Judaea more than Galilee. But even in

this destruction it is a blessed land.” He goes on to say that, among

the two thousand inhabitants to which the population of Jerusalem

had been reduced by the Sultan’s sword, he found only two Jews, two

brothers, dyers by trade, in whose house the Ten Men, the quorum

necessary to form a congregation for the purpose of worship, met on

the Sabbath, when they could; for Jews and Jewesses--“wretched folk,

without occupation and trade, pilgrims and beggars”--continued to come

from Damascus, Aleppo, and from other parts, to mourn over the ruins

of Zion. In spite of all the afflictions which met his eye, and in

spite of his longing for the friends and kinsmen whom the aged pilgrim

had forsaken without hope of ever seeing again, Nachmanides is able

to declare that for all those losses he is amply compensated by “the

joy of being a day in thy courts, O Jerusalem, visiting the ruins of

the Temple and crying over the ruined Sanctuary; where I am permitted

to caress the stones, to fondle the dust, and to weep over thy ruins.

I wept bitterly, but I found joy in my tears. I tore my garments, but

I felt relieved by it.” Nor does the Jew’s sublime optimism fail him

even in view of that desolation: “He who thought us worthy to let us

see Jerusalem in her desertion, he shall bless us to behold her again,

built and restored when the glory of the Lord will return unto her ...

you, my son, you all shall live to see the salvation of Jerusalem and

the comfort of Zion.”[298]

The example of this noble old man was followed by many Jews of Spain

and Germany, both in his own and in subsequent times. Down to this

day a pilgrimage to Jerusalem is considered a sacred duty, and many

devote the savings of a laborious life to defray the expenses of a last

visit to the Fatherland--“our own land.” Like shipwrecked mariners

long tost on the waves, they drift year after year from all parts of

the world to this harbour of rest and sorrow and hope. On the eve of

the Passover aged Jews and Jewesses of every country on earth may be

seen leaning against the grim ruin of the Temple--all that remains of

the magnificence of Israel--weeping and wailing for the fall of their

nation. They kiss the ancient stones, they water them with their tears,

and the place rings with their poignant lamentations.

And yet, though many come to lament the faded lustre of their race,

and are happy to die in Palestine, how many are there who would care

to live in it? This is a question to which different Jews would give

different answers. It may be urged that the longing for Zion is a

romantic dream which might lose much of its romance by realisation.

It can also be shown that the Jewish people has seldom thriven in

isolation; that a narrow environment is uncongenial to its temperament;

and that the Jew has always instinctively preferred the life which

is more suitable to the free development of his gifts--that is, the

life of competition with foreign nations. All this may be to a great

extent true; but, none the less, there are Jews who believe that the

majority of their race, or at all events the suffering portion of it,

would, under favourable conditions, gladly return to the land of their

ancestors. The same belief has been held by several distinguished

Christians, British and American, who at various times have lent their

support to the movement for Jewish rehabilitation--some actuated

by an enthusiasm for the Millennium, others by an enthusiasm for

British interests in the East. Among the latter may be mentioned Lord

Palmerston and Lord Salisbury, both of whom years ago countenanced

the attempts made to obtain from the Sultan a concession of territory

in Palestine for the purpose of establishing a self-governing Jewish

colony.[299]

But while the bulk of the race enjoyed comparative toleration, few

Jews were there found willing to relinquish the land of their adoption

for the gratification of a merely sentimental yearning towards that of

their remote forefathers. It was not until the revival of persecution

under its more rabid and sanguinary forms that the Zionist Utopia

became a living reality, and the assertion of Gentile Nationalism

led to a corresponding invigoration of Jewish Nationalism. Then the

Jews began to consider seriously the problem of the future of their

race, and to cast about, once more, for a refuge where they could

worship their God unmolested, develop their moral and intellectual

tendencies uninfluenced by an alien environment, and pursue their daily

occupations unfettered by legal restrictions. Such a refuge could only

be found in Palestine. One of the promoters of this idea summed up the

reasons, which led him to the choice of Palestine, in the following

terms:

“In Europe and America it is a crime to have an Oriental genius or

an Oriental nose; therefore, in God’s name, let the Jew go where his

genius will be free and his nose not remarked.”[300]

The massacres of Russian Jews in 1881 and 1882 coincided with the

publication of various schemes of rescue by members of the persecuted

race, who found many sympathisers outside Russia. The practical fruit

of the agitation was the birth, among other committees and societies

all over Russia and Roumania, of an association under the name of

“Chovevi (Lovers of) Zion,” the programme of which was to promote the

settlement of Jewish refugees in the Holy Land with a view to the

ultimate creation of an autonomous Jewish State. This was the origin

of the movement now known all over the world by the name of Zionism.

From the very first it met with a reception which proved how sincere

and how widespread was the desire for a return to the Land of Promise.

A writer, well qualified to speak on the subject, thus describes the

welcome accorded to the proposal: “It has seized upon the imagination

of the masses and produced a wave of enthusiasm in favour of emigration

to Palestine, the force and the extent of which only those who have

come in contact with it, as I have done, can appreciate.”[301]

It was not, however, until 1896, when Dr. Theodor Herzl came forward

with a definite plan, that the movement acquired cosmopolitan

importance and was placed on a solid practical foundation. Dr. Herzl

was a Jewish journalist of Vienna, born in Buda-Pesth on the 2nd of

May, 1860. He was the son of a well-to-do merchant, and was educated

in Vienna, where his parents had removed shortly after his birth.

Having for some time practised at the Bar, he subsequently gave up

Law for Literature, contributed to the _Berliner Tageblatt_ and other

journals, and wrote several novels and plays. In 1891 he was appointed

Paris correspondent of the Vienna _Neue Freie Presse_, and it was

during his sojourn in Paris that Dr. Herzl, filled with indignation

at the outburst of French anti-Semitism, and dismayed by the triumph

of the enemies of the Jews in Austria, resolved to undertake the lead

in the movement for the rescue of his co-religionists. Even if no

practical result were attained, he felt that the effort would not be

utterly wasted, as it would, at all events, tend--in the words of the

Zionist programme adopted at the first Congress in Basel, in 1897--to

promote “the strengthening of Jewish individual dignity and national

consciousness.”

Firm in this conviction, the young leader expounded his scheme in

a pamphlet which appeared in 1896 in the three principal European

languages, under the title, _The Jewish State: an attempt at a Modern

Solution of the Jewish Question_. According to Dr. Herzl’s proposal

the State was to be a self-governing republic tributary to the

Porte. Christian susceptibilities would be consulted, and diplomatic

complications avoided, by establishing the principle of broad religious

toleration, and by excluding from Jewish jurisdiction the scenes of

Christ’s life and death, and the shrines of the different Christian

communities in Palestine. The plan was received with applause by a

minority in every quarter, and Dr. Herzl found enthusiasts in both

hemispheres ready to help the cause with their pens and with their

purses. A Zionist newspaper was founded in Vienna (_Die Welt_), a

new Zionist Association was organised with numerous ramifications

in all parts of the Jewish world, and in less than seven years from

its beginning the movement numbered several hundred thousand of

adherents. The Association holds annual Congresses in various great

European centres, with a view to disseminating the idea, discussing all

details connected with the movement and deciding on the practical steps

necessary to its success.

It is obvious that the first requisite was the Turkish Government’s

consent to the acquisition of land in Palestine on the terms already

described. For this purpose Dr. Herzl paid a visit to Yildiz Kiosk

in May, 1901, and again in August, 1902. The latter expedition was

undertaken in response to a telegraphic invitation from the Sultan

himself, who expressed the desire to be informed of the precise

programme of the Zionists. Regular conferences took place with high

officials both of the Palace and of the Porte, and in the end Dr. Herzl

drew up and laid before Abdul Hamid a minute statement of his views,

explaining the demands of the Zionists and formulating the conditions

of a Jewish settlement in a part of Palestine and elsewhere in Asia

Minor, on the basis of a charter. The proposals were duly considered,

and the Sultan expressed his deep sympathy with the Jewish people, but

the concessions which he was prepared to make for a Jewish settlement

were not considered adequate by the leaders of the Zionist movement,

and the negotiations led to no definite result.[302]

Indeed, the obstacles in the way of a satisfactory arrangement on the

basis of the Zionist programme are neither few nor small. The Turks, it

is true, have always displayed towards the Jews a degree of toleration

such as the latter have seldom experienced at the hands of Christians.

As we have seen, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Turkey was

the only country that offered an asylum to the Jewish refugees from

the West. Religious sympathy may be partially responsible for this

toleration, strengthened by the fact that the Jews of Turkey, devoid of

all national aspirations, are distinguished among the Sultan’s subjects

by their loyalty to the Ottoman rule, and by their readiness to help

the Porte in the suppression of Christian rebellion. It has also been

suggested that Abdul Hamid was anxious, by a display of sympathy

with the Jews generally and the Zionists in particular, to secure

their powerful championship in the West against the host of enemies

which the Armenian massacres had raised to his Empire. Hence the

present Sultan’s attitude towards the race--an attitude which in its

benevolence contrasts strongly, if not strangely, with the treatment

meted out to his Christian subjects. In 1901 Abdul Hamid appointed

members of the Hebrew community to important posts in the Turkish army,

and attached two more to his personal entourage. On another occasion,

when a blood-accusation was brought against the Jews by the Christians

of the East, he caused the local authorities to take steps to prove its

groundlessness and clear the Jews of the heinous charge. And yet, it

would be hard to imagine the Sultan giving his sanction to the creation

of a fresh nationality within his Empire, and thus adding a new

political problem to the list, already sufficiently long, which makes

up the contemporary history of Turkey. Moreover, concerning the return

of the Jews to the Land of Promise, there are certain old prophecies to

whose fulfilment no true Mohammedan can be expected to contribute. For

both these reasons, political and religious, the Turkish Government in

1882, upon hearing that the Jews who fled from Russia were meditating

an immigration into Palestine, hastened to arrest the movement.

But, even if the Sultan could be brought, as Dr. Herzl hoped, “to

perceive the advantages that would accrue to his Empire from a Jewish

settlement on the basis of the Zionist programme,” it should not

be forgotten that the Sultan is not the only, or indeed the most

important, agent in the matter. Palestine, and Asia Minor generally,

is a field for the eventual occupation of which struggle most of the

Great Powers of Europe. Missions of a semi-religious, semi-political

character, representing several European nationalities, and sedulously

supported by several European Governments, have long been at work in

the land. Among them may be mentioned the Russian, the French, the

Italian, and the German. Russia, who persecutes the Jews at home,

would not see with any degree of pleasure a hostile population,

consisting for the most part of her own victims, settled in a province

to the ultimate absorption of which she aspires; the less so as

that population will in all probability be under British influence.

Although, for reasons not difficult to fathom, the Russian Consuls in

Palestine and Syria are instructed to extend over the Russian Jews in

those countries a protection with which the latter very often would

gladly dispense, the Russian Minister of Finance, in 1902, forbade the

sale of the Jewish Colonial Trust shares in the Czar’s dominions--a

step which created great perturbation in the ranks of Polish Zionists,

the most deeply affected by the prohibition.[303] This measure,

harmonising as it does with Russia’s well-known designs in Palestine,

throws on that Power’s real attitude towards Zionism a light too

clear to be affected even by the Russian Government’s assurances of

a benevolent interest in the movement.[304] An analogous opposition,

in a minor degree, may reasonably be anticipated on the part of the

rival Powers, especially Germany, and that despite the promises which

the German Emperor made to the delegation of Zionists who waited on

him during his visit to Palestine in 1898. Both Russia and Germany

enjoy a strong ascendancy over the present Sultan, whose fear of the

one Power and appreciation of the other’s friendship are too lively

to permit of any action calculated to offend either. The Christians

of the East are also a power to be reckoned with, and they, any more

than the Christians of the West, would not bear to see the sanctuary

of Christendom falling into the hands of the “enemies of Christ.” The

extra-territorialisation of Jerusalem has indeed been suggested by

the Zionists. But is it to be expected that the Jews will ever really

resign themselves to the final abandonment of Zion? The more powerful

they grew in Palestine the less inclined would they be to suffer the

ancient capital of their nation to remain in any hands but Israel’s.

To these external difficulties must be added the lack of unanimity

among the Jews themselves. Although the Zionist movement is undoubtedly

enjoying a considerable measure of popularity, it is subject to

a measure of opposition no less considerable. The great Jewish

financiers of the West, who, thanks to their wealth, have little

reason to complain of persecution, have hitherto shown themselves

coldly sceptical, or even contemptuous, towards the idea. Nor has

its reception been more cordial among the high spiritual authorities

of Israel. Both these classes hold that the plan of restoration,

even if it prove feasible, is not desirable. To the cultured and

prosperous Jew of the West the prospect of exchanging the comforts

and elegant luxuries of civilised life in a European or American city

for the barren obscurity of an Asiatic province is not alluring. The

re-settlement of Israel in Palestine has no charm for him. To him the

old prophecies are an incumbrance, and their fulfilment would be a

disappointment. For such a Jew nothing could be more inexpedient or

more embarrassing than the advent of the Messiah. This attitude is

well illustrated by a saying attributed to a member of the wealthiest

Jewish family in Europe: “If ever the Messiah came,” is this gentleman

reported to have said, “I would apply for the post of Palestinian

ambassador in London.” Less polished, but not less significant, was

another Western Jew’s terse reply to the question whether he would go

to Palestine: “Pas si bête.”

Even so, what time Cyrus permitted the captives of Babylon to

return to the land of their fathers, many preferred to remain in

rich Mesopotamia. The sacrifice of present comfort in the pursuit

of a romantic ideal presupposes a degree of emotional fervour and

of material wretchedness that it would be unreasonable, if not

uncharitable, to demand from a whole nation. But this opposition,

or indifference, to the Zionist efforts at repatriation does

not necessarily and in all cases spring from worldly motives of

self-indulgence. It is only one manifestation of a sincere divergence

of sentiment which has its sources deep in the past of the Jewish race,

or, one might say, of human nature, and which can only be adequately

treated in a separate work on Modern Judaism. Here it is sufficient

to describe it only in so far as it bears on the subject immediately

under discussion. Zionism, while acclaimed with enthusiasm by the Jews

of the East, has met in the West with two sets of adversaries who,

though asunder as the poles, have found a common standpoint in their

opposition to the movement. These adversaries are the extreme Liberal

and the extreme Orthodox Jews of Western Europe and America--the

Sadducees and Pharisees of to-day. The one scoffs at the movement as

too idealistic, the other as not idealistic enough. The contempt of

the one is based on commonsense; that of the other on the Bible. The

one objects to all Messiahs; the other refuses to follow any but _the_

Messiah. To the one Dr. Herzl appeared as a dreamer of dreams; to the

other as a prosaic utilitarian. The sentimental aim of Zionism is an

offence in the eyes of the one; the other condemns its methods as

sordidly practical. They both, starting from diametrically opposite

premises, arrive at the conclusion that the movement is a set-back of

Jewish history, an agitation, artificial and superfluous, which “has no

roots in the past and no fruits to offer for the future.”

The Liberal Jew’s ideal is not separation from the natives of the

country of his adoption, but assimilation to them. He has long lived

in political freedom. All careers are open to him; all objects of

distinction for which men strive are within his reach. He is an ardent

patriot. The political toleration to which he owes his liberty is

accompanied by a religious breadth, or may be scepticism, in which he

fully participates. Like his Christian neighbour, he is content to live

in the present. He has gradually abandoned the ceremonial observances

of the Law and the belief in a Messianic restoration, and is trying

to obliterate all traces of tribal distinction. By intermarriage and

education he endeavours to identify himself with the country of which

he is a citizen. In point of nationality he calls himself a German,

a Frenchman, an Italian, an Englishman, or an American. In point of

creed he may be a Reformed Jew, a Unitarian, a Theist, an Atheist, or a

placid Agnostic. This attitude is as intelligible as the sentiment from

which it springs is respectable. Such a Jew feels that he cannot be a

citizen of two cities. He must choose; and in his choice he is guided

by self-analysis. He feels that the country of his birth has greater

claims upon him than the country of his remote origin; that he has more

in common with his next-door neighbours than with the Patriarchs and

Prophets of Asia.

To this category evidently belongs the anonymous author of a book that

may be regarded as the Liberal Jew’s _apologia pro vita sua_. After

having demonstrated that among modern Jews there is, strictly speaking,

neither racial nor religious unity, the writer goes on to explain what,

in his opinion, should be the attitude of “the modern Occidental Jew”:

“Such a Jew, educated in an English, German, French, or American school

and university, is certainly in looks, manners, character, habits,

tastes, and ideas as different from a Jew of Turkey, or Egypt, or

Russia as he can well be. The people to whom he corresponds in all

essential points are the people of his own country in which he was

born and bred and has lived.... Now, what must such an Occidental

Jew say of himself, if he is true to himself, and if he recognises

truth in all matters as the supreme guide of man? He will have to

say that the strict racial unity of the Jews is doubtful, even with

regard to the past; and as regards the present he will have to deny it

altogether.”[305]

The author proceeds to point out that, with regard to his moral and

intellectual development, the Occidental Jew has undergone the same

educational influences as his Christian compatriot and contemporary:

Hebraism, through the Bible, Hellenism through the Renaissance,

Catholicism, Chivalry, Reformation, French Revolution: “He must

finally, above all, remember his indebtedness to the moral standard

of modern times, that love of man as man which is the result of no one

of these currents alone, but is the outcome of the action of all of

them, and to the standard of truth, as intensified by modern science.

Now, realising all this, he must admit that a very small portion of

his moral and intellectual existence is Jewish in the Oriental sense

of the term, and he cannot thus be cramped back into the laws which

are to govern the thought and life of a Jew as laid down in the Talmud

and embraced by the practices of the devout and observant Jew. He is

speaking and living a lie if he denies this by word or deed.”[306]

The practical question arises: “Recognising the evils of racial

exclusiveness, what ought such a modern Occidental Jew to do?” The

answer is: “He has simply to live up to his convictions in every

detail of his life. He must not only, as he has ever done, perform

the duties of a citizen in the country in which he lives, fully and

conscientiously, but he must refuse, as far as the race question goes,

in any way to recognise the separate claims of the Jews within his

country.... He may feel justly proud of being a descendant of a race

which is not only the oldest and purest, but has through many centuries

steadfastly followed the guidance of a great spiritual idea to the

blessing of mankind, just as a Norman, or a Saxon, or a Celt in Great

Britain may, when called upon to do so, consider, and be gratified

by, the memory of his own racial origin. Beyond this he must not go.

He must spurn and avoid all those symbols and rites which have been

established to signify a separate, even though a chosen, people. His

marriage and his choice of friends must be exclusively guided by those

considerations of inner affinity which are likely to make such unions

perfect as far as things human can be perfect.”[307]

Such a Jew’s advice, if asked by his less advanced brethren of Eastern

Europe, would be, not to perpetuate the narrowness of antiquity, but

to share in the broad development of modern civilisation. Not to go

back to the political and religious isolation of Palestine, but to

move on with the political and religious progress of modern Europe

and America: to seek for light not in the East but in the West. He

regards the memories of Israel with indifference, and its aspirations

with perplexity. He can hardly enter into his Polish brother’s soul

and realise his modes of thought and feeling. To him the longing for

Zion is an incomprehensible mystery, the attempt to gratify it a wild

and hopeless adventure. If Eastern Europe will not have the Jews, he

is ready to help them to migrate to Western Europe, or to America; but

with the Zionist Utopia he neither can nor will have anything to do.

When told that Western Europe has eloquently declared her hostility,

and America may soon follow, he calmly answers that anti-Semitism is a

passing cloud; the wind which has wafted it over the western sky will,

sooner or later, dissipate it.

Precisely similar are the views entertained by the cultured minority

of Russian and more especially of Polish Jews. Despite the strong

anti-Semitic feeling displayed by the Christian inhabitants of those

countries, the more advanced representatives of the race offer a

vigorous opposition to Zionism and its separatist tendencies, holding

that the re-animation of Jewish national sentiment is a temporary

infatuation due to the cruel treatment of the Jews and destined to die

out with it. These Jews also have abandoned the old Jewish national

ideals, convinced that a man may frequent a Jewish synagogue and have

a Semitic nose and yet be as good a Polish or Russian patriot as any

other. They feel that a thousand years’ residence in Poland has weaned

them effectually from any sentimental attachment to Palestine and that,

born and bred as they are in the North, they are physically unfit for

a southern climate. In one word, they consider themselves both in body

and in mind children of the land in which they have lived and suffered

for so many centuries.

In direct opposition to this type of Jew stands the irreconcilable and

uncompromising Israelite--a man who after twenty centuries’ residence

in the West still persists in calling himself Oriental, in cultivating

obedience to antiquated modes of thought, and in adhering to formulas

obsolete and, in his altered circumstances, a trifle absurd. Like the

Zionist of the Russian pale, this Oriental Jew of the West is ready

to exclaim with the Psalmist: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my

right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue

cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my

chief joy.” But, unlike the Russian Zionist, he declines to support

the movement, the object of which is to restore him to Jerusalem.

His wish is to remain distinct from the Gentiles, and yet to remain

amongst them. He clings to the Pharisaic ideal of social isolation,

while he recoils from geographical and political segregation. He

abhors the Liberal Jew’s doctrine of assimilation and ridicules the

Zionist’s efforts at repatriation. Is the heroic endurance of Israel

under all its sufferings to lead to nothing but racial extinction by

intermarriage--the very thing which, had it been allowed to happen

twenty centuries ago, would have obviated those sufferings? Such an

idea implies a negation of divine justice, and lowers the solemn

tragedy of Jewish history into something quite different. It also forms

a negation of what the orthodox Jew holds to be the mission of Israel

on earth. This mission, according to the orthodox Jew of the West, is

to maintain intact the monotheistic dogma among the nations of the

world. In order to fulfil this mission, Israel must remain severely

apart and yet scattered among the nations. It is the argument “that it

may possibly have been God’s will and meaning, that the Jews should

remain a quiet light among the nations for the purpose of pointing at

the doctrine of the unity of God”--an argument which Coleridge answered

by his famous retort: “The religion of the Jews is, indeed, a light;

but it is as the light of the glow-worm, which gives no heat and

illumines nothing but itself,”[308] and which a modern Jewish writer

has described as “a controversial fiction.”[309] It might, perhaps, be

more justly described as an unhappy afterthought.

A Jew of this type may, or may not, believe in the ultimate political

restoration of his race; but if he believes in it, he holds that it

is to be brought about by some mysterious and miraculous dispensation

of Providence, such as the Pharisees expected to bring about the

conversion of the heathen. He opposes Zionism on the ground that it

discredits Providence by striving to effect by human means that which,

according to the prophets, is to be the special task of God. His

attitude is that of the typical Oriental. Persuaded of the futility of

personal action, he trusts in a vague impersonal Power which envelops

all things and shapes the course of events to an inevitable and

predestined end.

An eminent example of this way of looking at life is presented by a

recent publication, apparently authoritative, though anonymous. On the

one hand the author deplores the liberalism of the Occidental Jew, and

on the other he denounces the Zionism of Dr. Herzl. With regard to the

first, he says: “The miraculous preservation of the Jews is itself an

argument for their election. By every law and rule of history they

should have been exterminated long since, yet we see them to-day in

all parts of the world, fighting steadily and pertinaciously for the

purpose they are set to fulfil. That purpose carries with it the bar on

intermarriage, which, despite occasional breaches, is still jealously

observed by the overwhelming majority of Jews as an essential condition

of their survival.”[310] The purpose in question is the one explained

already, “to be a light to the nations.” With regard to Zionism, the

author’s position is, to say the least, very emphatically set forth.

For that movement, and for its leader, he reserves some of his choicest

sarcasms. Dr. Herzl is “this redoubtable Moses from the Press-club”;

he is accused of having “traded on the resources of prophecy”; “Dr.

Herzl, with ingenious effrontery, represented his scheme of evading the

mission of the exiles, and their duty to the lands of their dispersion,

as a fulfilment of the ancient prophecy.” “Dr. Herzl and those who

think with him are traitors to the history of the Jews.” These and

similar titles are abundantly bestowed on the man who has been guilty

of the heinous sin of seeking to redeem his co-religionists from the

house of bondage by purely human means, without waiting for a direct

interference on the part of the Deity,--or of the European Concert:

“The restoration of the Jews to the land of their old independence,”

affirms the author, “may occur in one of two ways. It may be by the

concerted act of the Governments of the countries of their dispersion,

devised as a measure of self-protection against the spread of the

Jews; or by the fulfilment of prophecy when the Jewish mission is

complete.... But Dr. Herzl’s plan makes short work of the spiritual

element in the new exodus of Jewry. He would force the hand of

Providence. The restoration, instead of occurring on the appointed end

of the dispersion, would be interpolated in the middle of it as a means

of evading its obligations. This plan, which is a travesty of Judaism,

is equally futile as statecraft.”[311]

Many Jews also, who sympathise with the Zionist idea, shrink from

associating themselves with a movement which for the attainment of

its object must necessarily solicit the favour of Abdul Hamid. They

feel that the Sultan, owing to his drastic methods in the treatment of

domestic complaints, is not popular abroad, and they, not unreasonably,

apprehend that any practical advantages which the movement might derive

from its relations with the Sultan would be more than counterbalanced

by the loss of the moral support of the Christian nations.

Lastly, even among Dr. Herzl’s own adherents, the men who year after

year gathered from all parts of the world in Basel, drawn thither by

one common desire, there did not reign that degree of concord which

is essential for the success of any enterprise of the magnitude of

the Zionist movement. The proceedings in those congresses have been

described by a Jew of the Occidental school with a vivacity which need

not be less accurate because it is prompted by candid scepticism.

“There,” says the chronicler, “at the gateway to the playground of

more than one continent, the Zionists met annually to disagree in

many languages on the advisability of setting up Israel among the

nations again; and here the descendants of Abraham proved themselves no

longer a race but a fortuitous concourse of peoples: an exceptionally

cosmopolitan and polyglot multitude. More than that, their differences

were accentuated by the very enthusiasm that had drawn them together.

The Zionism of the English stockbroker and the French _boulevardier_

is different entirely from the sacred hope which the same word

connotes for the rabbi of Eastern Europe.... The young, up-to-date

German student in University club cap, who looked as if he might have

stepped out of ‘Old Heidelberg,’ made no secret of his contempt for the

gabardined and long-curled rabbi. To the latter the cigarette which the

student coolly puffed on the Sabbath was desecration; the non-Jewish

meals in which the student indulged daily were regarded with pious

horror and indignation. Not for this had the other come to Basel, and

the sad-eyed and silent delegate who tramped half-way across Europe on

what he deemed a holy pilgrimage sighed and thought that Israel was in

greater darkness in the centre of its new-born hope than in the unhappy

land of persecution wherein he was suffered to exist. Nor here did he

expect to see the sacred Mosaic ordinances openly flouted, nor those

who had committed the greatest of sins--that of marrying out of the

faith--received with enthusiasm. Intermarriage is the very antithesis

of the Zionistic ideal, and here they were endeavouring to run hand

in hand. Here is the canker which is gnawing at the hope of the sons

of Zion. The Jewish race has always been held inseparable from the

religion of Judaism, and it will ever remain so. But the old tradition,

‘All Israel are brethren,’ no longer holds good for all that. Like the

Christian, the Jew is now a member first of the land that gave him

birth, or which he adopts, and a Jew afterwards.”

The writer goes on to comment on the inevitable outcome of this

diversity among the delegates: sections, plotting and counter-plotting

against one another, faction, cabal, personal animus, tumult,

Babel.[312]

This lack of unanimity will, no doubt, become more and more pronounced

as the movement advances from the purely theoretical to the practical

stage. Let us for a moment picture Israel back in Palestine. Each

community of immigrants, bound together by the ties of language, habit,

and particular home associations, will live in a separate quarter.

They will instinctively cling to their mother tongue and bring up

their children in it. The British Jews will despise their Polish and

Roumanian brethren as ignorant, and will, in their turn, be despised by

them as spurious Jews. The Spanish-speaking Sephardim will scorn and be

scorned by the Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim. All the differences, social

and national, which underlie the religious unity of Israel will emerge

to the surface. The feeling of brotherly equality will be superseded

by class distinctions and, in one word, freedom will bring about the

disruption which oppression had checked. Even as it is, the difference

between the various sections of the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine is

noticeable at every turn. There is, for instance, a small community,

dwelling in a secluded valley of Northern Galilee and first discovered

by Lord Kitchener in the course of his survey work in Palestine. These

are said to be the remnant of the ancient inhabitants. They speak the

tongue of their Syrian neighbours--an Arabic dialect retaining many

elements of Aramaic--they till the soil as their neighbours do, and,

though scrupulous in the observance of their religion and abstaining

from intermarriage with outsiders, they live on the best of terms with

them. On the other hand, the Jewish immigrants are not only distinct

in dress, dialect, and mode of living from these native Jews, but are

amongst themselves divided by the barrier of language, the Spanish Jews

being utterly unable to understand or to make themselves understood

to their brethren from Northern and Central Europe, though they all

employ the Hebrew characters in writing; and by manners, the Spanish

immigrants, owing to their longer residence in the country, being more

Oriental than the new-comers. The Sephardim have adopted the Eastern

garb and head-dress, and, besides their Spanish mother-tongue, also

speak Arabic. The Russian and Polish Jews are clad in long flowing

gowns of silk or cloth, and their heads are covered with fur caps.

The German Jews affect the quaint long coat and low wide-awake of

the land of their origin. None of the Ashkenazim are permitted by

their Rabbis to learn Arabic. Their domestic life is that of the

Western _Judenstadt_. But they all cultivate the long ringlets which

the Levitic law prescribes. Not less marked is their difference in

character, “The Sephardim,” a recent traveller attests, “are tolerant,

easy-going, and sociable. They earn their living largely by manual

labour, are fishers at Tiberias, porters at Jerusalem and Jaffa. The

Ashkenazim limit their activities to traffic, shun work with their

hands, are rigid separatists, sticklers for the observance of the oral

law, and conservative in their Judaism. The Sephardim are stationary in

numbers; the Ashkenazim increase by leaps and bounds. They constitute

the wave of Jewish immigration and stand for the development of Judaism

in Palestine. There are two other sections of Jews in the country

insignificant in number. One comes from Bokhara, the other from

Yemen; the latter are very poor, and follow the humblest callings.

The shoe-blacks of Jerusalem are recruited from their ranks. These

various groups of the Jewish population, one in race and faith, are

so strongly marked off from each other that they may be regarded as

diverse nationalities.”[313] Finally, it should be added that, besides

the orthodox Jews, both Chassidim and Karaites are represented in the

population of the country.

Diversity of political ideals will intensify the discord arising

from social, sectarian, and national differences. In the new Jewish

commonwealth, it is to be feared, the old feud between the Pharisees

and the Sadducees will be revived under a new aspect. The more

advanced Jews from the West will be anxious to administer the country

on Western, that is secular, principles. The Rabbis, with the fanatical

populace of Eastern, Polish, and Roumanian Jews at their back, will

insist on establishing on a large scale that supremacy of the Synagogue

which formed the basis of the ancient Hebrew State, and of the internal

constitution of the Jewish communities whilst in exile. And the Rabbis

will be supported by the traditions of the race. The Jewish catechism

distinctly states that the Law of Moses is only in abeyance, and that

“whenever the Jews return to their own land, and again constitute a

state, it will have full force.” Synagogue and State will thus repeat

the struggle which Church and State waged in Christendom for so many

centuries. And, whichever party won, the result would be almost equally

disastrous. Should the Rabbis succeed in establishing the Levitical

polity the country would, in the opinion of a high authority, “either

pass away through internal chaos or would so offend the modern

political spirit that it would be soon extinguished from outside. If

it were secular, it would not be a Jewish State. The great bulk of its

present supporters would refuse to live in it, and it would ultimately

be abandoned to an outlander population consisting of Hebrew Christians

and Christian Millennarians.”[314]

However, be the practical difficulties as serious as they may, so long

as anti-Semitism endures the enthusiasm for Zionism is bound to endure.

Mr. Israel Zangwill, one of the most eminent champions of the cause in

England, has repeatedly expounded the views of his brother-Zionists.

In his address to a meeting in May, 1903, he declared that “the only

solution of the Jewish question was to be found in a legally-assured

home in Palestine.” He pointed to the recent butchery of the Jews at

Kishineff as a proof “that the question was just where it was in the

Middle Ages,” and expressed his conviction that “the rest of Europe

also tended to slide back into the Dark Ages.” Hence arises the

necessity for leaving Europe. Referring to Baron Hirsch’s emigration

scheme, Mr. Zangwill said, “Baron Hirsch left £2,000,000 for emigration

only, and £7,000,000 for emigration principally. His trustees had

reduced emigration to a minimum. They despaired of emigration. But

because colonists in the Argentine and Canada were a failure, was that

a reason for despair? How dared they despair till they had tried the

one land to which the Jew’s heart turned?”[315]

In August of the same year the Zionist Congress met at Basel, and

several interesting details were given concerning the progress of the

movement. It was stated that the number of members had risen from

120,000 to 320,000, all of whom were directly represented at the

Congress by so-called shekel payments. The Report of the Committee

of Management showed that the year’s receipts amounted to £9886,

that Zionism was on the increase everywhere, and that the Zionist

Colonial Bank in London was already declaring small dividends.[316]

This bank, it should be noted, was founded under the name of Jewish

Colonial Trust, with a capital of £2,000,000 in £1 shares, over

£350,000 of which has been subscribed from among the poorer Jews,

with the result that it boasts no fewer than 135,000 shareholders.

In addition to this institution, two more Jewish National Funds have

been started, one of them known as the Shekel Account. In October of

the same year the Odessa newspapers reported that a number of persons,

acting on behalf of 107 Jews, mostly of the working classes, were

taking steps to effect, through the medium of the Colonial Bank, the

purchase of an immense tract of land in Palestine for the purpose

of colonisation.[317] In the Zionist Congress of 1904 there were

represented about 2,500 organisations in various parts of the world.

These facts amply prove that Zionism has stirred a very real enthusiasm

among a vast section of the Jewish race, even though it has stirred an

equally real opposition.

In the meantime the Jewish population of Palestine has been increasing

steadily and rapidly, by immigration chiefly of Ashkenazim refugees

from Central and Northern Europe. In 1872 there were scarcely 10,000

Jews in the Holy Land; by 1882 they had risen to 20,000; in 1890 there

were only 25,000; in 1902 they were estimated at 60,000--distributed

in the various towns of Jaffa, Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias, and others.

In all these places are to be seen new Jewish colonies housed in neat

white-washed buildings which stretch in barrack-like lines--the bounty

of a Rothschild or a Montefiore. In addition to these urban colonies,

there are numerous agricultural settlements in Central Judaea, Samaria,

and Galilee. Immigration, stimulated by the persecution to which

the Hebrew race is subjected in Eastern Europe, and facilitated by

the construction of the Jaffa-Jerusalem railway, which has now been

running for twelve years, continues, partly under the auspices of

the _Alliance Israélite Universelle_. This society maintains many

schools for boys and girls, endeavouring to infuse French culture and

the new spirit into the ancient body of Judaism, which in Tiberias

especially has always sought its refuge and its tomb. Besides general

instruction, the pursuits of agriculture and gardening are assiduously

encouraged. From the elementary schools the most promising pupils

are sent to the Professional School of Jerusalem or to the Model

Farm of Mikweh, founded in 1870, whence, at the conclusion of their

studies, the students are placed in the Jewish colonies of Palestine

and Syria as head-gardeners and directors of agriculture, while

others are apprenticed to handicrafts, thus being gradually formed a

population both morally and materially equipped for life’s work under

modern conditions. The agricultural colonies, divided into three

groups--Palestine, Samaria, and Galilee--have helped, it is said, to

attach to the soil some 5000 out of the 60,000 Jews of the country.

Other centres of the same nature are in the course of formation across

the Jordan, towards the Howran range of mountains, where vast tracts

of land were acquired a few years ago, and are slowly reclaimed from

the waste of sand, rock, and marsh by the perseverance and untiring

industry of the Jewish colonists.

But, while dwelling on this bright side of the Zionist movement--the

side of enlightened enterprise--it is well to note another side not

so promising. The recent traveller, already quoted, gives a very

pessimistic account of his impressions. It is to be hoped that his

statements are exaggerated and his pessimism inordinate; but, in the

interests of historic truth, we feel compelled to listen to his tale:

“The Ashkenazim,” he tells us, “preponderate so largely as to swamp

the others. If there is ever a Jewish State, it will be Ashkenazim.

The great mass of them is located in Jerusalem, and the rest in Safed,

Tiberias, and Hebron. Gregarious by instinct, urban by habit, they

herd together in the towns, creating new ghettos similar to those

they have left in Europe. A fraction of them maintain themselves by

petty commerce; the rest live on Haluka, a fund provided by their

wealthy co-religionists in the West. This amounts to £50,000 annually

in Jerusalem. Its object is to enable its recipients to study the

Talmud and engage in religious exercises vicariously for those who

contribute it. Haluka is a fruitful source of sloth and hypocrisy, and

places undue power in the hands of the rabbis who are charged with

its administration. To those who know only the trading Jew of our

commercial centres, the modern Sadducees, it reveals a new aspect of

the race--that of the Jew turning aside from all enterprise, content

to live in pious mendicancy, his sole business the observance of the

minutiae of the ceremonial law; the Jew who binds on his phylactery,

wears long ringlets brought down in front of the ears in obedience to

a Levitical precept, and shuns the carrying of a pocket-handkerchief

on the Sabbath, save as a bracelet or a garter. Haluka is a mistake

and a stumbling-block in the path of Zionism. To turn Palestine into a

vast almshouse is not the way to lay the foundation of a Jewish State.

It attracts swarms of slothful bigots whose religion begins and ends

with externals, a salient example of ‘the letter that killeth,’ whose

Pharisaic piety has no influence on their conduct in life. It has

established an unproductive population of inefficients, drawn from the

least desirable element of the race. Its evil effect is patent, and the

better sort of Jews themselves condemn it or advise its restriction

to the aged and infirm. It is depressing to move among crowds of

burly men, contributing nothing to the commonweal, puffed up with

self-satisfied bigotry and proud of their useless existence. Left to

his own devices the Jew gives the land a wide berth and sticks to the

town. But Western philanthropy has expended much money and energy in

putting him on to the land, rightly judging that the foundations of a

nation cannot be laid on the hawking of lead-pencils among the Bedawin

who do not want them.

“An agricultural college has been established near Jaffa, but it was

found that the youths availed themselves of the excellent general

education it afforded in order, not to till the land, but to engage

in more congenial and more profitable pursuits. Agricultural colonies

were founded, and the colonists, in addition to free land, seed, and

implements, were endowed by M. Edmund de Rothschild with 3 francs a

day for every man, 2 francs for every woman, and 1 franc for every

child. This enabled the recipients to sit down and employ Arabs to do

the work, and has been stopped, to the great chagrin of the colonists.

As a matter of fact, the best of the farms to-day depend on native

labour. The mattock and the hoe are repugnant to the Jewish colonists,

who all seek for places in the administration. The financial result is

not cheering. The most prosperous concern, perhaps, is the wine-growing

establishment of Rishon le Sion. Wine-making is the one industry the

Jews take to. They practise it individually on a small scale. The

Western tourist in Hebron is invariably accosted by some ringleted

Israelite, who proffers him his ‘guter Wein,’ and his thoughts go back

to childhood and that Brobdingnagian cluster of grapes which the spies

bore between them from the neighbouring valley of Eschol. The attitude

of the Jew with respect to agriculture is not to be wondered at. His

hereditary tendencies are against it. Centuries of urban life and

urban pursuits lie behind him. Inured to no exercise save that of his

wits, poor in physique, unused to the climate, can it be expected that

this child of the ghetto should turn to and compete with the strong

brown-lined Judaean peasant on the burning hillside? The one exception

is to be found in the Bulgarian Jews of Sephardim stock. Hardy,

stalwart, accustomed to tillage, these have made efficient farmers, and

next to them come the Jews from Roumania. But with every inducement to

settle on the land, and all sorts of props and aids, the agricultural

Jews in Palestine number only about 1000 out of an ever-augmenting

population. The fact is significant.”[318]

Another point worth serious consideration is the political situation

created by Jewish immigration into Palestine. The colonists, the

majority of whom come from Russia, are a bone of contention between

the rival foreign propagandas in the country. The Russians, as has

been seen, while massacring the Jews in Bessarabia, court their

favour in Syria. The German Emperor, while tolerating anti-Semitism

in the Fatherland, earns the thanks of the Zionists by his affability

towards the exiles. The French, through the educational efforts of the

_Alliance Israélite_, whose pupils were hitherto mainly drawn from

the Spanish Jews, seek to turn the Jews of Palestine, as of other

parts of the Near East, into apostles of Gallic preponderance and into

instruments for the promotion of Gallic interests. The Zionists are

regarded by the French supporters of the _Alliance_ as its adversaries,

and that for the reason that, while the mission of the _Alliance_, as

it is understood by the French, is the extension of the Republic’s

influence, and, therefore, very remotely connected with the religious

and national aspirations of the Jewish people, these aspirations are

precisely the point on which the Zionists lay the greatest stress.[319]

Lastly, the poverty of Palestine is a source of infinite difficulties

which can only be overcome by proportionate labour. Mr. Zangwill has

very eloquently described these conditions in one of his speeches: “My

friends,” he said, “you cannot buy Palestine. If you had a hundred

millions you could only buy the place where Palestine once stood.

Palestine itself you must re-create by labour, till it flows again with

milk and honey. The country is a good country. But it needs a great

irrigation scheme. To return there needs no miracle--already a third of

the population are Jews. If the Almighty Himself carried the rest of us

to Palestine by a miracle, what should we gain except a free passage?

In the sweat of our brow we must earn our Palestine. And, therefore,

the day we get Palestine, if the most joyous, will also be the most

terrible day of our movement.”[320]

It was the consideration of the various obstacles enumerated above,

and others of a similar nature, coupled with the urgent need to find a

home for those wretched outcasts whose refuge in England was menaced by

the anti-alien agitation, that induced Dr. Herzl, in July 1903, acting

on Mr. Chamberlain’s suggestion,[321] to propose that an agreement

should be entered into between the British Government and the Jewish

Colonial Trust for the establishment of a Jewish settlement in British

East Africa. The British Government, anxious to find a way out of the

“Alien Invasion” difficulty, welcomed the proposal, and Lord Lansdowne

expressed his readiness to afford every facility to the Commission

which, it was suggested, should be sent by the Zionists to East Africa

for purposes of investigation. If a suitable site could be found, the

Foreign Secretary professed himself willing “to entertain favourably

proposals for the establishment of a Jewish colony on conditions

which will enable the members to observe their national customs. For

this purpose he would be prepared to discuss the details of a scheme

comprising as its main features the grant of a considerable area of

land, the appointment of a Jewish official as the chief of the local

administration, and permission to the colony to have a free hand in

regard to municipal legislation, and the management of religious and

purely domestic matters; such local autonomy being conditional on the

right of His Majesty’s Government to exercise general control.”[322]

This project was announced at one of the meetings of the Zionist

Congress at Basel in August, 1903, and the motion submitted to the

Congress for the appointment of a committee, who should send an

expedition to East Africa in order to make investigations on the spot,

was adopted. But, though 295 voted in its favour, it was opposed by a

great minority of 177 votes, and the Russian delegates left the hall

as a protest. In a mass meeting of Zionists held in the following May

in London Mr. Israel Zangwill spoke warmly in favour of the proposal,

urging on his fellow-Zionists to take advantage of the offer made

by the British Government. But he added, “The Jewish Colonisation

Association, the one body that should have welcomed this offer of

territory with both hands, stood aloof.”[323] Indeed, it cannot be said

that this new departure of Zionism has commanded universal approval.

Nor did opposition to the scheme confine itself to platonic

protests. In the following December, Dr. Max Nordau, one of the most

distinguished men of letters among Dr. Herzl’s followers, who had

declared himself at the Basel Congress of the previous August in

favour of the proposal, was fired at in Paris by a Russian Jew, who

in his cross-examination before the Magistrate confessed that, in

making that attempt on Dr. Nordau’s life, he aimed at the enemy of the

Jewish race--the supporter of a scheme which involved the abandonment

by Zionists of Palestine as the object of the movement.[324] The

incident afforded a painful proof of want of concord, not only among

the Jews generally, not only among the supporters of various movements

all theoretically recognising the necessity of emigration, but even

among the partisans themselves of the Zionist cause. Dr. Herzl,

anxious to allay the ill-feeling aroused by his alleged abandonment

of the Zionist idea, wrote a letter to Sir Francis Montefiore, the

president of the English Zionist Federation, repudiating any desire

to divert the movement away from the Holy Land and to direct it

to East Africa. Nothing, he protested, could be further from the

truth. He felt convinced that the solution of the Jewish problem

could only be effected in that country, Palestine, with which are

indelibly associated the historic and sentimental bias of the Jewish

people. But as the British Government had been generous enough to

offer territory for an autonomous settlement, it would have been

impossible and unreasonable to do otherwise than give the offer careful

consideration.[325]

The clouds of misconception of which Dr. Herzl complained were not

dissipated by this declaration. If the attachment to Palestine is to

be the central idea of Zionism, it is hard to see how its realisation

could be promoted by the adoption of East Africa as a home. East

Africa, as a shrewd diplomatist has wittily observed, is not in

Palestine nor on the road to it. Its name awakens no memories or hopes

in the Jewish heart. Its soil is not hallowed by the temples and the

tombs of Israel. Its hills and vales are not haunted by the spirits

of the old martyrs and heroes of the nation. Neither the victories

of the past nor the prophetic visions for the future are in any way

associated with East Africa. In the circumstances, it is not to be

wondered at that the proposal, as Dr. Herzl admitted, did not meet with

the enthusiasm required for success, and that the strongest opposition

to the scheme came from those very Jews in the Russian “pale” who stand

in most need of a refuge from persecution. It must be borne in mind

that those very Jews who suffer most severely from persecution are the

most sincerely and wholeheartedly attached to the ancient ideals of

the race, and, owing partly to this psychological cause, partly to

their less advanced stage of development, they were the least able to

appreciate the practical advantages of the scheme--the least disposed

to submit to the dictates of prosaic expediency. They firmly believe

that, sooner or later, the beautiful dream is destined to cohere into

substance; and, like all dreamers, they abhor compromise.

The proposal, however, met with opposition in other quarters than

the Russian Ghetto. Sir Charles Eliot, H.M.’s Commissioner for the

East Africa Protectorate, did not approve of it. While disclaiming

all anti-Semitic feeling, he said that his hesitation arose from

doubt as to whether any beneficial result would be obtained from the

scheme. The proposed colony, he pointed out, would not be sufficiently

large to relieve appreciably the congested and suffering Jewish

population of some parts of Eastern Europe, and he expressed the fear

that the climate and agricultural life would in no way be suitable

to Israelites. Moreover, when the country began to attract British

immigrants who showed an inclination to settle all round the proposed

Jewish colony, he considered that the scheme became dangerous and

deprecated its execution. It was, Sir Charles declared, tantamount

to reproducing in East Africa the very conditions which have caused

so much distress in Eastern Europe: that is to say, the existence of

a compact mass of Jews, differing in language and customs from the

surrounding population, to whom they are likely to be superior in

business capacity but inferior in fighting power. To his mind, it is

best to recognise frankly that such conditions can never exist without

danger to the public peace.[326]

Sir Harry Johnston also was at first opposed to the scheme, but,

influenced partly by the development of the idea into a less crude

plan, and by the opening up of the country by the Uganda Railway,

partly, perhaps, by the intimate connection between the proposal and

the solution of our own overcrowding problem, he was ultimately

converted into a warm supporter of it.[327] Soon afterwards a

Commission was despatched to East Africa to report on the tract of

land offered by the British Government for the proposed Zionist

settlement,[328]--a proof that official opposition was abandoned.

But the opposition on the part of the Jews remained, as was shown by

the comments of the Jewish press of America on Mr. Israel Zangwill’s

visit to that country with a view to interesting American Jews in the

project, by his own “absolute and profound disgust” at their cold

irresponsiveness, and even more clearly by the establishment of the

London Zionist League. The President of this association, Mr. Herbert

Bentwich, in his inaugural address, commenting on the matter, said

that the British East Africa scheme had never touched Zionism in the

slightest degree; that it was a mere accident in Jewish history to

which Zionists could not devote their energies; that the offer of

territory had been made as a practical expression of sympathy “by

those who would exclude the alien immigrant from Great Britain and as

such was gratefully to be received, but it could never be dealt with

seriously,” and that the Zionists hoped not to amend but to end the

Jewish distress; that being the object for which the league had been

formed in London.[329]

The Commission’s report, published in English and German, was

partly unfavourable and partly inconclusive; but even if it had

been favourable it is doubtful whether it would have met with

approval. At all events, when the scheme was definitely submitted

to the Zionist Congress at Basel, towards the end of July, 1905,

it gave rise to scenes of an unexampled character in the history

of Zionism. The Congress was divided into “Palestinians,” who were

opposed to any Jewish national settlement outside Palestine, and into

“Territorialists,” who maintained that the true aim of Zionism is to

obtain an autonomous settlement anywhere. The latter party, led by

Mr. Zangwill, was strongly in favour of the British offer; the former

was as strongly against it. After a stormy discussion the scheme was

rejected, and a resolution was adopted by an overwhelming majority,

in which the Seventh Zionist Congress reaffirmed the principle of the

creation of a legally secured home for the Jewish people in Palestine,

repudiating, both as object and as means, all colonising activity

outside Palestine, and adjacent lands, and, while thanking the British

Government for its kindness, it expressed the hope that the latter will

continue to aid the Zionists in their efforts to attain their true aim.

Thus this episode in the history of Zionism came to an end.

While the East Africa scheme was the subject of so much discord both

among the Jews and elsewhere, the leader of the Zionists passed away.

Dr. Herzl died at Edlach, in Austria, on the 3rd of July, 1904, denied

the happiness of seeing the mission to which he had consecrated his

life fulfilled. Among his adherents he has left the reputation of

a fervent apostle of emancipation, an inspired idealist, a Messiah

burning with the desire to rescue his people from persecution and to

lead them back to the Land of Promise. But even those least inclined

to follow his lead, could not but admire in him that single-minded

devotion to an ideal and that steadfastness in its pursuit, which,

whether success crowns their possessor or not, proclaim the great man.

Among the masses of his suffering co-religionists the claims of Dr.

Herzl to gratitude are less liable to qualification. His personality

produced a deep impression on their imagination, and his efforts to

realise the dream of eighteen centuries, aided by the magic of his

eloquence and the grace of his manner, stirred their hearts to their

inmost depths. Parents named their children after Dr. Herzl, and his

death aroused universal grief. Ten thousand mourners, men and women,

accompanied the funeral to the Vienna cemetery, where the remains of

the leader were laid to rest amid the lamentations of his followers.

The latter subsequently gave a tangible proof of their gratitude by

providing for their leader’s orphaned family, and by resolving to

perpetuate his memory in a manner that would have pleased him. The

memorial is to take the form of a forest of ten thousand olive trees

planted in some historic spot in Palestine, and to be known as the

Herzl Forest.

It would be rash to affirm that Zionism has died with Dr. Herzl. Since

his death, however, the movement has suffered a certain transformation.

Although his East Africa project has been rejected by the majority

of the party, and though both those who favoured it and those who

opposed it are now persuaded of the hopelessness of a chartered home

in Palestine, yet the plan of a return to the Land of Promise still is

enthusiastically adhered to, especially by the sufferers of the Russian

Ghetto: with the only difference that repatriation is no longer looked

for from the Sultan, or from the European Powers, but from individual

effort. Side by side with political and diplomatic activity abroad,

the Congress of 1905 resolved upon practical work in Palestine itself.

This will take the form of general investigation into the country’s

resources and its economic possibilities, and attempts at amelioration

of its administrative conditions. In other words, the colonisation of

Palestine is to be encouraged and its autonomy postponed until the Jews

are established in sufficient numbers to obtain their ultimate object.

“Creep into Palestine anyway. Colonise, redeem the land, populate it,

establish factories, stimulate trade; in a word, rebuild Palestine

and then see what the Sultan will say.” This is the advice given by a

prominent Jew to his co-religionists.[330] Whether these endeavours

will yield the desired fruit or not is a matter on which it would be

more prudent to express an opinion after the event. It is equally

difficult to forecast the outcome of Mr. Zangwill’s “Jewish Territorial

Organisation,” which, abandoning Zion at all events for the moment,

seeks to found a Jewish Colony elsewhere. This variation of the Zionist

programme has attracted the sympathy of many of those who stood

completely aloof from the Herzl scheme. At the same time it has driven

a wedge into Zionism proper.

Meanwhile, it would be idle to deny that, viewed as a whole, the Jewish

Question at the present moment stands pretty much where it has been at

any time during the last eighteen hundred years. A few Jews have solved

the problem for themselves by assimilation to their surroundings. Some

more dwell among the Gentiles in a state of benevolent neutrality: one

with them on the surface, but at heart distinct; performing all the

duties of citizenship conscientiously and sharing in the intellectual

and political life of their adopted countries brilliantly; yet,

by their avoidance of intermarriage, implying the existence of an

insuperable barrier between themselves and those who have not the good

fortune to be descended from Abraham. But the bulk of the race still is

a people of wanderers; and their hope of restoration little more than a

beautiful, melancholy dream. There are at the present hour upwards of

ten million Jews, scattered to the four corners of the earth. Nine of

these millions live in Europe: two-thirds of them in Russia, Roumania

and Poland. In the Middle Ages persecution in the West had driven

them Eastwards. Lately persecution in the East has turned the tide

Westwards. There is no rest for Israel. If the past and the present are

any guides regarding the future, it is safe to predict that for many

centuries to come the world will continue to witness the unique and

mournful spectacle of a great people roaming to and fro on the highways

of the earth in search of a home.

[Illustration: APPROXIMATE DENSITY OF THE JEWISH POPULATION.

London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd.]

FOOTNOTES

[1] The oldest Greek author in whose works the term occurs is the

orator Isaeus who flourished B.C. 364; the earliest Latin writer is

Plautus who died B.C. 184. Of course, the word, though very good

Hebrew, may have been imported into Europe by the Phoenicians. But it

would be a bold man who would attempt to distinguish between Jewish and

Phoenician merchants at this time of day.

[2] I. Macc. xiii. 51.

[3] On the other hand, a famous Palestinian authority, Abbahu (c.

279–320 A.D.), was a noted friend of Greek. He taught it to his

daughters as “an ornament.” Of Abbahu it was said that he was the

living illustration of Ecclesiastes vii. 18 “It is good that thou

shouldst take hold of _this_ (_i.e._ the Jewish Law), yet also from

_that_ (_i.e._ Gentile culture) withdraw not thy hand: for he that

feareth God shall come forth of them all.” Hellenism might appeal

sometimes to the Jew’s head, though it never thrilled his heart. Cf. p.

39 below.

[4] Hdt. i. 1–5.

[5] Justin Mart. _Dial._ i.–vii.

[6] I am referring here to what seems to me characteristic of Hebraism

in the earlier periods when it came into contact and conflict with

Hellenism. In its subsequent development Pharisaism (which gradually

absorbed the whole of the Jewish people) avoided undue asceticism

and laid stress on the joy of living. “Joyous service” became the

keynote of Judaism and Jewish life in the Middle-ages, as it was the

keynote of many Pharisees in the first centuries of the Christian

era. The Essenes, though highly important in the history of primitive

Christianity, had less influence on the main development of Rabbinic

Judaism.

[7] Bk. i. ch. vi. 5–7.

[8] Mac. xiv.–xv.

[9] _Pro L. Flacco_, 28. All the references made to the Jews and

Judaism in Greek and Latin literature have been well collected and

interpreted by T. Reinach in his _Textes d’auteurs grecs et romains

relatifs au Judaisme_ (Paris, 1895).

[10] Suetonius, _Julius_, 84.

[11] Id. _Augustus_, 93.

[12] Suetonius, _Tiberius_, 36.

[13] Tacitus, _Historia_, v. 9.

[14] Suetonius, _Claudius_, 25. Cp. _Acts_, xviii. 2.

[15] _Sat._ i. 9, 69, etc.

[16] _Ant._ 18. 3 (4).

[17] _Sat._ v. 184.

[18] Fgm. ap. Augustin., _Civ. D._ 6, 11.

[19] _Sat._ xiv. 96–99, etc.

[20] Isaiah iii. 26.

[21] Deuter. vii. 3; Nehem. xiii. 25.

[22] Juvenal, _Sat._ xiv. 97.

[23] Tacitus, _Hist._ v. 9.

[24] _Hist._ v. 4.

[25] _Hist._ v. 8.

[26] _Ib._ 5. Cp. Juv. _Sat._ xiv. 103–4.

[27] _Annales_, xv. 44.

[28] Juv. _Sat._ iii. 12–14.

[29] _Hist._ i. 1.

[30] It is, however, only fair to add that the Jewish records know

nothing of these atrocities, and, as M. Reinach justly comments, the

above details (for which Dion Cassius is our sole authority) “inspirent

la méfiance.” The numbers of the victims, as reported by Dion, are in

themselves sufficient to throw doubt upon the story.

[31] H. Graetz, _History of the Jews_, Eng. tr. vol. ii. p. 405.

[32] Mommsen, _History of Rome_, Eng. tr. vol. iv. p. 642.

[33] Just. Mart. _Dial._ xvii.

[34] _c Cels._ vi. 27.

[35] This account of the fervid response of the Jews to Julian’s call,

based on the authority of Christian writers, is pronounced by the

Jewish historian Graetz “purely fictitious” (_History of the Jews_,

Eng. tr. vol. ii. p. 606). At any rate, it seems to be a fiction that

bears upon it a clearer mark of verisimilitude than many a “historical”

document relating to this period.

[36] That the ‘Haman’ so burned was only an effigy is now clearly shown

by an original Geonic Responsum on the subject discovered in the Cairo

Geniza and published in the _Jewish Quarterly Review_, xvi. pp. 651 fol.

[37] The exact date of the “Tour” is disputed. It probably occupied the

thirteen years between 1160 and 1173.

[38] Benjamin of Tudela’s _Itinerary_, p. 24 (ed. Asher). A new

critical edition (by M. N. Adler) has recently appeared in the _Jewish

Quarterly Review_. For the passage in the text see _ibid._ xvi. 730.

[39] H. Graetz, _History of the Jews_, vol. iii. p. 31.

[40] H. Graetz, _History of the Jews_, vol. iii. p. 38.

[41] With regard to the legal relations between the Jews and the

various mediaeval states see J. E. Scherer’s _Beiträge zur Geschichte

des Judenrechtes im Mittelalter_ (1901), a work unhappily left

incomplete by the death of the author.

[42] Joseph Jacobs, “The God of Israel” in the _Nineteenth Century_,

September 1879.

[43] J. E. Sandys, _A History of Classical Scholarship_, pp. 539 fol.

[44] H. Graetz, _History of the Jews_, vol. iii. p. 349. For some fine

translations of Jehuda Halevi’s poems the reader may turn to Mrs. H.

Lucas’ _The Jewish Year_ (Macmillan, 1898) and to Mrs. R. N. Salaman’s

_Songs of Exile_ (Macmillan, 1905). Jehuda Halevi’s philosophical

dialogue the _Khazari_ has recently been translated into English by Dr.

H. Hirschfeld (Routledge, 1905).

[45] Joseph Jacobs, “The God of Israel,” _The Nineteenth Century_,

September, 1879. The _Guide_ has been translated into English by Dr. M.

Friedländer (1885; new edition, Routledge, 1904).

[46] H. Graetz, _History of the Jews_, vol. iii. p. 509.

[47] For Maimonides see the volume on the subject by D. Yellin and I.

Abrahams in the _Jewish Worthies Series_, Vol. I. (Macmillan, 1903).

[48] Vogelstein and Rieger, _Geschichte der Juden in Rom_, i, pp. 136

fol. In general this work should be consulted for all points of contact

between the Papacy and Judaism in the middle ages.

[49] Ibn Verga, _Shebet Yehuda_ (ed. Wiener), p. 50.

[50] Statutes of Avignon quoted by Israel Abrahams, _Jewish Life in the

Middle Ages_, p. 408.

[51] In the first century of our era Aristo of Pella is said to have

been the author of an attempt to prove from the Prophets that Jesus

was the Messiah. Justin Martyr followed in his path, and the latter

writer’s arguments subsequently reappear in the works of Tertullian and

other Fathers. See W. Trollope’s edition of _S. Justini Dialogus_, p. 4.

[52] Heine’s famous satire “Disputation” well characterises the

futility of these public controversies; “der Jude wird verbrannt” was

Lessing’s grim summary in _Nathan der Weise_. See also Schechter,

_Studies in Judaism_, pp. 125 fol.

[53] Lord Curzon, _Problems of the Far East_, p. 298.

[54] Israel Abrahams, _Jewish Life in the Middle Ages_, p. 407.

[55] Lord Curzon, _Problems of the Far East_, p. 303.

[56] _Inferno_, xi. 49–50.

[57] Deuter. xxiii. 19.

[58] Ps. xv. 1, 5.

[59] Koran (Sale’s tr.) ch. ii.

[60] _Rep._ 555 E.

[61] _Laws_, 742 c.

[62] _Pol._ i. 3, 23.

[63] Fifth Homily.

[64] We hear, for example, that early in the thirteenth century

interest was fixed by law at 12½ per cent. at Verona, while at Modena

towards the end of the same century it seems to have been as high as 20

per cent. The Republic of Genoa, a hundred years later, despite Italy’s

commercial prosperity, paid from 7 to 10 per cent. to her creditors.

Much more oppressive were the conditions of the money market in France

and England. Instances occur of 50 per cent., and there is an edict

of Philip Augustus limiting the Jews in France to 48 per cent. At the

beginning of the fourteenth century an ordinance of Philip the Fair

allows 20 per cent. after the first year of a loan, while in England

under Henry III. there are cases on record of 10 per cent. for two

months.

[65] The notorious legend of Hugh of Lincoln is placed by the

chronicler, Matthew Paris, in the year 1255. The prolific nature of

monkish imagination on this subject is shown by the subjoined facts

due to Tyrwhitt’s researches: “In the first four months of the _Acta

Sanctorum_ by Bollandus, I find the following names of children

canonized, as having been murdered by Jews:

XXV. Mart. Willielmus Norvicensis, 1144;

Richardus, Parisiis, 1179;

XVII. Apr. Rudolphus, Bernae, 1287;

Wernerus, Wesaliae, anno eodem;

Albertus, Poloniae, 1598.

I suppose the remaining eight months would furnish at least as many

more.” Quoted by Dr. W. W. Skeat, _Chaucer_, Intr., p. xxiii.

[66] A contemporary historian pathetically states that in 1248 “no

foreigner, let alone an Englishman, could look at an English coin with

dry eyes and unbroken heart.” Henry III. issued a new coin; but it was

not long ere it reached the condition of the older one. In England the

penalty for the crime was loss of life or limbs.

[67] W. Cunningham, _The Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, p.

187.

[68] The original charter of expulsion has recently been discovered; it

was, by a gracious irony of history, found at Leicester at a time when

a Jew had been thrice mayor of the town.

[69] See above, p. 98.

[70] Alami, quoted by H. Graetz, _History of the Jews_, vol. iv. p. 220.

[71] _A History of the Inquisition of Spain_, by H. C. Lea (Macmillan,

Vols. I., II. and III. of which have now appeared, 1906), is a

monumental work on its subject.

[72] _Apologia pro vita sua_, p. 29.

[73] This attachment of Jews to countries with which they have

long been identified recurs at the present day. Jewish emigration

associations are constantly faced by the reluctance of very many

Russian Jews to tear themselves from Russia.

[74] As a matter of fact, Celestine V. hardly deserves this sentence.

It was not cowardice but native humility, the consciousness of the

temptations of power, physical weakness, and the hermit’s longing for

tranquillity that impelled the Pope to resign after five months and

eight days’ pontificate. Commentators had hitherto agreed in applying

the above passage to Celestine V., but recent opinion rejects the

traditional interpretation. However that may be, the point which

concerns us is that Dante censures _a_ pope.

[75] See Berliner, _Persönliche Beziehungen zwischen Christen und

Juden_. Reference should also be made to the same author’s _Geschichte

der Juden in Rom._

[76] _Paradiso_, xii.

[77] Praef. ad Librum de _Serm. Lat._, quoted by Tyrwhitt in Dr. W. W.

Skeat’s _Chaucer_, Intr., p. xxiii.

[78] See above, p. 170.

[79] A good account of the Roman Ghetto may be found in E.

Rodocanachi’s _Le Saint-Siège et les Juifs: Le Ghetto à Rome_ (Paris,

1891).

[80] Browning in his _Holy-Cross Day_ has depicted the farcical

grotesqueness of these efforts at conversion as unsparingly as Heine

satirised the compulsory controversies. Cp. above, p. 98 _n._

[81] _Diary_, March 23, 1646.

[82] I. Abrahams, _Jewish Life in the Middle Ages_, pp. 409–410.

[83] S. Schechter, _Studies in Judaism_, p. 15.

[84] William Hazlitt’s Translation, ch. 857.

[85] Ch. 853.

[86] Ch. 852.

[87] Ch. 700.

[88] Ch. 859.

[89] Ch. 852.

[90] Ch. 864.

[91] _Ibid._

[92] H. Graetz, _History of the Jews_, vol. iv. p. 502.

[93] Ch. 857.

[94] Ch. 864.

[95] Ch. 866.

[96] Ch. 852.

[97] _Ibid._

[98] _Ibid._

[99] _Ibid._

[100] Ch. 856.

[101] Ch. 861.

[102] Ch. 864.

[103] Ch. 852.

[104] Ch. 855.

[105] Ch. 867.

[106] Ch. 862.

[107] Ch. 858.

[108] Ch. 852.

[109] Ch. 854.

[110] Ch. 860.

[111] Ch. 854.

[112] Ch. 855.

[113] Ch. 854.

[114] Ch. 861.

[115] Ch. 865.

[116] Ch. 869.

[117] Ch. 355. O Martin, Martin! What of the “circumcision of the

heart,” to say nothing about Christian charity? But this was in 1541.

[118] Ch. 861.

[119] Ch. 865.

[120] Ch. 866.

[121] _Von den Juden und Ihren Luegen_ (1544) is the title of one of

these pamphlets. See H. Graetz, _History of the Jews_, vol. iv. pp. 583

fol.

[122] For the history of the Hamburg Jews, see M. Grunwald’s _Hamburg’s

Deutsche Juden_, 1904.

[123] On Pfefferkorn and Reuchlin see two papers by S. A. Hirsch in _A

Book of Essays_ (Macmillan, 1905).

[124] See above, p. 175.

[125] Perhaps the most lucid and impartial estimate of Spinoza’s place

in the world of thought, accessible to the English reader, is to be

found in Sir Frederick Pollock’s _Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy_.

This work also contains in an appendix a reprint of the English

translation (1706) of the Dutch biography of Spinoza by his friend

the Lutheran minister Johannes Colerus, published in 1705. The latest

biography of Spinoza, based on new materials, is J. Freudenthal’s

_Spinoza, sein Leben und seine Lehre_, Erster Band, _Das Leben

Spinozas_ (Stuttgart, 1904).

[126] _Confessio Amantis_, bk. vii.

[127] See above, p. 199.

[128] It was by some of these German miners whom the merchant venturers

of Cornwall engaged in exploiting the Cornish mines, under a charter

granted by Queen Elizabeth, that the “dowsing rod” (_Schlagruthe_,

or striking-rod) was introduced into England for the purpose of

discovering mineral veins. Professor W. F. Barrett, “Water-Finding,” in

the _Times_, January 21, 1905.

[129] Essay, _Of Usurie_.

[130] _Merchant of Venice_, Act i. Sc. 3.

[131] I. Abrahams, _Jewish Life in the Middle Ages_, p. 251.

[132] S. R. Gardiner, _History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate_,

vol. ii. p. 30, n. 3.

[133] See above, p. 148.

[134] _Spectator_, No. 213, Nov. 3 1711.

[135] _Ib._ No. 495, Sept. 27, 1712.

[136] Quoted in H. Graetz’s _History of the Jews_, vol. v. p. 359.

[137] T. Carlyle, _History of Frederick the Great_, bk. xvi. ch. vii.

[138] This arrangement was abolished by the Separation Law promulgated

on December 9, 1905, when the Republic resolved neither “to recognise,

pay salaries to, nor subsidise any form of worship.” The Jews have

shared the effects of this Act with the Protestants and Roman Catholics

of France, and like the former of these Christian denominations, and

unlike the latter, readily accepted the change.

[139] _Over the Teacups_, pp. 193 fol.

[140] J. G. Lockhart, _Life of Sir W. Scott_, Ch. xlvi.

[141] The original of Scott’s Rebecca is said to have been a real

person--Rebecca Gratz of Philadelphia. Washington Irving, who knew Miss

Gratz, introduced her to Scott’s notice. She was born in 1781, and died

in 1869. Her claim to have been “the original of Rebecca in _Ivanhoe_”

is sustained in a paper with that title in the _Century Magazine_,

1882, pp. 679 fol.

[142] _Don Juan_, Canto II. lxv. It is only fair to add that Scott

also, at the time of his financial distress, embittered by the harsh

treatment which he experienced at the hands of his Jewish creditors,

Abud and Son, expressed himself in very strong terms concerning “the

vagabond stock-jobbing Jews” in general, and the Abuds in particular.

See Scott’s Diary under dates Nov. 25, 1825, and Oct. 9, 1826, in J. G.

Lockhart, _Life of Sir W. Scott_, Ch. lxv. and lxxi.

[143] _Table-Talk._

[144] Luther’s _Table-Talk_, Ch. 852.

[145] Coleridge’s _Table-Talk_, April 14, 1830.

[146] Cp. above, p. 225.

[147] Editor’s note on May 30, 1830.

[148] Aug. 14, 1833.

[149] Editor’s note on April 14, 1830.

[150] Charles Lamb, Essay on _Imperfect Sympathies_.

[151] J. Morley, _Life of W. E. Gladstone_, Vol. i. pp. 106, 375.

[152] See below, pp. 378 fol.

[153] See _The Jewish Encyclopaedia_, passim.

[154] This phase of the internal history of Russia since 1881 is well

summarised in an article on “The Constitutional Agitation in Russia,”

by Prince Kropotkin, _The Nineteenth Century_, January, 1905.

[155] See Memorandum of the Armenian Patriarchate, protesting against

the edict of spoliation, issued on June 12–25, 1903, in _Armenia_,

October and November, 1906.

[156] See A. Vambéry, “The Awakening of the Tartars,” _The Nineteenth

Century_, February, 1905.

[157] _The Times_, October 8, 1904.

[158] According to the census returns of 1897, the number of illiterate

inhabitants in the country varies from 44.9 to 89.2 per cent.

[159] E. F. G. Law, “The Present Condition of Russia,” _The Fortnightly

Review_, April, 1882.

[160] Vice-Consul Wagstaff’s report, in Goldwin Smith’s “The Jews,”

_The Nineteenth Century_, Nov. 1882.

[161] See above, p. 148. Cp. p. 167.

[162] Olga Novikoff, “The Temperance Movement in Russia,” _The

Nineteenth Century_, Sept. 1882. Cp. M. O. Menchikoff, “The Jewish

Peril in Russia,” _The Monthly Review_, Feb. 1904.

[163] See above, p. 329.

[164] Goldwin Smith, _ubi supra_.

[165] _Ibid._

[166] Goldwin Smith, _ubi supra_.

[167] See above, p. 154.

[168] For a full account of this and other aspects of Russian domestic

policy, the reader is referred to Herr Wolf von Schierbrand’s Russia:

_Her Strength and her Weakness_, 1904.

[169] E. F. G. Law, _ubi supra_.

[170] Olga Novikoff, _ubi supra_.

[171] Goldwin Smith, “The Jews,” _The Nineteenth Century_, Nov. 1882.

Cp. Pierre Botkine, Secretary of the Russian Legation in Washington, “A

Voice for Russia,” _The Century Magazine_, Feb. 1893.

[172] Laurence Oliphant, “The Jew and the Eastern Question,” _The

Nineteenth Century_, Aug. 1882.

[173] Pierre Botkine, Secretary of the Russian Legation in Washington,

“A Voice for Russia,” in _The Century Magazine_, Feb. 1893. Cp. “A

reply” to it by Joseph Jacobs, Secretary of the Russo-Jewish Committee,

London, in the same periodical, July, 1893.

[174] In 1902–3 the Russian Empire, according to the Statistical Table

in the _Jewish Year Book_, contained 5,189,401 Jews, representing 04.13

of the total population (125,668,000). There are serious reasons,

however, to believe that their real number is considerably in excess of

this figure.

[175] _The Times_, June 14, 1905.

[176] Towards the end of 1904 a Bill was introduced in the Council

of the Empire, preventing the promotion even of baptized Jews. But,

owing to reasons which will be explained in the sequel, it was

withdrawn.--The newspaper _Voshod_, reported by Reuter in a despatch

dated St. Petersburg, Dec. 23.

[177] H. H. Munro in the _Morning Post_, June 3, 1904.

[178] Statement by M. De Plehve, _The Standard_, April 8, 1904.

[179] Reuter telegram, dated Melbourne, June 4, 1903.

[180] _The Daily Chronicle_, June 22, 1903.

[181] Reuter telegram, dated Berlin, May 30, 1903.

[182] Andrew D. White, “A Diplomat’s Recollections of Russia,” _The

Century Magazine_, Nov. 1904.

[183] Prince Kropotkin, “The Constitutional Agitation in Russia,” _The

Nineteenth Century_, Jan. 1905.

[184] Those were the words of the Crown Prosecutor at the Kishineff

Trial, _The Times_, Dec. 25, 1903.

[185] _The Times_, Dec. 19, 1903.

[186] _Ibid._

[187] Reuter telegram, dated Kishineff, Dec. 21, 1903.

[188] Reuter telegram, dated St. Petersburg, Dec. 17, 1903.

[189] M. O. Menchikoff, one of the editors of the _Novoe Vremya_, “The

Jewish Peril in Russia,” _The Monthly Review_, Feb. 1904.

[190] Reuter telegram, dated St. Petersburg, June 4, 1903.

[191] _The Standard_ correspondent at Kieff, under date Dec. 18, 1903.

[192] A meagre account of the occurrence appeared in _The Standard_,

Sept. 25, 1903.

[193] _The Times_, Dec. 21, 1903.

[194] Tugan-Baranowsky, “Anti-Semitism in Contemporary Russia,” _The

Monthly Review_, Jan. 1904.

[195] Some very illuminating revelations concerning the organisation

of these authorised riots were made during a recent trial at St.

Petersburg. See Reuter telegram from that town, Oct. 26, 1906, and an

account by the _Tribune_ correspondent under same date.

[196] See Reuter telegram, dated St. Petersburg, June 13, and Mr.

Lucien Wolf’s letter in _The Times_ of June 14, 1904.

[197] Andrew D. White, “A Diplomat’s Recollections of Russia,” _The

Century Magazine_, Nov. 1904.

[198] _The Standard_, Aug. 1, 1904.

[199] Lucien Wolf, “M. De Plehve and the Jewish Question,” in _The

Times_, Feb. 6, 1904.

[200] Reuter telegram, Aug. 17, 1904.

[201] Reuter telegram, dated St. Petersburg, Sept. 12, 1904.

[202] Reuter telegram, dated Kattowitz (Silesia), Sept. 12, 1904.

[203] The Special Commissioner of the _Daily Telegraph_, Dec. 10, 1904.

[204] Reuter telegram, dated St. Petersburg, Sept. 3, 1904.

[205] Reuter telegram, dated New York, January 10, 1905.

[206] According to the returns of the last census (1899), 78 per cent.

of the population over 7 years of age can neither read nor write.

[207] See above, p. 243.

[208] See a most interesting sketch of the movement in S. Schechter’s

_Studies in Judaism_, pp. 1 fol., the same author’s article on the

subject in _Nord und Süd_, January, 1905, and S. M. Dubnow’s article in

the _Jewish Encyclopedia_, Vol. vi. pp. 251 fol.

[209] H. Sutherland Edwards, _Sir William White: His Life and

Correspondence_, p. 84.

[210] _Ibid._ See also a summary of this period under title “The Jews

in Roumania” in _The Standard_, Sept. 30, 1902.

[211] J. Morley, _Life of W. E. Gladstone_, Vol. iii. p. 475 (1891).

[212] The story is related at length by Gibbon, _Decline and Fall of

the Roman Empire_, Ch. xxvi.

[213] One example will suffice. The peasant word for a convivial

gathering is written _sedatore_, and pronounced shezetoare.

[214] Alexander A. Landesco, in _The Century Magazine_, May, 1906, p.

160.

[215] The Vienna correspondent of _The Times_, June 10, 1902.

[216] Carmen Sylva, “The Jews in Roumania,” _The Century Magazine_,

March, 1906.

[217] See statistics of population in the _Jewish Year Book_ for

1902–03. Cp. the _Statesman’s Year Book_ for 1906.

[218] Report from Bucharest, published in the _Pester Lloyd_, see _The

Standard_, Sept. 27, 1902. Cp. the article “Oath More Judaico” in the

_Jewish Encyclopedia_, ix. p. 367.

[219] The Vienna correspondent of _The Standard_, Sept. 19, 1902.

[220] Reuter telegram, dated Bucharest, April 12, 1902.

[221] _The Times_, June 10, 1902.

[222] Reuter telegram, dated Washington, Sept. 17, 1902.

[223] _The Standard_, Sept. 23, 1902.

[224] The attitude of the various Powers is described at length by

the correspondents of the London Press in their respective capitals.

See _Standard_, Sept. 20, 25, 26; _Morning Post_, Sept. 20; _Daily

Chronicle_, Sept. 22, etc.

[225] _The Daily Chronicle_, September 29, 1902.

[226] Carmen Sylva, “The Jews in Roumania,” _The Century Magazine_,

March, 1906.

[227] Alexander A. Landesco, _The Century Magazine_, May, 1906, p. 160.

[228] The Vienna correspondent of the _Standard_, Sept. 26, 1902.

[229] Isocrates, _Panegyr._ 50.

[230] In Germany, out of a total population of 56,500,000, there are

587,000 Jews, of whom 376,000 reside in Prussia. In Austria there are

1,150,000 out of a total population of 26,000,000, and in Hungary

850,000 out of a total population of 19,000,000. The percentage of

Jews, therefore, is in Germany 01.04, in Austria 04.80, in Hungary

04.43.--_Jewish Year-Book_, 1902–03.

[231] “The Jews in Germany,” by the author of “German Home Life,” _The

Contemporary Review_, January, 1881.

[232] Ernest Schuster, “The Anti-Jewish Agitation in Germany,” _The

Fortnightly Review_, March 1, 1881.

[233] Statutes quoted by Lucien Wolf in “The Anti-Jewish Agitation,”

_The Nineteenth Century_, February, 1881.

[234] Ernest Schuster, _ubi supra_.

[235] See above, p. 307.

[236] “The Jews in Germany,” by the author of “German Home Life,” _The

Contemporary Review_, January, 1881. For these and similar demands see

also Ernest Schuster, _ubi supra_.

[237] Karl Blind, “The Conflict in Germany,” _The Nineteenth Century_,

February, 1882.

[238] The Vienna Correspondent of the _Times_ in a letter dated Nov.

11, 1904.

[239] _The Times_, October 22, 1904.

[240] Reuter telegram, dated Vienna, June 11, 1906. Cp. “Hidden

Forces in Austrian Politics,” a letter by “Scotus Viaticus” in the

_Spectator_, July 7, 1906.

[241] The Vienna correspondent of _The Times_, January 7, 1907.

[242] Lucien Wolf, “The Anti-Jewish Agitation,” _The Nineteenth

Century_, Feb., 1881.

[243] _Étude sur l’Ecclésiaste_, pp. 91 fol.

[244] See _Qu’est-ce qu’une Nation?_ a paper read at the Sorbonne on

March 11, 1882, in _Discours et Conférences_, pp. 277 fol.

[245] See lectures and speeches delivered in 1883 in _Discours et

Conférences_, pp. 336, 374, etc.

[246] See Ed. Drumont’s _La France Juive_, a work which, published in

1886, raised its author at once to the rank of commander-in-chief of

the anti-Semitic forces in France.

[247] 86,885 in a total population of 38,595,000, _i.e._ a percentage

of 00.22, _Jewish Year Book_, 1902–03.

[248] _The Standard_, Dec. 7, 1903.

[249] A statistic supplied to the Commission for Tlemcen shows that out

of 6000 Jews there are only 10 possessing more than £2000, and another,

supplied for Constantine, shows that out of 1024 Jewish electors there

are only 10 possessed of real estate and 146 merchants. The rest lead a

miserable hand-to-mouth existence.--_Le Temps_, Sept. 25, 1901.

[250] J. Morley, _Life of W. E. Gladstone_, vol. iv. pp. 552, 558.

[251] _E.g._ Sir J. G. T. Sinclair, _A Defence of Russia_ (1877); T. P.

O’Connor, _Lord Beaconsfield: a Biography_ (1878); etc.

[252] In justice to the writer it must be added that this ungenerous

and untrue caricature was the common estimate of Disraeli entertained

by all his political opponents. Except Lord Acton, they all agreed

with the Duke of Argyll in holding that Disraeli was a “fantastic

adventurer”--a man who, having no opinions of his own and no traditions

with which to break, “was free to play with prejudices in which he did

not share, and to express passions which were not his own, except in so

far as they were tinged with personal resentment.” See _Duke of Argyll:

Autobiography and Memoirs_, Vol. i. p. 280.

[253] Malcolm MacColl, “Lord Beaconsfield,” _The Contemporary Review_,

June, 1881.

[254] Goldwin Smith, “The Jews,” _The Nineteenth Century_, Nov., 1882.

The writer repeats all these views, in almost identical terms, in _The

Independent_, June 21, 1906.

[255] Israel Abrahams, _Jewish Life in the Middle Ages_, Introd.

[256] _Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe_, vol.

ii. p. 281.

[257] Goldwin Smith, _ubi supra_.

[258] S. Singer, “The Russo-Jewish Immigrant,” in _The English

Illustrated Magazine_, Sept. 1891.

[259] David Baron, _The Ancient Scriptures and the Modern Jew_, p. 179,

1900.

[260] Arnold White, _The Modern Jew_, 1899.

[261] _Jewish Year Book_, 1902.

[262] Report in _The Standard_, Dec. 14, 1903.

[263] Arnold White, _For Efficiency_, 1902, price 3d.

[264] “The Alien Inquiry: an omitted point,” _The Standard_, Sept. 5,

1903.

[265] _The Pioneer_, Nov. 14, 1904. Commercial jealousy, embittered by

racial prejudice, is also at the root of the anti-Japanese agitation

now raging in California.

[266] Charles Grant, _The Contemporary Review_, March, 1881.

[267] See an article under the title “The East-End Hevra” in _The

Standard_ of April 27, and a reply to it in the issue of May 1, 1903.

[268] J. H. Schooling, “Foreigners in England,” _The Fortnightly

Review_, November, 1904. Mr. Chamberlain also, in the debate on the

Aliens Bill (May 2, 1905), frankly avowed that he supported that

measure because it harmonised with his policy of protection, and he

very logically dwelt on the identity of the principle underlying both

programmes.

[269] Report of the Commission, pp. 19, 20.

[270] _The Daily Chronicle_, January 9, 1903.

[271] _The Daily Chronicle_, Feb. 17, 1904.

[272] For the text of the Bill, see _The Times_, April 1, 1904.

[273] _The Standard_, leading article, April 26, 1904.

[274] Mr. Winston Churchill’s letter to a member of the Jewish

community in Manchester, May 30, 1904.

[275] _The Daily Chronicle_, May 18, 1903.

[276] _The Daily Chronicle_, May 4, 1904.

[277] Letter by Mr. Balfour, dated May 9, 1904.

[278] _The Daily Chronicle_, May 13, 1904.

[279] _Ibid._ May 14, 1904.

[280] _A Modern Exodus._ By Violet Guttenberg.

[281] Report in _The Standard_, April 2, 1904.

[282] Report in _The Times_, April 17, 1905.

[283] Mr. Wyndham’s statement in the House of Commons, April 25, 1904.

[284] “Milesian,” letter in _The Times_, April 4, 1904.

[285] E. B. Levin, letter in _The Times_, April 12, 1904.

[286] “Milesian,” _ubi supra_.

[287] “Milesian,” _ubi supra_.

[288] See _The Times_, April 8 and 12, 1904.

[289] _The Standard_, August 8, 1904.

[290] J. H. Schooling, “Foreigners in England,” _The Fortnightly

Review_, November, 1904.

[291] W. Evans Gordon, “The Economic Side of Alien Immigration,” _The

Nineteenth Century_, February, 1905.

[292] W. Evans Gordon, letter in _The Times_, March 22, 1904.

[293] Letter in _The Standard_, August 8, 1904.

[294] _Ibid._ July 7, 1904.

[295] J. Morley, _Life of W. E. Gladstone_, vol. iii. p. 475.

[296] For a list of such works see the article “Inquisition” in the

_Encyclopaedia Britannica_.

[297] Jeremiah xxxii. 37. Cp. Isaiah xi. 12 etc.

[298] S. Schechter, _Studies in Judaism_, pp. 131–2.

[299] For an exhaustive account of the historic development of Zionism

see Lucien Wolf, “Zionism,” in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_.

[300] For a full enumeration of the arguments and sentiments which

impelled the mass of Russian and Roumanian Jews in the early ’Eighties

to prefer an Eastern to a Western exodus, see Laurence Oliphant, “The

Jew and the Eastern Question,” _The Nineteenth Century_, August, 1882.

[301] Laurence Oliphant, _ubi supra_. On the other hand, it must not be

forgotten that the members of the Chovevi Zion Societies represented

but a very small proportion of the total Jews of the world.

[302] _The Jewish World_, Aug. 15, 1902.

[303] The St. Petersburg correspondent of _The Times_, Oct. 14, 1902.

[304] See the late Minister’s of the Interior utterances on the

subject: Lucien Wolf, “M. De Plehve and the Jewish Question,” in _The

Times_, Feb. 6, 1904.

[305] _The Jewish Question_, Gay and Bird, 1894, p. 27.

[306] Pp. 31–32.

[307] P. 38.

[308] _Table-Talk_, April 13, 1830.

[309] Lucien Wolf, “Zionism,” _Encyclopaedia Britannica_.

[310] _Aspects of the Jewish Question._ By “A Quarterly Reviewer,”

1902, p. 76.

[311] P. 16.

[312] M. J. Landa, “The Doom of Zionism,” in _The Manchester Guardian_,

Jan. 10, 1905.

[313] “Palestine Revisited,” _The Statesman_, Oct. 23, 1904.

[314] Lucien Wolf, article on “Zionism” in the _Encyclopaedia

Britannica_.

[315] Report in _The Daily Chronicle_, May 18, 1903.

[316] Reuter telegram, dated Basel, Aug. 24, 1903.

[317] Reuter telegram, dated St. Petersburg, Oct. 12, 1903.

[318] “Palestine Revisited,” _The Statesman_, October 23, 1904.

[319] On this aspect of the Jewish question see an article by M.

Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu in the _Revue des deux Mondes_, March 1, 1903;

and another on _La Langue Française en Orient_ in _Le Monde Illustré_,

April 11, 1903.