Chapter I: Part 1

TEN ESSAYS ON ZIONISM AND JUDAISM

Printed in Great Britain by
St. Stephen’s Printing Works, Bristol, England.

TEN ESSAYS ON ZIONISM AND JUDAISM

BY
ACHAD HA-AM

TRANSLATED FROM THE HEBREW BY
LEON SIMON
Author of _Studies in Jewish Nationalism_

LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LTD.
BROADWAY HOUSE, 68-74, CARTER LANE, E.C.
1922

CONTENTS

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION vii

THE WRONG WAY (1889) 1

THE FIRST ZIONIST CONGRESS (1897) 25

THE JEWISH STATE AND THE JEWISH PROBLEM (1897) 32

PINSKER AND POLITICAL ZIONISM (1902) 56

THE TIME HAS COME (1906) 91

“WHEN MESSIAH COMES” (1907) 114

A SPIRITUAL CENTRE (1907) 120

SUMMA SUMMARUM (1912) 130

THE SUPREMACY OF REASON (1904) 162

JUDAISM AND THE GOSPELS (1910) 223

INDEX 254

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

The present volume of translations from the Hebrew of Achad Ha-Am[1] differs in character from the volume of _Selected Essays_ published in 1912 by the Jewish Publication Society of America. The earlier selection was confined, by the express desire of the publishing Society, to essays dealing with the broader aspects of Judaism and Jewish thought; essays of a more polemical character, in which the author has defined his attitude to the modern Jewish national movement, were designedly omitted. Of the ten further essays included in the present selection, only two belong to the former category, and these have been placed, out of their chronological order, at the end. The other eight essays all deal with one aspect or another of Zionism, and they form a series which will enable the English reader who is interested in the Zionist movement to follow its history under the guidance of one who is at the same time among its staunchest pillars and its most unsparing critics. The first[2] of the eight—which is also the first essay written by Achad Ha-Am—belongs to the early years of the Jewish national movement, when the Zionist Organisation was unborn, and the very name “Zionism” uninvented. The last of the eight—and the most recent of Achad Ha-Am’s essays, for the war and ill-health have made him silent of recent years—records his impressions of the practical results achieved by Zionism in Palestine up to 1911.

As the background of these essays is for the most part unfamiliar to English readers, it will not be out of place to give here a brief sketch of the phases through which the Zionist movement has passed, in so far as that is necessary for a proper understanding of the criticisms and allusions in the essays themselves.

The first organised form of Zionism took shape in Russia under the stress of the pogroms of 1880-81. Those pogroms, following a period during which the Russian Government had seemed to be working sincerely towards the emancipation of the Jews, and themselves followed by a whole code of restrictive legislation known as the May Laws, awoke into a blaze the national sentiment which had slumbered but had not died in the Russian Ghetto. They revealed the evils of _galuth_—exile, life outside Palestine—in all their hideousness, and turned men’s minds to the active accomplishment of that escape from _galuth_ for which during many centuries the Jew had only prayed. _Chibbath Zion_ (Love of Zion) became an organised movement, and throughout Russia groups of _Chovevé Zion_ (Lovers of Zion) began to work for the settlement of Jews on the land in Palestine. At the head of the movement stood Dr. Leo Pinsker, who in his pamphlet _Auto-Emancipation_ had outlined an ambitious scheme for the emigration of Jews _en masse_ to some territory (not necessarily Palestine) where they could be their own masters. His proposal found no response among the emancipated Western Jews, to whom it was addressed; and as its realisation was obviously beyond the power of the oppressed and persecuted Russian Jews, its author turned to _Chibbath Zion_ as the only means open to him of working for a national regeneration of Jewry. Events soon showed that _Chibbath Zion_ was as yet unable to achieve so large an aim. The difficulties in the way of settling Jews on the land in Palestine were enormous, and the resources of the _Chovevé Zion_ were painfully limited. The national sentiment was not sufficiently alive in the Jewish masses to induce large numbers of them to brave the hardships and privations of life in Palestine for the sake of a national ideal. Any Jew whose primary object was to escape from pogroms and May Laws and to better his individual position would naturally prefer some country, like the United States, where economic life was already developed. The _Chovevé Zion_ attempted, rather unwisely, to make Palestine attractive to the less idealistically minded by exaggerating the possibilities of individual self-advancement which it held out. The natural result was disappointment and disillusion; and the Palestinian agricultural settlements (or colonies, as they are generally called) would have faded away altogether but for the generous assistance of Baron Edmond de Rothschild, of Paris. Thanks to him the first colonies pulled through, and after many vicissitudes were set on the road to independence. But the whole colonisation movement remained small and poor, and any hopes which might have been entertained of its bringing about even the beginning of a solution of the material problem of _galuth_ were dissipated at an early date. Meanwhile, however, the _Chovevé Zion_ contributed to a national work of the first importance by helping to lay the foundations of a revival of the Hebrew language, especially in Palestine—a development which, while it had nothing to do with the solution of any material problem, had very much to do with the stimulation of that national sentiment which is the only possible basis of a national as distinct from a purely philanthropic or economic movement.

In 1895, when the colonisation work was at a low ebb, the Jewish world was startled by the appearance of _Der Judenstaat_, a pamphlet in which a brilliant Viennese journalist and playwright, Dr. Theodor Herzl, advocated, as a solution of the Jewish problem, the establishment of an autonomous Jewish State in some suitable territory (not necessarily Palestine). Herzl’s scheme was (unconsciously) more or less a reproduction of that of Pinsker; but it met with a different fate, largely, no doubt, thanks to the silent growth of the national sentiment which had been brought about during the intervening years by the awakening—albeit to little purpose from a purely practical point of view—of Jewish interest in Palestine. While the Western Jews were for the most part as deaf to Herzl’s call as they had been to Pinsker’s, many of the _Chovevé Zion_ found in his pamphlet a new inspiration, and their pressure induced him to take in hand himself the practical realisation of a scheme which he had meant to leave others to carry out. The result was the Zionist Organisation, which was founded at the first Zionist Congress at Basle in 1897. This organisation, though the great body of its supporters was drawn from the ranks of the _Chovevé Zion_, reflected the outlook and ideas of Herzl and his handful of friends and supporters from the West. There was to be no more waste of time and effort on “petty colonisation.” Instead, there was to be a political organisation of Jewry, with a large National Fund, which would first of all buy Palestine from the Turk under a Charter guaranteed by the European Powers, and would then proceed to settle in Palestine all those Jews who could not be happy where they were. This beautiful dream roused the Jewish masses for a time to a kind of Messianic fervour; it was so much more alluring than the hard realities which the _Chovevé Zion_ had had to face. But after a few years the inevitable awakening came. Realities remained realities, and the Charter remained a distant vision. Herzl passed away untimely in 1904, and with him and his wonderful personality passed the only force which could make the dream-world appear for a time real. He had, indeed, obtained from the British Government an offer of a territory in East Africa (commonly, though incorrectly, located in Uganda) for a quasi-autonomous settlement of Jews; but this triumph of the Zionist Organisation only served to bring out the essential difference, hitherto more or less successfully kept in the background, between the head of the Organisation and its body. The _Chovevé Zion_, however they may have erred in attempting to further the colonisation of Palestine by appeals to individual self-interest, had at any rate remained sufficiently nationalist to feel that a national Jewish settlement could by no possibility have any other home than Palestine. They had seen to it that the Zionist Organisation put Palestine and no other country into its programme. Now, when they found their trusted and beloved leader attempting to divert them to East Africa—though he averred solemnly that East Africa was only intended as a temporary refuge, a _Nachtasyl_, and Palestine remained the real goal—they felt that they had been betrayed. Herzl’s enormous influence averted, at the Congress of 1903, a direct refusal of the British Government’s offer: a Commission was appointed to study the proposed territory. But when the next Congress met, in 1905, Herzl was no more, and the opponents of East Africa—the _Zioné Zion_, “Zion-Zionists,” as they were called—carried the day. There was of course a violent reaction: the masses swung away from Zionism, now that it no longer held out to them the hope of a refuge from persecution and poverty, and some of the minority party founded a new body, the Jewish Territorial Organisation, to search the globe for a home of refuge. This was all to the good, for the Zionist Organisation was purged of Messianism and was able to face realities again. The framework, and to a large extent the phraseology, created by Herzl were retained, but essentially the Zionist Organisation became perforce an instrument for the realisation of the national ideal along the two lines on which alone real advance is possible—the lines of Palestinian development and national education. It was only during the war, which brought on the one hand the Balfour Declaration, with its promise of a National Home for the Jewish people in Palestine, and on the other hand untold suffering and loss to the Jewish masses in Eastern Europe, that Messianic hopes were again aroused—again to be followed by the inevitable disillusionment and reaction.

On the position created by the recent developments of Zionism Achad Ha-Am has commented in a brief introduction, written in June, 1920, for a new edition of his collected essays in Hebrew. As the question of the scope of the Balfour Declaration is still much debated, and has a special interest for English readers, I reproduce here the greater part of that Introduction.

“When,” he writes, “I returned from Palestine in 1912, and my _Summa Summarum_ aroused violent anger in various quarters, I wrote an explanatory note by way of supplement to that essay; and I should like to remind my readers on this occasion of some of the things that I said then, because they seem to me relevant at the present time. ‘There must be,’ I wrote, ‘some natural connection of cause and effect between an object and the means by which its attainment is sought: we must be able to show how this object can be attained by these means. So long as that connection does not exist, so long as we cannot attempt to justify our choice of means except by such vague phrases as ”Perhaps ... you never can tell ... times change ...”—we may speak of cherished hopes and an ideal for the distant future, but we cannot speak of a _practical_ object which can serve as a basis for a systematic plan of work. For every systematic plan of work must necessarily be based on a clear conception (whether intellectual or imaginative) of the chain of cause and effect which connects the various activities one with another, and all of them together with the object.... No doubt, we cannot foretell the future; no doubt it is possible that unforeseen things may happen and may change the face of reality. But a possibility of that kind cannot be made the basis of a systematic plan of work, and we are dealing no longer with an objective of immediate activity, but with a vision of the future.’

“About two years after these words were written and published the world-war began, and led to those results which we know: ‘unforeseen things happened and changed the face of reality.’ Our own life, too, was caught in the maelstrom of world-happenings; and the face of our own reality, too, was changed as a consequence. Much might be said, and has already been said, about the character of these changes, about their good and their bad side, about their significance both for the Diaspora and for Palestine. I cannot now deal with this subject fully, and I wish for my part only to say a word or two on one of the principal features of the changed situation—I mean the widening of the horizon of our work in Palestine through the famous Declaration of the British Government, which has recently been confirmed by the Supreme Council, and thus has ceased to be merely the promise of a single Government and has become an international obligation. This Declaration has provided a new ‘basis for a systematic plan of work,’ and has set up ‘an objective of immediate activity’—activity on a large scale, such as has been hitherto only a theme for the anticipations of orators and essayists, with no real basis in the present. But at the same time the Declaration has winged anew the imagination of those who were already accustomed to build castles in the air, without regard to the realities of this earthly life. That is, I fancy, one of the reasons why there is still a demand for this book, though much of its contents does not fit the realities of to-day. It is not so much the contents that matter as the point of view from which I have tried to deal with the various questions as they arose. I have tried to judge not on the basis of that ‘you-never-can-tell’ attitude which shrouds itself in the mists of the future, but on the basis of present realities, or of impending realities which can be prognosticated from existing conditions. Even to-day this point of view needs reiteration. For once it has happened, as by a miracle, that what was wildly improbable a short time ago has become to a certain extent actual: and this ‘miracle’ has led those who were always waiting for miracles to claim a victory, and to insist on maintaining their attitude for the future also, and on laying down as the one principle of policy this perverted axiom—that if such a thing has happened once in exceptional circumstances, its like may happen again, and we can therefore construct our world as we please, regardless of present realities, and relying on a repetition of the miracle when we need it. There is a Jewish proverb which says: ‘A mistake which succeeds is none the less a mistake.’ So a plan of work which turns its back on realities, and relies on the possibility that something out of the ordinary may turn up and change realities to its advantage, is a mistaken plan, even if it succeeds for once in a way. And if it goes on banking on the element of chance, which does in fact interfere occasionally with the normal course of events, and continues to act accordingly, it will end in disaster, despite its initial success.

“All the details of the diplomatic conversations in London which led to the Declaration have not yet been made public; but the time has come to reveal one ‘secret,’ because knowledge of it will make it easier to understand the true meaning of the Declaration.

“‘To facilitate the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people’—that is the text of the promise given to us by the British Government. But that is not the text suggested to the Government by the Zionist spokesmen. They wished it to read: ‘the reconstitution of Palestine as the National Home of the Jewish people’; but when the happy day arrived on which the Declaration was signed and sealed by the Government, it was found to contain the first formula and not the second. That is to say, the allusion to the fact that we are about to _re_build our _old_ national home was dropped, and at the same time the words ‘constitution of Palestine as the national home’ were replaced by ‘establishment of a national home in Palestine.’ There were some who understood at once that this had some significance; but others thought that the difference was merely one of form. Hence they sometimes attempted on subsequent occasions, when the negotiations with the Government afforded an opportunity, to formulate the promise in their own wording, as though it had not been changed. But every time they found in the Government’s reply a repetition of the actual text of the Declaration—which proves that it is not a case where the same thing may be put equally well in either of two ways, but that the promise is really defined in this particular form of words, and goes no further.

“It can scarcely be necessary to explain at length the difference between the two versions. Had the British Government accepted the version suggested to it—that Palestine should be reconstituted as the national home of the Jewish people—its promise might have been interpreted as meaning that Palestine, inhabited as it now is, was restored to the Jewish people on the ground of its historic right; that the Jewish people was to rebuild its waste places and was destined to rule over it and to manage all its affairs in its own way, without regard to the consent or non-consent of its present inhabitants. For this rebuilding (it might have been understood) is only a renewal of the ancient right of the Jews, which over-rides the right of the present inhabitants, who have wrongly established their national home on a land not their own. But the British Government, as it stated expressly in the Declaration itself, was not willing to promise anything which would harm the present inhabitants of Palestine, and therefore it changed the Zionist formula, and gave it a more restricted form. The Government thinks, it would seem, that when a people has only the moral force of its claim to build its national home in a land at present inhabited by others, and has not behind it a powerful army or fleet to prove the justice of its claim, that people can have only what its right allows it in truth and justice, and not what conquering peoples take for themselves by armed force, under the cover of various ‘rights’ invented for the occasion. Now the historic right of a people in relation to a country inhabited by others can mean only the right to settle once more in its ancestral land, to work the land and to develop its resources without hindrance. And if the inhabitants complain that strangers have come to exploit the land and its population, the historic right has a complete answer to them: these newcomers are not strangers, but the descendants of the old masters of the country, and as soon as they settle in it again, they are as good as natives. And not only the settlers as individuals, but the collective body as a people, when it has once more put into this country a part of its national wealth—men, capital, cultural institutions and so forth—has again in the country its national home, and has the right to extend and to complete its home up to the limit of its capacity. But this historic right does not over-ride the right of the other inhabitants, which is a tangible right based on generation after generation of life and work in the country. The country is at present their national home too, and they too have the right to develop their national potentialities so far as they are able. This position, then, makes Palestine common ground for different peoples, each of which tries to establish its national home there; and in this position it is impossible for the national home of either of them to be complete and to embrace all that is involved in the conception of a ‘national home.’ If you build your house not on untenanted ground, but in a place where there are other inhabited houses, you are sole master only as far as your front gate. Within you may arrange your effects as you please, but beyond the gate all the inhabitants are partners, and the general administration must be ordered in conformity with the good of all of them. Similarly, national homes of different peoples in the same country can demand only national freedom for each one in its internal affairs, and the affairs of the country which are common to all of them are administered by all the ‘householders’ jointly if the relations between them and their degree of development qualify them for the task, or, if that condition is not yet fulfilled, by a guardian from outside, who takes care that the rights of none shall be infringed.

“When, then, the British Government promised to facilitate the establishment _in Palestine of a national home_ for the Jewish people—and not, as was suggested to it, the reconstitution of Palestine as the national home of the Jewish people—that promise meant two things. It meant in the first place recognition of the historic right of the Jewish people to build its national home in Palestine, with a promise of assistance from the British Government; and it meant in the second place a negation of the power of that right to over-ride the right of the present inhabitants and to make the Jewish people sole ruler in the country. The national home of the Jewish people must be built out of the free material which can still be found in the country itself, and out of that which the Jews will bring in from outside or will create by their work, without overthrowing the national home of the other inhabitants. And as the two homes are contiguous, and friction and conflicts of interest are inevitable, especially in the early period of the building of the Jewish national home, of which not even the foundations have yet been properly laid, the promise necessarily demands, though it is not expressly so stated, that a guardian shall be appointed over the two homes—that is, over the whole country—to see to it that the owner of the historic right, while he does not injure the inhabitants in their internal affairs, shall not on his side have obstacles put in his way by his neighbour, who at present is stronger than he. And in course of time, when the new national home is fully built, and its tenant is able to rely, no less than his neighbour, on the right which belongs to a large population living and working in the country, it will be possible to raise the question whether the time has not come to hand over the control of the country to the ‘householders’ themselves, so that they may together administer their joint affairs, fairly and justly, in accordance with the needs of each of them and the value of his work for the revival and development of the country.

“This and no more, it seems to me, is what we can find in the Balfour Declaration; and this and no more is what our leaders and writers ought to have told the people, so that it should not imagine more than what is actually there, and afterwards relapse into despair and absolute scepticism.

“But we all know how the Declaration was interpreted at the time of its publication, and how much exaggeration many of our workers and writers have tried to introduce into it from that day to this. The Jewish people listened, and believed that the end of the _galuth_ had indeed come, and that in a short time Palestine would be a ‘Jewish State.’ The Arab people too, which we have always ignored from the very beginning of the colonisation movement, listened, and believed that the Jews were coming to expropriate its land and to do with it what they liked. All this inevitably led to friction and bitterness on both sides, and contributed much to the state of things which was revealed in all its ugliness in the events at Jerusalem last April.[3] Those events, in conjunction with others which preceded them, might have taught us how long is the way from a written promise to its practical realisation, and how many are the obstacles, not easily to be removed, which beset our path. But apparently we learned nothing; and only a short time after the events at Jerusalem, when the British promise was confirmed at San Remo, we began once more to blow the Messianic trumpet, to announce the ‘redemption,’ and so forth. The confirmation of the promise, as I said above, raised it to the level of an international obligation, and from that point of view it is undoubtedly of great value. But essentially it added nothing, and the text of the earlier promise remains absolutely unaltered. What the real meaning of that text is, we have seen above; but its brevity and vagueness allow those who so wish—as experience in Palestine has shown—to restrict its meaning much more—indeed, almost to nothing. Everything, therefore, depends on the good will of the ‘guardian,’ on whom was placed at San Remo the duty of giving the promise practical effect. Had we paid attention to realities, we should have restrained our feelings, and have waited a little to see how the written word would be interpreted in practice.

“I have dwelt perhaps at undue length on this point, because it is the fundamental one. But in truth we are now confronted with other questions, _internal_ questions, which demand a solution without delay; and the solutions which we hear from time to time are as far from realities as are the poles asunder. It will not be long, however, before these visionary proposals, which are so attractive, have to make way for actual _work_, and we have to show _in practice_ how far we have the material and moral strength to establish the national home which we have been given permission to establish in Palestine.

“And at this great and difficult moment I appear before my readers—perhaps for the last time—on the threshold of this book, and repeat once more my old warning, on which most of the essays in this book are but a commentary:

“Do not press on too quickly to the goal, so long as the actual conditions without which it cannot be reached have not been created; and do not disparage the work which is possible at any given time, having regard to actual conditions, even if it will not bring the Messiah to-day or to-morrow.”

* * * * *

It is because Achad Ha-Am has consistently driven home the lesson reiterated in these last words, and because that lesson is so strikingly apt at the present time, that one feels justified to-day in producing a translation of some of his essays which, as regards their actual subject-matter, are somewhat out of date. The point of view from which he approaches Zionist questions—that of an idealism guided but not subdued by a sternly objective apprehension of realities—is not out of date, and never will be until either human beings or external realities change very much. And that point of view is capable of a wider application than is expressly given to it by the Lover of Zion, concerned primarily with the problems and the destiny of his own people: for it is true of any other ideal movement no less than of Zionism that it is endangered not alone by those who oppose it, but also by those who adhere to it only because they expect it to work miracles.

* * * * *

The translations in this volume, like those in its predecessor, have had the advantage of revision by Achad Ha-Am. The few foot-notes which the translator has added are enclosed in square brackets.

I am much indebted to Mr. Fisher Unwin and to Messrs. Paul Goodman and Arthur D. Lewis for permission to include in this volume the translation of “A Spiritual Centre,” which first appeared in _Zionism: Problems and Views_, and to the Union of Jewish Literary Societies for permission to reprint that part of “The Time has Come” which appeared in the _Jewish Literary Annual_ for 1907. My best thanks are due to the Editors of the Jewish Review, Messrs. Norman Bentwich and Joseph Hockman, who have kindly allowed me to include “Judaism and the Gospels” and “Summa Summarum” from the _Jewish Review_. I have also to thank the _Jüdischer Verlag_, which now owns the copyright of the Hebrew original, for consenting to the publication of this volume of translations.

LEON SIMON.

Footnote 1:

Achad Ha-Am (= “one of the people”) is the pen-name of Asher Ginzberg,
a famous Hebrew thinker and essayist, born in Russia in 1856, who has
lived in London since 1908. His biography (up to 1902) is given in the
_Jewish Encyclopædia_. For some account of his teaching I may refer to
the essay called “One of the People” in my _Studies in Jewish
Nationalism_ (Longmans, 1920).

Footnote 2:

This essay (“The Wrong Way”), when first published, had to be
expressed somewhat obscurely so as to pass the Russian Censor. It was
altered subsequently, when the first collection of Achad Ha-Am’s
essays was published in book form, but it still lacks somewhat of the
absolute clarity which distinguishes his usual style.

Footnote 3:

The anti-Jewish riots of April, 1920, in which many lives were lost.
In a footnote at this point the author recalls that as far back as
1891 he drew attention to the Arab question, and pointed out the folly
of regarding the Arabs as “wild men of the desert,” who could not see
what was going on around them.

THE WRONG WAY
(1889)

I

For many centuries the Jewish people, sunk in poverty and degradation, has been sustained by faith and hope in the divine mercy. The present generation has seen the birth of a new and far-reaching idea, which promises to bring down our faith and hope from heaven, and transform both into living and active forces, making our land the goal of hope, and our people the anchor of faith.

Historic ideas of this kind spring forth suddenly, as though of their own accord, when the time is ripe. They at once establish their sway over the minds which respond to them, and from these they spread abroad and make their way through the world—as a spark first sets fire to the most inflammable material, and then spreads to the framework of the building. It was in this way that our idea came to birth, without our being able to say who discovered it, and won adherents among those who halted half-way: among those, that is, whose faith had weakened, and who had no longer the patience to wait for miracles, but who, on the other hand, were still attached to their people by bonds which had not lost their strength, and had not yet abandoned belief in its right to exist as a single people. These first “nationalists” raised the banner of the new idea, and went out to fight its battle full of confidence. The sincerity of their own conviction gradually awoke conviction in others, and daily fresh recruits joined them from Left and Right: so that one might have expected them in a short time to be numbered by tens of thousands.

But meanwhile the movement underwent a fundamental change. The idea took practical shape in the work of Palestinian colonisation. This unlooked-for development surprised friends and foes alike. The friends of the idea raised a shout of victory, and cried in exultation: Is not this a thing unheard-of, that an idea so young has strength to force its way into the world of action? Does not this prove clearly that we were not mere dreamers? The foes of the movement, on their side, who had hitherto despised it and mocked it, as an idle fancy of dreamers and visionaries, now began grudgingly to admit that after all it showed signs of life and was worthy of attention.

From that time dates a new period in the history of the idea; and if we glance at the whole course of its development from that time to the present, we shall find once again matter for surprise. Whereas previously the idea grew ever stronger and stronger and spread more and more widely among all sections of the people, while its sponsors looked to the future with exultation and high hopes, now, after its victory, it has ceased to win new adherents, and even its old adherents seem to lose their energy, and ask for nothing more than the well-being of the few poor colonies[4] already in existence, which are what remains of all their pleasant visions of an earlier day. But even this modest demand remains unfulfilled; the land is full of intrigues and quarrels and pettiness—all for the sake and for the glory of the great idea—which give them no peace and endless worry; and who knows what will be the end of it all?

If, as a philosopher has said, it is melancholy to witness the death from old age of a religion which brought comfort to men in the past, how much more sad is it when an idea full of youthful vigour—the hope of the passing generation and the salvation of that which is coming—stumbles and falls at the outset of its career! Add to this that the idea in question is one which we see exercising so profound an influence over many peoples, and surely we are bound to ask ourselves the old question: Why are we so different from any other race or nation? Or are those of our people really right, who say that we have ceased to be a nation and are held together only by the bond of religion? But, after all, those who take that view can speak only for themselves. It is true that between them and us there is no longer any bond except that of a common religion and the hatred which our enemies have for us; but we ourselves, who feel our Jewish nationality in our own hearts, very properly deride anybody who tries to argue out of existence something of which we have an intuitive conviction. If this is so, why has not the idea of the national rebirth succeeded in taking root even among ourselves and in making that progress for which we hoped?

Writers in the press give us two answers to this question. Some blame the _Chalukah_[5] with its Rabbis and scribes, others “the Baron”[6] with his agents and administrators in Palestine. All alike try to fasten the blame on certain men, as though but for them the Jewish problem would have been solved for all time; and the only point at issue is whether it is A. and B. or X. and Y. who stand in the way of that consummation. But such answers are not at all satisfying. They simply raise a further question: How is it that certain individuals, be they who they may, are in a position to obstruct the progress of the whole nation? Must it not be a sorry “national movement” which depends for its success on the generosity of a philanthropist and the kindness of his agents, and cannot withstand the miserable _Chalukah_, which is itself fighting for its existence with what strength it has left?

We must look, then, for the cause of all the evil not in isolated facts, in what this man or the other does, but much deeper. If we do that we shall find, I think, the true cause to lie in the “victory” which the idea has achieved prematurely through the fault of its champions. In their eagerness to obtain great results before the time was ripe, they have deserted the long road of natural development, and by artificial means have forced into the arena of practical life an idea which was still young and tender, neither fully ripened nor sufficiently developed; and thanks to this excessive haste their strength has failed them, and their labour has been in vain.

This judgment will certainly not be widely acceptable, and I will therefore endeavour in what follows to explain it so far as I am able, and so far as the nature of the subject permits.

Every belief or opinion which leads to action must necessarily be founded on the following three judgments: First, that the attainment of a certain object is felt by us to be needed; secondly, that certain actions are the means to the attainment of that object; and thirdly, that those actions are not beyond our power, and the effort which they require is not so great as to outweigh the value of the object in our estimation. The first of these judgments is based on feeling, and needs no proof; the second and third are based on knowledge of facts and phenomena outside ourselves, and therefore need the assent of reason.

When, therefore, a new idea summons us to a new course of action, it may be simply discovering new methods of attaining an object which we valued before, and may at the same time be able to demonstrate by conclusive proofs, whether theoretical or practical, that these methods really lead to the attainment of the object, and are commensurate with its value and with our resources. A new discovery of this sort belongs entirely to the sphere of reason, and therefore its sponsors need put their case only before people of intelligence and good judgment. If such men pronounce the new idea right, and proceed to act as it bids, its victory among the masses is assured: for gradually the masses will follow in the right course. But it will be different if one of these conditions is lacking—if, that is, the object which the new idea sets before us is one that we do not already value, or one not valued proportionately to the difficulty of its attainment; or again if it cannot compel reason, by convincing arguments, to admit the correctness of its judgment as regards the connection between the means and the object, and as regards the resources and the effort necessary for the attainment of the object. In either of these cases the new idea must rely for its success not on reason, but on sentiment. For the growth of a feeling of affection and desire for the object will carry with it not only a strengthening of the determination to strive after its attainment, no matter how great the effort required, but also an increasing intellectual belief in the possibility of its attainment, in spite of the absence of conclusive evidence that it is attainable. Hence those who originate an idea of this kind have not, at the outset of their activity, any concern with the intellectuals, the men of dry logic and cold calculation: it is not in that quarter that they will find support. They must turn only to those whose sensibilities are quick, and who are governed by their feelings; they alone will listen. And for that reason the originators of the idea must themselves be above all things men of keen sensibility, temperamentally capable of concentrating their whole spiritual life on a single point, on one idea and one desire, of devoting their whole life to it and expending in its service their last ounce of strength. By doing their work competently and with absolute devotion they will show that they have themselves boundless faith in the truth of their idea, and infinite love for its service; and that will be the only sure means of awakening faith and love in others. In that way, and not by mere talk, will they gain wide support for their idea. And if they appeal in this way to sentiment, then there is a chance for the idea (provided that it does in some way correspond to a current need) to spread gradually and to win many adherents who will be devoted to it heart and soul. It is true that such adherents, being strong mainly on the side of feeling, are not generally fitted, for all their good will, to carry out a difficult undertaking, which needs strength, discernment, and experience; but that matters not at all. For in course of time, as the idea strikes root more and more firmly in the heart of the people, and makes its way into every house and every family, it will at last capture the great men, the leaders and the thinkers. They, too, will begin, whether they like it or no, to feel the workings of the new force which envelops them on every side. Their opposition will grow feebler and feebler, until at last they will succumb and take their place in the van. Then the idea will become a force to be reckoned with in practical affairs, and its originators, setting out on the task of its realisation, with the confidence born of strength, and with the necessary equipment of knowledge and skill, may achieve brilliant results, and have the laugh of the intellectuals and the sceptics who used to scoff at them as dreamers.

The history of ideas and beliefs afford actual examples of all that has been said above. But it is time to return to our immediate subject.

The idea which we are here discussing is not new in the sense of setting up a new object of endeavour; but the methods which it suggests for the attainment of its object demand a great expenditure of effort, and it cannot prove the adequacy of its methods so conclusively as to compel reason to assent to the truth of its judgments. What it needs, therefore, is to make of the devotion and the desire which are felt for its ideal an instrument for the strengthening of faith and the sharpening of resolution. Now the devotion of the individual to the well-being of the community, which is the ideal here in question, is a sentiment to which we Jews are no strangers. But if we would estimate aright its capacity to produce the faith and the resolution that are needed for the realisation of our idea, we must first of all study the vicissitudes through which it has passed, and examine its present condition.

All the laws and ordinances, all the blessings and curses of the Law of Moses have but one unvarying object: the well-being of the nation as a whole in the land of its inheritance. The happiness of the individual is not regarded. The individual Israelite is treated as standing to the people of Israel in the relation of a single limb to the whole body: the actions of the individual have their reward in the good of the community. One long chain unites all the generations, from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to the end of time; the covenant which God made with the Patriarchs he keeps with their descendants, and if the fathers eat sour grapes, the teeth of the children will be set on edge. For the people is one people throughout all its generations, and the individuals who come and go in each generation are but as those minute parts of the living body which change every day, without affecting in any degree the character of that organic unity which is the whole body.

It is difficult to say definitely whether at any period our people as a whole really entertained the sentiment of national loyalty in this high degree, or whether it was only a moral ideal cherished by the most important section of the people. But at any rate it is clear that after the destruction of the first Temple, when the nation’s star had almost set, and its well-being was so nearly shattered that even its best sons despaired, and when the elders of Israel sat before Ezekiel and said: “We will be as the heathen, as the families of the countries,” and “Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost”—it is clear that at that time our people began to be more concerned about the fate of the righteous individual who perishes despite his righteousness. From that time date the familiar speculations about the relation between goodness and happiness which we find in Ezekiel, in Ecclesiastes, and in many of the Psalms (and in Job some would add, holding that book also to have been written in this period); and many men, not satisfied by any of the solutions which were propounded, came to the conclusion that “it is vain to serve God,” and that “to serve the Master without expectation of reward” is a fruitless proceeding. It would seem that then, and not till then, when the well-being of the community could no longer inspire enthusiasm and idealism, did our people suddenly remember the individual, remember that besides the life of the body corporate the individual has a life peculiarly his own, and that in this life of his own he wants pleasure and happiness, and demands a personal reward for his personal righteousness.

The effect of this discovery on the Jewish thought of that epoch is found in such pronouncements as this: “The present life is like an entrance-hall to the future life.” The happiness which the individual desires will become his when he enters the banqueting-hall, if only he qualifies for it by his conduct in the ante-room. The national ideal having ceased to satisfy, the religious ordinances are endowed instead with a meaning and a purpose for the individual, as the spirit of the age demands, and are put outside the domain of the national sentiment. Despite this change, the national sentiment continued for a long time to live on and to play its part in the _political_ life of the people: witness the whole history of the long period which ended with the wars of Titus and Hadrian. But since on the political side there was a continuous decline, the religious life grew correspondingly stronger, and concurrently the individualist element in the individual members of the nation prevailed more and more over the nationalist element, and drove it ultimately from its last stronghold—the hope for a future redemption. That hope, the heartfelt yearning of a nation seeking in a distant future what the present could not give, ceased in time to satisfy people in its original form, which looked forward to a Messianic Age “differing from the life of to-day in nothing except the emancipation of Israel from servitude.” For living men and women no longer found any comfort for themselves in the abundance of good which was to come to their nation in the latter end of days, when they would be dead and gone. Each individual demanded his own private and personal share of the expected general happiness. And religion went so far as to satisfy even this demand, by laying less emphasis on the redemption than on the resurrection of the dead.

Thus the national ideal was completely changed. No longer is patriotism a pure, unselfish devotion; no longer is the common good the highest of all aims, overriding the personal aims of each individual. On the contrary: henceforward the _summum bonum_ is for each individual his personal well-being, in time or in eternity, and the individual cares about the common good only in so far as he himself participates in it. To realise how complete the change of attitude became in course of time, we need only recall the surprise expressed by the Tannaim[7] because the Pentateuch speaks of “the land which the Lord swore to your ancestors to give _to them_.” In fact, the land was given not to them, but only to their descendants, and so the Tannaim find in this passage an allusion to the resurrection of the dead (_Sifré_). This shows that in their time that deep-rooted consciousness of the union of all ages in the body corporate of the people, which pervades the whole of the Pentateuch, had become so weak that they could not understand the words “to them” except as referring to the actual individuals to whom they were addressed.

Subsequent events—the terrible oppressions and frequent migrations, which intensified immeasurably the personal anxiety of every Jew for his own safety and that of his family—contributed still further to the enfeebling of the already weakened national sentiment, and to the concentration of interest primarily in the life of the family, secondarily in that of the congregation (in which the individual finds satisfaction for his needs). The national life of the people as a whole practically ceased to matter to the individual. Even those Jews who are still capable of feeling occasionally an impulse to work for the nation cannot as a rule so far transcend their individualism as to subordinate their own love of self and their own ambition, or their immediate family or communal interests, to the requirements of the nation. The demon of egoism—individual or congregational—haunts us in all that we do for our people, and suppresses the rare manifestations of national feeling, being the stronger of the two.

This, then, was the state of feeling to which we had to appeal, by means of which we had to create the invincible faith and the indomitable will that are needed for a great, constructive national effort.

What ought we to have done?

It follows from what has been said above that we ought to have made it our first object to bring about a _revival_—to inspire men with a deeper attachment to the national life, and a more ardent desire for the national well-being. By these means we should have aroused the necessary determination, and we should have obtained devoted adherents. No doubt such work is very difficult and takes a long time, not one year or one decade; and, I repeat, it is not to be accomplished by speeches alone, but demands the employment of all means by which men’s hearts can be won. Hence it is probable—in fact almost certain—that if we had chosen this method we should not yet have had time to produce concrete results in Palestine itself: lacking the resources necessary to do things well, we should have been too prudent to do things badly. But, on the other side, we should have made strenuous endeavours to train up Jews who would work for their people. We should have striven gradually to extend the empire of our ideal in Jewry, till at last it could find genuine, whole-hearted devotees, with all the qualities needed to enable them to work for its practical realisation.

But such was not the policy of the first champions of our ideal. As Jews, they had a spice of individualism in their nationalism, and were not capable of planting a tree so that others might eat its fruit after they themselves were dead and gone. Not satisfied with working among the people to train up those who would ultimately work in the land, they wanted to see with their own eyes the actual work in the land and its results. When, therefore, they found that their first rallying-cry, in which they based their appeal on the general good, did not at once rouse the national determination to take up Palestinian work, they summoned to their aid—like our teachers of old—the individualistic motive, and rested their appeal on economic want, which is always sure of sympathy. To this end they began to publish favourable reports, and to make optimistic calculations, which plainly showed that so many dunams[8] of land, so many head of cattle and so much equipment, costing so-and-so much, were sufficient in Palestine to keep a whole family in comfort and affluence: so that anybody who wanted to do well and had the necessary capital should betake him to the goodly land, where he and his family would prosper, while the nation too would benefit. An appeal on these lines did really induce some people to go to Palestine in order to win comfort and affluence; whereat the promoters of the idea were mightily pleased, and did not examine very closely what kind of people the emigrants to Palestine were, and why they went. But these people, most of whom were by no means prepared to submit cheerfully to discomfort for the sake of a national ideal, found when they reached Palestine that they had been taken in by imaginative reports and estimates; and they set up—and are still keeping up—a loud and bitter outcry, seeking to gain their individual ends by all means in their power, and regardless of any distinction between what is legitimate and what is not, or of the fair name of the ideal which they dishonour. The details of the story are public property.

What wonder, then, that so great an ideal, presented in so unworthy a form, can no longer gain adherents; that a national building founded on the expectation of profit and self-interest falls to ruins when it becomes generally known that the expectation has not been realised, and self-interest bids men keep away?

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