Chapter IV: Part 4

But with Pinsker it is different. The loss which he mourns is primarily the loss of Jewish national dignity. He weeps for a _nation_ which is not regarded and respected by the other nations as an equal, and whose individual members are treated everywhere not merely as foreigners, but as beggars in receipt of charity. With him the question of national dignity comes first of all. Of the three causes to which he traces the ill-feeling between Jews and Gentiles, the first one, which lies in the degraded position of the Jews as a nation—a point not mentioned by the new Zionists—is the most important in his own view, and occupies most of his attention. Next to it stands the political cause; and this cause also, unlike the new Zionists, he regards from the point of view of the problem of national dignity. He is not much troubled by the fact that we are treated as aliens in every country: that fact, no doubt, harms us as individuals, but in itself it does not imply any contempt or inferiority. The root of the trouble is that we are not treated as aliens in the ordinary political sense, but are regarded as wandering mendicants, as inferior beings, who are not entitled to demand respect and consideration as of right. So with the third cause, the economic one. Its sting lies for Pinsker chiefly in the fact that here also we Jews are differentiated from other aliens—that in consequence of the low esteem in which we are held our competition causes more resentment than that of other aliens. Pinsker, therefore, has more right than the new Zionists to regard the establishment of a Jewish State as the absolute solution of the Jewish problem—that is, of the problem of the _dignity_ of the Jewish nation and of its members, who, even if most of them remain scattered among the nations, and even if they continue to be hated and persecuted in various countries because of their economic competition, will at any rate no longer be exposed to the contempt of their neighbours, and to the taunt that they are not a nation, but a pack of beggars wandering about in a world which is not theirs, and existing only on sufferance.

On the other hand, Pinsker raises another question, which does not trouble the new Zionists very much: the question of the national consciousness.

If we assume, as Herzl does in his pamphlet, that the Jewish State will contain all the Jews, and will offer to every individual Jew the possibility of living comfortably among his people, then we need not be much concerned about the anterior development of the national consciousness as an incentive to the establishment of the State. We have ready to hand another and a stronger incentive in the natural desire of every individual to improve his position.[41] But if from the outset we accept the fact that even a Jewish State will not absolutely solve the Jewish problem on its economic side, and that the chief purpose for which we need a State is a moral one—to gain for our own nation the respect of other nations, and to create a healthy body for our national spirit—then we are bound to face the question whether the national consciousness is so strong among us, and the honour of our nation so dear to us, that this motive alone, unalloyed by any consideration of individual advantage, will be sufficient to spur us on to so vast and difficult a task.

Now Pinsker, candid here as always, does not conceal from us that, as things are, the national consciousness among us is not nearly strong enough for our purpose. “Our greatest misfortune is that we do not form a nation: we are merely Jews.” The _galuth_ life has compelled every Jew to put all his strength into his individual struggle for existence; and in that struggle we have been compelled to use any kind of weapon that came to hand, without enquiring too closely whether it was consistent with our national dignity. Thus, as time went on, both our sense of nationality and our sense of dignity became dulled; and at last we ceased to feel the need of restoring our dignity, national or individual.[42] We left it to the Deity to perform that ideal task by bringing us the Messiah at the proper time, and buried ourselves in affairs more necessary for our immediate physical survival.[43] Even in modern times, when the breeze of modern culture has blown on us and begun to awaken our dormant sense of dignity, we try to find satisfaction in a strange delusion of our own invention—that the people of Israel has a “mission,” for the sake of which it must remain scattered among the nations: “a mission in which nobody believes, a privilege of which, candidly, we should be glad to be rid, if at that price we could wipe out the name of ‘Jew’ as a title of shame.”[44] This loss of self-respect on the one side aggravates the contempt in which we are held, and on the other side is itself the greatest stumbling-block on our path of progress. For what, except a strong national consciousness, can induce our people to bend all its energies to the task of restoring its national dignity, and to fight unceasingly and unwearyingly against all the obstacles with which it is confronted? That those obstacles are many and serious—this again Pinsker does not conceal from us. At the best, several generations must elapse before we can attain our end, “perhaps only after labour too great for human strength.” Only, as we recognise that this is the one road to our national salvation, we must not turn back faint-heartedly because of the danger or for lack of confidence in the success of our efforts.[45] But such language is intelligible only to a thoroughly awakened national consciousness, which can intensify the desire to attain the end in proportion to the heaviness of the task, can flame up for one instant in the heart of the whole people, and produce a “national resolution,” a sacred and unbending resolve to take up the work of revival and to carry it on, generation after generation, till its completion. And “where,” asks Pinsker, bitterly, “where shall we find this national consciousness?”

Pinsker found no satisfactory answer to this question. He made this national consciousness a categorical imperative, a _conditio sine qua non_; but he did not show how it was to be supplied. For this reason the whole of the practical scheme which follows gives one the impression of being formulated conditionally—subject, that is, to the emergence among our people, no matter by what means, of a national consciousness strong enough to enable them to carry out the idea in practice.

Pinsker’s practical scheme, as I said above, is only an outline. But its general lines are very similar to those laid down by Herzl in the pamphlet which is the basis of present-day Zionist policy.

As we cannot hope for another leader like Moses—“history does not vouchsafe such leaders to the same people repeatedly”—the leadership of the movement for national rebirth must be taken by a group of distinguished Jews, men of strong will and generous character, who “by their union will, perhaps, succeed in freeing us from reproach and persecution, no less than did the one great leader.”[46] Herzl uses very similar language about this collective _negotiorum gestor_,[47] and he and Pinsker alike look for its members among the upper-class Jews; but Herzl has his eye especially on the Jews of England, while Pinsker looks generally to the great organisations already in existence.[48] Herzl calls this governing body “the Society of Jews”; Pinsker calls it “the Directorium.” Herzl pictures the formation of the Society of Jews in a very simple manner. The best of the English Jews, having approved the project, come together without any preliminaries, and form a “Society of Jews.” Herzl sees no need to call a National Assembly first: the general consent which is necessary to give the Society proper standing with the Governments will come afterwards spontaneously.[49] But Pinsker wanted the various organisations to call “_a National Congress_, of which they themselves would be the nucleus.” Only in the event of their refusing to do this does he suggest that they should at least constitute a special “national institution” called a “Directorium,” which should unite all forces in the national work. The principal and immediate object of this institution would be “to create a safe and independent home of refuge for that superfluity of poor Jews which exists as a proletariat in various countries, and is disliked by the native population.”[50] All other Jews, not merely in the West, “where they are already naturalised up to a certain point,” but also “in those places where they are not readily tolerated,” can remain where they are. Unlike Herzl, Pinsker does not think it possible that all the Jews will leave their homes and go to their own State; nor is this necessary for his real object, as I have pointed out above. Economic pressure is under present conditions causing the “superfluity” to emigrate year by year from every country where there is a superfluity; and thousands of Jews leave their homes because they can no longer maintain themselves. At present these emigrants escape one trouble to fall into another. They wander from country to country, and find no proper resting-place; and the large sums of money expended by various organisations on the migration of Jews and their settlement in new homes produce no real benefit, because the new home also is only a temporary lodging. When the number of Jews in the new country reaches the “saturation-point,” the journey will have to be resumed; the Jews must move on to yet other countries. But if we can prepare, while there is yet time, a single secure home of refuge instead of the many insecure ones, the superfluity will gradually find its way thither, and its inhabitants will increase from year to year, till at last it becomes the centre of our national life, though the bulk of the people will remain, as hitherto, scattered in strange lands.

The first act of the “Directorium” would be to send an expedition of experts to investigate and find the territory best suited to our purpose from every point of view. When he wrote his pamphlet Pinsker did not yet regard our historic land as the only possible home of refuge; on the contrary, he feared that our ingrained love for Palestine might give us a bias and induce us to choose that country without paying regard to its political, economic and other conditions, which perhaps might be unfavourable. For this reason he warns us emphatically not to be guided by sentiment in this matter, but to leave the question of territory to a commission of experts, who will solve it after a thorough and detailed investigation. But on the whole he thinks that the desired territory will be found either in America or in Turkey.[51] In the latter alternative we shall form a special “Pashalik,” the independence of which will be guaranteed by Turkey and the other Great Powers. “It will be one of the principal functions of the Directorium,” writes Pinsker, for all the world like an orthodox adherent of “diplomatic” Zionism to-day, “to win for this project the sympathy of the Porte and the other European Governments.”[52]

“And then, but not till then,” he warns us once again, the Directorium will enter on its work of buying land and organising colonisation. In this work it will need the assistance of “a group of capitalists,” who will form “a joint-stock company”—exactly as in Herzl’s scheme, where side by side with the Society of Jews there is established the Jewish Company, a company of capitalists, to direct the material affairs of the settlement.

Pinsker next proceeds to describe in outline the progress of the new settlement—how the land will be parcelled out in small plots, some to be sold to men with capital, and some to be occupied by men of no means with the assistance of a _National Fund_ established to that end; and so forth. But for our present purpose we need follow him no further. What has been said above will suffice to make it plain to all who wish to see that it was Pinsker who worked out the whole theory of political Zionism, and that his successors, so far from adding anything essential to his scheme, actually took away in large measure its ideal basis, and thus so seriously impaired its moral value that they had to have recourse to various promises which they could neither fulfil nor repudiate. This will become abundantly clear to anybody who will compare the two pamphlets, Pinsker’s and Herzl’s.

Pinsker, as we have seen, puts the emphasis on the moral aspect, Herzl on the material. Hence Pinsker wishes to found only a national centre, Herzl promises a complete “ingathering of the exiles”; Pinsker finds the motive power in a strong national consciousness, Herzl in the desire for individual betterment. For this reason Pinsker does not find it necessary to minimise the difficulties: on the contrary, he repeats many times, with emphasis, that only at the cost of infinite sacrifice will the goal perhaps—mark that “perhaps”!—be reached. Similarly, he recognises that it is not work for one generation alone. “We have to take only the first step; our successors must follow in our footsteps, with measured tread and without undue haste.”[53] Not so Herzl. He is bound to make light of the difficulties, because otherwise he would have to face the question: “If we are looking for betterment as individuals, how can we waste so much energy on a task that will take generations to accomplish, and may not be accomplished at all, when we have so many pressing needs which can be more or less met if we devote that energy to them?” Hence Herzl is never tired of promising that it will be very easy to carry out his project in a short time, if only we want it. “Let us but begin, and anti-Semitism will at once die down in every country: for this will be our treaty of peace with it. Once let the Jewish Company be established, and the news of it will spread in one day to the ends of the earth, and our position will immediately begin to improve.... Thus the work will proceed, rapidly yet without convulsion.”[54] The same difference is evident in the general scheme of the two pamphlets. Pinsker devotes most of his pamphlet to showing how low we have sunk as a nation, and how badly we need a State of our own to save our dignity. Only at the end does he explain briefly how he pictures to himself the practical realisation of his idea. This is because from his point of view the essential thing is that we resolve that our dignity absolutely demands this course of action, cost what it may. We have no need to spend much thought at the outset on the question whether we shall succeed, or how and when we shall succeed, because, if we suppose that the task is beyond our strength, we must none the less take it up, in order to wipe out our reproach. The question of dignity brooks no calculation. But Herzl deals very briefly with fundamental principles and reasons, because, from his materialistic point of view, there is really no need to enlarge on them. Can anybody doubt that the position of the Jews in exile is very bad, and that it would be better for them and for their neighbours if they went and established a separate State for themselves? Even our “assimilationists” would certainly agree for the most part, if they only knew with absolute certainty from the start that the project could be carried out without too much trouble, “rapidly yet without convulsion.” The root question is, then, whether the goal can in fact be reached under such comfortable conditions. For this reason Herzl gives most of his attention to this question, and explains his practical scheme in minute detail, with the object of showing that it demands no great sacrifices, whether material or spiritual, and that everything from A to Z will be achieved with ease, rapidity and universal satisfaction. All the emigration to the Jewish State, up to the time when the whole people is gathered there, he describes almost as though it were a holiday excursion. And in the State itself everybody lives in comfort and prosperity. Nobody will need to forgo even the minor habits of his ordinary life; and the immigrant will not even have to miss his friends and relations, because the Jews will leave the different countries in “local groups,” and will be settled in their own land on that basis, so that each man can attach himself to the group which is closest to him geographically and spiritually. The working-classes, on whose strength the State will be built up, will work only seven hours a day, and even the Jewish Company, which is to direct the whole work with its capital, will not incur any financial risk, because its investments will be sound and will produce an exceptionally good return.[55]

If, further, we take into account the wide difference between the two pamphlets in style, we may see that Herzl’s pamphlet has the air of being a translation of Pinsker’s from the language of the ancient Prophets into that of modern journalism.

Yet the name of Pinsker, as the originator of the political Zionist theory, is almost forgotten. He is mentioned as a rule only in connection with the work of “petty colonisation” in Palestine, as though his horizon had been bounded by his activity in that sphere. Ordinary men, for whom the real is the visible, remember only things that are done: and the thing that Pinsker did—that to which he devoted all his subsequent work—has really no direct relation to the message which he began by enunciating.

I have shown elsewhere how it was that Pinsker came to take part in the work of the _Chovevé Zion_, despite the political character of his theory. He understood perfectly well that their work was very far removed from the great project of which he dreamt; but he understood also that without a “national resolution,” proceeding from a strong national consciousness, and without unity and an organisation embracing the whole people, it would be impossible to carry out his great idea. The consent of the Powers, the favour of the Sublime Porte, even a Charter signed and sealed—all this cannot help us in the least, so long as we are not a single people, strong by virtue of our unity and our indomitable will, penetrated through and through with a sense of our present national degradation, and prepared to sacrifice our all for a nobler future. Hence, when Pinsker saw that national indifference was the rule in every section of the people; when he saw how faint an echo his pamphlet raised in the hearts of the ruling classes, whom he confidently expected to be the first to rally to his banner; and when he saw a small group of men with insignificant means, or none, putting forth every possible effort to carry out a national project, small and poor though it was in comparison with his own ideal—Pinsker could not help lending a hand to those who were engaged in this work, seeing in them the nucleus of an organisation, and the small beginning of the “national resolution.” For Pinsker the work done in Palestine was not the beginning of the practical realisation of his programme, but only the beginning of the preparatory stage—the beginning of the revival of the national consciousness, and of the union of the people under the banner of a common ideal. He hoped by means of national action on a small scale to arrive ultimately at that national resolution on the part of the whole people for which he looked in his pamphlet; and then the real work would begin.

It is abundantly clear that this is exactly the course which the new Zionists too are taking to-day, though as yet, it would appear, unconsciously. How great, for instance, is the gulf between the Jewish Company of Herzl’s vision—possessing a capital of fifty millions sterling, and undertaking not only to plant the settlers in the Jewish State, but also to sell the property and transact the business of all the Jews in the Diaspora—and the small Bank, with its quarter-of-a-million, which has now been opened, after infinite labour, to carry on some simple and unimportant business operations in Palestine and Russia! Or again, is there any sort of relationship between the Society of Jews which Herzl describes in his pamphlet—a Society which is to stand at the head of the whole people and manage all its national affairs, as Moses did—and the Actions Committee which now stands at the head of the Zionist organisation? And how shall we be brought to the Jewish State—that free State guaranteed by all the Powers—by such minor concessions as it is possible to obtain now, according to the Zionist leaders, at Yildiz Kiosk for a certain price? The plain truth is that all this work, which the new Zionists regard as “political” work _par excellence_, has as little to do with the theory of political Zionism as had the petty colonisation work which Pinsker took up. In the one case as in the other, the whole value of the work lies in its effect on the people, which it educates gradually in the direction of unity, organisation, national resolution. In other words, we are still, as we were in Pinsker’s day, at the first stage, the preliminary stage of preparatory work.

It must be admitted, however, that in the practical sphere—even confining that to preparatory work and propaganda—Pinsker did little, and did not achieve in his ten years of work half as much as the leader of the new Zionism has achieved in five years. Pinsker was purely a theorist: he worked out the theory of Zionism better and more fully than his successor, but, like all theorists, he was of little use when it came to practical work. Men of his type, simple-souled and pure-minded to a degree, innocent of the tricks and wiles of diplomacy, knowing nothing but the naked truth—such men cannot find the way to popular favour. Their words are too sincere, their actions too straightforward. Those only can attract the mob and bend it to their will who can descend to its level, pander to its tastes, and pipe to it in a hundred tunes, choosing the right one at the right moment. Pinsker had none of these arts. If, for example, he had gone to Yildiz Kiosk to negotiate for the colonisation of Palestine, and had been told there: “If you have two million pounds you may have so-and-so; otherwise—nothing”—what would he have done? Without a doubt he would have replied at once: “We have not such a large sum of money, and have at present no prospect of getting it.” Then he would have returned home empty-handed, and the public at large would have known nothing of his going or of his returning; or, if it had been impossible to keep the matter quiet, everybody would have known that “certain steps had been taken” at Yildiz, but had come to nothing. This, of course, would have made a bad impression, and have helped in some degree to weaken the energy of his few supporters. But we all still remember how the Zionist leaders behaved on a similar occasion last year. Leadership on these lines cannot satisfy those who have a liking for the plain truth; but from a pragmatic point of view it undoubtedly has the advantage. First of all, people heard only the glad news (it “spread in one day to the ends of the earth”) that the Sultan had given the Zionist leaders a favourable reception and made them certain promises, but that the details could not yet be published. This news aroused widespread attention: friends and foes alike waited breathlessly for the curtain to be drawn. Then, after the news had become public property and enlivened the hopes of the Zionists, the leaders made the further announcement that the great promises had been made conditionally, and could not be fulfilled unless they had two million pounds. Everybody who knew the true state of things understood at once—and certainly the leaders understood it, even while they were having audience of the Sultan—that this condition could not be met, so that the promises were mere empty words. And yet the first impression was not altogether effaced, and it served to strengthen in many people the belief that something great could be done if only all sections of the people were ready to put all their strength into it—the kind of belief which is calculated to intensify the energy of the workers, and to spur them on to put forth greater efforts.

In a word: theory and practice are two departments which no doubt depend on each other, but each one needs special abilities and different qualities of mind, which can with difficulty be combined in one man. We must therefore honour every man according to his value in his own department. If I might borrow an illustration from religion, I should say that Pinsker was the originator of the gospel of political Zionism, and Herzl its apostle; Pinsker brought the new dispensation, and Herzl gave it currency. But it is usual for the apostle to recognise the originator and to acknowledge his greatness: as he spreads the gospel, so he publishes abroad and sanctifies the name of him who brought it. Had the Zionist apostle followed this custom, Pinsker would now have a world-wide reputation, and would be venerated by all whose watchword is Zion. But Herzl would not be satisfied with the practical mission which was in reality his _métier_. He must needs “originate” the gospel itself over again—in an inferior form, it is true—so that it should be all his. Thus the odd result has come about that the further the gospel spreads, the more completely is its true originator forgotten.

But it is not for Pinsker’s reputation that I am concerned. In his lifetime he was so far from the desire for notoriety and ascendancy, that I have no doubt that if he were alive to-day, he would rejoice wholeheartedly at the wide vogue given to his idea, and not a shade of displeasure would pass over his face because of the injustice done to himself personally. My only regret is that Pinsker’s wonderful pamphlet has sunk with him, and the Zionist gospel itself has become more superficial and more materialistic.[56] Zionism is a faith, and, like every other faith, it needs one authoritative “Bible,” to be conned by the true believers, to be their fountain-head of spiritual influence. At present Zionism has no “Bible.” Great as is Herzl’s influence with the new Zionists, his pamphlet could not attain that high dignity. But its general spirit pervades all the other brochures and speeches on which Zionists live, and from which they derive their faith; and that spirit, as we have seen, is not calculated to raise the masses above material interests, and render them capable of making great sacrifices for a higher national ideal. Pinsker’s pamphlet is the only one that is worthy to take the first place in the literature of Zionism, and to be revered by the party as the _fons et origo_ of all its views and policies. If this pamphlet were disseminated among Zionists, and made familiar to them, it would undoubtedly help to educate them in its spirit—a spirit of pure idealism, which sets more store by the dignity of the whole people than by the advantage of the individual, never flinches in the face of danger, is never impatient, and demands no certainty of success. Then the leaders would not have to be always looking for some means of keeping the fervour up to the required temperature, nor to entangle themselves in exaggerated promises and self-contradictions, which only the blindness of enthusiasm can fail for a moment to detect.

Enthusiasm, however, is a flame which spreads rapidly but does not last. It is only the slow-burning fire, with its steady flame, that can create the enormous strength required for such a national task in many successive generations. For this reason I believe that there will yet come a day when all the external show and parade will no longer satisfy those who thirst for a national ideal; and in that day many will once more remember Pinsker and his pure and lofty message—a message of work without limit and sacrifice without reward, for no other object than to restore the dignity of our people, and to enhance our value for humanity.

Footnote 31:

We hear now that Herzl commended Pinsker and his pamphlet—for the
first time—at one of the sittings of the Fifth Congress. That Congress
met at Basle some weeks after the _Chovevé Zion_ in Russia had given
prominence to Pinsker’s name on the anniversary of his death. This is
evidence that the President of the Zionist Congress still sometimes
pays attention to the public opinion of Russian Jewry. But, of course,
this does not affect what is said above.

Footnote 32:

[A second edition was published about a year after the appearance of
this Essay.]

Footnote 33:

Here is an incident which illustrates the extent to which the contents
of Pinsker’s pamphlet have been forgotten, even in Russia. A short
time ago, some of the Jewish periodicals in Russia published a letter
of Pinsker’s dating from 1883, which was found among the papers of the
Odessa Committee. The letter contains only a few headings of the ideas
which are explained in detail in his pamphlet. But the periodicals
were surprised, and found it necessary to remark that it appeared
_from this letter_ that so long as twenty years ago Pinsker had
“foreseen, as it were,” the Zionist movement of our day.

Footnote 34:

In Austria the _Chovevé Zion_ used to call themselves “Zionists” long
before Herzl’s time. I believe that Dr. Birnbaum invented the name in
his journal _Selbst-Emanzipation_. Herzl mentions the “Zionists” a few
times in his brochure, and satirically represents them as trying to
raise a heavy load by the steam of a tea-kettle (_Judenstaat_, p. 4).

Footnote 35:

_Autoemancipation_, pp. 1-7 [7-11 in the second edition, 1903.]

Footnote 36:

_ib._ p. 15 [17.]

Footnote 37:

Pinsker died before the days of what is now called “spiritual
nationalism,” the view which denies the need for a distinct national
territory, believing it possible that sooner or later we shall
obtain equal rights in the lands of our dispersion as _a nation_:
that is, shall be allowed to carry on our distinctive _national_
life in these lands, just as we have already obtained equal rights,
_as citizens_, in many countries: that is, have been allowed to take
part in social and political life like the other inhabitants. But
Pinsker lays the foundation for this view, by demanding—for the
first time—_national_ equality, and substituting the formula of
spiritual nationalism: “the same rights for the Jewish _nation_ as
for the other _nations_” (“die Gleichstellung der jüdischen Nation
mit den anderen Nationen”—_Autoemancipation_, p. 7 [11]) for the
older formula of the protagonists of emancipation: “the same rights
for Jews as for the other citizens.” It is, however, fundamental to
Pinsker’s view that national equality is unattainable so long as we
lack the concrete attributes of nationality. A nation which is a
nation only in the spiritual sense is a monstrosity which the other
nations cannot possibly regard as their compeer; it follows that
they cannot recognise its title to demand the same rights as those
enjoyed by the real nations.

Footnote 38:

_ib._ pp. 7-10 [11-13.]

Footnote 39:

_ib._ pp. 10-11 [13-14].

Footnote 40:

_Judenstaat_, pp. 24-26.

Footnote 41:

The question, “What will induce the Jews to found their State and to
settle in it?” is answered by Herzl quite simply: “We can trust the
anti-Semites to see to that.” (_Judenstaat_, p. 59.)

Footnote 42:

_Autoemancipation_, p. 12 [15].

Footnote 43:

_ib._ p. 16 [18].

Footnote 44:

_ib._ p. 19 [20]. As the sequel shows, Pinsker’s criticism is aimed
only at those who make the “mission” the moral end of our dispersion.
They think that we can fulfil our mission only if we are thoroughly
scattered: whereas the fact is precisely the reverse. “So far the
world does not regard us as a genuine firm, and allows us little
credit.” If, therefore, we really wish to benefit the world by
fulfilling a mission, we must first of all establish our national
position, so as to enhance our credit with the rest of the world.

Footnote 45:

_ib._ p. 20 [21].

Footnote 46:

_ib._ p. 26 [25].

Footnote 47:

_Judenstaat_, p. 70.

Footnote 48:

He means, apparently, the _Alliance Israélite Universelle_ and its
sister organisations in England and Austria. The Jewish Colonisation
Association had not yet come into existence.

Footnote 49:

Herzl shows, in his pamphlet, no great liking for large meetings, even
for propaganda purposes. “There is no need”—so writes the founder of
the Zionist Congress—“to summon special meetings with a lot of
palaver.” (_ib._ p. 57.)

Footnote 50:

_Autoem._ p. 27 [25-26]. Elsewhere (p. 34 [30]) Pinsker insists that
the home of refuge must be secured by _political_ means (“politisch
gesichert.”)

Footnote 51:

Herzl also, in his pamphlet, does not decide on a territory; but he
also looks to America and Turkey, and suggests the Argentine or
Palestine (_Judenstaat_, p. 29).

Footnote 52:

_Autoem._ p. 30 [28].

Footnote 53:

_ib._ p. 35 [31].

Footnote 54:

“Eilig und doch ohne Erschütterung” (_Judenstaat_, p. 85). In one
place Herzl says that the emigration of the whole people from the
various countries to its own State will take “some decades” (p. 27),
but does not say how many. Elsewhere he is more definite; the
emigration will last “perhaps twenty years or perhaps more” (p. 79).

Footnote 55:

It is worth pointing out that Pinsker, too, hints that the company of
capitalists, which is to co-operate with his Directorium, may expect a
good profit. But as soon as he has mentioned this expectation he adds:
“Whether, however, this act of national redemption will be more or
less good business or not—that question is not of great moment in
comparison with the importance of the undertaking for the future of
our people.” (pp. 32-33 [30].)

Footnote 56:

Even in his lifetime Pinsker was not understood, and his pamphlet was
not appreciated at its full value. Smolenskin, in his critique, saw
nothing in the pamphlet beyond the superficial _Chibbath Zion_ which
had then a wide vogue in Hebrew literature, and could find nothing to
say in its praise except that it was written in German—a language in
which “such ideas ... have never been expressed before.”

THE TIME HAS COME
(1906[57])

You are right, my friends: “Now the time has come to begin planting our literature in the land of its birth and on its own native soil.”[58] But it seems to me that there is a wider and a deeper foundation for this statement than you give to it in your announcement. The time is ripe for your enterprise not merely “because there is already a considerable number of Jews in Palestine and the neighbouring countries, and so Hebrew literature, its language being common to the Jews of Palestine, has a function to perform in the sphere of national culture.” If that were the only reason, we Hebrew writers outside Palestine, though we should certainly have welcomed the new adventure and have been glad to enjoy the literary fruit of Palestine, should not have felt it our duty to take an active part in a local Palestinian literary movement, created only for the Jews in Palestine, whose circumstances are known to us only by hearsay, or from the visitor’s brief experience. If none the less I feel—and I am sure that other writers will feel the same—that it is my duty to take part in your undertaking, that can only be because it is not merely the condition of the Jews in Palestine, but the condition of our people in general that now convinces us of the necessity of reuniting our land and our language—those sundered halves of a single whole, those twin main pillars of our national life, which are both so near to us and so far from us—and of making them both together, by the establishment of a worthy literary centre in the land, a single mighty channel through which the influence of our national spirit should be carried to all the lands of our dispersion.

“_Now_ convinces us,” I say: although it is already many years since we began to recognise that the Hebrew spirit is yearning towards its own land, because its life in exile is not a healthy and a complete life. But this recognition itself could not get free all at once from the fetters of _galuth_, and did not prevent us from dreaming all those years of the revival of our language and literature outside Palestine. Now realities have shown the futility of our dream, and we learn perforce from experience what we would not learn willingly from logic, that just as the Hebrew spirit cannot develop as it should without a free centre “on its own native soil,” so, too, are its outer vestments, our language and literature, under the same disability; and all our efforts to revive them on strange soil will not avail except for a short time—until the hammer of an alien environment strikes out a spark which will destroy in a moment what we have spent many years and the last remnant of our strength in building up.[59]

How slow is the development of an idea in the human mind! Every new idea is born with great travail, and even after its birth there is a long lapse of time and a heavy loss of force between its dawn and its noontide splendour. At first it appears shrouded in mist, luminous yet obscure, and its faint rays shimmer on the surface of the human spirit without being able to penetrate to the depths below. Only little by little, after much labour and hard struggling, is the mist dispelled, and the light of the idea grows stronger and floods all the dark corners of the mind. Then we look into these corners, and wonder at ourselves for not having been conscious before of the chaos of error and contradiction which held its own there while the light was already playing on the surface above.

Hard were the birth-pangs of our national idea in the form of “Zionism,” and the mists shrouded it at its birth. In the last generation the Jewish people had settled down to its exile; it waited for the mercy of Heaven and the kindness of the world, scarcely felt how its limbs were being torn asunder and scattered in all directions, and asked no great boon of the future, except a peaceful life and a livelihood among the nations. Then a hurricane arose, and thunderously swept away the hope of kindness from the world, yes, and even the hope of mercy from heaven. And the clarion-call went forth among the exiled people: You wish for a peaceful life and livelihood? Then get you up and go to your national land, and look no more for crumbs from strangers’ tables: for there is neither peace nor livelihood except for each people in its own land.

That was the dawn of our new idea. The memory of our historic land, which had become a lifeless thing, a mere book-memory, became once more a living emotional force, and in its re-birth awoke our love for the rest of our heritage, which now appeared in a new light to many for whom it had lost all actual value. If we say—so these men reasoned—that we have a national land, to which we wish to return in very deed and not only in prayer, then we admit, and want others to admit, that we are actually a nation, and not merely a Church. And if we are a nation, then we must have a national spirit, which distinguishes us from other nations, and we must value and protect it as every other nation does with its national spirit. And if we value our national spirit, where shall we find it if not in the heritage of our past, and especially in our national language and literature, in which each generation stored up its spiritual treasure, and left to its heirs in the next the best fruits of its thought, its secret longings, its half-uttered sighs? Thus _Chibbath Zion_ began by giving an impulse to the “spiritual revival”—the fostering of our language and literature, the establishment of national schools, and so forth—not as a separate and distinct ideal, but as a necessary consequence of the ideal of a peaceful life in Palestine, as a sort of proof of our being really a distinct nation and possessing all the attributes of a nation, and being therefore both in need and deserving of that which we have not now—our national land.

But gradually the Zionist idea began to get clearer, and events in Palestine and elsewhere helped it to emerge from the mists of visionary hopes. Then some of its followers reversed the sequence of ideas. It is not the case, they said, that the redemption of the people is the goal of all our efforts, and the spiritual revival only a means to it, and a branch of it. On the contrary, the spiritual revival is our real object, whether we know it or not, and the whole purpose of the settlement to be built up in Palestine is merely to serve as its basis.

It is true—such was the train of reasoning of this dissident section—that _galuth_ is a very evil thing, and that the only way to escape the ills which are inevitably bound up with it is to escape from _galuth_ itself. But this truth of itself tells us nothing, if we cannot at the same time discover the way to “the only way.” To say to a poor man: “If you want always to be sure of a meal, get rid of your poverty and become rich!” or to a sick man: “If you want to be free of your pains, get up from your bed and be well!”—to say this is to say nothing, unless at the same time you show the poor man how to get rich, and the sick man how to get well. Now Zionism has not shown us how to get out of _galuth_. For all the sophistication in the world cannot do away with the cruelty of hard facts, which do not allow us to picture to ourselves, even approximately and in a general way, how our work in Palestine, even if in time it develops up to the very maximum of what is possible, and covers the whole land with gardens and orchards and factories, can accomplish this unprecedented miracle: that so small a country as ours should absorb hundreds of thousands of immigrants at a time, year by year, without coming to such a crisis as would drive out its old and its new inhabitants in even greater numbers. But if this miracle does not happen, and the Palestinian settlement develops only little by little, concurrently with the development of the country’s economic resources, then it is impossible to deny that its gradual expansion will not diminish the number of Jews in other countries (since their natural increase will offset the exodus to Palestine), and will not put an end to their wandering and scattering to all the corners of the globe under economic and social pressure, which is brought to bear on them from time to time in every country in which they become too numerous. In other words: the hope for an “ingathering of the exiles” has no basis in reality; and even in that distant future to which we look forward, when the Palestinian settlement will have reached its full development, and the Jews there will grow and multiply and fill all the land and make it their own by their work—even then the majority of Jews will be scattered in strange lands, and their life in those lands will even then depend on the good-will of the peoples among whom they live as a small minority, and the dominant peoples will even then look askance at the growth of this “alien body” in their midst if it dares to rise above a certain level: and finally _galuth_ in the physical sense will still be with us, and only a part of the people will have escaped from it—that comparatively small part which will have had the good fortune to rebuild the waste places of our land and to attain national freedom there, while all the rest of the people, scattered in strange countries, will remain as to its external condition just as it is, and no fleet will set sail from Palestine to protect it from persecution.

But if this is so, have we a right to regard the rebuilding of Palestine as an ideal for the whole nation, and its success as vital to the hopes of the whole nation?

We have! For _galuth_ is twofold—it is material and spiritual. On the one hand it cramps the individual Jew in his material life, by taking from him the possibility of carrying on his struggle for existence, with all his strength and in complete freedom, like any other man; and on the other hand it cramps no less our people as a whole in its spiritual life, by taking from it the possibility of safeguarding and developing its national individuality according to its own spirit, in complete freedom, like any other people. This spiritual cramping, which our ancestors used to call, in their own fashion, “the exile of the Divine Presence,” and for which they shed not less tears than for the exile of the people, has become especially painful in our time, since the overthrow of the artificial wall behind which the spirit of our people entrenched itself in past generations, in order to be able to live its own life; and now we and our national life are enslaved to the spirit of the peoples around us, and we can no longer save our national individuality from being undermined as a consequence of the necessity of assimilating ourselves to the spirit of the alien life, which is too strong for us. Now it is this problem of spiritual _galuth_ which really finds its solution in the establishment of a national “refuge” in Palestine: a refuge not for all Jews who need peace and bread, but for the spirit of the people, for that distinctive cultural form, the result of a historical development of thousands of years, which is still strong enough to live and to develop naturally in the future, if only the fetters of _galuth_ are removed. And though the refuge contain only a tenth part of the people, this tenth part will be sacred to the whole people, which will see in it a picture of its national individuality, of what it is like when it lives its own life, without external constraint. And who can estimate in advance the strength of the influence which this national centre will exert on all the circumference, and the radical changes which that influence will produce in the life of the whole people?

Some of the _Chovevé Zion_ arrived at this idea, as I have said, some eighteen years ago.[60] Had they succeeded in making it common property, it might have saved both the people and the land from many mistakes. But ideas do not develop quickly in the human mind, and this idea, like others, met with formidable obstacles, which did not allow it to penetrate fully into men’s minds. When this opinion of a minority was made public, a shudder went through the Zionist camp, as though the presence of a destructive enemy had been detected. Nor was this instinct wholly mistaken. The movement was then only just beginning to spread among the masses, and here was an attempt to give it a form which must alienate the masses, who want above all things an escape from their material troubles! It is possible that men did occasionally say to themselves: “What does it matter? Those few who can really find a quiet life and a livelihood in Palestine at the present time—will they refuse to go there unless they are assured beforehand that they are bringing complete redemption to the whole people? And the men who work for the ideal—they are of course bound to get quite clear in their own minds about the real purpose of their work, with due regard to actualities, so that they may set about their task in the way best suited to achieve their purpose.” It may be that people occasionally indulged in such reflections in secret. But we live in the age of democracy, and everybody believes that only the masses are the source of light and of progress, and that any ideal which the masses cannot grasp is mere nonsense. While it is true that in those days the democratic character of Zionism was not proclaimed from every house-top, as it is to-day, yet even the early _Chovevé Zion_ were unconsciously democrats in this sense, that they regarded the masses not merely as material for the national building, but as conscious architects, deliberately intent on making such a building as the national purpose required. Hence they were scared by the idea that their propaganda would not go down with the masses if they put forward the spiritual revival as their only object; and they went on telling the masses that redemption was at hand if only they would give their whole-hearted support. But in spite of all this they did not succeed in creating a real mass-movement, because the masses not only heard what they said, but also saw what they achieved—and what they achieved was not calculated to confirm the belief that this was the way to redemption. It was only when western Zionism came and proclaimed that it had found a new and “practical” way to achieve the object—the way of diplomacy in the courts of East and West—that the masses followed its flag for a short time, believing in their simplicity that diplomatic documents would be the “paper bridge”[61] over which they would soon pass to the land of their fathers—and then an end to _galuth_ and its miseries. But when the hopes of diplomacy were disappointed, the masses once more lost faith in the possibility of escape from _galuth_; and when at the same time they saw a slight chance of an improvement of their condition in the land of their exile in a not distant future, they turned in that direction. So the masses are deserting the Zionist flag before our eyes, and—what is still more painful—they sometimes take the Zionist flag with them and tack it on to the flag of another camp.