JEWISH NATIONALISM
WHEN it is rational to say, ‘I know not my father or my mother, let my children be aliens to me that no prayer of mine may touch them’, then it will be rational for the Jew to say, ‘I will not cherish the prophetic consciousness of our nationality—let the Hebrew cease to be, and let all his memorials be antiquarian trifles, dead as the wall paintings of a conjectured race’.
The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory. Let us help to will our own better future and the better future of the world—not renounce our higher gift and say, ‘Let us be as if we were not among the populations’; but choose our full heritage, claim the brotherhood of our nation, and carry into it a new brotherhood with the nations of the Gentiles. The vision is there; it will be fulfilled.
GEORGE ELIOT, 1876,
in ‘Daniel Deronda’.
No British Jew would be less British because he looked upon the cradle of his race with pride, and at the religious centre of his faith with happiness and reverence.
SIR MARK SYKES, 1918.
A JEWISH NATIONAL HOME[61]
FOREIGN OFFICE,
November 2, 1917.
DEAR LORD ROTHSCHILD,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet:—
‘His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.’
Yours sincerely,
ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR.