The Progress of the Century

by Unknown

ZIONISM

There can be no doubt that next to the Reform movement the profoundest modification of the forces within Judaism has come about during the last years of the century through the rise and progress of the Zionist movement. It has been said by some that Zionism is the expression of Jewish pessimism, by others that it is the highest form of Jewish optimism. I venture to say that it is both. The emancipation of the Jews has not been able to do away with anti-Semitism; history has repeated itself time and time again. When the Jews of a country were few in number and of little influence, they led a tolerably secure existence; but as soon as their number increased and their influence commenced to be felt, anti-Semitism was the effective weapon in the hands of their opponents. In so far, then, as Zionism takes account of this fact, it is pessimistic; for conditions in the future will hardly differ from those in the past. It sees the Wandering Jew of history continuing still his dreary march through the ages, never at rest and never able to effect a quiet and even development of his own forces. It explains this phenomenon from the fact that Israel has in all the changed circumstances striven to maintain its racial identity, and as this racial identity has a religious side as well, that the two combined may well be called a separate national existence; that a people holding tenaciously to this separate existence, but having no home of its own, must become, when occasion demands, the scape-goat and the play-ball of other forces. It recognizes anti-Semitism as continually existent, and in so far the opponents of Zionism may be right in saying that its rise is the result of the anti-Jewish movement. It is the Jewish answer from the Jewish point of view. On the other hand, Zionism is optimistic in believing that real help for the Jews can only come from within their own body; and that the Jewish question will only be solved when the Jews return to that point in their history whence they set out on their wanderings, and again found a permanent home to which all the persecuted can flee and from which a light will go forth to every nook and corner of Jewry. It does not hope that all Jews will return to Palestine, but it believes that only in a national centre can the centrifugal force be found which will hold the Jews together in the various countries of their sojourn.

When Theodore Herzl, a littérateur in Vienna, published in 1897 his pamphlet on the Jewish state, he little imagined that it would call forth an echo in every country in which the Jews were scattered. He was not the first to attempt this solution of the problem. Far-seeing Russian Jews before him had, many years previous to that, propounded this method of dealing with the question, and it had been practically the assumption upon which the Judaism of the past had been built up. Reform Judaism, in relinquishing the hope of a return, and in cutting out from the prayer-book all mention of Palestine and the restoration, broke one of the strongest links which bound the Judaism of to-day with that of the past, and cast aside a great ideal, the realization of which had been a light to the feet of the Jews since the destruction of the Temple. The idea of a “Mission” has taken its place, the preaching of a pure Monotheism.

The Zionist congresses (which have now been held during four successive years) have found the platform, so often sought for in vain during the nineteenth century, upon which all Jews, regardless of theological opinions and of economic theories, can stand. They represent the old unity of Israel; for Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and even the purely racial Jew are to be found there as well as in the Zionist societies which have grown up in every Jewish community, whether in Europe or in Africa, in North or in South America, even in the distant Philippines. The Orthodox Jew must be, by his very profession, a Zionist; but he often doubts whether the plan as formulated by Dr. Herzl is feasible, and holds himself aloof, waiting for the realization of his hopes at the hands of others, or for some supernatural sign of divine assistance. The very fact that the Jewish opponents of Zionism (and they are the only opponents it has) come from various parts of the Jewish camp is in itself a proof of the above statement. The Orthodox complain that some of the leaders of the movement are not sufficiently Jewish; the Reform, that some are too Jewish. That this opposition is exceedingly strong cannot be denied. The demand made that the Jew should assert himself first and foremost as a Jew has been distasteful to many who were soaring in the mystic hazes of Universalism, or who had hoped to get out of Judaism as it were by the back door, without being seen by the world at large.

But even in those circles which do not formally affiliate with Zionism, or who at times even oppose it, there has of late years been a very strong revival of Jewish feeling and a movement towards a stronger expression of that feeling. Germany is honeycombed with societies for the study of Jewish literature; the Hebrew language has been revived, notably in Russia, not only as a form of literary expression, but also as a vehicle of social intercourse; France has its Society of Jewish Studies; America and England have their Jewish Historical Societies, and their Jewish Chautauqua movements; Jewish national societies have sprung up among the students of German and Austrian universities—all influences—tending in this one direction.