This cause also, then, cannot be removed except through the removal of the other causes mentioned before. We must build a house for ourselves, and then, even in foreign countries, we shall have the position of respected guests, and our competition with the native population will not arouse their resentment and jealousy more than the competition of other strangers. But the economic cause differs from the other causes. Our national and political degradation is a moral fact, and requires only a moral remedy—that we stand higher in the estimation of the world, as a nation with a concrete life of its own, and with a land in which it can extend to others that hospitality which it receives elsewhere. But in order to remove the economic cause we must of necessity diminish the competition between Jew and non-Jew in places where that competition is excessive. For even the respected guest has economic freedom only within certain limits. If he oversteps these limits, and his competition presses too hard on the native, the native is forced to protect himself, either by legislative restriction of the foreigner’s rights, or sometimes even by force. It follows that if we succeed in establishing a separate State for our people, the two first causes of anti-Semitism will be removed, even if the State is very small, and even if most of the Jews remain where they are, and only a very small minority goes to settle in our State. For the mere fact of the existence of a Jewish State, where Jews would be masters, and their national life would develop on lines of its own in accordance with their spirit—this fact alone would suffice to remove from us the brand of inferiority, and to raise us in the world’s estimation to the level of a nation equal in worth to the other nations, sharing alike their privileges and their duties; and the attitude of the other nations to us would no longer be different from their attitude to each other. But the economic cause, though its working may be mitigated to some extent when the wandering mendicant is transformed into a well-to-do guest, cannot be got rid of until the number of Jews in every country declines to the limit dictated by the economic condition of the native population. Until that time hatred of these foreign competitors will continue, and the native population will continue to persecute them with restrictive laws and even with violence, even though there exist somewhere or other a separate Jewish State, and even though all nations respect the Jewish nationality which has in that State its concrete expression.
Thus we arrive at a further condition of the solution of our problem. What we need is not simply a State, but a State to which the majority of the Jews will emigrate from all their present homes—to such an extent that their numbers in every country will decline to the extent demanded by local conditions—and a State extensive enough and materially rich enough to maintain so large a population.
And here we come to the Achilles’ heel of political Zionism. Granted that we have it in our power to establish a Jewish State: have we it in our power to diminish thereby the number of Jews in every country to the maximum which the economic condition of the country can bear without their arousing anti-Semitism? This question the opponents of the new Zionism, which promises to put an end to the Jewish problem by the establishment of the State, are continually asking: but so far we have not received from the Zionists a clear and satisfactory answer. During the last twenty years, for instance, at least a million Jews have left Eastern Europe for America and Africa. That is a very large number, sufficient for the establishment of a Jewish State. Yet this emigration has had no perceptible effect on the economic condition of the countries from which it has taken place, and the relations between the native population and the Jews in those countries have not improved. The reason is that the emigration has not in fact lessened the number of Jews in those countries, the loss being always counterbalanced by the natural increase of those who remain. If, then, Pinsker’s idea had been carried out as soon as his pamphlet was published, and all these emigrants had gone not to America or Africa, but to the Jewish State, the State might by now have been successful and flourishing, and national life might be developing there in a satisfactory manner, so as to bring great honour to our people wherever Jews are; but none the less the Jewish problem in the lands whence the emigration proceeded would remain exactly where it was, because economic competition between the Jews and the native population would be just as keen as before, and would still be felt by the latter to an intolerable degree. If, therefore, a Jewish State is really to solve the Jewish problem on its economic side for good and all, then hundreds of thousands must emigrate to it every year from the lands of the Diaspora, so that the diminution in the number of Jews in those lands will be patently perceptible, and their influence on economic life will decrease from year to year, till it ceases to be a cause of hatred and jealousy on the part of the native population. We must therefore ask ourselves first of all, whether it is really possible to transport such a vast number of people in a short time, and to open up for them new sources of livelihood in a new State, wherever it may be. I doubt very much whether any responsible person will answer this question in the affirmative.
But this criticism, which is fatal to the new Zionism, as expounded by Herzl and his followers, does not seriously affect Pinsker’s Zionism. The new Zionists make the political and economic problem the be-all and end-all of their strivings. Their primary aim is to improve the hard lot of the Jews as individuals. They regard such improvement in exile as out of the question, since Jews are regarded as strangers in every country, and the competition of the stranger exposes him to the resentment of the native population. Hence they demand that the Jews shall establish a separate State for themselves, where they will not be strangers and their competition will not be a crime.[[40]] But this idea can be justified only if the State is able to improve the lot of all the Jews or most of them; that is, if all or most of the Jews can leave foreign countries and settle in their State. Unless this condition is fulfilled, the amelioration will be only partial; it will affect only that fortunate minority which succeeds in establishing itself in the Jewish State. The majority will remain as badly off as before—hated and persecuted foreigners in strange lands. Where, then, is the promised annihilation of the Jewish problem through the establishment of the State?
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.