Such is the condition of “practical work in Palestine,” and such its relation to “the redemption of the people and the land.” The hope of a future redemption is an age-long national hope, still cherished by every Jew who is faithful to his people, whether as a religious belief or in some other form. Every man can picture the realisation to himself as it suits him, without regard to actual present conditions: for who knows what is hidden in the bosom of the distant future? But if men set out to achieve the redemption by their own efforts, they are no longer at liberty to shut their eyes to the facts. There must be some natural chain of cause and effect between what they do and what they wish to attain. Between “practical work in Palestine” and “the redemption of the people and the land” this chain of causation may be imagined to exist by those who are at a distance; but in Palestine itself even imagination cannot find it. In Palestine the possibilities of practical work are too clear. It is possible to buy bits of land here and there; but it is not possible to redeem the land as a whole, or even most of it. It is possible to found beautiful Colonies on the “redeemed” land; but it is not possible to settle in them more than a very few poor Colonists. It is possible to produce in the Colonies an “upper-class” type of agriculturists, whose work is mostly done by others, and perhaps it is possible also to create a small labourer class for the finer kinds of work, which are comparatively easy and well paid; but it is not possible to create a real rural proletariat, capable of monopolising the rougher, more exacting, and worse-paid kinds of work, which alone can support a rural proletariat with its thousands and tens of thousands.[[81]]
This being the case, we should expect every visitor to Palestine whose standard is that of the “home of refuge” to return home in grief and despair. Yet every day we find just the opposite. Orthodox Zionists, who wax grandiloquent at home about “the redemption of the people and the land,” come to Palestine, see what there is to see there, and return home in joy and gladness, full of inspiration and enthusiasm, as though they had heard Messiah’s trumpet from the Mount of Olives.
That is exactly my point. On the surface the Programme is supreme, and all its adherents seem really to believe that their work is bringing the redemption. But beneath the surface the unacknowledged instinct of national self-preservation is supreme, and it is that instinct that urges them on to work—not for the accomplishment of the Programme, but for the satisfaction of its own demands. When our orthodox Zionist comes to Palestine, and sees the work and its results, his whole being thrills with the feeling that it is a great and a noble thing that is being created there; that whether it leads to complete redemption or not, it will be an enormous force for our national preservation in all the countries over which we are scattered. Then the “redemption” idea finds its proper level: it becomes one of those cherished hopes which are not yet ready to be mainsprings of action; and the real object, the object which is actually being attained by practical work in Palestine, appears large and splendid enough in itself to provide inspiration and enthusiasm.
My respect for my readers and for myself does not permit me to explain once more in detail—after more than twenty years of explanation after explanation—what exactly is the object to which I allude here. But I think it no shame to avow that on this occasion I seemed to myself to see my dream of twenty years ago in process of realisation in Palestine, though naturally with differences of detail. What has already been accomplished in Palestine entitles one to say with confidence that that country will be “a national spiritual centre of Judaism, to which all Jews will turn with affection, and which will bind all Jews together; a centre of study and learning, of language and literature, of bodily work and spiritual purification; a true miniature of the people of Israel as it ought to be ... so that every Hebrew in the Diaspora will think it a privilege to behold just once the ‘centre of Judaism,’ and when he returns home will say to his friends: ‘If you wish to see the genuine type of a Jew, whether it be a Rabbi or a scholar or a writer, a farmer or an artist or a business man—then go to Palestine, and you will see it.’”[[82]]
No doubt the time has not yet come, nor will it soon come, when the traveller returned from Palestine, speaking of the “genuine type of a Jew,” can say to his friends, “Go to Palestine, and you will see it.” But he can say, and generally does, “Go to Palestine, and you will see it in the making.” The existing Colonies, although they depend mainly on non-Jewish labour, strike the Jew of the Diaspora as so many little generating stations, in which there is gradually being produced a new type of national life, unparalleled in the Exile. So soon as he enters a Jewish Colony, he feels that he is in a Hebrew national atmosphere. The whole social order, all the communal institutions, from the Council of the Colony to the school, bear the Hebrew stamp. They do not betray, as they do in the Diaspora, traces of that foreign influence which flows from an alien environment and distorts the pure Hebrew form. Of course, he does not find everything satisfactory and commendable. He discovers—if he has eyes to see—many defects in the communal life and in that of the individual. Even the schools in the Colonies are still for the most part very far from perfection; and even the much-vaunted predominance of the Hebrew language in the Colonies is as yet but half complete—it extends only to the children. But everything—he tells himself—is still in its infancy; the process of free development has only just begun, and it is going on. Many of these defects will be remedied in time; and whatever is not remedied must be a defect in ourselves, with its roots in our national character. If we want to create a genuine Hebrew type, we must accept the bad with the good, provided that both alike belong essentially to the type, and that the type itself is not corrupted as in the Diaspora. The Jewish visitor travels from Colony to Colony, and finds them sometimes many hours’ journey from one another, with alien fields and villages in between. But the intervening space seems to him nothing more than an empty desert, beyond which he reaches civilisation again, and breathes once more the refreshing atmosphere of Hebrew national life. Days pass, or weeks, and he seems to have spent all the time in another world—a world of the distant past or the distant future. When he leaves this world he says to himself, “If it is thus to-day, what will it be one day, when the Colonies are more numerous and fully developed?” At such a time he realises that here, in this country, is to be found the solution of the problem of our national existence; that from here the spirit shall go forth and breathe on the dry bones that are scattered east and west through all lands and all nations, and restore them to life.
But from this point of view the term “practical work” does not apply only to the agricultural colonies. This national Hebrew type may have, and indeed has, its generating stations outside the agricultural settlement. Many Zionists criticise the Directors of the National Fund for sinking a good deal of their capital in the building of Jewish quarters in towns (such as Tel-Aviv in Jaffa). From the point of view of the Programme these critics are certainly right. The Fund was created for “the redemption of the land” in the widest sense of the term, and not for the purchase of small pieces of urban land, and the erection on them of houses for Jews. But, as I have said, the work is directed not by the demands of the Programme but by the promptings of an instinct. If our visitor from the Diaspora remains some days in Tel-Aviv, observes its life, and sees the Hebrew children who are growing up there, he will not criticise the National Fund for having made it possible to found such a generating station. He will wish with all his heart that the Directors would commit the same fault again, and create similar stations in the other towns of Palestine.
And need it be demonstrated that the Hebrew schools in Jaffa and Jerusalem are centres of unremitting activity in the creation of “the genuine type of a Jew”? This educational work, again, does not fit in very well with the Programme. “What use,” it is often asked, “is there in educating the children in the national spirit, so long as the land is not redeemed, and the nation does not come to the land, and many of these very children may not remain there? To redeem the land, extend the settlement, capture labour—that is the way to realise the Programme. But education? When the number of Jews in Palestine is large, national education will follow as a matter of course. At present we have no right to use for spiritual purposes the resources which are needed for more important things.” I doubt whether this criticism can be reasonably and logically answered on the basis of the Programme. But what can logic do when instinct pulls the other way? The very men who promise to bring about the redemption by means of “practical work in Palestine” are using a great deal of their energy in educational work in the country; and Zionists generally value such work and turn to it more and more. To learn why, one has only to listen to the speeches at a Zionist meeting during a debate on “cultural work” in Palestine. The “redeemers” forget for a time the Programme, the “home of refuge,” and all their other catchwords, and begin to extol “the revival of the spirit,” and the creation of a new Hebrew type. They prophesy that this type will in future be a connecting link between all the scattered parts of the nation. They point to the beneficial influence already exerted by the schools in Palestine on education in the Diaspora. And so forth, and so forth.
Eighteen years ago I saw the beginnings of this educational work in Palestine, and I could not then bring myself to believe that the individual teachers who stood for the great ideal of a Hebrew education in the Hebrew language, and had begun to put it into practice with their limited resources, could really succeed in producing such a spiritual revolution. But at the same time I saw how bent they were on the attainment of their object, and how confident of success: and I said, “Who knows? Perhaps this confidence will be able to work miracles.”[[83]] Now I have seen that confidence has indeed worked miracles. “A Hebrew education in the Hebrew language” is no longer an ideal in Palestine: it is a real thing, a natural, inevitable phenomenon; its disappearance is inconceivable. No doubt there are some scattered fortresses which have not yet been captured; but these, too, will surrender, as others have, to the demands of the age. Take, for instance, the educational institutions of the German Hilfsverein in Jerusalem, from the Kindergartens up to the Teachers’ Seminary. All in all, they have sixteen hundred pupils of both sexes, and these are being trained—despite the still visible remnant of German education—in the Hebrew spirit and the Hebrew language. All who know how things used to be must confess that there has really been a revolution in Palestine, and that the Hebrew teacher has won.[[84]] Of course, there is still much to be done before the victory can be complete even internally—that is to say, before Hebrew education can find the right road in every department, and before its defects, which are still numerous, can be removed. But the conqueror has already shown his patience and his devotion to his ideal; and we can surely trust him not to rest until he has so perfected Hebrew education in Palestine as to make it a worthy model for Jews throughout the world, a standard type of national education, to which they will endeavour to approximate so far as the conditions of the Diaspora allow.
Yet another urban generating station of a different kind has been created of late years, also by the unbounded confidence of an individual; and the Zionists and the National Fund have not refrained from helping it and enabling it to live and to develop, although it is very difficult indeed to bring it within the scope of the Programme. I mean, of course, the Bezalel.[[85]] True, its great object—the development of Hebrew art—has so far been attained only to a slight extent, and it has not yet touched the higher branches of art. But its achievements in the domain of handicraft justify the belief that here also confidence will work miracles. Whatever may happen, the Bezalel has already become the source of a spiritual influence which makes itself felt in lands far distant from Palestine. Who can tell how many estranged hearts have been brought back to their people, in greater or less degree, by the beautiful carpets and ornaments of the Bezalel?