Discourses of Keidansky

by Bernard G. Richards

III Sometimes He is a Zionist

Word flashed across the cables that Dr. Theodore Herzl and other leaders of the Zionist movement had held a favorable interview with the Sultan of Turkey, and the followers of the cause—the restoration of Palestine to the Jews—were all in a flutter of gladness. As it was interpreted by the faithful, the vague, meagre cablegram meant that the Sultan was willing, that he was hard up, and that the Holy Land was for sale. And who could doubt when this was announced by the New York Yiddish dailies, under four-column headlines? No one could doubt but the jester. He said that this only proved that the Yiddish papers also had big type in their composing rooms. He said that the truth about a certain movement could not be found in any party organ. In fact, if one wanted the absolute truth about anything he would advise him to go home and sleep it off.

But serious and sane folk will ask no jester for advice. The jester can only add to the sadness of the nations; but he cannot impair the faith of the believers. So the Zionists were rejoicing while their opponents were debating in the lighter vein, and laughing at the mistakes of the so-called new Moses and the errors of his followers.

The news had also reached Keidansky's circle, and the question was taken up again for consideration. They were all at Zarling's on Leverett street, where the "kosher" eatables are inviting, where tea is Russian, the newspapers Yiddish, and the attendant members of one industrious family, ranging from several bright pupils of the grammar school up. The poet, the young lawyer, the short-sighted medical student who has for many years been writing a scientific work, the Anarchist orator in embryo, the flower vendor and undiscovered inventor of an ingenious self-lighting lamp and a wonderful fuel-saving stove—they were all there, and, of course, Keidansky was with them. They all sat about a little round wooden table in a corner of the big dusky store, pouring out wisdom and drinking tea. The long row of "kosher" Vienna wurst hanging over Zarling's brass-railed counter were mocking and menacing the vegetarian of the group as he was munching a cheese sandwich.

They were all heartily opposed to Zionism. Each one had the solution for the social problem, which would also settle the Jewish question, and Keidansky said that it was highly problematic whether there was such a thing as a Jewish problem. However, they all had plans for making this a better world, plans which the Jews were eminently fitted to help to carry out, and the benefits of which they would reap in the form of an ideal state of society, with universal brotherhood, and without racial hatred and anti-Semitism. They took Zionism severely, scathingly to task, and as there was no Zionist present it was an easy victory. The Jewish State was nipped in the bud, or rather abolished ere its establishment. The poet and the orator sailed heavily into the "dubious personality of Dr. Max Nordau," one of the leaders of the movement, and thus again avenged themselves on the man who, in his gentle booklet on "Degeneration," so wantonly threw so much mud on their revolutionary idols. Reference was made to the demolishing review of the Doctor's book by the only and original G. Bernard Shaw, and Whitman and Wagner and the others were saved.

Keidansky listened silently to all that passed, looked into a book and sipped his tea. If the conversation was not good he could find something in his book, and if the book was not interesting he could at least enjoy his tea. So he once said when told that he was not attentive and not true to the spirit of "the order of midnight tea-drinkers."

Everybody had spoken, and I turned to Keidansky for a word. "Sometimes," he said, "I am Zionist, and all longings leave me and I yearn for naught but the realization of the old, long-cherished, holy dream that our people have carried along with them and fondly caressed through their cruel exiles of the ages—the restoration of our never-to-be-forgotten home, Palestine. The passion for the race returns, the old feeling of national pride and patriotism comes back and takes its old place, the consciousness of Israel awakens within me, and I am completely swayed by the mastering desire to see Judea 'emancipated, regenerated and redeemed.'

"I feel again the unity I have forgotten. The old Messianic hope looms up big before me. The Heimweh of the long-lost wanderer, the grief-stricken, menaced nomad takes possession of me. I feel the terrible danger of dissolution: it is so bitter to stare destruction in the face, to contemplate annihilation of so long and so miraculous an existence. I feel that there is no place like his old home. The homeless Jew must return to Palestine. The big world is too small. It has no room for him. Good or bad, he is always offensive, and he is exalted only to be cast down into an abyss of misery. Civilization is not even civil, and it has no hospitality for its earliest light-bearer. The world is a wretched ingrate. We have given everything, including the means of future salvation; we receive nothing but calumny, and are doomed to everlasting damnation. 'We have given you your religion,' we say to the Christians. 'That's nothing,' they answer; 'it has not affected us in the least.' And they prove it. They keep on baiting and persecuting and killing their neighbours, not as themselves. What must we do? Get back our old home, though we have to pay for it. There, at least, will we find 'a crust of bread and a corner to sleep in.'

"We must have a common cause, an object of unity, a centre of gravity, in order to survive as a people, and this is what we can have in the proposed Jewish State.