The Zionist movement, on the other hand, differs from all former movements, except the first, inasmuch as it strives to enlist in its favour the heart as well as the head of Israel. In selecting Palestine as the future home of the race, the leaders of the movement have endeavoured to gratify a craving, the force of which it is easy to exaggerate, but impossible to ignore. If there is in Jewish history one event that has exercised a lasting influence over the fortunes of the nation, it is the destruction of Jerusalem and the consequent dispersion. If there is one sentiment that has bound the branches of the Jewish family together through the ages, more strongly than any other, it is the hope of ultimate rehabilitation. For eighteen hundred years the children of Israel have wandered over the earth, insulted, oppressed, persecuted, without a country, without a home, with scarcely a resting place, strangers in every realm in which they pitched their tent. But, though banished from the land of their birth and far from the tombs of their forefathers, the vast majority of them have preserved, amidst all trials and temptations, their traditions, their usages and their faith unimpaired. Without the hope of restoration such constancy would have been impossible and meaningless.
The destruction of Zion cast its shadow over the soul of the Jewish people throughout the Middle Ages, and the mourning for it is the most picturesque, the most pathetic, and the most prominent feature of their public and domestic life. In the synagogues, as well as in many private houses, a space on the wall was always left unpainted to recall the national humiliation. The Jews of every country in token of grief wore black, whence they were called “Mourners of Zion.” In memory of the same calamity gold and silver ornaments were banished from the bridal wreath, and ashes were strewn over the heads of the bride and the bridegroom at weddings. In Germany the bridegroom wore a cowl of mourning and the bride a white shroud. A mediaeval table-hymn, sung after the meal on Friday evenings, or Saturday mornings, ran as follows:
“Build, O rebuild Thou, Thy temple,
Fill again Zion, Thy city,
Clad with delight will we go there,
Other and new songs to sing there,
Merciful One and All-holy,
Praisèd for ever and ever.”
Similar examples might be cited from every side—all showing that the sad memories of the past and the belief in ultimate triumph were the two poles between which revolved the spiritual life of the nation. The Prophets who had predicted the dispersion and the captivity of the children of Israel had also predicted their repatriation. “Behold, I will gather them out of all countries whither I have driven them in mine anger, and in my fury, and in great wrath; and I will bring them again unto this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely.”[297] This hope was the life-belt which enabled the Jew to float amidst the wrecks of so many storms during eighteen centuries. In the night of their darkest desolation the Jews kept their eyes fixed to the East, and said to themselves and to one another, “Courage, the day is at hand.” Attachment to Faith and Fatherland—the religious and the national ideals—are the two strands, indissolubly entwined, of that great Messianic dream which runs like a golden thread through the black web of Jewish history. The Holy Land never ceased to be regarded as the true home of the race. Benjamin of Tudela, writing about the middle of the twelfth century, testifies to the tenacity with which many of the Jewish communities in Europe, which he visited in his tour, clung to the belief that they were destined to be redeemed from captivity and be gathered together in the fulness of time. The various Messiahs whose rise and failure have been narrated in the foregoing pages would never have attained their wonderful popularity but for this belief. But even in normal times it was the ardent desire of every good Jew to die in Jerusalem, and the longing of some to live there. This desire was nursed by the poets and thinkers of Israel. We have seen at the beginning of the twelfth century Jehuda Halevi addressing Zion, in accents full of tenderness, as his “woe-begone darling,” and in fulfilment of a life-long vow ending his days among her ruins. ♦1211♦ A century later three hundred Rabbis from France and England set out for Palestine.
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