Israel in Europe

by G. F. Abbott

But, even if the Sultan could be brought, as Dr. Herzl hoped, “to perceive the advantages that would accrue to his Empire from a Jewish settlement on the basis of the Zionist programme,” it should not be forgotten that the Sultan is not the only, or indeed the most important, agent in the matter. Palestine, and Asia Minor generally, is a field for the eventual occupation of which struggle most of the Great Powers of Europe. Missions of a semi-religious, semi-political character, representing several European nationalities, and sedulously supported by several European Governments, have long been at work in the land. Among them may be mentioned the Russian, the French, the Italian, and the German. Russia, who persecutes the Jews at home, would not see with any degree of pleasure a hostile population, consisting for the most part of her own victims, settled in a province to the ultimate absorption of which she aspires; the less so as that population will in all probability be under British influence. Although, for reasons not difficult to fathom, the Russian Consuls in Palestine and Syria are instructed to extend over the Russian Jews in those countries a protection with which the latter very often would gladly dispense, the Russian Minister of Finance, in 1902, forbade the sale of the Jewish Colonial Trust shares in the Czar’s dominions—a step which created great perturbation in the ranks of Polish Zionists, the most deeply affected by the prohibition.[303] This measure, harmonising as it does with Russia’s well-known designs in Palestine, throws on that Power’s real attitude towards Zionism a light too clear to be affected even by the Russian Government’s assurances of a benevolent interest in the movement.[304] An analogous opposition, in a minor degree, may reasonably be anticipated on the part of the rival Powers, especially Germany, and that despite the promises which the German Emperor made to the delegation of Zionists who waited on him during his visit to Palestine in 1898. Both Russia and Germany enjoy a strong ascendancy over the present Sultan, whose fear of the one Power and appreciation of the other’s friendship are too lively to permit of any action calculated to offend either. The Christians of the East are also a power to be reckoned with, and they, any more than the Christians of the West, would not bear to see the sanctuary of Christendom falling into the hands of the “enemies of Christ.” The extra-territorialisation of Jerusalem has indeed been suggested by the Zionists. But is it to be expected that the Jews will ever really resign themselves to the final abandonment of Zion? The more powerful they grew in Palestine the less inclined would they be to suffer the ancient capital of their nation to remain in any hands but Israel’s.

To these external difficulties must be added the lack of unanimity among the Jews themselves. Although the Zionist movement is undoubtedly enjoying a considerable measure of popularity, it is subject to a measure of opposition no less considerable. The great Jewish financiers of the West, who, thanks to their wealth, have little reason to complain of persecution, have hitherto shown themselves coldly sceptical, or even contemptuous, towards the idea. Nor has its reception been more cordial among the high spiritual authorities of Israel. Both these classes hold that the plan of restoration, even if it prove feasible, is not desirable. To the cultured and prosperous Jew of the West the prospect of exchanging the comforts and elegant luxuries of civilised life in a European or American city for the barren obscurity of an Asiatic province is not alluring. The re-settlement of Israel in Palestine has no charm for him. To him the old prophecies are an incumbrance, and their fulfilment would be a disappointment. For such a Jew nothing could be more inexpedient or more embarrassing than the advent of the Messiah. This attitude is well illustrated by a saying attributed to a member of the wealthiest Jewish family in Europe: “If ever the Messiah came,” is this gentleman reported to have said, “I would apply for the post of Palestinian ambassador in London.” Less polished, but not less significant, was another Western Jew’s terse reply to the question whether he would go to Palestine: “Pas si bête.”

Even so, what time Cyrus permitted the captives of Babylon to return to the land of their fathers, many preferred to remain in rich Mesopotamia. The sacrifice of present comfort in the pursuit of a romantic ideal presupposes a degree of emotional fervour and of material wretchedness that it would be unreasonable, if not uncharitable, to demand from a whole nation. But this opposition, or indifference, to the Zionist efforts at repatriation does not necessarily and in all cases spring from worldly motives of self-indulgence. It is only one manifestation of a sincere divergence of sentiment which has its sources deep in the past of the Jewish race, or, one might say, of human nature, and which can only be adequately treated in a separate work on Modern Judaism. Here it is sufficient to describe it only in so far as it bears on the subject immediately under discussion. Zionism, while acclaimed with enthusiasm by the Jews of the East, has met in the West with two sets of adversaries who, though asunder as the poles, have found a common standpoint in their opposition to the movement. These adversaries are the extreme Liberal and the extreme Orthodox Jews of Western Europe and America—the Sadducees and Pharisees of to-day. The one scoffs at the movement as too idealistic, the other as not idealistic enough. The contempt of the one is based on commonsense; that of the other on the Bible. The one objects to all Messiahs; the other refuses to follow any but the Messiah. To the one Dr. Herzl appeared as a dreamer of dreams; to the other as a prosaic utilitarian. The sentimental aim of Zionism is an offence in the eyes of the one; the other condemns its methods as sordidly practical. They both, starting from diametrically opposite premises, arrive at the conclusion that the movement is a set-back of Jewish history, an agitation, artificial and superfluous, which “has no roots in the past and no fruits to offer for the future.”

The Liberal Jew’s ideal is not separation from the natives of the country of his adoption, but assimilation to them. He has long lived in political freedom. All careers are open to him; all objects of distinction for which men strive are within his reach. He is an ardent patriot. The political toleration to which he owes his liberty is accompanied by a religious breadth, or may be scepticism, in which he fully participates. Like his Christian neighbour, he is content to live in the present. He has gradually abandoned the ceremonial observances of the Law and the belief in a Messianic restoration, and is trying to obliterate all traces of tribal distinction. By intermarriage and education he endeavours to identify himself with the country of which he is a citizen. In point of nationality he calls himself a German, a Frenchman, an Italian, an Englishman, or an American. In point of creed he may be a Reformed Jew, a Unitarian, a Theist, an Atheist, or a placid Agnostic. This attitude is as intelligible as the sentiment from which it springs is respectable. Such a Jew feels that he cannot be a citizen of two cities. He must choose; and in his choice he is guided by self-analysis. He feels that the country of his birth has greater claims upon him than the country of his remote origin; that he has more in common with his next-door neighbours than with the Patriarchs and Prophets of Asia.

To this category evidently belongs the anonymous author of a book that may be regarded as the Liberal Jew’s apologia pro vita sua. After having demonstrated that among modern Jews there is, strictly speaking, neither racial nor religious unity, the writer goes on to explain what, in his opinion, should be the attitude of “the modern Occidental Jew”:

“Such a Jew, educated in an English, German, French, or American school and university, is certainly in looks, manners, character, habits, tastes, and ideas as different from a Jew of Turkey, or Egypt, or Russia as he can well be. The people to whom he corresponds in all essential points are the people of his own country in which he was born and bred and has lived.... Now, what must such an Occidental Jew say of himself, if he is true to himself, and if he recognises truth in all matters as the supreme guide of man? He will have to say that the strict racial unity of the Jews is doubtful, even with regard to the past; and as regards the present he will have to deny it altogether.”[305]

The author proceeds to point out that, with regard to his moral and intellectual development, the Occidental Jew has undergone the same educational influences as his Christian compatriot and contemporary: Hebraism, through the Bible, Hellenism through the Renaissance, Catholicism, Chivalry, Reformation, French Revolution: “He must finally, above all, remember his indebtedness to the moral standard of modern times, that love of man as man which is the result of no one of these currents alone, but is the outcome of the action of all of them, and to the standard of truth, as intensified by modern science. Now, realising all this, he must admit that a very small portion of his moral and intellectual existence is Jewish in the Oriental sense of the term, and he cannot thus be cramped back into the laws which are to govern the thought and life of a Jew as laid down in the Talmud and embraced by the practices of the devout and observant Jew. He is speaking and living a lie if he denies this by word or deed.”[306]

The practical question arises: “Recognising the evils of racial exclusiveness, what ought such a modern Occidental Jew to do?” The answer is: “He has simply to live up to his convictions in every detail of his life. He must not only, as he has ever done, perform the duties of a citizen in the country in which he lives, fully and conscientiously, but he must refuse, as far as the race question goes, in any way to recognise the separate claims of the Jews within his country.... He may feel justly proud of being a descendant of a race which is not only the oldest and purest, but has through many centuries steadfastly followed the guidance of a great spiritual idea to the blessing of mankind, just as a Norman, or a Saxon, or a Celt in Great Britain may, when called upon to do so, consider, and be gratified by, the memory of his own racial origin. Beyond this he must not go. He must spurn and avoid all those symbols and rites which have been established to signify a separate, even though a chosen, people. His marriage and his choice of friends must be exclusively guided by those considerations of inner affinity which are likely to make such unions perfect as far as things human can be perfect.”[307]

Such a Jew’s advice, if asked by his less advanced brethren of Eastern Europe, would be, not to perpetuate the narrowness of antiquity, but to share in the broad development of modern civilisation. Not to go back to the political and religious isolation of Palestine, but to move on with the political and religious progress of modern Europe and America: to seek for light not in the East but in the West. He regards the memories of Israel with indifference, and its aspirations with perplexity. He can hardly enter into his Polish brother’s soul and realise his modes of thought and feeling. To him the longing for Zion is an incomprehensible mystery, the attempt to gratify it a wild and hopeless adventure. If Eastern Europe will not have the Jews, he is ready to help them to migrate to Western Europe, or to America; but with the Zionist Utopia he neither can nor will have anything to do. When told that Western Europe has eloquently declared her hostility, and America may soon follow, he calmly answers that anti-Semitism is a passing cloud; the wind which has wafted it over the western sky will, sooner or later, dissipate it.

Precisely similar are the views entertained by the cultured minority of Russian and more especially of Polish Jews. Despite the strong anti-Semitic feeling displayed by the Christian inhabitants of those countries, the more advanced representatives of the race offer a vigorous opposition to Zionism and its separatist tendencies, holding that the re-animation of Jewish national sentiment is a temporary infatuation due to the cruel treatment of the Jews and destined to die out with it. These Jews also have abandoned the old Jewish national ideals, convinced that a man may frequent a Jewish synagogue and have a Semitic nose and yet be as good a Polish or Russian patriot as any other. They feel that a thousand years’ residence in Poland has weaned them effectually from any sentimental attachment to Palestine and that, born and bred as they are in the North, they are physically unfit for a southern climate. In one word, they consider themselves both in body and in mind children of the land in which they have lived and suffered for so many centuries.