In direct opposition to this type of Jew stands the irreconcilable and uncompromising Israelite—a man who after twenty centuries’ residence in the West still persists in calling himself Oriental, in cultivating obedience to antiquated modes of thought, and in adhering to formulas obsolete and, in his altered circumstances, a trifle absurd. Like the Zionist of the Russian pale, this Oriental Jew of the West is ready to exclaim with the Psalmist: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.” But, unlike the Russian Zionist, he declines to support the movement, the object of which is to restore him to Jerusalem. His wish is to remain distinct from the Gentiles, and yet to remain amongst them. He clings to the Pharisaic ideal of social isolation, while he recoils from geographical and political segregation. He abhors the Liberal Jew’s doctrine of assimilation and ridicules the Zionist’s efforts at repatriation. Is the heroic endurance of Israel under all its sufferings to lead to nothing but racial extinction by intermarriage—the very thing which, had it been allowed to happen twenty centuries ago, would have obviated those sufferings? Such an idea implies a negation of divine justice, and lowers the solemn tragedy of Jewish history into something quite different. It also forms a negation of what the orthodox Jew holds to be the mission of Israel on earth. This mission, according to the orthodox Jew of the West, is to maintain intact the monotheistic dogma among the nations of the world. In order to fulfil this mission, Israel must remain severely apart and yet scattered among the nations. It is the argument “that it may possibly have been God’s will and meaning, that the Jews should remain a quiet light among the nations for the purpose of pointing at the doctrine of the unity of God”—an argument which Coleridge answered by his famous retort: “The religion of the Jews is, indeed, a light; but it is as the light of the glow-worm, which gives no heat and illumines nothing but itself,”[308] and which a modern Jewish writer has described as “a controversial fiction.”[309] It might, perhaps, be more justly described as an unhappy afterthought.
A Jew of this type may, or may not, believe in the ultimate political restoration of his race; but if he believes in it, he holds that it is to be brought about by some mysterious and miraculous dispensation of Providence, such as the Pharisees expected to bring about the conversion of the heathen. He opposes Zionism on the ground that it discredits Providence by striving to effect by human means that which, according to the prophets, is to be the special task of God. His attitude is that of the typical Oriental. Persuaded of the futility of personal action, he trusts in a vague impersonal Power which envelops all things and shapes the course of events to an inevitable and predestined end.
An eminent example of this way of looking at life is presented by a recent publication, apparently authoritative, though anonymous. On the one hand the author deplores the liberalism of the Occidental Jew, and on the other he denounces the Zionism of Dr. Herzl. With regard to the first, he says: “The miraculous preservation of the Jews is itself an argument for their election. By every law and rule of history they should have been exterminated long since, yet we see them to-day in all parts of the world, fighting steadily and pertinaciously for the purpose they are set to fulfil. That purpose carries with it the bar on intermarriage, which, despite occasional breaches, is still jealously observed by the overwhelming majority of Jews as an essential condition of their survival.”[310] The purpose in question is the one explained already, “to be a light to the nations.” With regard to Zionism, the author’s position is, to say the least, very emphatically set forth. For that movement, and for its leader, he reserves some of his choicest sarcasms. Dr. Herzl is “this redoubtable Moses from the Press-club”; he is accused of having “traded on the resources of prophecy”; “Dr. Herzl, with ingenious effrontery, represented his scheme of evading the mission of the exiles, and their duty to the lands of their dispersion, as a fulfilment of the ancient prophecy.” “Dr. Herzl and those who think with him are traitors to the history of the Jews.” These and similar titles are abundantly bestowed on the man who has been guilty of the heinous sin of seeking to redeem his co-religionists from the house of bondage by purely human means, without waiting for a direct interference on the part of the Deity,—or of the European Concert: “The restoration of the Jews to the land of their old independence,” affirms the author, “may occur in one of two ways. It may be by the concerted act of the Governments of the countries of their dispersion, devised as a measure of self-protection against the spread of the Jews; or by the fulfilment of prophecy when the Jewish mission is complete.... But Dr. Herzl’s plan makes short work of the spiritual element in the new exodus of Jewry. He would force the hand of Providence. The restoration, instead of occurring on the appointed end of the dispersion, would be interpolated in the middle of it as a means of evading its obligations. This plan, which is a travesty of Judaism, is equally futile as statecraft.”[311]
Many Jews also, who sympathise with the Zionist idea, shrink from associating themselves with a movement which for the attainment of its object must necessarily solicit the favour of Abdul Hamid. They feel that the Sultan, owing to his drastic methods in the treatment of domestic complaints, is not popular abroad, and they, not unreasonably, apprehend that any practical advantages which the movement might derive from its relations with the Sultan would be more than counterbalanced by the loss of the moral support of the Christian nations.
Lastly, even among Dr. Herzl’s own adherents, the men who year after year gathered from all parts of the world in Basel, drawn thither by one common desire, there did not reign that degree of concord which is essential for the success of any enterprise of the magnitude of the Zionist movement. The proceedings in those congresses have been described by a Jew of the Occidental school with a vivacity which need not be less accurate because it is prompted by candid scepticism. “There,” says the chronicler, “at the gateway to the playground of more than one continent, the Zionists met annually to disagree in many languages on the advisability of setting up Israel among the nations again; and here the descendants of Abraham proved themselves no longer a race but a fortuitous concourse of peoples: an exceptionally cosmopolitan and polyglot multitude. More than that, their differences were accentuated by the very enthusiasm that had drawn them together. The Zionism of the English stockbroker and the French boulevardier is different entirely from the sacred hope which the same word connotes for the rabbi of Eastern Europe.... The young, up-to-date German student in University club cap, who looked as if he might have stepped out of ‘Old Heidelberg,’ made no secret of his contempt for the gabardined and long-curled rabbi. To the latter the cigarette which the student coolly puffed on the Sabbath was desecration; the non-Jewish meals in which the student indulged daily were regarded with pious horror and indignation. Not for this had the other come to Basel, and the sad-eyed and silent delegate who tramped half-way across Europe on what he deemed a holy pilgrimage sighed and thought that Israel was in greater darkness in the centre of its new-born hope than in the unhappy land of persecution wherein he was suffered to exist. Nor here did he expect to see the sacred Mosaic ordinances openly flouted, nor those who had committed the greatest of sins—that of marrying out of the faith—received with enthusiasm. Intermarriage is the very antithesis of the Zionistic ideal, and here they were endeavouring to run hand in hand. Here is the canker which is gnawing at the hope of the sons of Zion. The Jewish race has always been held inseparable from the religion of Judaism, and it will ever remain so. But the old tradition, ‘All Israel are brethren,’ no longer holds good for all that. Like the Christian, the Jew is now a member first of the land that gave him birth, or which he adopts, and a Jew afterwards.”
The writer goes on to comment on the inevitable outcome of this diversity among the delegates: sections, plotting and counter-plotting against one another, faction, cabal, personal animus, tumult, Babel.[312]
This lack of unanimity will, no doubt, become more and more pronounced as the movement advances from the purely theoretical to the practical stage. Let us for a moment picture Israel back in Palestine. Each community of immigrants, bound together by the ties of language, habit, and particular home associations, will live in a separate quarter. They will instinctively cling to their mother tongue and bring up their children in it. The British Jews will despise their Polish and Roumanian brethren as ignorant, and will, in their turn, be despised by them as spurious Jews. The Spanish-speaking Sephardim will scorn and be scorned by the Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim. All the differences, social and national, which underlie the religious unity of Israel will emerge to the surface. The feeling of brotherly equality will be superseded by class distinctions and, in one word, freedom will bring about the disruption which oppression had checked. Even as it is, the difference between the various sections of the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine is noticeable at every turn. There is, for instance, a small community, dwelling in a secluded valley of Northern Galilee and first discovered by Lord Kitchener in the course of his survey work in Palestine. These are said to be the remnant of the ancient inhabitants. They speak the tongue of their Syrian neighbours—an Arabic dialect retaining many elements of Aramaic—they till the soil as their neighbours do, and, though scrupulous in the observance of their religion and abstaining from intermarriage with outsiders, they live on the best of terms with them. On the other hand, the Jewish immigrants are not only distinct in dress, dialect, and mode of living from these native Jews, but are amongst themselves divided by the barrier of language, the Spanish Jews being utterly unable to understand or to make themselves understood to their brethren from Northern and Central Europe, though they all employ the Hebrew characters in writing; and by manners, the Spanish immigrants, owing to their longer residence in the country, being more Oriental than the new-comers. The Sephardim have adopted the Eastern garb and head-dress, and, besides their Spanish mother-tongue, also speak Arabic. The Russian and Polish Jews are clad in long flowing gowns of silk or cloth, and their heads are covered with fur caps. The German Jews affect the quaint long coat and low wide-awake of the land of their origin. None of the Ashkenazim are permitted by their Rabbis to learn Arabic. Their domestic life is that of the Western Judenstadt. But they all cultivate the long ringlets which the Levitic law prescribes. Not less marked is their difference in character, “The Sephardim,” a recent traveller attests, “are tolerant, easy-going, and sociable. They earn their living largely by manual labour, are fishers at Tiberias, porters at Jerusalem and Jaffa. The Ashkenazim limit their activities to traffic, shun work with their hands, are rigid separatists, sticklers for the observance of the oral law, and conservative in their Judaism. The Sephardim are stationary in numbers; the Ashkenazim increase by leaps and bounds. They constitute the wave of Jewish immigration and stand for the development of Judaism in Palestine. There are two other sections of Jews in the country insignificant in number. One comes from Bokhara, the other from Yemen; the latter are very poor, and follow the humblest callings. The shoe-blacks of Jerusalem are recruited from their ranks. These various groups of the Jewish population, one in race and faith, are so strongly marked off from each other that they may be regarded as diverse nationalities.”[313] Finally, it should be added that, besides the orthodox Jews, both Chassidim and Karaites are represented in the population of the country.
Diversity of political ideals will intensify the discord arising from social, sectarian, and national differences. In the new Jewish commonwealth, it is to be feared, the old feud between the Pharisees and the Sadducees will be revived under a new aspect. The more advanced Jews from the West will be anxious to administer the country on Western, that is secular, principles. The Rabbis, with the fanatical populace of Eastern, Polish, and Roumanian Jews at their back, will insist on establishing on a large scale that supremacy of the Synagogue which formed the basis of the ancient Hebrew State, and of the internal constitution of the Jewish communities whilst in exile. And the Rabbis will be supported by the traditions of the race. The Jewish catechism distinctly states that the Law of Moses is only in abeyance, and that “whenever the Jews return to their own land, and again constitute a state, it will have full force.” Synagogue and State will thus repeat the struggle which Church and State waged in Christendom for so many centuries. And, whichever party won, the result would be almost equally disastrous. Should the Rabbis succeed in establishing the Levitical polity the country would, in the opinion of a high authority, “either pass away through internal chaos or would so offend the modern political spirit that it would be soon extinguished from outside. If it were secular, it would not be a Jewish State. The great bulk of its present supporters would refuse to live in it, and it would ultimately be abandoned to an outlander population consisting of Hebrew Christians and Christian Millennarians.”[314]
However, be the practical difficulties as serious as they may, so long as anti-Semitism endures the enthusiasm for Zionism is bound to endure. Mr. Israel Zangwill, one of the most eminent champions of the cause in England, has repeatedly expounded the views of his brother-Zionists. In his address to a meeting in May, 1903, he declared that “the only solution of the Jewish question was to be found in a legally-assured home in Palestine.” He pointed to the recent butchery of the Jews at Kishineff as a proof “that the question was just where it was in the Middle Ages,” and expressed his conviction that “the rest of Europe also tended to slide back into the Dark Ages.” Hence arises the necessity for leaving Europe. Referring to Baron Hirsch’s emigration scheme, Mr. Zangwill said, “Baron Hirsch left £2,000,000 for emigration only, and £7,000,000 for emigration principally. His trustees had reduced emigration to a minimum. They despaired of emigration. But because colonists in the Argentine and Canada were a failure, was that a reason for despair? How dared they despair till they had tried the one land to which the Jew’s heart turned?”[315]
In August of the same year the Zionist Congress met at Basel, and several interesting details were given concerning the progress of the movement. It was stated that the number of members had risen from 120,000 to 320,000, all of whom were directly represented at the Congress by so-called shekel payments. The Report of the Committee of Management showed that the year’s receipts amounted to £9886, that Zionism was on the increase everywhere, and that the Zionist Colonial Bank in London was already declaring small dividends.[316] This bank, it should be noted, was founded under the name of Jewish Colonial Trust, with a capital of £2,000,000 in £1 shares, over £350,000 of which has been subscribed from among the poorer Jews, with the result that it boasts no fewer than 135,000 shareholders. In addition to this institution, two more Jewish National Funds have been started, one of them known as the Shekel Account. In October of the same year the Odessa newspapers reported that a number of persons, acting on behalf of 107 Jews, mostly of the working classes, were taking steps to effect, through the medium of the Colonial Bank, the purchase of an immense tract of land in Palestine for the purpose of colonisation.[317] In the Zionist Congress of 1904 there were represented about 2,500 organisations in various parts of the world. These facts amply prove that Zionism has stirred a very real enthusiasm among a vast section of the Jewish race, even though it has stirred an equally real opposition.