Zionism and Anti-Semitism

by Max Simon Nordau; Gustav Gottheil

The principle of nationality has, in its exaggerations, led to excesses. It has been led astray into Chauvinism, abased to idiotic hatred of the foreigner, degraded to grotesque self-worship. From this caricature of itself the Jewish nationalism is safe. The Jewish nationalist does not suffer from self-inflation; he feels, on the contrary, that he must make tireless efforts to render the name of Jew a title of honor. He modestly recognizes the good qualities of other nations, and seeks diligently to acquire them in so far as they harmonize with his natural capacities. He knows what terrible harm centuries of slavery or disability have done to his originally proud and upright character, and seeks to cure it by means of intense self-training. If, however, nationalism is on its guard against all illusions as to itself, this is a natural phase in the process of development from barbaric selfish individualism to free humanism and altruism,—a phase the justification and necessity of which can only be denied by him who has no comprehension whatever of the laws of organic evolution, and is totally lacking in the historical sense.

Anti-Semitism has also taught many educated Jews the way back to their people. It has had the effect of a sharp trial which the weak cannot stand, but from which the strong emerge stronger or more confident in themselves. It is not correct to say that Zionism is but a "gesture of truculence" or an act of desperation against Anti-Semitism. It is true that more than one educated Jew has been moved only by Anti-Semitism to throw in his lot again with Jewdom, and he would again fall away if his Christian fellow-countrymen would receive him anew in a friendly spirit. But, in the case of most Zionists, Anti-Semitism only forced them to reflect upon their relation to the nations, and their reflection has led them to conclusions which would remain a lasting acquirement of their mind and heart, even if Anti-Semitism were to disappear completely from the world.

Be it well understood; the Zionism analyzed above is that of the educated and free Jews,—the Jewish élite. The uneducated mass, clinging to the old traditions, is Zionist without much reflection, from feeling, from instinct, from distress, and yearning. They suffer too much from the hardships of life, from the hatred of the peoples, from legal disabilities, and social outlawry; they feel that they cannot hope for any lasting amelioration of their situation so long as they must live as a powerless minority among a hostile majority. They desire to become a nation, to rejuvenate themselves by close contact with mother earth, and to become once more the masters of their destiny. This Zionist mass is still in part not quite free from mystical tendencies. It allows its Zionism to be pervaded, to a certain extent, by Messianic reminiscences, and blends it with religious emotions. They have certainly a clear idea of the aim, the reassembling of the Jewish nation, but not of the means. Still, even they have realized already the necessity of themselves making efforts, and there is a vast difference between their active readiness for organization and their spirit of sacrifice, and the pious, prayer-indulging passiveness of the purely religious Messianist.

III.

The new or political Zionism has had here and there forerunners, whose first appearance dates back to the early half of the nineteenth century.

In the beginning of the eighties terrible persecutions broke out in Russia without any apparent reason, persecutions which cost hundreds of Jews their lives, destroyed the prosperity of thousands more, and induced tens of thousands to turn their backs on the land of their birth. This calamity brutally aroused the Jews from their hundred-year-old illusions and brought them again to a sense of reality. A Russian Jew, Dr. Pinsker, at that time wrote a small pamphlet entitled, "Auto-Emancipation," which was already a prelude to the modern political Zionism, and sketched all its motives without however developing them symphonically. He, at any rate, it was who gave its watchword to the whole movement: "The Jews are no mere religious community, they are a nation. They desire again to live in their own country as a united people. Their rejuvenation must be at the same time economical, physical, intellectual, and moral."

The Jewish youth of the middle schools and universities of Russia were profoundly affected by Pinsker's arguments. They began to found national Jewish societies. A number of students who studied at foreign universities became in their new surroundings apostles of Dr. Pinsker's idea, and found adherents here and there, for the most part among the young Jews of Vienna. Others preferred action to word, example to sermon, abandoned their studies, and emigrated to Palestine in order to become peasants there,—Jewish peasants on historically Jewish soil. Deeply moved by this idealism of a peculiarly enthusiastic élite, cooler headed Jews in Russia and Germany began also to form societies in order to support from a distance the Palestine settlements of the Jewish pioneers. This took place without any combined plan and with no clear notion of the aim and the means. The societies were not conscious of the fact that they felt and acted as Zionists. They did not perceive the connection between the Jewish colonization of Palestine and the future of the whole Jewish nation. It was in their case rather an instinctive movement in which all kinds of obscure feelings are dimly discernible,—piety, archæological-historical sentimentality, charity, and pride of pedigree. At any rate, the minds of the Jews were prepared, the feeling was in the air, Jewdom was ripe for a change.

As is always the case in such historical moments, the man also appeared whose mission it was to express clearly the ideas obscurely felt by many, and to proclaim loudly the word they were waiting to hear. This man was Dr. Theodor Herzl. He published in the autumn of 1896 a concisely written booklet, "Der Judenstaat" (The Jewish State), which proclaimed, with a determination that till then had no precedent, the fact that the Jews are a people who demand for themselves all the rights of a people, and who desire to settle in a country where they can lead a free and complete political existence.

"Der Judenstaat" has become the real starting point of political Zionism,—the starting point, not the programme. Herzl's book is still the subjective work of a solitary thinker who speaks in his own name. Many details in it are literature. It is not easy to draw a sharp boundary line between the sober earnest of the social politician and the imagination of the prophetical poet. The real programme had to be a collective work which was certainly based on Herzl's book, and inspired by Herzl's visions of the future, but which rid itself of all fantastic details, and was built up solely from the elements of reality.