Zionism and Anti-Semitism

by Max Simon Nordau; Gustav Gottheil

The first congress did not separate without having created a lasting organization. It elected a "Great Committee of Action," in which all countries with a somewhat considerable Jewish population are represented, and which in its turn selected a smaller "permanent committee" with its headquarters in Vienna, under the presidency of Dr. Herzl. It was followed in the three ensuing years by three further congresses, in 1898 and 1899, again in Basel, and in 1900 in London. The number of the delegates rose in 1898 to two hundred and eighty, in 1899 to three hundred and seventy, and in 1900 to four hundred and twenty. At every succeeding congress the regulations for election were more strictly enforced, the mandates more closely examined, and at the present moment the congress, which has become a permanent institution of the Zionist Jewdom, and which met for the fifth time in December, 1901, again in Basel, can with justice claim to be the real representative of one hundred and eighty thousand electors.

He who desires to know what the Jews who have been represented at the congress have done up to the present time to realize the programme of Zionism drawn up by the first congress, has only to compare the various points of this programme with the facts we are going to record.

"(1.) The well-regulated promotion of the settlement of Palestine by Jewish agriculturists, artisans, and manufacturers."

Zionism rejects on principle all colonization on a small scale, and the idea of "sneaking" into Palestine. The Zionists have therefore devoted themselves preëminently to a zealous and tireless advocacy of the uniting of the already existing Jewish colonies in Palestine with those who until now have given them their aid and who of late have inclined towards the withdrawal of their support from them. The Zionists have also prepared the way for founding factories in the Holy Land, which will give employment to the Jewish workmen there, and have assured, by according a yearly subvention, the future existence of the model Hebraic school in Jaffa, which was about to close its doors for want of funds. They take care that the existing and promising beginnings of a Jewish colonization shall be looked after and maintained till the movement will be possible on a large scale.

"(2.) The organization and knitting together of the whole Jewish community by the means of proper local and general institutions in accordance with the law of the different countries."

The Zionist Jewish community is at present organized in both hemispheres in about nine hundred societies, which display great activity. In the matter of organization covering the whole of Jewdom, Zionism possesses national federations of its societies,—the "great" and the "smaller committee of action," and the congress which maintains a permanent secretarial office in Vienna. The cost of this apparatus is covered by the voluntary yearly offerings of the Zionists, to which offerings the name of the old Jewish coinage is applied, and which accordingly are known as "shekels,"—their amount being in America forty cents, and in Western lands a unit of the coinage (one mark, one franc, one shilling, etc.). The payment of the shekel gives the right of vote for the congress. Zionism possesses its official organ, "Die Welt," published in German in Vienna. Its ideas are further set forth in about forty other periodicals in the Hebrew, German, Russian, Polish, Italian, English, French, and Roumanian languages, and in the Jewish-German and Judeo-Spanish jargons. Its American organ is the periodical, "The Maccabæan." It has founded numerous schools, Toynbee Halls, and educational institutes, and has recently begun to acquire a share in the administration of the Jewish communities, in order to devote their resources, more than has heretofore been the case with the anti-national or unthinking leaders, to the promoting of national Jewish instruction, education, and culture.

"(3.) Strengthening of the Jewish self-respect and national consciousness."

The Zionist societies use every effort that the members and the Jewish masses in general may know the history of their nation, and become acquainted with the sacred and profane literature in the Hebrew tongue. They teach the Jews to hold their heads high, to be proud of their descent, and to despise the Anti-Semitic lies, calumnies, and insults. They care, in the measure of their strength, for the amelioration of the hygiene of the Jewish proletariat, for its economic improvement by means of association and solidarity, for well-directed education of children, and for the instruction of the women. They give the young students a goal for their efforts and an ideal in life. They preach the duty of leading a faultless, spiritual life, the rejection of a crude materialism, into which the assimilation Jews, on account of the want of a worthy ideal, are only too apt to sink, and strict self-control in word and deed. They found athletic societies in order to promote the long neglected physical development of the rising generation. They give a new impulse to the celebration of Jewish historical feasts and memorial days. In many instances they even make themselves outwardly conspicuous by wearing insignia. The Zionist regards it as contemptible to conceal his nationality. He wishes to be recognized as a Jew, and as he always behaves himself in a natural, unaffected way, plays no comedy of imitation, wishes to deceive nobody about his extraction and identity, intrudes upon no one under a false flag, his relations to his Christian neighbors and fellow-countrymen are sounder, truer, more frank and dignified than those of the assimilation Jew, who makes painful and useless efforts, which disgust every Christian possessing a modicum of good taste, to hide the fact that he is a Jew.

"(4.) Preparatory steps to obtain the consent of the governments necessary to achieve the aims of Zionism."

Several of the governments whose opinion will eventually be decisive in the matter have been, by means of memorials, reliably informed of the aims of Zionism; and there has been no want of very important encouragements and promising expressions of sympathy with its tendencies.