By those who do not understand it the Jewish national idea is reproached with constituting an antithesis to the idea of the State and of citizenship on the one hand, and to the spiritual and the Torah on the other. This reproach has no foundation: Jewish nationality cannot find expression in political citizenship in the Diaspora, simply because it lies outside that sphere. On the other hand, from the point of view of the inner, spiritual strength of Jewry, the sense of nationality is a source of vitality, and produces a fusion which transcends all parties. It is folly to regard it as a degradation of the spiritual character of Judaism.
Those who were unable to comprehend this distinction, and could not or would not recognize the true nobility of their Jewish nationality, were impelled by a desire to destroy the distinctive characteristics which recalled their origin. They wished to submerge their nationality, glorious in tradition and history, illustrious in its record of heroism, venerable in its antiquity, holy by the inspiration of religion. They failed to see that their people’s history abounded in events and incidents sufficient not only to stamp a nation as glorious, but to confer upon themselves, as men and as citizens in the countries of their birth, greater dignity, more native worth and integrity of purpose. They forgot that assimilation involved the sacrifice of a glorious historical tradition, of a living national sentiment, and, worst of all, of their national genius. However, the pursuit of assimilation did not always extend to a desire for total absorption; its effect was to weaken rather than to destroy.
The attitude of assimilation was not adopted in its fulness by the Jews in England. This was due to the influence of the English nation. Jews in England could not fail to see the attachment of Englishmen to time-honoured political observances, sometimes meaningless in themselves, yet full of significance through their symbolism or associations; that strong under-current of traditional feeling which, though held in check by the swifter stream of progress, manifests its presence and power in a dignified reverence for the past. With such fellow-countrymen as the British people, in a land whose greatness is built on the past, on tradition, on the Bible, the Jews had no need to be ashamed of pointing to their own traditions, of dwelling upon their own history and the glory of their own past. The Jews, whose history is an epic, had no need to slur over that chapter of the poem whose scenes are laid in the Holy Land. They knew that the ancient glory of their annals shone brightly on those sacred shores. They knew that that holy soil had been trodden by the prophets, the poets, and the warriors of their race, and that there they had first impressed themselves on their age and on the ages which were to follow. They knew that amid the most splendid states of antiquity or of the modern world no land had produced such brilliant examples of valour, wisdom and virtue; that no land had ever rendered more wonderful services to the world than this Holy Land of theirs; that no land had ever had so great a past. And though the future is wrapped in darkness, national hope sees a glimmer of promise even through the veil of mist.
English Jews understood, then, that the relationship of the Jewish people to the Holy Land was a tie of a peculiar character. They understood that in ordinary circumstances the connection between an exiled people and its land would probably have been severed long ago. It could hardly have resisted the influences that had been at work to bring about its dissolution. Everybody knows of numerous instances of such dissolution recorded in history. When a people, or a section of a people, leaves the country which was the cradle of its nationality to live in a distant clime, under the ægis of new institutions, the link that bound it to the ancient soil loosens and gives way in course of time and by force of events. At first old associations assert themselves. Familiar names are resumed on the unfamiliar shore. The followers of Cadmus (fl. 1493 b.c.e.) planted a new Thebes in the land to which they migrated. The Pilgrim Fathers raised a new Plymouth on the shore which the Mayflower touched at the end of its outward voyage from the Plymouth of the motherland. For long years the American exile called the old country his home. But even this feeling scarcely survives the changes of which we are witnesses. Generations pass by. New institutions take root: new feelings prevail, they ripen and burst into fruit. There is no revolution more complete and more enduring than that caused by the transplanting of a nation. But with the Jews and the land of their lost glory the case is wholly different. Elements of a higher character than those of an ordinary historical nature enter into consideration. The Holy Land is the country of their past greatness, present longings and future hopes. It is a bridge which links the past with the future through the span of the present. It is still a land of dreams, but it is to become a land of wakeful activity, it is to be stirred to new life and progress. To carry out such objects combined, sustained and intelligent action is required. How could English Jews, living amongst the greatest colonizing nation in the world, overlook this great necessity?
No other country under the sun can unite all the advantages which the restored home of the Hebrews will present, can attract the Jewish people, with the knowledge which it has gained of the ways of the world and its pre-eminence in commerce, can become the home of a Commonwealth which will restore its national greatness.
From a purely practical point of view, again, there is no reason why property in the land of Israel should not offer as safe an investment as any other. Surely it is within the realm of probability that those who regard the idea as the ridiculous notion of a mad enthusiast, or at least their children after them, may find it to their interest to labour for the restoration of Palestine as the surest method of placing their worldly possessions in safety, even without taking into consideration the benefits which would accrue to the Jews as a religious community, through their obtaining once more a home for the practice of their laws, a spot where the ark of the covenant may rest without being exposed to malevolence and prejudice.
These ideas, in fact, were prevalent among English Jews. There were some adherents of Assimilation, but they were insignificant both in numbers and in influence. It is note-worthy that the idea preached by modern Zionism in the first years of the movement, namely, that the Jewish tragedy is due to the fact that the Jews are everywhere in a minority, and that therefore the only solution of the problem is to make them a majority in their own country, was expressed in England by a Jewish publicist in 1863 (Appendix lxvi).
CHAPTER XXXV.
COLONIZATION AND RESTORATION
Henry Wentworth Monk—Zionism in France—Jean Henri Dunant’s “Le Renouvellement de l’Orient”—Napoleon III.—Bishop Stephen Watson—“L’Orient” in Brussels.