His life and experiences—His Auto-emancipation—The old idea of self-help in Jewish teaching—Individual and national self-help—The revival of an old doctrine—An analysis of Auto-emancipation—The results of Pinsker’s idea.
Leo Pinsker (1821–1891) was the son of the well-known Jewish scholar Simchah Pinsker (1801–1864), the celebrated author of Lekute Kadmonioth (Wien, 1860), an important work on the history of the Karaites, and of other valuable Hebrew works. Pinsker was educated at Odessa, where he studied law at the local Richelieu Lyceum. Law, however, was not to his liking, and he went to Moscow, where he studied medicine and took the degree of M.D. He returned to Odessa and took up practice as a medical man. Shortly afterwards the Crimean War came to an end, and Odessa was full of soldiers suffering from typhoid fever. There was danger of an epidemic. Pinsker gave up his practice and devoted himself entirely to the stricken soldiers. This self-sacrifice was not overlooked by the higher officials, who brought it to the notice of the Czar Alexander II. (1818–1881), and Pinsker received a generous reward. Pinsker, besides being an authority on medical matters, was one of the editors of the Russian-Jewish paper Zion. Educated as he had been in the dark days of the reign of Nicholas I. (1796–1855), and witnessing the somewhat improved conditions brought about for the Jews by the accession of Alexander II., Pinsker believed for a time in emancipation and amalgamation; but after long years of observation and experience he came to take a different view. He was an eye-witness of the anti-Jewish riots in 1859, 1871, and 1881; and in the latter year, he issued a pamphlet in German, under the nom de plume “Ein Russischer Jude,” in which he most forcibly expresses the conclusions he had arrived at. It was entitled “Auto-emancipation,” of which an English version appeared in London some ten years later.[¹] Self-emancipation was Pinsker’s great idea. Not that the idea did not exist before he preached it: as a matter of fact it is as old as Judaism. But Pinsker started his career as a Jewish nationalist by giving renewed expression to this idea of self-help, and from that moment he kept it in the very forefront of his aspirations and activities. Electricity is a comparatively recent discovery; it is only within the last half-century that it has come to be fully understood and harnessed for man’s purposes. But this mysterious power is not of recent birth; although unknown to man it was latent in the universe from the beginning. In the fullness of time inquiring minds discovered it and gave us our modern triumphs of power, of lighting and of communication. The analogy, though weak, may convey to us in a certain degree what happened in the case of the idea of self-help. It had permeated the Jewish nation from the beginning of the ages. The importance of free will and independent action had been a leading Jewish principle from time immemorial. But it needed the “Lovers of Zion” and the advent of a great interpreter to bring home the lesson to the Jewish people.
[¹] Self-Emancipation! The only Solution of the Jewish Question. Translated from the anonymous German original, by Albert A. L. Finkenstein.... London, E. W. Rabbinowicz, Printer and Publisher, 8 Little Alie St., E., 1891 (8vo. 51 pp. [I. S.])
“Dedicated to Lieutenant-Colonel A. Goldsmid as a token of esteem for his zealous championship of Palestine colonisation.”
Self-help implies the duty of the nation to be on its guard and to use its own endeavours to secure its position. It implies the moral obligation of self-defence and of self-salvation by one’s own efforts and sacrifices, without the assistance and protection of others. The principle comes to the surface over and over again in the Bible, where we catch glimpses of a doctrine that is to be fully worked out only in the development of a national movement. The author of the Book of Joshua strikes the keynote of Israel’s duties when he says:—
“Be strong and of good courage;...” (Joshua i. 6).
“Only be strong and very courageous, ...” (Ibid. 7).
Phrases similar to those in Deuteronomy xxxi. 6, 7, 23. Joshua obeyed the precept, and abundantly realized the promise with which it was accompanied. The historical sections of the Bible are filled with this idea—every deliverance is attributed directly to the moral integrity of the Jew and to the help of his God. It is remarkable how large a place exhortations to courage hold in the Bible; we cannot easily count the “fear nots” of the Scriptures. And these are not merely soothing words to calm, they are quickening words, calling to conflict and to victory. This is the lesson which the individual as well as the nation had to learn. In the light of it may be read the whole history of Israel. The course of ages reveals a thousand ways in which Israel vainly tries to remedy the disaster into which it has brought itself by relying on the aid of others. Now it was Egypt (Isaiah xxx. 2, xxxvi. 6), now Assyria (2 Kings xvi. 7), now their own kings and nobles. When threatened by the Syrians, they made treaties with the Assyrians; when threatened by the Assyrians, they tried to strengthen themselves by the support of Egypt. The proved uselessness of reliance on others brought the nation at last to recognize the virtue of entire and obedient trust in God.
“Trust in the Lord with all thy heart,...” (Prov. iii. 5),
was a protest against self-sufficiency, self-conceit and vanity, and also against relying on others. Entire reliance upon God, implied in the words “with all thy heart,” is here appropriately placed at the head of a series of admonitions relating especially to God and man’s relations with him, inasmuch as such confidence or trust is a fundamental principle of all religion. The admonition does not mean that men are not to use their own understanding, i.e. to make plans and to employ legitimate means in the pursuit of their ends; but that, when they use it, they are to depend upon God and his directing and overruling providence. For there is a true and a false self-reliance: that which forgets God is ignorant and impious; that which recognizes Him as the source of all true intelligence is genuine and blessed.