[¹] Zionist Pamphlets. Second Series ... Pinsker and Political Zionism, by Achad Ha’am (Translated by Leon Simon), London, 1916, p. 7.
[²] Ibid., p. 8.
“We cannot know whether that great day will ever arrive when all mankind will live in brotherhood and concord, and national barriers will no longer exist; but even at the best, thousands of years must elapse before that Messianic age. Meanwhile nations live side by side in a state of relative peace, which is based chiefly on the fundamental equality between them.... But it is different with the people of Israel. This people is not counted among the nations, because since it was exiled from its land it has lacked the essential attributes of nationality, by which one nation is distinguished from another.... True, we have not ceased even in the lands of our exile to be spiritually a distinct nation; but this spiritual nationality, so far from giving us the status of a nation in the eyes of the other nations, is the very cause of their hatred for us as a people. Men are always terrified by a disembodied spirit, a soul wandering about with no physical covering; and terror breeds hatred. This is a form of psychic disease which we are powerless to cure. In all ages men have feared all kinds of ghosts which their imaginations have seen; and Israel appears to them as a ghost—but a ghost which they see with their very eyes, not merely in fancy. Thus the hatred of the nations for Jewish nationality is a psychic disease of the kind known as ‘demonopathy’; and having been transmitted from generation to generation for some two thousand years, it has by now become so deep-rooted that it can no longer be eradicated.”[¹]
[¹] Ibid., pp. 8–9.
The great value of Pinsker’s doctrine does not lie in the fact of its originality in literature. Original to him—he undoubtedly came to his conclusion by his own reflection—it was not a discovery in the usual sense of this word: views of this kind had been expressed before him. Neither does its great value lie in its possessing the indisputable character of a scientific axiom. It may be said that although the Jews are perhaps the most perfect example of a spiritual existence in dispersion, still they are not quite unique in that respect. Other disinherited nations have existed more or less spiritually for many centuries in a degraded state of national homelessness, “lacking the essential attributes of nationality,” dispersed or dependent on other nations, and yet have not produced, even in a smaller degree, that fear which is evoked by a “disembodied spirit.” It may also be urged that the Jews were hated and branded by all sorts of calumnies and malicious accusations [Apion (fl. 15–54 c.e.), Tacitus (55?–post 117 c.e.)], mainly on account of their distinctiveness, their isolation, their different views and customs, and the inveterate prejudices of others—even when they had a land of their own. And although they may, and probably will, meet with the sympathy of some nations, which are not entirely blinded by prejudice, and whose interests may not clash with theirs, if they succeed in establishing their own home, still the supposition that they will no longer be hated by others, plausible though it may be, cannot claim any scientific certainty. It must be remembered that, apart from “demonophobia,” which is undoubtedly an important motive, hatred of the Jews is continually stimulated by a deep-rooted religious fanaticism, by economic competition and jealousy, by racial prejudice, and that it is rather a mixtum compositum of causes, conditions, passions, and interests too numerous to be destroyed by the removal of a few of them, and perhaps too various to be focussed in any single formula.
But that is not the main point. The psychology of anti-Semitism, as Pinsker formulated it, may be from a scientific point of view absolutely true, or it may be open to some criticism: the finest and most original achievement of Pinsker is rather that he was one of the first Russian Jews to treat the Jewish problem as a whole, and to treat it scientifically, while others deal only with fragments of it, and always in an apologetic spirit. The new synthesis, the new line of thought, foreshadowed by great minds in the past, but now fully disengaged and standing clearly revealed as the beacon-light of the future, was, to our mind, not his formulation of the causes of the problem, but his formulation of the programme—self-emancipation. Perez Smolenskin had voiced the demand of the Jewish conscience to maintain its historic tradition, and its condemnation of all that spirit of assimilation that betrays it with new formulas or deliberately denies it. Superior to Pinsker’s in being independent of the way in which the Jewish people is treated by others—to Smolenskin the fact of anti-Semitism was not one of fundamental importance—his message, eloquent as it was, suffered from being expressed in many different books, mixed up with other subjects, and confined to Hebrew readers, and thus cannot be compared with Pinsker’s concise and definite teaching. There were, however, many imperfections in that teaching. “Our great misfortune is that we do not form a nation—we are merely Jews.... And where shall we find this national consciousness?”[¹] How different Smolenskin and others, who spoke from a secure tower of faith! “When he wrote his pamphlet Pinsker did not yet regard our historic land as the only possible home of refuge; on the contrary, he feared that our ingrained love for Palestine might give us a bias and induce us to choose that country without paying regard to its political, economic and other conditions, which perhaps might be unfavourable. For this reason he warns us emphatically not to be guided by sentiment in this matter, but to leave the question of territory to a commission of experts.”[²] He evidently saw in Palestine no more than a fraction of Asiatic earth, peopled by a certain number of inhabitants, while Smolenskin, David Gordon, and many others looked on it as the sanctuary of the nation, the historic centre, whence came the Jewish message to men, and the Jewish initiative in the world. Pinsker, like many others after him, had not yet realized at that time that one’s country is not merely a territory. Territory is only its basis; country is the idea that rises on that basis, the thought of a common history that draws together all the sons of that territory. But in spite of all these imperfections, Pinsker’s pamphlet necessarily led to faith in a national revival and to Palestine—not because of its arguments, but because it was a wonderful human document. Earnest, true, without a trace of affectation, Pinsker’s appeal bore the stamp of great sincerity, and if there was in his pamphlet some of the spirit of the prophets,[³] this was essentially in his cry for self-help, in his warnings not to trust in others, in his appeal to national dignity and energy. To superficial minds, the idea of this modern scientist unconsciously re-echoing the warnings of the prophets not to trust in Egypt or in Assyria may seem exaggerated, but the apparently far-fetched comparison is absolutely sane, for it is based on the sanest of all conceptions—the unity of the Jewish national idea throughout hundreds of generations.
[¹] Ibid., p. 19.
[²] Ibid., p. 21.
[³] Ibid., p. 21.
“He came to take part in the work of the Chovevé Zion.... He understood perfectly well that their work was very far removed from the great project of which he dreamt ... but when he saw a small group of men, with insignificant means, putting forth every possible effort to carry out a national project, small and poor though it was in comparison with his own ideal, Pinsker could not help lending a hand to those who were engaged in this work, seeing in them the nucleus of an organization, and the small beginning of the national resolution.”[¹] He encouraged and supported the work of the Chovevé Zion (Lovers of Zion) as the first President of the Odessa Committee, and paved the way for modern Zionism. He died at Odessa, his native town, at the age of sixty-nine, on the 21st of December, 1891.