“D. The wants of the congregation.—The Committee will provide money for the erection of a synagogue, a Talmud Torah school, a hospital, bath and washhouses, also for the erection of a small trading mart to be managed in accordance with the regulations laid down by the officers of the colony for the necessary transactions.”
ADDENDA
I. (vol. i., p. xxviii.)
It is a thorough confusion of ideas to identify Zionists with the Nationalists, Chauvinists and Jingoes of other nations. Judaism in its ethics is more cosmopolitan than any other doctrine in the world. In teaching that all men are brethren it lays the foundation of the equality of men and races, and excludes in principle every impulse of race egotism as immoral. In Judaism is therefore contained from the beginning the suppression of national limitation and animosity. And what is founded upon Judaism must necessarily prevail in Zionism, which represents the quintessence of Judaism, with all the power of logic and tradition. But it is just upon this point that those Jews who combat Zionism make a surprising mistake. They attempt to make use of this truth in order to prove that the Jewish nationality has to disappear from this world. Here lies the fallacy. It is true that Judaism rejects the ill-natured aloofness of one nation towards another, but it is not true that Judaism strives after the suppression of national distinctions, and it even borders on the ridiculous to suppose that Judaism requires the suppression of Jewish nationality. Judaism, which recognizes all natural formations, cannot wish to annihilate or to suppress the manifoldness of the national articulation of humanity.
Apart from this all that is alive and modern has a tendency towards the creation of a national culture. All valuable literature and art bears a national character. Everything international is bare of colour and expression. What the Jews do can generally also be done by others, in a worse or better manner. What is of importance to humanity, are the special values which the Jews as such create. The downfall of a nationality which represents a state of culture would be equivalent to a lessening of the spiritual possession of humanity. Besides, the abrasion of the national leads throughout to a loosening of the self-containing of the personality. It comes from the national instinct of the individuality, and the imprint cannot be effaced without internal injury. That is why Zionism means the return to the natural character of the Jewish personality.
II. (vol. i., p. 5)
Anglo-Israelism, the theory which identifies the ancient Britons with the Israelites, was originated by Richard Brothers (1757–1829). The chief exponents of this doctrine, which became the teaching of a particular sect in England and America, were: J. Wilson, W. Carpenter, F. R. A. Glover, Edward Hine, S. W. Greenwood, the Rev. W. H. Poole, S. Bernatto and T. R. Howlett. The Anglo-Israelites have their literature and periodical publications, in which they propagate their idea with great zeal, and in the United States and in Britain to-day amount to a very large number of believers. Without entering into a scientific analysis of this doctrine, we must admit that the fact that a certain number of English people are endeavouring to prove their Israelite origin, is possible only in a country so strongly attached to the Bible, including the Old Testament, as England. Other people would shrink from the mere idea of being mixed up, even in the remotest degree, with Israelites. Even Jewish assimilationists are inclined to accept any extravagant hypothesis tending to prove that the present Jews are not of pure Jewish or Semitic origin.
III. (vol. i., p. 100
The anonymous author of A Treatise of the Future Restoration of the Jews and Israelites to their Own Land, etc. Addressed to the Jews. (London, 1746), defended the idea without any allusion to conversion, in a Jewish spirit, though he was evidently a non-Jew. He gave many interesting descriptions of Palestine.