“Neanmoins ils ne peuvent s’empêcher, en rappelant ici les actes emanes de Sa Majesté la Sultan dont l’article 9 du traité du 30 mars, 1856, a constate la haute valeur,” etc. (Recueil des Traités de la Porte Ottoman, 1884, T. 6, p. 45).
IX. (vol. i., p. 160)
It is noteworthy that Palestinian rabbis recognized the activity of the English Consul. James Finn was, indeed, an English pioneer of the idea of the colonization of Palestine and of England’s protection of Palestinian Jews. He was appointed Consul before the death of Bishop Alexander (who was a converted Jew and the first Bishop appointed by the English Government in Jerusalem), in 1848, and the chief reason for his appointment was his known love of the Jewish cause. He was at the time a member of the London Society’s Committee, had published an interesting and learned work on the History of the Spanish Jews, as well as a book upon the Chinese Jews, had devoted himself with great zeal and rare success to the study of Hebrew, which he spoke and wrote with fluency, and was considered on this account to be particularly well qualified for the post of Consul at Jerusalem (another proof of the great appreciation of the National Jewish character of Palestine on the part of the British Government at that time). Finn went out as a devoted friend to the Jewish cause, and as such he proved himself. Though an ardent Christian, he won the sympathy of the most orthodox Jerusalem rabbis, and their moral support for the colonization of Palestine. He was the son-in-law of Alexander McCaul, a distinguished Christian Hebraist who devoted the greater part of his active life to missionary work among the Jews. When the Bishopric of Jerusalem was established in 1842, under the joint protection of the Queen of England and the King of Prussia, McCaul was the first to be offered the See.
“By desire of the King of Prussia, and with the hearty concurrence of the heads of the Church, the bishopric in Jerusalem was tendered to Dr. McCaul, the worthiest, perhaps, of all the Gentiles for that high honour. He demanded, however, but short time for deliberation and refusal, declaring his firm belief that the Episcopate of St. James was reserved, in the providence of God, for the brethren of the apostle according to the flesh.”[¹] Bishop Alexander was thereupon offered and accepted the trust.
[¹] Jewish Intelligence, June, 1842, p. 207.
X. (vol. i., p. 194)
Zionism is not merely an economic, but also, and perhaps primarily, a spiritual movement. The Jewish people must be able to live in accordance with the requirements of its soul in Palestine. Economically it could perhaps live equally well elsewhere, but spiritually only in its own historical and actual home. No people on earth have so highly valued the spiritual as the Jews. The ever-recurring motif of the Thora (the Law) is the most striking proof of this conception. The spiritual capacity of a people is not its all, but certainly its highest possession. For this constituent complements all other possessions and ennobles every other interest. Traditions are of high standing, but ignorance and superstition cause otherwise good and great traditions to become forces which, instead of working for good, only interfere as disturbing, thwarting and perplexing elements in the activities of life.
“The ignorant cannot be pious” was a good old saying of the ancients, but of the impious learned ones, on the contrary, the saying was: “May they but cherish the Law, for the light of the Law will turn them towards the good.” Man must not, of course, regard learning as the goal, but without knowledge his life and existence are blind; only in the light of cognition can the traditions of a people assume the best possible form. Historical reminiscences are of the greatest importance for the consciousness of the people, but even they shrink into pitiful narrowness if the breadth of outlook upon life be wanting. In any case the fundamentally good is only sanctified when the pursuit of learning has widened the horizon of everything human, and has taught the art of building up with the best materials out of the past in harmony with the present. This is the universal function of learning, and in comparison with this sphere of action all other superficial functions sink into mere activities which only acquire value through learning.
This fundamental idea, upon which the whole of Judaism is based, may be illustrated from another aspect. When the Seventy Elders had translated the Pentateuch into Greek, which was the most cultured language of Antiquity, the learned ones complained and even went so far as to assert in a paradoxical sentence: “The day on which this happened is like unto the days of woe at the time of the destruction of the Temple.” We have only succeeded by degrees in grasping the deep truth of this sentence. Translation, generalization, localization may be necessary in the Dispersion. But one must not be deceived: only that which is written in the original tongue of the people is genuinely national. The Law of the Jewish nation can only be preserved in all its originality in the language of that nation.
That the Shechinah (the glory of God) should languish in exile, that the Thora should have to share the hard fate of its bearers, condemned to wander from place to place in foreign lands, seemed to many a mystical idea. But, in reality, this idea is but an expression of the conscious need or longing for the old home. There is not the slightest trace of mysticism in this: it is a clear and illuminating thought. Learning must, in order to be disseminated and perpetuated among the successive generations, have some kind of institution available for the purpose of an adequate interchange of ideas. For the purposes of the formation of scientific, professional classes, for the development of an organized system of education, for the vitalization of the language, for the purpose of entering into relation with natural surroundings, it is necessary to presume a whole series of cultural precedents, which would probably be for the greater part of a practical nature. Not until these conditions have been created will national Jewish culture, ancient but ever young, appear in all its glory. In the Dispersion there are, unfortunately, but a few who are able, through the power of intuition, to realize the sublimity and depth of a chapter from the Hebrew prophetic scriptures. They have preserved the Jewish spirit, partly through atavism, and partly through tradition and long study. But no outsider can experience the same feeling towards the Hebrew bible as a Palestinian Jew. No one else either can rightly understand a “Mishna” of the “Seder Z’raïm,” the part which treats of the Palestinian flora, in spite of the most ingenious commentaries. In the Ghetto, they only extract from the Thora that for which the Ghetto possesses understanding—the disputations concerning business (Dine momonoth) or the Dietary Laws, and the laws concerning the sabbath and the festivals. The Thora in its entirety can only be revived in Palestine. The Dispersion only possesses fragments of an ancient national culture, which are, in every country, differently valued, and vague remembrances and surmises of the nature of a national feeling.