BASING its structure on the formulas of the prophets,[1] who proclaimed that polity was indispensable for effecting the true mission of Israel—for the realization of the religious, social, or ethical ideal; conceiving Israel, as did Reform Judaism, to be its own Messiah, not fated, however, to remain a minutely scattered leaven among nations who condemned or destroyed it, but destined according to the prophetic promise to re-establish itself upon Zion;[2] convinced that a true assimilating of the fruits of emancipation in contradistinction to an imitating of Gentile culture could only be effected by an emancipation from within, by an auto-emancipation;[3] the vision of a Jewish State grew into outline. To the consummation of the picture, a wealth of economic, scientific, and cultural inspiration has been devoted. Herzl and his predecessors selected the stone which had been rejected by the philanthropists and the earnest, but mistaken, builders of Reform Judaism in their efforts to create a fit habitation for the European Jew; and lo! it has become the chief corner-stone.
To assure the foundation, to justify the conception of a Jewish State, a number of powerful arguments other than above indicated have been brought to bear. The problem of race was attacked,[4] and a consequent demolition of the basis of Reform Judaism undertaken, whereby the racial identity of the Jew became demonstrated and a comparative racial purity established. In turn, the claim of the anti-Semites that the Jewish race indeed existed, but to the peril of Western civilization, received scientific annihilation. At the most, the Aryan race was proclaimed a myth and Teutonic superiority a lie;[5] at the least, a justification of the Jewish race was achieved upon its contribution to civilization: in metaphysics, of the vision of reality in flux; in morals, the conception of the value of the individual; in religion, the conception of Jehovah as a moral-arbiter; in culture, a literature of basic inspiration for the western world.[6]
The Moral Right of the Jewish Race to Survival
THAT this race, definable in identity and valuable in content, is being either crushed by force or dissipated by freedom, raises on one hand the next question for creative Zionism, and constitutes on the other the problem which Zionism in its aspect as a "solution" assails. The question: Has this race, facing destruction, a moral right to survival? is in the instinctive, Darwinian sense unnecessary. Every race has a right to survive if it can prove its right by surviving; however, like most evolutionary thinking, this is tautological. Nevertheless, an affirmative answer[7] has been advanced, based on the conception of values recognized since Aristotle; whereby was demonstrated the intrinsic value of the Jews as witnessed by their virility and capacity for an intelligent enjoyment of life, which their social customs, religious ideals, and cultural ethos have created for them, and which have won for them the title "Am Olam," the perpetual people; and their instrumental value in the preservation and enrichment of life for the Western world at large, as witnessed by their contributions to civilization outlined above.
To the final question: How may the destruction facing a race, worth the saving, be averted? the Zionists, as already shown, answer: Let us establish a Jewish State. It now remains to explain how this answer can be made effective.
The Program of the First Zionist Congress
ALTHOUGH Herzl, like Pinsker, at first was indifferent as to the location of the State, Palestine was decided upon at the First Zionist Congress for the following practical reasons:[8]
1. Palestine is, of inhabitable and sufficiently uninhabited lands, the nearest to Russia and Roumania, where the greatest number of Jews are undergoing physical suffering.
2. It is not ruled by Christians, and penal discriminatory laws against Jews are not there in force.