Hence the Jewish task became a double one: the Jews in every country, while participating to the full in the life of their environment—for the return to the Ghetto was neither desirable nor possible—had to endeavor to secure a maximum of elbowroom for the development of their own section of Jewry, while as part of universal Israel they had to keep up their contact with the Jews throughout the world and labor with them for the realization of the common Jewish hope, that of a spiritual center in the historic land of Judaism. Diaspora without Palestine was impossible, because without the refreshing breath of a healthy Jewish life in Palestine it was bound to wither and dry up. Palestine without the Diaspora was equally impossible, because it lacked the backing of the people as a whole, and was in danger of becoming a petty and obscure corner in the vast expanse of the Jewish Dispersion, a sort of Jewish Nigeria.
This synthesis was not a pale cast of thought, the flimsy product of an imaginative brain. It had its prototype in the actual facts of history. For during several centuries preceding the dissolution of the Jewish state, Palestine was the spiritual center of Judaism, in the sense just indicated. The Jews outside of Palestine were superior, not only in numbers, but also in wealth and influence, to those of Palestine. The Jews of Egypt, and the same applies to other countries of that period, were closely associated with the cultural and material aspirations of their environment. Philo was one of the most illustrious representatives of the Hellenic culture of his age; these Diaspora Jews even found it necessary to translate the Holy Writings into Greek. Yet they were, at the same time, loyal to Palestine. They paid their Shekel, they made their annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem, and looked upon the Holy Land as the spiritual center of all Jewry.
The Second Issue: Religion vs. Nationalism
THE other fundamental issue on which Jewish opinion is divided is closely associated with the preceding one; it hinges on the formula Religion versus Nationalism. From its earliest beginnings down to the time of modern emancipation, Judaism represented an indissoluble combination of nationalism and religion. Though ultimately intended to appeal to the whole of humanity, Judaism was essentially a national religion. Its bearer was a national community which zealously guarded its racial purity, and its external manifestations assumed the forms of a national life. Again the Jewish people was, first and foremost, a religious nation. Its sole reason for existence was, in the belief of every one of its members, "to know the Lord" and to make Him known to others. A Jew who did not believe in the fundamentals of the Jewish creed or who did not observe the fundamentals of the Jewish ceremonial was as much of a monstrosity as the Jew who denied the common racial descent of the Jews in the past, or their common national destiny in the future.
The departure of the Jews from the Ghetto and their entrance into modern life marked a turning point also in this direction. Filled with the desire of becoming part of the nations in whose midst they lived, modern Jews were ready, and thought they were compelled, to deny the national character of Judaism. The Jews were now labelled as Germans or Frenchmen of the Mosaic persuasion, who were divided from their fellow-citizens by the purely spiritual affiliations of religious faith—the same affiliations which divided the Christian population. Here, too, Reform Judaism was quick to meet the demands of practical life. It began to chop off all the elements in Judaism which betrayed a national character, both in the domain of doctrine and of practice, though it halted half way, and down to this day still acknowledges, in flagrant contradiction with its own theory, a number of rites and ceremonies which bear an unmistakable racial imprint.
This transformation of Judaism, or rather this transformation of Jewish terminology—for, in many cases, it was merely a question of terms—was greatly stimulated by the development of nationalism in Western Europe, where the structure of the modern state excluded, or was thought to exclude, a diversity of nationalities, while the principle of religious toleration left enough room for a variety of religious beliefs. As a result, those Jews who lost their religious affiliations were bound to feel that they were outcasts in the religious community of Israel: they became either konfessionslos or, by a curious perversion of logic and conscience, became members of the dominant faith.
The Rapprochement of Religionists and Nationalists
THE thesis "Judaism as Religion" was followed by the antithesis "Judaism as Nationalism." It is interesting to observe that the antithesis came from the Jews of Eastern Europe who, in their overwhelming majority, were adherents of strict orthodoxy. Those Jews of Russia and Poland who had drifted away from their religious moorings were neither psychologically nor physically in a position to abandon Judaism: psychologically, because they were too strongly saturated with Jewish culture and Jewish associations to tear themselves away from the influence of Judaism; physically, because they were excluded from participating in the life of the environment and were forced to remain within the fold. Living as the Eastern Jews did in compact masses, they found it easier, both in theory and in practice, to emphasize the national aspect of the Jewish community. As a result, a doctrine sprang up which looked upon Jewry as an essentially racial or national entity, in which religion was merely one of the many passing phases of its historical development. If among the champions of the thesis "Religion" there were Jews who celebrated the Ninth of Ab as a holiday because it marked, in their eyes, the end of Jewry as a nation, there were, among the others, the adherents of the antithesis "Nationalism," Jews who arranged entertainments on the Day of Atonement, as a public protest against the religious character ascribed to Judaism.
Here, too, however, the synthesis was gradually paving its way, and the formula "Religion plus Nationalism" was supplanting the thesis "Judaism as Religion" and the antithesis "Judaism as Nationalism." The religionists, that is, the believers in the purely religious character of Judaism, began to realize the devastating effect of their doctrine on Jewish life and development, while the nationalists, without sacrificing their convictions—for religion, least of all sentiments, can be forced on modern men—began to appreciate the overwhelming influence of the Jewish religion as a historic factor in the life of the Jewish people, and were ready to acknowledge the difficulty and the danger of squeezing an officially nationalistic Jewry into the narrow frame of the modern Nationalstaat.
This mutual rapprochement resulted, gradually, in a tacit agreement—an agreement far more durable than a legal compact, because founded on sentiment rather than on law—which implied the recognition of Judaism as composed of Religion and Nationalism, but left sufficient room to include the two extreme types of Jews: those whose loyalty to Judaism was entirely fed from the fountain of religion, and those whose devotion to Judaism was altogether grounded in race consciousness.