CONTEMPORARY with the unsuccessful attempt at clearing up the Jewish position in western Europe, palliative measures were undertaken to solve the problem in eastern Europe. In 1860 the Alliance Israelite Universelle was founded at Paris with the following purposes in chief:[26]
1. To work everywhere for the emancipation and moral progress of the Jew.
2. To give effectual support to those who are suffering persecution because they are Jews.
The Alliance began by distributing pamphlets and calling the attention of western governments to eastern injustice; it gradually, however, undertook practical work. Influenced by Rabbi Kalischer, religious enthusiast, a farm school (Mikveh Israel) was established at Jaffa; and after the Russian persecutions of 1880-82, active colonization for the relief of refugees became the chief work, in which the Alliance received substantial aid from Baron de Rothschild. Meanwhile Baron de Hirsch, another philanthropist of international proportions, dedicated millions to the foundation of colonies in Argentine and Palestine. In the latter place the Hirsch activities were incorporated under the title of the Jewish Colonization Association ("IKA", 1891), working in harmony of aim with the Alliance and with still a third movement—one more of the people—styled Chovevei-Zion (Lovers of Zion). The only activities of the Chovevei-Zion, a general term attached to small and ardent semi-affiliated societies throughout Europe and America, with which we are here concerned are the philanthropic; and their services in this respect were haphazard and negligible.[27]
To cast up briefly the sum of practical work accomplished by 1898: 94 schools in Asia and Africa,[28] and 25 colonies in Palestine supporting 5,000 Jews.[29] Such philanthropy is to be considered an attempt, however valiant and noble, to empty the sea with a pail—with a leaking pail.
Thus, upon a review of the situation, three alternatives present themselves: (1) Maintenance of the status quo with its dull round of persecution and degradation on one hand, and the soul-destroying life in the Fool's Paradise of Reform Judaism on the other; (2) Amalgamation with the surrounding peoples—a grim race-suicide; (3) Re-establishment of a national center where, perhaps not the entire people, but a remnant can be saved.
(To be concluded)
AS Greece stands for art and Rome stands for law and order, so Judaea stands for morality, and so it occupies an exalted position in history. The Menorah Society comes to the University with a challenge and defies us to ignore at our peril that which Judaism has contributed to civilization and which we have derived from it. We have derived our own religion from it, and that spirit of Puritanism which was so closely connected with the settlement of the new world.—From an Address before the Cornell Menorah Society by President Jacob Gould Schurman of Cornell University.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Psalm 79.