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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/24186-8.txt b/24186-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b33f32f --- /dev/null +++ b/24186-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1560 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Zionism and Anti-Semitism, by +Max Simon Nordau and Gustav Gottheil + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Zionism and Anti-Semitism + Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil + +Author: Max Simon Nordau + Gustav Gottheil + +Release Date: January 7, 2008 [EBook #24186] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ZIONISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM *** + + + + +Produced by Jeannie Howse, Bryan Ness and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +book was produced from scanned images of public domain +material from the Google Print project.) + + + + + + + + + +ZIONISM + +_and_ + +ANTI-SEMITISM + + + + +_Zionism_ + +AND + +_Anti-Semitism_ + + + +BY + +MAX NORDAU + + +AND + +GUSTAV GOTTHEIL + + + +NEW YORK +FOX, DUFFIELD & COMPANY +1905 + + + + +_Copyright 1902_ +_FREDERICK A. RICHARDSON_ + +_Copyright 1903_ +_SCOTT-THAW COMPANY_ + +_Copyright 1905_ +_By FOX, DUFFIELD & COMPANY_ + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + +ZIONISM. _By Max Nordau_ 9 + +ANTI-SEMITISM IN EUROPE _By Gustav Gottheil._ 47 + + + + +ZIONISM + +BY + +MAX NORDAU + + + + +ZIONISM + + +Among the persons of the educated classes who follow with any +attention all the more important movements of the times, it would now +be difficult to find one to whom the word "Zionism" is quite unknown. +People are generally aware that it describes an idea and a movement +that in the last years has found numerous adherents among the Jews of +all countries, but especially among those of the East. Comparatively +few, however, both among the Gentiles and the Jews themselves, have a +perfectly clear notion of the aims and ways of Zionism; the Gentiles, +because they do not care sufficiently for Jewish affairs to take the +trouble to inform themselves at first hand as to the particulars; the +Jews, because they are intentionally led astray by the enemies of +Zionism, by lies and calumnies, or because even among the fervent +Zionists there are not many who have probed the whole Zionist idea to +the bottom, and are willing or able to present it in a clear and +comprehensible fashion, without exaggeration and polemical heat. + +I will endeavor to furnish readers of good faith, who are not biased, +and have no other interest than that of gaining authentic information +about a phenomenon in contemporary history, as concisely and soberly +as possible with all the facts, as they really are, not as they are +reflected in muddled brains, or distorted and falsified by +calumniators. + + +I. + +Zionism is a new word for a very old object, in so far as it merely +expresses the yearning of the Jewish people for Zion. Since the +destruction of the second temple by Titus, since the dispersion of the +Jewish nation in all countries, this people has not ceased to long +intensely, and hope fervently, for the return to the lost land of +their fathers. This yearning for, and hope in, Zion on the part of the +Jews was the concrete, I might say, the geographical, aspect of their +Messianic faith, which in its turn forms an essential part of their +religion. + +Messianism and Zionism were really, for nearly two thousand years, +identical conceptions, and without caviling and hair-splitting +interpretation, it would not be easy to make a distinction between the +prayers for the appearance of the promised Messiah, and those for the +not less promised return to the historical home,--both of which stand +side by side on every page of the Jewish liturgy. These prayers were, +until a few generations ago, meant literally by every Jew, as they +still are by the simple believing Jews. The Jews had no other idea +than that they were a people which as a punishment for its sins had +lost the land of its forefathers, which was condemned to live as +strangers in strange lands, and whose great sufferings would first +cease when it was again assembled on the consecrated soil of the Holy +Land. + +This gradually changed about the middle of the eighteenth century, +when enlightenment first began to find its way into Jewdom, in the +person of its first herald, Moses Mendelssohn, the popular +philosopher. The faith of the Jews became more lukewarm; the educated +classes, where they did not simply convert themselves to Christianism, +began to regard the doctrines of their religion in a rationalist +manner; for them the dispersion of the Jewish people was a final and +unalterable fact; they emptied the conception of the Messiah and of +Zion of every concrete meaning, and arranged for themselves a singular +doctrine, according to which the Zion promised to the Jews was to be +understood only in a spiritual sense, as the setting up of the Jewish +monotheism in the whole world, as the future triumph of Jewish ethics +over the less sublime and less noble moral teaching of the other +nations. An American rabbi reduced this conception to the striking +formula, "Our Zion is in Washington." The Mendelssohn teaching +logically developed in the first half of the nineteenth century into +the "Reform," which deliberately broke with Zionism. For the Reform +Jew, the word Zion had just as little meaning as the word dispersion. +He does not feel himself in any diaspora. He denies that there is a +Jewish people and that he is a member of it. He desires only to belong +to the people in whose midst he lives. For him Judaism is a purely +religious conception which has nothing whatever to do with +nationality. The land of his birth is his fatherland, and he will know +of no other. The idea of a return to Palestine excites him either to +indignation or to laughter. He answers it with the well-known, silly, +would-be witticism, "If the Jewish state is again set up in Palestine, +I will ask to be its ambassador in Paris." + +The thinking Jew did not fail, however, to perceive, in the course of +time, that Reform Judaism is a half measure, a compromise, which like +every compromise, contains the germ of destruction, as it cannot for +one instant resist logical criticism. Whom shall the Reform Judaism +satisfy? The believing Jew? He rejects it with the greatest +abhorrence. The unbelieving Jew? He despises it as hypocrisy and +phrase-mongering. The Jew who really desires to break with his +national past and to be absorbed by his Christian surroundings? For +that Jew, Reform Judaism does not suffice; he goes a step farther, the +step that leads to the baptismal font. Still less does it satisfy the +Jew who desires to guard Jewdom against destruction and to preserve it +as an ethnical individuality. For to him an openly expressed +abandonment of all national aspirations is synonymous with a +self-condemnation of the Jewish people to a perhaps slow, but sure, +death. Reform Judaism without Zionism, that is to say, without the +wish and the hope for a reassembling of the Jewish people, has no +future. At the best, it can only be regarded as a somewhat crooked +path that leads to Christianity. He who desires to reach that goal can +find straighter and shorter routes. + + +II. + +And so it has come about that the generations which had been under the +influence of the Mendelssohnian rhetoric and enlightenment, of reform +and assimilation, have, in the last twenty years of the nineteenth +century, been followed by a new generation which seeks to take up a +standpoint other than the traditional towards the question of Zion. +These new Jews shrug their shoulders at that twaddle which has been +the fashion among rabbis and _literati_ for the last hundred years, +and which boasts of a "Mission of Jewdom," said to consist in this, +that the Jews must live forever in dispersion among the peoples in +order to act as their teachers and models of morality, and to educate +them gradually to pure rationalism, to a general brotherhood of +mankind, and to an ideal cosmopolitanism. They declare the mission +swagger to be either presumption or foolishness. They, more modest and +more practical, demand only the right for the Jewish people to live +and to develop itself, according to its abilities, up to the natural +limits of its type. They have become convinced that this is not +possible in dispersion, as, under that condition, prejudice, hatred, +and contempt continually follow and oppress them, and either stint +their development, or force them to an ethnical mimicry which +necessarily makes of them, instead of original types with a right to +existence, mediocre or bad copies of foreign models. They therefore +work methodically with a view to rendering the Jewish people once more +a normal one, which lives on its own soil, and accomplishes all +economical, intellectual, moral, and political functions of a +civilized nation. + +The goal cannot be reached at once. It lies in a future more or less +near. It is an ideal, a desire, a hope, as the Messianic Zionism was +and is. The new Zionism, which has been called the political one, +differs, however, from the old, the religious, the Messianic one, in +this,--that it disavows all mysticism, no longer identifies itself +with Messianism, and does not expect the return to Palestine to be +brought about by a miracle, but desires to prepare the way by its own +efforts. + +The new Zionism has grown in part only out of the internal impulsions +of Judaism itself, out of the enthusiasm of modern educated Jews for +their history and martyrology, out of the awakened consciousness of +their racial qualities, out of their ambition to save the ancient +blood, in view of the farthest possible future, and to add to the +achievements of their forefathers the achievements of their posterity. + +On the other hand, Zionism is the effect of two impulses which came +from without,--first, the principle of nationality, which for half a +century ruled thought and feeling in Europe, and governed the politics +of the world; secondly, Anti-Semitism, from which the Jews of all +countries have more or less to suffer. + +The principle of nationality has awakened self-consciousness in all +the peoples; it teaches them to regard their peculiarities as +qualities, and gives them a passionate desire for independence. It +could not, therefore, pass over the educated Jews without leaving a +trace. It induced them to remember who and what they are; to feel +themselves, what they had unlearned, a people apart; and to demand for +themselves a normal national destiny. This slow and painful work of +the recovery of their national individuality was rendered easier by +the attitude of the peoples, who eliminated them from among themselves +as a foreign element, and put stress, without consideration or +courtesy, on the real and imaginary contrasts, or at least +differences, between themselves and the Jews. + +The principle of nationality has, in its exaggerations, led to +excesses. It has been led astray into Chauvinism, abased to idiotic +hatred of the foreigner, degraded to grotesque self-worship. From this +caricature of itself the Jewish nationalism is safe. The Jewish +nationalist does not suffer from self-inflation; he feels, on the +contrary, that he must make tireless efforts to render the name of Jew +a title of honor. He modestly recognizes the good qualities of other +nations, and seeks diligently to acquire them in so far as they +harmonize with his natural capacities. He knows what terrible harm +centuries of slavery or disability have done to his originally proud +and upright character, and seeks to cure it by means of intense +self-training. If, however, nationalism is on its guard against all +illusions as to itself, this is a natural phase in the process of +development from barbaric selfish individualism to free humanism and +altruism,--a phase the justification and necessity of which can only +be denied by him who has no comprehension whatever of the laws of +organic evolution, and is totally lacking in the historical sense. + +Anti-Semitism has also taught many educated Jews the way back to their +people. It has had the effect of a sharp trial which the weak cannot +stand, but from which the strong emerge stronger or more confident in +themselves. It is not correct to say that Zionism is but a "gesture of +truculence" or an act of desperation against Anti-Semitism. It is true +that more than one educated Jew has been moved only by Anti-Semitism +to throw in his lot again with Jewdom, and he would again fall away if +his Christian fellow-countrymen would receive him anew in a friendly +spirit. But, in the case of most Zionists, Anti-Semitism only forced +them to reflect upon their relation to the nations, and their +reflection has led them to conclusions which would remain a lasting +acquirement of their mind and heart, even if Anti-Semitism were to +disappear completely from the world. + +Be it well understood; the Zionism analyzed above is that of the +educated and free Jews,--the Jewish élite. The uneducated mass, +clinging to the old traditions, is Zionist without much reflection, +from feeling, from instinct, from distress, and yearning. They suffer +too much from the hardships of life, from the hatred of the peoples, +from legal disabilities, and social outlawry; they feel that they +cannot hope for any lasting amelioration of their situation so long as +they must live as a powerless minority among a hostile majority. They +desire to become a nation, to rejuvenate themselves by close contact +with mother earth, and to become once more the masters of their +destiny. This Zionist mass is still in part not quite free from +mystical tendencies. It allows its Zionism to be pervaded, to a +certain extent, by Messianic reminiscences, and blends it with +religious emotions. They have certainly a clear idea of the aim, the +reassembling of the Jewish nation, but not of the means. Still, even +they have realized already the necessity of themselves making efforts, +and there is a vast difference between their active readiness for +organization and their spirit of sacrifice, and the pious, +prayer-indulging passiveness of the purely religious Messianist. + + +III. + +The new or political Zionism has had here and there forerunners, whose +first appearance dates back to the early half of the nineteenth +century. + +In the beginning of the eighties terrible persecutions broke out in +Russia without any apparent reason, persecutions which cost hundreds +of Jews their lives, destroyed the prosperity of thousands more, and +induced tens of thousands to turn their backs on the land of their +birth. This calamity brutally aroused the Jews from their +hundred-year-old illusions and brought them again to a sense of +reality. A Russian Jew, Dr. Pinsker, at that time wrote a small +pamphlet entitled, "Auto-Emancipation," which was already a prelude to +the modern political Zionism, and sketched all its motives without +however developing them symphonically. He, at any rate, it was who +gave its watchword to the whole movement: "The Jews are no mere +religious community, they are a nation. They desire again to live in +their own country as a united people. Their rejuvenation must be at +the same time economical, physical, intellectual, and moral." + +The Jewish youth of the middle schools and universities of Russia were +profoundly affected by Pinsker's arguments. They began to found +national Jewish societies. A number of students who studied at foreign +universities became in their new surroundings apostles of Dr. Pinsker's +idea, and found adherents here and there, for the most part among the +young Jews of Vienna. Others preferred action to word, example to +sermon, abandoned their studies, and emigrated to Palestine in order to +become peasants there,--Jewish peasants on historically Jewish soil. +Deeply moved by this idealism of a peculiarly enthusiastic élite, +cooler headed Jews in Russia and Germany began also to form societies +in order to support from a distance the Palestine settlements of the +Jewish pioneers. This took place without any combined plan and with no +clear notion of the aim and the means. The societies were not +conscious of the fact that they felt and acted as Zionists. They did +not perceive the connection between the Jewish colonization of +Palestine and the future of the whole Jewish nation. It was in their +case rather an instinctive movement in which all kinds of obscure +feelings are dimly discernible,--piety, archĉological-historical +sentimentality, charity, and pride of pedigree. At any rate, the minds +of the Jews were prepared, the feeling was in the air, Jewdom was ripe +for a change. + +As is always the case in such historical moments, the man also +appeared whose mission it was to express clearly the ideas obscurely +felt by many, and to proclaim loudly the word they were waiting to +hear. This man was Dr. Theodor Herzl. He published in the autumn of +1896 a concisely written booklet, "Der Judenstaat" (The Jewish State), +which proclaimed, with a determination that till then had no +precedent, the fact that the Jews are a people who demand for +themselves all the rights of a people, and who desire to settle in a +country where they can lead a free and complete political existence. + +"Der Judenstaat" has become the real starting point of political +Zionism,--the starting point, not the programme. Herzl's book is still +the subjective work of a solitary thinker who speaks in his own name. +Many details in it are literature. It is not easy to draw a sharp +boundary line between the sober earnest of the social politician and +the imagination of the prophetical poet. The real programme had to be +a collective work which was certainly based on Herzl's book, and +inspired by Herzl's visions of the future, but which rid itself of all +fantastic details, and was built up solely from the elements of +reality. + +Herzl's book was at once greeted by tens of thousands of Jews, chiefly +the young, as an act of redemption. It was not to remain merely +printed paper, but should be transformed into a practical creation. +New societies were founded everywhere, no longer with a view of the +slow, petty settlement of Palestine by means of groups of Jews +creeping surreptitiously as it were into the country, but by the +preparation for an emigration "en masse" into the Holy Land, based on +a formal treaty with the Turkish Government, guaranteed by the Great +Powers, by which the former should accord the new settlers the right +of self-government. + +The premises of political Zionism are that there is a Jewish nation. +This is just the point denied by the assimilation Jews, and the +spiritless, unctuous, prating rabbis in their pay. Dr. Herzl saw that +the first task he had to fulfil was the organizing of a manifestation +which should bring before the world, and the Jewish people itself, in +modern, comprehensible form the fact of its national existence. He +convoked a Zionist congress, which in spite of the most furious +attacks and most unscrupulous acts of violence,--the Jewish community +of Munich where the congress was originally intended to be held +protested against its meeting in that town,--assembled for the first +time in Basel, the end of August, 1897, and consisted of two hundred +and four selected representatives of the Zionist Jews of both +hemispheres. + +The first Zionist congress solemnly proclaimed in the face of the +attentive world that the Jews are a nation, and that they do not +desire to be absorbed by other nations. It vowed to work for the +emancipation of that part of the Jewish race which is deprived of all +rights, and which is dragging out its existence in undeserved misery, +and to prepare for it a brighter future. It puts its aims on record in +a programme unanimously adopted with the greatest enthusiasm. This ran +as follows:-- + +"Zionism works to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine +guaranteed by public law. + +"For the reaching of this goal the congress proposes to adopt the +following means:-- + +"(1.) The well-regulated promotion of the settlement of Palestine by +Jewish agriculturists, artisans, and manufacturers. + +"(2.) The organization and knitting together of the whole Jewish +community by means of proper local and general institutions, in +accordance with the law of the different countries. + +"(3.) The strengthening of the Jewish self-respect and national +consciousness. + +"(4.) Preparatory steps for obtaining the consent of the governments, +which is necessary for the achievement of the aims of Zionism." + + +IV. + +The first congress did not separate without having created a lasting +organization. It elected a "Great Committee of Action," in which all +countries with a somewhat considerable Jewish population are +represented, and which in its turn selected a smaller "permanent +committee" with its headquarters in Vienna, under the presidency of +Dr. Herzl. It was followed in the three ensuing years by three +further congresses, in 1898 and 1899, again in Basel, and in 1900 in +London. The number of the delegates rose in 1898 to two hundred and +eighty, in 1899 to three hundred and seventy, and in 1900 to four +hundred and twenty. At every succeeding congress the regulations for +election were more strictly enforced, the mandates more closely +examined, and at the present moment the congress, which has become a +permanent institution of the Zionist Jewdom, and which met for the +fifth time in December, 1901, again in Basel, can with justice claim +to be the real representative of one hundred and eighty thousand +electors. + +He who desires to know what the Jews who have been represented at the +congress have done up to the present time to realize the programme of +Zionism drawn up by the first congress, has only to compare the +various points of this programme with the facts we are going to +record. + +"(1.) The well-regulated promotion of the settlement of Palestine by +Jewish agriculturists, artisans, and manufacturers." + +Zionism rejects on principle all colonization on a small scale, and +the idea of "sneaking" into Palestine. The Zionists have therefore +devoted themselves preëminently to a zealous and tireless advocacy of +the uniting of the already existing Jewish colonies in Palestine with +those who until now have given them their aid and who of late have +inclined towards the withdrawal of their support from them. The +Zionists have also prepared the way for founding factories in the Holy +Land, which will give employment to the Jewish workmen there, and have +assured, by according a yearly subvention, the future existence of the +model Hebraic school in Jaffa, which was about to close its doors for +want of funds. They take care that the existing and promising +beginnings of a Jewish colonization shall be looked after and +maintained till the movement will be possible on a large scale. + +"(2.) The organization and knitting together of the whole Jewish +community by the means of proper local and general institutions in +accordance with the law of the different countries." + +The Zionist Jewish community is at present organized in both +hemispheres in about nine hundred societies, which display great +activity. In the matter of organization covering the whole of Jewdom, +Zionism possesses national federations of its societies,--the "great" +and the "smaller committee of action," and the congress which +maintains a permanent secretarial office in Vienna. The cost of this +apparatus is covered by the voluntary yearly offerings of the +Zionists, to which offerings the name of the old Jewish coinage is +applied, and which accordingly are known as "shekels,"--their amount +being in America forty cents, and in Western lands a unit of the +coinage (one mark, one franc, one shilling, etc.). The payment of the +shekel gives the right of vote for the congress. Zionism possesses its +official organ, "Die Welt," published in German in Vienna. Its ideas +are further set forth in about forty other periodicals in the Hebrew, +German, Russian, Polish, Italian, English, French, and Roumanian +languages, and in the Jewish-German and Judeo-Spanish jargons. Its +American organ is the periodical, "The Maccabĉan." It has founded +numerous schools, Toynbee Halls, and educational institutes, and has +recently begun to acquire a share in the administration of the Jewish +communities, in order to devote their resources, more than has +heretofore been the case with the anti-national or unthinking leaders, +to the promoting of national Jewish instruction, education, and +culture. + +"(3.) Strengthening of the Jewish self-respect and national +consciousness." + +The Zionist societies use every effort that the members and the Jewish +masses in general may know the history of their nation, and become +acquainted with the sacred and profane literature in the Hebrew +tongue. They teach the Jews to hold their heads high, to be proud of +their descent, and to despise the Anti-Semitic lies, calumnies, and +insults. They care, in the measure of their strength, for the +amelioration of the hygiene of the Jewish proletariat, for its +economic improvement by means of association and solidarity, for +well-directed education of children, and for the instruction of the +women. They give the young students a goal for their efforts and an +ideal in life. They preach the duty of leading a faultless, spiritual +life, the rejection of a crude materialism, into which the +assimilation Jews, on account of the want of a worthy ideal, are only +too apt to sink, and strict self-control in word and deed. They found +athletic societies in order to promote the long neglected physical +development of the rising generation. They give a new impulse to the +celebration of Jewish historical feasts and memorial days. In many +instances they even make themselves outwardly conspicuous by wearing +insignia. The Zionist regards it as contemptible to conceal his +nationality. He wishes to be recognized as a Jew, and as he always +behaves himself in a natural, unaffected way, plays no comedy of +imitation, wishes to deceive nobody about his extraction and identity, +intrudes upon no one under a false flag, his relations to his +Christian neighbors and fellow-countrymen are sounder, truer, more +frank and dignified than those of the assimilation Jew, who makes +painful and useless efforts, which disgust every Christian possessing +a modicum of good taste, to hide the fact that he is a Jew. + +"(4.) Preparatory steps to obtain the consent of the governments +necessary to achieve the aims of Zionism." + +Several of the governments whose opinion will eventually be decisive +in the matter have been, by means of memorials, reliably informed of +the aims of Zionism; and there has been no want of very important +encouragements and promising expressions of sympathy with its +tendencies. + +For the moment the committee of action is trying to obtain from Turkey +a charter for the colonization of such land in Palestine as can be +disposed of, and which at present is lying waste, and for the opening +of its neglected resources. The exploiting of such a charter is not +possible without considerable sums of money. In order to be armed +financially for the time that Turkey will accord such a charter, the +second Zionist congress (1898) decided to found a national Jewish bank +institute, the "Jewish Colonial Trust," with its headquarters in +London. This resolution was carried out the following year (1899). The +bank has been brought into being. Its capital in shares is two million +pounds sterling. It can, by the statutes, start business when one +eighth of this capital, two hundred and fifty thousand pounds +sterling, has been actually paid up. This has already been done. + +Another financial instrument of Zionism is the "National Fund," +created by the fifth congress (1901), which is raised by voluntary +subscription and which is to amount to two hundred thousand pounds +sterling. The half of this sum is to be devoted to the purchase of +land in Palestine, the other half to remain an intangible common +property of the Jewish people, which will by means of compound +interest and gifts continually increase, so that at important +junctures the interest may be used for great national purposes. + + +V. + +I have taken pains to show, in as brief and as objective a manner as +possible, what Zionism is, what it desires to do, how it came into +being, and how it has developed up to the present. I have also +repeatedly mentioned that its most violent opponents have arisen from +the Jewish community. + +Many of them content themselves with libeling and insulting the +leaders of the Zionist movement. This kind of hostility they who are +vilified can afford to despise. Men who, without expecting the +slightest advantage to themselves, out of the purest, most unselfish +love for the unhappy ones of their race, out of reverence for their +forefathers, out of a general spirit of philanthropy, have made the +greatest sacrifices in money, time, strength, and health, in order to +elevate their people and to free millions of innocent, persecuted men +from the bitterest misery, have the right smilingly to shrug their +shoulders when irresponsible fanatics or pitiable paid scribes +reproach them with self-interest or with vanity. + +Besides these opponents of a lower type, there are others who do not +merely lie and slander, but also seek to argue. They delight in +comparing the apostles of Zionism with the false Messiahs like the +notorious Sabbathai Levi, who have appeared only too often in Jewish +history, and who have always done the greatest mischief to the Jewish +people they have deceived. To compare Zionism with the vagaries or +impostures of false Messiahs of the Sabbathai Levi kind, presupposes +great foolishness or great bad faith. Zionism is precisely +characterized by the complete absence of any mystical element. It +promises its adherents no miracles; on the contrary, it continually +impresses on them that their emancipation from a situation they find +intolerable can only be the result of their own work, the fruit of +their long, strenuous, and combined efforts. + +People declare Zionism to be a dream, and deny that its practical +realization is possible. To objections of this category the Zionists +have a hundred times given a sufficient answer. This simple negative +criticism can be passed over. Its only real refutation is in deeds, +such as the Zionists have already performed and as they intend further +to perform. + +The one point which probably forever excludes the possibility of an +understanding between Zionist and non-Zionist Jews is the question of +the Jewish nationality. Whoever maintains and believes that the Jews +are not a nation can indeed be no Zionist; he cannot join a movement +which is only justified when it is admitted that it desires to create +normal conditions of existence for a people living and suffering +under abnormal conditions. He who, on the contrary, is convinced that +the Jews are a people must necessarily become Zionist, as only the +return to their own country can save the everywhere hated, persecuted, +and oppressed Jewish nation from physical and intellectual +destruction. + +Many Jews, especially those of the West, have, in their heart of +hearts, completely broken with Judaism, and they will probably soon do +so openly, and if they do not break away, their children or +grandchildren will. These desire to be entirely absorbed by their +Christian fellow-countrymen. They resent it as a great annoyance when +other Jews proclaim that they are a people apart, and desire to bring +about an unequivocal separation between themselves and the other +nations. Their great and constant fear is to be denounced as strangers +in the land of their birth, of which they are free citizens. They fear +that this will be more than ever the case, if a large section of the +Jewish people openly claim for themselves rights as an autonomous +nation, and still worse, if anywhere in the world a political and +intellectual center of Judaism should really be created, in which +millions of Jews would be grouped together, united as a nation. + +All these feelings on the part of the assimilation Jews are +comprehensible. From their standpoint they are justified. These Jews, +however, have no right to expect that Zionism should for their sake +commit suicide. The Jews who are happy and contented in the land of +their birth, and who indignantly reject the suggestion of abandoning +it, are about a sixth of the Jewish nation, say two millions out of +twelve. The other five sixths, or ten millions, feel themselves +profoundly unhappy in the countries where they reside, and they have +every reason for doing so. These ten millions cannot be called upon to +submit forever unresistingly to their thraldom, and to renounce every +effort for redemption from their misery, merely in order that the +comfort of two million happy and contented Jews may not be disturbed. + +The Zionists are, moreover, firmly convinced that the misgivings of +the assimilation Jews are unfounded. The reassembling of the Jewish +people in Palestine will not have the consequences which they fear. +When there is again a Jewish country, the Jews will have the choice of +emigrating thither, or of remaining in their present home. Many will +doubtless remain, and will prove by their choice that they prefer the +land of their birth to their kindred and to their national soil. It is +barely possible that the Anti-Semites will still throw the scornful +and perfidious "stranger!" in their face. But the real Christians +among their fellow-countrymen, those who think and feel according to +the teaching and examples of the Holy Writ, will be convinced that +they do not regard themselves as strangers in the land of their birth, +and will then rightly comprehend the real meaning of their voluntary +renunciation of a return to a land of the Jews, and of their fidelity +to their homes and to their Christian neighbors. + +The Zionists know that they have undertaken a work of unexampled +difficulty. Never before has the effort been made to transplant, +peacefully, in a short space of time, to another soil, several million +people from various countries; never has it been attempted to +transform millions of physically degenerate proletarians, without +trade or profession, into agriculturists and cattle breeders, to bring +townbred hucksters and trades people, agents, and men of sedentary +occupation again into contact with the plough and the mother earth. It +will be necessary to accustom Jews of different origins to one +another, to train them practically to national unity, and at the same +time to overcome the superhuman obstacles of difference of language, +unequal civilization, and of the manners of thought, prejudices, +likes, and dislikes of foreign nations, brought severally from the +lands of their birth. + +What gives the Zionists the courage to begin this labor of Hercules is +the conviction that they are doing a necessary and useful work, a +work of love and civilization, a work of justice and wisdom. They +desire to save eight to ten millions of their kindred from intolerable +suffering. They desire to free the nations among whom they now +vegetate from a presence which is considered disagreeable. They wish +to deprive Anti-Semitism--which everywhere lowers public morals and +develops the very worst instincts--of its victim. They wish to make +unquestionable producers out of the Jews at present reproached with +being parasites. They desire to fertilize with their sweat and till +with their hands a country that is to-day a desert, until it is again +the flowering garden it has once been. Thus will Zionism in an equal +degree serve the unhappy Jew and the Christian peoples, civilization +and the economy of the world; and the services which it can render, +and wishes to render, are great enough to justify its hope that the +Christian world, too, will appreciate them, and support the movement +with its active sympathy. + + + + +ANTI-SEMITISM + +IN EUROPE + +BY + +DR. GUSTAV GOTTHEIL + + + + +THE TRUE NATURE OF ANTI-SEMITISM IN EUROPE + + +Anti-Semitism would be simply ridiculous if it were not so terribly in +earnest. People who make that word a war cry upon a whole race ought +to know its meaning, especially if it is to express the chief reason +for their hostility. Before they prefix the "anti" to a word they +should be sure that they understand the "pro," lest they be found to +fight shadows merely, specters of their own creation. But how far is +this the case? How many ever tried to learn the sense of the +designation under which they have enrolled themselves? Suppose we ask, +"What does Semitism mean?" Only this, must be our answer,--that it is +a summing up of the ruling dispositions, habits, mental endowments, +and moral peculiarities of all the races comprised under the name of +Semites, so named from their supposed descent from the eldest of the +three sons of Noah. So ineradicable are these features supposed to be +that, no matter where the races have lived or are now living, no +matter what stage of civilization they have passed through or have +reached now, no matter what influence non-Semitic races have exercised +upon them, they remain essentially the same. What are these features? +Who will formulate the precise standard by which a descendant of Shem +is unfailingly known and set apart from those of Ham or Japhet? When +we consider that we are pointed back for the meaning of Semite to +antediluvian times, that is to say, to one of the oldest myths of the +world, we must admit that it would indeed be the wonder of wonders if +a large section of mankind have a family likeness so clear that they +are marked off from the rest. And this, despite the long ages that +have passed since the supposed separation of the sons of Noah and +their wide dispersion; despite their triumphs and defeats in wars, in +state building, and church formation; despite the wide diversity +between them in their literature, their philosophy, their art, their +trades and industries. Are the Semites still characterized by the same +gifts and tendencies of mind and heart, ruled by the same passions, +subject to the same limitations, as were their ancestors in all their +generations? + +Among them there is a fraction, and that fraction again scattered over +vast areas, in various states of civilization, and under diversified +kinds of governments, enjoying liberty and rights of citizenship in +the one, and groaning under relentless oppression in the other,--are +they still none other than Semites? Are they so permeated with Semitic +features that they can never amalgamate with their surroundings and +become full-weighted citizens of the state where they pitch their +tents,--offer them what inducements you may,--but must be kept at +arms length and treated as suspects? Has nature lost all her power in +this instance and become faithless to herself? Will the Hebrew child +not love the land of its birth and feel the kinship with the people +whose language and mode of life become its own? But why heap up +improbabilities and impossibilities? The designation fastened upon us +as a stigma was a fraud from the beginning, a conscious fraud and a +malicious invention. It was "conceived in mischief and brought forth +in iniquity." What was meant was not anti-Semitism, but +_anti-Judaism_; but that name had to be avoided because it implies +hostility to a religion and a creed; and that, again, might be +construed as springing from an awakened zeal for the instigator's own +Church; a suspicion they could not permit to rest upon them. No, it is +not the Jew's religion that makes him obnoxious and a danger to the +state, but it is his descent from the eldest son of Noah. True, the +Jews have at no time adopted it as a national name. "Semitic" is of +comparatively recent date, an abstract word intended merely for +scientific classification, never meant for discrimination of any +portion of the Semitic races, or to become a hissing and a byword or a +mask for robbers of human rights and destroyers of human happiness. + +The victims of this crusade are not a nameless horde for whom a +designation had to be coined; they are known to history for three +thousand years as Hebrews, Israelites, Jews, and they have no mind to +exchange these names for any other. But a new "Hep Hep" was wanted, +and so "Semites" was hauled from the world of books, disfigured, and +fastened upon the Jewish gabardine in noble emulation of the barbarism +of the Middle Ages. The more senseless, the more welcome it was as a +bugbear to frighten the populace and to stir into flames the sparks of +fanaticism which are always smouldering in the hearts of the vulgar, +whether of low degree or high degree, worldly or ghostly. + +The strangest thing, however, in this learned falsification is that +it should have succeeded so well with people calling themselves +Christians and clinging to that name often after they have given up +all its historic substance. Is Christianity not purely Semitic at the +core? Is it not based upon the Semitic conception of the relation +between man and his Creator? The great efforts to liberalize and +rationalize the Church which the last century witnessed, up to +Professor Harnack's recent attempt to sum up "Das Wesen des +Christenthums,"--what are all these but endeavors to free it from +foreign accretions and envelopments and to bring its Semitic character +into greater prominence? + +It is the only Asiatic conception of religion that has subdued Europe +and America, and that still holds undisputed sway over all its diverse +nationalities. The very name which symbolizes to them all that is +noblest, purest, and most blessed, points to that source as +unfailingly as the needle of the compass to the poles. Harnack claims +that Christianity is not one religion amongst others, but _The +Religion_, the only one fulfilling all the conditions of its highest +ideal. The Being in whom that fulness of light was revealed,--was he +not a Semite of the Semites? Did he ever deny his origin? Christianity +means _Messianity_, and the whole idea of a Mashiach,--the anointed, +namely, anointed ruler,--is most intensely national and, therefore, +intensely Semitic,--from which indisputable fact it follows that the +loftiest conception of religion came to the world from that source. +Thence came the Bible,--the book of the world which has been +translated into every living tongue and dialect, and to the +elucidation of which hosts of scholars still devote their lives. +Painting, sculpture, music, poetry, have attempted their highest +flights under its inspiration. From countless pulpits its moral and +religious truths are expounded, week after week, and on every great +occasion of national significance,--in whatever part of Christendom it +may occur,--the Songs of Zion are awakened as the fittest expressions +of the prevailing sentiment. The Psalter is the most wonderful of +existing books,--at home alike in the palace of the king and the +cottage of the peasant, the inexhaustible theme of our masters of +music. Noeldeke, Protestant professor at the University of Strasburg, +one of the great lights of Semitic scholarship, declares that "by the +side of the Psalms all other religious hymns appear as pale imitations +merely." On that field were gathered the sheaves which a master hand +has wound together into the One Universal Prayer, in which all +Churches join with one accord. And the Universal Day of Rest,--that +one sure blessing of the laboring man,--whence did it come? What other +legislator had the divine audacity to make its observance one of the +foundation laws of his constitution, and to give it precedence, even +over all moral enactments? + +Professor R.F. Grau of the conservative school of theology writes:-- + +"God is a living, holy, loving Being. He is not first and foremost to +be scientifically comprehended, but worshipped and revered in the +heart, and because He is such a Being, the Semites had to be chosen as +His apostles to the whole world. For they had a heart for Him in the +beginning.... The Semite has the religion of the Infinite, and as this +is the perfect religion, ... the Church, as the Community of Christ, +has sprung from the Semitic mustard seed, although at present myriads +of Indo-germanics dwell under the branches of the tree." + +In the face of admissions like these by men who have a right to be +heard in the matter, and considering that the tree can never change +the nature of the root from which it sprang, the conclusion is not +unwarranted that "anti-Semitic" is a synonym for "anti-Christian." + +Its success is due to the still persistent prejudice against the Jews +among so many Christians,--all their professions to the contrary +notwithstanding. And it continues for several reasons. One is its long +duration; it has lasted for ages and is ingrained in their feelings +and ideas. What if it be shown ever so clearly that it is unjust, +unreasonable, yea, even unchristian!--that will not materially change +the temper of the great masses of the people. The common man is rarely +swayed by the force of arguments; the power of a principle, so weighty +with the thinkers, is of no consequence to him. He belongs to the +material world, and to make good his place in it is the aim toward +which all his energies are bent. For things spiritual he has neither +time nor capacity. He is ruled by the sentiments which were implanted +in him in his youth and by his immediate surroundings. All thinking +must be done for him; all new ideas must be presented to him, as it +were, ready made and in tangible form. He does not push himself +forward, but must be led onward by hands that understand him and his +ways. But in this instance, his guides are not particularly anxious to +bring about a change for the better,--even if we suppose that they +consider the liberation from prejudice against the Jews a betterment. +They have their own theological difficulty to contend with. The Jews +are still unconverted, and the missions established and maintained for +the purpose of winning them over can show no better results now than +in the past. The chief controversy between the Church and Israel +stands to-day where it stood when it was first raised at Jerusalem +eighteen centuries ago. A judicial sentence of a court at Jerusalem +has grown into a pivotal point on which, as the Church declares, turns +the salvation of mankind for time and eternity; and if she is right, +the Jews must be wrong. Since that fatal occurrence, Christianity, in +one form or another, has conquered Europe and America, and has planted +outposts in almost every part of the earth, but has not been able to +subdue the Jew. Every conceivable means to make him surrender has been +tried, including that of the jailor and the executioner and all the +horrors that lie between them,--expulsion, pillage, social +degradation, impaling in ghettos, and what not--but in vain. The same +policy is continued to this day as far as the present more civilized +state of the Christians permits; but still in vain. So far are their +persecutors from having brought the Jews to their knees, that the +self-consciousness of the race, as a whole, has deepened; and their +advance in general culture enables them to measure swords, +intellectually, with their accusers and to give a reason for the faith +that is in them. + +All the conditions of this interminable conflict are against them. In +numbers they are a vanishing minority, and still more weakened by +their dispersion over the face of the earth, unorganized, without any +ecclesiastical authority in their Church that could direct them or act +in their name. Every individual Jew must face the world's hostility +single-handed, and be, religiously, his own priest, his own pope. +Allies he has none, advocates of his cause are few and far between. +The favors of his friends are often more humiliating than the attacks +of his enemies. Still he holds his own, and if for the last century or +so he has carried on a reformation of his ancient rituals, he has done +so from his own initiative and in his own way, which is not that into +which it has been tried so long to force or to lure him. At the same +time a revival of Jewish literature has taken place which not only has +brought to light the long-forgotten treasures of the past, but has +shown the large part the Jews have in the general progress of mankind. +The ecclesia triumphant has no victory to record in this section of +her battlefields, and it is not in ordinary human nature frankly to +admit a defeat in such an unequal struggle. Only one had a right to +expect that a Church that claims to have regenerated the human race +and to have lifted the slave of his blind instincts into "the glorious +liberty of the children of God" would have risen superior to the +common weakness. Instead of that, almost throughout Christendom, the +crusade against the Jews is being preached and the policy of +repression loudly demanded. + +On what ground? It is said that they dominate everywhere--in finance, +in law courts, in politics, in art, in literature, in the press, in +trade and manufacture. But how do they achieve this astounding feat? +How do the Jews succeed in so lording it over the immense majority? By +witchcraft? Is it by magic that a few bankers and brokers keep all +their competitors in subjugation and handle them at their will and to +their own profit? Is it by sorcery that they force their way to the +universities and academies? Are they in possession of secret formulas +by which they can direct the currents of trade at their will? +Recently, loud complaints were raised in several of the German state +parliaments that there were too many Jewish judges and lawyers in +their lands, and the governments were exhorted to put an end to the +scandal. No charges of incompetency or exploitation were raised +against the Hebrews that "handle the law." Only it was declared that +a Christian shrunk from taking an oath at the hand of a Jewish lawyer. +If this be so, how is it that the people go to them in numbers that +excite the envy of their non-Jewish colleagues? All the statements +about the alleged power of the Jews are ridiculous exaggerations, +trumped up to scare the imagination of the thoughtless, as has been +proved over and over again. But even reduced to their true measure, +they prove, not the possession of magic, but of soundness of mind, of +unimpaired energy, and of all the other needful conditions for +success, which the Jews have kept intact despite all the attempts made +to crush the unbelievers into the dust. The outcry against them is +their vindication; people do not fear weaklings, do not raise alarms +against perils which can be pushed aside by an effort of the will. The +few must own inherent sources of strength if the many resort to the +coward's weapon of lies and slander. And in this instance the +admission of the truth is an implied homage to the religion which the +victors in the unequal struggle profess and defend. For it is +indisputable that this is the source to which the formation of the +Jewish mind and heart must be attributed. Let me cite, for one proof, +the admission of the most persistent and most powerful oppressor of +the Jews, the procurator of the Russian synod. Half the number of all +Hebrews are subjects of Russia. They came under her dominion when she +conquered and incorporated the Polish provinces; they are kept there +under the most stringent laws, and life is made to them as burdensome +as possible. "The Pale" is a gigantic ghetto where the oldest form of +rabbinism prevails to this day. Yet the same fear of the superiority +of the Jewish mind haunts the government; it is the alleged reason for +practically closing up all the avenues of the higher education for +them. Only _three per cent_ of the total number of students are +admitted to the universities and to the technical schools. But more +than a hundred thousand common soldiers are drafted from the Jews +into the armies and sent to all parts of the gigantic empire, kept +there during the best part of their lives, without any prospect of +promotion, and often going only to die in the defense of territories +which, if they were civilians, they would not be permitted to enter. +The Russian Torquemada, not long ago, openly declared that not a +single Jew should be permitted to settle amongst the peasantry, even +within the Pale, because he would be the only sober man amongst a +population that cannot resist the temptations of strong drink. Strange +spectacle indeed! Men banished from places where they wish to live +because they are too good for their surroundings! forced to remain +where they can hardly eke out a miserable living. The question, +surely, is justified. How did that poverty-stricken mass of oppressed +people succeed in preserving its freedom from a national vice in a +country where its ancestors have dwelt for long generations? Can a +great virtue be maintained by sorcery? The common experience is that +of the poet-- + + "Misery doth bravest mind abate." + +What but their religion made them proof against the arrows of a fate +which, for duration and cruelty, is without a parallel in history! +This conclusion is further corroborated by the fact that the same +virtue of sobriety characterizes them everywhere, and makes them an +object of envy to their non-Jewish neighbors,--nay, forces the honest +temperance advocate to hold them up before his Christian audiences as +examples to shame them into going and doing likewise; rather, let me +say, into staying at home and doing likewise. For one of the +witchcraft mysteries of Judaism is that its home is not in the church, +but that the church is in the home. The Jew's salvation is in nowise +dependent upon rabbi and synagogue, but upon wife and children. They +are his congregation to whom he ministers as priest in fulfilment of +the great charter word of dedication, "Ye shall be unto me a kingdom +of priests and a holy nation." The deepest roots of the Jewish faith +rest and are nourished in the domestic soil. The synagogue has nothing +to offer to the faithful which he cannot find in his own tent. Ten men +gathered together with a Sepher Tora (scroll of the Mosaic law) in +their midst, form a Kahal Hakodesh (sacred body). No man becomes a +drunkard with wife and children and aged parents near him for guardian +angels. The greatest difficulty the Jewish reformation has to face is +what to substitute for the old ceremonials where they have become +impracticable, and thus to preserve the essentially domestic character +of the ancient faith. Is it thinkable that the Jew would be less +objectionable to his surroundings were he to lose his sturdy horror of +intemperance, and thus "assimilate" more freely with his neighbors of +different faiths? It is not thinkable when we consider the great +efforts made by Christians everywhere to redeem their people from +their bondage to strong drink and the misery resulting from it. The +Jew is the _natural ally of the temperance advocates_; and if he is +not found in their ranks, it is simply because he never knew from +experience the need of that reformation. + +And never will he know, as long as his passionate fondness for home +and his longing for family love abide within him. At present, this, +generally speaking, is still the case; the poorest and least +cultivated classes are not excepted; nay, just in that class it is one +of the most noteworthy features. If the uncouth immigrant from Eastern +Europe stoops to the lowest kinds of peddling, or, for a mere +pittance, wastes his life in the stifling sweatshop; if he is not very +scrupulous in his dealings with his transient patrons, and does not +hold city ordinances as inviolable as those of the "Shulchan Aruch" +(code of ceremonials), the central motive is his ever present thought +of his family; even when he has not yet scraped together enough +pennies to pay for their fare to the new home, they are constantly +with him in his mind. This is not offered as a defense for +over-reaching and cannot be allowed by a magistrate as a plea for +law-breaking; but it is offered to the unprejudiced reader in +compliance with Spinoza's golden rule: Human errors must not be +ridiculed and condemned, but _understood_. _Si duo faciunt idem, non +est idem._ This wise caution is the more to be heeded in the present +instance, as, from the same source, devotion to home life, springs +another fine feature of Jewry; go down in the scale as deep as you +may, they are an industrious, toilsome class of people, often turning +their narrow homes into workshops where old and young ply a handicraft +from early morn to the late evening hours. Hundreds of men and women, +arriving in this country after they have passed the middle life, learn +trades and work at them till their trembling hands can hold the tools +no longer or the light fades from their overstrained eyes. Among them +there are not a few that have seen better days at their native places, +or are deeply learned in the Law. They are quick in seizing the +secret of a successful trade of paying manufacture, and not rarely +better the instruction; a skill for which they are hated and despised +by their own aristocracy in the markets, and branded as spoilers of +every good thing as soon as it appears. If this aptitude and eagerness +for trade be a fault, the Christians have themselves to blame for it. +Even a superficial glance at the history of Israel proves that as long +as the people lived on their native soil, and could live out their own +lives, they showed neither skill nor desire for mercantile pursuits; +that their legislation, their religion, their poetry and prophesying, +and their ethical ideas presuppose a nation of shepherds and tillers +of the soil. For the great change in the ruling disposition of the +Jews, since their dispersion, those alone are responsible who now +reproach them for it. The first Christians were Jewish ploughmen and +herdsmen; the Apostles mostly Judĉan peasants and fishermen. The +finest parables and similes in the speeches of Jesus are taken from +the peasants' occupation and experience. And even to this day +thousands of the scattered race are ready to seize again the plough +and the spade, if they are given a chance, and not a few have done so +even under the most disheartening conditions. The fact is, the pagan +Mercury proved a more merciful god to the Jews than the Christian +Jesus, as he was taught and practised by the mediĉval Church. He +gloated over the sufferings of those who were of his own flesh and +blood. No wonder they sought refuge under the wings of the heathen +deity and became adepts in the art which he symbolized. + +But suppose it were true that all the Jews dote on traffic as their +dearest occupation,--what of it? The British have the nickname of "a +nation of shopkeepers" fastened on them; yet they were and are the +greatest benefactors of the human race, carrying the blessings of +civilization to half the peoples of the globe. Commerce has done more +for the peace of the world than all the preaching, praying, and +prophesying taken together. A great railroad, a steamship line, a +cable or a telephone wire, a commercial treaty, a tariff +convention,--these are the modern bonds that hold the remotest parts +of the earth together, and make them equally abhor war and its +ravages. A falling off in the exports, a shrinking of the value of +investments, an unforeseen competitor in the markets of the world, +cause the rulers of the most civilized nations more anxiety than any +adverse political combination. For the former threaten the peace and +welfare of the home life of the people, on whose contentment they rely +for the defense of their claims in all their political intricacies. A +class of people credited with the mastery of the art of buying and +selling should, therefore, be welcome to every country and given the +amplest freedom and encouragement to ply their skill, provided, of +course, they do not carry their hoarded profits out of the country and +enrich other nations by them. But where do the Jews think of such a +thing? Their own country, if Palestine may still be so denominated, is +one of the poorest in the world, and what little revival there has +lately been perceptible is due to the colonies established there by +Jewish peasants who, under most trying conditions, labor to restore +the soil to its ancient fertility, after the long sleep into which it +has sunk. Jewish wealth can be enjoyed, and is being enjoyed, in no +other way than non-Jewish. Its owners are charged by its religious +teachers with being only too willing to imitate the luxuries and +extravagances of their neighbors. The same snares are spread for the +feet of their offspring as for those of Gentile birth; the tempters +that lie in wait for them are liberal enough to ignore distinctions +between the various creeds. I will not stoop to any defense of my race +from the vulgar charge that they are cheaters; that each and all will +always try, right or wrong, to secure the best of any bargain into +which a poor Gentile may enter with them. Those whom the commercial +standing of the Jews, here and elsewhere, has not yet cured of this +slanderous prejudice will not be converted by my pleading. Envy is an +incurable disease; jealousy makes blind, and the common saying is +surely true, that none are so blind as those who will not see. But +neither have I the least desire to hide or gloss over our real +failings and shortcomings. Those who cannot rest on their own real +merits and accept the blame for their undeniable demerits must not +dare to challenge the judgment of the world. The Jew does dare it, and +all he asks of his critics is fairness, impartiality, justice. What I +have said to his praise and for his defense was intended solely to +assist the fairminded reader in forming a just opinion of an agitation +which in Europe embitters, cripples, and darkens thousands of lives, +which, under better treatment, would be spent in contentment and +general usefulness. + +It is for this purpose only that I will briefly add two more traits of +the Jews, equally valuable and undeniable. One is their charity; they +care for their poor, their sick, their aged, if destitute, as the +numerous institutions prove, found in every place where they dwell in +sufficient number to maintain them. Ungrudgingly they assume the heavy +burdens which this "exclusiveness" imposes upon them. Blame them for +it who may; the right-minded will not, especially when assured that +this feeling of pity is not the privilege of the well-to-do among them +only. The working classes have always something to spare from their +scanty earnings for "Z'dakah," the religious term in common use for +charity, which, significantly enough, in biblical Hebrew means +"justice." The idea that charity is an essential part of worship has +been bred into them by long tradition, and continues to be regarded as +such, wherever rabbinical Judaism survives in full force. From +childhood every Jew knows the saying of Simon the Just, one of the +last men of the Great Synagogue:-- + + "The whole world rests on these three pillars; + + Law, Worship, and Charity." + +The other trait is their zeal in the education of their children. + +One of the standard objections to the Hebrews is their "forwardness"; +socially, it is a disagreeable and annoying fault, but otherwise a +gift of no little value. Forwardness is the soul of all progress and +advancement. Call it that, call it self-help, call it energy, call it +self-reliance, call it by the popular name of wide-awakeness, and you +transfigure the fault into a merit. How the Jew was able to preserve +it in any one of its forms is one of the many miracles of his history, +seeing that the world has left nothing untried to cast the Jews +backward to the last depth of self-despair. An exhibition of his +forwardness might be seen at the doors of the public schools in the +lower districts of the city, notably at the time of admission of new +pupils. The poorest of the Jewish fathers and mothers would be seen +wrangling for the registration of their little ones, as if it were for +their daily bread. And may this not also serve for a proof that the +parents are willing to surrender their offspring to the influence of +these schools, and see them thoroughly Americanized? + + * * * * * + +By these signs ye shall know the Jews, wherever ye find them; they +may, therefore, be called racial. In every other respect they are +neither better nor worse than other people of the corresponding stages +of life. Every variety of character is found among them; virtue and +vice are distributed among them. Let Americans not stigmatize them as +"undesirable immigrants," and close their hospitable gate upon them. +They bring with them qualities which are an ample compensation for +their defects, and their well-to-do brethren are not behindhand in +seeing to it that they become no public burden. The American people +have repeatedly shown the door to those who came hither for the +purpose of preaching anti-Semitism, thereby publicly testifying that +they would have none of that disgrace to our age. What exists of it +in social life is not worth arguing against. It will and must +disappear in a country, the civil order of which is based upon the +principle of equal rights to all law-abiding citizens, to whatever +race or religion they may belong. "A fair field and no favor." This +good old saying comprises all our demands. + + + + + * * * * * + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Zionism and Anti-Semitism, by +Max Simon Nordau and Gustav Gottheil + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ZIONISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM *** + +***** This file should be named 24186-8.txt or 24186-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/1/8/24186/ + +Produced by Jeannie Howse, Bryan Ness and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +book was produced from scanned images of public domain +material from the Google Print project.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Zionism and Anti-Semitism + Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil + +Author: Max Simon Nordau + Gustav Gottheil + +Release Date: January 7, 2008 [EBook #24186] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ZIONISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM *** + + + + +Produced by Jeannie Howse, Bryan Ness and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +book was produced from scanned images of public domain +material from the Google Print project.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<h3 class="sc">Zionism</h3> + +<h4><i>and</i></h4> + +<h3 class="sc">Anti-Semitism</h3> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + + +<h2><i>Zionism</i></h2> + +<h4>AND</h4> + +<h2><i>Anti-Semitism</i></h2> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + + +<h4>BY</h4> + +<h3>MAX NORDAU</h3> + +<br /> + +<h4>AND</h4> + +<h3>GUSTAV GOTTHEIL</h3> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<h5><span class="sc">New York</span><br /> +FOX, DUFFIELD & COMPANY<br /> +1905</h5> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + + +<h5><i>Copyright 1902</i><br /> +<i>FREDERICK A. RICHARDSON</i><br /> +<br /> +<i>Copyright 1903</i><br /> +<i>SCOTT-THAW COMPANY</i><br /> +<br /> +<i>Copyright 1905</i><br /> +<i>By FOX, DUFFIELD & COMPANY</i></h5> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="toc" id="toc"></a><hr /> +<br /> + +<h3>CONTENTS</h3> +<br /> + +<div class="centered"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" width="60%" summary="Table of Contents"> + <tr> + <td width="80%"> </td> + <td class="tdr" width="20%" style="font-size: 80%;">PAGE</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#ZIONISM"><span class="sc">Zionism.</span></a> <i>By Max Nordau</i></td> + <td class="tdr">9</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#ANTI-SEMITISM"><span class="sc">Anti-Semitism in Europe</span></a> <i>By Gustav Gottheil.</i></td> + <td class="tdr">47</td> + </tr> +</table> +</div> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="ZIONISM" id="ZIONISM"></a><hr /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<h2>ZIONISM</h2> + +<h4>BY</h4> + +<h3 class="sc">Max Nordau</h3> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<h3>ZIONISM<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + + +<p>Among the persons of the educated classes who follow with any +attention all the more important movements of the times, it would now +be difficult to find one to whom the word "Zionism" is quite unknown. +People are generally aware that it describes an idea and a movement +that in the last years has found numerous adherents among the Jews of +all countries, but especially among those of the East. Comparatively +few, however, both among the Gentiles and the Jews themselves, have a +perfectly clear notion of the aims and ways of Zionism; the Gentiles, +because they do not care sufficiently for Jewish affairs to take the +trouble to inform themselves at first hand as to the particulars; the +Jews, because they are intentionally led astray by the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>enemies of +Zionism, by lies and calumnies, or because even among the fervent +Zionists there are not many who have probed the whole Zionist idea to +the bottom, and are willing or able to present it in a clear and +comprehensible fashion, without exaggeration and polemical heat.</p> + +<p>I will endeavor to furnish readers of good faith, who are not biased, +and have no other interest than that of gaining authentic information +about a phenomenon in contemporary history, as concisely and soberly +as possible with all the facts, as they really are, not as they are +reflected in muddled brains, or distorted and falsified by +calumniators.</p> + +<br /> + +<h4>I.</h4> + +<p>Zionism is a new word for a very old object, in so far as it merely +expresses the yearning of the Jewish people for Zion. Since the +destruction of the second temple by Titus, since the dispersion of the +Jewish nation in all countries, this people has not ceased to long +intensely, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>hope fervently, for the return to the lost land of +their fathers. This yearning for, and hope in, Zion on the part of the +Jews was the concrete, I might say, the geographical, aspect of their +Messianic faith, which in its turn forms an essential part of their +religion.</p> + +<p>Messianism and Zionism were really, for nearly two thousand years, +identical conceptions, and without caviling and hair-splitting +interpretation, it would not be easy to make a distinction between the +prayers for the appearance of the promised Messiah, and those for the +not less promised return to the historical home,—both of which stand +side by side on every page of the Jewish liturgy. These prayers were, +until a few generations ago, meant literally by every Jew, as they +still are by the simple believing Jews. The Jews had no other idea +than that they were a people which as a punishment for its sins had +lost the land of its forefathers, which was condemned to live as +strangers in strange lands, and whose great sufferings would <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>first +cease when it was again assembled on the consecrated soil of the Holy +Land.</p> + +<p>This gradually changed about the middle of the eighteenth century, +when enlightenment first began to find its way into Jewdom, in the +person of its first herald, Moses Mendelssohn, the popular +philosopher. The faith of the Jews became more lukewarm; the educated +classes, where they did not simply convert themselves to Christianism, +began to regard the doctrines of their religion in a rationalist +manner; for them the dispersion of the Jewish people was a final and +unalterable fact; they emptied the conception of the Messiah and of +Zion of every concrete meaning, and arranged for themselves a singular +doctrine, according to which the Zion promised to the Jews was to be +understood only in a spiritual sense, as the setting up of the Jewish +monotheism in the whole world, as the future triumph of Jewish ethics +over the less sublime and less noble moral teaching of the other +nations. An American rabbi reduced this <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>conception to the striking +formula, "Our Zion is in Washington." The Mendelssohn teaching +logically developed in the first half of the nineteenth century into +the "Reform," which deliberately broke with Zionism. For the Reform +Jew, the word Zion had just as little meaning as the word dispersion. +He does not feel himself in any diaspora. He denies that there is a +Jewish people and that he is a member of it. He desires only to belong +to the people in whose midst he lives. For him Judaism is a purely +religious conception which has nothing whatever to do with +nationality. The land of his birth is his fatherland, and he will know +of no other. The idea of a return to Palestine excites him either to +indignation or to laughter. He answers it with the well-known, silly, +would-be witticism, "If the Jewish state is again set up in Palestine, +I will ask to be its ambassador in Paris."</p> + +<p>The thinking Jew did not fail, however, to perceive, in the course of +time, that Reform <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>Judaism is a half measure, a compromise, which like +every compromise, contains the germ of destruction, as it cannot for +one instant resist logical criticism. Whom shall the Reform Judaism +satisfy? The believing Jew? He rejects it with the greatest +abhorrence. The unbelieving Jew? He despises it as hypocrisy and +phrase-mongering. The Jew who really desires to break with his +national past and to be absorbed by his Christian surroundings? For +that Jew, Reform Judaism does not suffice; he goes a step farther, the +step that leads to the baptismal font. Still less does it satisfy the +Jew who desires to guard Jewdom against destruction and to preserve it +as an ethnical individuality. For to him an openly expressed +abandonment of all national aspirations is synonymous with a +self-condemnation of the Jewish people to a perhaps slow, but sure, +death. Reform Judaism without Zionism, that is to say, without the +wish and the hope for a reassembling of the Jewish people, has no +future. At the best, it <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>can only be regarded as a somewhat crooked +path that leads to Christianity. He who desires to reach that goal can +find straighter and shorter routes.</p> + +<br /> + +<h4>II.</h4> + +<p>And so it has come about that the generations which had been under the +influence of the Mendelssohnian rhetoric and enlightenment, of reform +and assimilation, have, in the last twenty years of the nineteenth +century, been followed by a new generation which seeks to take up a +standpoint other than the traditional towards the question of Zion. +These new Jews shrug their shoulders at that twaddle which has been +the fashion among rabbis and <i>literati</i> for the last hundred years, +and which boasts of a "Mission of Jewdom," said to consist in this, +that the Jews must live forever in dispersion among the peoples in +order to act as their teachers and models of morality, and to educate +them gradually to pure rationalism, to a general brotherhood of +mankind, and to an ideal cosmopolitanism. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>They declare the mission +swagger to be either presumption or foolishness. They, more modest and +more practical, demand only the right for the Jewish people to live +and to develop itself, according to its abilities, up to the natural +limits of its type. They have become convinced that this is not +possible in dispersion, as, under that condition, prejudice, hatred, +and contempt continually follow and oppress them, and either stint +their development, or force them to an ethnical mimicry which +necessarily makes of them, instead of original types with a right to +existence, mediocre or bad copies of foreign models. They therefore +work methodically with a view to rendering the Jewish people once more +a normal one, which lives on its own soil, and accomplishes all +economical, intellectual, moral, and political functions of a +civilized nation.</p> + +<p>The goal cannot be reached at once. It lies in a future more or less +near. It is an ideal, a desire, a hope, as the Messianic Zionism was +and is. The new Zionism, which has been called the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>political one, +differs, however, from the old, the religious, the Messianic one, in +this,—that it disavows all mysticism, no longer identifies itself +with Messianism, and does not expect the return to Palestine to be +brought about by a miracle, but desires to prepare the way by its own +efforts.</p> + +<p>The new Zionism has grown in part only out of the internal impulsions +of Judaism itself, out of the enthusiasm of modern educated Jews for +their history and martyrology, out of the awakened consciousness of +their racial qualities, out of their ambition to save the ancient +blood, in view of the farthest possible future, and to add to the +achievements of their forefathers the achievements of their posterity.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, Zionism is the effect of two impulses which came +from without,—first, the principle of nationality, which for half a +century ruled thought and feeling in Europe, and governed the politics +of the world; secondly, Anti-Semitism, from which the Jews of all +countries have more or less to suffer.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>The principle of nationality has awakened self-consciousness in all +the peoples; it teaches them to regard their peculiarities as +qualities, and gives them a passionate desire for independence. It +could not, therefore, pass over the educated Jews without leaving a +trace. It induced them to remember who and what they are; to feel +themselves, what they had unlearned, a people apart; and to demand for +themselves a normal national destiny. This slow and painful work of +the recovery of their national individuality was rendered easier by +the attitude of the peoples, who eliminated them from among themselves +as a foreign element, and put stress, without consideration or +courtesy, on the real and imaginary contrasts, or at least +differences, between themselves and the Jews.</p> + +<p>The principle of nationality has, in its exaggerations, led to +excesses. It has been led astray into Chauvinism, abased to idiotic +hatred of the foreigner, degraded to grotesque self-worship. From this +caricature of itself the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>Jewish nationalism is safe. The Jewish +nationalist does not suffer from self-inflation; he feels, on the +contrary, that he must make tireless efforts to render the name of Jew +a title of honor. He modestly recognizes the good qualities of other +nations, and seeks diligently to acquire them in so far as they +harmonize with his natural capacities. He knows what terrible harm +centuries of slavery or disability have done to his originally proud +and upright character, and seeks to cure it by means of intense +self-training. If, however, nationalism is on its guard against all +illusions as to itself, this is a natural phase in the process of +development from barbaric selfish individualism to free humanism and +altruism,—a phase the justification and necessity of which can only +be denied by him who has no comprehension whatever of the laws of +organic evolution, and is totally lacking in the historical sense.</p> + +<p>Anti-Semitism has also taught many educated Jews the way back to their +people. It has had the effect of a sharp trial which the weak cannot +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>stand, but from which the strong emerge stronger or more confident in +themselves. It is not correct to say that Zionism is but a "gesture of +truculence" or an act of desperation against Anti-Semitism. It is true +that more than one educated Jew has been moved only by Anti-Semitism +to throw in his lot again with Jewdom, and he would again fall away if +his Christian fellow-countrymen would receive him anew in a friendly +spirit. But, in the case of most Zionists, Anti-Semitism only forced +them to reflect upon their relation to the nations, and their +reflection has led them to conclusions which would remain a lasting +acquirement of their mind and heart, even if Anti-Semitism were to +disappear completely from the world.</p> + +<p>Be it well understood; the Zionism analyzed above is that of the +educated and free Jews,—the Jewish élite. The uneducated mass, +clinging to the old traditions, is Zionist without much reflection, +from feeling, from instinct, from distress, and yearning. They suffer +too much <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>from the hardships of life, from the hatred of the peoples, +from legal disabilities, and social outlawry; they feel that they +cannot hope for any lasting amelioration of their situation so long as +they must live as a powerless minority among a hostile majority. They +desire to become a nation, to rejuvenate themselves by close contact +with mother earth, and to become once more the masters of their +destiny. This Zionist mass is still in part not quite free from +mystical tendencies. It allows its Zionism to be pervaded, to a +certain extent, by Messianic reminiscences, and blends it with +religious emotions. They have certainly a clear idea of the aim, the +reassembling of the Jewish nation, but not of the means. Still, even +they have realized already the necessity of themselves making efforts, +and there is a vast difference between their active readiness for +organization and their spirit of sacrifice, and the pious, +prayer-indulging passiveness of the purely religious Messianist.</p> + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span><br /> + +<h4>III.</h4> + +<p>The new or political Zionism has had here and there forerunners, whose +first appearance dates back to the early half of the nineteenth +century.</p> + +<p>In the beginning of the eighties terrible persecutions broke out in +Russia without any apparent reason, persecutions which cost hundreds +of Jews their lives, destroyed the prosperity of thousands more, and +induced tens of thousands to turn their backs on the land of their +birth. This calamity brutally aroused the Jews from their +hundred-year-old illusions and brought them again to a sense of +reality. A Russian Jew, Dr. Pinsker, at that time wrote a small +pamphlet entitled, "Auto-Emancipation," which was already a prelude to +the modern political Zionism, and sketched all its motives without +however developing them symphonically. He, at any rate, it was who +gave its watchword to the whole movement: "The Jews are no mere +religious community, they are a nation. They desire again to live in +their own country as a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>united people. Their rejuvenation must be at +the same time economical, physical, intellectual, and moral."</p> + +<p>The Jewish youth of the middle schools and universities of Russia were +profoundly affected by Pinsker's arguments. They began to found +national Jewish societies. A number of students who studied at foreign +universities became in their new surroundings apostles of Dr. Pinsker's +idea, and found adherents here and there, for the most part among the +young Jews of Vienna. Others preferred action to word, example to +sermon, abandoned their studies, and emigrated to Palestine in order to +become peasants there,—Jewish peasants on historically Jewish soil. +Deeply moved by this idealism of a peculiarly enthusiastic élite, +cooler headed Jews in Russia and Germany began also to form societies +in order to support from a distance the Palestine settlements of the +Jewish pioneers. This took place without any combined plan and with no +clear notion of the aim and the means. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>The societies were not +conscious of the fact that they felt and acted as Zionists. They did +not perceive the connection between the Jewish colonization of +Palestine and the future of the whole Jewish nation. It was in their +case rather an instinctive movement in which all kinds of obscure +feelings are dimly discernible,—piety, archæological-historical +sentimentality, charity, and pride of pedigree. At any rate, the minds +of the Jews were prepared, the feeling was in the air, Jewdom was ripe +for a change.</p> + +<p>As is always the case in such historical moments, the man also +appeared whose mission it was to express clearly the ideas obscurely +felt by many, and to proclaim loudly the word they were waiting to +hear. This man was Dr. Theodor Herzl. He published in the autumn of +1896 a concisely written booklet, "Der Judenstaat" (The Jewish State), +which proclaimed, with a determination that till then had no +precedent, the fact that the Jews are a people who demand for +themselves all the rights of a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>people, and who desire to settle in a +country where they can lead a free and complete political existence.</p> + +<p>"Der Judenstaat" has become the real starting point of political +Zionism,—the starting point, not the programme. Herzl's book is still +the subjective work of a solitary thinker who speaks in his own name. +Many details in it are literature. It is not easy to draw a sharp +boundary line between the sober earnest of the social politician and +the imagination of the prophetical poet. The real programme had to be +a collective work which was certainly based on Herzl's book, and +inspired by Herzl's visions of the future, but which rid itself of all +fantastic details, and was built up solely from the elements of +reality.</p> + +<p>Herzl's book was at once greeted by tens of thousands of Jews, chiefly +the young, as an act of redemption. It was not to remain merely +printed paper, but should be transformed into a practical creation. +New societies were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>founded everywhere, no longer with a view of the +slow, petty settlement of Palestine by means of groups of Jews +creeping surreptitiously as it were into the country, but by the +preparation for an emigration "en masse" into the Holy Land, based on +a formal treaty with the Turkish Government, guaranteed by the Great +Powers, by which the former should accord the new settlers the right +of self-government.</p> + +<p>The premises of political Zionism are that there is a Jewish nation. +This is just the point denied by the assimilation Jews, and the +spiritless, unctuous, prating rabbis in their pay. Dr. Herzl saw that +the first task he had to fulfil was the organizing of a manifestation +which should bring before the world, and the Jewish people itself, in +modern, comprehensible form the fact of its national existence. He +convoked a Zionist congress, which in spite of the most furious +attacks and most unscrupulous acts of violence,—the Jewish community +of Munich where the congress was originally intended to be held +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>protested against its meeting in that town,—assembled for the first +time in Basel, the end of August, 1897, and consisted of two hundred +and four selected representatives of the Zionist Jews of both +hemispheres.</p> + +<p>The first Zionist congress solemnly proclaimed in the face of the +attentive world that the Jews are a nation, and that they do not +desire to be absorbed by other nations. It vowed to work for the +emancipation of that part of the Jewish race which is deprived of all +rights, and which is dragging out its existence in undeserved misery, +and to prepare for it a brighter future. It puts its aims on record in +a programme unanimously adopted with the greatest enthusiasm. This ran +as follows:—</p> + +<p>"Zionism works to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine +guaranteed by public law.</p> + +<p>"For the reaching of this goal the congress proposes to adopt the +following means:—</p> + +<p>"(1.) The well-regulated promotion of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>settlement of Palestine by +Jewish agriculturists, artisans, and manufacturers.</p> + +<p>"(2.) The organization and knitting together of the whole Jewish +community by means of proper local and general institutions, in +accordance with the law of the different countries.</p> + +<p>"(3.) The strengthening of the Jewish self-respect and national +consciousness.</p> + +<p>"(4.) Preparatory steps for obtaining the consent of the governments, +which is necessary for the achievement of the aims of Zionism."</p> + +<br /> + +<h4>IV.</h4> + +<p>The first congress did not separate without having created a lasting +organization. It elected a "Great Committee of Action," in which all +countries with a somewhat considerable Jewish population are +represented, and which in its turn selected a smaller "permanent +committee" with its headquarters in Vienna, under the presidency of +Dr. Herzl. It was followed in the three ensuing years by three +further <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>congresses, in 1898 and 1899, again in Basel, and in 1900 in +London. The number of the delegates rose in 1898 to two hundred and +eighty, in 1899 to three hundred and seventy, and in 1900 to four +hundred and twenty. At every succeeding congress the regulations for +election were more strictly enforced, the mandates more closely +examined, and at the present moment the congress, which has become a +permanent institution of the Zionist Jewdom, and which met for the +fifth time in December, 1901, again in Basel, can with justice claim +to be the real representative of one hundred and eighty thousand +electors.</p> + +<p>He who desires to know what the Jews who have been represented at the +congress have done up to the present time to realize the programme of +Zionism drawn up by the first congress, has only to compare the +various points of this programme with the facts we are going to +record.</p> + +<p>"(1.) The well-regulated promotion of the settlement of Palestine by +Jewish agriculturists, artisans, and manufacturers."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>Zionism rejects on principle all colonization on a small scale, and +the idea of "sneaking" into Palestine. The Zionists have therefore +devoted themselves preëminently to a zealous and tireless advocacy of +the uniting of the already existing Jewish colonies in Palestine with +those who until now have given them their aid and who of late have +inclined towards the withdrawal of their support from them. The +Zionists have also prepared the way for founding factories in the Holy +Land, which will give employment to the Jewish workmen there, and have +assured, by according a yearly subvention, the future existence of the +model Hebraic school in Jaffa, which was about to close its doors for +want of funds. They take care that the existing and promising +beginnings of a Jewish colonization shall be looked after and +maintained till the movement will be possible on a large scale.</p> + +<p>"(2.) The organization and knitting together of the whole Jewish +community by the means of proper local and general institutions <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>in +accordance with the law of the different countries."</p> + +<p>The Zionist Jewish community is at present organized in both +hemispheres in about nine hundred societies, which display great +activity. In the matter of organization covering the whole of Jewdom, +Zionism possesses national federations of its societies,—the "great" +and the "smaller committee of action," and the congress which +maintains a permanent secretarial office in Vienna. The cost of this +apparatus is covered by the voluntary yearly offerings of the +Zionists, to which offerings the name of the old Jewish coinage is +applied, and which accordingly are known as "shekels,"—their amount +being in America forty cents, and in Western lands a unit of the +coinage (one mark, one franc, one shilling, etc.). The payment of the +shekel gives the right of vote for the congress. Zionism possesses its +official organ, "Die Welt," published in German in Vienna. Its ideas +are further set forth in about forty other periodicals in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>the Hebrew, +German, Russian, Polish, Italian, English, French, and Roumanian +languages, and in the Jewish-German and Judeo-Spanish jargons. Its +American organ is the periodical, "The Maccabæan." It has founded +numerous schools, Toynbee Halls, and educational institutes, and has +recently begun to acquire a share in the administration of the Jewish +communities, in order to devote their resources, more than has +heretofore been the case with the anti-national or unthinking leaders, +to the promoting of national Jewish instruction, education, and +culture.</p> + +<p>"(3.) Strengthening of the Jewish self-respect and national +consciousness."</p> + +<p>The Zionist societies use every effort that the members and the Jewish +masses in general may know the history of their nation, and become +acquainted with the sacred and profane literature in the Hebrew +tongue. They teach the Jews to hold their heads high, to be proud of +their descent, and to despise the Anti-Semitic <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>lies, calumnies, and +insults. They care, in the measure of their strength, for the +amelioration of the hygiene of the Jewish proletariat, for its +economic improvement by means of association and solidarity, for +well-directed education of children, and for the instruction of the +women. They give the young students a goal for their efforts and an +ideal in life. They preach the duty of leading a faultless, spiritual +life, the rejection of a crude materialism, into which the +assimilation Jews, on account of the want of a worthy ideal, are only +too apt to sink, and strict self-control in word and deed. They found +athletic societies in order to promote the long neglected physical +development of the rising generation. They give a new impulse to the +celebration of Jewish historical feasts and memorial days. In many +instances they even make themselves outwardly conspicuous by wearing +insignia. The Zionist regards it as contemptible to conceal his +nationality. He wishes to be recognized as a Jew, and as he always +behaves himself <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>in a natural, unaffected way, plays no comedy of +imitation, wishes to deceive nobody about his extraction and identity, +intrudes upon no one under a false flag, his relations to his +Christian neighbors and fellow-countrymen are sounder, truer, more +frank and dignified than those of the assimilation Jew, who makes +painful and useless efforts, which disgust every Christian possessing +a modicum of good taste, to hide the fact that he is a Jew.</p> + +<p>"(4.) Preparatory steps to obtain the consent of the governments +necessary to achieve the aims of Zionism."</p> + +<p>Several of the governments whose opinion will eventually be decisive +in the matter have been, by means of memorials, reliably informed of +the aims of Zionism; and there has been no want of very important +encouragements and promising expressions of sympathy with its +tendencies.</p> + +<p>For the moment the committee of action is trying to obtain from Turkey +a charter for the colonization of such land in Palestine as can <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>be +disposed of, and which at present is lying waste, and for the opening +of its neglected resources. The exploiting of such a charter is not +possible without considerable sums of money. In order to be armed +financially for the time that Turkey will accord such a charter, the +second Zionist congress (1898) decided to found a national Jewish bank +institute, the "Jewish Colonial Trust," with its headquarters in +London. This resolution was carried out the following year (1899). The +bank has been brought into being. Its capital in shares is two million +pounds sterling. It can, by the statutes, start business when one +eighth of this capital, two hundred and fifty thousand pounds +sterling, has been actually paid up. This has already been done.</p> + +<p>Another financial instrument of Zionism is the "National Fund," +created by the fifth congress (1901), which is raised by voluntary +subscription and which is to amount to two hundred thousand pounds +sterling. The half of this sum is to be devoted to the purchase of +land <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>in Palestine, the other half to remain an intangible common +property of the Jewish people, which will by means of compound +interest and gifts continually increase, so that at important +junctures the interest may be used for great national purposes.</p> + +<br /> + +<h4>V.</h4> + +<p>I have taken pains to show, in as brief and as objective a manner as +possible, what Zionism is, what it desires to do, how it came into +being, and how it has developed up to the present. I have also +repeatedly mentioned that its most violent opponents have arisen from +the Jewish community.</p> + +<p>Many of them content themselves with libeling and insulting the +leaders of the Zionist movement. This kind of hostility they who are +vilified can afford to despise. Men who, without expecting the +slightest advantage to themselves, out of the purest, most unselfish +love for the unhappy ones of their race, out of reverence for their +forefathers, out of a general spirit of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>philanthropy, have made the +greatest sacrifices in money, time, strength, and health, in order to +elevate their people and to free millions of innocent, persecuted men +from the bitterest misery, have the right smilingly to shrug their +shoulders when irresponsible fanatics or pitiable paid scribes +reproach them with self-interest or with vanity.</p> + +<p>Besides these opponents of a lower type, there are others who do not +merely lie and slander, but also seek to argue. They delight in +comparing the apostles of Zionism with the false Messiahs like the +notorious Sabbathai Levi, who have appeared only too often in Jewish +history, and who have always done the greatest mischief to the Jewish +people they have deceived. To compare Zionism with the vagaries or +impostures of false Messiahs of the Sabbathai Levi kind, presupposes +great foolishness or great bad faith. Zionism is precisely +characterized by the complete absence of any mystical element. It +promises its adherents no miracles; on the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>contrary, it continually +impresses on them that their emancipation from a situation they find +intolerable can only be the result of their own work, the fruit of +their long, strenuous, and combined efforts.</p> + +<p>People declare Zionism to be a dream, and deny that its practical +realization is possible. To objections of this category the Zionists +have a hundred times given a sufficient answer. This simple negative +criticism can be passed over. Its only real refutation is in deeds, +such as the Zionists have already performed and as they intend further +to perform.</p> + +<p>The one point which probably forever excludes the possibility of an +understanding between Zionist and non-Zionist Jews is the question of +the Jewish nationality. Whoever maintains and believes that the Jews +are not a nation can indeed be no Zionist; he cannot join a movement +which is only justified when it is admitted that it desires to create +normal conditions of existence for a people living and suffering +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>under abnormal conditions. He who, on the contrary, is convinced that +the Jews are a people must necessarily become Zionist, as only the +return to their own country can save the everywhere hated, persecuted, +and oppressed Jewish nation from physical and intellectual +destruction.</p> + +<p>Many Jews, especially those of the West, have, in their heart of +hearts, completely broken with Judaism, and they will probably soon do +so openly, and if they do not break away, their children or +grandchildren will. These desire to be entirely absorbed by their +Christian fellow-countrymen. They resent it as a great annoyance when +other Jews proclaim that they are a people apart, and desire to bring +about an unequivocal separation between themselves and the other +nations. Their great and constant fear is to be denounced as strangers +in the land of their birth, of which they are free citizens. They fear +that this will be more than ever the case, if a large section of the +Jewish people <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>openly claim for themselves rights as an autonomous +nation, and still worse, if anywhere in the world a political and +intellectual center of Judaism should really be created, in which +millions of Jews would be grouped together, united as a nation.</p> + +<p>All these feelings on the part of the assimilation Jews are +comprehensible. From their standpoint they are justified. These Jews, +however, have no right to expect that Zionism should for their sake +commit suicide. The Jews who are happy and contented in the land of +their birth, and who indignantly reject the suggestion of abandoning +it, are about a sixth of the Jewish nation, say two millions out of +twelve. The other five sixths, or ten millions, feel themselves +profoundly unhappy in the countries where they reside, and they have +every reason for doing so. These ten millions cannot be called upon to +submit forever unresistingly to their thraldom, and to renounce every +effort for redemption from their misery, merely in order <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>that the +comfort of two million happy and contented Jews may not be disturbed.</p> + +<p>The Zionists are, moreover, firmly convinced that the misgivings of +the assimilation Jews are unfounded. The reassembling of the Jewish +people in Palestine will not have the consequences which they fear. +When there is again a Jewish country, the Jews will have the choice of +emigrating thither, or of remaining in their present home. Many will +doubtless remain, and will prove by their choice that they prefer the +land of their birth to their kindred and to their national soil. It is +barely possible that the Anti-Semites will still throw the scornful +and perfidious "stranger!" in their face. But the real Christians +among their fellow-countrymen, those who think and feel according to +the teaching and examples of the Holy Writ, will be convinced that +they do not regard themselves as strangers in the land of their birth, +and will then rightly comprehend the real meaning of their voluntary +renunciation of a return to a land <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>of the Jews, and of their fidelity +to their homes and to their Christian neighbors.</p> + +<p>The Zionists know that they have undertaken a work of unexampled +difficulty. Never before has the effort been made to transplant, +peacefully, in a short space of time, to another soil, several million +people from various countries; never has it been attempted to +transform millions of physically degenerate proletarians, without +trade or profession, into agriculturists and cattle breeders, to bring +townbred hucksters and trades people, agents, and men of sedentary +occupation again into contact with the plough and the mother earth. It +will be necessary to accustom Jews of different origins to one +another, to train them practically to national unity, and at the same +time to overcome the superhuman obstacles of difference of language, +unequal civilization, and of the manners of thought, prejudices, +likes, and dislikes of foreign nations, brought severally from the +lands of their birth.</p> + +<p>What gives the Zionists the courage to begin this labor of Hercules is +the conviction that they <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>are doing a necessary and useful work, a +work of love and civilization, a work of justice and wisdom. They +desire to save eight to ten millions of their kindred from intolerable +suffering. They desire to free the nations among whom they now +vegetate from a presence which is considered disagreeable. They wish +to deprive Anti-Semitism—which everywhere lowers public morals and +develops the very worst instincts—of its victim. They wish to make +unquestionable producers out of the Jews at present reproached with +being parasites. They desire to fertilize with their sweat and till +with their hands a country that is to-day a desert, until it is again +the flowering garden it has once been. Thus will Zionism in an equal +degree serve the unhappy Jew and the Christian peoples, civilization +and the economy of the world; and the services which it can render, +and wishes to render, are great enough to justify its hope that the +Christian world, too, will appreciate them, and support the movement +with its active sympathy.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span><br /> +<a name="ANTI-SEMITISM" id="ANTI-SEMITISM"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<h2>ANTI-SEMITISM<br /> +IN EUROPE</h2> + +<h4>BY</h4> + +<h3 class="sc">Dr. Gustav Gottheil</h3> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span><br /> +<hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<h3>THE TRUE NATURE OF ANTI-SEMITISM IN EUROPE<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<p>Anti-Semitism would be simply ridiculous if it were not so terribly in +earnest. People who make that word a war cry upon a whole race ought +to know its meaning, especially if it is to express the chief reason +for their hostility. Before they prefix the "anti" to a word they +should be sure that they understand the "pro," lest they be found to +fight shadows merely, specters of their own creation. But how far is +this the case? How many ever tried to learn the sense of the +designation under which they have enrolled themselves? Suppose we ask, +"What does Semitism mean?" Only this, must be our answer,—that it is +a summing up of the ruling dispositions, habits, mental endowments, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>and moral peculiarities of all the races comprised under the name of +Semites, so named from their supposed descent from the eldest of the +three sons of Noah. So ineradicable are these features supposed to be +that, no matter where the races have lived or are now living, no +matter what stage of civilization they have passed through or have +reached now, no matter what influence non-Semitic races have exercised +upon them, they remain essentially the same. What are these features? +Who will formulate the precise standard by which a descendant of Shem +is unfailingly known and set apart from those of Ham or Japhet? When +we consider that we are pointed back for the meaning of Semite to +antediluvian times, that is to say, to one of the oldest myths of the +world, we must admit that it would indeed be the wonder of wonders if +a large section of mankind have a family likeness so clear that they +are marked off from the rest. And this, despite the long ages that +have passed since the supposed separation of the sons of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>Noah and +their wide dispersion; despite their triumphs and defeats in wars, in +state building, and church formation; despite the wide diversity +between them in their literature, their philosophy, their art, their +trades and industries. Are the Semites still characterized by the same +gifts and tendencies of mind and heart, ruled by the same passions, +subject to the same limitations, as were their ancestors in all their +generations?</p> + +<p>Among them there is a fraction, and that fraction again scattered over +vast areas, in various states of civilization, and under diversified +kinds of governments, enjoying liberty and rights of citizenship in +the one, and groaning under relentless oppression in the other,—are +they still none other than Semites? Are they so permeated with Semitic +features that they can never amalgamate with their surroundings and +become full-weighted citizens of the state where they pitch their +tents,—offer them what inducements you may,—but must be kept at +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>arms length and treated as suspects? Has nature lost all her power in +this instance and become faithless to herself? Will the Hebrew child +not love the land of its birth and feel the kinship with the people +whose language and mode of life become its own? But why heap up +improbabilities and impossibilities? The designation fastened upon us +as a stigma was a fraud from the beginning, a conscious fraud and a +malicious invention. It was "conceived in mischief and brought forth +in iniquity." What was meant was not anti-Semitism, but +<i>anti-Judaism</i>; but that name had to be avoided because it implies +hostility to a religion and a creed; and that, again, might be +construed as springing from an awakened zeal for the instigator's own +Church; a suspicion they could not permit to rest upon them. No, it is +not the Jew's religion that makes him obnoxious and a danger to the +state, but it is his descent from the eldest son of Noah. True, the +Jews have at no time adopted it as a national name. "Semitic" is of +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>comparatively recent date, an abstract word intended merely for +scientific classification, never meant for discrimination of any +portion of the Semitic races, or to become a hissing and a byword or a +mask for robbers of human rights and destroyers of human happiness.</p> + +<p>The victims of this crusade are not a nameless horde for whom a +designation had to be coined; they are known to history for three +thousand years as Hebrews, Israelites, Jews, and they have no mind to +exchange these names for any other. But a new "Hep Hep" was wanted, +and so "Semites" was hauled from the world of books, disfigured, and +fastened upon the Jewish gabardine in noble emulation of the barbarism +of the Middle Ages. The more senseless, the more welcome it was as a +bugbear to frighten the populace and to stir into flames the sparks of +fanaticism which are always smouldering in the hearts of the vulgar, +whether of low degree or high degree, worldly or ghostly.</p> + +<p>The strangest thing, however, in this learned <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>falsification is that +it should have succeeded so well with people calling themselves +Christians and clinging to that name often after they have given up +all its historic substance. Is Christianity not purely Semitic at the +core? Is it not based upon the Semitic conception of the relation +between man and his Creator? The great efforts to liberalize and +rationalize the Church which the last century witnessed, up to +Professor Harnack's recent attempt to sum up "Das Wesen des +Christenthums,"—what are all these but endeavors to free it from +foreign accretions and envelopments and to bring its Semitic character +into greater prominence?</p> + +<p>It is the only Asiatic conception of religion that has subdued Europe +and America, and that still holds undisputed sway over all its diverse +nationalities. The very name which symbolizes to them all that is +noblest, purest, and most blessed, points to that source as +unfailingly as the needle of the compass to the poles. Harnack claims +that Christianity is not one religion <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>amongst others, but <i>The +Religion</i>, the only one fulfilling all the conditions of its highest +ideal. The Being in whom that fulness of light was revealed,—was he +not a Semite of the Semites? Did he ever deny his origin? Christianity +means <i>Messianity</i>, and the whole idea of a Mashiach,—the anointed, +namely, anointed ruler,—is most intensely national and, therefore, +intensely Semitic,—from which indisputable fact it follows that the +loftiest conception of religion came to the world from that source. +Thence came the Bible,—the book of the world which has been +translated into every living tongue and dialect, and to the +elucidation of which hosts of scholars still devote their lives. +Painting, sculpture, music, poetry, have attempted their highest +flights under its inspiration. From countless pulpits its moral and +religious truths are expounded, week after week, and on every great +occasion of national significance,—in whatever part of Christendom it +may occur,—the Songs of Zion are awakened as the fittest expressions +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>of the prevailing sentiment. The Psalter is the most wonderful of +existing books,—at home alike in the palace of the king and the +cottage of the peasant, the inexhaustible theme of our masters of +music. Noeldeke, Protestant professor at the University of Strasburg, +one of the great lights of Semitic scholarship, declares that "by the +side of the Psalms all other religious hymns appear as pale imitations +merely." On that field were gathered the sheaves which a master hand +has wound together into the One Universal Prayer, in which all +Churches join with one accord. And the Universal Day of Rest,—that +one sure blessing of the laboring man,—whence did it come? What other +legislator had the divine audacity to make its observance one of the +foundation laws of his constitution, and to give it precedence, even +over all moral enactments?</p> + +<p>Professor R.F. Grau of the conservative school of theology writes:—</p> + +<p>"God is a living, holy, loving Being. He is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>not first and foremost to +be scientifically comprehended, but worshipped and revered in the +heart, and because He is such a Being, the Semites had to be chosen as +His apostles to the whole world. For they had a heart for Him in the +beginning.... The Semite has the religion of the Infinite, and as this +is the perfect religion, ... the Church, as the Community of Christ, +has sprung from the Semitic mustard seed, although at present myriads +of Indo-germanics dwell under the branches of the tree."</p> + +<p>In the face of admissions like these by men who have a right to be +heard in the matter, and considering that the tree can never change +the nature of the root from which it sprang, the conclusion is not +unwarranted that "anti-Semitic" is a synonym for "anti-Christian."</p> + +<p>Its success is due to the still persistent prejudice against the Jews +among so many Christians,—all their professions to the contrary +notwithstanding. And it continues for several reasons. One is its long +duration; it has lasted <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>for ages and is ingrained in their feelings +and ideas. What if it be shown ever so clearly that it is unjust, +unreasonable, yea, even unchristian!—that will not materially change +the temper of the great masses of the people. The common man is rarely +swayed by the force of arguments; the power of a principle, so weighty +with the thinkers, is of no consequence to him. He belongs to the +material world, and to make good his place in it is the aim toward +which all his energies are bent. For things spiritual he has neither +time nor capacity. He is ruled by the sentiments which were implanted +in him in his youth and by his immediate surroundings. All thinking +must be done for him; all new ideas must be presented to him, as it +were, ready made and in tangible form. He does not push himself +forward, but must be led onward by hands that understand him and his +ways. But in this instance, his guides are not particularly anxious to +bring about a change for the better,—even if we suppose that they +consider the liberation <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>from prejudice against the Jews a betterment. +They have their own theological difficulty to contend with. The Jews +are still unconverted, and the missions established and maintained for +the purpose of winning them over can show no better results now than +in the past. The chief controversy between the Church and Israel +stands to-day where it stood when it was first raised at Jerusalem +eighteen centuries ago. A judicial sentence of a court at Jerusalem +has grown into a pivotal point on which, as the Church declares, turns +the salvation of mankind for time and eternity; and if she is right, +the Jews must be wrong. Since that fatal occurrence, Christianity, in +one form or another, has conquered Europe and America, and has planted +outposts in almost every part of the earth, but has not been able to +subdue the Jew. Every conceivable means to make him surrender has been +tried, including that of the jailor and the executioner and all the +horrors that lie between them,—expulsion, pillage, social +degradation, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>impaling in ghettos, and what not—but in vain. The same +policy is continued to this day as far as the present more civilized +state of the Christians permits; but still in vain. So far are their +persecutors from having brought the Jews to their knees, that the +self-consciousness of the race, as a whole, has deepened; and their +advance in general culture enables them to measure swords, +intellectually, with their accusers and to give a reason for the faith +that is in them.</p> + +<p>All the conditions of this interminable conflict are against them. In +numbers they are a vanishing minority, and still more weakened by +their dispersion over the face of the earth, unorganized, without any +ecclesiastical authority in their Church that could direct them or act +in their name. Every individual Jew must face the world's hostility +single-handed, and be, religiously, his own priest, his own pope. +Allies he has none, advocates of his cause are few and far between. +The favors of his friends are <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>often more humiliating than the attacks +of his enemies. Still he holds his own, and if for the last century or +so he has carried on a reformation of his ancient rituals, he has done +so from his own initiative and in his own way, which is not that into +which it has been tried so long to force or to lure him. At the same +time a revival of Jewish literature has taken place which not only has +brought to light the long-forgotten treasures of the past, but has +shown the large part the Jews have in the general progress of mankind. +The ecclesia triumphant has no victory to record in this section of +her battlefields, and it is not in ordinary human nature frankly to +admit a defeat in such an unequal struggle. Only one had a right to +expect that a Church that claims to have regenerated the human race +and to have lifted the slave of his blind instincts into "the glorious +liberty of the children of God" would have risen superior to the +common weakness. Instead of that, almost throughout Christendom, the +crusade against the Jews is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>being preached and the policy of +repression loudly demanded.</p> + +<p>On what ground? It is said that they dominate everywhere—in finance, +in law courts, in politics, in art, in literature, in the press, in +trade and manufacture. But how do they achieve this astounding feat? +How do the Jews succeed in so lording it over the immense majority? By +witchcraft? Is it by magic that a few bankers and brokers keep all +their competitors in subjugation and handle them at their will and to +their own profit? Is it by sorcery that they force their way to the +universities and academies? Are they in possession of secret formulas +by which they can direct the currents of trade at their will? +Recently, loud complaints were raised in several of the German state +parliaments that there were too many Jewish judges and lawyers in +their lands, and the governments were exhorted to put an end to the +scandal. No charges of incompetency or exploitation were raised +against the Hebrews that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>"handle the law." Only it was declared that +a Christian shrunk from taking an oath at the hand of a Jewish lawyer. +If this be so, how is it that the people go to them in numbers that +excite the envy of their non-Jewish colleagues? All the statements +about the alleged power of the Jews are ridiculous exaggerations, +trumped up to scare the imagination of the thoughtless, as has been +proved over and over again. But even reduced to their true measure, +they prove, not the possession of magic, but of soundness of mind, of +unimpaired energy, and of all the other needful conditions for +success, which the Jews have kept intact despite all the attempts made +to crush the unbelievers into the dust. The outcry against them is +their vindication; people do not fear weaklings, do not raise alarms +against perils which can be pushed aside by an effort of the will. The +few must own inherent sources of strength if the many resort to the +coward's weapon of lies and slander. And in this instance the +admission of the truth is an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>implied homage to the religion which the +victors in the unequal struggle profess and defend. For it is +indisputable that this is the source to which the formation of the +Jewish mind and heart must be attributed. Let me cite, for one proof, +the admission of the most persistent and most powerful oppressor of +the Jews, the procurator of the Russian synod. Half the number of all +Hebrews are subjects of Russia. They came under her dominion when she +conquered and incorporated the Polish provinces; they are kept there +under the most stringent laws, and life is made to them as burdensome +as possible. "The Pale" is a gigantic ghetto where the oldest form of +rabbinism prevails to this day. Yet the same fear of the superiority +of the Jewish mind haunts the government; it is the alleged reason for +practically closing up all the avenues of the higher education for +them. Only <i>three per cent</i> of the total number of students are +admitted to the universities and to the technical schools. But more +than a hundred thousand <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>common soldiers are drafted from the Jews +into the armies and sent to all parts of the gigantic empire, kept +there during the best part of their lives, without any prospect of +promotion, and often going only to die in the defense of territories +which, if they were civilians, they would not be permitted to enter. +The Russian Torquemada, not long ago, openly declared that not a +single Jew should be permitted to settle amongst the peasantry, even +within the Pale, because he would be the only sober man amongst a +population that cannot resist the temptations of strong drink. Strange +spectacle indeed! Men banished from places where they wish to live +because they are too good for their surroundings! forced to remain +where they can hardly eke out a miserable living. The question, +surely, is justified. How did that poverty-stricken mass of oppressed +people succeed in preserving its freedom from a national vice in a +country where its ancestors have dwelt for long generations? Can a +great virtue be maintained <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>by sorcery? The common experience is that +of the poet—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Misery doth bravest mind abate."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>What but their religion made them proof against the arrows of a fate +which, for duration and cruelty, is without a parallel in history! +This conclusion is further corroborated by the fact that the same +virtue of sobriety characterizes them everywhere, and makes them an +object of envy to their non-Jewish neighbors,—nay, forces the honest +temperance advocate to hold them up before his Christian audiences as +examples to shame them into going and doing likewise; rather, let me +say, into staying at home and doing likewise. For one of the +witchcraft mysteries of Judaism is that its home is not in the church, +but that the church is in the home. The Jew's salvation is in nowise +dependent upon rabbi and synagogue, but upon wife and children. They +are his congregation to whom he ministers as priest in fulfilment of +the great charter word of dedication, "Ye shall be unto <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>me a kingdom +of priests and a holy nation." The deepest roots of the Jewish faith +rest and are nourished in the domestic soil. The synagogue has nothing +to offer to the faithful which he cannot find in his own tent. Ten men +gathered together with a Sepher Tora (scroll of the Mosaic law) in +their midst, form a Kahal Hakodesh (sacred body). No man becomes a +drunkard with wife and children and aged parents near him for guardian +angels. The greatest difficulty the Jewish reformation has to face is +what to substitute for the old ceremonials where they have become +impracticable, and thus to preserve the essentially domestic character +of the ancient faith. Is it thinkable that the Jew would be less +objectionable to his surroundings were he to lose his sturdy horror of +intemperance, and thus "assimilate" more freely with his neighbors of +different faiths? It is not thinkable when we consider the great +efforts made by Christians everywhere to redeem their people from +their bondage to strong drink and the misery <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>resulting from it. The +Jew is the <i>natural ally of the temperance advocates</i>; and if he is +not found in their ranks, it is simply because he never knew from +experience the need of that reformation.</p> + +<p>And never will he know, as long as his passionate fondness for home +and his longing for family love abide within him. At present, this, +generally speaking, is still the case; the poorest and least +cultivated classes are not excepted; nay, just in that class it is one +of the most noteworthy features. If the uncouth immigrant from Eastern +Europe stoops to the lowest kinds of peddling, or, for a mere +pittance, wastes his life in the stifling sweatshop; if he is not very +scrupulous in his dealings with his transient patrons, and does not +hold city ordinances as inviolable as those of the "Shulchan Aruch" +(code of ceremonials), the central motive is his ever present thought +of his family; even when he has not yet scraped together enough +pennies to pay for their fare to the new home, they are constantly +with him in his mind. This is not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>offered as a defense for +over-reaching and cannot be allowed by a magistrate as a plea for +law-breaking; but it is offered to the unprejudiced reader in +compliance with Spinoza's golden rule: Human errors must not be +ridiculed and condemned, but <i>understood</i>. <i>Si duo faciunt idem, non +est idem.</i> This wise caution is the more to be heeded in the present +instance, as, from the same source, devotion to home life, springs +another fine feature of Jewry; go down in the scale as deep as you +may, they are an industrious, toilsome class of people, often turning +their narrow homes into workshops where old and young ply a handicraft +from early morn to the late evening hours. Hundreds of men and women, +arriving in this country after they have passed the middle life, learn +trades and work at them till their trembling hands can hold the tools +no longer or the light fades from their overstrained eyes. Among them +there are not a few that have seen better days at their native places, +or are deeply learned <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>in the Law. They are quick in seizing the +secret of a successful trade of paying manufacture, and not rarely +better the instruction; a skill for which they are hated and despised +by their own aristocracy in the markets, and branded as spoilers of +every good thing as soon as it appears. If this aptitude and eagerness +for trade be a fault, the Christians have themselves to blame for it. +Even a superficial glance at the history of Israel proves that as long +as the people lived on their native soil, and could live out their own +lives, they showed neither skill nor desire for mercantile pursuits; +that their legislation, their religion, their poetry and prophesying, +and their ethical ideas presuppose a nation of shepherds and tillers +of the soil. For the great change in the ruling disposition of the +Jews, since their dispersion, those alone are responsible who now +reproach them for it. The first Christians were Jewish ploughmen and +herdsmen; the Apostles mostly Judæan peasants and fishermen. The +finest parables and similes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>in the speeches of Jesus are taken from +the peasants' occupation and experience. And even to this day +thousands of the scattered race are ready to seize again the plough +and the spade, if they are given a chance, and not a few have done so +even under the most disheartening conditions. The fact is, the pagan +Mercury proved a more merciful god to the Jews than the Christian +Jesus, as he was taught and practised by the mediæval Church. He +gloated over the sufferings of those who were of his own flesh and +blood. No wonder they sought refuge under the wings of the heathen +deity and became adepts in the art which he symbolized.</p> + +<p>But suppose it were true that all the Jews dote on traffic as their +dearest occupation,—what of it? The British have the nickname of "a +nation of shopkeepers" fastened on them; yet they were and are the +greatest benefactors of the human race, carrying the blessings of +civilization to half the peoples of the globe. Commerce has done more +for the peace of the world <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>than all the preaching, praying, and +prophesying taken together. A great railroad, a steamship line, a +cable or a telephone wire, a commercial treaty, a tariff +convention,—these are the modern bonds that hold the remotest parts +of the earth together, and make them equally abhor war and its +ravages. A falling off in the exports, a shrinking of the value of +investments, an unforeseen competitor in the markets of the world, +cause the rulers of the most civilized nations more anxiety than any +adverse political combination. For the former threaten the peace and +welfare of the home life of the people, on whose contentment they rely +for the defense of their claims in all their political intricacies. A +class of people credited with the mastery of the art of buying and +selling should, therefore, be welcome to every country and given the +amplest freedom and encouragement to ply their skill, provided, of +course, they do not carry their hoarded profits out of the country and +enrich other nations by them. But where do the Jews <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>think of such a +thing? Their own country, if Palestine may still be so denominated, is +one of the poorest in the world, and what little revival there has +lately been perceptible is due to the colonies established there by +Jewish peasants who, under most trying conditions, labor to restore +the soil to its ancient fertility, after the long sleep into which it +has sunk. Jewish wealth can be enjoyed, and is being enjoyed, in no +other way than non-Jewish. Its owners are charged by its religious +teachers with being only too willing to imitate the luxuries and +extravagances of their neighbors. The same snares are spread for the +feet of their offspring as for those of Gentile birth; the tempters +that lie in wait for them are liberal enough to ignore distinctions +between the various creeds. I will not stoop to any defense of my race +from the vulgar charge that they are cheaters; that each and all will +always try, right or wrong, to secure the best of any bargain into +which a poor Gentile may enter with them. Those whom the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>commercial +standing of the Jews, here and elsewhere, has not yet cured of this +slanderous prejudice will not be converted by my pleading. Envy is an +incurable disease; jealousy makes blind, and the common saying is +surely true, that none are so blind as those who will not see. But +neither have I the least desire to hide or gloss over our real +failings and shortcomings. Those who cannot rest on their own real +merits and accept the blame for their undeniable demerits must not +dare to challenge the judgment of the world. The Jew does dare it, and +all he asks of his critics is fairness, impartiality, justice. What I +have said to his praise and for his defense was intended solely to +assist the fairminded reader in forming a just opinion of an agitation +which in Europe embitters, cripples, and darkens thousands of lives, +which, under better treatment, would be spent in contentment and +general usefulness.</p> + +<p>It is for this purpose only that I will briefly add two more traits of +the Jews, equally valuable <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>and undeniable. One is their charity; they +care for their poor, their sick, their aged, if destitute, as the +numerous institutions prove, found in every place where they dwell in +sufficient number to maintain them. Ungrudgingly they assume the heavy +burdens which this "exclusiveness" imposes upon them. Blame them for +it who may; the right-minded will not, especially when assured that +this feeling of pity is not the privilege of the well-to-do among them +only. The working classes have always something to spare from their +scanty earnings for "Z'dakah," the religious term in common use for +charity, which, significantly enough, in biblical Hebrew means +"justice." The idea that charity is an essential part of worship has +been bred into them by long tradition, and continues to be regarded as +such, wherever rabbinical Judaism survives in full force. From +childhood every Jew knows the saying of Simon the Just, one of the +last men of the Great Synagogue:—</p> + +<div class="block"> +<p class="noin">"The whole world rests on these three pillars;</p> +<p style="margin-left: 5em;">Law, Worship, and Charity."</p> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>The other trait is their zeal in the education of their children.</p> + +<p>One of the standard objections to the Hebrews is their "forwardness"; +socially, it is a disagreeable and annoying fault, but otherwise a +gift of no little value. Forwardness is the soul of all progress and +advancement. Call it that, call it self-help, call it energy, call it +self-reliance, call it by the popular name of wide-awakeness, and you +transfigure the fault into a merit. How the Jew was able to preserve +it in any one of its forms is one of the many miracles of his history, +seeing that the world has left nothing untried to cast the Jews +backward to the last depth of self-despair. An exhibition of his +forwardness might be seen at the doors of the public schools in the +lower districts of the city, notably at the time of admission of new +pupils. The poorest of the Jewish fathers and mothers would be seen +wrangling for the registration of their little ones, as if it were for +their daily bread. And may this not also serve for a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>proof that the +parents are willing to surrender their offspring to the influence of +these schools, and see them thoroughly Americanized?</p> + +<br /> +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> +<br /> + +<p>By these signs ye shall know the Jews, wherever ye find them; they +may, therefore, be called racial. In every other respect they are +neither better nor worse than other people of the corresponding stages +of life. Every variety of character is found among them; virtue and +vice are distributed among them. Let Americans not stigmatize them as +"undesirable immigrants," and close their hospitable gate upon them. +They bring with them qualities which are an ample compensation for +their defects, and their well-to-do brethren are not behindhand in +seeing to it that they become no public burden. The American people +have repeatedly shown the door to those who came hither for the +purpose of preaching anti-Semitism, thereby publicly testifying that +they would have none of that disgrace to our age. What exists of it +in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>social life is not worth arguing against. It will and must +disappear in a country, the civil order of which is based upon the +principle of equal rights to all law-abiding citizens, to whatever +race or religion they may belong. "A fair field and no favor." This +good old saying comprises all our demands.</p> + + + +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Zionism and Anti-Semitism, by +Max Simon Nordau and Gustav Gottheil + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ZIONISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM *** + +***** This file should be named 24186-h.htm or 24186-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/1/8/24186/ + +Produced by Jeannie Howse, Bryan Ness and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +book was produced from scanned images of public domain +material from the Google Print project.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Zionism and Anti-Semitism + Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil + +Author: Max Simon Nordau + Gustav Gottheil + +Release Date: January 7, 2008 [EBook #24186] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ZIONISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM *** + + + + +Produced by Jeannie Howse, Bryan Ness and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +book was produced from scanned images of public domain +material from the Google Print project.) + + + + + + + + + +ZIONISM + +_and_ + +ANTI-SEMITISM + + + + +_Zionism_ + +AND + +_Anti-Semitism_ + + + +BY + +MAX NORDAU + + +AND + +GUSTAV GOTTHEIL + + + +NEW YORK +FOX, DUFFIELD & COMPANY +1905 + + + + +_Copyright 1902_ +_FREDERICK A. RICHARDSON_ + +_Copyright 1903_ +_SCOTT-THAW COMPANY_ + +_Copyright 1905_ +_By FOX, DUFFIELD & COMPANY_ + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + +ZIONISM. _By Max Nordau_ 9 + +ANTI-SEMITISM IN EUROPE _By Gustav Gottheil._ 47 + + + + +ZIONISM + +BY + +MAX NORDAU + + + + +ZIONISM + + +Among the persons of the educated classes who follow with any +attention all the more important movements of the times, it would now +be difficult to find one to whom the word "Zionism" is quite unknown. +People are generally aware that it describes an idea and a movement +that in the last years has found numerous adherents among the Jews of +all countries, but especially among those of the East. Comparatively +few, however, both among the Gentiles and the Jews themselves, have a +perfectly clear notion of the aims and ways of Zionism; the Gentiles, +because they do not care sufficiently for Jewish affairs to take the +trouble to inform themselves at first hand as to the particulars; the +Jews, because they are intentionally led astray by the enemies of +Zionism, by lies and calumnies, or because even among the fervent +Zionists there are not many who have probed the whole Zionist idea to +the bottom, and are willing or able to present it in a clear and +comprehensible fashion, without exaggeration and polemical heat. + +I will endeavor to furnish readers of good faith, who are not biased, +and have no other interest than that of gaining authentic information +about a phenomenon in contemporary history, as concisely and soberly +as possible with all the facts, as they really are, not as they are +reflected in muddled brains, or distorted and falsified by +calumniators. + + +I. + +Zionism is a new word for a very old object, in so far as it merely +expresses the yearning of the Jewish people for Zion. Since the +destruction of the second temple by Titus, since the dispersion of the +Jewish nation in all countries, this people has not ceased to long +intensely, and hope fervently, for the return to the lost land of +their fathers. This yearning for, and hope in, Zion on the part of the +Jews was the concrete, I might say, the geographical, aspect of their +Messianic faith, which in its turn forms an essential part of their +religion. + +Messianism and Zionism were really, for nearly two thousand years, +identical conceptions, and without caviling and hair-splitting +interpretation, it would not be easy to make a distinction between the +prayers for the appearance of the promised Messiah, and those for the +not less promised return to the historical home,--both of which stand +side by side on every page of the Jewish liturgy. These prayers were, +until a few generations ago, meant literally by every Jew, as they +still are by the simple believing Jews. The Jews had no other idea +than that they were a people which as a punishment for its sins had +lost the land of its forefathers, which was condemned to live as +strangers in strange lands, and whose great sufferings would first +cease when it was again assembled on the consecrated soil of the Holy +Land. + +This gradually changed about the middle of the eighteenth century, +when enlightenment first began to find its way into Jewdom, in the +person of its first herald, Moses Mendelssohn, the popular +philosopher. The faith of the Jews became more lukewarm; the educated +classes, where they did not simply convert themselves to Christianism, +began to regard the doctrines of their religion in a rationalist +manner; for them the dispersion of the Jewish people was a final and +unalterable fact; they emptied the conception of the Messiah and of +Zion of every concrete meaning, and arranged for themselves a singular +doctrine, according to which the Zion promised to the Jews was to be +understood only in a spiritual sense, as the setting up of the Jewish +monotheism in the whole world, as the future triumph of Jewish ethics +over the less sublime and less noble moral teaching of the other +nations. An American rabbi reduced this conception to the striking +formula, "Our Zion is in Washington." The Mendelssohn teaching +logically developed in the first half of the nineteenth century into +the "Reform," which deliberately broke with Zionism. For the Reform +Jew, the word Zion had just as little meaning as the word dispersion. +He does not feel himself in any diaspora. He denies that there is a +Jewish people and that he is a member of it. He desires only to belong +to the people in whose midst he lives. For him Judaism is a purely +religious conception which has nothing whatever to do with +nationality. The land of his birth is his fatherland, and he will know +of no other. The idea of a return to Palestine excites him either to +indignation or to laughter. He answers it with the well-known, silly, +would-be witticism, "If the Jewish state is again set up in Palestine, +I will ask to be its ambassador in Paris." + +The thinking Jew did not fail, however, to perceive, in the course of +time, that Reform Judaism is a half measure, a compromise, which like +every compromise, contains the germ of destruction, as it cannot for +one instant resist logical criticism. Whom shall the Reform Judaism +satisfy? The believing Jew? He rejects it with the greatest +abhorrence. The unbelieving Jew? He despises it as hypocrisy and +phrase-mongering. The Jew who really desires to break with his +national past and to be absorbed by his Christian surroundings? For +that Jew, Reform Judaism does not suffice; he goes a step farther, the +step that leads to the baptismal font. Still less does it satisfy the +Jew who desires to guard Jewdom against destruction and to preserve it +as an ethnical individuality. For to him an openly expressed +abandonment of all national aspirations is synonymous with a +self-condemnation of the Jewish people to a perhaps slow, but sure, +death. Reform Judaism without Zionism, that is to say, without the +wish and the hope for a reassembling of the Jewish people, has no +future. At the best, it can only be regarded as a somewhat crooked +path that leads to Christianity. He who desires to reach that goal can +find straighter and shorter routes. + + +II. + +And so it has come about that the generations which had been under the +influence of the Mendelssohnian rhetoric and enlightenment, of reform +and assimilation, have, in the last twenty years of the nineteenth +century, been followed by a new generation which seeks to take up a +standpoint other than the traditional towards the question of Zion. +These new Jews shrug their shoulders at that twaddle which has been +the fashion among rabbis and _literati_ for the last hundred years, +and which boasts of a "Mission of Jewdom," said to consist in this, +that the Jews must live forever in dispersion among the peoples in +order to act as their teachers and models of morality, and to educate +them gradually to pure rationalism, to a general brotherhood of +mankind, and to an ideal cosmopolitanism. They declare the mission +swagger to be either presumption or foolishness. They, more modest and +more practical, demand only the right for the Jewish people to live +and to develop itself, according to its abilities, up to the natural +limits of its type. They have become convinced that this is not +possible in dispersion, as, under that condition, prejudice, hatred, +and contempt continually follow and oppress them, and either stint +their development, or force them to an ethnical mimicry which +necessarily makes of them, instead of original types with a right to +existence, mediocre or bad copies of foreign models. They therefore +work methodically with a view to rendering the Jewish people once more +a normal one, which lives on its own soil, and accomplishes all +economical, intellectual, moral, and political functions of a +civilized nation. + +The goal cannot be reached at once. It lies in a future more or less +near. It is an ideal, a desire, a hope, as the Messianic Zionism was +and is. The new Zionism, which has been called the political one, +differs, however, from the old, the religious, the Messianic one, in +this,--that it disavows all mysticism, no longer identifies itself +with Messianism, and does not expect the return to Palestine to be +brought about by a miracle, but desires to prepare the way by its own +efforts. + +The new Zionism has grown in part only out of the internal impulsions +of Judaism itself, out of the enthusiasm of modern educated Jews for +their history and martyrology, out of the awakened consciousness of +their racial qualities, out of their ambition to save the ancient +blood, in view of the farthest possible future, and to add to the +achievements of their forefathers the achievements of their posterity. + +On the other hand, Zionism is the effect of two impulses which came +from without,--first, the principle of nationality, which for half a +century ruled thought and feeling in Europe, and governed the politics +of the world; secondly, Anti-Semitism, from which the Jews of all +countries have more or less to suffer. + +The principle of nationality has awakened self-consciousness in all +the peoples; it teaches them to regard their peculiarities as +qualities, and gives them a passionate desire for independence. It +could not, therefore, pass over the educated Jews without leaving a +trace. It induced them to remember who and what they are; to feel +themselves, what they had unlearned, a people apart; and to demand for +themselves a normal national destiny. This slow and painful work of +the recovery of their national individuality was rendered easier by +the attitude of the peoples, who eliminated them from among themselves +as a foreign element, and put stress, without consideration or +courtesy, on the real and imaginary contrasts, or at least +differences, between themselves and the Jews. + +The principle of nationality has, in its exaggerations, led to +excesses. It has been led astray into Chauvinism, abased to idiotic +hatred of the foreigner, degraded to grotesque self-worship. From this +caricature of itself the Jewish nationalism is safe. The Jewish +nationalist does not suffer from self-inflation; he feels, on the +contrary, that he must make tireless efforts to render the name of Jew +a title of honor. He modestly recognizes the good qualities of other +nations, and seeks diligently to acquire them in so far as they +harmonize with his natural capacities. He knows what terrible harm +centuries of slavery or disability have done to his originally proud +and upright character, and seeks to cure it by means of intense +self-training. If, however, nationalism is on its guard against all +illusions as to itself, this is a natural phase in the process of +development from barbaric selfish individualism to free humanism and +altruism,--a phase the justification and necessity of which can only +be denied by him who has no comprehension whatever of the laws of +organic evolution, and is totally lacking in the historical sense. + +Anti-Semitism has also taught many educated Jews the way back to their +people. It has had the effect of a sharp trial which the weak cannot +stand, but from which the strong emerge stronger or more confident in +themselves. It is not correct to say that Zionism is but a "gesture of +truculence" or an act of desperation against Anti-Semitism. It is true +that more than one educated Jew has been moved only by Anti-Semitism +to throw in his lot again with Jewdom, and he would again fall away if +his Christian fellow-countrymen would receive him anew in a friendly +spirit. But, in the case of most Zionists, Anti-Semitism only forced +them to reflect upon their relation to the nations, and their +reflection has led them to conclusions which would remain a lasting +acquirement of their mind and heart, even if Anti-Semitism were to +disappear completely from the world. + +Be it well understood; the Zionism analyzed above is that of the +educated and free Jews,--the Jewish elite. The uneducated mass, +clinging to the old traditions, is Zionist without much reflection, +from feeling, from instinct, from distress, and yearning. They suffer +too much from the hardships of life, from the hatred of the peoples, +from legal disabilities, and social outlawry; they feel that they +cannot hope for any lasting amelioration of their situation so long as +they must live as a powerless minority among a hostile majority. They +desire to become a nation, to rejuvenate themselves by close contact +with mother earth, and to become once more the masters of their +destiny. This Zionist mass is still in part not quite free from +mystical tendencies. It allows its Zionism to be pervaded, to a +certain extent, by Messianic reminiscences, and blends it with +religious emotions. They have certainly a clear idea of the aim, the +reassembling of the Jewish nation, but not of the means. Still, even +they have realized already the necessity of themselves making efforts, +and there is a vast difference between their active readiness for +organization and their spirit of sacrifice, and the pious, +prayer-indulging passiveness of the purely religious Messianist. + + +III. + +The new or political Zionism has had here and there forerunners, whose +first appearance dates back to the early half of the nineteenth +century. + +In the beginning of the eighties terrible persecutions broke out in +Russia without any apparent reason, persecutions which cost hundreds +of Jews their lives, destroyed the prosperity of thousands more, and +induced tens of thousands to turn their backs on the land of their +birth. This calamity brutally aroused the Jews from their +hundred-year-old illusions and brought them again to a sense of +reality. A Russian Jew, Dr. Pinsker, at that time wrote a small +pamphlet entitled, "Auto-Emancipation," which was already a prelude to +the modern political Zionism, and sketched all its motives without +however developing them symphonically. He, at any rate, it was who +gave its watchword to the whole movement: "The Jews are no mere +religious community, they are a nation. They desire again to live in +their own country as a united people. Their rejuvenation must be at +the same time economical, physical, intellectual, and moral." + +The Jewish youth of the middle schools and universities of Russia were +profoundly affected by Pinsker's arguments. They began to found +national Jewish societies. A number of students who studied at foreign +universities became in their new surroundings apostles of Dr. Pinsker's +idea, and found adherents here and there, for the most part among the +young Jews of Vienna. Others preferred action to word, example to +sermon, abandoned their studies, and emigrated to Palestine in order to +become peasants there,--Jewish peasants on historically Jewish soil. +Deeply moved by this idealism of a peculiarly enthusiastic elite, +cooler headed Jews in Russia and Germany began also to form societies +in order to support from a distance the Palestine settlements of the +Jewish pioneers. This took place without any combined plan and with no +clear notion of the aim and the means. The societies were not +conscious of the fact that they felt and acted as Zionists. They did +not perceive the connection between the Jewish colonization of +Palestine and the future of the whole Jewish nation. It was in their +case rather an instinctive movement in which all kinds of obscure +feelings are dimly discernible,--piety, archaeological-historical +sentimentality, charity, and pride of pedigree. At any rate, the minds +of the Jews were prepared, the feeling was in the air, Jewdom was ripe +for a change. + +As is always the case in such historical moments, the man also +appeared whose mission it was to express clearly the ideas obscurely +felt by many, and to proclaim loudly the word they were waiting to +hear. This man was Dr. Theodor Herzl. He published in the autumn of +1896 a concisely written booklet, "Der Judenstaat" (The Jewish State), +which proclaimed, with a determination that till then had no +precedent, the fact that the Jews are a people who demand for +themselves all the rights of a people, and who desire to settle in a +country where they can lead a free and complete political existence. + +"Der Judenstaat" has become the real starting point of political +Zionism,--the starting point, not the programme. Herzl's book is still +the subjective work of a solitary thinker who speaks in his own name. +Many details in it are literature. It is not easy to draw a sharp +boundary line between the sober earnest of the social politician and +the imagination of the prophetical poet. The real programme had to be +a collective work which was certainly based on Herzl's book, and +inspired by Herzl's visions of the future, but which rid itself of all +fantastic details, and was built up solely from the elements of +reality. + +Herzl's book was at once greeted by tens of thousands of Jews, chiefly +the young, as an act of redemption. It was not to remain merely +printed paper, but should be transformed into a practical creation. +New societies were founded everywhere, no longer with a view of the +slow, petty settlement of Palestine by means of groups of Jews +creeping surreptitiously as it were into the country, but by the +preparation for an emigration "en masse" into the Holy Land, based on +a formal treaty with the Turkish Government, guaranteed by the Great +Powers, by which the former should accord the new settlers the right +of self-government. + +The premises of political Zionism are that there is a Jewish nation. +This is just the point denied by the assimilation Jews, and the +spiritless, unctuous, prating rabbis in their pay. Dr. Herzl saw that +the first task he had to fulfil was the organizing of a manifestation +which should bring before the world, and the Jewish people itself, in +modern, comprehensible form the fact of its national existence. He +convoked a Zionist congress, which in spite of the most furious +attacks and most unscrupulous acts of violence,--the Jewish community +of Munich where the congress was originally intended to be held +protested against its meeting in that town,--assembled for the first +time in Basel, the end of August, 1897, and consisted of two hundred +and four selected representatives of the Zionist Jews of both +hemispheres. + +The first Zionist congress solemnly proclaimed in the face of the +attentive world that the Jews are a nation, and that they do not +desire to be absorbed by other nations. It vowed to work for the +emancipation of that part of the Jewish race which is deprived of all +rights, and which is dragging out its existence in undeserved misery, +and to prepare for it a brighter future. It puts its aims on record in +a programme unanimously adopted with the greatest enthusiasm. This ran +as follows:-- + +"Zionism works to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine +guaranteed by public law. + +"For the reaching of this goal the congress proposes to adopt the +following means:-- + +"(1.) The well-regulated promotion of the settlement of Palestine by +Jewish agriculturists, artisans, and manufacturers. + +"(2.) The organization and knitting together of the whole Jewish +community by means of proper local and general institutions, in +accordance with the law of the different countries. + +"(3.) The strengthening of the Jewish self-respect and national +consciousness. + +"(4.) Preparatory steps for obtaining the consent of the governments, +which is necessary for the achievement of the aims of Zionism." + + +IV. + +The first congress did not separate without having created a lasting +organization. It elected a "Great Committee of Action," in which all +countries with a somewhat considerable Jewish population are +represented, and which in its turn selected a smaller "permanent +committee" with its headquarters in Vienna, under the presidency of +Dr. Herzl. It was followed in the three ensuing years by three +further congresses, in 1898 and 1899, again in Basel, and in 1900 in +London. The number of the delegates rose in 1898 to two hundred and +eighty, in 1899 to three hundred and seventy, and in 1900 to four +hundred and twenty. At every succeeding congress the regulations for +election were more strictly enforced, the mandates more closely +examined, and at the present moment the congress, which has become a +permanent institution of the Zionist Jewdom, and which met for the +fifth time in December, 1901, again in Basel, can with justice claim +to be the real representative of one hundred and eighty thousand +electors. + +He who desires to know what the Jews who have been represented at the +congress have done up to the present time to realize the programme of +Zionism drawn up by the first congress, has only to compare the +various points of this programme with the facts we are going to +record. + +"(1.) The well-regulated promotion of the settlement of Palestine by +Jewish agriculturists, artisans, and manufacturers." + +Zionism rejects on principle all colonization on a small scale, and +the idea of "sneaking" into Palestine. The Zionists have therefore +devoted themselves preeminently to a zealous and tireless advocacy of +the uniting of the already existing Jewish colonies in Palestine with +those who until now have given them their aid and who of late have +inclined towards the withdrawal of their support from them. The +Zionists have also prepared the way for founding factories in the Holy +Land, which will give employment to the Jewish workmen there, and have +assured, by according a yearly subvention, the future existence of the +model Hebraic school in Jaffa, which was about to close its doors for +want of funds. They take care that the existing and promising +beginnings of a Jewish colonization shall be looked after and +maintained till the movement will be possible on a large scale. + +"(2.) The organization and knitting together of the whole Jewish +community by the means of proper local and general institutions in +accordance with the law of the different countries." + +The Zionist Jewish community is at present organized in both +hemispheres in about nine hundred societies, which display great +activity. In the matter of organization covering the whole of Jewdom, +Zionism possesses national federations of its societies,--the "great" +and the "smaller committee of action," and the congress which +maintains a permanent secretarial office in Vienna. The cost of this +apparatus is covered by the voluntary yearly offerings of the +Zionists, to which offerings the name of the old Jewish coinage is +applied, and which accordingly are known as "shekels,"--their amount +being in America forty cents, and in Western lands a unit of the +coinage (one mark, one franc, one shilling, etc.). The payment of the +shekel gives the right of vote for the congress. Zionism possesses its +official organ, "Die Welt," published in German in Vienna. Its ideas +are further set forth in about forty other periodicals in the Hebrew, +German, Russian, Polish, Italian, English, French, and Roumanian +languages, and in the Jewish-German and Judeo-Spanish jargons. Its +American organ is the periodical, "The Maccabaean." It has founded +numerous schools, Toynbee Halls, and educational institutes, and has +recently begun to acquire a share in the administration of the Jewish +communities, in order to devote their resources, more than has +heretofore been the case with the anti-national or unthinking leaders, +to the promoting of national Jewish instruction, education, and +culture. + +"(3.) Strengthening of the Jewish self-respect and national +consciousness." + +The Zionist societies use every effort that the members and the Jewish +masses in general may know the history of their nation, and become +acquainted with the sacred and profane literature in the Hebrew +tongue. They teach the Jews to hold their heads high, to be proud of +their descent, and to despise the Anti-Semitic lies, calumnies, and +insults. They care, in the measure of their strength, for the +amelioration of the hygiene of the Jewish proletariat, for its +economic improvement by means of association and solidarity, for +well-directed education of children, and for the instruction of the +women. They give the young students a goal for their efforts and an +ideal in life. They preach the duty of leading a faultless, spiritual +life, the rejection of a crude materialism, into which the +assimilation Jews, on account of the want of a worthy ideal, are only +too apt to sink, and strict self-control in word and deed. They found +athletic societies in order to promote the long neglected physical +development of the rising generation. They give a new impulse to the +celebration of Jewish historical feasts and memorial days. In many +instances they even make themselves outwardly conspicuous by wearing +insignia. The Zionist regards it as contemptible to conceal his +nationality. He wishes to be recognized as a Jew, and as he always +behaves himself in a natural, unaffected way, plays no comedy of +imitation, wishes to deceive nobody about his extraction and identity, +intrudes upon no one under a false flag, his relations to his +Christian neighbors and fellow-countrymen are sounder, truer, more +frank and dignified than those of the assimilation Jew, who makes +painful and useless efforts, which disgust every Christian possessing +a modicum of good taste, to hide the fact that he is a Jew. + +"(4.) Preparatory steps to obtain the consent of the governments +necessary to achieve the aims of Zionism." + +Several of the governments whose opinion will eventually be decisive +in the matter have been, by means of memorials, reliably informed of +the aims of Zionism; and there has been no want of very important +encouragements and promising expressions of sympathy with its +tendencies. + +For the moment the committee of action is trying to obtain from Turkey +a charter for the colonization of such land in Palestine as can be +disposed of, and which at present is lying waste, and for the opening +of its neglected resources. The exploiting of such a charter is not +possible without considerable sums of money. In order to be armed +financially for the time that Turkey will accord such a charter, the +second Zionist congress (1898) decided to found a national Jewish bank +institute, the "Jewish Colonial Trust," with its headquarters in +London. This resolution was carried out the following year (1899). The +bank has been brought into being. Its capital in shares is two million +pounds sterling. It can, by the statutes, start business when one +eighth of this capital, two hundred and fifty thousand pounds +sterling, has been actually paid up. This has already been done. + +Another financial instrument of Zionism is the "National Fund," +created by the fifth congress (1901), which is raised by voluntary +subscription and which is to amount to two hundred thousand pounds +sterling. The half of this sum is to be devoted to the purchase of +land in Palestine, the other half to remain an intangible common +property of the Jewish people, which will by means of compound +interest and gifts continually increase, so that at important +junctures the interest may be used for great national purposes. + + +V. + +I have taken pains to show, in as brief and as objective a manner as +possible, what Zionism is, what it desires to do, how it came into +being, and how it has developed up to the present. I have also +repeatedly mentioned that its most violent opponents have arisen from +the Jewish community. + +Many of them content themselves with libeling and insulting the +leaders of the Zionist movement. This kind of hostility they who are +vilified can afford to despise. Men who, without expecting the +slightest advantage to themselves, out of the purest, most unselfish +love for the unhappy ones of their race, out of reverence for their +forefathers, out of a general spirit of philanthropy, have made the +greatest sacrifices in money, time, strength, and health, in order to +elevate their people and to free millions of innocent, persecuted men +from the bitterest misery, have the right smilingly to shrug their +shoulders when irresponsible fanatics or pitiable paid scribes +reproach them with self-interest or with vanity. + +Besides these opponents of a lower type, there are others who do not +merely lie and slander, but also seek to argue. They delight in +comparing the apostles of Zionism with the false Messiahs like the +notorious Sabbathai Levi, who have appeared only too often in Jewish +history, and who have always done the greatest mischief to the Jewish +people they have deceived. To compare Zionism with the vagaries or +impostures of false Messiahs of the Sabbathai Levi kind, presupposes +great foolishness or great bad faith. Zionism is precisely +characterized by the complete absence of any mystical element. It +promises its adherents no miracles; on the contrary, it continually +impresses on them that their emancipation from a situation they find +intolerable can only be the result of their own work, the fruit of +their long, strenuous, and combined efforts. + +People declare Zionism to be a dream, and deny that its practical +realization is possible. To objections of this category the Zionists +have a hundred times given a sufficient answer. This simple negative +criticism can be passed over. Its only real refutation is in deeds, +such as the Zionists have already performed and as they intend further +to perform. + +The one point which probably forever excludes the possibility of an +understanding between Zionist and non-Zionist Jews is the question of +the Jewish nationality. Whoever maintains and believes that the Jews +are not a nation can indeed be no Zionist; he cannot join a movement +which is only justified when it is admitted that it desires to create +normal conditions of existence for a people living and suffering +under abnormal conditions. He who, on the contrary, is convinced that +the Jews are a people must necessarily become Zionist, as only the +return to their own country can save the everywhere hated, persecuted, +and oppressed Jewish nation from physical and intellectual +destruction. + +Many Jews, especially those of the West, have, in their heart of +hearts, completely broken with Judaism, and they will probably soon do +so openly, and if they do not break away, their children or +grandchildren will. These desire to be entirely absorbed by their +Christian fellow-countrymen. They resent it as a great annoyance when +other Jews proclaim that they are a people apart, and desire to bring +about an unequivocal separation between themselves and the other +nations. Their great and constant fear is to be denounced as strangers +in the land of their birth, of which they are free citizens. They fear +that this will be more than ever the case, if a large section of the +Jewish people openly claim for themselves rights as an autonomous +nation, and still worse, if anywhere in the world a political and +intellectual center of Judaism should really be created, in which +millions of Jews would be grouped together, united as a nation. + +All these feelings on the part of the assimilation Jews are +comprehensible. From their standpoint they are justified. These Jews, +however, have no right to expect that Zionism should for their sake +commit suicide. The Jews who are happy and contented in the land of +their birth, and who indignantly reject the suggestion of abandoning +it, are about a sixth of the Jewish nation, say two millions out of +twelve. The other five sixths, or ten millions, feel themselves +profoundly unhappy in the countries where they reside, and they have +every reason for doing so. These ten millions cannot be called upon to +submit forever unresistingly to their thraldom, and to renounce every +effort for redemption from their misery, merely in order that the +comfort of two million happy and contented Jews may not be disturbed. + +The Zionists are, moreover, firmly convinced that the misgivings of +the assimilation Jews are unfounded. The reassembling of the Jewish +people in Palestine will not have the consequences which they fear. +When there is again a Jewish country, the Jews will have the choice of +emigrating thither, or of remaining in their present home. Many will +doubtless remain, and will prove by their choice that they prefer the +land of their birth to their kindred and to their national soil. It is +barely possible that the Anti-Semites will still throw the scornful +and perfidious "stranger!" in their face. But the real Christians +among their fellow-countrymen, those who think and feel according to +the teaching and examples of the Holy Writ, will be convinced that +they do not regard themselves as strangers in the land of their birth, +and will then rightly comprehend the real meaning of their voluntary +renunciation of a return to a land of the Jews, and of their fidelity +to their homes and to their Christian neighbors. + +The Zionists know that they have undertaken a work of unexampled +difficulty. Never before has the effort been made to transplant, +peacefully, in a short space of time, to another soil, several million +people from various countries; never has it been attempted to +transform millions of physically degenerate proletarians, without +trade or profession, into agriculturists and cattle breeders, to bring +townbred hucksters and trades people, agents, and men of sedentary +occupation again into contact with the plough and the mother earth. It +will be necessary to accustom Jews of different origins to one +another, to train them practically to national unity, and at the same +time to overcome the superhuman obstacles of difference of language, +unequal civilization, and of the manners of thought, prejudices, +likes, and dislikes of foreign nations, brought severally from the +lands of their birth. + +What gives the Zionists the courage to begin this labor of Hercules is +the conviction that they are doing a necessary and useful work, a +work of love and civilization, a work of justice and wisdom. They +desire to save eight to ten millions of their kindred from intolerable +suffering. They desire to free the nations among whom they now +vegetate from a presence which is considered disagreeable. They wish +to deprive Anti-Semitism--which everywhere lowers public morals and +develops the very worst instincts--of its victim. They wish to make +unquestionable producers out of the Jews at present reproached with +being parasites. They desire to fertilize with their sweat and till +with their hands a country that is to-day a desert, until it is again +the flowering garden it has once been. Thus will Zionism in an equal +degree serve the unhappy Jew and the Christian peoples, civilization +and the economy of the world; and the services which it can render, +and wishes to render, are great enough to justify its hope that the +Christian world, too, will appreciate them, and support the movement +with its active sympathy. + + + + +ANTI-SEMITISM + +IN EUROPE + +BY + +DR. GUSTAV GOTTHEIL + + + + +THE TRUE NATURE OF ANTI-SEMITISM IN EUROPE + + +Anti-Semitism would be simply ridiculous if it were not so terribly in +earnest. People who make that word a war cry upon a whole race ought +to know its meaning, especially if it is to express the chief reason +for their hostility. Before they prefix the "anti" to a word they +should be sure that they understand the "pro," lest they be found to +fight shadows merely, specters of their own creation. But how far is +this the case? How many ever tried to learn the sense of the +designation under which they have enrolled themselves? Suppose we ask, +"What does Semitism mean?" Only this, must be our answer,--that it is +a summing up of the ruling dispositions, habits, mental endowments, +and moral peculiarities of all the races comprised under the name of +Semites, so named from their supposed descent from the eldest of the +three sons of Noah. So ineradicable are these features supposed to be +that, no matter where the races have lived or are now living, no +matter what stage of civilization they have passed through or have +reached now, no matter what influence non-Semitic races have exercised +upon them, they remain essentially the same. What are these features? +Who will formulate the precise standard by which a descendant of Shem +is unfailingly known and set apart from those of Ham or Japhet? When +we consider that we are pointed back for the meaning of Semite to +antediluvian times, that is to say, to one of the oldest myths of the +world, we must admit that it would indeed be the wonder of wonders if +a large section of mankind have a family likeness so clear that they +are marked off from the rest. And this, despite the long ages that +have passed since the supposed separation of the sons of Noah and +their wide dispersion; despite their triumphs and defeats in wars, in +state building, and church formation; despite the wide diversity +between them in their literature, their philosophy, their art, their +trades and industries. Are the Semites still characterized by the same +gifts and tendencies of mind and heart, ruled by the same passions, +subject to the same limitations, as were their ancestors in all their +generations? + +Among them there is a fraction, and that fraction again scattered over +vast areas, in various states of civilization, and under diversified +kinds of governments, enjoying liberty and rights of citizenship in +the one, and groaning under relentless oppression in the other,--are +they still none other than Semites? Are they so permeated with Semitic +features that they can never amalgamate with their surroundings and +become full-weighted citizens of the state where they pitch their +tents,--offer them what inducements you may,--but must be kept at +arms length and treated as suspects? Has nature lost all her power in +this instance and become faithless to herself? Will the Hebrew child +not love the land of its birth and feel the kinship with the people +whose language and mode of life become its own? But why heap up +improbabilities and impossibilities? The designation fastened upon us +as a stigma was a fraud from the beginning, a conscious fraud and a +malicious invention. It was "conceived in mischief and brought forth +in iniquity." What was meant was not anti-Semitism, but +_anti-Judaism_; but that name had to be avoided because it implies +hostility to a religion and a creed; and that, again, might be +construed as springing from an awakened zeal for the instigator's own +Church; a suspicion they could not permit to rest upon them. No, it is +not the Jew's religion that makes him obnoxious and a danger to the +state, but it is his descent from the eldest son of Noah. True, the +Jews have at no time adopted it as a national name. "Semitic" is of +comparatively recent date, an abstract word intended merely for +scientific classification, never meant for discrimination of any +portion of the Semitic races, or to become a hissing and a byword or a +mask for robbers of human rights and destroyers of human happiness. + +The victims of this crusade are not a nameless horde for whom a +designation had to be coined; they are known to history for three +thousand years as Hebrews, Israelites, Jews, and they have no mind to +exchange these names for any other. But a new "Hep Hep" was wanted, +and so "Semites" was hauled from the world of books, disfigured, and +fastened upon the Jewish gabardine in noble emulation of the barbarism +of the Middle Ages. The more senseless, the more welcome it was as a +bugbear to frighten the populace and to stir into flames the sparks of +fanaticism which are always smouldering in the hearts of the vulgar, +whether of low degree or high degree, worldly or ghostly. + +The strangest thing, however, in this learned falsification is that +it should have succeeded so well with people calling themselves +Christians and clinging to that name often after they have given up +all its historic substance. Is Christianity not purely Semitic at the +core? Is it not based upon the Semitic conception of the relation +between man and his Creator? The great efforts to liberalize and +rationalize the Church which the last century witnessed, up to +Professor Harnack's recent attempt to sum up "Das Wesen des +Christenthums,"--what are all these but endeavors to free it from +foreign accretions and envelopments and to bring its Semitic character +into greater prominence? + +It is the only Asiatic conception of religion that has subdued Europe +and America, and that still holds undisputed sway over all its diverse +nationalities. The very name which symbolizes to them all that is +noblest, purest, and most blessed, points to that source as +unfailingly as the needle of the compass to the poles. Harnack claims +that Christianity is not one religion amongst others, but _The +Religion_, the only one fulfilling all the conditions of its highest +ideal. The Being in whom that fulness of light was revealed,--was he +not a Semite of the Semites? Did he ever deny his origin? Christianity +means _Messianity_, and the whole idea of a Mashiach,--the anointed, +namely, anointed ruler,--is most intensely national and, therefore, +intensely Semitic,--from which indisputable fact it follows that the +loftiest conception of religion came to the world from that source. +Thence came the Bible,--the book of the world which has been +translated into every living tongue and dialect, and to the +elucidation of which hosts of scholars still devote their lives. +Painting, sculpture, music, poetry, have attempted their highest +flights under its inspiration. From countless pulpits its moral and +religious truths are expounded, week after week, and on every great +occasion of national significance,--in whatever part of Christendom it +may occur,--the Songs of Zion are awakened as the fittest expressions +of the prevailing sentiment. The Psalter is the most wonderful of +existing books,--at home alike in the palace of the king and the +cottage of the peasant, the inexhaustible theme of our masters of +music. Noeldeke, Protestant professor at the University of Strasburg, +one of the great lights of Semitic scholarship, declares that "by the +side of the Psalms all other religious hymns appear as pale imitations +merely." On that field were gathered the sheaves which a master hand +has wound together into the One Universal Prayer, in which all +Churches join with one accord. And the Universal Day of Rest,--that +one sure blessing of the laboring man,--whence did it come? What other +legislator had the divine audacity to make its observance one of the +foundation laws of his constitution, and to give it precedence, even +over all moral enactments? + +Professor R.F. Grau of the conservative school of theology writes:-- + +"God is a living, holy, loving Being. He is not first and foremost to +be scientifically comprehended, but worshipped and revered in the +heart, and because He is such a Being, the Semites had to be chosen as +His apostles to the whole world. For they had a heart for Him in the +beginning.... The Semite has the religion of the Infinite, and as this +is the perfect religion, ... the Church, as the Community of Christ, +has sprung from the Semitic mustard seed, although at present myriads +of Indo-germanics dwell under the branches of the tree." + +In the face of admissions like these by men who have a right to be +heard in the matter, and considering that the tree can never change +the nature of the root from which it sprang, the conclusion is not +unwarranted that "anti-Semitic" is a synonym for "anti-Christian." + +Its success is due to the still persistent prejudice against the Jews +among so many Christians,--all their professions to the contrary +notwithstanding. And it continues for several reasons. One is its long +duration; it has lasted for ages and is ingrained in their feelings +and ideas. What if it be shown ever so clearly that it is unjust, +unreasonable, yea, even unchristian!--that will not materially change +the temper of the great masses of the people. The common man is rarely +swayed by the force of arguments; the power of a principle, so weighty +with the thinkers, is of no consequence to him. He belongs to the +material world, and to make good his place in it is the aim toward +which all his energies are bent. For things spiritual he has neither +time nor capacity. He is ruled by the sentiments which were implanted +in him in his youth and by his immediate surroundings. All thinking +must be done for him; all new ideas must be presented to him, as it +were, ready made and in tangible form. He does not push himself +forward, but must be led onward by hands that understand him and his +ways. But in this instance, his guides are not particularly anxious to +bring about a change for the better,--even if we suppose that they +consider the liberation from prejudice against the Jews a betterment. +They have their own theological difficulty to contend with. The Jews +are still unconverted, and the missions established and maintained for +the purpose of winning them over can show no better results now than +in the past. The chief controversy between the Church and Israel +stands to-day where it stood when it was first raised at Jerusalem +eighteen centuries ago. A judicial sentence of a court at Jerusalem +has grown into a pivotal point on which, as the Church declares, turns +the salvation of mankind for time and eternity; and if she is right, +the Jews must be wrong. Since that fatal occurrence, Christianity, in +one form or another, has conquered Europe and America, and has planted +outposts in almost every part of the earth, but has not been able to +subdue the Jew. Every conceivable means to make him surrender has been +tried, including that of the jailor and the executioner and all the +horrors that lie between them,--expulsion, pillage, social +degradation, impaling in ghettos, and what not--but in vain. The same +policy is continued to this day as far as the present more civilized +state of the Christians permits; but still in vain. So far are their +persecutors from having brought the Jews to their knees, that the +self-consciousness of the race, as a whole, has deepened; and their +advance in general culture enables them to measure swords, +intellectually, with their accusers and to give a reason for the faith +that is in them. + +All the conditions of this interminable conflict are against them. In +numbers they are a vanishing minority, and still more weakened by +their dispersion over the face of the earth, unorganized, without any +ecclesiastical authority in their Church that could direct them or act +in their name. Every individual Jew must face the world's hostility +single-handed, and be, religiously, his own priest, his own pope. +Allies he has none, advocates of his cause are few and far between. +The favors of his friends are often more humiliating than the attacks +of his enemies. Still he holds his own, and if for the last century or +so he has carried on a reformation of his ancient rituals, he has done +so from his own initiative and in his own way, which is not that into +which it has been tried so long to force or to lure him. At the same +time a revival of Jewish literature has taken place which not only has +brought to light the long-forgotten treasures of the past, but has +shown the large part the Jews have in the general progress of mankind. +The ecclesia triumphant has no victory to record in this section of +her battlefields, and it is not in ordinary human nature frankly to +admit a defeat in such an unequal struggle. Only one had a right to +expect that a Church that claims to have regenerated the human race +and to have lifted the slave of his blind instincts into "the glorious +liberty of the children of God" would have risen superior to the +common weakness. Instead of that, almost throughout Christendom, the +crusade against the Jews is being preached and the policy of +repression loudly demanded. + +On what ground? It is said that they dominate everywhere--in finance, +in law courts, in politics, in art, in literature, in the press, in +trade and manufacture. But how do they achieve this astounding feat? +How do the Jews succeed in so lording it over the immense majority? By +witchcraft? Is it by magic that a few bankers and brokers keep all +their competitors in subjugation and handle them at their will and to +their own profit? Is it by sorcery that they force their way to the +universities and academies? Are they in possession of secret formulas +by which they can direct the currents of trade at their will? +Recently, loud complaints were raised in several of the German state +parliaments that there were too many Jewish judges and lawyers in +their lands, and the governments were exhorted to put an end to the +scandal. No charges of incompetency or exploitation were raised +against the Hebrews that "handle the law." Only it was declared that +a Christian shrunk from taking an oath at the hand of a Jewish lawyer. +If this be so, how is it that the people go to them in numbers that +excite the envy of their non-Jewish colleagues? All the statements +about the alleged power of the Jews are ridiculous exaggerations, +trumped up to scare the imagination of the thoughtless, as has been +proved over and over again. But even reduced to their true measure, +they prove, not the possession of magic, but of soundness of mind, of +unimpaired energy, and of all the other needful conditions for +success, which the Jews have kept intact despite all the attempts made +to crush the unbelievers into the dust. The outcry against them is +their vindication; people do not fear weaklings, do not raise alarms +against perils which can be pushed aside by an effort of the will. The +few must own inherent sources of strength if the many resort to the +coward's weapon of lies and slander. And in this instance the +admission of the truth is an implied homage to the religion which the +victors in the unequal struggle profess and defend. For it is +indisputable that this is the source to which the formation of the +Jewish mind and heart must be attributed. Let me cite, for one proof, +the admission of the most persistent and most powerful oppressor of +the Jews, the procurator of the Russian synod. Half the number of all +Hebrews are subjects of Russia. They came under her dominion when she +conquered and incorporated the Polish provinces; they are kept there +under the most stringent laws, and life is made to them as burdensome +as possible. "The Pale" is a gigantic ghetto where the oldest form of +rabbinism prevails to this day. Yet the same fear of the superiority +of the Jewish mind haunts the government; it is the alleged reason for +practically closing up all the avenues of the higher education for +them. Only _three per cent_ of the total number of students are +admitted to the universities and to the technical schools. But more +than a hundred thousand common soldiers are drafted from the Jews +into the armies and sent to all parts of the gigantic empire, kept +there during the best part of their lives, without any prospect of +promotion, and often going only to die in the defense of territories +which, if they were civilians, they would not be permitted to enter. +The Russian Torquemada, not long ago, openly declared that not a +single Jew should be permitted to settle amongst the peasantry, even +within the Pale, because he would be the only sober man amongst a +population that cannot resist the temptations of strong drink. Strange +spectacle indeed! Men banished from places where they wish to live +because they are too good for their surroundings! forced to remain +where they can hardly eke out a miserable living. The question, +surely, is justified. How did that poverty-stricken mass of oppressed +people succeed in preserving its freedom from a national vice in a +country where its ancestors have dwelt for long generations? Can a +great virtue be maintained by sorcery? The common experience is that +of the poet-- + + "Misery doth bravest mind abate." + +What but their religion made them proof against the arrows of a fate +which, for duration and cruelty, is without a parallel in history! +This conclusion is further corroborated by the fact that the same +virtue of sobriety characterizes them everywhere, and makes them an +object of envy to their non-Jewish neighbors,--nay, forces the honest +temperance advocate to hold them up before his Christian audiences as +examples to shame them into going and doing likewise; rather, let me +say, into staying at home and doing likewise. For one of the +witchcraft mysteries of Judaism is that its home is not in the church, +but that the church is in the home. The Jew's salvation is in nowise +dependent upon rabbi and synagogue, but upon wife and children. They +are his congregation to whom he ministers as priest in fulfilment of +the great charter word of dedication, "Ye shall be unto me a kingdom +of priests and a holy nation." The deepest roots of the Jewish faith +rest and are nourished in the domestic soil. The synagogue has nothing +to offer to the faithful which he cannot find in his own tent. Ten men +gathered together with a Sepher Tora (scroll of the Mosaic law) in +their midst, form a Kahal Hakodesh (sacred body). No man becomes a +drunkard with wife and children and aged parents near him for guardian +angels. The greatest difficulty the Jewish reformation has to face is +what to substitute for the old ceremonials where they have become +impracticable, and thus to preserve the essentially domestic character +of the ancient faith. Is it thinkable that the Jew would be less +objectionable to his surroundings were he to lose his sturdy horror of +intemperance, and thus "assimilate" more freely with his neighbors of +different faiths? It is not thinkable when we consider the great +efforts made by Christians everywhere to redeem their people from +their bondage to strong drink and the misery resulting from it. The +Jew is the _natural ally of the temperance advocates_; and if he is +not found in their ranks, it is simply because he never knew from +experience the need of that reformation. + +And never will he know, as long as his passionate fondness for home +and his longing for family love abide within him. At present, this, +generally speaking, is still the case; the poorest and least +cultivated classes are not excepted; nay, just in that class it is one +of the most noteworthy features. If the uncouth immigrant from Eastern +Europe stoops to the lowest kinds of peddling, or, for a mere +pittance, wastes his life in the stifling sweatshop; if he is not very +scrupulous in his dealings with his transient patrons, and does not +hold city ordinances as inviolable as those of the "Shulchan Aruch" +(code of ceremonials), the central motive is his ever present thought +of his family; even when he has not yet scraped together enough +pennies to pay for their fare to the new home, they are constantly +with him in his mind. This is not offered as a defense for +over-reaching and cannot be allowed by a magistrate as a plea for +law-breaking; but it is offered to the unprejudiced reader in +compliance with Spinoza's golden rule: Human errors must not be +ridiculed and condemned, but _understood_. _Si duo faciunt idem, non +est idem._ This wise caution is the more to be heeded in the present +instance, as, from the same source, devotion to home life, springs +another fine feature of Jewry; go down in the scale as deep as you +may, they are an industrious, toilsome class of people, often turning +their narrow homes into workshops where old and young ply a handicraft +from early morn to the late evening hours. Hundreds of men and women, +arriving in this country after they have passed the middle life, learn +trades and work at them till their trembling hands can hold the tools +no longer or the light fades from their overstrained eyes. Among them +there are not a few that have seen better days at their native places, +or are deeply learned in the Law. They are quick in seizing the +secret of a successful trade of paying manufacture, and not rarely +better the instruction; a skill for which they are hated and despised +by their own aristocracy in the markets, and branded as spoilers of +every good thing as soon as it appears. If this aptitude and eagerness +for trade be a fault, the Christians have themselves to blame for it. +Even a superficial glance at the history of Israel proves that as long +as the people lived on their native soil, and could live out their own +lives, they showed neither skill nor desire for mercantile pursuits; +that their legislation, their religion, their poetry and prophesying, +and their ethical ideas presuppose a nation of shepherds and tillers +of the soil. For the great change in the ruling disposition of the +Jews, since their dispersion, those alone are responsible who now +reproach them for it. The first Christians were Jewish ploughmen and +herdsmen; the Apostles mostly Judaean peasants and fishermen. The +finest parables and similes in the speeches of Jesus are taken from +the peasants' occupation and experience. And even to this day +thousands of the scattered race are ready to seize again the plough +and the spade, if they are given a chance, and not a few have done so +even under the most disheartening conditions. The fact is, the pagan +Mercury proved a more merciful god to the Jews than the Christian +Jesus, as he was taught and practised by the mediaeval Church. He +gloated over the sufferings of those who were of his own flesh and +blood. No wonder they sought refuge under the wings of the heathen +deity and became adepts in the art which he symbolized. + +But suppose it were true that all the Jews dote on traffic as their +dearest occupation,--what of it? The British have the nickname of "a +nation of shopkeepers" fastened on them; yet they were and are the +greatest benefactors of the human race, carrying the blessings of +civilization to half the peoples of the globe. Commerce has done more +for the peace of the world than all the preaching, praying, and +prophesying taken together. A great railroad, a steamship line, a +cable or a telephone wire, a commercial treaty, a tariff +convention,--these are the modern bonds that hold the remotest parts +of the earth together, and make them equally abhor war and its +ravages. A falling off in the exports, a shrinking of the value of +investments, an unforeseen competitor in the markets of the world, +cause the rulers of the most civilized nations more anxiety than any +adverse political combination. For the former threaten the peace and +welfare of the home life of the people, on whose contentment they rely +for the defense of their claims in all their political intricacies. A +class of people credited with the mastery of the art of buying and +selling should, therefore, be welcome to every country and given the +amplest freedom and encouragement to ply their skill, provided, of +course, they do not carry their hoarded profits out of the country and +enrich other nations by them. But where do the Jews think of such a +thing? Their own country, if Palestine may still be so denominated, is +one of the poorest in the world, and what little revival there has +lately been perceptible is due to the colonies established there by +Jewish peasants who, under most trying conditions, labor to restore +the soil to its ancient fertility, after the long sleep into which it +has sunk. Jewish wealth can be enjoyed, and is being enjoyed, in no +other way than non-Jewish. Its owners are charged by its religious +teachers with being only too willing to imitate the luxuries and +extravagances of their neighbors. The same snares are spread for the +feet of their offspring as for those of Gentile birth; the tempters +that lie in wait for them are liberal enough to ignore distinctions +between the various creeds. I will not stoop to any defense of my race +from the vulgar charge that they are cheaters; that each and all will +always try, right or wrong, to secure the best of any bargain into +which a poor Gentile may enter with them. Those whom the commercial +standing of the Jews, here and elsewhere, has not yet cured of this +slanderous prejudice will not be converted by my pleading. Envy is an +incurable disease; jealousy makes blind, and the common saying is +surely true, that none are so blind as those who will not see. But +neither have I the least desire to hide or gloss over our real +failings and shortcomings. Those who cannot rest on their own real +merits and accept the blame for their undeniable demerits must not +dare to challenge the judgment of the world. The Jew does dare it, and +all he asks of his critics is fairness, impartiality, justice. What I +have said to his praise and for his defense was intended solely to +assist the fairminded reader in forming a just opinion of an agitation +which in Europe embitters, cripples, and darkens thousands of lives, +which, under better treatment, would be spent in contentment and +general usefulness. + +It is for this purpose only that I will briefly add two more traits of +the Jews, equally valuable and undeniable. One is their charity; they +care for their poor, their sick, their aged, if destitute, as the +numerous institutions prove, found in every place where they dwell in +sufficient number to maintain them. Ungrudgingly they assume the heavy +burdens which this "exclusiveness" imposes upon them. Blame them for +it who may; the right-minded will not, especially when assured that +this feeling of pity is not the privilege of the well-to-do among them +only. The working classes have always something to spare from their +scanty earnings for "Z'dakah," the religious term in common use for +charity, which, significantly enough, in biblical Hebrew means +"justice." The idea that charity is an essential part of worship has +been bred into them by long tradition, and continues to be regarded as +such, wherever rabbinical Judaism survives in full force. From +childhood every Jew knows the saying of Simon the Just, one of the +last men of the Great Synagogue:-- + + "The whole world rests on these three pillars; + + Law, Worship, and Charity." + +The other trait is their zeal in the education of their children. + +One of the standard objections to the Hebrews is their "forwardness"; +socially, it is a disagreeable and annoying fault, but otherwise a +gift of no little value. Forwardness is the soul of all progress and +advancement. Call it that, call it self-help, call it energy, call it +self-reliance, call it by the popular name of wide-awakeness, and you +transfigure the fault into a merit. How the Jew was able to preserve +it in any one of its forms is one of the many miracles of his history, +seeing that the world has left nothing untried to cast the Jews +backward to the last depth of self-despair. An exhibition of his +forwardness might be seen at the doors of the public schools in the +lower districts of the city, notably at the time of admission of new +pupils. The poorest of the Jewish fathers and mothers would be seen +wrangling for the registration of their little ones, as if it were for +their daily bread. And may this not also serve for a proof that the +parents are willing to surrender their offspring to the influence of +these schools, and see them thoroughly Americanized? + + * * * * * + +By these signs ye shall know the Jews, wherever ye find them; they +may, therefore, be called racial. In every other respect they are +neither better nor worse than other people of the corresponding stages +of life. Every variety of character is found among them; virtue and +vice are distributed among them. Let Americans not stigmatize them as +"undesirable immigrants," and close their hospitable gate upon them. +They bring with them qualities which are an ample compensation for +their defects, and their well-to-do brethren are not behindhand in +seeing to it that they become no public burden. The American people +have repeatedly shown the door to those who came hither for the +purpose of preaching anti-Semitism, thereby publicly testifying that +they would have none of that disgrace to our age. What exists of it +in social life is not worth arguing against. It will and must +disappear in a country, the civil order of which is based upon the +principle of equal rights to all law-abiding citizens, to whatever +race or religion they may belong. "A fair field and no favor." This +good old saying comprises all our demands. + + + + + * * * * * + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Zionism and Anti-Semitism, by +Max Simon Nordau and Gustav Gottheil + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ZIONISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM *** + +***** This file should be named 24186.txt or 24186.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/1/8/24186/ + +Produced by Jeannie Howse, Bryan Ness and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +book was produced from scanned images of public domain +material from the Google Print project.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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