After the terror of the bloody atrocities a moment of calm followed for baiter
and baited to catch their breath. Meanwhile the Jewish refugees, with the very
funds collected for their immigration, are being -- "repatriated"! But
the Western Jews have again learned to suffer the cry, "hep! hep!" as
their brothers in the old days. The eruption of blazing indignation over the
shame to which they were subjected has turned to a rain of ashes, gradually
covering the glowing soil. Shut your eyes and hide your head like an ostrich --
there is to be no lasting peace unless in the fleeting intervals of relaxation
you apply a remedy more thoroughgoing than those palliatives to which our
hapless people have been turning for 2000 years.
That hoary problem, subsumed under the Jewish question,
today, as ever in the past, provokes discussion. Like the squaring of the circle
it remains unsolved, but unlike it, continues to be the ever-burning question of
the day. That is because the problem is not one of mere theoretical interest: it
renews and revives in every-day life and presses ever more urgently for
solution.
This is the kernel of the problem, as we see it: the Jews
comprise a distinctive element among the nations under which they dwell, and as
such can neither assimilate nor be readily digested by any nation.
Hence the solution lies in finding a means of so readjusting
this exclusive element to the family of nations, that the basis of the Jewish
question will be permanently removed.
This does not mean, of course, that we must think of waiting
for the age of universal harmony.
No previous civilization has been able to achieve it, nor can
we see even in the remote distance, that day of the Messiah, when national
barriers will no longer exist and all mankind will live in brotherhood and
concord. Until then, the nations must narrow their aspirations to achieve a
tolerable modus vivendi.
The world has yet long to wait for eternal peace. Meanwhile
nations live side by side in a state of relative peace, secured by treaties and
international law, but based chiefly on the fundamental equality between them.
But it is different with the people of Israel. There is no
such equality in the nations' dealings with the Jews. The basis is absent upon
which treaties and international law may be applied: mutual respect. Only when
this basis is established, when the equality of Jews with other nations becomes
a fact, can the Jewish problem be considered solved.
An equality of this kind did exist in the now long forgotten
past, but unfortunately, under present conditions, the prospect that will
readmit the Jewish people to the status of nationhood is so remote as to seem
illusory. It lacks most of the essential attributes by which a nation is
recognized. It lacks that autochthonous life which is inconceivable without a
common language and customs and without cohesion in space. The Jewish people has
no fatherland of its own, though many motherlands; no center of focus or
gravity, no government of its own, no official representation. They home
everywhere, but are nowhere at home. The nations have never to deal with
a Jewish nation but always with mere Jews. The Jews are not a nation
because they lack a certain distinctive national character, inherent in all
other nations, which is formed by common residence in a single state. It was
clearly impossible for this national character to be developed in the Diaspora;
the Jews seem rather to have lost all remembrance of their former home. Thanks
to their ready adaptability, they have all the more easily acquired
characteristics, not inborn, of the people among whom fate has thrown them.
Often to please their protectors, they recommend their traditional individuality
entirely. They acquired or persuaded themselves into certain cosmopolitan
tendencies which could no more appeal to others than bring satisfaction to
themselves.
In seeking to fuse with other peoples they deliberately
renounced to some extent their own nationality. Yet nowhere did they succeed
in obtaining from their fellow-citizens recognition as natives of equal status.
But the greatest impediment in the path of the Jews to an
independent national existence is that they do not feel its need. Not only that,
but they go so far as to deny its authenticity.
In the case of a sick man, the absence of desire for food is
a very serious symptom. It is not always possible to cure him of this ominous
loss of appetite. And even if his appetite is restored, it is still a question
whether he will be able to digest food, even though he desire it.
The Jews are in the unhappy condition of such a patient. We
must discuss this most important point with all possible precision. We must
prove that the misfortunes of the Jews are due, above all, to their lack of
desire for national independence; and that this desire must be awakened and
maintained in time if they do not wish to be subjected forever to disgraceful
existence -- in a word, we must prove that they must become a nation.
In the seemingly irrelevant circumstances, that the Jews are
not regarded as an independent nation by other nations, rests in part the secret
of their abnormal position and of their endless misery. Merely to belong to this
people is to be indelibly stigmatized, a mark repellent to non-Jews and painful
to the Jews themselves. However, this phenomenon is rooted deeply in human
nature.
Among the living nations of the earth the Jews are as a
nation long since dead.
With the loss of their country, the Jewish people lost their
independence, and fell into a decay which is not compatible with existence as a
whole vital organism. The state was crushed before the eyes of the nations. But
after the Jewish people had ceased to exist as an actual state, as a political
entity, they could nevertheless not submit to total annihilation -- they lived
on spiritually as a nation. The world saw in this people the uncanny form of one
of the dead walking among the living. The Ghostlike apparition of a living
corpse, of a people without unity or organization, without land or other bonds
of unity, no longer alive, and yet walking among the living -- this spectral
form without precedence in history, unlike anything that preceded or followed
it, could but strangely affect the imagination of the nations. And if the fear
of ghosts is something inborn, and has a certain justification in the psychic
life of mankind, why be surprised at the effect produced by this dead but still
living nation
A fear of the Jewish ghost has passed down the generations
and the centuries. First a breeder of prejudice, later in conjunction with other
forces we are about to discuss, it culminated in Judeophobia.
Judeophobia, together with other symbols, superstitions and
idiosyncrasies, has acquired legitimacy phobia among all the peoples of the
earth with whom the Jews had intercourse. Judeophobia is a variety of
demonopathy with the distinction that it is not peculiar to particular races but
is common to the whole of mankind, and that this ghost is not disembodied like
other ghosts but partakes of flesh and blood, must endure pain inflicted by the
fearful mob who imagines itself endangered.
Judeophobia is a psychic aberration. As a psychic aberration
it is hereditary, and as a disease transmitted for two thousand years it is
incurable.
It is this fear of ghosts, the mother of Judeophobia, that
has evoked this abstract, I might say Platonic hatred, thanks to which the whole
Jewish nation is wont to be held responsible for the real or supposed misdeeds
of its individual members, and to be libeled in so many ways, to be buffeted
about so shamefully.
Friend and foe alike have tried to explain or to justify this
hatred of the Jews by bringing all sorts of charges against them. They are said
to have crucified Jesus, to have drunk the blood of Christians, to have poisoned
wells, to have taken usury, to have exploited the peasant, and so on. These and
a thousand and one other charges against an entire people have been proved
groundless. They showed their own weakness in that they had to be trumped up
wholesale in order to quiet the evil conscience of the Jew-baiters, to justify
the condemnation of an entire nation, to demonstrate the necessity of burning
the Jew, or rather the Jewish ghost, at the stake. He who tries to prove too
much proves nothing at all. Though the Jews may justly be charged with many
shortcomings, those shortcomings are, at all events, not such great vices, not
such capital crimes, as to justify the condemnation of the entire people. In
individual cases, indeed, these accusations are contradicted by the fact that
the Jews get along fairly well with their Gentile neighbors. This is the reason
that the charges preferred are usually of the most general character, made up
out of whole cloth, based to a certain extent on a priori reasoning, and true at
best in individual cases, but not admitting of proof as regards the whole people
In this way have Judaism and Anti-Semitism passed for
centuries through history as inseparable companions. Like the Jewish people, the
real wandering Jew, Anti-Semitism, too, seems as if it would never die. He must
be blind indeed who will assert that the Jews are not the chosen people,
the people chosen for universal hatred. No matter how much the nations are at
variance in their relations with one another, however diverse their instincts
and aims, they join hands in their hatred of the Jews; on this one matter all
are agreed. The extent and the manner in which this antipathy is shown depends
of course upon the cultural status of each people. The antipathy as such,
however, exists in all places and at ail times, whether it appears in the form
of deeds of violence, as envious jealousy, or under the guise of tolerance and
protection. To be robbed as a Jew or to be protected as a Jew is equally
humiliating, equally destructive to the self-respect of the Jews.
Having analyzed Judeophobia as an hereditary form of
demonopathy, peculiar to the human race, and having represented Anti-Semitism as
proceeding from an inherited aberration of the human mind, we must draw the
important conclusion that we must give' up contending against these hostile
impulses as we must against every other inherited predisposition. This view is
especially important because it should persuade us that polemics are useless and
that we should abstain from it as a waste of time and energy, for against
superstition even the gods contend in vain. Prejudice or instinctive ill-will is
not moved by rational argument, however forceful and clear. These sinister
powers must either be kept within bounds by force like every other blind natural
force or simply evaded.
In human psychology, then, we find the roots of the prejudice
against the Jewish nation; but there are other factors not less important which
render impossible the fusion or equalization of the Jews with the other peoples
to be considered.
No people, generally speaking, likes foreigners.
Ethnologically, this cannot be brought as a charge against any people. Now, is
the Jew subject to this general law to the same extent as the other
nationalities? Not at all! The aversion which meets the foreigner in a strange
land can be repaid in equal coin in his home country. The non-Jew pursues his
own interest in a foreign country openly and without giving offense. It is
everywhere considered natural that he should fight for these interests, alone or
in conjunction with others. The foreigner has no need to be, or to seem to be, a patriot. But as for the Jew, not only is he not a native in his
own home country, but he is also not a foreigner; he is, in very truth, the
stranger par excellence. He is regarded as neither friend nor foe but an
alien, of whom the only thing known is that he has no home.
One distrusts the foreigner but does not trust the Jew. The foreigner has a claim to hospitality, which he can repay in the
same coin. The Jew can make no such return; consequently he can make no claim to
hospitality. He is not a guest, much less a welcome guest. He is more like a
beggar; and what beggar is welcome! He is rather a refugee; and where is the
refugee to whom a refuge may not be refused?
The Jews are aliens who can have no representatives, because
they have no country. Because they have none, because their home has no
boundaries within which they can be entrenched, their misery too is boundless.
The general law does not apply to the Jews as true aliens, but there are
everywhere laws for the Jews, and if the general law is to apply to them,
a special and explicit by-law is required to confirm it. Like the Negroes, like
women, and unlike all free peoples, they must be emancipated. If, unlike
the Negroes, they belong to an advanced race, and if, unlike women, they can
produce not only women of distinction, but also distinguished men, even men of
greatness, then it is very much the worse for them.
Since the Jew is nowhere at home, nowhere regarded as a
native, he remains an alien everywhere. That he himself and his ancestors as
well are born in the country does not alter this fact in the least.
In the great majority of cases, he is treated as a stepchild,
as a Cinderella; in the most favorable cases he is regarded as an adopted child
whose rights may be questioned; never is he considered a legitimate child
of the fatherland.
The German proud of his Teutonism, the Slav, the Celt, not
one of them admits that the Semitic Jew is his equal by birth; and even if he be
ready, as a man of culture, to admit him to all civil rights, he will never
quite forget that his fellow-citizen is a Jew. The legal emancipation of
the Jews is the culminating achievement of our century. But legal emancipation is not social emancipation, and with the proclamation of the
former the Jews are still far from being emancipated from their exceptional social
position.
The emancipation of the Jews is required as a postulate of logic,
of law, and of enlightened national interest, but it can never be
a spontaneous expression of human feeling. Far from owing its origin to
spontaneous feeling, it is never a matter of course; and it has
never yet taken root so deeply that further discussion of it becomes
unnecessary. In any event, whether emancipation was undertaken from spontaneous
impulse or from conscious motives, it remains a rich gift, a splendid alms,
willingly or unwillingly flung to the poor, humble beggars whom no one, however,
cares to shelter, because a homeless, wandering beggar wins confidence or
sympathy from now. The Jew is not permitted to forget that the daily bread of
civil rights must be given him.
So long as this people produces in accordance with its
nature, vagrant nomads; so long as it cannot give a satisfactory account of
whence it comes and whither it goes; so long as the Jews themselves prefer not
to speak in Aryan society of their Semitic descent and prefer not to be reminded
of it; so long as they are persecuted, tolerated, protected or emancipated, the
stigma attached to this people, which forces it into an undesirable isolation
from all nations, cannot be removed by any sort of legal emancipation.
This degrading dependence of the ever alien Jew upon the
non-Jew is reinforced by another factor, which makes amalgamation of the Jews
with the original inhabitants of a land absolutely impossible. In the great
struggle for existence, civilized peoples readily submit to laws which help to
transform their struggle into a peaceful competition, a noble emulation. In this
respect a distinction is usually made between the native and the foreigner, the
first, of course, always receiving the preference. Now, if this distinction is
drawn even against the foreigner of equal birth, how harshly is it applied to
the ever alien Jew! The beggar who dares to cast longing eyes upon a country not
his own is in the position of a young virgin's suitor, guarded against him by
jealous relatives! And if he nevertheless prosper and succeed in plucking a
flower here and there from its soil, woe to the ill-fated man! He must expect
the fate of the Jews of Spain and Russia.
The Jews, moreover, do not suffer only when they meet with
notable success. Wherever they are congregated in large numbers, they must, by
their very preponderance, hold an advantage in competition with the non-Jewish
population. Thus, in the western provinces we see the Jews squeezed together,
leading a wretched existence in dreadful poverty, while charges of Jewish
exploitation are continually pressed.
To sum up then, to the living the Jew is a corpse, to the
native a foreigner, to the homesteader a vagrant, to the proprietary a beggar,
to the poor an exploiter and a millionaire, to the patriot a man without a
country, for all a hated rival.
This natural antagonism is the source of numberless
misunderstandings, accusations and reproaches which both parties rightfully or
wrongfully hurl at each other. Instead of realizing their own position and
adopting a rational line of conduct, the Jews appeal to eternal justice, and
fondly imagine that the appeal will have some effect. And whereas the non-Jew
should simply plead superior strength, the historical prerogative of the strong
over the weak, he seeks to justify his attitude by a mass of accusations which,
on closer examination, prove to be baseless or negligible. The impartial
thinker, who does not desire to judge and interpret the affairs of this world
according to the principles of some Utopian Arcadia, but would merely ascertain
the facts in order to draw a conclusion of practical value, will not seriously
charge either of the parties with responsibility for this antagonism. To the
Jews, however, he will say: "You are foolish, because you stand
there non-plussed and expect of human nature something which it has never
produced -- humanity. You are also contemptible, because you have no real
self-estimation and no national self- respect."
National self-respect! Where can we find it! It is precisely
the great misfortune of our race that we do not constitute a nation, but are
merely Jews. We are a flock scattered over the whole face of the earth, and no
shepherd to protect us and bring us together. At best we attain the rank of
goats, which in Russia are mated with racehorses. And that is the highest reach
of our ambition!
It is true that those who claim to sympathize with us have
always taken good care that we should have no respite in which to recover our
self-respect. As individual Jews, but not as a Jewish nation, we have carried on
for centuries the hard and unequal struggle for existence. Each man singly has
sequestered his genius and energy for a little oxygen and a morsel of bread,
moistened with tears. We did not succumb in this desperate struggle. We waged
the most glorious of all guerrilla struggles with the peoples of the earth, who
with one accord wished to destroy us. But the war we have waged -- and God knows
how long we shall continue to wage it -- has not been for a fatherland, but for
the wretched maintenance of millions of "Jew peddlers."
The nations of the earth could not destroy us bodily, yet
they were able to suppress in us every sense of national independence. So now we
look on with caution fatalistic indifference when in many countries we are
refused such recognition as would not lightly be denied to Zulus. In the
Diaspora we maintained our individual life, and proved our power of resistance,
but we broke the common tie of national consciousness. Seeking to maintain our
material existence, we were compelled very often to forget our moral dignity. We
did not perceive that unworthy tactics, though forced upon us, have lowered us
still more in the eyes of our opponents, that we were only the more exposed to
humiliating contempt and outlawed existence, which has at length become our
baleful heritage. In the great, wide world there was no place for us. We pray
only for a little place somewhere to lay our weary head to rest. And as our
claims diminished, our dignity vanished away.
We were the shuttle-cock which the peoples tossed in turn to
one another. The cruel game was equally amusing whether we were caught or
thrown, and was enjoyed all the more as our national respect became more elastic
and yielding in the hands of the peoples. Under such circumstances, how could
there be any question of national self-determination, of a free, active
development of our national force or of our native genius ?
By the way, our enemies did not fail to make capital of this
trait, though irrelevant, in order to prove our inferiority. One would think
that a man of genius among them grew as blackberries on the hedges. The
wretches! They mock the eagle who once soared to heaven and saw Divinity itself,
because he can no longer fly after his wings are broken! Even so we have
remained on the level with the great peoples of civilization. Grant us but our
independence, allow us to take care of ourselves, give us but a little strip of
land like that of the Serbians and Romanians, give us a chance to lead a
national existence and then prate about our lacking manly virtues! Today we
live under the weight of evils you have brought upon us. What we lack is not
genius but self-consciousness, an appreciation of our value as men of which we
were deprived by you!
When we are ill-used, robbed, plundered and dishonored, we
dare not defend ourselves, and, worse still, we take it almost as a matter of
course. When our face is slapped, we soothe our burning cheek. with cold water;
and when a bloody wound has been inflicted, we apply a bandage. When we are
turned out of the house which we ourselves built, we beg humbly for mercy, and
when we fail to reach the heart of our oppressor we move on in search of another
exile.
When an idle spectator on the road calls out to us: "You
poor Jewish devils are certainly to be pitied," we are most deeply touched;
and when a Jew is said to be an honor to his people, we are foolish enough to be
proud of it. We have sunk so low that we become almost jubilant when, as in the
West, a small fraction of our people is put on equal footing with non-Jews. But
he who must be put on a footing stands but weakly. If no notice is taken
of our descent and we are treated like others born in the country, we express
our gratitude by actually turning renegades. For the sake of the comfortable
position we are granted, for the flesh-pots which we may enjoy in peace, we
persuade ourselves, and others, that we are no longer Jews, but full-blooded
citizens. Idle delusion! Though you prove yourselves patriots a thousand times,
you will still be reminded at every opportunity of your Semitic descent. This
fateful memento mori will not prevent you, however, from accepting the
extended hospitality, until some fine morning you find yourself crossing the
border and you are reminded by the mob that you are, after all, nothing but
vagrants and parasites, without the protection of law.
But even humane treatment does not prove that we are welcome.
Indeed, what a pitiful figure we cut! We are not counted
among the nations, neither have we a voice in their councils, even when the
affairs concern us. Our fatherland -- the other man's country; our
unity-dispersion; our solidarity -- the battle against us; our weapon --
humility; our defense -- flight; our individuality -- adaptability ; our future
-- the next day. What a miserable role for a nation which descends from the
Maccabees!
Do you wonder that a people which allowed itself for dear
life's sake to be trampled upon, and has learned to love these very feet that
trample upon them, should have fallen into the utmost contempt!
Our tragedy is that we can neither live nor die. We cannot
die despite the blows of our enemies, and we do not wish to die by our own hand,
through apostasy or self-destruction. Neither can we live; our enemies have
taken care of that. We will not recommence life as a nation, live like the other
peoples, thanks to those over-zealous patriots, who think it is necessary to
sacrifice every claim upon independent national life to their loyalty as
citizens -- which should be a matter of course. Such fanatical patriots deny
their ancient national character for the sake of any other nationality, whatever
it may be, of high rank or low. But they deceive no one. They do not see how
glad one is to decline Jewish companionship.
Thus for eighteen centuries we have lived in disgrace,
without a single earnest attempt to shake it off!
We know well the great martyrology of our people and we would
be the last to place the responsibility upon our ancestors. The demands of
individual self-preservation necessarily sup- press in the germ every national
thought, every united movement. If the non-Jewish peoples, thanks to our
dispersion, deserved to strike through each of us the whole Jewish people, we
had the resistance to survive as a people, but we were left too powerless to
raise ourselves and carry on an active struggle in our own behalf. Under the
pressure of the hostile world we have lost in the course of our long exile all
self-confidence, all initiative.
Moreover, the belief in a Messiah, in the intervention of a
higher power to bring about our political resurrection, and the religious
assumption that we must bear patiently divine punishment, caused us to abandon
every thought of our national liberation, unity and independence. Consequently,
we have renounced the idea of a nationhood and did so the more readily since we
were preoccupied with our immediate needs. Thus we sank lower and lower. The
people without a country forgot their country. Is it not high time to
perceive the disgrace of it all?
Happily, matters stand somewhat differently now. The events
of the last few years in enlightened Germany, in Roumania, in Hungary,
and especially in Russia, have effected what the far bloodiest persecutions of
the Middle Ages could not. The national consciousness which until then had lain
dormant in sterile martyrdom awoke the masses of the Russian and Roumanian Jews
and took form in an irresistible movement toward Palestine. Mistaken as this
movement has proved to be by its results, it was, nevertheless, a right instinct
to strike out for home. The severe trials which they have endured have now
provoked a reaction quite different from the fatalistic submission to a divine
condign punishment. Even the unenlightened masses of the Russian Jews have not
entirely escaped the influences of the ptinciples of modern culture. Without
renouncing Judaism and their faith, they revolted against undeserved
ill-treatment which could be inflicted with impunity only because the Russian
Government regards the Jews as aliens. And the other European Governments -- why
should they concern themselves with the citizens of a state in whose internal
affairs they have no right to interfere?
Today, when our kinsmen in a small part of the earth are
allowed to breathe freely and can feel more deeply for the sufferings of their
brothers; today, when a number of other subject and oppressed nationalities have
been allowed to regain their independence, we, too, must not sit a moment longer
with folded hands; we must not consent to play forever the hopeless role of the
"Wandering Jew." It is a truly hopeless one, leading to despair.
When an individual finds himself despised and rejected by
society, no one wonders if he commits suicide. But where is the deadly weapon to
give the coup de grace to the scattered limbs of the Jewish nation, and
then who would lend his hand to it! The destruction is neither possible nor
desirable. Consequently, we are bound by duty to devote all our remaining moral
force to re-establishing ourselves as a living nation, so that we may ultimately
assume a more fitting and dignified role among the family of the nations.
If the basis of our argument is sound, if the prejudice of
mankind against us rests upon anthropological and social principles, innate and
ineradical, we must look no more to the slow progress of humanity. And we must
learn to recognize that as long as we lack a home of our own, such as the other
nations have, we must resign forever the noble hope of becoming the equals of
our fellow-men. We must recognize that before the great idea of human
brotherhood will unite all the peoples of the earth, milleniums must elapse; and
that meanwhile a people which is at home everywhere and nowhere, must everywhere
be regarded as alien. The time has come for a sober and dispassionate
realization of our true position.
With unbiased eyes and without prejudice we must see in the
mirror of the nations the tragi-comic figure of our people, which with distorted
countenance and maimed limbs helps to make universal history without
managing properly its own little history. We must reconcile ourselves
once and for all to the idea that the other nations, by reason of their inherent natural antagonism, will forever reject us. We must not shut our eyes to
this natural force which works like every other elemental force; we must take it
into account. We must not complain of it; on the contrary, we are in
duty bound to take courage, to rise, and to see to it that we do not remain
forever the Cinderella, the butt of the peoples. We are no more justified in
leaving our national fortune in the hands of the other peoples than we are in
making them responsible for our national misfortune. The human race, including
ourselves, has hardly reached the first stage of the interminable road to
perfection in human conduct, providing the goal is to be reached at all. We
must, therefore, abandon the delusion that we are fulfilling by our dispersion a
Providential mission, a mission in which no one believes, an honorable post
which we, to speak frankly, would gladly resign, if the odious epithet
"Jew" could only be blotted out of the memory of man. We must seek our
honour and our salvation not in self-deceptions, but in the restoration of our
national ties. Hitherto the world has not considered us as a firm of standing,
and consequently we enjoyed no genuine credit.
If other national movements which have risen before our eyes
were their own justification, can it still be questioned whether the Jews have a
similar right? They play a larger part in the life of the civilized nations, and
they have rendered greater service to humanity; they have a greater past and
history, a common, unmixed descent, an indestructible vigor, an unshakable
faith, and an unexampled martyrology; the peoples have sinned against them more
grievously than against any other nation. Is not that enough to make them
capable and worthy of possessing a fatherland? The struggle of the Jews for
national unity and independence as an established nation not only possesses the
inherent justification that belongs to the struggle of every oppressed people,
but it is also calculated to win the support of the people by whom we are now
unwanted. This struggle must become an irresistible factor of contemporary
international politics and destined for future greatness.
At the very outset we expect a great outcry. Most Jews, grown
timid and skeptical, will declare the early activities to be the unconscious
convulsions of a crushed organism and certainly its execution and achievement is
sure to encounter the gravest of difficulties and perhaps will be possible only
after superhuman efforts. But since the Jews have no other way out of their
desperate position, it would be cowardly to shrink from it in the face of heavy
odds. But "faint heart never won fair lady" - -and, indeed, what have
we to lose! At the worst, we shall continue to be in the future what we have
been in the past, what we are too cowardly to resolve that we will be no longer: eternally despised Jews. We have lately had very bitter experiences in
Russia, We are both too many and too few; too many in the southwestern
provinces, in which the Jews are allowed to reside, and too few in all the other
provinces, where they are forbidden. If the Russian Government, and the Russian
people as well, realized that an equal distribution of the Jewish population
would benefit the entire country, we might have been spared all our sufferings.
Unfortunately, Russia cannot and will not realize this. That is not our fault,
neither is it a consequence of the low cultural state of the Russian people. We
have found our bitterest opponents, indeed, in a large part of the press, which
might be supposed to possess education; the unfortunate situation of the Russian
Jews is due, rather, purely and simply to the operation of those general forces,
a consequence of human nature which we have previously discussed. And since it
is not to be our mission to reform mankind, we must see what we have to do for
ourselves under the circumstances.
Such being the situation, we shall forever remain a burden to
the rest of the population, parasites who can never secure their favor. The
apparent fact that we can mix with nations only slightly offers a further
obstacle to the establishment of amicable relations. Therefore, we must see to
it that the surplus, the unassimilable residue, is removed and elsewhere
provided for. The burden is ours alone. If the Jews could be equally distributed
among all the peoples of the earth, perhaps there would be no Jewish question.
But this is not possible. Nay, there can be no more doubt that an immigration of
the Jews en masse into the most progressive countries would be declined
with emphasis. We say this with a very heavy heart; but we must admit the truth.
And it is necessary to know the facts if we would improve our position.
Moreover, it would be a misfortune if we were unwilling to
profit by the testimony of our experience which has practical value, the most
important being the constantly growing conviction that we are nowhere at home,
and that we must at last look for a home , if not a country of our
own.
Another conclusion is that the sorry upshot of the Russian
and Roumanian emigration is ascribable solely to the important fact that we were
taken unawares; we had made no provision for the principal needs, a refuge and a
systematic organization of emigration. When thousands were seeking new homes we
forgot to provide for that which no villager forgets when he wants to move --
the small matter of suitable new lodgings.
If we would have a secure home, give up our endless life of
wandering and rise to the dignity of a nation in our own eyes and in the eyes of
theworld, we must, above all, not dream of restoring ancient Judaea. We must not
attach ourselves to the place where our political life was once violently
interrupted and destroyed. The goal of our present endeavors must be not the
"Holy Land," but a land of our own. We need nothing but a large tract
of land for our poor brothers, which shall remain our property and from which no
foreign power can expel us. There we shall take with us the most sacred
possessions which we have saved from the ship-wreck of our former country, the God-idea and the Bible . It is these alone which have made our old fatherland
the Holy Land, and not Jerusalem or the Jordan. Perhaps the Holy Land will again
become ours. If so, all the better, but first of all , we must determine
-- and this is the crucial point -- what country is accessible to us, and at the
same time adapted to offer the Jews of all lands who must leave their homes a
secure and indisputed refuge, capable of productivization. We do not overlook
the enormous external and internal difficulties involved in this, which is to be
the life-long endeavor of our people. But most difficult of all will be the
attainment of the first and most necessary prerequisite, the national
resolution; for we are, to our sorrow, a stiff-necked people. How readily
could conservative opposition, of which our history has so much to tell, nip
such a resolution in the bud! If it should, then woe to our entire future!
What a difference between Past and Present! In unity and in
serried ranks we once accomplished an orderly departure from Egypt to escape
from a shameful slavery and conquer our land. Now we wander as fugitives and
exiles with the foot of the Russian mob upon our necks, death in our hearts,
without a Moses for our leader, without a promise of land which we are to
conquer by our own might. We are driven through all the lands of all rulers;
here we are ushered out with all politeness, that we may not introduce a plague;
there fortune grants that we may be provided for somewhere, somehow, that we may
be free and unmolested -- to sell old clothes, make cigarettes, or become
incompetent farmers. It would be a euphemism to call it emigration. Ashamed and
helpless the refugees stood on the frontiers and looked out of their hollow eyes
for help. They received by way of answer a few barracks and a few thousand
passports! Then a few more repatriations, another thousand bitter
disillusionments, and the tide of public sympathy ebbs. All is quiet again, and
our beneficent brothers in the West betake themselves comfortably to repose. The
surging sea of yesterday is calmed, and recedes into the old marsh with the old
creeping things.
Thus, for centuries we have been revolving perplexedly in a
magic circle, allowing a blind fate to rule over us. The sorrows of thousands of
years have made us only a folk of "Merciful Brethren," but have not
produced any rational healers of our ills. We continue on the old beaten track
seeking only for the palliative of philanthropy. But we refuse to attack our
malady at the root, in order to effect a complete cure. Intelligent and rich in
experience, we are as short-sighted and thoughtless as children; we have had no
time to reflect and ask ourselves whether this mad race, or rather this mad
rout, will ever come to an end.
In the life of nations, as in the life of individuals, there
are vital moments which rarely recur, and which, according as they are utilized
or not utilized, decisively affect their future. We are now passing through such
a moment. The consciousness of the people is awake. The great ideas of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have not passed us by without leaving a
trace. We feel not only as Jews; we feel as men. As men, we, too, wish to live
and be a nation as the others. And if we seriously desire that, we must first of
all extricate ourselves from the old yoke, and rise manfully to our full height.
We must first of all desire to help ourselves and then the help of others
is sure to follow.
But the time in which we live is adapted for decisive action
not merely because of our own inner experience, not merely in consequence
of our newly-aroused self-consciousness. The general history of the
present day seems destined to become our ally. In a few decades we have seen
rising into new life nations which at an earlier time would not have dared to
dream of a resurrection. The dawn is already breaking through the darkness of
traditional statecraft. The governments already incline their ears -- where it
cannot be avoided -- to the clamor of the awakening of self-consciousness of
nationalities. It is true that those happy ones who attained their national
independence were not Jews. They lived upon their own soil and spoke one
language, and therein they certainly had the advantage over us.
But what if our position is more difficult? That is all the
more reason why we should strain every energy to the task of ending our national
misery in honorable fashion. We must set out with resolution and self-denial and
God will help us. We have always been ready for sacrifice, and we have not been
wanting in resolution to hold our banner firm, if not high. We sailed the
surging ocean of universal history without a compass, and such a compass
must be invented. Far, far off, is the haven toward which our souls are turning.
We know not even whether it be East or West. But for the wanderers of 2,000
years, the way, however, distant, cannot seem too long.
But how can we find that haven without first sending out an
expedition! If we are for once so happyas to know what we want, and if only we
are so resolved, we must go forward with all care and foresight, step by step,
without undue haste and without digression. Of course, we have not the genius of
a Moses -- history does not grant such leaders repeatedly. But a clear
recognition of what we need most, a recognition of the absolute necessity of a
home of our own, would arouse among us a number of energetic, honorable and
distinguished friends of the people who would assume leadership, and would,
perhaps, be no less able than that one man to deliver us from disgrace and
persecution.
But what are we to do next, how should we begin? We believe
that a nucleus for this beginning already lies at hand in the existing
societies. It is incumbent upon them, they are called and in duty bound, to
lay the foundation of that lighthouse to which our eyes will turn. If they are
to be equal to their new task, these societies must, of course, be completely
transformed. They must convoke a national congress; of which they are to
form the centre. If they decline that function, however, and refuse to go beyond
the limits of their present activity, they must at least depute some of their
numbers as a national board, let us say a directorate, which will have to
establish that unity which we now Lack and without which the success of our
endeavors is unthinkable. To represent our national interests this institute
must comprise the leaders of our people, and it must energetically take in hand
the direction of our general, national affairs. Our greatest and ablest forces
-- men of finance, of science, and of affairs, statesmen and publicists -- must
join hands with one accord in steering toward the common destination. They would
aim chiefly and especially at creating a secure and inviolable home for the surplus of those Jews who live as proletarians in the different countries and are a
burden to the native citizens.
We do not, of course, propose united emigration of the entire
people. The comparatively small number of Jews in the West, who constitute a
small percentage of the population, and for this reason, perhaps, are better
situated and even to a certain extent naturalized, may in the future remain
where they are. The wealthy may also remain even where the Jews are not
willingly tolerated. But, as we have said before, there is a certain point of
saturation beyond which their numbers may not increase, if the Jews are not to
be exposed to the dangers of persecution as in Russia, Roumania, Morocco and
elsewhere. It is this surplus which, a burden to itself and to others, conjures
up the evil fate of the entire people. It is now high time to create a refuge
for this surplus. We must occupy ourselves with the foundation of such a lasting
refuge, not with the meaningless collection of donations for emigrants or
refugees who forsake, in their consternation, an unhospitable home to
perish in the abyss of a strange and unknown land.
The first task of this national institute, which we miss so
much and must unconditionally call into existence, would have to find a
territory adapted to our purpose, as far as possible continuous in extent and of
uniform character. In this respect, two countries, lying at opposite points of
the globe, which have lately vied with each other for first place and created
two opposite currents of Jewish emigration, present themselves. This division
caused the failure of the entire movement.
Without plan, purpose, or unity, the last emigration must be
regarded as a complete failure in having disappeared without a trace, but it has
taught us what we should do and not do in the future. With a total lack of
vision, reasonable calculation and prudent unity, it was impossible to recognize
in the chaos of wandering, famishing fugitives a hopeful movement toward a
clearly marked goal. It was no emigration, but a portentous flight. For the
refugees the years 1881 and 1882 were a highway covered with the wounded and
dead. And even the few who were so fortunate as to reach their goal, the
longed-for haven, found it no better than the dangerous road. Wherever they came
people tried to get rid of them. The emigrants were soon confronted by the
desperate alternative of either roaming about without shelter, help or advice in
a foreign land, or of wandering back shamefully to their no less alien and
loveless home-country. This emigration was for our people nothing but a new date
in its martyrology. But this aimless wandering in the labyrinth of exile, to
which our people have always been accustomed, does not advance them a step; they
rather sink deeper in the morass of their wanderings. In the last emigration no
sign of progress toward a better state of things is to be observed. Persecution,
flight, dispersion, and a new exile -- just as in the good old times. The
weariness of the persecutors now allows us a little respite; will we be
satisfied with it? Or will we rather use this respite to draw the proper from
the accumulated experience, in order that we may escape the new blows which are
sure to come!
It is to be hoped that we have not emerged from that stage in
which the Jews of the Middle Ages vegetated miserably. The children of modern
civilization among our people esteem their dignity no less highly than our
oppressors do theirs. But we shall not be able successfully to defend this
dignity until we stand upon our own feet. As soon as asylum is found for our
poor people, for the refugees whom our historic and predestined fate will always
create for us, we shall also rise in the estimation of the nations. Then we
should not be taken by surprise by such tragic happenings as those in the last
few years, happenings which are likely to be repeated in Russia and elsewhere.
If we already knew where to direct our steps, were we
compelled to emigrate again, we could surely make a vast step forward. We must
set vigorously to work to complete the great task of self-liberation. We
must use all the resources which human intellect and human experience have
devised, instead of leaving our national regeneration to blind chance. The
territory to be acquired must be fertile, well-situated and sufficiently
extensive to allow the settlement of several millions. The land, as national
property, must be inalienable. Its selection is, of course, of the first and
highest importance, and must not be left to off-hand decision or to certain
preconceived sympathies of individuals, as has, alas, happened lately. This land
must be uniform and continuous in extent, for it lies in the very nature
of our problem that we must possess as a counterpoise to our disposition one
single refuge, since a number of refuges would again be equivalent to
our old dispersion. Therefore, the selection of a permanent, national land,
meeting all requirements, must be made with every precaution and confided to one
single body, through a committee of experts selected from our directorate. Only
such a supreme tribunal will be able, after thorough and comprehensive
investigation, to give an opinion and decide upon which of the two
continents and upon which territory in them our final choice should fall.
Only then, and not before, should the directorate, together with an associated
body of capitalists, as founders of a stock company later to be organized,
acquire a tract of land sufficient for the settlement, in the course of time, of
several million Jews. This tract might form a small territory in North America,
or a sovereign Pashalik in Asiatic Turkey recognized by the Porte and the other
Powers as neutral. It would certainly be an important duty of the directorate to
secure the assent of the Porte, and probably of the other European cabinets to
this plan. Under the supervision of the directorate, the land purchased would
have to be divided by surveyors into small parcels, which could be assigned
according to the local conditions to agricultural, building, or manufacturing
purposes. Every parcel laid off thus (for agricultural, house and garden,
town-hall, factory, etc.) would form a lot which would be transferred to the
purchaser in accordance with his wishes.
After a complete survey and the publication of detailed maps
and a comprehensive description of the land, a part of the lots would be sold to
Jews for an adequate payment at a price, exactly fixed in proportion to the
original purchase price, perhaps a little above it. Part of the proceeds of the
sale, together with the profits, would belong to the stock company, and part
would flow into a fund to be administered by the directorate, for the
maintenance of destitute immigrants. For the establishment of this fund the
directorate could also open a national subscription. It is definitely to be
expected that our brethren everywhere would hail with joy such an appeal for
subscriptions and that the most liberal donations would be made for so sacred a
purpose.
Each title-deed delivered to the purchaser, with his name
entered and signed by the directorate and the company, must bear the exact
number of the lot upon the general map so that each purchaser would know exactly
the location of the piece of ground -- field, or building lot -- which he
purchases as his individual property.
Assuredly, many a Jew, who is still bound to his old home by
an unenviable occupation, would gladly grasp the opportunity to throw out an
anchor to windward by such a deed and to escape those sad experiences so
numerous in the immediate past.
That part of the territory which would be assigned to the
directorate for free distribution, against the national subscription mentioned
and the expected profits, would be given to destitute but able-bodied
immigrants, recommended by local committees.
Since the donations to the national subscription would not
come in at once, but say in annual contributions, the colonization, also, would
be carried out gradually and in a fixed order.
If the experts find in favor of Palestine or Syria, this
decision would not be based on the assumption that the country could be
transformed in time by labor and industry into a quite productive one. In this
event the price of land would rise in proportion. But should they prefer North
America, however, we must hasten. If one considers that in the last thirty-eight
years the population of the United States of America has risen from seventeen
millions to fifty millions, and that the increase in population for the next
forty years will probably continue in the same proportion, it is evident that
immediate action is necessary, if we do not desire to eliminate for all time the
possibility of establishing in the New World a secure refuge for our unhappy
brethren.
Every one who has the slightest judgment can see at first
glance that the purchase of lands in America would, because of the swift rise of
that country, not be a risky, but a lucrative enterprise.
Whether this act of national self-help on our part might turn
out profitably or otherwise, however, is of little consequence as compared with
the great significance which such an undertaking would have for the future of
our unsettled people; for our future will remain insecure and precarious unless
a radical change in our position is made. This change cannot be brought about by
the civil emancipation of the Jews in this or that state, but only by the
auto-emancipation of the Jewish people as a nation, the foundation of a colonial
community belonging to the Jews, which is some day to become our inalienable
home, our country.
There will certainly be plenty of counter-arguments. We will
be charged with reckoning without our host. What land will grant us permission
to settle a nation within its borders? At first glance, our building would
appear from this standpoint to be a house of cards to divert children and wits.
We think, however, that only thoughtless childhood could be diverted by the
sight of shipwrecked voyagers who desire to build a little boat in order to
leave inhospitable shores. We even go as far as to say that we expect, strangely
enough, that those inhospitable people will aid us in our departure. Our
"friends" will see us leave with the same pleasure with which we turn
our back upon them.
Of course, the establishment of a Jewish refuge cannot come
about without the support of the governments. In order to obtain the latter and
to insure the perpetual existence of a refuge, the molders of our national
regeneration must proceed with caution and perseverance. What we seek is at
bottom neither new nor dangerous to anyone. Instead of the many refuges which we have always been accustomed to seek, we would fain have one single
refuge , the existence of which, however, would have to be politically
assured.
Let "Now or never" be our watchword. Woe to our
descendants, woe to the memory of our Jewish contemporaries, if we let this
moment pass by!
The Jews are not a living nation; they are everywhere aliens;
therefore they are despised.
The civil and political emancipation of the Jews is not
sufficient to raise them in the estimation of the peoples.
The proper, the only solution, is in the creation of a Jewish
nationality, of a people living upon its own soil, the auto- emancipation of the
Jews; their return to the ranks of the nations by the acquisition of a Jewish
homeland.
We must not persuade ourselves that humanity and
enlightenment alone can cure the malady of our people.
The lack of national self-respect and self-confidence of
political initiative and of unity, are the enemies of our national renaissance.
That we may not be compelled to wander from one exile to
another, we must have an extensive, productive land of refuge, a center which is our own. The present moment is the most favorable for this plan.
The international Jewish question must have a national
solution. Of course, our national regeneration can only proceed slowly. We must take the first step. Our descendants must follow us at a measured
and not over-precipitant speed.
The national regeneration of the Jews must be initiated by a
congress of Jewish notables. No sacrifice should be too great for this
enterprise which will assure our people's future, everywhere endangered.
The financial execution of the undertaking does not present
insurmountable difficulties.
Help yourselves, and God will help you!