1889
For many centuries the Jewishpeople, sunk in poverty and degradation, has been sustained by faith and hopein the divine mercy. The present generation has seen the birth of a new andfar-reaching idea, which promises to bring down our faith and hope from heaven,and transform both into living and active forces, making our land the goal ofhope, and our people the anchor of faith.
Historic ideas of this kind springforth suddenly, as though of their own accord, when the time is ripe. They atonce establish their sway over the minds which respond to them, and from thesethey spread abroad and make their way through the world -- as a spark firstsets fire to the most inflammable material, and then spreads to the frameworkof the building. It was in this way that a idea came to birth, without ourbeing able to say who discovered it, and won adherents among those who haltedhalf-way: among those, that is, whose faith had weakened, and who had no longerthe patience to wait for miracles, but who, on the other hand, were stillattached to their people by bonds which had not lost their strength, and hadnot yet abandoned belief in its right to exist as a single people. These first"nationalists" raised the banner of the new idea, and went out tofight its battle full of confidence. The sincerity of their own convictiongradually awoke conviction in others, and daily fresh recruits joined them fromLeft and Right: so that one might have expected them in a short time to benumbered by tens of thousands.
But meanwhile the movementunderwent a fundamental change. The idea took practical shape in the work ofPalestinian colonisation. This unlooked-for development surprised friends andfoes alike. The friends of the idea raised a shout of victory, and cried inexultation : Is not this a thing unheard-of, that an idea so young has strengthto force its way into the world of action ? Does not this prove clearly that wewere not mere dreamers? The foes of the movement, on their side, who hadhitherto despised it and mocked it, as an idle fancy of dreamers andvisionaries, now began grudgingly to admit that after all it showed signs oflife and was worthy of attention .
From that time dates a new periodin the history of the idea; and if we glance at the whole course of itsdevelopment from that time to the present, we shall find once again matter forsurprise. Whereas previously the idea grew ever stronger and stronger andspread more and more widely among all sections of the people, while itssponsors looked to the future with exultation and high hopes, now, after itsvictory, it has ceased to win new adherents, and even its old adherents seem tolose their energy, and ask for nothing more than the well-being of the few poorcolonies already in existence, which are what remains of all their pleasant visionsof an earlier day. But even this modest demand remains unfulfilled; the land isfull of intrigues and quarrels and pettiness -- all for the sake and for theglory of the great idea -- which give them no peace and endless worry; and whoknows what will be the end of it all?
If, as a philosopher has said, itis melancholy to witness the death from old age of a religion which broughtcomfort to men in the past, how much more sad is it when an idea full ofyouthful vigour -- the hope of the passing generation and the salvation of thatwhich is coming -- stumbles and falls at the outset of its career! Add to thisthat the idea in question is one which we ace exercising so profound aninfluence over many peoples, and surely we are bound to ask ourselves the oldquestion: Why are we so different from any other race or nation? Or are thoseof our people really right, who say that we have ceased to be a nation and areheld together only by the bond of religion? But, after all, those who take thatview can speak only for themselves. It is true that between them and us thereis no longer any bond except that of a common religion and the hatred which ourenemies have for us ; but we ourselves, who feel our Jewish nationality in ourown hearts, very properly deride anybody who tries to argue out of existencesomething of which we have an intuitive conviction. If this is so, why has notthe idea of the national rebirth succeeded in taking root even among ourselvesand in making that progress for which we hoped?
The idea which we are herediscussing is not new in the sense of setting up a new object of endeavour; butthe methods which it suggests for the attainment of its object demand a greatexpenditure of effort, and it cannot prove the adequacy of its methods so conclusivelyas to compel reason to assent to the truth of its judgments. What it needs,therefore, is to make of the devotion and the desire which are felt for itsideal an instrument for the strengthening of faith and the sharpening ofresolution. Now the devotion of the individual to the well-being of thecommunity, which is the ideal here in question, is a sentiment to which we Jewsare no strangers. But if we would estimate aright its capacity to produce thefaith and the resolution that are needed for the realisation of our idea, wemust first of all study the vicissitudes through which it has passed, andexamine its present condition.
All the laws and ordinances, allthe blessings and curses of the Law of Moses have but one unvarying object: thewell-being of the nation as a whole in the land of its inheritance -thehappiness of the individual is not regarded. The individual Israelite istreated as standing to the people of Israel in the relation of a single limb tothe whole body: the actions of the individual have their reward in the good ofthe community. One long chain unites all the generations, from Abraham, Isaac,and Jacob to the end of time; the covenant which God made with the Patriarchshe keeps with their descendants, and if the fathers eat sour grapes, the teethof the children will be set on edge. For the people is one people throughoutall its generations, and the individuals, who come and go in each generationare but as those minute parts of the living body which change every day,without affecting in any degree the character of that organic unity which isthe whole body.
It is difficult to say definitelywhether at any period our people as a whole really entertained the sentiment ofnational loyalty in this high degree, or whether it was only a moral idealcherished by the most important section of the people. Rut at any rate it isclear that after the destruction of the first Temple, when the nation's starhad almost set, and its well-being was so nearly shattered that even its bestsons despaired, and when the elders of Israel sat before Ezekiel and said:"We will be as the heathen, as the families of the countries," and" Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost" -- it is clear that atthat time our people began to be more concerned about the fate of the righteousindividual who perishes despite his righteousness. From that time date thefamiliar speculations about the relation between goodness and happiness whichwe find in Ezekiel, in Ecclesiastes, and in many of the Psalms (and in Job somewould add, holding that book also to have been written in this period); andmany men, not satisfied by any of the solutions which were propounded, came tothe conclusion that " it is vain to serve God," and that "toserve the Master without expectation of reward" is a fruitless proceeding.It would seem that then, and not till then, when the well-being of thecommunity could no longer inspire enthusiasm and idealism, did our peoplesuddenly remember the individual, remember that besides the life of the bodycorporate the individual has a life peculiarly his own, and that in this lifeof his own he wants pleasure and happiness, and demands a personal reward forhis personal righteousness.
The effect of this discovery onthe selfish thought of that epoch is found in such pronouncements as this:"The present life is like an entrance-hall to the future life." Thehappiness which the individual desires will he come his when he enters thebanqueting-hall, if only he qualifies for it by his conduct in the ante-room.The national ideal having ceased to satisfy, the religious ordinances areendowed instead with a meaning and a purpose for the individual, as the spiritof the age demands, and are put outside the domain of the national sentiment.Despite this change, the national sentiment continued for a long time to liveon and to play its part in the political life of the people: witness thewhole history of the long period which ended with the wars of Titus andHadrian. But since on the political side there was a continuous decline, thereligious life grew correspondingly stronger, and concurrently theindividualist element in the individual members of the nation prevailed moreand more over the nationalist element, and drove it ultimately from its laststronghold -- the hope for a future redemption. That hope, the heartfeltyearning of a nation seeking in a distant future what the present could notgive, ceased in time to satisfy people in its original form, which lookedforward to a Messianic Age "differing from the life of to-day in nothingexcept the emancipation of Israel from servitude." For living men andwomen no longer found any comfort for themselves in the abundance of good whichwas to come to their nation in the latter end of days, when they would be deadand gone. Each indvidual demanded his own private and personal share of theexpected general happiness. And religion went so far as to satisfy even thisdemand, by laying less emphasis on the redemption than on the resurrection ofthe dead.
Thus the national ideal wascompletely changed. No longer is patriotism a pure, unselfish devotion; nolonger is the common good the highest of all aims, over- riding the personalaims of each individual. On the contrary: henceforward the summum bonumis for each individual his personal well-being, in time or in eternity, and theindividual cares about the common good only in so far as he himselfparticipates in it. To realise how complete the change of attitude: became incourse of time, we need only recall the surprise expressed by the Tannaimbecause the Pentateuch speaks of "the land which the Lord swore to yourancestors to give to them." In fact, the land was given not tothem, but only to their descendants, and so the Tannaim find in this passage anallusion to the resurrection of the dead (Sifre). This shows that in their timethat deep- rooted consciousness of the union of all ages in the body corporateof the people, which pervades tie whole of the Pentateuch, had become so weakthat they could not understand the words "to them" except asreferring to the actual individuals to whom they were addressed.
Subsequent events -- the terribleoppressions and frequent migrations, which intensified immeasurably thepersonal anxiety of every Jew for his own safety and that of his family --contributed still further to the enfeebling of the already weakened nationalsentiment, and to the concentration of interest primarily in the life' of thefamily, secondarily in that of the congregation (in which the individual findssatisfaction for his needs). The national life of the people as a wholepractically ceased to matter to the individual. Even those Jeffs who are stillcapable of feeling occasionally an impulse to work for the nation cannot as arule so far transcend their individualism as to subordinate their own love ofself and their own ambition, or their immediate family or communal interests,to the requirements of the nation. The demon of egoism -- individual orcongregational -- haunts us in all that we do for our people, and suppressesthe rare manifestations of national feeling, being the stronger of the two.
This, then, was the state offeeling to which we had to appeal, by means of which we had to create theinvincible faith and the indomitable will that are needed for a great,constructive national effort.
What ought we to have done?
It follows from what has been saidabove that we ought to have made it our first object to bring about a revival-- to inspire men with a deeper attachment to the national life, and a moreardent desire for the national well-being. By these means we should havearoused the necessary determination, and we should have obtained devotedadherents. No doubt such work is very difficult and takes a long time, not oneyear or one decade; and, I repeat, it is not to be accomplished by speechesalone, but demands the employment of all means by which men's hearts can bewon. Hence it is probable -- in fact almost certain -- that if we had chosenthis method we should not yet have had time to produce concrete results inPalestine itself: lacking the resources necessary to do things well, we shouldhave been too prudent to do things badly. But, on the other side, we shouldhave made strenuous endeavours to train up Jews who would work for their people.We should have striven gradually to extend the empire of our ideal in Jewry,till at last it could find genuine, whole-hearted devotees, with all thequalities needed to enable them to work for its practical realisation.
But such was not the policy of thefirst champions of our ideal. As Jews, they had a spice of individualism intheir nationalism, and were not capable of planting a tree so that others mighteat its fruit after they themselves were dead and gone. Not satisfied withworking among the people to train up those who would ultimately work in theland, they wanted to see with their own eyes the actual work in the land andits results. When, therefore, they found that their first rallying-cry, inwhich they based their appeal on the general good, did not at once rouse thenational determination to take up Palestinian work, they summoned to their aid-- like our teachers of old -- the individualistic motive, and rested theirappeal on economic want, which is always sure of sympathy. To this end they beganto publish favourable reports, and to make optimistic calculations, whichplainly showed that so many dunams of land, so many head of cattle and so muchequipment, costing so-and- so much, were sufficient in Palestine to keep awhole family in comfort and affluence: so that anybody who wanted to do welland had the necessary capital should betake him to the goodly land, where heand his family would prosper, while the nation too would benefit. An appeal onthese lines did really induce some people to go to Palestine in order to wincomfort and affluence; whereat the promoters of the idea were mightily pleased,and did not examine very closely what kind of people the emigrants to Palestinewere, and why they sent. But these people, most of whom were by no meansprepared to submit cheerfully to discomfort for the sake of a national ideal,found when they reached Palestine that they had been taken in by imaginativereports and estimate; and they set up -- and are still keeping up --a loud andbitter outcry, seeking to gain their individual ends by all means in theirpower, and regardless of any distinction between what is legitimate and what isnot, or of the fair name of the ideal which they dishonour. The details of thestory are public property.
What wonder, then, that so greatan ideal, presented in so unworthy a form, can no longer gain adherents; that anational building founded on the expectation of profit and self-interest fallsto ruins when it becomes generally known that the ecxpectation has not beenrealised, and self-interest bids men keep away?
This, then, is the wrong way.Certainly, seeing that these ruins are already there, we are not at liberty toneglect the task of mending and improving so far as we can. But at the same tiewe must remember that it is not on these that we must base our nope of ultimatesuccess. The heart of the people -- that is the foundation on which the landwill be regenerated. And the people is broken into fragments.
So let us return to the road onwhich we started when our idea first arose. Instead of adding yet more ruins,let us endeavour to give the idea itself strong roots and to strengthn anddeepen its hold on the Jewish people, not by force, but by the spirit. Then weshall in time have the possibility of doing actual work.
"I shall see it, but not now:I shall behold it, but not nigh."
Translatedfrom the Hebrew by Leon Simon c 1912, Jewish Publication Society of America