Ten Essays on Zionism and Judaism

The present volume of translations from the Hebrew of Achad Ha-Am[1] differs in character from the volume of _Selected Essays_ published in 1912 by the Jewish Publication Societ...

“But we all know how the Declaration was interpreted at the time of its publication, and how much exaggeration many of our workers and writers have tried to introduce into it fr...

Subsequent events—the terrible oppressions and frequent migrations, which intensified immeasurably the personal anxiety of every Jew for his own safety and that of his family—co...

The Congress of the Zionists, the subject of a controversy which has filled the emptiness of our little world for some months past, is now a piece of history. About two hundred...

Or do the champions of the State idea think, perhaps, that, being masters in our own country, we shall be able by diplomatic means to get the various governments to relieve the...

The whole Congress, too, was designed rather as a demonstration to the world than as a means of making it clear to ourselves what we want and what we can do. The founders of the...

The second cause of our degradation is political in character. “Generally speaking,” says Pinsker, “we do not find any nation over-fond of the stranger. This is a fact which has...

As we cannot hope for another leader like Moses—“history does not vouchsafe such leaders to the same people repeatedly”—the leadership of the movement for national rebirth must...

Pinsker died before the days of what is now called “spiritual nationalism,” the view which denies the need for a distinct national territory, believing it possible that sooner o...

When the history of Zionism comes to be written, the historian will not be able to pass in silence over an extraordinary inconsistency of contemporary Zionist propagandists and...

Let them smile—until they grow old enough to understand life as it is, and not as it appears through the glasses of a ready-made doctrine. Then they will understand that what th...

Three years ago,[71] I remember, after I had published in some journal a protest against the favourable reports about the condition of the Palestinian colonies that were then be...

It is true that the great progress which has been made in most of the Colonies is matter for rejoicing. Twelve years ago one knew what to expect on entering a Jewish Colony in P...

No doubt the time has not yet come, nor will it soon come, when the traveller returned from Palestine, speaking of the “genuine type of a Jew,” can say to his friends, “Go to Pa...

This extreme conclusion had already been deduced from the teaching of Aristotle by some of his early commentators (such as Alexander Aphrodisius). There were, indeed, other comm...

Maimonides gave much thought to the question of the creation of the world, and examined it from every side. He tried to ascertain whether there was anything conclusive in the ev...

If we remember that this was the general attitude of mind, we cannot help asking how it could happen that in such a period and in such an atmosphere Maimonides arrived at the do...

The first question cannot be answered in the affirmative: the evidence is rather on the negative side. Had Maimonides recognised clearly the strength of the national sentiment a...

We find all the principles of his system in the Introduction to his first book (the _Commentary on the Mishnah_), and again at the end of his last book (_Guide_, III., chap. li.).

This fundamental tendency of Israel to rise clear of “any likeness” in its religious and moral life is evident not only in relation to the religious and moral _ideal_, but also...

But the New Testament view of marriage and divorce reveals a very different tendency (Matthew and Mark, _locc. citt._; Paul, First Epistle to the Corinthians, vii.). As in all t...