Part 12

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 being spread abroad, for diplomatic purposes, a writer in the camp of the political Zionists became angry with me, and determined to shatter with one blow all my views on Zionism, and so remove a dangerous heresy. This idea he carried out in an elaborate article, which was continued through many numbers of the same journal. The details I have forgotten: they were but the old arguments dished up in different words. But I still remember one thing, which provoked not only a smile but also reflections such as those which are the subject of the present essay. After proving conclusively that material factors are of great importance, and cannot be lightly brushed aside, our author reaches the conclusion that it is for that reason idle to confine our work solely to the foundation of a spiritual centre for our nationality: we must found in Palestine an _economic and spiritual_ centre. It escaped his notice that so soon as he used the word “centre” he became himself a “spiritual Zionist,” and in adding the epithet “economic” added exactly nothing. The journal in question appeared in Warsaw, which was also at that time the home of our author; and in order to understand the matter aright he had only to go into the street and ask any intelligent Pole: “What is Warsaw to the Polish people as a whole? Is it a spiritual centre of the nation, or a spiritual and economic centre?” The answer, I think, would have been something like this: “For the Polish people as a whole this city is certainly a spiritual centre of their nationality. Here the national characteristics find their expression in every department of life, here the national language, literature, and art live and develop; and all this, and what goes with it, influences the spirit of the Poles, binds them, wherever they may be, to the centre, and prevents the spark of nationality in the individual from becoming buried and extinguished. But an _economic_ centre of the nation? My good sir! How could Warsaw be an economic centre for all the millions of Poles who are scattered over different lands, and whose economic lives depend on entirely different centres, where Polish economic conditions do not count at all?” I should not have advised our author, after getting an answer of that kind, to ask: “How so? Are there not in Warsaw, besides spiritual things, ever so many factories and shops and other material things, without which it could not develop its spiritual side? And is it not therefore an economic and spiritual centre?” I should not have advised him to ask that question, because I could not guarantee that the intelligent Pole would waste words on such a questioner.

But amongst ourselves “the economic centre” has become a current phrase with many people who on the one hand want to do their duty by the economic side of Zionism (that is _de rigueur_ nowadays), and on the other hand cannot achieve the imaginative eagle-flights of “Proletarian Zionism,”[72] which promises to create in Palestine a national economic system so healthy and so vast that it will be able to provide room and work for all those Jews who are being more and more completely elbowed out of the best branches of industry in the lands of their exile (that is, for almost nine-tenths of the people). Zionists like these, in order to get rid of the difficult question as to the possibility of settling the majority of our people in Palestine, even when their new economic system becomes a fact, consent to accept half the loaf, and want to regard Palestine as merely an economic _centre_. But herein they escape one snare to fall into a worse: they have got rid of an external problem, which depends on arguments from experience, and are caught instead in an inner contradiction, which mere logic can expose. With the “Proletarian” formula one can still argue: one can demand, for instance, a somewhat clearer explanation of that “internal process” by which the economic system of Palestine will become able to absorb immigration on a scale unparalleled in history: but at all events there is no self-contradiction. Whereas the conception of “an economic centre of the nation,” when applied to a people scattered over the whole world, leaves no room for argument or questioning, because its refutation is in itself.

But psychological combinations of this kind are a good sign. They show—in common with other clear signs—that the “centre” as an idea is making headway and is leading to various deductions which could not have been imagined some years ago. And that is the all-important thing. In time the deduction which is involved in the word “spiritual,” when rightly understood, will also be drawn, and it will no longer be possible to suppress it by psychological means. True, all this will not do away with the old nonsense about “spiritual Zionism”; on the contrary—and this is even now unmistakably evident—the more the substance of spiritual Zionism prevails, the more will psychology try to distinguish the victorious tendency from its hated name. But what of that? Let the name be beaten, so but the idea prevail!

Footnote 69:

[_i.e._, in 1892.]

Footnote 70:

[_i.e._, the article “Dr. Pinsker and his Pamphlet,” from which the phrase under discussion is quoted.]

Footnote 71:

[_i.e._, in 1904.]

Footnote 72:

[The name given to a Zionist doctrine based on Marxian Socialism, which had a vogue in Russia, especially among the younger generation, at the time when this article was written. The “internal process” (mentioned later) belongs to the terminology of this doctrine.]

SUMMA SUMMARUM (1912)

This is a summary not of facts and figures, but of impressions stored in my mind in the course of sixty days during which our national work enveloped me in its atmosphere and engrossed my every thought: ten days at Basle during the Tenth Congress, and fifty days afterwards in Palestine.

Fourteen years have passed since I saw a Zionist Congress (the first), and twelve years since I witnessed the condition of our work in Palestine. My object in revisiting both the Congress and the land was not, as before, to go into details, to collect material, in the shape of facts and figures, for the solution of certain practical problems. On this occasion I opened my mind wide to the different impressions that crowded in on me from all sides; I allowed them to enter and to dissolve of themselves into a single general impression—a kind of mental summary of all that I saw and heard in connection with our movement and our work in and out of Palestine. I am of those who stand on the threshold of age and look back on many long years of work and struggle, of victories and defeats, of pain and of joy. A man in this position finds it necessary at times to turn his thoughts for a while from questions of detail, and to take a more comprehensive view, so that he may find for his own satisfaction an answer to that broad, fundamental question which occasionally disturbs his sleep: What is the purpose, what the result, of all this work which has occupied your life and consumed your strength?

It was this necessity that took me on this occasion to Basle and to Palestine. And let me confess that it is a long time since I spent such happy days as those of my travels. Not that all is now right with the movement; not that the sun has shone on our work, and driven away the shadows, and spread light and joy everywhere. We are still a long way from such a happy consummation. Even to-day the shadows are many; if they are less in one place, they are more in another. But one fact is becoming increasingly clear: our work is not an artificial product, a thing that we have invented to give the people something to do, as a palliative for the national sorrow. That idea might be entertained if aim and achievement corresponded, if the work were done for the purpose of attaining that result which it is in fact attaining. If that were so, one might doubt whether the attainment of this result were really necessary for the nation, and whether the whole business were not artificial. But that is not the case. Since the beginning of the movement the workers have had one goal in view, and have been unconsciously approaching another. This dualism is the surest sign that the driving force is not reasoning reflection, but something much deeper: one of those natural instincts which work in darkness, and make a man do their will whether he likes it or not, while he believes that his action is directed to the object which his reason has set before him. This driving force is the instinct of national self-preservation. By it we are compelled to achieve what must be achieved for the perpetuation of our national existence; and we follow it—albeit without clear consciousness, and by crooked paths—because follow it we must if we would live. I used to be distressed by this dualism; I used to fear that we might lose the right path—the path of life—through making for a goal to which no path can lead. But now that I have seen the results of the work so far, I have no such fears as to its ultimate fate. What matters it that the work is professedly directed to an object which it cannot attain? _L’homme propose_.... History does not trouble about our programme; it creates what it creates at the bidding of our “instinct of self-preservation.” Whether we ourselves understand the true import and purpose of our work, or whether we prefer not to understand—in either case history works through us, and will reach its goal by our agency. Only the task will be harder and longer if true understanding does not come to our aid.

That is the real state of the case. All that I saw and heard at Basle and in Palestine has strengthened my conviction that the “instinct of self-preservation” slumbers not nor sleeps in the nation’s heart. Despite our mistakes, it is creating through our agency just what our national existence requires most of all at present: _a fixed centre for our national spirit and culture, which will be a new spiritual bond between the scattered sections of the people, and by its spiritual influence will stimulate them all to a new national life_.

To miss Basle during the Tenth Zionist Congress was to miss seeing an extraordinary medley of languages and ideas—the result of an internal crisis of which everybody was conscious, but which everybody tried hard not to see. Throughout the Congress there was a struggle between two sections, the “political” and the “practical.” You hear the “politicals” declare that they, too, are really “practical,” only that they do not forget “the political end”; you hear the “practicals” protest that they, too, are really “political,” only that they do not forget “the practical means.” And both sections alike protest that the “State” has really been given up, but the Basle Programme has not been given up to the extent of a single comma.[73].... In the end the “practicals” won: that is to say, the essential work of Zionism was pronounced to be the extension of the Jewish settlement, and the furthering of education and culture, in Palestine. Thereupon the victors stood up and promised to guard faithfully the Basle Programme and “the Zionist tradition developed during fourteen years.”

But all this confusion was only an inevitable consequence of the state of mind in which the two sections came to the Congress.

The Zionism of the “politicals,” most of whom were brought into the camp not by a heartfelt longing for the persistence and the development of Jewish nationality, but by a desire to escape from external oppression through the foundation of a “secured home of refuge” for our people—their Zionism is necessarily bound up with that object, and with that alone: take that away, and it remains an empty phrase. For this reason they cannot help seeing that the “practical work” which their opponents make the basis of Zionism is not calculated to hasten that end which is, for them, the only end. They still remember the estimate which they heard in the opening speech of the first Congress: that the colonising work of the _Chovevé Zion_ will bring the exiled people back to Palestine in nine hundred years! But the course of events during recent years has destroyed their hope of reaching that goal more quickly by means of that “political” work which is the foundation of “the Zionist tradition.” Hence they were in a quandary at this Congress, and did not know how to extricate themselves. They came with empty hands, and professed devotion to an object which there were no means of attaining; they could only fall back on the hope of a vague future, when external conditions may perhaps become more favourable to “political work.” This explains also the excessive shyness which they displayed. They did not go out to battle, as they used to do, with trumpetings and loud alarums; there was scarcely a mention of those familiar flourishes, which they used to utter with such boldness and vigour, about the salvation which Zionism is to bring to all oppressed and persecuted Jews. Even Nordau, in his speech on the condition of the Jews, changed his tune on this occasion. The whole idea of his speech, which has been given at the opening of every Congress, and has become an essential part of the “Zionist tradition,” was to justify Zionism _on the ground of anti-Semitism_. “You see”—such, in effect, used to be his argument—“how perilous is your position all over the world; there is no way out. And _therefore_, if you wish to be saved, join us, and we will save you.” But on this occasion Nordau contented himself with describing the evil, and dealing out reproaches to Jews and non-Jews. The essential thing—the “therefore”—was lacking almost entirely. And throughout the Congress there were heard speeches which openly opposed this Zionism based on anti-Semitism, and the speakers were not shouted down, as they certainly would have been in earlier years.

The “practicals”—mostly Eastern Jews and their Western pupils, for whom national Judaism is the very centre of their being, and who are ruled unconsciously by the “instinct of national self-preservation”—they came to Basle in a very different frame of mind. They brought with them a complete programme of “practical work in Palestine,” embracing both colonising and cultural activity; and they came with a settled conviction that all the various branches of this work were the proper means to the attainment of the end—THE end—the one and only, yet undefined. The “politicals” raised their old question: “Do you honestly believe that the occasional purchase of a small piece of land, the foundation of a tiny colony with infinite pains, a workmen’s farm without security of tenure, a school here, a college there, and so forth—that these are the means of acquiring a ‘home of refuge’ as understood by the ‘Zionist tradition’—a refuge which will end our troubles by ending our exile?” The “practicals” had no satisfactory answer. None the less, they stood to their guns, and stoutly maintained that work in Palestine is the only road that leads to _the_ end: but.... At this point they broke off abruptly, and did not complete their thought—for a very good reason. They dared not expressly repudiate that article of faith which alone has made Zionism a popular movement—“the redemption of the nation.” They dared not recognise and acknowledge that the end of which they speak to-day differs from that of the “Zionist tradition.” What they are working for is not “a home of refuge for the _people_ of Israel,” but “a fixed centre for the _spirit_ of Israel.” All branches of the present work in Palestine, _be it buying land or founding schools_, are sure means to the attainment of that end, but have nothing to do with the other. The “practicals” were inwardly conscious of this truth even while the “politicals” still had the upper hand, and for this reason they joined with the “politicals” in fighting it bitterly and angrily. It was a disturbing factor, of which they would fain be rid. But now that the star of “political” Zionism had waned, this conviction had grown stronger in the minds of the “practicals,” and had become a real driving force. As yet, however, they lacked the moral courage to intensify this subconscious whisper into a clear profession of faith. Thus the real object remained beneath the threshold of consciousness, while above the threshold there wandered about, like disembodied spirits, here means without an object, there an object without means; and imagination tried hard to combine the two.[74]

But while the “makers of history” inside the Congress Hall were in the dark, it was outside the Hall, among the crowds attracted to Basle by the Congress, that I saw quite clearly what history has really been doing. In the fourteen years since the first Congress we have been joined by a body of Jews of a new kind: men in whom the national consciousness is deep-rooted, and is not measured by _Shekalim_[75] or limited by a Programme, but is an all-pervading and all-embracing sentiment. Jews of this type came to Basle from all the ends of the earth; they returned to their people out of the gulf of assimilation, most of them yet young in years, able and willing to work for the national revival. When I saw these men—our heirs—outside the Congress Hall, I said to myself: Never trouble about those who are inside! Let them make speeches and pass resolutions and believe that they are hastening the redemption. The distant redemption may not be any nearer; but the estranged hearts are drawing near. In spite of all, history is doing its work in this place, and these men are helping, whether they know it or not.

This same historical tendency, dimly discerned at Basle through the dark cloud of words, I found in Palestine clearly revealed in the light of facts. The more I travelled and observed, the more evident it became to me that what is happening in Palestine—despite all the contradictions and inconsistencies—is tending broadly towards a single goal—that goal which I mentioned above. No doubt we have a long journey to travel yet; but even an untrained eye can see our destination on the distant horizon. If any there be for whom the horizon is too narrow, and the goal too petty, let him go to Zionist meetings outside Palestine: there he will be shown a wider prospect, with larger aims at the end of it. But let him not go to Palestine. In Palestine they have almost forgotten the wider prospects. Realities are too strong for them there: they can see nothing beyond.

Take the National Bank, which was intended to provide a foundation for “the redemption of the people and the land” by _political_ means. What is the Bank doing? Needless to say, its political object has been abandoned and forgotten. But even in the mere work of colonisation it neither does nor can achieve great things. Its business consists—and must consist, if it wishes to survive—in dealings with local tradesmen, Jews and non-Jews, and its profits are derived chiefly from the latter. All that it does for Jewish colonisation, or all that it could do—if we agree with its critics that it could do more than it does—without danger to itself, is so little, that one cannot even conceive any possible connection between it and the “larger aims,” or imagine it to be moving at all along the road that leads to the complete “redemption.” By this time, apparently, there are many people outside Palestine as well who have ceased to hope much from the Bank in the matter of land-settlement; and they now look for the solution to an Agrarian Bank. But possibly it would be worth while first of all to examine what little the existing Bank has done in the way of loans to the colonies, in order to learn what this experience has to teach as regards the problems of agrarian credit in Palestine. It is not enough to adduce examples from other countries, where the conditions and the people are different, to demonstrate what agrarian credit can do. Credit is a very useful thing if it succeeds, but a very harmful thing if it fails. Everything depends on local conditions and the character of the people. The existing Bank has followed precedent in its attempts to help the colonies already in existence—and with what success? The colonists will tell you. No doubt I shall be told that I am drawing a false analogy, for such-and-such reasons. But I am not here attempting to express an opinion on this question of an Agrarian Bank, which has already been much discussed, and of which the merits and demerits have been fully canvassed. My purpose is merely to hint at the difficulties of the project, even if it is carried out on a very modest scale, so as to suggest that it is premature at the present stage, when the Agrarian Bank is not even in sight, to talk about the great things that it is going to do. Our colonisation work in Palestine is carried out under conditions of such multifarious difficulty, that even small things have to be done with extreme care, and precedent alone is no safe guide. If the proposed Agrarian Bank is really going to aim high—to aim, that is, at something considerable in relation to “the redemption of the people and the land”—we cannot yet say whether in the end it will help or hurt.[76]

Then there is the National Fund, and its work for “the redemption of the land” by commercial means, for which purpose it was created. The Fund has already spent a great deal of its money: and how much has it redeemed? How much could it have redeemed if it had spent many times as much? A few scattered pieces of land, lost in the large areas of land not redeemed. Meanwhile, the price of land in Palestine is going up by leaps and bounds, especially in districts where we gain a footing, and the amount of land which it is in the power of the Fund to redeem with the means at its command grows correspondingly less and less. And there is another factor, independent of finance, which lessens its possibilities still further. Many natives of Palestine, whose national consciousness has begun to develop since the Turkish revolution, look askance, quite naturally, at the selling of land to “strangers,” and do their best to put a stop to this evil; while the Turkish Government—be its attitude to our work whatever it may—is not likely to irritate the Arabs for our sakes: that would not suit its book. Thus the purchase of land becomes more and more difficult, and the idea of “the redemption of the land” shrinks and shrinks, until no Palestinian whose eyes are open can see in the National Fund what it was in the imagination of its founders—the future mistress of all or most of the land in Palestine. It is clearly understood in Palestine that many years of hard work, with the help of the National Fund or by other means, will achieve no more than this: to win for us a large number of points of vantage over the whole surface of Palestine, and to make these points counterbalance by their _quality_ the whole of the surrounding area. For this reason, people in Palestine do not talk much about the coming “redemption”; they work patiently and laboriously to add another point of vantage, and another, and yet another. They do not ask: “How will these save us?” They all feel that these points _themselves_ are destined to be, as it were, power-stations _of the national spirit_; that it is not necessary to regard them as a first step towards “the conquest of the land” in order to find the result worth all the labour.

Then, again, there are the Colonies already established, which were born in pain and nurtured with so much trouble. They also do not fire the imagination to the pitch of regarding them as the first step towards “the redemption.”