Part 3

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—contributed still further to the enfeebling of the already weakened national sentiment, and to the concentration of interest primarily in the life of the family, secondarily in that of the congregation (in which the individual finds satisfaction for his needs). The national life of the people as a whole practically ceased to matter to the individual. Even those Jews who are still capable of feeling occasionally an impulse to work for the nation cannot as a rule so far transcend their individualism as to subordinate their own love of self and their own ambition, or their immediate family or communal interests, to the requirements of the nation. The demon of egoism—individual or congregational—haunts us in all that we do for our people, and suppresses the rare manifestations of national feeling, being the stronger of the two.

This, then, was the state of feeling to which we had to appeal, by means of which we had to create the invincible 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 said above 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 more ardent desire for the national well-being. By these means we should have aroused the necessary determination, and we should have obtained devoted adherents. No doubt such work is very difficult and takes a long time, not one year or one decade; and, I repeat, it is not to be accomplished by speeches alone, but demands the employment of all means by which men’s hearts can be won. Hence it is probable—in fact almost certain—that if we had chosen this method we should not yet have had time to produce concrete results in Palestine itself: lacking the resources necessary to do things well, we should have been too prudent to do things badly. But, on the other side, we should have 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 the qualities needed to enable them to work for its practical realisation.

But such was not the policy of the first champions of our ideal. As Jews, they had a spice of individualism in their nationalism, and were not capable of planting a tree so that others might eat its fruit after they themselves were dead and gone. Not satisfied with working among the people to train up those who would ultimately work in the land, they wanted to see with their own eyes the actual work in the land and its results. When, therefore, they found that their first rallying-cry, in which they based their appeal on the general good, did not at once rouse the national determination to take up Palestinian work, they summoned to their aid—like our teachers of old—the individualistic motive, and rested their appeal on economic want, which is always sure of sympathy. To this end they began to publish favourable reports, and to make optimistic calculations, which plainly showed that so many dunams[8] of land, so many head of cattle and so much equipment, costing so-and-so much, were sufficient in Palestine to keep a whole family in comfort and affluence: so that anybody who wanted to do well and had the necessary capital should betake him to the goodly land, where he and his family would prosper, while the nation too would benefit. An appeal on these lines did really induce some people to go to Palestine in order to win comfort and affluence; whereat the promoters of the idea were mightily pleased, and did not examine very closely what kind of people the emigrants to Palestine were, and why they went. But these people, most of whom were by no means prepared to submit cheerfully to discomfort for the sake of a national ideal, found when they reached Palestine that they had been taken in by imaginative reports and estimates; and they set up—and are still keeping up—a loud and bitter outcry, seeking to gain their individual ends by all means in their power, and regardless of any distinction between what is legitimate and what is not, or of the fair name of the ideal which they dishonour. The details of the story are public property.

What wonder, then, that so great an ideal, presented in so unworthy a form, can no longer gain adherents; that a national building founded on the expectation of profit and self-interest falls to ruins when it becomes generally known that the expectation has not been realised, 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 to neglect the task of mending and improving so far as we can. But at the same time we must remember that it is not on these that we must base our hope of ultimate success. The heart of the people—that is the foundation on which the land will be regenerated. And the people is broken into fragments.

So let us return to the road on which 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 strengthen and deepen its hold on the Jewish people, not by force, but by the spirit. Then we shall in time have the possibility of doing actual work.

“I shall see it, but not now: I shall behold it, but not nigh.”

II

“Let us not theorise too much, or slacken our efforts. Let us avoid impatience and undue haste. Let us increase our devotion to our people and our love for our ancestral land, and the God of Zion will help us.”

These are the concluding words of the long criticism of my first essay which appeared in _ha-Meliz_.[9] It might be inferred that my advice to the _Chovevé Zion_ was that they should confine themselves to theory, give up practical work, proceed with undue haste, and refrain from increasing devotion to our people and love for our ancestral land. But any attentive reader of my article will not need to be told that as regards the two last points I said the exact opposite: that we should not, through undue haste, attempt to achieve by the appeal to self-interest things which are not yet ripe for achievement by force of the ideal itself, because so long as _Chibbath Zion_ is not a living and burning passion in the heart of the people we lack the only basis on which the land could be regenerated, and for that reason we must strive with all our might to increase our devotion to our people and our love for our ancestral land. But as regards theorising and neglecting action, I may really have left my meaning uncertain through excessive brevity. Though I said explicitly that propaganda could be made only by work competently done, and not by speeches alone, it is possible that I ought to have added—what is really self-evident from the context—that so long as the time is not ripe for the actual carrying out of our idea, the object of everything that we do on a small scale ought to be simply to win adherents to our cause; that by that test and that alone we ought to distinguish between what is well and what is ill done both in Palestine and outside it; that therefore quality and not quantity must be our concern, and we must not confine our efforts to the improvement of the colonies, but must use all the many and various ways of appealing to the people.

It is therefore futile for my critic to labour to prove that the _Chovevé Zion_ had no right “to defer action until they had created a new state of mind in the Jewish masses and awakened their national consciousness.”

“Idea and action,” he says, “are not separated in our minds; it requires deeds to convince us. How then could the idea of resettlement gain acceptance with the masses if it were not accompanied by action?” All this does not touch my position, because I did not demand deferment of action. On the contrary, I demanded that everything possible should be done to awaken the love of Palestine, and from that it follows that when the champions of the idea themselves cultivate the Holy Land with the sweat of their brows and their hearts’ blood, _as an example_, they are doing the very best propaganda work. But the settlement as it is to-day—can it be regarded as propaganda work of this kind? My critic himself says that “the champions of the idea did not do the work with their own hands,” but “talked in four languages;” and what they said was calculated only to incite those who were out for material advancement to go to Palestine and do the work. Such men did in fact go to Palestine, and we know what they did and what happened to them and what the settlement has become. No wonder, then, that the idea has gone on losing its influence on the minds of the people, and that the heart of the Jew does not glow at the vision of Jewish farmers hoeing and ploughing the land of our fathers, as in the days of David and Solomon. Neither the deeds nor the doers are such as to inspire enthusiasm in a people whose heart is chilled by age and trouble.

But my critic joins issue with me in principle as well. He maintains that by no possible means can we succeed in arousing a strong national sentiment among our people, because ever since we became a nation “the sentiment of nationality has been foreign to the spirit of our people, and the individual Jew seeks rather his own good and his private advantage;” and it is vain for us to fight against the spirit and natural character of the people, “for nothing avails against national character.” Hence the _Chovevé Zion_ chose the line of self-interest, not because they preferred it, but because no other was open. “The Jewish masses do not properly understand the language of the national sentiment. Our endeavour must be to make actions speak to them in a language which they do understand—the language of self-interest. Then calculation will succeed where sentiment cannot.”

Now “the language of self-interest” is the language of the struggle for existence, which speaks to each individual in the particular style adapted to his position and ambitions, and to no man in a speech which his neighbour understands; and I for my part am unable to see how it can serve us instead of the unvarying appeal of the national sentiment, which unites all hearts for one aim and one purpose. Even the Utilitarians, who tried to trace all moral and social tendencies to the pursuit of individual advantage, were concerned only to explain the first cause of these tendencies, and to show how they came into existence and developed, as against those who attributed their presence to a direct interposition of Providence. But it is universally admitted that self-interest alone, as it is in itself, cannot provide a basis for any organised society or any great collective effort.

Let us, however, waive that point, and let us hear from our critic’s own lips what is the language of self-interest in this matter. “National sentiment,” he says, “is foreign to the spirit of our people. The way to convince them is to show by figures that any industrious and peaceable man will find what he wants in Palestine, provided he has physical strength and capital.” He admits, then, that only a man who has capital and physical strength, and is industrious and peaceable to boot, will find in Palestine what he wants—that is to say, his individual advantage. Now it is difficult to find the last-named qualifications in a Jew who has capital, and is accustomed to make his living easily and to have a great regard for his own dignity; and apart from that, we have to remember that such a man will not easily find what he wants in Palestine. For a man with capital wants not merely plain food and raiment: he wants also the luxuries and pleasures to which he has been used. And if he is thinking of his individual advantage, he will certainly come to the conclusion that it is folly to lay out his capital in purchasing a piece of land in Palestine, where at the very best he will have to work hard without being able to find satisfaction for even a half of his desires. To the truth of this statement our critic himself bears witness. He tells us that “in those days also (_i.e._, in the beginning of the colonisation work) the movement existed principally among the poor, who hoped to be established by the generosity of others; and the rich held aloof, then as now.” Again: “In the winter of 1881-82 the first emissary travelled to Palestine, bearing written authority from a number of men in good circumstances to purchase land on their behalf. He bought the land of Rishon-le-Zion, but those who had authorised him to buy for them changed their minds.” And again: “Of those who bought plots of land in the colony just mentioned it was only the poor who went to Palestine; the rich remained at home.” Finally: “The net result of the whole movement was that, with few exceptions, those who remained in Palestine were men in the last stage of poverty.” Experience, therefore, teaches us that men of capital, if they understand no language except that of individual self-interest, will not go to find in Palestine “what they want,” because they want more than they will find there. Who is there, then, whom figures can persuade or to whom self-interest can recommend Palestine, if those who could go will not, and those who would cannot?

I asked in my article why the idea lost ground among our people from the time when it began to take practical shape in the land. Our critic answers with a sigh: “Our impatient people saw that a long time and a great deal of money would be needed to put the colonies which had been founded into a satisfactory condition, and their courage failed them. For eighteen hundred years we found it possible to exist without moving a finger for the colonisation of our land and the salvation of our people; but now that we have not been able to make our colonies all that they should be in six years, we lose heart. Are we not an impatient people?” He does not realise that what he attributes to impatience is simply an inevitable result of the appeal to self-interest. For eighteen hundred years we did not move a finger for the colonisation of our land, because we did not expect it to bring us advantage as individuals. In recent years we have paid attention to the colonisation of our land, because reports and statistics have led us to hope that it will bring us advantage as individuals. But now, when we see that a long time and a great deal of money will be needed to put the colonies already founded into a satisfactory condition, it becomes clear that from the point of view of individual self-interest the thing is not worth while; and so we have quite justifiably lost heart, and the colonisation of our land has become a charitable affair, which affords a scant subsistence to some hundreds of people “in the last stage of poverty.”

* * * * *

Such, then, is the language of individual self-interest. Had our critic really been able to adduce convincing arguments in support of his severe judgment that there never was and never will be any national sentiment among the Jews, and that individual Jews will never be able to rise above “private advantage and individual self-interest,” then we might as well throw up the sponge. We should have no right to be called a people or to lay claim to a land. But, luckily for us, his arguments are not so dangerous.

As a general rule, ethnological investigations into the characteristics of different people are extremely speculative and hazardous. One ethnologist set about to collect the opinions of the foremost authorities as to the characteristics of the Arabs, and this is what he found. Some maintain that the Arab is a man of action, concerned only with concrete things, and very weak on the side of imagination; while others assert that both the Arabs and the Hebrews are strongly imaginative, and that among the Arabs the imagination is always more powerful than the reason. On the other hand, Sprenger regards it as self-evident that the predominance of the imagination over the reason is a characteristic opposed to the Arab spirit, and lays it down as a truth universally recognised that the spirit of the Semitic peoples generally is objective; whereas Lassen, and after him Renan, regard it as universally recognised that the fundamental characteristic of the Semitic peoples is subjectivity.[10]

If there are these differences of opinion as regards the characteristics of the Arabs, who have never been uprooted and driven into exile, can anybody have the assurance to dogmatise about the characteristics of a people like our own, which has been scattered among different peoples these two thousand years? Can anybody be so all-knowing as to distinguish with precision between those characteristics which are innate and original in us, and those which have been produced in us by our own environment in exile; to trace one by one all the mutations which the original and the acquired traits have undergone in the passage from generation to generation and from land to land; to forecast which of our characteristics may or may not change with a change of environment? Why, here is our critic laying down the law about the Jewish character as though it were something fixed and unchangeable by time or place, while one famous modern writer has picked out the Jews to demonstrate the truth of his theory that national characteristics depend more on environment and social conditions than on heredity, because he finds that our characteristics differ in different countries and change at different periods, according to our environment and the spirit of the people among whom we live.[11]

This being so, I will not enlarge on the details of our critic’s theory as to Jewish characteristics, but will confine myself to that one dangerous characteristic which he attributes to us—the _innate_ lack of national sentiment.

In my essay I argued thus: Seeing that the Law of Moses is entirely based on the welfare of the whole nation, so much so that it has no need to appeal to belief in future reward and punishment (a belief which was known in Egypt in very early times) in order to satisfy the individual, we are justified in inferring the existence at that time of a very strong national sentiment in the whole people, or the most important section of it; and it was only through historical circumstances that this sentiment afterwards lost its force. Thus we are at liberty to believe that by appropriate means it is possible to revive to-day in our people a sentiment which it already had in ancient times. To this our critic replies: “If the Law looked only at the general good, that is not because at a certain time the spirit of individualism did not exist in Israel, but because the Law is practical and reckons with facts. We see that the individual is exposed to all kinds of accidents and misfortunes. How, then, could a practical Law like ours guarantee individual happiness, which is unrealisable?”

I have tried my hardest, Heaven knows, to discover what this means, but in vain. It simply proves my point. For if Judaism is realistic, and if the happiness of the individual on earth is unrealisable, and if at the same time there was no national sentiment, and the people attached no great importance to the well-being of the nation as a whole—then how could Judaism be content with promising a reward which could not have much value as an incentive to right living, when it might have done as other religions have done, both before and since, and as it did itself at a much later period, in response to the needs of the time: namely, have promised every individual a reward in heaven?

And our critic gets himself into all this difficulty simply because he finds it stated by Chwolson that all Semites are individualistic by nature. If that is so, we cannot admit the existence of a national sentiment in Israel at any period. Now we have seen above how much reliance can be placed in such matters on the statements of well-known authorities. But if we examine carefully the passage which our critic quotes from Chwolson, we shall be even more surprised at his finding in it sufficient ground for passing such a sweeping judgment on his people. Chwolson says: “There was scarcely ever a strong bond of union between the Jewish tribes. A full national consciousness has never developed very far among Semites. Each tribe is a unity, the members of which are closely bound together among themselves; but there is no feeling of unity between the different tribes.” The explanation, according to Chwolson, lies in that individualism “which is especially characteristic of the Semites.” But who can show how “a full national consciousness” differs in character from a feeling of love for and attachment to a single tribe? And if it was individualism—and not external circumstances—which prevented the Jewish tribes from being joined by “a strong bond of union,” how is it that this individualism allowed each tribe to become a closely-knit unity? Surely, when a man feels it necessary and possible to subordinate his individual interests to those of the larger unit to which he belongs, even if that unit is only a petty tribe, he has already got beyond individualism, and is therefore capable even of “a full national consciousness,” provided that there are no external obstacles; and the only difference between the national sentiment of a Frenchman and the tribal sentiment of a Montenegrin lies in the magnitude of what inspires the sentiment, not in the character of the sentiment itself. And, in fact, it does happen in all periods, under suitable conditions, that tribal patriotism expands into national patriotism. The ancient Greeks were at first divided into small tribes, continually at war with one another, and it was only at a late period that they acquired the sentiment of national unity. In the Middle Ages the Italian cities were separate and mutually hostile, and yet at last the Italians developed a strong national sentiment. And, to come to recent times, who does not know what the Germans were until a few decades ago? “We still remember,” says one of their great writers,[12] “the time when we were justly reproached with being conspicuous among all the civilised peoples of Europe for our lack of a strong and healthy national sentiment.” And look at the Germans now!

In a word: the contention that Semites in general, or the Jews in particular, cannot have a national sentiment (a sentiment of which one of the greatest scientists[13] finds traces even in animals) needs to be supported by weightier evidence.

And until such evidence is forthcoming, “let us not slacken our efforts, and let us avoid undue haste. Let us increase our devotion to our people and our love for our ancestral land, and the God of Zion will help us.”

Footnote 4:

[_i.e._, Jewish agricultural settlements in Palestine.]

Footnote 5:

[_Chalukah_—lit. “division”—is the Hebrew name for the stream of charity which flows—or flowed before the war—into Palestine from all quarters of the Jewish dispersion. Intended primarily for the support of scholars, it has in practice done much to pauperise the Jewish population in the cities of Palestine, and has created a problem which it may take a generation or more of economic progress to solve.]

Footnote 6:

[Baron Edmond de Rothschild.]

Footnote 7:

The Jewish teachers of the period (roughly) from 200 B.C. to 200 C.E. They were responsible for the Mishnah—the first Code of Jewish Law after the Pentateuch—and for the earliest commentaries on the Bible or parts of it, one of which is called _Sifré_.

Footnote 8: