History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume 3 of 3. From the Accession of Nicholas II until the Present Day. Dubnow Simon

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СКАЧАТЬ of the Jewish people upon a separate territory, without determining the question whether that territory should be Palestine or Argentina. But, in contradistinction to Pinsker, Herzl was not satisfied with formulating the problem theoretically; he offered at the same time a plan of political and economic organization by means of which the problem was to be solved: the creation of special representative bodies which were to enter into negotiations with rulers and Governments concerning the cession of an appropriate territory to the Jews under an international protectorate, and were also to obtain huge funds to carry out the transplantation and resettlement of vast Jewish masses. Representing a combination of theoretic enthusiasm and practical Utopias, the "Jewish State" of Herzl revived the nearly smothered political hopes which had been cherished by the Hobebe Zion circles in Russia. The Russian Jews, groaning under the yoke of an Egyptian bondage, flocked to the new Moses who announced the glad tidings of the Exodus, and Herzl, beholding the ready hosts in the shape of the Hobebe Zion societies, was quick to adjust his territorialistic scheme to the existing Palestinian movement.

      In this wise, the organization of political Zionism sprang into life, using as its medium of expression the international party congresses, most of which convened in Switzerland, in the city of Basle. The first Basle Congress held in August, 1897, was an impressive demonstration of the national awakening of the Jewish people. For the first time, the united representatives of Eastern and Western Jewry proclaimed before the world that the scattered sections of Jewry looked upon themselves as one national organism striving for national regeneration. From the center of Western assimilation, advocating the disappearance of Jewry, came the war-cry, proclaiming the continued existence of the Jewish nation, though that existence was conditioned by the establishment of a separate "publicly and legally assured" territorial center. Of the four articles of the "Basle program," which were adopted by the first Congress, three deal with the fundamental task of the party, the political and financial endeavors looking to the colonization of large Jewish masses in Palestine, and only one voices the need "of strengthening the Jewish national feeling and self-respect."

      In the further progress of the Zionist organization, these two principles, the political and the cultural, were constantly struggling for mastery, the Zionists of the West gravitating toward political activities and diplomatic negotiations, while the Zionists of the East laid greater emphasis upon internal cultural work along national lines, looking upon it as an indispensable prerequisite for national rebirth. The struggle between these two principles continued at each succeeding annual Congress (at the second and third held in Basle in 1898 and 1899, at the fourth in London in 1900, and at the fifth in Basle in 1901). On the one hand, the Zionists were feverishly engaged in the external organization of the movement: the consolidation of the Shekel-payer societies, the creation of the Jewish Colonial Trust and the Jewish National Fund, the conduct of diplomatic negotiations with the Turkish Government and with the political representatives of other countries for the purpose of obtaining a guaranteed "charter" for a wholesale colonization in Palestine. On the other hand, endeavors were made to nationalize the Jewish intellectual classes, to promote the Hebrew language, to create a national school, and "to conquer the communities" for Zionism, that is, to strengthen the influence of the party in the administration of the Jewish communities. The Convention of Russian Zionists, held at Minsk in 1902, paid particular attention to the cultural aspirations of the party, and adopted a resolution calling for the appointment of two committees, an orthodox and a progressive, to find ways and means for placing Jewish education on a national basis. The same Convention demonstrated the growth of the movement, for, during the first five years of its existence, the Zionist organization in Russia had succeeded in securing about seventy thousand Shekel-payers who were organized in approximately five hundred societies.

      Yet the political and financial achievements of Zionism during that period of bloom – prior to the crisis of 1903 – were insignificant. The diplomatic negotiations of the Zionist leader, Dr. Theodor Herzl, with the Sultan of Turkey and his Government, as well as with the German emperor and several other European sovereigns, failed of their purpose – the obtaining of a Turkish charter for the wholesale colonization of Palestine. The financial instrument of the party, the Jewish Colonial Trust, proved as yet too weak to collect the proposed fund of ten million dollars – a modest sum when compared with the purpose for which it was destined. The colonization of Palestine proceeded at a slow pace, and its miniature scale was entirely out of proportion to the grand plan of establishing a national autonomous center in Palestine. Withal, Zionism proved during that brief interval a potent factor in the national awakening of Jewry. The strength of the movement lay, not in the political aims of the organization, which were mostly beyond reach, but in the very fact that tens of thousands of Jews were organized with a national end in view. It lay, moreover, in the current national-cultural activities, in the Gegenwartsarbeit, which, yielding to necessity, had been raised from a means to an end. In Western Europe, the principal significance of Zionism lay in its effect as a counterbalance to assimilation, Herzl having declared that "Zionism aims at the establishment of a publicly and legally assured home for those Jews who, in their present places of residence, are not able, or not willing, to assimilate themselves." In Russia, however, where Jewish life was dominated by more powerful nationalizing influences, the chief importance of political Zionism lay in this very propaganda of a national rebirth in the midst of those whom militant Judæophobia was endeavoring to reduce by intolerable oppression to the level of moral degenerates. The apathy and faint-heartedness which had characterized public Jewish life during the eighties and the first half of the nineties was followed by a period of noisy bustle, of organizing activity, and of great animation. The Pale of Settlement resounded with the din of its hundreds of Zionist societies, with the speeches of Zionist agitators at public meetings and in the synagogues, with the intense agitation preceding the elections for each Zionist congress, with the heated debates about the program between the political and the cultural Zionists, between the Mizrahists (the faction of orthodox Zionists) and the Progressives. The public utterances of the Zionist leaders, Herzl and Nordau, were the subject of interminable discussion and comment. The Russian Jews were particularly stirred by the annual Congress addresses of Nordau on the "General Situation in Jewry," in which the famous writer pictured with characteristic vividness the tragedy of the Golus, the boundless extent of Jewish misery, having a material aspect in the lands of oppression and a moral aspect among the emancipated sections of Jewry, and which culminated in the thought that Jewry could not exist without Zion.

      Nordau's motto, "Jewry will be Zionistic, or it will not be," was differently interpreted in the different circles of the Russian Jewish intelligenzia. Among the Russian leaders of the party only a minority (Dr. Mandelstamm of Kiev, and others) were fully in accord with the extreme political views of the Western leaders. The majority of the former workers in the ranks of the Hobebe Zion movement (Ussishkin, Chlenov, and others) sought to harmonize the political functions of Zionism with its cultural aspirations and combine the diplomatic negotiations concerning a charter with the upkeep of the existing colonization work in Palestine, which latter was contemptuously branded by the hide-bound adherents of political Zionism as "infiltration." This Babel of opinions within the ranks of the organization could not fail to weaken its effectiveness as an agency for the attainment of the ultimate Zionist goal. At the same time, it brought life and animation into the movement. The crack of the whip of the Egyptian taskmasters remained unheard amidst the clash of ideas and the proud slogans of national liberation which resounded throughout the Jewish Pale.

      2. Spiritual Zionism, or Ahad-Ha´amism

      And yet, political Zionism viewed as a theory failed to offer a satisfactory solution of the great Jewish problem in all its historic complexity. Born of the reaction against anti-Semitism, and endeavoring to soothe the pain of the wounded Jewish heart, it was marked by all the merits and demerits of a theory which was substantially Messianic in character and was entirely dependent on subjective forces, on faith and will-power. "If you only will it, then it is no fairy tale"19– in these words the ultimate goal of political Zionism is indicated by its founder, who firmly believed that an extraordinary exertion of the national will would transform the fairy tale of a "Jewish state" into reality. When confronted with the question as to the future of the Jewish nation СКАЧАТЬ