ESSAY
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Fragments from the Archives
The Zionist Idea, edited by the late Arthur Hertzberg, is perhaps the best introduction to the classic texts of the Zionist movement. Taken together, the writings in this volume demonstrate the extraordinary diversity of Zionist thought - different writers in different geographical locations at different times, all articulating different reasons for their advocacy of the Zionist project.
One encounters the Russian Marxist, Ber Borochov, and his manifesto for "proletarian Zionism", alongside the writings and speeches of the distinctly bourgeois Theodor Herzl, generally regarded as the father of the Zionist movement. Also present are Louis Brandeis, a powerful voice of American Zionism, and David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, as well as lesser known thinkers, like Moses Hess, a contemporary of Marx and Engels who valiantly tried to combine communism with Zionism.
Z Word is pleased to present these excerpts from The Zionist Idea. We stress that these selections are but a tiny portion of the overall book. Readers who would like to obtain a copy of this invaluable volume are encouraged to contact the Jewish Publication Society.
Leo Pinsker: Autoemancipation (1882)
We were the shuttle-cock which the peoples tossed in turn to one another. The cruel game was equally amusing whether we were caught or thrown, and was enjoyed all the more as our national respect became more elastic and yielding in the hands of the peoples. Under such circumstances, how could there be any question of national self-determination, of a free, active development of our national force or of our native genius?
"What we lack is not genius but self-consciousness, an appreciation of our value as men of which we were deprived by you!"
By the way, our enemies did not fail to make capital of this trait, though irrelevant, in order to prove our inferiority. One would think that a man of genius among them grew as blackberries on the hedges. The wretches! They mock the eagle who once soared to heaven and saw Divinity itself, because he can no longer fly after his wings are broken! Even so we have remained on the level with the great peoples of civilization. Grant us but our independence, allow us to take care of ourselves, give us but a little strip of land like that of the Serbians and Romanians, give us a chance to lead a national existence and then prate about our lacking manly virtues! Today we live under the weight of evils you have brought upon us. What we lack is not genius but self-consciousness, an appreciation of our value as men of which we were deprived by you!
Max Nordau: Speech to the First Zionist Congress (1897):
The Western Jew has bread, but man does not live on bread alone. The life of the Western Jew is no longer endangered through the enmity of the mob; but bodily wounds are not the only wounds that cause pain, and from which one may bleed to death. The Western Jew meant emancipation to be real liberation, and hastened to draw the final conclusions therefrom. But the nations made him fear that he erred in being so heedlessly logical. The magnanimous laws, magnanimously lays down the theory of equality of rights. But governments and Society exercise the practice of equality of rights in a manner which renders it the same mockery as did the appointment of Sancho Panza to the splendid position of Viceroy of the Island of Barataria. The Jew says naively: "I am a human being, and I regard nothing human as alien," the answer he meets is: "Softly, your rights as a man must be enjoyed cautiously; you lack the right notion of honour, feeling for duty, morality, patriotism, idealism. You must, therefore, hold aloof from all vocations which make possession of these qualifications as conditions."
No-one has ever tried to justify these terrible accusations by facts. At most, now and then, an individual Jew, the scum of his race and of mankind, is triumphantly cited as an example, and contrary to all laws of logic, the example is made general. This tendency is psychologically correct. It is the practice of human intellect to invent for the prejudices, which sentiment has called forth, a cause seemingly reasonable. Probably wisdom has long been acquainted with this psychological law, and puts it in fairly expressive words: "If you have to drown a dog," says the proverb, "you must first declare him to be mad." All kinds of vices are falsely attributed to the Jews, because one wishes to convince himself that he has a right to detest them. But the pre-existing sentiment is the detestation of the Jews.
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