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.
"The nations which emancipated the Jews have mistaken their own feelings. In order to produce its full effect, emancipation should first have been completed in sentiment before it was declared by law"
I must utter the painful word. The nations which emancipated the Jews have mistaken their own feelings. In order to produce its full effect, emancipation should first have been completed in sentiment before it was declared by law. But this was not the case. The history of Jewish emancipation is one of the most remarkable pages in the history of European thought. The emancipation of the Jews was not the consequence of the conviction that grave injury had been done to a race, that it had been treated most terribly, and that it was time to atone for the injustice of a thousand years; it was solely the result of the geometrical mode of thought of French rationalism of the 18th century. This rationalism was constructed by the aid of pure logic, without taking into account living sentiments and the principles of the certainty of mathematical action; and it insisted upon trying to introduce these creations of pure intellect into the world of reality. The emancipation of the Jews was an automatic application of the rationalistic method. The philosophy of Rousseau and the encyclopedists had led to the declaration of human rights. Out of this declaration, the strict logic of the men of the Great Revolution deduced Jewish emancipation. They formulated a regular equation: Every man is born with certain rights; the Jews are human beings, consequently the Jews are born to own the rights of man. In this manner, the emancipation of the Jews was pronounced, not through a fraternal feeling for the Jews, but because logic demanded it. Popular sentiment rebelled, but the philosophy of the Revolution decreed that principles must be placed higher than sentiment. Allow me then an expression which implies no ingratitude. The men of 1792 emancipated us only for the sake of principle.
Ahad Ha'am: The Jewish State and the Jewish Problem (1897)
And now Judaism finds that it can no longer tolerate the galuth form which it had to take on, in obedience to its will-to-live, when it was exiled from its own country, and that if it loses that form its life is in danger. So it seeks to return to its historic centre, in order to live there a life of natural development, to bring its powers into play in every department of human culture, to develop and perfect those national possessions which it has acquired up to now, and thus to contribute to the common stock of humanity, in the future as in the past, a great national culture, the fruit of the unhampered activity of a people living according to its own spirit. For this purpose Judaism needs at present but little. It needs not an independent State, but only the creation in its native land of conditions favourable to its development: a good-sized settlement of Jews working without hindrance in every branch of culture, from agriculture and handicrafts to science and literature. This Jewish settlement, which will be a gradual growth, will become in course of time the centre of the nation, wherein its spirit will find pure expression and develop in all its aspects up to the highest degree of perfection of which it is capable. Then from this centre the spirit of Judaism will go forth to the great circumference, to all the communities of the Diaspora, and will breathe new life into them and preserve their unity; and when our national culture in Palestine has attained that level, we may be confident that it will produce men in the country who will be able, on a favourable opportunity, to establish a State which will be a Jewish State, and not merely a State of Jews.
"...[F]rom this centre the spirit of Judaism will go forth to the great circumference, to all the communities of the Diaspora, and will breathe new life into them and preserve their unity"
This Hibbat Zion, which takes thought for the preservation of Judaism at a time when Jewry suffers so much, is something odd and unintelligible to the " political" Zionists of the West, just as the demand of R. Jochanan ben Zakkai for Jabneh was strange and unintelligible to the corresponding people of that time. And so political Zionism cannot satisfy those Jews who care for Judaism: its growth seems to them to be fraught with danger to the object of their own aspiration.
The secret of our people's persistence is - as I have tried to show elsewhere - that at a very early period the Prophets taught it to respect only spiritual power, and not to worship material power. For this reason the clash with enemies stronger than itself never brought the Jewish nation, as it did the other nations of antiquity, to the point of self-effacement. So long as we are faithful to this principle, our existence has a secure basis: for in spiritual power we are not inferior to other nations, and we have no reason to efface ourselves.
Haim Nahman Bialik: On the Hebrew University (1925)
We are not coming here to seek wealth, or dominion, or greatness. How much of these can this poor little country give us? We wish to find here only a domain of our own for our physical and intellectual wealth. We have not yet achieved great things here. We have not yet had time to wash the dust of long wanderings from our feet and to change our patched garmets. Undoubtedly many years have yet to pass until we have healed this desolate land of the leprosy of its rocks and the rot of its swamps. For the present there is only a small beginning of upbuilding; yet already the need has been felt for erecting a home for the intellectual work of the nation.
"We must therefore hasten to light here the first lamp of learning and science and of every sort of intellectual activity in Israel, ere the last lamp grows dark for us in foreign lands"
Such has ever been the nature of our people: it cannot live for three consecutive days without Torah. Already at this hour we experience cultural needs that cannot be postponed and must be satisfied at once. Besides, we are burdened with heavy cares for the cultural fate of our people in the Diaspora. Nations born only yesterday foolishly imagine that through intellectual parching, by means of numerous clausus, they can do to death an old nation with a past of four thousand years of Torah. We must therefore hasten to light here the first lamp of learning and science and of every sort of intellectual activity in Israel, ere the last lamp grows dark for us in foreign lands. And this we propose to do in the house whose doors have been opened this day upon Mount Scopus.
Ber Borochov: Our Platform (1906)
Anti-Semitism is becoming a dangerous political movement. Anti-Semitism flourishes because of the national competition between the Jewish and non-Jewish petty bourgeoisie and between the Jewish and non-Jewish proletarianized and unemployed masses. Anti-Semitism menaces both the poor helpless Jews and the all-powerful Rothschilds. The latter, however, understand very well where the source of the trouble lies: the poverty-ridden Jewish masses are at fault. The Jewish plutocracy abhors these masses, but anti-Semitism reminds it of its kinship to them. Two souls reside within the breast of the Jewish upper bourgeoisie - the soul of a proud European and the soul of an unwilling guardian of his Eastern coreligionists. Were there no anti-Semitism, the misery and poverty of the Jewish emigrants would be of little concern to the Jewish upper bourgeoisie. It is impossible, however, to leave them in some West European city (on their way to a place of refuge) in the care of the local government, for that would arouse anti-Semitic ire. Therefore, in spite of themselves and despite their efforts to ignore the Jewish problem, the Jewish aristocrats must turn philanthropists. They must provide shelter for the Jewish emigrants and must make collections for pogrom-ridden Jewry. Everywhere the Jewish problem and a means of being delivered of the Jewish masses. This is the sole form in which the Jewish problem presents itself to the Jewish upper bourgeoisie.
"Anti-Semitism menaces both the poor helpless Jews and the all-powerful Rothschilds...The Jewish plutocracy abhors these masses, but anti-Semitism reminds it of its kinship to them"
The middle bourgeoisie is bound more closely to the Jewish masses. In general, the economic interests of a middle and petty bourgeoisie depend on the market which the mass of the people affords, which market is coextensive with the national language and cultural institutions. Therefore, in the case of territorial nations, the middle and petty bourgeoisie is the chief supporter of all types of "cultural" nationalism. Since the section of the Jewish bourgeoisie has no territory and market, it falls under the influence of assimilatory forces. On the other hand, because of the intense national competition in which the middle and lower bourgeoisie is involved, the isolating factor of anti-Semitism is felt in every branch of activity. Anti-Semitism is at the root of all the discriminatory laws against Jews in politically backward countries and of the social boycott in the bourgeois-democratic countries. The boycott, which is becoming more organized and more intensive, overtakes the Jewish bourgeoisie everywhere: in trade, in industry, in social life, and even in the press. With the growth of capitalism there is a corresponding growth of political democracy on the one hand, and of national competition on the other. Those who see in the growth of political democracy the elimination of discriminatory laws against the Jews and the corresponding lessening of the acute form of Judaeophobia (such as pogroms) see merely one side of the process. They fail to recognize the continual sharpening of national competition in bourgeois society, the growth of which is parallel with that of democracy. This process strengthens the hostility and makes for a stronger and more efficiently organized boycott against the Jews. The Jewish middle and petty bourgeoisie, with no territory and no market of its own, is powerless against this menace. In the white-collar class the discrimination against the Jewish physician, engineer, and journalist forces them to face the Jewish problem. Jewish misery is closer to them than to the upper petty bourgeois character. Lacking any means of support in their struggle for a market, they tend to speak of an independent political existence and of a Jewish state where they would play a leading role. They feel the effects of state anti-Semitism very strongly and therefore strive to protect Jewish civil and national rights. Since they are directly affected by the poverty and degeneration of the Jewish masses, they tend to advocate a Jewish national policy.
But as long as they succeeded in retaining their middle class position, as long as the boycott and the isolation brought about by anti-Semitism have not yet undermined their material well being, the center of gravity of their political interests continues to be in the Galut. Their personal needs remain outside the Jewish national sphere, for the conflict between their economic interests and the conditions of production restricting Jewish life has not yet reached a peak. In other words, as long as the Jewish middle bourgeoisie retains its economic position it is relatively unconcerned with the Jewish problem. True, the Jewish problem is a cause of certain discomforts to the middle class, but the class is not sufficiently hard pressed to desire a radical change in its condition. Its energy can be utilized to a certain extent in behalf of the rehabilitation of Jewish life, but the middle class as a whole can never be the base for a movement of Jewish emancipation.
Martin Buber: An Open Letter to Mahatma Gandhi (1939)
You, Mahatma Gandhi, who know of the connection between tradition and future, should not associate yourself with those who pass over our cause without understanding or sympathy.
But you say - and I consider it to be the most significant of all the things you tell us - that Palestine belongs to the Arabs and that it is therefore "wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs."
Here I must add a personal note in order to make clear to you on what premises I desire to consider your thesis.
I belong to a group of people who from the time Britain conquered Palestine have not ceased to strive for the concluding of a genuine peace between Jew and Arab.
By a genuine peace we inferred and still infer that both peoples together should develop the land without the one imposing its will on the other. In view of the international usages of our generation, this appeared to us to be very difficult but not impossible. We were and still are well aware that in this unusual - yes, unprecedented - case it is a question of seeking new ways of understanding and cordial agreement between the nations. Here again we stood and still stand under the sway of a commandment.
We considered it a fundamental point that in this case two vital claims are opposed to each other, two claims of a different nature and a different origin which cannot objectively be pitted against one another and between which no objective decision can be made as to which is just, which unjust. We considered and still consider it our duty to understand and to honor the claim which is opposed to ours and to endeavor to reconcile both claims. We could not and cannot renounce the Jewish claim; something even higher than the life of our people is bound up with this land, namely its work, its divine mission. But we have been and still are convinced that it must be possible to find some compromise between this claim and the other, for we love this land and we believe in its future; since such love and such faith are surely present on the other side as well, a union in the common service of the land must be within the range of possibility. Where there is faith and love, a solution may be found even to what appears to be a tragic opposition.
"I belong to a group of people who from the time Britain conquered Palestine have not ceased to strive for the concluding of a genuine peace between Jew and Arab"
In order to carry out a task of such extreme difficulty-in the recognition of which we have had to overcome an internal resistance on the Jewish side too, as foolish as it is natural-we have been in need of the support of well-meaning persons of all nations, and have hoped to receive it. But now you come and settle the whole existential dilemma with the simple formula: "Palestine belongs to the Arabs."
What do you mean by saying a land belongs to a population? Evidently you do not intend only to describe a state of affairs by your formula, but to declare a certain right. You obviously mean to say that a people, being settled on the land, has so absolute a claim to that land that whoever settles on it without the permission of this people has committed a robbery. But by what means did the Arabs attain the right of ownership in Palestine? Surely by conquest, and in fact a conquest with intent to settle. You therefore admit that as a result their settlement gives them exclusive right of possession; whereas the subsequent conquests of the Mamelukes and the Turks, which were conquests with a view to domination, not to settlement, do not constitute such a right in your opinion, but leave the earlier conquerors in rightful ownership. Thus settlement by conquest justifies for you, a right of ownership of Palestine; whereas a settlement such as the Jewish - the methods of which, it is true, though not always doing full justice to Arab ways of life, were even in the most objectionable cases far removed from those of conquest - does not justify in your opinion any participation in this right of possession. These are the consequences which result from your axiomatic statement that a land belongs to its population. In an epoch when nations are migrating you would first support the right of ownership of the nation that is threatened with dispossession or extermination; but were this once achieved, you would be compelled, not at once, but after a suitable number of generations had elapsed, to admit that the land "belongs" to the usurper. . . .
It seems to me that God does not give any one portion of the earth away, so that the owner may say as God says in the Bible: "For all the earth is Mine" (Exodus 19:5). The conquered land is, in my opinion, only lent even to the conqueror who has settled on it-and God waits to see what he will make of it.
I am told, however, I should not respect the cultivated soil and despise the desert. I am told, the desert is willing to wait for the work of her children: she no longer recognizes us, burdened with civilization, as her children. The desert inspires me with awe; but I do not believe in her absolute resistance, for I believe in the great marriage between man (adam) and earth (adamah). This land recognizes us, for it is fruitful through us: and precisely because it bears fruit for us, it recognizes us. Our settlers do not come here as do the colonists from the Occident to have natives do their work for them; they themselves set their shoulders to the plow and they spend their strength and their blood to make the land fruitful. But it is not only for ourselves that we desire its fertility. The Jewish farmers have begun to teach their brothers, the Arab farmers, to cultivate the land more intensively; we desire to teach them further: together with them we want to cultivate the land - to "serve" it, as the Hebrew has it. The more fertile this soil becomes, the more space there will be for us and for them. We have no desire to dispossess them: we want to live with them. We do not want to dominate them: we want to serve with them. . . .
Bernard Lazare: Jewish Nationalism and Emancipation (1899)
For a Jew, the word nationalism should mean freedom. A Jew who today may declare, "I am a nationalist," will not be saying in any special, precise, or clear-cut way, "I am a man who seeks to rebuild a Jewish state in Palestine and who dreams of conquering Jerusalem." He will be saying, I want to be a man fully free, I want to enjoy the sunshine I want to escape the oppression, to escape the outrage, to escape the scorn with which men seek to overwhelm me." At certain moments in history, nationalism is for human groups the manifestation of the spirit of freedom.
In saying this I do not in the least deny internationalist ideas. When socialists fight nationalism, in fact they are fighting protectionism and national exclusivism; they fight that chauvinistic, narrow, and absurd patriotism which leads peoples to set themselves up against each other as rivals or as enemies determined to grant each other neither reprieve nor mercy.
"To suppress the frontiers does not mean to produce one sole amalgam of all the inhabitants of the globe. The federative concept, the concept of a fragmented humanity made up of a multitude of cellular organisms, is one of the commonplace notions of international socialism and even of revolutionary anarchism"
Such is the selfishness of nations, as hateful as the selfishness of individuals and as deserving of contempt. Internationalism obviously presupposes the existence of nations. To be an internationalist means to set up between nations bonds not of diplomatic friendship but of human brotherhood; it means to abolish the political-economic structure of our present nations, since this structure has been created only to protect the people's private interests or rather to those of their governments, at the expense of neighboring peoples. To suppress the frontiers does not mean to produce one sole amalgam of all the inhabitants of the globe. The federative concept, the concept of a fragmented humanity made up of a multitude of cellular organisms, is one of the commonplace notions of international socialism and even of revolutionary anarchism. Granted that in its ideal development this theory conceives that the cells which will thus come together will be knit by virtue of affinities not entailed by any ethnological, religious or national tradition. But this is of little import as long as the theory allows for groups. Moreover, our task is only to deal with our own day, and our own day requires us to seek the most suitable means for assuring men their freedom. Now in our day and generation, it is by virtue of traditional principles that men wish to associate together. To this end they invoke certain identities of origin, their common past, similar ways of looking upon phenomena beings and things; a common philosophy, a common history. They must be allowed to band together.
Louis Brandeis- The Jewish Problem and How to Solve It (1915)
Note what Seton-Watson says:
"America is full of nationalities which, while accepting with enthusiasm their new American citizenship, nevertheless look to some centre in the old world as the source and inspiration of their national culture and traditions. The most typical instance is the feeling of the American Jew for Palestine which may well become a focus for his declassé kinsmen in other parts of the world." (The War and Democracy, p.290.)
There is no inconsistency between loyalty to America and loyalty to Jewry. The Jewish spirit, the product of our religion and experiences, is essentially modern and essentially American. Not since the destruction of the Temple have the Jews in spirit and in ideals been so fully in harmony with the noblest aspirations of the country in which they lived.
America's fundamental law seeks to make real the brotherhood of man. That brotherhood became the Jewish fundamental law more than twenty-five hundred years ago. America's insistent demand in the twentieth century is for social justice. That also has been the Jews' striving for ages. Their affliction as well as their religion has prepared the Jews for effective democracy. Persecution broadened their sympathies. It trained them in patient endurance, in self-control, and in sacrifice. It made them think as well as suffer. It deepened the passion for righteousness.
"America's insistent demand in the twentieth century is for social justice. That also has been the Jews' striving for ages"
Indeed, loyalty to America demands rather that each American Jew become a Zionist. For only through the ennobling effect of its strivings can we develop the best that is in us and give to this country the full benefit of our great inheritance. The Jewish spirit, so long preserved, the character developed by so many centuries of sacrifice, should be preserved and developed further, so that in America as elsewhere the sons of the race may in future live lives and do deeds worthy of their ancestors.
But we have also an immediate and more pressing duty in the performance of which Zionism alone seems capable of affording effective aid. We must protect America and ourselves from demoralization, which has to some extent already set in among American Jews. The cause of this demoralization is clear. It results in large part from the fact that in our land of liberty all the restraints by which the Jews were protected in their Ghettos were removed and a new generation left without necessary moral and spiritual support. And is it not equally clear what the only possible remedy is? It is the laborious task of inculcating self-respect, a task which can be accomplished only by restoring the ties of the Jew to the noble past of his race, and by making him realize the possibilities of a no less glorious future. The sole bulwark against demoralization is to develop in each new generation of Jews in America the sense of noblesse oblige. That spirit can be developed in those who regard their people as destined to live and to live with a bright future. That spirit can best be developed by actively participating in some way in furthering the ideals of the Jewish renaissance; and this can be done effectively only through furthering the Zionist movement.
David Ben-Gurion: The Imperatives of the Jewish Revolution (1944)
The meaning of the Jewish revolution is contained in one word--independence! Independence for the Jewish people in its homeland!
"From this inner sense of freedom outer forms of independence will develop in our way of life, social organization, relations with other people, and economic structure"
Dependence is not merely political or economic; it is also moral, cultural, and intellectual, and it affects every limb and nerve of the body every conscious and subconscious act. Independence, too, means more than political and economic freedom. It involves also the spiritual, moral, and intellectual realms and, in essence, it is independence in the heart, in sentiment, and in will. From this inner sense of freedom outer forms of independence will develop in our way of life, social organization, relations with other people, and economic structure. Our independence will be shaped further by the conquest of labor and the land, by broadening the range of our language and its culture, by perfecting the methods of self-government and self-defense, by creating the framework and conditions for national independence and creativity, and finally--by attaining political independence. This is the essence of the Jewish revolution.