IRLF 
 
 V 
 
 o o r s a n o'e r 
 
 / DM; J" 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 OIFT OF 
 
 \i 
 
 Class 
 
I 
 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 Open Letters Written By 
 
 REV. DR. JACOB VOORSANGER, 
 
 of San FrancL/co, CaJ., 
 
 To 
 
 HON. SIMON WOLF, 
 
 of Washington, D. C. 
 
 1903-04. 
 
 THE LIPPMAN PRINTING CO. 
 
I. 
 
 You ask me, my dear friend, to express an opinion of 
 your article against Zionism, republished in theCrifcriott, 
 as well as of the correspondence between Professor Gott- 
 lieil and yourself resulting from this article. I do so with 
 alacrity, the more because, in view of recent criticisms of 
 my own utterances, I have been constrained to review 
 my attitude toward Zionism, believing it necessary that 
 we, who so persistently condemn the methods by which 
 the Zionists seek to accomplish the salvation of our peo- 
 ple, should have "a clear case," and should be able to 
 dissipate the fallacies which underlie the movement, even 
 if in the prosecution of the case we should have to admit 
 that, at the present time at least, we can present no plan 
 of our own to mitigate the sorrows of the greater half of 
 the people of Israel. Nor will it be necessary to present 
 4 'schemes." Cut-and-dried plans based upon sentiment 
 only would be an evidence that the people indulging such 
 plans have not sufficiently measured the distance between 
 cause and effect, and I do not wish to be guilty of so 
 flagrant an error, if I must bend my energies towards the 
 solution of problems that hitherto have proved insoluble 
 if viewed, as they should be, from the rational, practical 
 standpoint of economics, politics, and government. In 
 other words, if, no matter how beautiful and inspiring 
 sentiment may be and undoubtedly is, we could prove by 
 the physical fact that Zionism is a delusion we contrib- 
 ute at least something to a better understanding of the 
 questions involved in that one word Zionism, that, no 
 matter how absurd, should always command our rever- 
 ent attention for its root is Zion, the well-spring of the 
 Thorah, the centrifugal source of the noblest aspirations 
 
 of the Jew-. 
 
 * # # 
 
 Pardon me for a personal observation. It is the weak- 
 ness of Zionists to cast aspersion upon the loyalty of their 
 opponents. You would be wrong in apologizing for your 
 
 120151 
 
negative attitude. You owe no man an apology. Your 
 loyalty towards your people is a matter of history ; it is no 
 longer subject to contemporary opinion. For forty years 
 and more you have given the best of yourself to the ser- 
 vice of Israel. By day and by night, in season and out of 
 season, you have been a faithful sentinel of our interests, 
 you have rendered personal service that in degree exceeds 
 the service of any other Jew. Whilst others theorized 
 you practiced, whilst they preached you toiled, whilst 
 they shouted glory beneath flamboyant banners you sat 
 in your room and studied our advantages, whilst they 
 thundered from the tribunes your heart prayed for us. 
 You need not, in this year of the full maturity of your 
 noble career, apologize for your attitude towards Zionism. 
 Let the others apologize. Let them explain the fanaticism 
 that blinds their eyes and fetters their reason ; the bigotry 
 that fulminates against the best friends and lovers of 
 Israel, because the latter demand the infusion of common 
 sense into the dreams of the period ; fearing that our peo- 
 ple will be led astray and in the end become still more 
 unhappy because of the bitter contrast between the reali- 
 ties and the gorgeous fancies deft hands had woven before 
 their deluded eyes. God bless you and give you increase 
 of strength in this your seventieth year; remain what you 
 are, the splendid type of the American Jew, by which 
 many of us younger men have fashioned ourselves; and, 
 I beg of you, let a noble perseverance in your practical, 
 intelligent attitude towards all Jewish questions, be the 
 continued security that we may rely upon you in our 
 battle for the preservation of the holiest interests of our 
 people. As for me, I am neither afraid nor dismayed, 
 though I have been roughly handled of late. The more 
 opposition, the greater the need of review. If we are de~ 
 nied the constitutional elements of love for and loyalty to 
 our people, we can best refute the charge by a continu- 
 ance of our protest against the hare-brained schemes which 
 from the first aroused our resentment. And nov for a 
 
 review of the facts. 
 
 * * * 
 
5 
 
 I admit, at the very outset, the necessity for a mighty 
 international Jewish organization, for the treatment of 
 questions and problems that affect our people the world 
 over. I would gladly join such an organization, for my 
 heart weeps at the helplessness we exhibit in the face of 
 difficulties that invite common and united action. I am 
 dismayed at the coldness of the Western Jew ; at his re- 
 luctance to face situations that arise as often from the 
 peculiar constitution of our people as from the complex 
 political or psychical causes that operate against them; I 
 am aroused by the selfishness of many individuals who 
 believe their fortunes and social environments to be the 
 cloaks within which they may hide from the responsibili- 
 ties that confront every Jew. If Zionism can be that 
 powerful international organization, a tremendous solidar- 
 ity, that, without at any time assuming any political 
 attributes or prerogatives, shall exercise an imposing 
 moral force upon all iniquitous governments, upon all 
 the enemies of justice, equal rights and humanity, I shall 
 become a Zionist. If, at the present time, Zionism stands 
 for an active sympathy with the millions of our unfortun- 
 ate brethren, and if it further stands for an ardent hope 
 to cleave the clouds of bitter discontent and sorrow, to en- 
 able the light of redemption to break through, then I am 
 already a Zionist. I have never hidden or denied my 
 sympathies. I am a lover of Zion. I honor her ruins 
 and reverence her dust. The unhappy land of Israel was 
 the cradle of a race that fought the pagan with the Voice 
 of God as its sole armament; and at its holy sounds the 
 Pantheon toppled over. The voices of the prophets ring 
 in my ears; those awful protestations against heathendom, 
 those apostles of divinity, those missionaries of character 
 they are the only international orators recognized this 
 day. Palestine forged the world's faith in God; whatever 
 truth the world clings to in this time of outreaching, came 
 from its rocky ranges. In the wars between Jahveh and 
 the gods, Jahveh wins; in the battle of empires, Assyria 
 and Egypt, the Alexandrian power and Rome, all bite the 
 dust, and from the desolate wastes of Judaea a handful of 
 
teachers go forth to mould anew the character of the 
 generations rising from the ruins of a dying and dead 
 world. From Palestine have come the treasures of 
 humanity: God, holiness, righteousness, justice, the per- 
 sonal attributes that distinguish man, the structural ele- 
 ments of government that constitute the moral aspects, 
 the only true aspects of his civilization. Palestine is the 
 land of our fathers, and our fathers were the noblest 
 idealists of mankind. Palestine was the cradle of our 
 faith, and our faith is the purest in existence. To remain 
 unimpressed with so much dignity, to remain uninspired 
 by the epics of religion sung in that dear land, by the 
 wisdom taught in its schools, by the flames of a holy ser- 
 vice that rose heavenward, to feel nothing of the spirit of 
 its poets, the music of its singers, the ardor of its prophets 
 or the sanctifying love of its people for the God who sym- 
 bolizes every element of truth, purity and righteousness, 
 is to be ignorant of the proud chronicles wherein is writ 
 the story of the past. Only a callous materialist, only a 
 perverted time-server, only an empty-headed ignoramus 
 will not feel the touch of pride upon his heart wiien these 
 holy facts are recited, nor deny the full measure of his 
 reverence to the land bathed in holiness, the very rocks 
 of which re-echo the inspiration of immortal prophets. If 
 being imbued with such sentiments means being a Zion- 
 ist, assuredly I am one of the most ardent. But if, in 
 addition, Zionism stands for a translation of such senti- 
 ments into the belief that the past can and must be re- 
 stored along political lines, then I am unfortunately an 
 anti-Zionist. For my love and reverence for Zion have no 
 political element whatever in them. 
 
 Again, if an ardent desire to contribute something to 
 the solution of present-day problems makes one a Zionist, 
 1 am assuredly one of the most enthusiastic. God knows 
 I am not blind to the besetting difficulties of our exist" 
 ence. Only a handful of us have peace and liberty; all 
 the rest have sorrow and contention. Sometimes I hold 
 the thought that our history has never presented the 
 problems we are called upon to so'lve in this age of super- 
 
7 
 
 ior or supreme civilization. Our fathers faced problems 
 of settlement and reconstruction, made difficult by race- 
 hatred, by the arrogance of the master towards the slave, 
 by contempt for his simple faith, for the latter in the days 
 of greatest despondency was masterful towards the heathen 
 and the Christian. Yet our fathers lived in seclusion, 
 and so often escaped the notice of the evil-minded, having 
 often their periods of peace, when they could revive and 
 restore the breaches made by the enemy. But we, we 
 live in the open; we demand a share in the world's activ- 
 ities ; we claim our legitimate share in the progress of the 
 times, and are confronted with hampering difficulties that 
 are only equaled in degree by our marvellous tenacity. 
 For one problem of. a thousand years ago we have a dozen. 
 There is a Jewish problem in every country, and each has 
 its different aspects. There is the problem of Russia, the 
 disfranchisement of millions of our brethren, victims of a 
 government that makes them pawns on its political chess- 
 board, inciting its own populace to whatever the game re- 
 quires, including murder and rapine and every other 
 crime in the calendar. There is the problem of Rou- 
 mania, the refined cruelty of a petty government that 
 deliberately studies the means of reducing three hundred 
 thousand intelligent people to the condition of pariahs, 
 that legislates damnation for them, that pretends its 
 cruelty to be an expression of decent government, that 
 invokes the horrors of persecution to rid itself of its in- 
 cubus. There is the problem of Germany, land of sages, 
 singers and philosophers, land of industry and commerce, 
 giant exponent of nineteenth century civilization, where 
 the Jew has contributed his share to the country's great- 
 ness, having fought in its wars, having fallen on its battle- 
 fields, having explore I its colonies, exploited its enter- 
 prises, built its ships, made it great in science and art, 
 where the Jew votes and pays taxes, where he is assimi- 
 lated according to his own notion, but where race preju- 
 dice is supreme and rampant, where Teutonic arrogance 
 forbids his calling himself a German, where a quasi- 
 Christian government plays the hand of his enemies by 
 
barring his advancement in the army, in the government 
 bureaux and in the universities. That German 1 problem 
 is the most humilating of all, dear friend; for Germany 
 exacts more service from the Jew than any other country, 
 yet in proportion gives him less compensation, and frowns 
 at him because the blood of the Teuton is not in his veins. 
 Germany has one of the most composite populations on 
 the face of the earth ; yet few there could trace their 
 origin. Teutonic self-glorification! robs him of the advan- 
 tages, if not of the conditions of his citizenship. I am 
 not pleased with the spirit of the German Jew. In the 
 slang of the West he "knocks under." In Germany 
 originated the great Reform movement, yet the German 
 Jew to-day, worn jut by incessant social prejudice and 
 ibe government policy of excluson, resorts to baptism to 
 secure the advantages which are denied him as a faithful 
 consistent worshipper of the God of his fathers. That, too, 
 is a problem, this wholesale regenacy, this numerous de- 
 fection from our ranks, resulting in the alienaton of thou- 
 sands of Jewish families. Then there is a French prob- 
 lem, the problem of an inflammable population being used 
 to subserve the execrable ends of low-minded politicians, 
 the problem of a church translating its deathless enmity 
 to the Jews into a continuous appeal to the superstitious 
 hatred of an ignorant peasantry, the problem of one man 
 becoming the vicarious victim of his people, a mere hand- 
 ful, a loyal band who worshipped and idolized France 
 and all the glory for which she stands; yet upon whom 
 shame and contumely have been visited, because the wild 
 passions of a volatile people were formed by corrup- 
 tionists who kept out of prison by fastening their guilt 
 upon this one innocent man, who still faces the world 
 with the story of his wrongs and still cries out for the 
 justice the entire French nation has denied him. Then 
 there is the problem of England and America, God- 
 blessed homes of truly free nations; but the awful prob- 
 lem of regiments of poor people herding together in the 
 seaports, competing in open market for whatever labor 
 they can obtain, so reducing schedules of wages, origin- 
 
9 
 
 ati::g sweat shops, toiling day and night for pitifully 
 small wages, generating disease and pauperism, and de- 
 spite their residence in free countries beirg poorer, and 
 becoming more despondent than they ever were in their 
 native homes. Then there is the problem of the poverty 
 of our people all over the world does it not seem strange 
 to venture upon such a statement in the face of the gen- 
 eral superstition that we are all rich? the terrible prob- 
 lem of the pauper population of Palestine, of the squalor 
 and misery of the Jews of the Levantine and African 
 ports, of their humiliation and degradation in Oriental 
 and semi-Oriental countries. There is the problem of 
 social prejudice against the Occidental Jew, more or less 
 pronounced everywhere, the reluctance of classes to 
 accq>t him as an equal, the stupid discrimination against 
 him, the clamor against him, his life, his habits, his 
 genius, proving only too -well that a declaration of politi- 
 cal rights does not include a generous appreciation of 
 the social equality of all religions. However, this prob~ 
 lem has its two sides, which we may discuss some other 
 time. But there is the last, and possibly the most over- 
 whelming and vexatious problem of them all, the un- 
 speakable horror of white slavery, that has made us all 
 weep tears of blood, for our holiest treasure is our woman- 
 hood, ami the squalor, the misery, the poverty of our un- 
 happy people have at last reached such a degree that the 
 ancient treasures of purity and chastity are not held as 
 precious as they were wont to be. Do you know of any- 
 thing that contradicts civilization mt>re flatly than this 
 beastly industry, that thrives upon hunger, appeals to 
 anarchy, and grips young girls by the throat to render 
 them more desolate than death itself? Ah. how helpless 
 we are, we in the West, we with our fine men and beau- 
 tiful women, we with our millionaires, our opulent mer- 
 chants, our eloquent lawyers, learned doctors and sage 
 university professors, we who glory in our heritage, who 
 speak proudly of our achievements, ah. how helpless 
 we are, standing by coldly, passively, doing nothing to- 
 wards the necessity of the hour, relying npon 'our rights 
 
10 
 
 that no harm shall come nigh us, looking for protection 
 to the Constitution, laughing at and scorning social 
 prejudice as harmless, ah, how helpless we are, because 
 we have lost the consciousness of our Jewish individual- 
 ity, because our sympathies are dead or dormant, because 
 \\ e fancy these problems are so far away from us that our 
 hand is not strong enough to reach out to them ! Of this, 
 too, am I conscious : that we have not been active enough, 
 generous enough, liberal enough. We repose in our fan- 
 cied security; when we are liberal it is with the liberality 
 of those whose doors are stormed and who must open 
 them lest violence enforces the request for aid. But now 
 what can, what shall -we do towards the solution of 
 these problems? Here Zionism professes its ability to cut 
 the Gordian knot. All this unhappiness, all this conten- 
 tion, all these problems can be solved by a movement 
 to restore the nationality of Israel. Withdraw from the 
 countries where these problems have originated, and the 
 problem will be no more. The suggestion is alluring and 
 fascinating. Shall we, you and I, join the ranks of 
 the Zionists upon that platform? If so, there can be no 
 objection if we thoroughly investigate the feasibility and 
 practical aspects of the suggestion. Let this investigation 
 be my privilege in the next installment. 
 
 II. 
 
 It seems to me, dear friend, there can be no objection 
 to a full and honest investigation of the claims of Zionism 
 to our loyalty and adherence. We do not wish to "go it 
 blind." We do not want our common sense smothered 
 by mere phrases, nor our logic by sentiment. If we must 
 join the ranks, it must be as free men who are convinced 
 that they are taking the right step, whose scruples are 
 met and whose objections are answered. To expect our 
 loyalty upon any other conditions would be unfair and un- 
 reasonable. 
 
 * * * 
 
 I confess when Zionism first made it appearance, I was 
 considerably taken with it. It appealed to me. It seemed 
 
II 
 
 to me that Dr. Herzl had begun a movement that would 
 change the history of our people. Reasoning with him 
 I believed I saw the logic of the new cause. It appeared 
 to me as a practical scheme to realize the long-deferred 
 hopes of Israel. True it is that the majority of our peo- 
 ple are still strangers in strange lands. The final awaken- 
 ir.g to the awful fact that they are not merely strangers, 
 but will be kept in the condition of aliens by governments 
 which persist in denying them both their personal and 
 political rights, seemed to justify a movement for the re- 
 nationalization of Israel. To know that our brethren 
 would be finally and permanently redeemed from the 
 grinding political injustice of foreign governments or 
 from nations that kq)t their hearts and affections closed 
 against them, aroused in me a desire to associate myself 
 with so fascinating a ca\ise. I permitted my sentiment to 
 control my reason. I saw, and I gloried in the sight. I 
 saw the land of Israel, according to the visions of Biblical 
 poets, rehabilitated and resurrected. I saw the millions 
 marching to the seaports, or following the old high roads 
 of the world's armies through Asia Minor, to take peace- 
 ful possession of their ancient inheritance. I saw Russia 
 depopulated and made poor; Roumania punished by the 
 destruction of her industries; Germany amazed at the 
 logical outcome of her own prejudices ; the Bible Chris- 
 tians of England and America shouting glory because the 
 prophecies had come to pass. I saw the land in its an- 
 cient beauty, from Lebanon to the southern desert, from 
 the Great Sea to the Salt Lake. I saw the waste places 
 restored, the cities rebuilt, the land redeemed. I saw the 
 cedars restored on Lebanon, the vineyards and orchards 
 on Carmel, the roses blooming in the drained marshes of 
 Sharon. I saw Esdraelon, battlefield of Israel, re-appear 
 in the golden glory of the wheat harvest; Galilee re-pop- 
 ulated with a sturdy stock of husbandmen ; I saw the 
 lakes made rich by the industry of its fishermen ; I saw 
 the mountaineers of Judah looking down with affection 
 upon the sheltered valleys. And beyond Jordan I saw the 
 mountains of Moab and the fat lands of Bashan teeming 
 
12 
 
 with the shepherds and their kine, restored to their ancient 
 title and redeemed from the squalor of the fellaheen. And 
 in the midst of it all I saw Jerusalem, capital city of the 
 republic of Israel, resting on her hills, once again the 
 world's refuge, the heart of the nations, and along the 
 terraced Temple mount there swarmed a population that 
 looked with eyes aglow with piety towards the new 
 Sanctuary that had become the new centre o<f the world's 
 religious aspirations, made richer by the piety and learn- 
 ing of ministers who had learned to read the Word of God 
 aright because Israel had at last reconquered its rightful 
 place in the world. And in Jerusalem was no pauper 
 population; it was a city of freemen, and its government 
 was so absolutely just, it understood the harmony be- 
 tween the physical and moral conditions so perfectly, that 
 the Holy City had become the joy of all the earth. Jeru- 
 shalayitn Hab'benuyah! Jerusalem restored! The fascina- 
 tion of it seemed to grow o<n me! Even then I thought 
 not so much of political attributes as of the glory of the 
 spirit that, like an inexhaustible flood, had its source at 
 Zion ; to know the schools rebuilt and filled with legions 
 of disciples, to know Jerusalem the centre of inspiration, 
 to know that the idealism of our people had at last its 
 habitat, and that its influence would radiate throughout 
 the world; to know that the new republic would be 
 founded in justice and its inhabitants led by righteous- 
 ness, to know that the enmity of the world was finally 
 destroyed, and every promise o<f God through His seers 
 had been fulfilled, to know that Israel would weep no 
 more, and that its land would be cherished by all the 
 nations all this, friend, had a fascination beyond ex" 
 pression for me, and I hoped, if our own condition did 
 not justify our uprooting, that we might assist in the de- 
 population of the countries inimical to our people and 
 help to make the land of Israel great, according to our 
 interpretation of the law and the prophets. But when I 
 expressed my sympathy with so glorious a scheme I was 
 told, rather cynically, that I was a Messianist, not a Zion- 
 ist; that Zionism had nothing to do with the babbling of 
 
l/N/VERS/r, 
 
 13 
 
 dreamers, nothing 1 to do with the unpractical ideals of 
 visionaries; that it was a practical scheme with no Mes- 
 sianic background ; that it had a political, not a religious 
 aspect; that it meant restoration of the nationality of 
 Israel upon the mere basis of political recognition; that it 
 looked for homes for the homeless wherever such homes 
 could be legally secured and protected; that it was a 
 movement necessitated by continued anti-Semitic agita- 
 tion, looking to the transplanting of our people, where- 
 ever that could be peacefully accomplished, but prefer- 
 ably in Palestine; and that it was my duty to join this 
 international movement because the Jew had no home 
 and ought to have a place where he could lay his head 
 unmolested. In brief, I was asked to join a movement 
 that claimed to have a purely practical basis, and this 
 being the case, can it be wrong to investigate this "prac- 
 tical basis?" I never argue my ideals because I feel 
 them; they are not subject, to the tests of logic; but when 
 1 am asked to engage in practical work I want to discuss 
 
 things and know where I stand. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Therefore, it is the practical aspect of Zionism that we 
 must consider. Let us say to our friends who sympathize 
 with that movement that we are agreed with them as to 
 the necessity of solving the problems of our existence as 
 a distinct family; but that they must give us security that 
 their plans are practical. I have looked into their plans 
 and find them impractical. Moreover I have presented 
 my objections and can find no one to say they are ground- 
 less. My idealism is ridiculed, and yet when I place my- 
 self upon a practical basis I am charged with a lack of 
 faith and idealism. \Yhen I ask how the Zionists intend 
 to accomplish their object I am referred to the records of 
 the Basle Congresses, and yet I find in these records noth- 
 ing but the most poetical idealism. When I ask what 
 may be the modus opcrandi for the peaceful conquest of 
 our ancestral territory, I am told rather mysteriously, 
 that it is as yet a "state secret." It seems that Zionism, 
 as to its external organization, is composed of a few 
 
14 
 
 leaders who may or may not have a distinct plan of 
 action, and of a multitude of people who are utterly 
 ignofant of the true aims of Zionism, people who are 
 moved, as I am moved, by the unhappiness of their co- 
 religionists to anticipate a vague something, who are 
 filled with love for the old Jewish ideals and believe them 
 capable of realization, but who reason no further than the 
 admission that the great scheme of reparation can be 
 easily accomplished. I have attended Zionist meetings 
 and discovered this lack of tangibility, this traumerei on 
 the part of people who denounce my idealism as anti-Zion- 
 istic. For my dreams I am asked to accept a substitute, 
 that is all. I have attended mass meetings in the city of 
 New York. I witnessed a demonstration that made me 
 shout with enthusiasm. I heard Maslianski, noblest of 
 Jewish tribunes, when he electrified ten thousand people 
 with his matchless eloquence. But, really, I heard nothing 
 concerning what I desired to know. I heard the story of 
 Jewish persecution and was moved to tears; I heard of 
 the need of restoring a Jewish sympathy with Jewish 
 thought and activity and approved ; I heard of the scheme 
 to create in Palestine or elsewhere a home for the dis- 
 persed of Israel, a home legally guaranteed and protected 
 by the Powers, and was interested. But not one word 
 about the practical aspect of the Jewish question. Not 
 one word, whether this plan, so easily accomplished in 
 the visions of an idealist, was in accord with all the prac- 
 tical principles and ideas that underlie organization and 
 the making of nations. So far as idealism is concerned, 
 it seems to me the Zionists have never the best of us. 
 We seek to accomplish all they look for. Our hearts are 
 as sore as theirs. Our hopes are as ardent as theirs. 
 We, too, wish to help our people. Our teachers, too, 
 have reproached us for our lack of sympathy, and have 
 urged the paramount need of resuscitating that Jewish 
 consciousness that will awaken greater activity on the 
 part of our people along distinctly Jewish lines. But 
 this is the real point of departure we differ on economic 
 grounds, and, beyond, I believe we differ radically in con" 
 
ception how the problems of the day should be attacked, 
 'i he successful solution of a problem depends very much 
 upon our logical attitude towards it. Since I am told that 
 Zionism presents a practical, not an ideal problem, it is 
 therefore my duty to eliminate all idealism, to consider 
 it with cold reason, and to ascertain, so far as the plans 
 of its leaders have leaked out, whether there is any prac- 
 tical basis to it. I have, accordingly, arrived at some 
 conclusions. 
 
 * * * 
 
 The restoration of the nationality of Israel that, from 
 an ideal aspect, appears so alluring and fascinating, is, 
 from a practical point of view, beset with difficulties the 
 Zionist leaders have not yet pretended can be overcome. 
 Ideally, the pictures I have drawn look beautiful; prac- 
 tically, they need to be examined and analyzed. If, in 
 the similitudes of the prophets, we permit ourselves a 
 glance at the great achievements of the "latter days" we 
 have no right for a moment to suppose that the redemp- 
 tion of Israel comes without human effort, and the latter 
 according to the wonted experience of mankind as re- 
 corded in history. From that point of view the restora- 
 tion becomes an exceedingly vexatious problem, not, in- 
 deed, insoluble, but subject to the law that makes and 
 unmakes nations. "Are nations born in a day"? Can 
 the Jewish nation be resuscitated by the fiat of congresses 
 or by the screaming. of preachers, or by the shouts .of 
 enthusiasts? Setting aside the fact that we are not a 
 nation because we lack every element of national sov- 
 e^eignty. do we really posses the physical, the mental, 
 the nsYchioal, even the physiological attributes of nation- 
 hood? Without argument, we do not. We are, indeed, 
 united by ties of blood, religion and tradition. But we 
 are divided into numerous fractions, whose blood, relig- 
 ion, sentiment, though presenting superficially the same 
 outlines, have become modified by long centuries of 
 adaptation to the environments of other nations. It i& 
 true that the French Jew, the German Jew, the African 
 Jew, the American Jew, have the same religion, worship 
 
i6 
 
 the same God, draw inspiration from the same spiritual 
 anl literary sources, but when this general fact is made 
 specific by environment, we discover differences that can 
 not be overcome in a night. The nationalization of the 
 Jew predicates the possibility of his denationalization, and 
 it is reasonable to inquire, first, whether that is possible; 
 secondly, whether it is desirable. The picture may be 
 alluring, but humanly speaking, it will take centuries to 
 draw and consummate it. It may be possible to denation- 
 alize our people everywhere, and subsequently nationalize 
 them; but the time, the time it will take! Let history 
 speak for itself. Consider the facts, not ideally, but as 
 they are, how old is the English nation? How many 
 centuries between the Roman Conquest and the Wars of 
 the Roses before the Englsh people lost the consciousness 
 of being cut up in factions, that is to say, before it attained 
 a national consciousness? And yet, originally, Normans. 
 Danes, Saxons, Anglos, were of a common stock, common 
 enough to acknowledge the affinities of blood, language, 
 genius and religion. How old is the French nation ? 
 How many centuries from Charlemagne to Louis XIV., 
 the first monarch who might really be said to govern a 
 nation endowed with genius, as may be proved by the 
 corresponding birth of the^ classical *era in French litera- 
 ture? A Shakespeare represents the expression of a 
 national genius; and so are Racine. Moliere, Corneille 
 and La Fountaine to mention these only the expressons 
 of a national genius that required half a millennium in 
 the making. "Rome was not built in a day" is a trite 
 expression that presents the forcible historical suggestion 
 that the Roman nation if the latter word might he 
 applied to the handful that subjugated the world- 
 attained its position only after centuries of development. 
 We speak, of course, of an American nation, and yet it 
 may be doubted, speaking with clue reservation, whether 
 that word applies literally and in its true sense to the 
 aggregation of elements that compose the people of the 
 United States. According to one of the most noted econ- 
 omists of the last century, De Tocqueville himself, such 
 
17 
 
 an aggregation of elements is sufficient to constitute a 
 nation by their common obedience to law and their sub- 
 scription to a common constitution; but I can not alto- 
 gether follow the great Frenchman in such a conclusion, 
 for nationhood means more than seclusion within terri- 
 torial limits, a common language or a common law. It 
 means, above all things, a national consciousness, a na- 
 tional genius, if I may be permitted that paradox, a na- 
 tional individuality. Again, look at the history of our 
 own people. The tradition has it that the national spirit 
 asserted itself in the time of Samuel the Seer, by clamor- 
 ing for a king. I shall not cavil at the tradition by point- 
 ing out that long after Samuel the homogeneity of the tribes 
 
 was still a debatable proposition. 
 
 * * * 
 
 But from Abraham to Samuel that is to say, histori- 
 cally speaking, from the time of the scattered nomads to 
 the time of the traditional assumption of nationality and 
 homogeneity how many centuries? This Zionistic pre- 
 mise, the restoration of the political entity of the Jew may 
 look well on paper, but when we begin to test it by the 
 undisputed facts of history, where do we land? Of course, 
 I have hitherto assumed Zionism from its political aspect 
 only. I know there are other aspects and I will not for- 
 get them. But this political aspect, how grotesque it looks, 
 unless we are prepared to engage in a work, the consent 
 of the Powers being assumed, that will take hundreds of 
 years, even if we acknowledge that the homogeneity of 
 the Jewish elements can be achieved in much quicker 
 time than that of other tribes or races which now con- 
 stitute a nation. But is it reasonable? Does not the 
 assumption of the possibility of denationalizing the Jew 
 constitute a dangerous mental reservation that his na- 
 tional consciousness is assumed and therefore easily 
 changed. Is this .true? Is not the German Jew a 
 thoroughly nationalized German? Is not the Russian 
 Jew, despite all we hear to the contrary, thoroughly 
 Russianized? Do you know of a purer Frenchman than 
 the French Jew? I know of no better American than 
 
i8 
 
 yourself and a thousand other Jews, and what does this 
 mean but, that, in addition to our descent, our religion, 
 our tradition, the consicousness of the national life of our 
 time and our environments has passed into our very 
 being, removable only through generations of residence 
 elsewhere? For are not our children more American 
 than we are, and will not each succeeding generation of 
 Jews become more adapted to the life, the genius, the 
 soul, the consciousness, the habit, tastes and sentiments 
 of the American people? How, then, can a new nation 
 spring up by the mere ipse dixit of enthusiasts, even 
 under the stress of persecution? I contend that the pos- 
 sibility of such an achievement the birth of a nation 
 rests with the centuries. Aye, we could move to Pales- 
 tine assuming the land to be ours and fit to respond to 
 the demand of our times but we would have to become 
 subject to all the political, the economic, the mental and 
 psychical processes by which individuals, families, clans, 
 communities and tribes are welded into a nation, before 
 we could respond either to the conditions of organized 
 nationhood or to the prophetical ideals of restoration, 
 without which Palestine is not even worthy of a moment's 
 consideration. This is my first conclusion. It will take 
 centuries to bring us to conditions that may fairly be 
 assumed to represent nationhood. Meanwhile what is to 
 become of those for whom there will be no room in the 
 little land? Or, as I have so often protested, is the Zion- 
 ist scheme merely a petty colonization scheme, not a great 
 plan of nationalization, the scheme to procure a home for 
 a few thousands whose farms shall be mortgaged to the 
 rich Jews of England and America? This question and 
 many others will engage our attention in subsequent 
 chapters. 
 
 III. 
 
 As I am writing, dear friend, the wires are charged 
 with dire predictions of impending disaster. Another 
 assault upon our people in Russia is apprehended. The 
 Greek saints once more call the mob to the communion of 
 blood, the feast of carnage. These millions, whose lives 
 
19 
 
 depend upon the arbitrament of ignorant Moldavians and 
 drunken Cossacks, these millions unprotected by an in- 
 famous government, are they again to be terrorized, 
 robbed, assassinated? I pray the rumor be false, the news 
 exaggerated. I hope for the best yet fear the worst. How 
 long yet, O Lord, how long? 
 
 * * * 
 
 Is it riot remarkable that, in the very face of this o'er- 
 harging peril, upon the verge of another possible mas- 
 sacre, I can not force my reasoning faculties into any 
 sympathy whatever with the Zionist scheme? Much as I 
 feel the need of concentrated action, of co-operative strength 
 and activity, I place no dependence, even now, upon the 
 Zionist plans. So far as I know them they lack practica- 
 bilty. We have looked already into the question of 
 nationality. My first conclusion was that the Jewish 
 people must first be denationalized in order to be capable 
 of rationalization. My second conclusion is that the 
 land of Israel, from a political and economic point of 
 view, is utterly unfit to become at the present time the 
 home of a nation responding to the condition of a pro- 
 gressive nation of the twentieth and future centuries. And 
 this conclusion I must proceed to analyze. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Let us assume, for argument's sake, that every descrip- 
 tion of the Holy Land in Scripture, instead of being the 
 ideal paraphrase of poets, corresponds to the physical 
 conditions of the country as it then existed. But in 
 order to draw the economic parallel between then and now, 
 it is necessary that we should represent the facts as they 
 were, not as our pious imagination pictures them. The 
 Bible is the handiwork of idealists. Even its historians 
 depicted their facts wth an energy exalted by poetic fervor. 
 Yet the economic facts of the past -were simple enough. 
 Our fathers, politically speaking, could hardly have been 
 called a progressive nation. They were agriculturists and 
 cattle raisers. This leads us to determine the fitness of their 
 country to produce sustenance for its inhabitants. It will 
 
20 
 
 not be denied, I suppose, that in antiquity, the time of lim- 
 ited intercourse between nations, the country itself was the 
 principal source of a people's maintenance. Palestine could 
 maintain its population, and borrowed or purchased little 
 food from its neighbors. That, in one way, is an advantage 
 of a decided character. A people .that can feed itself and 
 r.eeds not purchase its food is exceedingly fortunate. But, 
 in another way, this self-same source for national. content- 
 ment becomes a source of stagnation and retrogression. 
 Phoenicia, which had to purchase its food, roamed the 
 world over for it, and became the most important mari- 
 time and commercial power of antiquity. Rome, which 
 had to purchase its wheat from Egypt, in time reached 
 out to acquire by conquest what she could not obtain by 
 clean trading. Again, the nations who produce more 
 than is needed for home consumption obtain a footing 
 abroad that becomes stronger in the ratio o<f the increase 
 of its export trades. The Phoenicians were traders, not 
 explorers. They carried to all known seaports the pro^ 
 ducts of the Syrian markets. Our fathers were no ex- 
 porters and imported but a limited number of commodi- 
 ties from Egypt and Syria, much to the disgust of the 
 prophets. The latter discovered in every foreign import- 
 ation an element of danger that would spoil the life of the 
 people and pervert their morals. Simplicity was the text 
 of the polemics that should characterize Jahveh's people. 
 That is all beautiful and possibly just as it should be; but 
 such a life is, from the secular point of view, unprogres- 
 sive. Marvelous as it is, that this simple agricultural 
 people, disinclined to the ways of the Gentiles, unprogres- 
 sive in everything but the great moral truths that came 
 to be -its great heritage, should have impressed these 
 truths upon the conscience of the world and made them 
 the principal element in a civilization by them contemned 
 as pagan it remains a fact that we have contributed 
 little else to the material elements of civilization. We 
 could not have done it. The land could not produce any 
 thing but the fruit of its orchards, the wheat of its fields, 
 the kine of its mountain sides, and the supply was limited 
 
21 
 
 to the population, which at its highest tide was possibly 
 three millions. The land was utterly unfit for extensive 
 international commerce. Of its western sea coast the 
 southern strip was Philistine, the northern Phoenicia; 
 and the central strip only had the port of Joppa, then as 
 now of no commercial significance. Tradition indeed 
 tells us of the great commercial enterprises of King Solo- 
 mon, which might indicate an effort to place Israel in the 
 rank of commercial nations; but there is no evidence that 
 this remote commercial activity was continued after the 
 death of the great associate and correspondent of the 
 Tynan Hiram. For six hundred years before the first 
 exile, and six hundred years afterwards, the land of 
 Israel stood for nothing in the economic history or pro- 
 gress of the then known world. If this is not a fact it 
 can be easily refuted. The land was indeed a goodly 
 land; but its inhabitants were poor and frugal, content 
 with the fruit of their labors, gentle instruments for those 
 mighty minds who conceived the conspiracy against the 
 pantheons of the world. The land was a blessed sr>ot, I 
 shall not deny it ; the graphic description of Deuteronomy 
 i> encouraging enough to justify such a conclusion, 
 though that its stones were iron and its mountains 
 charged with copper is just a bit too poetical to be ac- 
 cepted as the statement of an absolute fact. But agricul- 
 turally the land was fertile. From the sea eastward the 
 drained marshes of Sharon and the rising meadows of the 
 Shephelah were cultivable; the range beyond enclosed 
 small valleys of exceeding fertility and there was no lack 
 of water. The Egyptian system of irrigation was not 
 necessary. Live springs, fertilizing the wadis, ran in 
 every direction. The hills were the pasture lands for the 
 brown sing flocks, and on their summits were towns and 
 villages populous, contented, but, economically speaking, 
 stagnant. To the north where the valleys broaden out* 
 until above the fields of Smaria we have the broad plain 
 of Esdraelon running almost between the sea and the 
 lake of Tiberias where there is room for hundreds of thou- 
 sands of people. Beyond the Jordan the fat land of 
 
- 22 
 
 Bashan, the rich pasture grounds of Gilead still indicate 
 the ancient occupation of Reuben and Gael and the half 
 of Manasseh. Between the steep banks of Jordan, from 
 the Salt Sea as far north as Lake Tiberias, is the rich 
 tropical El Ghor, the Jordan valley, now the personal 
 domain of the Sultan, rich in all the produce of the 
 tropics. A land of fruit and flowers like California, a 
 land of wheat and barley, a land of the pomegranate and 
 oil olive, a land of fat kine, a land of milk and honey, a 
 land of wine and grape, such was Palestine, and the de- 
 scription is alluring enough to justify the question why 
 so goodly a land, provided its strength can be recovered, 
 should not again be made the home of a contented, indus- 
 trious people. My answer to this question might appear 
 sophistical to our Zionist brethren, but I am persuaded that 
 in categoring that answer I represent what I believe to be 
 
 the state of intelligent Jewish opinion at the present time. 
 
 * * * 
 
 First, the prophetical policy, if such it may be called, 
 and afterwards the puritanical policy of the second Jew- 
 ish commonwealth, discouraged extensive international 
 intercourse. The main element in that policy was the 
 preservation of monotheism, or negatively the danger of 
 heathen contamination; everything else was subservient. 
 The result was that whilst our fathers became the people 
 of the Book, as the prophet of Arabia called them, they 
 cultivated no energy for that international outreaching that 
 characterized their Phoenician neighbors. Politically they 
 were handicapped. "Not because of your superior num- 
 bers did the Lord find desire in you . . . for ye are but 
 a few" was already the opinion of the Deuteronomist. 
 Politically, the commonwealth of Israel never stood for 
 much. Disjointed and heterogeneous because of -the phy- 
 sical conformation of the land, the Jewish kingdoms had 
 no standing in the ancient concert of powers. Many of 
 the kings were nothing but vassals of neighboring over" 
 lords; if for brief preiods they regained independence it 
 was but to lose it again in the shuffle so characteristic of 
 Semitic tribal history. Israel could maintain itself neither 
 
23 
 
 against the kingdoms of Syria nor those of Assyria and 
 Babylonia, nor Egypt, nor the tribes of Arabia; its polit- 
 ical existence was harassed and precarious; for which we 
 have the testimony of sacred historians and prophets. 
 On the inscriptions Jews appear as tribute bringing. 
 Whilst this corresponds completely to the peaceful char- 
 acter of our ancestors, called because of that very charac- 
 ter to higher service than man at that time comprehended, 
 it nevertheless explains also that the geographical loca- 
 tion of Palestine does not favor the development of a 
 nation competent to compete in the ways of so-called 
 civilization, in commerce, in politics, in the exercises that 
 develop national greatness. It is too small a country and 
 its location is unfavorable. Anciently that unfavorable 
 location made Palestine a buffer country. Ancient 
 Egyptian and ancient Babylonian reached out to each 
 other across its hills and mountains. To-day the land of 
 Israel still bears the scars of the most ancient warfare. 
 On its soil stepped nation after nation, not so much to 
 conquer it, but to find the way to Egypt and the Greek 
 isles. Its highest roads have seen processions that appalled 
 the peaceful population and charged the air with the 
 shouts and fanfares of war. But not in antiquity alone 
 has Palestine been the theatre of war, whilst its inhabit- 
 ants bore the brunt of conflict. Its soil is furrowed with 
 the tracks of legions. The mountain passes, the roads 
 from Gaza and Asqalon northward, the plains of Jizre'el 
 and the caravan routes leading to Damascus have been 
 traversed by armies that recked not the consequences of 
 invasion to the poor villagers. From Khammurabi to 
 Xapoleon every conqueror has mapped the narrow 
 breadth of the Holy Land. Then again, what has been. 
 the political situation of Israel after the renascence of the 
 ration in the times of Ezra? Absolute political indeperr 
 deuce they never enjoyed. Tributary to Persia, then to 
 Alexander, then to the alternately victorious tribunes of 
 Eeypt and Syria, then a short shrift of independence un- 
 der the Maccabees, barely one hundred years, then to 
 Rome, and finally utterly bereft of a home, that was the 
 
24 
 
 political history of six centuries. \Ye are entitled to the 
 highest consideration of humanity for having developed, 
 maintained and preserved during all these centuries the 
 great truths that constitute the moral element in civiliza- 
 tion, but history proves that the teachers of mankind 
 probably just because they were moralists and philos- 
 ophers, were never politicans or economists; were never 
 imbued with the genius that made Greek and Roman, 
 were never contestants for power or competitors for 
 wealth whilst they lived in their own country and read 
 in the stars by night the messages that they translated 
 unto all mankind. No world conqueror came from Pales- 
 tine, if conquest spells the name of Khammurabi, Sal- 
 manesser, Nebukkadnezzar, Cyrus, Alexander, Selencus, 
 Caesar, Tamerlane, Geoffrey de Boullion and Napoleon. 
 But if conquest spells the names of the great victors 
 whose matchless teachings are incorporated into our 
 blessed Book, if it spells Moses and Isaiah, and the great 
 sages that represent the world's concrete wisdom, then 
 indeed Palestine, the often-conquered, stands as the last 
 victor of the souls of men. For we are still a nation of 
 teachers. Shall we ever be a people of different genius 
 outreaching in the attributes which are not ours by nature 
 
 or the gift of God? 
 
 * * * 
 
 Secondly, the future, to my mind, has less in store for 
 Palestine than it ever enjoyed in the past. I said it was 
 never a great country. I maintain that our people were 
 never distinguished for aught but the great wisdom it has 
 brought unto the world. Our fathers were neither great 
 merchants nor great politicians. The genius of govern- 
 ment is not inherent in us. We are splendid missionaries ; 
 as a nation, politically speaking, we were never a pro- 
 nounced success. Tell me, is it the intention of the 
 Zionists to reduce the energies of our people to the peace- 
 ful vocations of olden times? If not, if the tremendous 
 commercial energy of the Jews is to be maintained, it w r ill 
 again be legitimate to question the adaptability of Pales- 
 tine to modern ways. For we have changed. The an- 
 
25 
 
 cient shepherds and husbandmen, the artisians, scribes 
 and fishermen from the days of Rome have become con- 
 verted into a mighty guild of merchants, manufacturers 
 and entrepreneurs. The change is historically traceable. 
 The shepherds and the peasants, after the exile, became 
 accustomed to city ways. They learned the trades of the 
 world. When the wandering spirit became nature in 
 them they became the messengers of trade. When the 
 cruel discrimination of midiaeval times came upon them 
 they became usurers. Centuries of cruelty, of chicantery, 
 of man-hunting sharpened their senses; the peaceable, in- 
 experienced denizens of Palestine became the active, alert, 
 keen-witted, danger-proof communities of Europe forever 
 on the look out against robber barons, foresworn priests 
 and faithless monarchs. But, let the history be as it may, 
 the fact is that we are as little used to the ways of our 
 fathers as they were to ours. We exercise an energy 
 that often amazes the world, so marvelous is it. We have 
 become great and active in the ways of civilization. In 
 England, in France, America, Germany, Russia, Italy, in 
 every land that Affords us the least opportunity to exer- 
 cise that tremendous commercial energy, developed in the 
 persecution of the middle ages, that has built up great 
 communities and adds to the power of the countries in 
 which we live. Can that same energy build up Pales- 
 tine? Can it create a people, competing with the powers 
 of the earth for domain and sovereignty? Is Palestine 
 the country in which such great outreaching can be made 
 possible? These questions must be answered in the nega- 
 tive. Palestine is too small to become the home of a 
 great people. Only great people will divide the glory of 
 the coming centuries betw r een them. The tendency of 
 absorbing small principalities is too patent to be mistaken. 
 Ideally, we could be a secluded nation of teachers and 
 peasants; but, practically, no one will be content with 
 such modest glory. We have not been in the world for 
 two thousand years, our genius changed into that of the 
 most cosmopolitan people on earth, to be reconverted into 
 a petty people, protected, tolerated, cared for by great 
 
26 
 
 sovereign nations. Are -we, now free men, to return to a 
 little country, to become vassals of the Turk or to those 
 who ere long may substitute him in the Orient? Suppos- 
 ing 1 we were free and independent, could we, a petty nation, 
 compete with the great industrial nations of the earth? 
 Look at the geographical location of Palestine. Is it not 
 out of the way? What waterways does it possess, has it 
 ever possessed, to favor the development of commerce? 
 Was it not always intermediate between commercial centres 
 lying in every direction? What facilities has it for the 
 founding of great industries? What facilities for compet- 
 ing with the great depots of the European and transatlantic 
 countries? If these questions are asked, friend, the follies 
 of Zionism become at once apparent. To imagine the free 
 Jewish citizens of America or England incorporated into a 
 system that will crush all the ambition out of them is to 
 imagine the impossible. But the Zinonists half suspect 
 that such questions mjight be propounded. Then then 
 they propose Uganda and even Manchuria to give sanc- 
 tion to their dream of a Jewish state. A Jewish state any- 
 where but in Palestine? That is the rankest heresy of 
 which Zionism has been guilty. More anon. 
 
 IV. 
 
 In the foregoing paragraphs we have considered Zion- 
 ism from its earliest and still more prominent phrase, the 
 political, looking at Palestine as the prospective home for 
 a rehabilitated Jewish nation. My conclusions were, first, 
 the impossibility of denationalizing our people after the 
 processes of hundreds of years had made them homo- 
 geneous elements in the nations of Europe and America; 
 secondly, the unfitness of Palestine to become the home 
 of a nation inbued with the energies that characterize 
 the progressive people of the present. I believe political 
 Zionism, from its Palestine aspect, to teach an entirely 
 fallacious doctrine regarding the ultimate destiny of our 
 people. But even political Zionism has already its modi- 
 fications, witness the resolution of the recent Basle Con- 
 gress to inaugurate a movement looking to the settlement 
 
27 
 
 of Jews in Uganda. Witness also Mr. Lucien Wolf's 
 suggestion to M. de Plehve, the removal of the Russian 
 Jews to Manchuria. Really, if the whole matter were 
 not serious, we might experience some amusement at 
 these expressions of total helplessness. I am no fanatic, 
 otherwise I might say that these propositions betray a 
 lack of human feeling unheard of in men who desire to 
 jx)se as philanthropists. Uganda! Manchuria! It may 
 interest you to know that the latest theory regarding the 
 origin of the Semites gives Africa as their original home, 
 not far from the country to which it is contemplated to 
 send them. Uganda is to the southwest of Somaliland, 
 the home of wild tribes of mixed Semitic and Negro 
 blood, who are even now engaged in the bloodiest war- 
 fare with the English columns who seek to maintain the 
 empire's supremacy. Strange, how our friends of the 
 Zionist persuasion play into the hands of the anti-Semites 
 by maintaining that the Jew must finally withdraw from 
 his wonted habitat. Stewart Houston Chamberlain goes 
 even far enough to admit that the civilized world is Semit- 
 ized, and that only the complete withdrawal of the Jew 
 can cleanse the Aryan races from influences which have 
 prevented the full scope of their genius to develop. If 
 the Aryomaniac finds a confirmation for his speculations 
 in the adnlission of the Zionists, is he not to be congratu- 
 lated? This Uganda proposition strikes me as one of the 
 queerest beggings of a main question I have ever encoun- 
 tered. I at least understand the Palestine proposition. 
 It expresses the cravings of the people without a country 
 for the home of its ancestors. Even if we must admit 
 that Palestine does not answer to the demands set before 
 a people clothed with the attributes of modern times, we 
 can at least appreciate its selection because it is the center 
 of all Jewish ideality. But Uganda? Manchura? One, 
 despite its fertility, surrounded by savages, premising a 
 warfare for occupation not unlike that of the men who 
 with Pretorius penetrated the country of the Transvaal, 
 with the revelation that the Boers were accustomed to 
 such warfare, whilst the Jewish colonists must depend 
 
28 
 
 upon the armed protection of a foreign nation. The 
 other, Russia's conquered province in the heart of Asia, 
 where the Jew would still remain subject to the atrocious 
 arbitrariness of a government that is and has been its 
 bitterest foe. What do we really want for the persecuted 
 Jew only a chance to escape? Only a place to hide his 
 head? What we want most for him is freedom; not that 
 supine freedom that is akin to protected slavery; not the 
 favor of nations, which at best is an uncertain quantity. 
 We want that freedom that is rooted in independence and 
 equality; that promotes self-government and develops the 
 energies of a people can such freedom be obtained either 
 
 in Uganda or Manchuria? 
 
 * * * 
 
 At this point it occurs to me that our friends the Zion- 
 ists may charge me with begging the question. I find 
 fault with anything they propose. I look upon their 
 schemes as impossible, as quixotic in the extreme, as 
 opposed to the political and economic facts of the present 
 time. They would have a right to ask me, as they have 
 asked already: Can you offer anything more practical? 
 Can you tell us how to dispose of the grave problem that 
 environ our persecuted coreligionists? My answer is 
 promptly, that my dissent from their plans does not 
 necessarily mean that I must propose another. In fact, 
 as I have already stated, I believe plan making to be a 
 foolish enterprise. The future must and will develop it- 
 self. But, in answering in detail, a few facts are at my 
 command which may be set down in their proper place. 
 I believe the removal of the Jews of Europe from their 
 native base to be an economic impossiblity. Leon Errera 
 has already shown conclusively that from an economic 
 point of view such an enterprise is ridiculous. There are 
 not ships enough, nor is there money enough in the world 
 to encompass so gigantic an undertaking. The collective 
 Jews of the world have not means enough, to defray the 
 expenses of the settlement of such a multitude. But, say 
 they, this is simply ridiculous. No one, except a hare- 
 brained fool, thinks of uprooting millions at one time. 
 
29 
 
 The plan is to remove them by degrees, to locate them 
 elsewhere by degrees. Cleverly designed, provided 
 the Colonial Bank will stand the brunt of it ; but the grad- 
 ual removal of the Jewish people from their present bases 
 solves not a single question under present consideration. 
 There are at the present time at least a million Russian 
 Jews in the United States, not to mention those of other 
 countries, and yet the Jewish population of to-day is 
 much larger than it was a decade ago. The ratio of in- 
 crease by births is much greater than that of death or re- 
 moval, so that whilst those who depart are confronted 
 with the grave problem of settlement, the problems of 
 those remaining are in no degree whatever solved. Is 
 there then no way out? Of coure there is a way, but 
 unhappily the eyes of our people are blinded, and their 
 ears defeaned with the outcry of the sufferers. I com- 
 plain on the one hand of the selfish egotists w*ho desire 
 this unfortunate people to become exiles for the sake of 
 saving their skins, and on the other hand of the want of 
 courage and perseverance that characterizes the whole 
 movement. It may be charged against me that it is all 
 well enough for me to preach, living in a free land, in the 
 midst of free people, a stranger to the experiences that 
 cruise the unhapny Jew to curse the day on which he was 
 born, or the night on which it was said he saw the light. 
 That is true. I am a stranger to these experiences, but 
 I will not have it said that I do not understand them, 
 even if it is my opinion that the salvation of the Russian 
 lew must come from Russia itself. I know how difficult 
 it is to accept so inconclusive a proposition, that is, incon- 
 clusive on the surface only. Does any one assume that 
 the political conditions of Russia or Roumania will never 
 change? We know something of the political chances 
 that come with the times. Is it not a fact that it is only 
 since half a century that the English Jew became the 
 equal of his countrymen? It is not a fact that the French 
 Jew before 1789 was no political quantity whatever? Is 
 not the present condition of the Jew in all civilized coun- 
 tries but the first century of the modern life? Why must 
 
30 
 
 we assume that Russia will always remain what it is, and 
 never emanate from her autocratic conditions? In fact, 
 we know to the contrary. We know that Russia stands 
 on the edge of a volcano. Her people are, on the whole, 
 ready for the social changes that come with progressive 
 life. The intelligent elements of the Russian people are 
 fully prepared for social and political changes. It looks 
 and it sounds heartless, I fear, and our friends the Zion- 
 ists will most cheerfully denounce the writer as a wretch 
 whose want of sympathy is apparent in his opinions, but 
 I will have to stand that as I have stood it before. The 
 Russian Jew must take his chances with the Russian peo- 
 ples. His salvation must come out of Russia. I am led 
 to this conslusion because it is the experience of the 
 world, and no experience based upon the legitimate pro- 
 gression of events can be changed by sentiment. The 
 salvation of our brethren in Russia I refer to that coun- 
 try as the most prominent instance under discussion 
 depends upon their emancipation. It will be asserted 
 that Russia will not emancipate them, but is that a dec- 
 laration of a permanent and immutable attitude on the 
 part of that country? Political government and its meth- 
 ods are neither permanent nor immutable. I maintain, 
 not merely as the result of my own opinion, but upon the 
 authority of leading economists who have studied this 
 Russian-Jewish question, that the expatriation of five 
 millions of people is an impossibility. It is impossible as 
 to wholesale expatriation, for the world has neither ships 
 nor money enough to accomplish so gigantic a project. 
 It is impossible as a systematic and gradual enterprise, 
 for the percentage of births in Russia will more than com- 
 pensate for the percentage of departure, from which it re- 
 sults that as to the Russian Jew at home not a single 
 problem will be solved. The bulk of Russian Jews must 
 remain in Russia and there work out tHeir salvation. It 
 is their country, they have lived as long upon its soil as 
 their fathers did in the land of Palestine. The problems 
 that at the present time surround their political existence 
 are solvable only in the political future of Russia itself. 
 
Was there no Irish question equally as important as the 
 Jewish question? What was the state of opinion in Eng- 
 land before the passage of the Catholic Emancipation Act 
 in 1832? We of the present generation have forgotten 
 that Gladstone made England ashamed of itself, and that, 
 even though Ireland grumbles even now, the political 
 condition of the Irish people is immeasurably superior to 
 what it was a half century ago. I say we ought not to 
 assume that there is no future for the Russian Jew in 
 Russia. Have we German, French, English, Austrian 
 Jews, have we not passed through the same experience 
 politically? Were we not emancipated? Was our eman- 
 cipation not the result of the pressure of a public opinion 
 that stands out in magnificent emphasis against all dis- 
 crimination even though it cannot, and perhaps will not, 
 alienate itself from social and religious prejudices? Wise 
 Russian statesmen like Demidoff de San Donato, illuminated 
 sa^es like Tolstoi himself, see but one solution of 
 the Jewish question emancipation. The Russian Gov- 
 ernment has in its bureaux reports from one commission 
 after the other recommending the enfranchisement of the 
 Jews. The government is conscious, must be conscious, 
 that it can neither expel nor exterminate five millions of 
 people. Its present attitude is the expression of an effort 
 to maintain a status quo which has become odious to mil- 
 lions of Russians besides the Jew. Let us learn from 
 history. We know that whilst revolutions spring up in 
 a night, they are resulting from the slow causation of the 
 centuries. As soon as a nation has an opinion it will 
 assert it. An opinion is the expression of a national con- 
 sciousness, an utterance of a national judgment upon its 
 government, its fitness or unfitness. England decapitat- 
 ing her king, means England expressing an opinion and 
 a judgment regarding the people's attitude toward gov- 
 ernment. France, crazed with freedom and bloodthirsty, 
 is after all France waking up to an opinion that its gov- 
 ernment was a foul perversion of popular rights and an 
 expression of a popular will. We know that Russia has 
 no opinion. The national consciousness is cudgeled into 
 
32 
 
 torpid inactivity by the church and the censor's office, 
 the police and the army. But Russia, more than a cen- 
 tury behind the times, does not mean Russia forever be- 
 hind the times. We would have to assume that the Rus- 
 sian universities, the great medical schools, the wonder- 
 ful libraries, the gymnasia, the institutes for elementary 
 instruction, the trade schools we would have to assume 
 that the great Russian system of education will be forever 
 noting but an instrument of slavery, when we know to 
 the contrary. Education frees a people. If M. Pobediost- 
 neff desires Russia to remain forever under the domirr 
 ancy of an autocrat, he must abolish the three R's. 
 People who learn to begin to think, and people who think 
 will create a revolution against all the political injuries 
 of the ages. What autocratic government can persist in 
 civilized countries ? None, none whatever. The Russian 
 people will revolt. The most malign processes of subjec- 
 tion will be invoked against them. Their strong men 
 will suffer. The prison and the copper mines, the lash 
 and the chain, every badge of degration will be fastened 
 upon them, but the blood of the martyrs will drench the 
 soil from which will spring the flowers of freedom. All" 
 these things must come to pass. And when they come to 
 pass the Jews of Russia, the native Russian Jew, will cast 
 his lot with the champions of freedom. He suffers keenly ; 
 so does the Finn. In the excess of our sympathy we are 
 apt to forget that Russia is as cruel to others of her chil- 
 dren as to the Jew. The Finn suffers the most unheard- 
 of torture. A free and intelligent people, its privileges 
 protected since centuries, finds itself by a stroke of the 
 pen robbed of its charter, and Finland suffers to-day what 
 Judea suffered in the days of Antiochus IV. I decline to 
 believe that such oppression endures forever; I refuse to 
 admit that our dfforts to solve the Jewish question in 
 Russia must exclude the possibility of the great, glorious 
 ultimate self-assertion of the Russian people, its repudia- 
 tion of the autocratic government and its declaration of 
 freedom, self-government and self-independence. If it be 
 advised that, in the face of all the horrors of the period. 
 
33 
 
 the Russian Jew must wait and work and watch and 
 suffer is not that the experience of all our forbears? 
 Are we not mere youths in freedom? Have we not all 
 been slaves and victims until a century ago? Why refuse 
 to believe that Messiah, though he tarries, will assuredly 
 come why refuse to believe that the vindication of the 
 Russian Jew will come from Russia? 
 
 V. 
 
 We have advanced far enough to review our premises 
 and ascertain to what extent we have maintained our 
 care. Our conclusions thus far are as follows : 
 
 i Zionism, from its political aspect, maintains the inr 
 possible doctrine that the Jew cannot become domesti- 
 cated in the countries where his destiny has placed him. 
 
 2 Zionism, again from its political aspect, looks for the 
 rehabitation of the Jewish State, some time, some where, 
 as a solution to the vexatious problems that environ the 
 Jew of modern times. 
 
 3 In preferring Palestine to any other country, Zionism 
 responds in some degree to older phases of Jewish idealism, 
 but defeats itself by conditioning the independence of the 
 Jewish State. 
 
 4 In admitting the necessity of placing the proposed 
 commonwealth under the protection of the Powers, Zion- 
 ism practically admits the incomptency of the proposed gov- 
 ernment to maintain itself in competition with other powers. 
 
 5 Zionism, in formulating the programme for the for- 
 mation of the new state, violates all precedent natural sug- 
 gestions incorporated in the history of the genesis and 
 growth of nations. 
 
 6 Zionism, in its later aspects, weakening as regards its 
 convictions on the subject of the political future of Pales- 
 tine, turns its attention to remote provinces as suitable 
 homes for oppressed Jews, in violation of both economic 
 law and humanity. 
 
 7. Zionism, from its intellectual and spiritual aspects, 
 looks to the development of a distinct Jewish consciousness, 
 
34 
 
 and an organized capacity to grapple -with Jewish problems 
 as in the course of time one after the other will be de~ 
 veloped. 
 
 As regards the last propostion, I feel myself to be a 
 thorough Zionist. But another word is still required to 
 punctuate the bubbles of Uganda and Manchuria. There 
 are ways of getting rid of a problem, and this seems to be 
 one of them. Assuredly, despite my belief that the salva- 
 tion of the Russian Jew must come from Russia, and the 
 salvation of the Roumanian Jew from Roumania, I must 
 not be understood as unsympathetic towards any migra- 
 tory effort, or towards any competent enterprise to remove 
 as many of our brethren as possible from their deplorable 
 environments. In fact, the removal of large numbers of 
 our people from the edge of the Orient and their ultimate 
 prosperity in other lands can but contribute to the happi- 
 ness of those remaining. That has always been the ex- 
 perience of Israel. Leaving older chapters of immigration 
 out of consideration, it is only necessary to point to the 
 growth of the Jewish communities in England and America 
 during the past half century and the economic effect that 
 growth has exercised upon the remaining families in Ger~ 
 many, Poland, Russia and other countries. At least a de- 
 gree of the grinding poverty of the home folk is removed 
 by the prosperity of the emigrants, who, in addition, have 
 built up permanent interests in the new countries, 
 interests which, however remotely, are being shared 
 with the others. The emigration of thousands and 
 tens o<f Russian Jews \vill t>e of substantial and material 
 benefit to the people at home, compelled to await the trumpet 
 sounds of liberty in coming years provided they go where 
 their opportunities will be unhindered and their energies 
 developed. But can so great an enterprise be achieved in 
 the remote districts our sympathetic bethren have selected? 
 In order to answer that question we must review the con- 
 ditions which are anticipated for pioneers of a new com- 
 monwealth. I take it that however much they will be com- 
 pelled to labor in the sweat of their brow, however great 
 will be the obstacles to surmount or the difficulties to con" 
 
35 
 
 front, there must be conditions, political and moral, en- 
 tirely opposite from the conditions which justified the agita- 
 tion of the present time. They must not be harassed nor 
 persecuted; they must be subjects of a benign government 
 or protected by a Power that rejoices in the attributes of 
 justice and reason; they must be free, capable of developing 
 their own economic conditions according to the activities 
 their own energies can create. And it is believed that such a 
 free, active, energetic community, unhampered, and free 
 from harassment, can thrive in Uganda and Manchuria. I 
 shall not discuss the latter; it was but an unauthorized sug- 
 gestion of Mr. Lucien Wolf, approved by M. de Plehve, 
 who would be proud of his achievement to encompass 
 the depletion of European Russia. Manchuria is a very 
 fertile country, and doubtless Russian enterprise would only 
 be too glad to avail itself of the thrift of the Jew, and the 
 Russian nobility would only be too happy to draw from 
 their newly-alloted estates in Manchuria the wealth where- 
 with to continue their orgies in European capitals! One 
 of the baleful curses of the Deuteronomist is: "The fruit 
 of thy land and all thy produce shall be eaten by a people 
 whom thou knowst not" is this the blessing this English 
 Jew has to bestow upon his persecuted brethren? As to 
 Uganda. It is far enough, God knows. I fancy there will 
 be few of our brethren to venture upon the enterprise of. 
 settling it even under British protection. It is in Central 
 Africa, resting against Lake Victoria, Nyanza in the very 
 heart of the equatorial region. It is the southwestern ex~ 
 tension of Somaliland, the country inhabited by Afro-Semi- 
 tic Negroes of the most robust type. It is fertile, but moun- 
 tainous only on the lake side ; beyond, towards the northeast 
 are immense plains, undulating, and mostly of volcanic or- 
 igin. It has five millions of Negroes, untaught, uncivilized, 
 unaccustomed to the ways of civilization, their law and 
 government of the most primitive character. And this is to 
 be the future home of the Russian and Roumanian Jew, and 
 this is to be the delivery of pregnant Zionism, the putting 
 away of men who seek for freedom, for rest and peace, in a 
 country remote from civilization, their neighbors to be tin- 
 
36 
 
 tutored Negroes, their existence endangered by the Somali 
 robbers or by the wild beasts that abound in the forests ! I 
 do not say that to conquer such a land is an impossibility, 
 but we would have to admit that the Jewsish pioneer is 
 capable of suffering all the hardships connected with so 
 glorious an undertaking, Is it the intention of testing the 
 pioneer courage of Israel? No doubt we have men and 
 women -who would be willing to undertake the journey. 
 But have we then been so successful in other directions that 
 we can trust our people to conquer one of the wildest dis~ 
 tricts in the heart of equatorial Africa? Perhaps the in" 
 tention is to prepare the way for them, to send out an army 
 of engineers and surveyors, carpenters and builders, who 
 will put everything in shipshape for the intending settlers. 
 That would be very interesting, but also very foolish. Not 
 in this wise has civilization achieved its great empires. 
 New communities are founded by the pioneer spirit itself; 
 and we in America know that full well, for our fathers were 
 amongst the builders of the new commonwealths. Can you 
 trust a poor, unhappy, downtrodden people without any 
 preparation to enter upon so perilous an undertaking as 
 founding a civilized community in the heart of Africa ? It 
 sounds ideal and it conjures up glorious vistas of possi- 
 bility, but in the whole discussion of the realities I am 
 just a little bit ashamed of these enthusiastic Zionists. If 
 I do them injustice may I be forgiven, but the suggestion 
 looks to me, either as a shrewd device to be deemed con- 
 stantly active, constantly engaged in solving the problems^ 
 or a cowardly confession that the Russian Jew, out of 
 Russia, must be put out of the way as far as possible. Now 
 I, an anti-Zionist, believe that there are only two countries 
 on earth to which we should encourage our people to go, 
 to which we should bring them, compatible with the immi- 
 gration laws of those countries. I exclude England, because 
 the "tight little isle" is overcrowded, which fact is at- 
 tested by her noble position as the mother of many colonies. 
 But there is Canada and there is the United States, the two 
 largest, the two freest countries on earth. Tell me 
 what singular lack of moral courage has induced the 
 
37 
 
 Zionists to prefer the heart of Africa to the mag- 
 nificent praries and \alleys of Canada, to the wheat- 
 growing plains of the northwest of our own country? 
 We anti-Zionists have at least the merit that we 
 shirk no responsibility that comes to us. If any one be- 
 lieves that the immigrant Jew has not created any problem 
 for us let him visit New York, Philadelphia or Chicago; 
 Mnd yet in the face of our increasing difficulties and re- 
 sponsibilities we dare say that the Uganda proposition is 
 heartless, unbecoming, un-Jewish. It is a shifting of the 
 problem upon the shoulders of the government that exer- 
 cises its protectorate over that far-off country. Now look 
 at Canada. I have traveled it from west to east; from 
 Victoria to Quebec and beyond, into the beautiful wilds of 
 the Saginay river. It is impossible for me to believe that 
 in that wonderful country, the home of but five millions, 
 the possible home of least a hundred millions, there can be 
 made no room for a million Jews or more, living under the 
 government of Canada, one of the freest and best on earth. 
 \\'e should invite Dr. Herzl to take a trip with us over the 
 Canadian Pacific. I have travelled for three days from 
 Coolgarie at the base of the Rockies, to beyond Winnepeg, 
 through a country amazingly fertile, well watered, well 
 stocked, a country of immense distances, reaching for hun- 
 dreds of miles to the north and south, for thousands to the 
 east and west, a country seemingly made by Providence to be 
 the home of a great nation, a country so rich that the farmers 
 of Iowa and Nebraska are selling their homesteads to repair 
 thither, a country capable of becoming the wheat market 
 of the world why may not the Jew dwell there and pros- 
 per? Why must the Russian Jew elbow with the Negro* 
 when wide areas in the midst of civilization are without 
 an inhabitant? Why must the Jew perish beneath the 
 scorching rays of the equatorial sun, when whole provinces 
 in the thermal belt are awaiting the touch of strong willing 
 hands to spring into the full maturity of their productive 
 splendor? The possibilities of that wounderful country 
 are beyond description. Nature is benign and kind ; the 
 land knows the rigor of winter for but a short season and 
 
38 
 
 it is rarely afflicted with scorching heat. In its depths, 
 along the lines- of travel, hundreds of thousands may dis- 
 appear without perceptibly filling the country. Unless that 
 blessed land, together with the vast areas of our north- 
 western states, are made accessible to our people, organized 
 into communities whose self-government will be of a more 
 pronounced character than it ever could be in Palestine, I 
 see no way of helping our people. For years past that has 
 seemed to me the only way. We must find the courage to 
 demand of England and America that the cradles of liberty 
 may rock the Jew as well as the Gentile. But to make such 
 a demand we need several attributes we do not at the pres- 
 ent moment possess. We suffer at the present time from the 
 diffusion of energy. We are split up in factions and geo- 
 graphical groups, in classes and religious denominations 
 bordering on schismatic rupture. We have an East and a 
 West, an orthodox and reform party, a Zionist and anti- 
 Zionist group; and above all, we suffer from the insolence 
 of the petty .politicians who prostitute the most sacred in- 
 terests of Jews and Judaism to foster their chances of eat- 
 ing from the public-crib. But if we could be united, we o-f 
 England and America and the other free countries, if we 
 could enter an international congress permeated with the 
 spirit of helpfulness, unanimous in the desire to meet the 
 exigencies of the present, backed by the financial strength of 
 our people, what wonderful strength could we develop! 
 But the Zionist says his order did seek to accomplish this 
 end. Yes, it sought to unite Israel in the interest of the 
 suffering, none shall or must deny it ; but its platform is 
 unhealthy; it looked for no sane and rational measures of 
 relief, for no logical solution to the problems. The salva- 
 tion of the Jew is in the country where he lives ; for those 
 who at the present time desire to withdraw 7 we must have 
 a home, but not Palestine the unhappy, the Turk-ridden ; 
 not Manchuria, cursed with the inundation of Cossack 
 regiments; not Uganda, the land of the Negro, but our 
 own home, our own country, our own free institutions, 
 where we can create the energies that shall bless the people 
 beyond the seas. Ah, how gladly would I give my remaining 
 
39 
 
 years to serve a cause so nobly understood, so bravely furth- 
 ered. We need another organization. We can dispense with 
 Zionism and its hysterics. We need an organization of 
 English and American business men who will face their re- 
 sponsibility with the courage of free men, who will not lack 
 the moral courage to acknowledge their obligation towards 
 the oppressed and persecuted, who will not study this awful 
 question with a mental reservation that the poor Jew must 
 be put anywhere except where he can be free and within the 
 reach of the examples that shall influence his career. Would 
 not this be better than Basle with its enthusiasm, which re- 
 solves itself into impossibilities? And now for the closing 
 
 suggestion. 
 
 * * * 
 
 VI. 
 
 I believe I have stated my position regarding the prob- 
 lems that affect our people with sufficient distinctness to 
 justify my conclusion with Zionism, because of its utter 
 impracticability, will amount to nothing more than a brief 
 chapter in the history of its own time. Ideal as well as 
 theoretical, it lacks the basis upon which practical busi- 
 ness men would rear their superstructure, and therefore it 
 will disintegrate and fade from the memory of those who 
 even now are enthusiastically supporting it. But Zionism 
 will not pass a\vay without leaving some helpful suggestions 
 for the future. If these suggestions will be adopted by an- 
 other and stronger organization that does not seek to avoid 
 the practical issues intimately associated with the Jewish 
 problem, the time will come when answers to questions af- 
 fecting the future of the Jew will not be as vague and in- 
 determinate as they are to-day. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Fundamentlly, the great need of our people is organiza- 
 tion. But organization for what purpose? If that ques- 
 tion be answered from the political point of view, we in- 
 voke all the dangers to which Zionism, wittingly or un- 
 \\ittingly, has exposed us. An organization for the re- 
 nationalization of the Jew carries within itself the poten- 
 tiality of estranging him from the country of his nativity. 
 
40 
 
 Whilst on the one hand anti-Semitism professes to believe 
 that the Jew is not and can not be domesticated, on the 
 other hand those self-same enemies of our people will 
 point to a political or semi-political Jewish organization 
 as an evidence that there must always be a. grain of mem- 
 tal reservation in Jewish patriotism. Again, the admis- 
 sion of Zionism that the people of Israel have finally be- 
 come convinced that their sole refuge from further oppres- 
 sion is a return to the Jewish state wherever it may be 
 founded, is in itself an admission that the political unity 
 and homogeneity of the Jewish people can be restored. I 
 am constrained to emphatically deny the integrity of such 
 propositions for reasons already amply discussed in this 
 letter. But, let me reiterate, I do not concede that the 
 collapse of Zionism would leave us helpless to treat many 
 questions affecting us at the present time. Zionism, in 
 fact, has taught us some lessons, and it would be ungen- 
 erous, unfair and unjust to deny the fact. It has paved 
 the way to another movement, naturally greater and 
 broader than itself, which will vindicate the old doctrine 
 that the spiritual unity of the people of Israel can be 
 maintained in the absence of any and all elements of 
 sovereignty. For the preservation of such a unity, for 
 the assertion of a distinct Jewish consciousness, compat- 
 ible with the spirit of nationality in every country, for the 
 preservation of the ties of fraternity between the Jews of 
 many lands; for the spiritualization of our people every- 
 where; for their education and humanization in many 
 places; for developing an organized capacity for assist- 
 ance where it is needed; for the vindication of the alien- 
 able rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness 
 everywhere; for the invocation of justice against the 
 oppressor; for the dissemination of teachings that will 
 tend to educate and humanize the masses and inspire 
 them with a sense of justice and a sentiment of peace, 
 for these high, exalted and non-political purposes we 
 need an organization far stronger than any we have to- 
 day, an organization that will, I am persuaded, com- 
 mand the earnest consideration of even those potentates 
 
whose oracular attitude Dr. Herzl seems to construe as an 
 expression of sympathy with the political aims of his own 
 associates. But I am anticipating- somewhat. 
 
 I believe that the restoration of Palestine is utterly im- 
 possible; that it is inconsistent with the aims that animate 
 the Jewish people at the present time. I believe that the 
 effort to enthuse our people on behalf of that restoration 
 is a political and economic blunder. I believe the doc- 
 trine of the political restoration of the people of Israel to 
 be misleading, and, like all adventist doctrines, tending to 
 disintegrate the strength needed by the people to make 
 their social, their civic and industrial existence as contented 
 as possible. Adventism translated into possibilities ever be- 
 comes a dangerous doctrine if its sole nourishment is the 
 unbridled enthusiasm which it provokes. We all under- 
 stand its fascination. We all realize what tremendous in- 
 fluence it exercises upon the persecuted. But that influence 
 makes it so much more dangerous, for the collapse of ad- 
 ventist enterprises, not entirely unknown in Jewish history, 
 produces consequences that effect the intellectual growth of 
 society for centuries. If I state, at this point, that the Jew- 
 ish people even at this late day have not yet outlived the 
 consequences of the aberration of Zabbathai Zebi, I mention 
 a fact that no student of their internal conditions will be able 
 to gainsay. I am afraid that the new Zionism will likewise 
 produce a wave of mysticism, that child of the disap- 
 pointed and the unhappy, that mother of speculation that 
 narrows the issues of life to the egotistic demand for their 
 realization. And this, because enthusiasm, that heaves peo- 
 ple up to the skies, has no pillow whereon they may fall, if 
 scorched and burned, they precipitate to the earth where 
 their hopes are crushed and their ambitions buried. The 
 darkest period of Jewish history succeeded the mission of 
 the false Turkish messiah ; might we hope for a better issue 
 if modern adventism, that calls itself Zionism, leaves our 
 people as disappointed, as humiliated, as hungry for happi- 
 ness and peace as did that awful enterprise that involved 
 many of the elect of Israel, many of its sages and poets, its 
 princes and plebians both ? No, our history these nineteen 
 
42 
 
 hundred years indicates the sagacity of that great inter- 
 nationalist, Ben Zakkai, who with pervision tantamount 
 to prophetic insight, realized the potencies and possibili- 
 ties of the people of Israel in other but national environ* 
 ments. I stand upon the platform of Ben Zakkai and the 
 great doctors of the first centuries succeeding the Destruc- 
 tion the education of the people of Israel for their true 
 position in the midst of Gentile life. If in those awful 
 days of reconstruction the impression had gone forth that 
 the Jew can not live or succeed outside the boundaries of 
 his national life, what would have become of us? The key- 
 note to the activity of these remarkable internationalists 
 is a theory upon which they proceeded to mould the Jew- 
 ish character, namely, that the individuality of the race, 
 the integrity of its discipline, and the knowledge of the 
 Thorah could be preserved, no matter where the people 
 of Israel happened to be. That is my theory, and I am 
 so reverent, so deeply conscious of the prophetic efforts of 
 these men, that I wish to advance no other means for the 
 maintenance of these great factors, except in so far as 
 they must be made to apply to our own times. Trans- 
 lated into modern expressions the efforts of the inter- 
 nationalists tended : First, to develop, in foreign parts, 
 the consciousness of the solidarity of the Jewish people; 
 secondly, to inaugurate a system of education that would 
 preserve that consciousness of solidarity; third, to put 
 stress upon mutual support, upon the protection of the 
 unhappy of every characterization, as one of the main ex- 
 pressions of that solidarity. I can not deny the fact that 
 Zionism, aside from its vagaries, has materially assisted 
 in recalling these great factors of organization to our 
 mind and conscience. We have been suffering from a 
 diffusion of energy. In our western homes, luxuriating 
 in political freedom, we have become less individualistic 
 than we ought to be, consistent with our duty as the rep" 
 -resentatives of ideas distinctly our own inheritance. We 
 have, in freedom, lost much of our Jewish consciousness. 
 I shall not deny it. Every distinctive American Jewish 
 problem owes its unfortunate existence to the fact that we 
 
43 
 
 have lost much of that solidarity that alone is capable of 
 achieving great spiritual results. In fact, I fear that we 
 are too adverse, at the present time, to a strong organiza- 
 tion that shall develop and maintain a conviction, borne 
 out by conduct and discipline, that the exercise of duties 
 peculiar to the Jew as such, are not only inconsistent 
 with his citizenship, but would earn him the respect and 
 consideration of all his fellow-citizens. We have been 
 idolizing Freedom, and in the idolatrous worship our 
 senses have somewhat become benumbed, and we did not 
 see very clearly that we never should have lost the most 
 trifling fraction of a unity with which alone we can con- 
 front the problems of our day. Zionism has helped in 
 this direction. It has, at any rate, forced us to look our 
 problems squarely in the face. For, in its statement of 
 the reasons that prompted its organization it has not been 
 untrue to the facts. It is true that the majority of our 
 people are still in the net of the fowler; it is true that in 
 
 their homes they are aliens. 
 
 * * * 
 
 It is true that they are oppressed and persecuted. It is 
 true that an arrogant race spirit manifests itself in perse- 
 cution in Russia; in social and political discrimination in 
 Germany ; in contemptuous insults and religious bigotry 
 in Austria and Galicia. Whether it is true that our peo- 
 ple in Russia, Roumania and Galicia are really desiring a 
 new home could only be judged by their demand for 
 assisted expatriation, but I shall waive this last point. I 
 will take it for granted that the attitude of nations and races 
 justifies the Zionist propositions heretofore stated. Zion- 
 ism lias at least acomplished some ends scarcely looked 
 for a decade ago. Politically impossible, spiritually it has 
 pointed the way to the future. It has literally ingathered 
 the dispersed of Israel. It has awakened a sense of Jewish 
 solidarity in the breast of tens of thousands, whom the 
 exigencies of the times or their own course of reasoning, or 
 their convenience, had alienated from the Jewish cause. It 
 has aroused the conscience of intelligent, progressive men, 
 who believed that Judaism had run its course; who quoted 
 
44 
 
 Heine to prove that being a Jew was a misfortune; who ad- 
 vocated amalgamation with the Gentile world ; who thought 
 that the last chapter of Israel's story was about to be 
 written. They think differently now. Their conscience 
 became -wide-awake, they took up the burden of Israel with 
 i oble and determined repentance; their consciousness 
 aroused, they are trying to convince the world that in its 
 magnificent and conquering aspirations Israel is not even 
 at its zenith and has not accomplished its destiny, though 
 the world is getting old and the graves of nations are get- 
 ting numerous. They do not think now that being a Jew 
 is a misfortune; they are resolved that supine submission 
 to the false verdicts of anti-Semitism is a disgrace to the 
 Jewish name, but that perseverance, persistence, renewed 
 activity and vigorous intellectual endeavors will recall the 
 youth and manhood of Israel to the fame of the Thorah. 
 That is a phrase of Zionism that I have viewed with the 
 deepest admiration, because it responds to the convictions 
 of my own soul. What boots it to preach nationality to 
 a people not even aroused to a sense of individuality? 
 What achievements are to be made upon the world's stage 
 by a people bewildered by the scenes of modern activity, 
 blinded by the light of freedon? The first step in the direc" 
 tion of writing the Jewish history of future days is re-or- 
 ganization, re-orientation, if I may use an expressive Ger- 
 manism. Israel to become a factor or to maintain itself 
 jp.ust first know what Israel stands for. If we can convince 
 these hard-headed business men of ours, or these many cul~ 
 tured, often frivolous, women of ours, that their nondescript 
 attitudes in the social and religious world are disgraceful 
 from our own standpoint, and ridiculous from the Chris- 
 tian side of the house, we might have found the first instru- 
 mentality in forging a powerful solidarity. That, at least, 
 has been Zionism's virtue and the world can not cavil at 
 such a solidarity, because in all truth and candor, in all 
 historical fairness, the world has compelled it and still 
 compels it. The world compels us to laugh and cry with it; 
 \ve are required to rejoice at its triumphs and share its de- 
 feats; we are bending before every flag, enlisted in every 
 
45 
 
 army, our bones are rotting- on every battlefield, and a thoir 
 sand meadows are made rich with the blood we have shed, 
 yet, when Israel has its griefs the world compels it to 
 weep alone; when Israel complains of its injustice the 
 world sends it to the devil. When a million Cubans 
 cried our for deliverance, the mightiest nation on earth 
 rushed to the rescue ; but when five millions of Jews asked 
 for the righting of century-old wrongs, they are confronted 
 by diplomatic considerations, by sycophantic compliments, 
 by fair but hollow speech, but obtain no redress and remain 
 slaves. Is it not an eternal truth that the world has shifted 
 problems upon us which it declines to help us to solve? Is 
 it not true that, in all that concerns the salvation of our 
 people, we must help ourselves? Well, then, let us help our- 
 selves. If we are dissatisfied with the methods of Zionism, 
 let us find others. Zionism has not been a mere Utopian 
 scheme to restore the political status of the Jew. It has been 
 an instrumentality for rousing the Jewish consciousness. 
 It maintains the dominant fact that the historical identity of 
 Israel must be preserved. It has ten thousand societies in 
 which, besides its political schemes, the great theme of 
 Jewish solidarity is dwelled upon. By whatever name it 
 is called, it is a factor in rousing men to a sense of their 
 true position. The young men of Russia and Austria 
 are to-day thoroughly alive to their responsibility. Our 
 great Odessa master, Ginsburgf, writing under the pseu- 
 donym of "One of the People," has brilliantly vindicated 
 the great need of this solidarity as precedent to further 
 organized activity in the direction of nationalization. He 
 says ah, how true it is! that we in the west must be- 
 come Jews again. We must drink again from the wells 
 of our own tradition ; we must become alive with the 
 facts of our history ; we must become conscious of the 
 strength of our mission; we must learn; we must redeem 
 our ignorance; we must put aside our false gods, pride, 
 arrogance, the miserable content of prosperity, the awful 
 self-deception that in this free west no harm can befall 
 us. We must achieve a great victory if beneath the heavens 
 such a victory be again possible! The recovery of a domi- 
 
4 6 
 
 nant Jewish consciousness amongst the Jews of the free 
 Occident ! If that can be achieved the way to the future lies 
 open. 
 
 * * # 
 
 The rest may be briefly told. You, Sir, are a master 
 and a leader of men. You are in touch with the strong 
 men of our people. They listen to you where our voice 
 fades upon the air. Find out what is the matter with these 
 men. Ascertain why it is that your eastern capitalists, your 
 lawyers, your professors, your judges, reduce every Jewish 
 problem to a mere question of charity, a mere consideration 
 of how much of their surplus ought to be spent in relieving 
 want. They do not know as yet that the trouble of Israel 
 lies in their passiveness, in their false attitude which be~ 
 tokens a declaration that the problems of Israel lie outside 
 of themselves. They are the problem at least one of the 
 problems. They must be vitalized. They must become 
 alive with a sense of their personal responsibility, unless 
 they are ready to mingle their blood with the Gentile and 
 disappear in the third generation. They must become Jews 
 again. Convince your men in New York, in Philadelphia 
 and elsewhere, they who learnedly discourse the theories in 
 their studios and offices, that we need them in a great as~ 
 sembly where the public confession of their views will 
 startle a world that begins to believe that the average rich 
 Jew, the average educated Jew desires to cut loose from the 
 ancient moorings. After all, is not the moral courage of 
 Herzl and Nordau, once free thinkers and cosmopolitans, 
 thoroughly admirable? Is their example not more inspir- 
 ing than that of your capitalists and professors whose gal- 
 ling indifference borders on anti-Semitism ? Let us have the 
 congress we, the rabbis, ask for. Let us meet these men 
 face to face. Let the distinguished, the strong men of 
 our race come forth in the open, and publicly, fearlessly, 
 subscribe themselves by the name of Israel. The force of 
 such, a movement will stir many questions to its solution. 
 The organization of the west will be the first sign that the 
 Jew will obtain justice. The reawakening of Jewish con- 
 sciousness, the rehabilitation of Jewish literature, the 
 
47 
 
 assertive strength of the Jewish spirit, all converted into 
 a power .to seek and demand justice for our poor people, 
 will create conditions confronting which the world will be 
 forced to meet the accusation we hurl against it that it 
 persists in discriminating against Israel, since it battles 
 for the freedom of every nation whilst Israel remains a 
 slave. Reawaken the conscience of the Jew; organize the 
 Jews of the west, compel our men to see that a question 
 of justice and liberty is not a question of charity, reach 
 out the free hand of the West to the slaves of the East, 
 have the courage to open your heart and home to them, 
 stand by them with every fair means by which inhuman- 
 ity can be resented and justice vindicated, and, so may it 
 please God, we may accomplish our prophetic destiny with- 
 out the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, like a whipped cur, 
 crawling back to his old lair in the caves of Judaea! 
 
 JACOB VOORSANGER. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CAJ.IFORMA LIBRARY 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW 
 
 OCT 17 1916 
 ?EB 26 1918 
 
 DEC 3 01968 
 
 
 CMLOCF H 77 
 
 30m-l,'15 
 
r 
 
 YC 15602 
 
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