LILIENBLOOM THE ZIONIST 
 
 BY 
 
 A. L. BISCO 
 
 L. 
 
 WITH A LETTER BY 
 
 JEWISH RENAISSANCE PUBLISHEES, EDINBUBGH. 
 1912
 
 Printed byGoIombok Bros., ngGovan Street, S.S. C.l.i-.
 
 L1LIENBLCOM THE ZIONIST 
 
 2096020
 
 A LETTER 
 
 FROM 
 
 Dr. MAX 
 
 8 Rue Hener, 
 
 Paris, Dec. 6th, .1911. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 I have perused with considerable 
 interest the manuscript you have kindly for- 
 warded, and which I return by the same mail. 
 The author of the essay on Lilienbloom 
 evidently masters completely his subject, and 
 treats it with winning warmth. I have no 
 doubt it will favourably influence the opinion 
 and attitude towards Judaism of its readers '> 
 nd all I can wish is that it may find many 
 readers in Anglo-Jewry.
 
 I congratulate you on the constitution of 
 your Society and on its aims and methods, 
 
 and remain, 
 With Zion's Greetings, 
 Yours truly, 
 I )K. MAX NOKDAU 
 
 ) The Manuscript of "Lilienbloom the Zionist" uas 
 sent to Dr. Max Nordau by Mr. L. Rifkind in the name of the 
 Edinburgh Young Men's Zionist Culture Association. As we 
 wished to be sure of our attempt, from a literary point of vitw, 
 we were anxious to hear first the opinion of one of the great- 
 est Jewish thinkers. We are, of course, very grateful both for 
 his favourable opinion, and his cordial encouragement.
 
 THE name of Moshe Leib Lilienbloom 
 will without doubt be handed down to pos- 
 terity on account of his masterpiece "Chatos 
 Xeurim" (Sins of Youth), which is a sort of 
 an autobiography under a fictitious name ; and 
 by his being one of the most fervent Zionist 
 pioneers. Yet, however prevalent the zest of 
 literature is upon us, the present forlorn state 
 of the Jews everywhere impels us to devote 
 all our intellectual power to Zionism, examin- 
 ing it from all points of view, and when found 
 to be really sound, to ratify it as the sole 
 remedy for the Jewish welfare. Therefore we 
 shall reluctantly pass by in our present essay 
 Lilienbloom the writer, and devote our sole 
 attention to Lilienbloom the Zionist, who not 
 only dedicated his pen to Zionism, but till 
 he breathed his last there is no flourish in 
 this phrase took an active part in the Zion- 
 ist movement. But as the keynote of the 
 present essay is a lengthy, posthumous letter 
 written by Lilienbloom to the poet Gordon, 
 we find it necessary, from a psychological point 
 of view, to furnish here some characteristics 
 of the lives of these two eminent men of 
 letters.
 
 8 LILIENBLOOM 
 
 At AVilna J. L. Gordon was born on 
 the 21st October, 1832. There was but little 
 likelihood of his becoming in after years the 
 greatest poet of his time, as his parents, after 
 the manner of all orthodox Jews in Russia, 
 brought him up .with a view of becoming a 
 Rabbi ; consequently he was forced to dedicate 
 his boyhood to the study of the Bible .and 
 the Talmud. But, as stated above, Gordon 
 was fortunate enough to look first upon (Jod's 
 world at "Jerusalem of Lithuania" (a term 
 applied to Wilna as a mark of distinction for 
 its famous Jewish scholars), where he had the 
 opportunity to become acquainted in his youth 
 with the two great Hebrew poets, Adam and 
 Michael Lebenson, and other well-known writers 
 who influenced him to acquire the knowledge 
 of a few foreign languages. Gordon followed 
 the good advice of his literary friends, and 
 before long he entered the then existing 
 Rabbinical institution where he was qualified 
 as teacher of the Russian language, at the ane 
 of twenty two. To a certain extent fortune 
 smiled upon him : he was appointed teacher 
 in a small country-town, and there he got 
 married. 
 
 It is in truth a remarkable trait of a 
 real poet. Though being overwhelmed with 
 ungrateful work as a teacher among bigots
 
 ZIONIST 9 
 
 and fanatics who harrassed him every now 
 and then, and devoting assiduously his spare 
 hours to the study of several literary subjects, 
 he produced splendid poems, idyls, various 
 lyrical dainties, all of them sparkling here 
 and there with acute insight, shrewd wit, 
 and hundreds of honey-sweet and charming 
 utterances, as graceful many-coloured butter- 
 flies hovering about a flower-bed. But in his 
 literary pursuits, either in poetry or prose, he 
 strove earnestly for two significant objects : he 
 acrimoniously derided the rigid routine of the 
 'Orthodox faith, and constantly promoted pro- 
 gress of knowledge. But the embittered and 
 enraged orthodox class would not leave him 
 with impunity, and after he took residence 
 in St. Petersburg as secretary to the Jewish 
 congregation, they charged him with treason 
 against the Government. Thus he was put into 
 prison where he was confined for seme time. 
 
 Yes, we are sincerely bound in gratitude 
 to give credit to all harbingers and torch-bearers 
 and champions of civilisation; but in one 
 respect Gordon was greatly mistaken. He threw 
 himself headlong into the light of civilisation, 
 as a moth into the light of a burning candle, 
 unconscious of the fatal consequences. Moses 
 Mendelssohn, the precursor of the Jewish 
 renaissance in Germany, made the same mistake.
 
 10 LILINBLOOM 
 
 Mendelssohn "strove valiantly for the moral 
 and political elevation of the Je\\>," and his 
 efforts were crowned with success first in 
 Austria, where, by the sanction of the gracious 
 king Joseph II, schools for Jewish children 
 were opened. Mendelssohn and his friends 
 triumphed; but how long did their triumphant 
 exultation last? Mendelssohn alone was spared 
 by his death from seeing the mortifying results 
 of the commencement of the Jewish Assimilation. 
 His two daughters, as well as- his best friends, 
 were the first to desert the Je\vi>h camp, and 
 ever since the Jews in (iermnny are so proud, 
 their mind so rapturous for Kuropean civili- 
 sation that they continue almost fit l>loc to 
 shake off from themselves the sacred ties which 
 held them steadfastly to the Jewish Nation. 
 and in their ecstasy of this will-o-the-wisp 
 they sacrifice their heart and soul to ( 'hristianit \ . 
 
 And the passion for European civilisation 
 was so deep-rooted in Gordon's soul that he 
 was merely surprised and disappointed at the 
 first pogroms in Russia. His very soul, though 
 he was the greatest poet of his time, was 
 neither shaken enough to- "make him strike on 
 his lyre a Jeremiad of the mournful fate of 
 his nation, nor to cause him to give himself 
 up wholly to Zionism as Lilienbloom did. 
 for how strange and sad the fact is ! Gordon
 
 THE ZIONIST 11 
 
 had an immense affection for the national 
 language Hebrew, but not for the nation 
 itself. In one of Gordon's letters to Lilienbloom 
 there occurs the following : "If I did not write 
 and sing much about the idea of "The Coloni- 
 sation of Palestine," it was not because of my 
 dislike to it, but because I did not believe in 
 it, and where there is no belief, there is no 
 enthusiasm." These words pronounce him an 
 utterly indifferent Jew, for he who is deep in 
 love w*ith his people, and more so if he be a 
 poet, cannot help believing blindly in a move- 
 ment to emancipate his people. 
 
 But enough of Gordon as a contrast to 
 Lilienbloom. Now let us begin with the chief 
 object of our essay Lilienbloom. 
 
 At Keidany (Kovno gov.) M. L. Lilien- 
 bloom was born in October, 1843. Unlike 
 Gordon he spent his youth in a small country- 
 town, and did not have the good fortune to 
 come in contact with aiy of the eminent writers 
 of his time. With the exception of his extra- 
 ordinary search after truth and knowledge, and 
 his passionate sentiment for the reform x>f 
 the Jewish religion, as well as his illimitable 
 love for the Hebrew language, Lilienbloom 
 could be diametrically opposed to Gordon. In 
 his seventeenth year Gordon acquired the 
 knowledge of some foreign languages, in his
 
 12 LILIENBLOOM 
 
 twenty-second he got his certificate as teachef 
 which rendered him independent; a few years 
 afterwards he married and his domestic affairs 
 were sufferable enough. But Lilienbloom was 
 in his youth a profound scholar in the Talmud 
 only, and owing to his erudition, which was a 
 source of pride to his fond parents, they made 
 what they considered a good bargain in marry- 
 ing him early to a girl of a well-to-do family. 
 Whilst Gordon at that period of his life en- 
 joyed the intimacy and encouragement and 
 tuition of eminent writers and qualified 
 teachers, and, in addition, had a good 
 selection of books at his disposal, Lilienbloom 
 read by sheer chance a few Hebrew works 
 of the modern literature which were the in- 
 centives of a tremendous revolt in his soul. 
 
 Lilienbloom himself found the fittest term 
 to characterise this phase of his life by calling 
 it a "Hebrew tragi-comedy". Shortly after 
 his marriage he had to engage in the 
 battle of life and procured a livelihood for 
 his family as a Hebrew teacher. For a short 
 space of time he also delivered in a certain 
 Beth-Hamidrash a series of Talmudic lectures 
 to an audience of young scholars. But all the 
 wrestlings and struggles for the subsistence of 
 his family seemed to be trivial in comparison 
 with tha- vehement revolt which arose jji his
 
 THE ZIONIST 13 
 
 soul : he could no longer tolerate the trite 
 and cumbersome formalities of our religion. 
 He fought with himself for years, concealing 
 from his family and the townsfolk his inward 
 struggle. But when the fermentation of his 
 thoughts reached the climax, he gave vent to 
 them, and published an article in which he 
 persuasively pleaded for a radical reform. That 
 article, and others of the same nature, roused 
 the anger of all the orthodox class throughout 
 the country, and particularly of his fellow- 
 citizens. Their anger soon turned into such 
 a fury that they, in their frenzy, would no 
 doubt have done with the "heretic" (he was 
 then so nicknamed) the same what all fanatics 
 would have done in such a case. But not all 
 great reformers and inventors are doomed to 
 ordeal: a good many of them were saved by the 
 intervention of some open-minded man, and 
 Lilienbloom also was rescued by the kind- 
 hearted Dr. A. JShaffir of Kovno, who advised 
 him to take refuge at Odessa where he would 
 begin a new life by prepairing himself for 
 entrance to the university, there to take up a 
 course of studies. Lilienbloom in desperation 
 followed the good advice of his friend and 
 betook himself to Odessa; where the refugee 
 went through a series of harrowing trials : he 
 had for a long time to suffer the pangs of
 
 14 UL1KXP>L<M)M 
 
 hunger and humiliation. 
 
 One of his letters to his wife he had 
 sent her back to her native town pn/\<s the 
 best illustration of his heart-rendering MDTOWS. 
 In that letter he bitterly bewails ;md explicitly 
 describes every detail of his miserable life : you 
 hear in it a d'-ep moan, and a bitter complaint: 
 it is, in a word, a .Jeremiad. It is, how<-\< r. a 
 little too long, and too dull to be ghen l.ere. 
 We will, therefore, oiih make use of two 
 details mentioned therein. < hie of them i>. : 
 he had of necessity sold the works of Pisa rev, 
 a Russian critic and dry-as-dust materialist, 
 who had in his time morbidly infected the 
 young generation, and Lilienbloom was also 
 under his spell. The followers of Pisa rev would 
 naturally rather sacrifice anything in the world 
 rather than the works of their admired master, 
 and Lilienbloom 's wife probably knew well how 
 great was her husband's attachment to lh<e 
 works. The other details his irrevocable determ- 
 ination to devote all his energies to study. P>ut his 
 ignorant wife did not in the least care for his 
 persuasive letter, and she returned to him 
 with her children, and thus all the more en- 
 cumbered his mind with cares. Although he 
 boasted in the above mentioned letter that lie 
 had an inflexible will, it was either only to 
 frighten his wife, or he really believed himself
 
 THE ZIONIST 15 
 
 to .be endowed with such. The fact is that 
 his moral disposition, his honesty and tender 
 heart were always the leading forces in all 
 his actions. 
 
 While Lilienbloom was strenuously exerting 
 himself to earn a livelihood for his family, 
 and at the same time prepared himself for a 
 course of study at the university, he was un- 
 aware of the great literary fame he had won 
 by his work "Chatos Neurim" (Sins of Youth). 
 This book is a kind of a confession, or auto- 
 biography, of a young Jew who has become 
 conscious that he had wasted his youth in 
 devoting himself to the study of the Talmud 
 which is a curse and not a blessing, a mass 
 of trite, mawkish, subtle sophistry. The style 
 of the book is fluent and simple, the incidents, 
 the vicissitudes, the arguments, every line of 
 it, is so natural, so candid, that during his 
 eager perusal the reader is entirely under 
 the spell of the book. And yet, excepting the 
 deep gratitude, respect, veneration from the 
 advanced readers on one hand, and contempt, 
 execration, and malediction from the orthodox 
 class on the other hand, Lilienbloom had 
 materially gained very little by his book. He 
 only received, as was till of late the custom 
 with flebrew publishers, a few hundred copies 
 which he himself sold to his near and far
 
 16 LILIENBLOOM 
 
 acquaintances. 
 
 Lilienbloom thus dragged on a martyr- 
 life, endeavouring to procure a sort of living 
 for his family, and to fight for the promotion 
 of knowledge. But I cannot help it : the 
 adage must be altered a little man pro- 
 poses, Satan disposes : Lilienbloom on a Midden 
 became an iconoclast he entirely abandoned 
 his ideal of reform and his burning de>ire 
 for knowledge. That significant change was 
 the result of an external intervention. In the 
 end of the sixties Russia perpetrated, in broad 
 daylight, tremendous plunder and brutal 
 massacre against the Jews. That bestial action 
 was then termed "pogrom", and ever since 
 it has become in Russia a custom to repeat 
 this bloody action from time to time. But 
 the first pogrom threw all the civilised world 
 into consternation, and Lilienbloom was one 
 of those who got the greatest shock. Record- 
 ing that bloody event in his diary, he 
 writes : "The agony has done me much good. 
 The ravagers were approaching the house of 
 my residence. The women screamed and la- 
 mented, and seized the little ones in their arms 
 without knowing where to fly ; the men stood 
 stunned. All of us thought that within a few 
 moments we would become the prey of the 
 furious ravagers ; but, heaven be thanked, they
 
 17 
 I/ 
 
 fled for fear of the soldiers, and thus we were 
 spared. The agony has done me much good. 
 At least once in my life I happened to have 
 the same feeling that my ancestors have felt 
 all their lifetime. Fear and dread overfilled 
 their lives, and why should I, even for a while, 
 be exempted from that dreadful feeling which 
 they felt all their life ? I am descended from 
 them, their sufferings are dear to me, and I 
 am proud of their honour. How great is my 
 delight that fate granted me even once to 
 feel the bitterness of exiled life of my nation. 
 The agony has done me much good". And 
 at the conclusion of his diary he says : "The 
 reader sees that after the cause and aim of 
 the pogrom was made clear to my mind, and 
 being driven to despair of our national 
 prospects, my study of the gymnasial course 
 seemed to me a great perpetration against 
 my unfortunate nation". 
 
 It is not our business to enter here upon 
 the discussion whether great men are ordained 
 by Providence, or predestined by nature, 
 according to the doctrine that "the crisis 
 always produces the man" ; we only refer to 
 the most remarkable fact that the great men 
 who have at various periods freed our op- 
 pressed people were first induced not by re- 
 flection but by some external agitation
 
 18 LILIENBLOOM 
 
 which overwhelmed their mind. Simply and 
 concisely but with a tinge of poetical irrace 
 does relate our Bible : "And it came to pass in 
 those days, when Moses was grown, that lie 
 went out unto his brethren, and looked on 
 their burdens: and he spied an K^vpiian 
 smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren. And 
 he looked this way and that way, and when 
 he saw that there was no man, he slew the 
 Egyptian, and hid him in the sand". Theodore 
 Herzl likewise it is no secret now when he 
 saw with his own eyes how captain Dreyfus 
 was stripped in Paris of his dignity, was so 
 greatly shocked that he resolved to free our op- 
 pressed people, and in course of time he became 
 the leader of the Zionist movement. Lilien- 
 bloom was more than shocked: he was agonised 
 by the pogrom. 
 
 Another fact, not less remarkable than 
 the first, is, that those men were great 
 thinkers, and before they came forward as 
 deliverers of their people, they were more or 
 less cosmopolitans. From the birth of Moses 
 and the time of his adoption as the son of 
 Pharaoh's daughter, until he first "went out 
 unto his brethren, and looked on their bur- 
 dens", there is not recorded in the Bible a 
 single characteristic, a single remark, of the 
 intervening period. Yet we dare surmise that
 
 THE ZIONIST 19 
 
 Moses, being brought up in a royal family, 
 was in all likelihood very far in spirit from 
 his oppressed people ; the following is a con- 
 vincing proof. One of the most vital laws 
 which preserve our people as a nation is that 
 we may not intermarry with other peoples. 
 This law first took root with our progenitor 
 Abraham, and according to tradition, the 
 Hebrews observed this law very strictly during 
 the bondage in Egypt. And when Moses 
 escaped Pharaoh's sword and fled to the hospi- 
 table but heathen Jethro, he married the 
 daughter of his host. Herzl's, and to a very 
 small extent Lilienbloom's,cosmopolitan attitude, 
 speak for themselves too clearly, for most of 
 the highly educated Jews are cosmopolitans. 
 
 But if the first and greater part of 
 Moses' life is an insoluble enigma, a sealed 
 book to us, and the first part of Herzl's life is 
 similarly undeciphered for the present, we can 
 penetrate Lilienbloom's soul without much 
 difficulty. The first and greater part of his life 
 w r as a page of a 'tragi-comedy," full of infin- 
 ite sorrow and incessant struggle for a bare 
 livelihood. ' Not having the good luck to be 
 brought up as a prince like Moses, nor beyond 
 the walls of the Ghetto like Herzl, Lilienbloom 
 w r as born and bred in the centre of the Ghetto, 
 and consequently he saw and felt very deeply
 
 20 LILIENBLOOM 
 
 the wretchedness of thousands of his brothcrn. 
 For all that, however strenuously ho laboured 
 to attain some position in life, he could not 
 for a moment forget his hopeless people. He 
 seemed to be the embodiment of his people, 
 their life was his life, their death hi- death. 
 In the seventies, when there prc\ ailed nil 
 over Russia a severe famine which seriously 
 affected the Jews, who, under the mournful 
 existing circumstances, are always the first 
 victims of any economical distress, Lilienbloom 
 was the first who then suggested to promote 
 the settlement in Russia of Jewish agri- 
 culturists. He offered that suggestion in an 
 article written with such force that it made 
 a strong impression upon the readers, and 
 many of them resolved to carry out this project 
 into effect. For this purpose the richest .lows 
 in St. Petersburg laid the foundation of an 
 agricultural society, and they managed to col- 
 lect more than two hundred thousand roubles 
 in a short time. 
 
 Lilienbloom was now not very far from 
 setting up the banner towards Zion. He had 
 already removed the two greatest obstacles. 
 Since the last dispersion from Palestine our 
 people had -for centuries to live everywhere a 
 wandering, "beggarly, precarious life; it was 
 never more granted the wandering Jew to
 
 THE ZIONIST 21 
 
 enjoy a natural and settled life as a farmer : 
 acquiring land and living on it was forbidden 
 him, and as time went on he naturally became 
 absolutely estranged from nature. To stir up 
 anew in the heart of the Jews the desire for 
 cultivating the ground was the same as to 
 remould the whole Jewish nation, and Lilien- 
 bloom was the man who possessed the creative 
 power to exercise so commanding an influence 
 over his Brethren, 
 
 The other obstacle was the pernicious 
 Assimilation. We stated above that almost all 
 the cultured Jews are inclined to cosmopoli- 
 tanism, and a great part of them, including 
 even some Hebrew writers, were of the opinion 
 that Assimilation is the inevitable solution of 
 our national problem, and that we ought, 
 therefore, to comply with it gratefully. But 
 Lilienbloom's most judicious and perceptive 
 mind resisted powerfully this pernicious ten- 
 dency. Before the occurrence of the pogroms 
 in Russia, Lilienbloom vigorously refuted pub- 
 licly, as well as in private letters to his in- 
 timate friends, the apparently strong motives 
 of the preachers of assimilation. As an 
 illustration we shall now translate one of his 
 most important letters of which we already 
 made mention at the outset of our essay, and 
 which will point out by the way that not
 
 22 LILIKNT.LOOM 
 
 only the distress of the Jews, but and herein 
 lies the full weight the distress of Judaism 
 was the concern of Lilienbloom. 
 
 The following is that pregnant letter. 
 "Odessa, 20 Kislev, 1888. 
 
 "Not to recur to our previou- B I 
 
 intend to lay before you my promt view 
 which has not changed but has become clearer 
 to me. 
 
 "After the pogroms I made up my mind 
 to get at the root of the hatred that ac- 
 companies us everywhere and at all times. The 
 old subterfuges, such as religious hatred, on the 
 one hand, and the coarse appearance of < tin- 
 brethren to all other nations, on the other 
 hand, cannot be any more taken for granted, 
 because I have observed that those who do 
 not tolerate any religion hate us not less than 
 their orthodox ancestors, and our cultured 
 brethren are hated in the same way as the 
 ignorant classes. 
 
 "This investigation led me to the old 
 course. Being busy with economical questions, 
 I had not paid sufficient attention to it before, 
 namely, the natural difference between the 
 Jews (possibly the whole Semitic race), and 
 the Japhetic or Aryan races, of which the 
 first were Greeks, whose manners and customs
 
 THE ZIONIST 23 
 
 were afterwards adopted by all other nations. 
 The Jews, according- to Heine, concentrate 
 all their mind on one thing, therefore all the 
 powers they perceived they attributed to one 
 God, and the Japhetic on many things. The 
 Jews contemplate nature, are moderate in 
 history and legends, and the Japhetics are 
 enthusiasts in all those matters (notwithstand- 
 ing that in all the later centuries their 
 scholars began to analyse and study the 
 visible world). The Jews are morally very 
 strict, they discern the essence and spirit of 
 everything, keep themselves^ far from artificial 
 pleasures; and the Japhetics concern themselves 
 chiefly with beauty and taste, so that beauty 
 has become with them an important cult, and 
 to this day it is with them the greatest 
 characteristic in poetry and prose ; they are 
 very particular about external appearances, and 
 are mostly indulgent to pleasures. All the 
 European students sing the song which begins : 
 Gaudeamus igitur 
 Juvenes dum sumus . . . 
 
 words unsuitable for men who devote their 
 lives to study and the welfare of mankind. 
 Were I to suspect our ancient scholars of 
 knowing these characteristics I would then 
 say that they intentionally named the pro- 
 genitor of the Aryan races Japhet, because of
 
 24 LILIEXBLOOM 
 
 their love for beauty (rQ" 1 and HE* can 
 taken in Hebrew from one derivation. 7 
 translator). The Bible is with the .lev- the 
 same as the Iliad with the (I recks, but how 
 great is the diiFerence, how diveise ;;re \\\\ ir 
 spirits, and how far apart are their aims! 
 From these books we perceive what UPS tli 
 business of the one race, and what the 1. 
 of the other race. 
 
 
 
 "The Jews had years of the second tithe 
 (Tttf "NZ^yD), and they made their pilgrimage 
 to Jerusalem and spent their money on cattle 
 and whatever their heart desired ; but the 
 Greeks had their Olympic games, chariot-. 
 horse-races, various spectacles. The Komans 
 had gladiators, amphi-theatres, circuses, which 
 partly exist even now in Spain, and in another 
 form, in all Europe. How tremendous is the 
 passion of the European nations for plays can 
 be seen from the fact that in the ancient 
 times the starving 'mob cried: "I'anem et 
 circenses !" (I am always disgusted whenever I 
 recollect that strange conduction uttered by a 
 starving mob), and also from the large sums 
 they even now lavish on erecting theatres, 
 while there are scarcely enough proper schools, 
 hospitals, and charitable institutions. In Odes>a 
 they have just now built a large theatre 
 costing one million and-a-half roubles (though
 
 THE ZIONIST 25 
 
 there are already minor theatres), whilst the 
 town-hospital is in need of a new outfit, and 
 there are not even half the number of schools 
 required, and the medical department is on 
 the verge of bankroptcy. Whom do they 
 prefer to enrich, Helmholz, Pasteur, etc. or 
 Patey and Be 'nar ? 
 
 "The Romans disdained the beggars, 
 charity and alms-giving were strange to them, 
 and even in our own days begging is forbidden 
 by the law ; the Romans had no idea of 
 charity, and in the Middle and even Modern 
 Ages the European nations are extremely 
 dissoluted. Is it possible even to a very small 
 extent that what happened to Pushkin with 
 regard to his relations towards women and 
 his death shculd happen to one of our poets ? 
 I do not speak of our old poets as Ben-Gebirol, 
 Jehuda Halevi, but of cur present poets : 
 Almazi, Luzzati, Lebenson, etc. The Gospel, 
 at boltom, did not affect a change in the life 
 of the Japhetics ; the Roman festivals, their 
 customs and code are still the same. In vain 
 does Professor Soloviev complain : the wolf 
 sometimes casts its skin, but not its nature. 
 
 "A Jewish scholar once said : "Be rather 
 a tail to lions than a head to foxes", and a 
 Roman writer said : "Be rather the first in 
 a village than the second in a town".
 
 26 LILIENBLOOM 
 
 "To commemorate their national events 
 the Jews did not raise monuments, public 
 decorations, ornaments, but they made them 
 perpetual by acts, by the Feast of Tabernacles, 
 by Chanuccah-candles, and so on. The per- 
 formance of the act had to recall to the 
 Jewish mind those events of the past of which 
 the Japhetics are reminded by monuments, 
 statues and paintings. The Jewish poetry 
 differs extremely from the Japhetic one. IN 
 muse comes not from power, nor from beauty 
 because "favour is deceitful, and beauty is 
 vain" but from sublimity, consequently its 
 style is sublime rather than grand. The 
 Japhetics, blood-thirsty and keen for combat. 
 could not produce to the world a man th;t 
 should prophesy of a time when one nation 
 shall not lift a sword against another, but, 
 on the contrary, when one of their greatest 
 men happened once on the grave of Alexander 
 the Macedonian, he cried out pathetically : 
 "Alexander conquered half the world whilst 
 he w r as still my age, and I have done nothing !" 
 How abhorrent are such words, as if it is 
 incumbent on eyery man to destroy at le.-.-t 
 half a world ! Whether Julius Csesar realh 
 uttered those words or not, is all the same. 
 I do not judge from a single individual but 
 from the tradition that is circulated
 
 THE ZIOXIST 27 
 
 the people about their heroes, and therein, 
 in that tradition, is the reflection of the 
 mitional spirit. 
 
 "The Jews do not go out in pursuit of 
 games merely for the sake of sport and from 
 idleness ; all kinds of pleasures that are in- 
 vented only to pass the time are Japhetic 
 inventions. 
 
 "The Jews are far from order, and the 
 Japheties take much care of order, so that 
 on account of the order and system they 
 established in science we forget that the 
 real pioneers of science were Semites, the 
 Babylonians and the Syrians. Suchlike and 
 many more are the differences between the 
 .U-ws and the Japheties, and it may be that 
 all those differences are but branches from 
 one and the same root. To join the different 
 rings, to transmit the Japhetic spirit to the 
 Jews, or from the latter to the former, or to 
 reconcile the two different races there is no 
 need, and it is impossible to do so from my 
 point of view. I must not, as a Jew who is 
 concerned in this matter, undertake to decide ; 
 but I shall say with Lessing : "May every 
 one say his ring is the real one". 
 
 "But our ring fits only us and not others, 
 and it is understood that those characteristics
 
 28 LILIENBLOOM 
 
 which we consider our good points they re- 
 gard as faults. Accordingly when they come 
 in contact with us they are conscious that 
 we do not resemble them, and our appropriate 
 idiosyncracies keep them far from us, and they 
 hate us not knowingly hut instinctively. 
 
 "Our modern culture has done us much 
 harm. Had our culture been based on prac- 
 tical knowledge and applied science it would 
 have been a source of benefit to us ; but our 
 culture, which is European, is based on Greek 
 and Roman civilisation, on taste and beauty, 
 on external refinement, and whilst we en- 
 deavoured with might and main to adopt their 
 habits and manners which are foreign to our 
 spirit,we lost our own, and thus did not reach 
 our goal. Our advanced men are, therefore, 
 so to say, in a rotten state, and are, as a 
 matter of course, hated the most, because a 
 rotten thing gives out an offencive smell and 
 excites loathing . . . To our sorrow, we can- 
 not acquire in Europe a culture of another 
 kind because we have no schools of our own. 
 and suppose we had then our teachers, ap- 
 pointed by the government, would be like 
 monkeys that imitate others. 
 
 "I still wish a reform, but a reform on 
 the ground of applied science and criticism
 
 THE ZIONIST 29 
 
 and according to the Jewish spirit, but not 
 on the Hellenian love of beauty and taste, 
 with which w r e have no concern. Therefore I 
 mentioned above that I have not changed my 
 belief, because when I propogated reform I 
 had in view practical knowledge and criticism, 
 but not beauty. If I have at present no other 
 task than that of Jewish colonisation in 
 Palestine it is not because "I have become 
 a pillar of ice, and all my thoughts are con- 
 gealed by freezing to such an extent that I 
 am no more able to conceive any idea", but 
 bfM-.Muse the tasks I am engaged in, as I 
 perceive now, cannot be fulfilled here in 
 Europe Our religion cannot be reformed in 
 Europe, and we do not lead in Europe a life 
 that tan undergo any suitable reform, and 
 all other solutions being propounded to those 
 ta-ks from of old seem discordant to our 
 spirit and our habits. The performance of 
 circumcision here in Europe seems barbarous ; 
 the observance of Sabbath an immense eco- 
 nomical detriment because of the compulsory 
 law to observe Sunday ; the food forbidden by 
 our religion sever us from all other nations ; 
 intermarriages are necessary for the advance- 
 ment of friendship between us and the other 
 nations, and, generally, it is not fair to give 
 up friendship because of prejudice. But what
 
 30 LILIENBLOOM 
 
 else is there left for us? The education here 
 is a European in every respect, with tin- 
 spirit of severance from one another, of l\c 
 for artificial pleasures, of trifles, of luxury, of 
 submission to women, and of all we usually 
 call worldliness ; all those moods, the tenets 
 of European civilisation, demoralise us all 
 completely. Give me culture based on philo- 
 sophy, on genuine criticism, on chastity and 
 love for applied science; give me a ,Ie\\i>h 
 spirit, and I shall devote myself to this task 
 as well as to the colonisation of Palestine ; 
 but can you "produce a clean spirit"? . . . 
 Could Jean Jacques Ifousseau have seen such 
 a culture, he would not have said that civil- 
 isation has injured the world. 
 
 "Therefore I can by no means admit 
 that the Jews should go to Palestine via 
 America, and I prefer one fanatic of Jerusalem, 
 who would in no way influence one of the 
 colonists with his fanaticism, to hundreds of 
 Kdisons, who cannot transmit to them his 
 mental gifts and his inventions ; they will 
 only succeed in aping his manners. You would 
 advise the son of David (Messiah), were he 
 to ask you, to come not like a beggar on 
 the back of a donkey, but like a Rothschild 
 in the train, and in a first class -carriage, 
 too, and that he should convey us in ships
 
 THE ZIONIST 31 
 
 provided with all kinds of rich food and 
 luxuries. But were he to ask me, I would 
 say : "Come, Sir, through the window, through 
 the chimney, on a donkey or a camel, pro- 
 vided you come and redeem us, and we will 
 follow to a man, rich and poor, the rich in 
 ships in special cabins provided with all kinds 
 of dainties, and the poor on the deck in 
 trading vessels, having but mouldy bread. The 
 main thing with me is the end, and not the 
 means to it. 
 
 "In order to make more explicit the 
 difference between my view and yours, allow 
 me to tell you what I once said in the 
 presence of my friends. I consider your soul 
 is transmigrated from Heine. This requires 
 some explanation. Heine says that though 
 he himself is a Jew, his nature and spirit 
 are yet Hellenic. According to my opinion 
 Heine was only partially right, because being 
 a Jew he must have had a Jewish soul (allow 
 me to express myself in the style of the 
 Cabba lists), but he was also endowed with an 
 additional soul, a Hellenian one. Those two 
 souls both executed their function, but not 
 promiscuously. "As oil cannot assimilate with 
 other liquids, so Israel cannot assimilate with 
 other nations", and therefore each of Heine's 
 souls retained its innate ideas. His Hellenian
 
 32 LILIENBU )( >.M 
 
 soul aided him to appreciate his Jewish soul 
 (for he felt the power of them hoth what 
 is otherwise denied to the single minded), and 
 therefore he held Judaism in the greatest 
 respect. His Hellenian soul gave utterance 
 while he was engaged in love son^s. in science 
 of art, and other trifles; and his Jewish soul 
 vibrated in him when he most san -ji>ti< -.'My 
 chastised single individuals and whole nations. 
 All who were eager to imitate him only 
 exposed themselves to ridicule, because they 
 were like all other men single- in inner. 
 
 "You also possess two souls, one a .Je\\i h. 
 and the other a Hellenian, your so; ' also <lo 
 not function promiscuously. In your l,i\s we 
 perceive the impression of both your souls ; 
 the gravest and most thoughtful ideas are 
 sparks of the Jewish soul, and the most <ray 
 and exquisite tit-bits spring from the Ilelleniaii 
 soul ;you are thus unrivalled among the Jewish 
 poets that have but one soul, not a Hellenian, 
 and therefore you lay so much stress on taste 
 and beauty, the attributes of the Hellenians. 
 You may consider me a lunatic, but don't 
 forget that such a decree issued not from one 
 of the Italian Cabbalists, but from Heine." 
 
 We must admit that some of the arguments 
 in this letter are pretty shallow, and to a
 
 rru 17 '7 1 ' ] \ T v r q q 
 
 x n. j-. ^ i v/ -N J o-j 
 
 certain extent even erroneous ; yet the letter 
 on the whole contains a great deal of the 
 Zionist kernel which must be strengthened -by 
 the addition of a few more striking contrasts 
 of the two antagonistic spirits, the Jewish 
 and the Aryan. 
 
 The results of the unfortunate revolution 
 in Russia were a long series of slaughtering 
 and crippling of thousands of Jewish men, 
 and defiling of hundreds of Jewish women. 
 You will say it is not Christian business to 
 demand justice for Jewish women, not to speak 
 of Jewish men. Well, suppose we fully agree 
 with you. But at the same time the press 
 reports that the Christian revolutionists in 
 Russia were treated in a similar manner : 
 the men slaughtered and maimed, and the 
 women polluted. Did the Russian nation vehe- 
 mently demand justice not only for one, but 
 for hundreds violated women, and did the 
 other Christian nations protest against these 
 outrageous deeds ? Yes, one nation has no 
 right to meddle with the inner affairs of 
 another nation ; but all Christian nations have 
 but one Christ, and why, then, in the name 
 of that Christ, did they not with just in- 
 dignation protest against the ravishment of 
 Christian women in Russia ? If the crusaders 
 carried on wars against the Mahommedans
 
 34 LILIENBLOOM 
 
 to assert and guarantee the right of Christian 
 pilgrims to journey to Jerusalem, how much 
 more then had all the existing ('hristi;m 
 nations to carry on wars against Russia for 
 the violation of Christian women? Moreover, 
 can we find some excuse for the Christian 
 women in England, the so-called Suffragett 
 If they earnestly believe that by their par- 
 ticipating in the Government they will impn>\e 
 the State, why then did they not sound the 
 alarm against the violation of Christian women 
 in Russia? Can there be any greater vice than 
 the pollution of Christian women that ouaht 
 to thrill with horror the English Suffragettes? 
 One can have nothing against women that 
 burn with desire to obtain the same right of 
 voting as men, but is it not astounding that 
 those women did not raise their voice against 
 the rape of their sisters in Russia? And, 
 finally, Tolstoy, the great Christian moralist, 
 how did he behave in this case ; was he terri- 
 fied at the complete bankruptcy of Christian 
 morality, and did he thunder forth against 
 the loose-broken animal instincts? The answer 
 to this grave question consists but of one 
 monosyllable : No ! 
 
 But thousands of years ago, the uncivil- 
 ised and primitive Jewish people acted in such 
 a case entirely according to the then and
 
 THE ZIONIST 35 
 
 even now predominant Jewish spirit. The 
 following story is told in the Book of Judges. 
 The people of Gibeah violated the concubine 
 merely a concubine, not a legal wife of a 
 stranger who came to stay for a night in that 
 town. The debauched people of the town 
 tired the poor woman all night long, and 
 in the morning she fell dead at the 
 door of the house where her master was 
 hospitably received. Her master cut her in 
 twelve pieces and sent them to the twelve 
 tribes with a charge of ravishment. All the 
 tribes fell into a passion at the sight of such 
 a horrible crime, they gathered themselves 
 together and demanded that the sinners should 
 be given up to them. AVhen the townsfolk 
 refused to obey the national demand, all the 
 tribes proclaimed war against Benjamin, and 
 killed all the tribe save six hundred men 
 that escaped the grip of death. 
 
 Moreover, whilst we were writing these 
 lines we were shocked by the following igno- 
 minious incident, related in the Hamburger 
 Xachrichten. French soldiers in Morocco, who 
 were stationed there to keep up order in the 
 country, broke into Jewish houses with weapons 
 in their hands and violated Jewish girls and 
 women. When the Jews complained to the 
 captain of this regiment, he answered very
 
 36 LILIES-BLOOM 
 
 characteristically : "That is the manner of 
 war." \-).v. not only the gloomy and > un- 
 civilised RMS >ia, but the most enlightened 
 France has contributed another bloody p 
 to Jewish history. In such a case the Bible 
 furnishes a most remarkable .law. It is written 
 (Deuter. Cujt. -\) : "When thou goest forth 
 to war apiinst thine enemies, and the Lord 
 thy God hath delivered them into thine hand. 
 and thou hast taken them captive : And scc-l 
 among the captives a beautiful woman, and 
 hast a desire unto her, and thou wouldest 
 have her to thy wife". The la *t sentence 
 is not quite correct in the Kiiglish Translation, 
 for according to the Talmud it is written in 
 a commanding tone : you shall take her to 
 wife. At any rate this passage clearly shows 
 that the Jewish warrior married and did not 
 violate the beautiful woman, though she was 
 but a captive and a heathen. 
 
 Only ignorant people and savages are 
 nowadays afraid of devils, of ghosts and other 
 fantastic monsters, for the enlightened mind 
 will never more be obscured. But are there 
 no exceptions to that maxim? Take for 
 instance the Blood Accusation. Such an accu- 
 sation can only strike root in the mind of a 
 barbarian, and it was really first invented by 
 the pagans against the Christians in the early
 
 THE ZIONIST 37 
 
 stage of Christianity. But the merciful 
 Christians proved to be excellent disciples, 
 and they turned the same accusation, chiefly 
 in the Mid lie Ages, against the Jews, and 
 thus many pages of our history are stained 
 with hlood. But as time went on civilisation 
 put an end to ere i'llity and superstition, and 
 the Blood Accusation was also mitigated, but 
 did not vanish altogether. 
 
 But how infamous, how atrocious ! in our 
 own enlightened century Russia has sur- 
 passed all Christendom. A Christian boy was 
 killed at Kiev according to all the directions 
 of a book written by a certain Jew-hater. 
 And how lovely ! how humane ! one of the 
 members of the Duma asked the Minister of 
 Justice, during the session of that Parliament, 
 does the Government know about that murdered 
 boy, and if so, what steps she intended to 
 take ? Till recently such a case was usually 
 settled in a simple way : the followers of 
 Christ's doctrines the doctrines of boundless 
 love and mercy the inhabitants of that town 
 where such an accusation was brought against 
 the Jews, used to do justice to their Christ- 
 ian feeling by a massacre of the Jews of that 
 town. But that Russian Member of Parliament 
 is a faithful follower of the notorious Ham:-ni 
 who "thought scorn to lay hands on Mordechai
 
 38 LILIENBLOOM 
 
 alone", and therefore intended to induce the 
 Government to take up the case ;ui<l per- 
 petrate a general massacre of the Jews. Tin- 
 best evidence that the accusation against the 
 Jews of Kiev was false is that, however hostile 
 the Government is disposed towards the Jews. 
 all efforts to detect the real murderer- \\ere 
 in vain ; hut the fact will remain at once 
 a terrible and ignominious one which is a 
 thousand times more formidable than any 
 pogrom. 
 
 And the ignominy will remain for ever 
 not only with Russia, but with all the civil- 
 ised world, either constitutional or re- 
 publican, for not having resentfully proiestcd 
 against the blood-stained Parliament. Poli- 
 ticians of course the most ingenious of them 
 
 will say that I am entirely void of politics : 
 every Government has the full right to deal 
 with its subjects as it pleases, and no other 
 Government has the ri;-ht to interfere, because 
 
 it is a very fine policy it would hamper 
 the international business. But if a Christian 
 Government grossly insulted another Christian 
 Government, then, as a matter of course, only 
 the sword could blot out the insult, notwith- 
 standing the ruined lives of innumerable 
 Christians. Now, if this be the case with a 
 mere insult, then I dare ask, when a Christian
 
 THE ZIONIST 39 
 
 Parliament, as the Russian, propagates massa- 
 cre from its tribune, why should not all the 
 other Christian Parliaments interfere in the 
 name of the honour of all their Parliaments ? 
 Can we imagine a greater ignonimy and 
 more vicious propagation than the propagation 
 of massacre from a parliamentary tribune ? 
 Every Government has the full right to in- 
 stigate the mob clandestinely to slaughter the 
 Jews to a man, and no other Government 
 dare interfere, for, as I stated above, the 
 Jews, according to the opinion held by most 
 pious and merciful Christians, are created for 
 that very purpose. But to preach in broad 
 daylight, from a Christian parliamentary 
 tribune, slaughter on Jews who are falsely 
 accused how is it with the honour of all 
 other Christian Parliaments ? 
 
 The prohibition of eating blood is fre- 
 quent y repeated in the Old Testament because 
 of a simple but very remarkable reason. The 
 Bible says : "Ye shall eat the blood of no 
 manner of flesh, for the life of nil flesh is in 
 the blood thereof." This prohibition was in- 
 tensified to an enormous extent by our Rabbis, 
 and it contains scores of subtle laws even in 
 the case of a mere blood-spot in an egg. 
 Butcher-meat, in order to be freed from the 
 slightest taste of blood, must undergo the
 
 following treatments. First of all it is < Icared 
 of its veins, and kept in water for half an 
 hour, then it is excessively >;.!ted and pre- 
 served in this state for an hour, so th;.t no 
 trace of blood is left: and the opera! ii n of 
 slaughtering an animal is not le?<> remarkable. 
 The throat is cut by the Schochct. v\ho is special- 
 Iv trained for that operation, with a knife \\ ! 
 edire has no notch whatever even that of 
 a hair-breadth. The throat must he cut as 
 swift as possible only by tuo turns of the 
 knife to and fro, and when the Srhorh- 
 hand is too slow or presses a little the throat 
 with the knife, the flesh of the animal is for- 
 bidden, because its death-agon) was thus pro- 
 longed. For that very iva-on we are not 
 allowed to eat the meat of the "clean" animal or 
 fowl shot or killed in any other manner. And 
 the Schochet must not only he skilled in 
 slaughtering, but also a propound veterinary, 
 for after slaughtering the animal he carefully 
 examines its lungs, and when he finds the 
 slightest symptoms of any disease, he pro- 
 nounces the animal treifa (i.e. impure) 
 
 But the Christians do not abstain from 
 eating blood : they use it in different dishes, 
 and not only concrete blood, but the most 
 sacred. Both the Homan Catholics and the 
 Lutherans adhere to the doctrine of the real
 
 THE ZIOXLST 41 
 
 presence of Christ's body or blood in the 
 sacrament of the Lord's Supper. The root of 
 this doctrine we may surmise was the parent 
 of the Biood Accusation against Christians, 
 which has afterwards turned against the Jews. 
 And no wonder. One that uses blood cannot 
 help suspecting his neighbour of doing the 
 same. And when a man uses blood be he 
 even highly educated Ms spirit must natur- 
 ally become more or less prurient of bloodshed. 
 Within our brief limits it is impossible to 
 furnish evidences enough for our opinion, but 
 from one or two examples the reader may 
 infer the rest. Carlyle says : "Much has been 
 said of Mahomet's propagating his religion 
 by the sword. It is no doubt far nobler what 
 we have to boast of the Christian Religion, 
 that it propagated itself peaceably in the way 
 of preaching and conviction. Yet withal, if 
 we take this for an argument of the truth 
 or falsehood of a religion, there is a radical 
 mistake in it. The sword indeed : but where 
 will you get your sword ! Every new 
 opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a 
 minority of one. In one man's head alone, 
 there it dwells as yet. One man alone of the 
 whole world believes it ; there is one man 
 against all men; that he take a sword and 
 try to propagate with that, will do little for
 
 42 LILIENBLOOM 
 
 him. You must first get your sword ! ( )n the 
 whole, a thing will propagate itself as it can. 
 We do not find, of the Christian Religion 
 either, that it always disdained the sword, 
 when once it had got one. Charlemagne's con- 
 version of the Saxons was not hy preaching. 
 I care little about the sword : 1 will allow a 
 thing to struggle for itself in this world, with 
 any sword or tongue or implement it has. or 
 can lay hold of." Carlyle might have mentioned 
 some more important instances \\hen Ch/i>- 
 tianity often manifested itself not merely hy 
 word but entirely by s\\ord. lie had only to 
 refer to the blood-stained Crusades and the 
 Inquisition of Spain that were soaket through 
 and through with Jewish blood ; but he, 
 as well as Luther, sincere and profound 
 Christians as they were, felt instinctively 
 as Lilienblocm phrased it---an aversion to 
 the antagonistic spirit of the Jews. At all 
 events, Carlyle considered it as a matter 
 of course and justifiable to propagate an 
 idea through the medium of the sword, and 
 was not struck with abhorrence at the crime 
 of bloodshed. 
 
 But the Jewish spirit, with respect to 
 the propagation of Judaism, is just the very 
 reverse to the Aryan spirit. Lilienbloom showed 
 the difference between the great warrior,
 
 THE ZIONIST 43 
 
 Caesar, who was burning with a desire to 
 conquer the whole world, and the great 
 prophet, Isaiah, who prophesied a universal 
 and permanent suspension of hostilities. But 
 Lilienbloom omitted another remarkable charac- 
 teristic which is mentioned just in the beginning 
 of the same chapter of that book. Isaiah 
 says : "And many people shall go and say, 
 come ye, and let us go up to the mountain 
 of the Lord, to the house of the God of 
 Jacob ; and he will teach us of his ways, and 
 we will walk in his paths : for out of Zion 
 shall go forth the law, and the word of the 
 Lord from Jerusalem." And this luminous 
 prophecy will come to pis* not by the sword, 
 but as one of the minor prophets forsaw: u Th : s is 
 the word of the Lord unto Zjrubbabel, saying, 
 not by might, nor by power, b it by my spirit." 
 Thus from the earliest period of Jewish legis- 
 lature we were gradually imbued with a mul- 
 titude of laws which proh'bite:! eating of 
 blood in any form whatever, and which even 
 transformed slaughtering of animals into a 
 holy performance. 
 
 The Jewish history contains many records 
 of wholesale slaughters of the Jews in several 
 countries at different times, and all of them 
 were perpetrated by Christian fanatics, or by 
 ordinary Christian murderers. As time pro-
 
 44 LILIENBLOOM 
 
 gresses the records of Jew-slaughtering are 
 here and there increasing, and we HIV hecom- 
 ing accustomed to them as to all other in- 
 evitable calamities stored up by nature for 
 mankind. But the eighteenth century has Con- 
 tributed to Jewish history such a multitude 
 of atrocities which can by no means he just- 
 ified as being the result of religious fanaticism. 
 or perpetrated for plunder's sake. One of those 
 outrageous crimes will suffice for our purpose. 
 
 A certain Christian mayor of a count r\ - 
 town in Russia had invented a most ingenuous 
 amusement : he used to command Jewish \\omen 
 to climb up a tree and cry cuckoo, then In- 
 shot at them from a fowling-piece, and when 
 the unfortunate woman fell wounded beneath 
 the tree, he cheerfully flung golden coins at 
 them. Is it possible to imagine, even to a 
 genius such as Dante, the greatest inventor 
 of hells, that he who is imbued with an 
 abhorrence of eating of blood, and takes up 
 the cause of a defiled woman, would be de- 
 lighted in shoot ng at women for amusement's 
 sake only ? The unhesitating reply must be "No". 
 
 But to return to our subject. I Fad 
 Lilienbloom purposely set himself the task of 
 pointing out all the striking differences between 
 the Jewish and the Aryan spirits, he, as a
 
 THE ZIONIST 45 
 
 profound Talmudist and a great scholar, might 
 in all likelihood have produced a most valu- 
 able work, but he was wholly absorbed in the 
 renaissance of our ancestral land, and over- 
 whelmed with numerous Zionist affairs. Dr. 
 Glucksohn in his fine article "The work of 
 the Chovevei Zion" (republished in the "Zionist 
 work in Palestine"), giving a short account 
 of twenty years work, merely mentions Lilien- 
 bloom as one of the first pioneers of the 
 Zionist ideal, and thus he does him a great 
 injustice. The fact is that Dr. Pinsker became 
 a Zionist only through Lilienbloom who exer- 
 cised an immense influence over him. Lilien- 
 bloom himself tells us so of course, modest 
 as he was, he would not use the expression 
 "immense influence'' and from his account, 
 which extends from the year 1881, since he 
 wrote his article "The Jewish problem and 
 Palestine", till the year 1890, when the 
 Russian Government sanctioned the laws and 
 regulations of the Society for the relief of 
 Jewish Agriculturists in Syria and Palestine, 
 it is conspicuously seen that Lilienbloom was 
 all in all with the Zionist business. Even 
 the sanction of the Russian Government, 
 which was obtained by the urgent and a dr.i it- 
 solicitation of Zederbaum, the editor of the 
 "Hameliz" another great omission of Dr.
 
 46 LILIENBLOOM 
 
 Glucksohn was brought about by Lilienbloom 
 who again exercised his all-powerful influence 
 over Zederbaum. There \v;is no Conference, 
 no meeting of the different Zionist societies 
 in which Lilienbloom did not take an active 
 part. Freethinker or heretic as he \\as 
 considered by the orthordox class, he suc- 
 ceeded in influencing the Rabbis to allow 
 the colonists in Palestine to go on with their 
 work in the year of remission. This procedure 
 cost him much trouble and pain, but he nc\er 
 spared the most precious thing for his 
 worshipped ideal Zionism. 
 
 Lilienbloom 's leading motive of Zionism 
 was th ' settlement of Jewish agriculturists in 
 Palestine. In spite of his passion for reform 
 and his burning desire for knowledge, he 
 would have sacrificed all the world for one 
 Jewish colonist in Palestine, because that 
 colonist would never more be a stranger in 
 the world. He was in this respect quite the 
 reverse of Achad Haam whose sole aim is 
 the revival of the Jewish spirit. In their 
 different views of Zionism lies the inter- 
 pretation of their contrary attitudes towards 
 Herzl's scheme. Lilienbloom the Jewish scholar 
 and reformer but always struggling for a 
 bare wretched maintainance, and having for 
 the most part of his life to deal with in-
 
 THE ZIONIST 47 
 
 numerable wretches like himself, could not 
 but cling to concrete remedies in general, 
 and with respect to Zionism in particular. 
 Soon after the first pogrom took place in 
 Russia some of the Jewish students of the 
 Moscow University "wanted to propagate 
 amongst the Jews the idea of buying Palestine" 
 as Lilienbloom puts it "They wanted that 
 every Jew should contribute to that plan not 
 It'^s than 25 Kopecks. According to one of 
 them who proposed this plan to me, we will 
 have to give the Sultan three hundred million 
 francs. I told him that the initiative must 
 first be taken abroad." This idea, however 
 chimerical it may seem at first sight to men 
 of sense, fascinated Lilienbloom for a while 
 because of its novelty, and in an enthusiastic 
 article, published in the Hashctchar, he urgent- 
 ly pleaded to carry it into effect. But shortly 
 afterwards he realised the immaturity of such 
 a grand solution. "How foolish I was to write 
 in the Hashachar to buy Palestine !" he 
 exclaimed in one of his letters "Why shall 
 we buy from the Sultan the land which re- 
 quires treasures of gold, and in which success 
 is more than doubtfull, whilst we can dispense 
 with this project. What we have to do is no" 
 to be strangers any longer, and as we gradiiallv 
 return to our ancestral land, we shall never
 
 48 LILIKMJLOOM 
 
 again be strangers ; th;it is the very tiling. 
 \Ye only ought to buy there many portions 
 of ground and settle down, as all other nations 
 in their native land, though many of them 
 are subdued by other government-. Not a 
 (iovernment of our own is our present need, 
 but the citi/enship, the history, the -ettle- 
 inent in the native land for all the nation". 
 
 As all Lilienbloom's thoughts were con- 
 centrated on theJeuish x-ttlenient in PaleMinc, 
 he hid Her/1 a welcome with all his heart 
 and soul. Lilienbloom was not a man of the 
 world, and, like all llussian Jews, oppressed 
 and humbled to the dii-t he placed the utmost 
 confidence in his European co-religionists, 
 who, as the Uussian Jews believe, fully enjoy 
 the common weal. And as dark clouds were 
 continual!) gathering on the Jeui>h hori/on, 
 the Jewish world \\as rn a sudden great 
 events mostly take place unexpectedly en- 
 raptured by a certain phenomenon : there 
 appeared not the richest of the Jewish people, 
 nor the greatest scholar 'of them, but a mere 
 llerzl, a Jew with a soul of a Moses, of a 
 David, who was shocked at the degradation 
 of his people, and in his world-wide grief 
 issued a "Judenstaat". His pamphlet was not 
 a "calling voice in the wilderness" : Jews of 
 high culture and ability, and Jews of wealth
 
 THE ZIONIST 49 
 
 from all parts of the Diaspora enthusiastically 
 adopted this happy solution of the Jewish 
 problem, and Herzl brought his ideal so far 
 that he once declared that the Sultan was 
 willing to sell Palestine to the Jews for a 
 fixed sum of money, but the Zionist Organi- 
 sation could not afford the required sum, and 
 the Jewish nation as a whole did not make 
 the necessary advances to Herzl. 
 
 But could Lilienbloom the great patriot 
 keep himself back from the grand prospect 
 of the new Zionist movement ? Our answer is in 
 the negative. When the first Zionist Conference 
 took place in Russia at Minsk, Lilienbloom 
 being one of the delegates, solemnly pronounced 
 the benediction : "Blessed art thou, O, Lord 
 our God, King of the universe, who hast kept 
 us in life, and hast preserved us, and enabled 
 us to reach this season". In the early stage 
 of the new Zionist movement there was not 
 yet the contrast between "practical and political 
 Zionists", and the greater part of the Russian 
 "Chovevei Zion',, the most oppressed of all 
 Jews in the world, who are left to rely upon 
 vague and remote hopes, could not but bid 
 Herzl welcome, since he had designed a com- 
 plete solution which depended on their own 
 will, and who hinted at some substantial and 
 reliable support from highly esteemed sources.
 
 50 LILIENBLOOM 
 
 As regards the attitude of Acbad Ilaam 
 towards Iler/elian Zionism, which is just tin- 
 reverse of Lilienbloom's, we must give first 
 an account, of course a very brief one because 
 of our limited space, of the chief impedimenta 
 which still continue to hinder the progress 
 of the Zionist movement amoii^- the masses. 
 
 We have already indicated that Her/1 
 once made mention of a very urievou- fact 
 that the Sultan was willing to sell Palestine. 
 but that the Zionist Organisation could not 
 advance the required sum. But why could it 
 not advance this necessary sum? Was it not 
 the most sacred duty of the Zionist Organi- 
 sation to hammer the iron while it was hot, 
 to stir the whole Jewish nation to redeem 
 themselves once for all? However oppressed 
 and degraded we are in Russia and Ilmimania. 
 and notwithstanding the multitude of wretched 
 Jews all over the world, the Jewish nation as 
 a whole could easily have met the redemption 
 with their purse ; but the matter in hand is 
 not a pecuniary question at all: there is a 
 lack of something which is far more vital, 
 of which Herzl himself was at first unconscious. 
 Just after Herzl's "Judenstaat" was translated 
 into Russian the greatest active Zionist in 
 Russia, M. Ussischkin, received a copy of it 
 from his Zionist friends in Vienna with the
 
 THE ZIONIST 51 
 
 request to make his Russian friends acquainted 
 with it. When Ussischkin shortly afterwards 
 came to Vienna and was^^ed to pay a visit 
 to Herzl, Dr. Birnbau asked his opinion 
 about the new star that had appeared on the 
 Jewish horizon. Ussischkin replied : "This man 
 will be of very great use to the Palestinian 
 movement. He will doubtless attract all the 
 Russian Jews and probably will also affect 
 our Western brethren. He is in want only 
 of one thing", which with regard to our in- 
 terests is a great deficiency : he does not know 
 the Jews, and therefore he is sure there are 
 obstacles only outside the Zionist circle, and 
 not within the Zionist circle. But don't open 
 his eyes. It is better that his belief in his 
 undertaking shall be strengthened". 
 
 We are very sorry to say that Ussisch- 
 kin's opinion was infallible. A brief outline 
 of the national life of the Jewish classes will 
 throw some light on that subject. 
 
 The one thing, at once formidable and 
 deplorable, is the indifferentism of the Jews 
 with regard to the Christian attitude towards 
 them. Lilienbloom and some other intelligent 
 and sensible Jews, shocked with the first 
 pogroms, became Zionists ; but what was the 
 result of the false Blood Accusation against 
 the Jews, preached from the Russian parlia-
 
 52 LILIENBLOOM 
 
 mentary tribune ? Could there be a more ap- 
 palling incident than that ? and yet how 
 many Jews are converted by it to Zionism ? 
 Does it not remind us of that obsequious 
 servant who said : "I love my master, my 
 wife, and my children ; I will not go out 
 free", and his master bored his ear with an 
 awl for such degradation ? The heinous, peril- 
 ous, most pernicious indifferentism of t lie- 
 Jews to their slow but inevitable decline and 
 fall I say "inevitable" not because of a ruin 
 predestined by relentless fate, but because of 
 the present grievous circumstances is a crime 
 perpetrated by the well-known Rabbis nothing 
 to say of the minor ones and the so-called 
 Jewish aristocrats. 
 
 The well-known Rabbis, since they are 
 the leaders and representatives of our spiritual 
 life, are guilty of our national wretched): 
 Being alarmed by the first pogroms, and more 
 so after having deeply investigated the root 
 of Antisemitism, Lilienbloom had arrived at 
 the conclusion that besides the hostility, the 
 Jew-baiting, all over Christendom, the Jews 
 as a whole nation will ever fail to retain 
 their pecularities in a pure and original form 
 as long as they continue to live among Christ- 
 ians. Our nation will not only never again 
 produce great men like Moses the lawgiver,
 
 THE ZIONIST 53 
 
 or the prophets, but it will in course of time 
 languish and fade away as an exotic plant 
 transplanted to the North Pole. But we are 
 not beyond recovery : we have but to return 
 to the cradle of our nationality, to Palestine, 
 and there only there we will regain all our 
 lost abilities, and lead a natural life. Thus 
 the trend of all Lilienbloom's thoughts and 
 actions after becoming a Zionist was directed 
 towards the Jewish colonisation in Palestine. 
 And Lilienbloom, as well as the other Zion- 
 ist pioneers, though at first a reformer, almost 
 a cosmopolitan, took the greatest pains for 
 the rescue of our nationality. 
 
 But what have our present great Rabbis, 
 the guardians of our national spirit, done ? 
 When Mendelssohn first brought civilisation 
 into the Jewish world by translating the Bible 
 into German, and by shedding great light 
 on it by his exquisite exegetic interpretations, 
 the^Rabbis were very alarmed because as Dean 
 Milman puts it in a very concise but most 
 striking manner : "Rabbinism was still the 
 stronghold and the source of the general 
 stubborn fanaticism : yet even this stern priest- 
 craft which ruled with its ancient despotism 
 in more barbarous Poland, either lost its 
 weight, or was constrained to accommodate 
 itself to the spirit of the age, in the west
 
 54 LILIKXBLOOM 
 
 of Europe." The Rabbis had reason 
 to be "stern," and even "stubborn fanatio" 
 not "to accommodate themselves to the spirit 
 of the age," for as Milnian himself says: 
 ''Many of the Jewish youth emancipated by 
 his (Mendelssohn's) example from the control 
 of Rabbinism, probably rushed headlong down 
 the precipice of unbelief. I>ut what did the 
 Rabbis then do to keep the Jewish spirit in 
 good preservation? The idea of practical 
 /ionism did not occur to them, although the 
 Jews generally pray daily, and on every occasion, 
 for their restoration to Zion ; but what do 
 the Rabbis do at present when they see- 
 the innumerable apostates, on one hand, and 
 the brutal persecutions and pogroms, on the 
 other hand? Moreover: when the Ulood Ac- 
 cusation, which is a thousand times more for- 
 midable than any pogrom, was recently 
 declared from the Uussian parliamentary 
 tribune, what action did the Rabbis adopt? 
 Yes, they divulged a paper, at once a protest 
 and an apology, wherein they declared that 
 we -are unguilty of drinking Christian blood; 
 but this vindication of theirs was not only 
 unnecessary, but the lowest degradation. The 
 whole civilised world is convinced that that 
 accusation is false, and on the question : 
 When and where do the Jews drink Christian
 
 THE ZIOXIST 55 
 
 blood ? there is but one answer : everywhere 
 and whenever Anti-Semites accuse the Jews 
 of that crime. That Blood Accusation should 
 have impelled the Rabbis to take a position 
 in the foremost ranks of the Zionist camp ; 
 but not only our most orthodox Rabbis, but 
 the most advanced ones, the so-called Chief- 
 Rabbis, who are held in esteem by Christian 
 kings, look upon Zionism with hostility. The 
 advanced Rabbis with a few exceptions 
 only to gain access to the Christian kings 
 and princes and Ministers, obsequiously 
 sacrifice their nationality and declare that 
 the Jews are but a religious cast and not a 
 nation, though the same Rabbis pray daily 
 and pray they must because of their official 
 post for the restoration of our nation to 
 Zion 
 
 The orthodox Rabbis, again, fully agree 
 with some of our greatest antagonists in one 
 point. Amongst the base objections raised 
 against the emancipation of the Jews there 
 is one argument which w-as recently brought 
 forward by a certain "black" Member of the 
 Russian Duma, an argument which Macaulay 
 long ago exposed to ridicule in his ''Civil 
 disabilities of the Jews", In this brilliant 
 essay he says : "There is another argument 
 which we would not willingly treat with levity,
 
 56 LILIENBLOOM 
 
 and which yet we scarcely know how to treat 
 seriously. Scripture, it is said, is full of 
 trrrible denunciations against the Jews. It 
 is foretold that they are to be wanderers, Is 
 it then right to give them a home? It is 
 foretold that they are to be oppressed. Can 
 we with propriety suffer them to be rulers':* 
 To admit them to the rights of citizens is 
 manifestly to insult the Divine oracles". The 
 clear-sighted, kind-hearted and just Macaulay 
 could not imagine all the brutalities and 
 cruelties performed by the most pious Christ - 
 ians in the name of the Bible. Just to give 
 one instance, we shall refer to 
 "Lectures and Essays, first series". 
 tells us in one of these lectures : "Timothy 
 I) wight, President of Yale College, preached 
 a sermon against vaccination. His idea \\as 
 that, if God had desired from all eternity 
 that a certain man should die with the small- 
 pox, it was a frightful sin to avoid and annul 
 that decree by the trick of vaccination". The 
 same morbid logic governs most of the Jew- 
 haters, of course, of the so-called Christian 
 devotees who stick not to the spirit but to the 
 written letter of the Bible. And our Rabbis 
 are inclined to make use of the same logic. 
 
 We could, to our sorrow, easily furnish 
 a big list of the most striking facts which
 
 THE ZIONIST 57 
 
 would prove to be a terrible accusation against 
 the orthodox leaders and Rabbis ; but at 
 present this is not our intention, therefore 
 we shall cut the matter short and direct some 
 attention to the enlightened and rich classes 
 of our co-religionists. 
 
 Every Jew whose mind has not 
 been affected by any assimilative tendencies 
 knows full well that except a territory of 
 our own, and, consequently, a political position 
 in life, we are in all respects a nation with 
 its appropriate attributes : we possess a religion 
 of our own, in which we may assuredly take 
 a pride ; we possess a Bible of our own which 
 has no equal ; we possess a language of our 
 own I mean the Hebrew language ; we 
 possess a history of our own which is the 
 choicest of all histories in the world ; we 
 possess a literature, ancient and modern, and, 
 above all, a Jewish spirit, stamped and 
 fostered by our great prophets. Yes, we arc 
 richly endowed with spiritual treasures, which 
 are overcast with the darkest clouds of the 
 Diaspora, and it needs staunch and sober 
 champions to release it from the cumbersome 
 dregs. But the majority of our enlightened 
 and wealthy Jews are intoxicated with world- 
 ly pleasures and with the European will-o- 
 the-wisp, and thus would heartily sacrifice
 
 58 LILlKNT>LOo\i 
 
 Jill their brethren to the European Moloch, 
 
 After having pointed out some internal 
 obstacles which hamper the progress of the 
 Zionist movement, we shall return to Achad 
 Haam's attitude towards Zionism. Achad 
 Ilaam being himself an aristocrat who never 
 experienced the travails of life like Lilienbloom 
 but whose mental capacity, keen and sound 
 critical insight and his great erudition exceed 
 Lilienbloom X is a Zionist of quite another 
 type. He has never been, like Lilienbloom 
 and Herzl, enthusiastic, Cor his sound mind 
 is always sober, and his conception of Zionism 
 sprang, as a matter of course, not from his 
 inmost feelings, but from his great logical 
 power. Zionism with him was what a mathe- 
 matical problem is to the mathematician : 
 never to be changed or mistaken, lie profoundly 
 traced back the Jewish history from the present 
 day to the restoration from the Babylonian 
 captivity, and perceived all the analogous 
 characteristics of the ancient and modern 
 Sariballats. The ancient ones bitterly and 
 treacherously opposed the efforts of >sehemia 
 to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple : they 
 could not suffer the idea of Jewish renaissance. 
 SaysNehemiah : "When Sanballat the Iloronite 
 and Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite, heard 
 of it, it grieved them exceedingly that there
 
 THE ZIONIST 59 
 
 was come a man to seek the welfare of the 
 children of Israel". The objections of the 
 Sanballats were the following : "But when 
 Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the 
 servant, the Ammonite, and Geshem the 
 Arabian, heard it, they laughted us to scorn, 
 and despised us, and said, What is this thing 
 that ye do ? will ye rebel against the king ?" 
 And again : "And it came to pass that when 
 Sanballat heard that we builded the wall, he 
 was wroth, and took indignation, and mocked 
 the Jews. And he spoke before his brethren 
 and the army of Samaria, and said, What 
 do these feeble Jews ? will they fortify them- 
 selves ? Avill they sacrifice ? will they make 
 an end in a day ? will they revive the stones 
 of the heaps of the rubbish which are 
 burned ?" Our modern Sanballats are not 
 very far from the ancient ones in their 
 attitude towards Zionism. Some of the latter 
 said "Zionism is not compatible with patriot- 
 ism of the individual countries where the 
 Jews live". Others assert that Zionism must 
 strengthen anti-Semitism. Others again ask, 
 what good, from a biological point of view, 
 the segregation of the Jews in Palestine 
 would do to the world ? And again others 
 oppose Zionism on the ground that it was 
 the mission of the Jews to teach humanity
 
 LILIENBLOQM 
 
 pure monotheism and true morality. It is 
 quite unnecessary to furnish here a full list 
 <>*' all the objections of our Saiiliallats to 
 /ionisni. The objections are so numerous 
 and so wicked that they cause the blood of 
 a Jew to freeze on seeing that his >o-called 
 breihren oppose, by all kinds of sophistry 
 and subterfuges, this sole and vital remedy. 
 But Achad Haani from the first moment of 
 his devotion to the Jewish renaissance con- 
 spicuously perceived all the inveterate mala- 
 dies of the Jewish spirit since the Diaspora, 
 and demanded a radical cure, the revival of 
 the Jewish spirit by educating the people 
 anew, according to the national spirit. 
 
 On the one hand Achad Ilaam is quite 
 right demanding first a new education for 
 the Jewish people. The idea of pr<>\iding 
 first a national education for the people and 
 then to shape them into a nation settled 
 permanently in a cultivated land, is not a 
 new one. It is indeed a most striking char- 
 acteristic of our nation. "Whilst the history 
 of nearly every nation in the world begins 
 with the aeqisition of a land, the Jewish 
 people begin their history with the fostering 
 and training of a national spirit. Mo>es the 
 Lawgiver, who brought up in the wildenu 
 new generation, free from bondage and servi-
 
 THE ZIONIST 61 
 
 tude, preceded his disciple Joshua, who strove 
 for the possession of Palestine. The same 
 process was repeated a second time at the 
 Babylonian captivity : Ezra the Scribe, who is 
 rightly held in great esteem as the second 
 Moses by our Talmudists, took much pain to 
 re-educate the Jewish people. It was in olden 
 times, and it is at present our lot to be first 
 captives, slaves, and oppressed, and as such, 
 we must first of all shake off the Golus fetters 
 from us and purify our spirit from all the 
 rubbish and dross of the Diaspora. Always 
 having this in view, Achad Haam can by 
 no means be fully satisfied with the small 
 number of Jewish colonists in Palestine, nor 
 with the grand scheme of Herzl. He is 
 dissatisfied with the first because it does not 
 in any way give a complete remedy of the 
 Jews, nor can he be pleased with the other, 
 however capacious it is, because it is political. 
 
 On the other hand, however, Achad 
 Haam was wrong. Before people, the more so 
 if they were enslaved for a considerable time, 
 can be grouped into a nation, they must first 
 shake off their mental fetters and become 
 enlightened ; but after having once enjoyed 
 all the thrivingness and prosperity of a free 
 and enlightened nation, they unfortunately be- 
 come again enslaved, then however their
 
 62 LILIENBLOOM 
 
 cultured intellect may have sank into pitch- 
 darkness, their release must not start with 
 recultivation only, but it must simultaneously 
 go hand in hand with the restoration of the 
 material welfare. And our Book of Books a "-a in 
 furnishes a remarkable model. "While K/ra 
 the Scribe was the torch-bearer of the Jewish 
 renaissance at the release of the Babylonian 
 captivity, Nehemia, his associate in the sacred 
 work, took the greatest pains to re-edify the 
 walls and the temple of Jerusalem, and to 
 restore the Jews to Palestine. And it could 
 not be otherwise. The same pr< '.as. 
 
 and is still seen in the actions of the < MI 
 Committee, the remnant of the early Chove\ei 
 /ion. The actions of the members of that 
 Committee are the synthesis of two opposite 
 directions which converge in the end to one 
 point. Achad Ilaam. one of the ()deo;i Com- 
 mit tee leaders, is as yet initiating and 
 promoting the revival of the Jewish spirit, 
 and Lilienbloom, the other leader of that 
 Committee, devoted twenty-eight years of his 
 life entirely to the restoration of the Jews in 
 .Palestine. Even on his death-bed (died on 
 l-Ybruary, 1910), he did not depart from his 
 ideal. The last three months of his life he 
 suffered infinitely from a cancer in the 
 oesophagus, and when Ussischkin visited him
 
 f>n 
 
 63 
 
 a few hours before he breathed his last, the 
 dying Lilienbloom asked, what was to be 
 heard of the alteration of the laws and 
 regulations of the Society. He did not ask 
 to provide his family with a livelihood, for 
 he died a beggar, but was anxious to take 
 with him to the grave good tidings about 
 the Society. 
 
 Thus always die the faithful and 
 sincere children of their nation.
 
 The Rebuilding of 
 
 Palestine in its 
 Financial Aspects. 
 
 BY 
 
 I. A. NAIDITCH. 
 
 Published by the Central Office of the Zionist 
 Organisation, London. 
 
 1920.
 
 The Rebuilding of Palestine in its 
 Financial Aspects. 
 
 i. 
 
 The San Remo decision confirming the Balfour Declaration: 
 marks the beginning of a new and bright era in Jewish 
 history. A wave of enthusiasm has swept over the whole of 
 the Jewish people, and at this happy moment there is a strong- 
 manifestation of the Jewish national will to realize the great 
 possibilities that have be.en opened through the international 
 recognition of the Jewish right to a national home in 
 Palestine 
 
 More than two years were suffered to elapse between the 
 Balfour Declaration and the San Remo decision, and during 
 this period the facilities for inaugurating constructive work in- 
 Erez Israel have been extremely limited. It was impossible 
 to start the eagerly awaited mass-immigration. The con- 
 ditions prevailing under military occupation made it 
 impracticable to proceed with constructive work of a more com- 
 prehensive character, work that might have served as a 
 stepping stone towards a new social and political epoch in 
 the country. 
 
 We were obliged to content ourselves with minor colonising 
 work, with preserving and strengthening as far as possible 
 the existing settlement, ar,d waiting until the Peace Con- 
 ference should have settled the international situation. 
 
 At the time when we were forced to remain inactive and 
 possess our souls in patience, powerless to open for the Jewish 
 masses the gates of their national home at that very time 
 there was being enacted in the life of the Jewish people one 
 
 1
 
 THE REBUILDING OF PALESTINE 
 
 of the most gruesome of tragedies. A terrible wave of 
 murderous pogroms was let loose over the whole of Eastern 
 Jewry. In the Ukraine tens of thousands of Jews were 
 massacred, whole Jewish communities were utterly destroyed. 
 The most terrible experiences the Jews went through in 
 the middle ages fade into insignificance in comparison 
 with the unheard-of tortures and massacres which 
 are still being continued to this day before the eyes 
 of the whole European civilised world. In the middle 
 ages the harassed Jews had at least the opportunity 
 to flee from their persecutors and to seek refuge and quiet in 
 other lands. In the present age of European civilisation the 
 persecuted Jew is denied even that favour. All frontiers and 
 countries aie closed to him. Thus are millions of Jews a whole 
 nation forced to remain in the inferno, looking on and 
 waiting for the moment when the executioners will lay their 
 savage hands on them each one waiting for his turn to be 
 massacred. In this way large masses of Jews are perishing 
 from murder and torture, from hunger and want. The whole 
 Jewish nation looks on at these savage scenes with grief and 
 anguish, being powerless to save our unfortunate brothers and 
 sisters. The Jewish people has indeed uttered cries of woe 
 to the whole world. In New York, in London, and in other 
 towns hundreds of thousands of Jews have given unanimous 
 expression to their feelings at huge meetings and protest 
 demonstrations. But these protests have had no influence 
 whatever upon the authors of the massacres, whether they be 
 Ukrainians or Russian volunteers. Jewish blood still 
 continues to flow in torrents. One cry is heard from that 
 inferno, and it is: " We want to flee!" Thus every report 
 and rumour which seemed to open up a prospect of 
 opportunities for emigrating to Erez Israel has caused among 
 these unfortunate masses a tremor of joy and hope. This 
 thought has become for them the only ray of light in their 
 life's darkness, their one and only consolation which gives 
 them the force to live through their present sufferings hoping 
 for better times. 
 
 One thing is quite clear to all of us : we shall only be able 
 to bring speedy help to our unfortunate Jewish masses when
 
 IN ITS FINANCIAL ASPECTS 
 
 we have created the conditions for enabling hundreds of 
 thousands of Jews to emigrate in the near future. It is 
 therefore of material importance for us to know in which way 
 Zionism can participate in the solution of that problem. 
 There is no doubt that the Jewish masses expect help from 
 Zionism. Zionism, it is true, cannot be applied as a first-aid 
 in Jewish catastrophes, but it can and must create now a 
 haven of refuge for that section of the Jewish people which 
 sees in emigration the sole hope of its existence. The course 
 before us is therefore clear. If we want to bring speedy help 
 to the Jewish people and to realise their hopes for an assured 
 future in their national home, then we must do everything 
 possible in order to set on foot in the near future a mass- 
 immigration into Palestine. We are standing now on the 
 threshold of the realisation of the Zionist ideal. The glad 
 tidings of the decision of the Peace Conference to make 
 Palestine the national home of the Jewish people brings us 
 face to face with tremendous possibilities. Before long 
 the country will be opened for a great stream of immigration. 
 We shall be confronted by the pressing question of how to 
 commence the realisation of our plans, and thus bring about 
 the deliverance of our nation and our land. 
 
 Xow, when the Balfour Declaration has become part of the 
 international Peace Treaty, when Erez Israel has been 
 publicly and legally recognised as the national home of the 
 Jewish people now more than ever there rests upon us the 
 duty of reminding our brethren that fundamentally our 
 future depends on the creative and constructive forces which 
 reside in ourselves. Xo official recognition will by itself 
 build up our land if we ourxelve* do not mobilise all our forces 
 and begin to work out our national salvation, regardless of the 
 sacrifice involved. Xo outside power can restore and save 
 a people unless that people itself utilises to the full its moral 
 and financial resources. We must put our shoulders to the 
 wheel and not remain merely passive. The Jewish public 
 must realise that it rests mainly with itself to turn the 
 decision of the Peace Conference from a formula into an 
 accomplished fact.
 
 THK REBUILDING OF PALESTINE 
 
 II. 
 
 Bearing this carefully in mind we must boldly face the 
 following- facts. First, all projects for the re-construction of 
 Erez Israel by means of a gradual and very cautious immigra- 
 tion must be abandoned. The masses fleeing from the lands 
 of slaughter in Eastern Europe will not pay regard to any 
 obstacles or any warnings against immigration. There remains, 
 therefore, only one course which our national work must now 
 follow, namely, the organising of mass-immigration. 
 
 A second consideration to be faced is the financial problem. 
 In former days, in our financial schemes regarding Palestine, 
 an important part was played by Jewish capital in the 
 Eastern countries. We know well from abundant instances 
 what great monetary sacrifices Eastern Jewry was ready 
 to make in the past for the restoration of Palestine. But the 
 sums amassed in those countries, in so far as they have not 
 been plundered and dissipated, are at the present European 
 rates of exchange almost valueless. Hence the greater 
 portion of the Jewish people is not in a position to take any 
 serious financial part in the building up of our country. 
 These two facts we have to take into consideration when we 
 come to form our schemes of work for the near future. 
 
 The programme of our national undertakings, the details 
 of the great public works which, it will be possible to 
 execute by means of the sums of money to be mentioned 
 later on all this may be left to our experts and 
 our authorities. Here I should like to say a few 
 words on tlie difficult problem of our finance and the way to 
 solve it. In order to create in Palestine the necessary con- 
 ditions for carrying through a yearly immigration into 
 the country of some tens of thousands of Jews, it is necessary,, 
 according to the calculations of our experts, to create a fund 
 of 25 million pounds sterling. One of the most burning 
 questions for us therefore musfe be, how can this great sum 
 be raised ? For the solving of this problem two main proposals 
 have so far been put forward. One school maintains that 
 the sum can be raised only by means of a national loan ; 
 whilst another body of opinion advocates as the only means
 
 IN ITS FINANCIAL ASPECTS 
 
 likely to succeed an appeal for a national voluntary contribu- 
 tion. Let us consider these two proposals. 
 
 The idea of a national loan is a natural and logical one 
 for a people which lives on its own soil. Such a people possesses 
 numerous assets. It has at its disposal a variety of taxes and 
 other national funds. Mortgaging all these assets or part of 
 them as security or guarantee, a people living under such normal 
 conditions can without difficulty raise national loans ; 
 without such guarantees public loans can hardly be 
 raised anywhere. We must then ask whether we are in a 
 position to fulfil in Palestine these conditions. A moment's 
 reflection will show that the answer is in the negative. Our 
 only national assets in Palestine are at present the pieces of 
 land which are in the possession of the Jewish National Fund. 
 Apart from the fact that the statutes of the Jewish National 
 Fund forbid the mortgaging of its properties and farms, 
 their number is too small and they are altogether inadequate 
 to form the necessary security for any public loan worth 
 mentioning. 
 
 One of the most important elements in any national loan is 
 the punctual annual payment of interest. Should we be in 
 a position to fulfil this condition? Even the strongest sup- 
 porters of the idea of a national loan openly admit that before 
 the lapse of some twenty years we cannot reckon on our possess- 
 ing the means to pay up the interest, and it is a fact, known to 
 any one who is versed in the history of public loans, that 
 whenever the interest is not paid in the course of the first ten 
 years, the capital also may then safely be considered as lost. 
 
 But leaving on one side the question of interest, let us ask 
 whether we shall be able to pay off the capital itself in the 
 course of the first ten years. The answer to this question will 
 also be, No. We must not forget that the first portion of 
 the national loan will have to be applied to undertakings 
 which will not bring in any return in the shape of income and 
 which will simply swallow up large portions of the capital. The 
 large Jewish masses which will immigrate into Palestine will 
 have to bring into cultivation lands hitherto uncultivated, 
 which will only begin to yield their harvests after the lapse of 
 some years. Nor must it be forgotten that we are setting
 
 THE REBUILDING OF PALESTINE 
 
 about the reconstruction of the country at a time of great 
 national crisis everywhere, and of conditions of great scarcity, 
 which are bound to have an adverse effect on the capital of 
 the loan. We have to build a vast number of houses for the 
 labourers, we must have an enormous quantity of machinery 
 and working implements, and large quantities of raw material 
 for building and other purposes, all of which have now risen 
 enormously in price. With such huge expenses facing us it 
 will easily be seen what a tremendous responsibility is 
 incurred in applying national moneys to such purposes, no 
 matter how strong are the pledges given for their repayment. 
 The belief that with the magic watchword " national loan " 
 we shall win the ready sympathy of the people and thus 
 quickly obtain the necessary amount, is a mistake. The 
 moneyed Jews will not look seriously upon a proposition, 
 which, while calling itself a loan, does not offer to pay 
 any interest, and, as regards the capital, gives only a 
 promise of repayment after a score or more years. They will 
 bring forward all sorts of arguments to show that the whole 
 scheme only aims at raising a small charity subscription 
 under the mask of a loan which is not to be taken seriously. 
 Such a view and such an attitude on the part of Jewish 
 financial circles is bound to cause great harm to the national 
 work, as well as to the very idea of a national loan harm 
 which perhaps it will not be possible to repair for many years. 
 
 The idea of a national loan would certainly be received 
 with enthusiasm among the Jewish masses. The 
 question is only whether it is morally right to collect large 
 sums from the poor Jewish masses on the basis of promises 
 the fulfilment of which cannot be guaranteed. 
 
 A national loan we must have eventually, and probably it 
 will be very successful, but the time for it has not yet come; 
 we shall have it after some years, after we have created in 
 our land normal economic conditions. Should we succeed in 
 the course of a few years in creating a fairly large number of 
 economic assets, such as railways, ports, electrical power 
 stations and large cultivated areas which will belong to the 
 whole Jewish community -then only shall we have the 
 natural and normal conditions which will enable us to raise
 
 IN ITS FINANCIAL ASPECTS 
 
 loans. We shall then have a notional estate which we shall 
 be able to offer wholly or partially as guarantee in the same 
 manner as other financially sound and solvent nations. We 
 must thus renounce for the present all the beautiful and 
 romantic national appeals which might be based 
 on the proclamation of a national loan ; we 
 must postpone that project for a later period. 
 There now remains for us only a more modest way: to 
 appeal to every Jewish heart, to every Jew who has not yet 
 lost his connection with his people, that he should bring a 
 money-sacrifice for the deliverance of his people. We shall 
 be able to say with perfect truth and a clear conscience to 
 every Jew that we do not appeal to him for charity ; that he is 
 really being asked to help in creating our first national estate 
 in our historical home. With this voluntarily-raised national 
 capital we shall be able to bring to fruition the mighty scheme 
 of work in Palestine which will enrich our people with valuable 
 economic assets and extensive possessions. This people's con- 
 tribution is for ?/, therefore, the first, necessary condition 
 for the succexsful raising of our future national loans. 
 
 In order to initiate the work of reconstruction in Palestine 
 we must, as already mentioned, according to the views of our 
 experts, possess a capital of not less than 25 million sterling. 
 With that capital we shall be in a position to bring over 
 yearly into Palestine some tens of thousands of Jews. We 
 are now confronted with the question : how will our people 
 respond to this demand ? Is there a possibility of obtaining 
 from the Jewish people such a colossal sum ? 
 
 To such questions we can confidently give the following 
 answer : the Jewish people will realise the significance of the 
 present historical moment and will exert all its powers and 
 use all its resources in order to fulfil its duty both on humane 
 and national grounds. Every thinking Jew understands 
 to-day that it is his future which is at stake. An altogether 
 different conception of national duty has dawned upon that, 
 portion of our people which has been spared from the over- 
 whelming destruction that has overtaken Eastern Jewry. We 
 should have despaired of ourselves if we could have imagined 
 for a single moment that the awful tragedies which have
 
 THE REBUILDING OF PALESTINE 
 
 unrolled themselves before our eyes in the life of the Jews 
 did not stir profoundly the heart and conscience of every 
 thinking and feeling Jew. 
 
 There are two facts in connection with our work which 
 speak in clear and unmistakable language to the Jewish heart 
 and the Jewish mind. The first is the international recogni- 
 tion of our claim to Erez Israel, and the second is the 
 desperate situation in which millions of our people find 
 themselves. 
 
 Here is a people which has dreamt for close on two 
 thousand years of its old home. Its attachment to its land 
 Las been through these long years the great creative idea 
 which has bound up its past with its present and future. 
 The thought of the land has been the fountain of its comfort 
 and hope, of its prayers and tears, its poetry and literature, 
 art and science, of its passions and strivings. The thought of 
 Erez Israel is an immovable and indestructible national ideal 
 in Judaism, it is with us the eternal-idea, the quintessence of 
 the Jewish national psychology. For two thousand years the 
 people made no progress towards the realisation of its hopes, 
 it saw its most sacred ideals reviled and despised and its most 
 natural and human home-instincts ruthlessly suppressed. 
 That same reviled and humiliated people lives to-day to enjoy 
 an extraordinary moral victory, a triumph for its national 
 strivings and for its ideals of freedom. The whole civilised 
 world, nearly all the large and small kingdoms and republics 
 from Europe and America to China and Japan, proclaim 
 and recognise the right of the Jewish nation to its old 
 historical home. To any nation which still has a body and 
 soul, whose national existence is not yet wholly extinct, such 
 an occasion would be bound to bring a period of spiritual 
 revival, of political rejuvenation, and of self-sacrifice and 
 enthusiasm. We have no doubt that the Jewish people will 
 rise to the occasion, that it will turn with avidity to the new- 
 chapter in its history, and respond worthily to the call made 
 on it. 
 
 .Is it still necessary to point out the tremendous importance 
 which the Palestine question has for the oppressed and 
 despairing Jewish masses? There does not exist now one
 
 IN ITS FINANCIAL ASPECTS 
 
 .single circle in Jewry which, has not the strongest sympathy 
 with the sufferings of our brethren and the most sincere 
 desire to alleviate as far as in it lies the sad lot of our 
 tortured brothers and sisters. Never was the conscience of 
 Jewry so keenly aroused as now. The idea of helping and 
 rsaving our pogrom victims has become axiomatic in the 
 Jewish mind ; it has become the foundation of the Jewish 
 mass-psychology. At a moment when hundreds of thpusands 
 of Jews are standing and waiting with the greatest impatience 
 for the first opportunity to escape from their murderers and 
 torturers, at a time when all countries are closed to them, 
 every Jew will understand what it means to create a refuge 
 for tens of thousands of these . unfortunate sufferers. A 
 prospect of doing such service cannot fail to interest deeply 
 very Jewish heart. 
 
 Relying on these facts, we are able to demand from the 
 public that they should give us the help we require. We have 
 a. right to demand from each Jew a large and heavy monetary 
 sacrifice. The response to our demand can be given in one 
 word : Tithe. Tithe from the whole people ! Every Jew 
 -should surrender a tenth part of his capital he should offer 
 it on the altar of his people's deliverance. The institution 
 of the tithe is one of the most beautiful national institutions 
 of the society of ancient Israel. Let us resuscitate this 
 beautiful idea, and by bringing all our energy and organising 
 power to bear on its realisation make it into one of our most 
 potent social and national factors. This is the answer which 
 must now be given for the sake of our people and our land. 
 
 It is easy to prove from numerous achievements performed 
 in England and America that the Jewish people is able to 
 create a gigantic fund of this kind for a great national cause. 
 Take as an instance what happened in the years of war 1914- 
 1915, at the time of the terrible expulsions from Lithuania 
 .and Poland. A national catastrophe overwhelmed the Jewish 
 masses; tens of thousands of Jews, driven from home and 
 seeking refuge, were in the direst distress. A group of Jewish 
 national and communal workers realised that the critical 
 moment called for extraordinary measures in order to provide 
 .a relief which should be at all adequate, for the concentration
 
 THE REBUILDING OF PALESTINE 
 
 of all forces and for a vigorous propaganda among the Jewish 
 population. That group confined itself to one section of the- 
 work the organising of the three Jewish communities cf 
 Moscow, Petrograd and Kieff. It called upon those three 
 communities to bind themselves to pay out in the course of 
 three years ten million roubles. That sum, according to the- 
 then normal exchange of the rouble, was regarded by almost 
 everyone as extraordinarily large, almost fantastic. As a 
 matter of fact, those three towns have in the course of three- 
 years contributed more than ten million roubles. The reason 
 was that the Jews were addressed in their own language ; it 
 was made clear to them that it was not a question of charity,. 
 that the existence of large poitions of our nation was at stake~ 
 The Jewish population, understood its duty. 
 
 When we ask ourselves the question, what has been effected' 
 with this huge colossal sum and other similar sums, the- 
 answer is one which we cannot give without sorrow. It is true 
 that a great thing has been accomplished by this means. Tens, 
 of thousands of Jewish refugees have received a dry crust of 
 bread, sufficient to save them at least from death by starva- 
 tion. Xo constructive work, however, has been initiated with 
 this money. We have not built for the unfortunate Jewish 
 masses one single house ; nor have we created for them a 
 refuge of any sort or kind, where they could find protection 
 and a little rest from their sufferings and persecutions. The- 
 sum of ten million roubles which was then contributed by 
 only three Jewish communities represented a significant per 
 cent, of the 25 million fund which the Jewish nation has need 
 of at the present moment. Can any reasonable man doubt that 
 the Jewish people will realise its duty to-day, when our 
 tragedy is incomparably greater and more terrible than in 
 the first years of the war, and when the appeal is made on 
 behalf of a great constructive national work of building 
 houses, providing land and work for hundreds of thousands- 
 of Jews, and laying the foundation stone for the free Jewish 
 national home in its own land ? It is inconceivable that it 
 should not do so. If we only know how to touch the Jewish, 
 people at the right spot, to kindle in every Jewish home a 
 flame of love for the faith of our people, then will the whole> 
 
 10
 
 of Jewry without distinction of rank or class rise to the 
 occasion and fulfil its great duty. 
 
 III. 
 
 Our programme is thus clear. Our task at the present 
 moment is to raise the initial capital, to create the fund which 
 shall be the basis of constructive work in the land, which shall 
 attract Jewish capital and labour, and open the new era of 
 Jewish economic and political life. 
 
 The collections for this fund must be made in different 
 forms according to circumstances ; but these must all be 
 varieties of one form the national tax. And the chief and 
 most prominent form to be taken by the national tax must be 
 the characteristically Jewish one of tithe. Every wealthy Jew 
 must give up a tenth of his capital as an offering to the Jewish 
 nation. 
 
 In the enforcing of this claim various difficulties may 
 present themselves. First, many Jewish merchants and others- 
 may be afraid that payment of'the tithe, by indicating the 
 amount of their capital, might give away the secret of their 
 business. We will therefore draw up our tithe-claim in such 
 a way as not to leave room for any anxiety on this score. We 
 will ask for a tenth of all capita,! nx a minimum, but it will 
 be understood that the sums contributed may amount to- 
 more than that proportion. In this way the payment of the 
 tax will not serve to indicate the actual amount of the 
 capital of the payer. 
 
 Many persons, with all goodwill, will not be in a position 
 to pay their tithe in a lump sum. Especially must one make 
 allowance for merchants who, though well-to-do, cannot with- 
 draw a tenth of their capital from their business without 
 sei'iously jeopardising its stability. It is therefore necessary 
 in such cases that payment of the tithe should extend over 
 a period ranging from 3 to 5 years. It must be understood, 
 however, that the engagement to pay must be made in a 
 negotiable form, drawn up in accordance with the laws of 
 the country, so that it may be possible to discount the obliga- 
 tion without any difficulty. 
 
 11
 
 THE REBUILDING OF PALESTINE 
 
 There are some who may consider a system of deferred 
 payment to be not conducive to the security and progress 
 of our Palestine undertakings. This is not the case. It 
 must be borne in mind in the first instance that the fund of 
 '25,000,000 is not intended as the working capital of such 
 agencies as will actually undertake public works. For this 
 purpose special concerns will have to be formed, probably 
 in connection with the enlarged Jewish Colonial Trust. The 
 '25,000,000 fund will only be used for work of national 
 importance which cannot be entrusted to these companies. It 
 is moreover a well-known fact that in business the greatest 
 operations are very often carried through on a basis of long- 
 term credits, extending over a number of years. All that 
 is essential is that the security shall be adequately guaranteed. 
 In this way the system of deferred tithe can be utilised for our 
 immediate work. 
 
 For the tithing of the large Jewish middle class a different 
 method will have to be adopted. The Jewish middle class, 
 Avhich forms a considerable portion of the Jewish population, 
 will respond with peculiar readiness to this appeal, and will 
 without doubt be eager to bear its share in the tithe payment. 
 But we cannot call on it for payment in the form of a capital 
 tax, for the reason that its members mostly have no capital. 
 In dealing with them we shall have to introduce a system of 
 income-tax. The tithe-tax will here be applied in a graduated 
 scale, ranging from one to ten per cent., according to the 
 occupation and income of the payer. The division of the 
 tithe-tax into two classes, a capital tax and an income tax, is 
 a. necessary one. In the case of the Jewish capitalists and 
 -wealthy merchants, the taxing of income is altogether 
 impracticable, for the reason that no merchant would be 
 willing to disclose the amount of his income, and he will 
 therefore prefer to fulfil his duty by means of a single pay- 
 ment. But there is yet another important reason why it is 
 urgently necessary to insist on a capital tax; namely, that 
 the programme of our Palestine work demands the raising of 
 the largest possible sum of ready money in the shortest time. 
 Our building operations cannot wait; they cannot be post- 
 poned for years, till we have collected the large sums required 
 
 12
 
 IN ITS FINANCIAL ASPECTS 
 
 solely by means of income tax. The great work of national 
 self-help must be organised as soon as possible, and we must 
 get our means and resources from whatever quarter we 
 possibly can. 
 
 Ignoring the fact that it is a present from the people for 
 the people that we are asking for, we must incessantly 
 emphasise the national character of the tithe idea. The whole 
 propaganda must be based on the clear understanding of the 
 Jewish masses that this is no question of charity, and not 
 even a scheme of help in the ordinary sense of the word. We 
 must proclaim the tithe to be our first national subscription. 
 A new idea and a new will must animate all circles of our 
 people. Being regarded as the chosen instrument for laying 
 the foundation of a new epoch in Jewish history, the 
 tithe will become the magic watchword which will awaken 
 the latent energy of our people, and exhibit in all its 
 greatness the creative spirit of Judaism, still young in spite 
 of years. 
 
 The Zionists have now a great and noble duty. We do not 
 address ourselves to the Zionists \>nly, we appeal to the whole 
 nation. Still we do look to the Zionists at the present 
 moment to come forward more boldly and prominently. It is 
 incumbent now upon every Zionist to act as a pioneer of the 
 tithe idea. By their deeds and sacrifices the Zionists must 
 now serve as an example for the whole nation. They must 
 become the champions and the standard-bearers of the idea 
 of the national subscription. Through devoted labour and 
 through financial sacrifice they must show to all sections of 
 our people the spirit in which a work of such magnitude as 
 our historic national and social revival must be approached. 
 
 The idea of national self-help, conceived on so grandiose 
 and imposing a scale, will inspire all sections of our people with 
 the spirit of organisation and the desire for self-liberation. It 
 will give rise to a national effort which will instil fresh 
 courage and hope into our downcast and despairing Jewish 
 masses. The realisation of the tithe idea will be one of our 
 greatest historical demonstrations, and is bound to have 
 also an immense political importance in the Jewish as well 
 as in the non-Jewish world. 
 
 13
 
 THE REBUILDING OF PALESTINE 
 
 Work and propaganda in connection with the 25 million 
 fund will occupy all our energies, and will thus cause a 
 slackening in other activities on behalf of important Palestine 
 tasks which are now being prosecuted. First and foremost 
 the Jewish National Fund will be strongly affected. This 
 Fund is certainly one of our most attractive and successful 
 institutions, and we must see that it does not suffer in any 
 way through the competition. Of course, the general 
 activity on behalf of the Jewish National Fund and the 
 money collections will be continued as usual. But in spite 
 of that, many forces will have to be diverted from it. Every 
 effort will be made to prevent any encroachment upon the 
 activities of the Jewish National Fund, but there is some fear 
 lest the energy put into the 25,000,000 fund collection may 
 cause detriment to the sister fund. It will therefore be 
 necessary to come to a working arrangement with the National 
 Fund, under which it will be guaranteed a special income 
 from the 25 million fund. 
 
 We consider that a payment of ten per cent, will satisfy 
 all friends and co-workers of the Jewish National Fund, whose 
 role in Palestine work is already a considerable one and 
 will be very much greater in future. 
 
 The 25 million fund will also have to supply our general 
 Palestine budget. At present the Zionist Organisation 
 has to cover the budget of general Jewish institutions, as for 
 instance schools, hospitals, orphanages, aged people's homes, 
 and a great number of other very important social and 
 charitable institutions. This is not a proper system of manage- 
 ment. A strict separation will have to be effected between 
 the budget of the Zionist organisation and of the other tasks 
 which are of a general Jewish nature. The budget of the 
 Zionist Organisation will have to be covered by the Shekolim 
 and will have no relation to the 25 million fund. 
 
 Nor must the work for raising the 25 million fund be 
 allowed to continue indefinitely. It must be limited to a 
 definite period 1 of time, as is the case with every national 
 subscription. The whole work must be carried through and 
 closed within a definite period. For that purpose we will fix 
 the term of a year. The national collection should begin 
 
 14
 
 IN ITS FINANCIAL ASPECTS 
 
 within a few weeks of the granting of the Mandate to 
 England and should close at the forthcoming Zionist Congress. 
 
 For that period we must prepare with all our forces. These 
 we shall find in all sections and strata of our people. Our 
 aim being a national demonstration, such as we have rarely 
 given before, of our creative and constructive powers, we will 
 boldly call for a national mobilisation of all our potential 
 workers in all Jewish towns and communities throughout the 
 world. The whole nation must be called up in the great 
 hour. We are confident that the people will realise that now 
 is the time when it must bestir itself and take its fate into its 
 own hands. 
 
 Our generation has been privileged to undertake the great 
 .and enviable task of laying the foundation for a new free 
 life for our people. This moment of deliverance has been the 
 dream of hundreds of generations. May the generation 
 which has lived to see and to bring to fruition the long-desired 
 epoch of deliverance prove through its works that it is worthy 
 of this privilege. May it be indelibly recorded in the history 
 of our people that the great moment found a generation 
 worthy of it. 
 
 15
 
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