ZIONISM PAGE IV

            ADDRESS AT THE FIRST ZIONIST CONGRESS
           Basle, August 29, 1897

           Max Nordau

            1897 

        ADDRESS AT THE SIXTH ZIONIST CONGRESS Basle, August 24, 1903

        Auto-Emancipation Leon Pinsker  1882

       The Picture in 1907 Dr. Arthur Ruppin February 27, 1908

         ADDRESS AT THE FIRST ZIONIST CONGRESS
        Basle, August 29, 1897

         Max Nordau

The special reporters for individual countries will depict for you the condition of their brethren in the different states. Some of their reports have been submitted to me; others not. But even of the countries about which I learnt nothing from my collaborators, I have, partly from personal observation, partly from other sources, obtained some knowledge, so that I may, without presumption, undertake the task of reporting on the general situation of the Jews at the end of the 19th century.

This picture can, on the whole, be painted only in one colour. Everywhere, where the Jews have settled in comparatively large numbers among the nations, Jewish misery prevails. It is not the ordinary misery which is probably the unalterable fate of mankind. It is a peculiar misery, which the Jews do not suffer as human beings, but as Jews, and from which they would be free, were they not Jews.

Jewish misery has two forms, the material and the moral. In Eastern Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia -- those regions which shelter the vast majority, probably nine-tenths of our race -- the misery of the Jews is understood literally. It is the daily distress of the body, anxiety for every following day, the painful fight for the maintenance of a bare existence. In Western Europe, the struggle for existence has been made somewhat lighter for the Jews, although of late the tendency has become visible even there to render it difficult for them again. The question of food and shelter, the question of the security of life, tortures them less; there the misery is moral.

The Western Jew has bread, but man does not live on bread alone. The life of the Western Jew is no longer endangered through the enmity of the mob; but bodily wounds are not the only wounds that cause pain, and from which one may bleed to death. The Western Jew meant emancipation to be real liberation, and hastened to draw the final conclusions there from. But the nations made him fear that he erred in being so heedlessly logical. The magnanimous laws, magnanimously lays down the theory of equality of rights. But governments and Society exercise the practice of equality of rights in a manner which renders it the same mockery as did the appointment of Sancho Panza to the splendid position of Viceroy of the Island of Barataria. The Jew says naively: "I am a human being, and I regard nothing human as alien," the answer he meets is: "Softly, your rights as a man must be enjoyed cautiously; you lack the right notion of honour, feeling for duty, morality, patriotism, idealism. You must, therefore, hold aloof from all vocations which make possession of these qualifications as conditions."

No-one has ever tried to justify these terrible accusations by facts. At most, now and then, an individual Jew, the scum of his race and of mankind, is triumphantly cited as an example, and contrary to all laws of logic, the example is made general. This tendency is psychologically correct. It is the practice of human intellect to invent for the prejudices, which sentiment has called forth, a cause seemingly reasonable. Probably wisdom has long been acquainted with this psychological law, and puts it in fairly expressive words: "If you have to drown a dog," says the proverb, "you must first declare him to be mad." All kinds of vices are falsely attributed to the Jews, because one wishes to convince himself that he has a right to detest them. But the pre-existing sentiment is the detestation of the Jews.

I must utter the painful word. The nations which emancipated the Jews have mistaken their own feelings. In order to produce its full effect, emancipation should first have been completed in sentiment before it was declared by law. But this was not the case. The history of Jewish emancipation is one of the most remarkable pages in the history of European thought. The emancipation of the Jews was not the consequence of the conviction that grave injury had been done to a race, that it had been treated most terribly, and that it was time to atone for the injustice of a thousand years; it was solely the result of the geometrical mode of thought of French rationalism of the 18th century. This rationalism was constructed by the aid of pure logic, without taking into account living sentiments and the principles of the certainty of mathematical action; and it insisted upon trying to introduce these creations of pure intellect into the world of reality. The emancipation of the Jews was an automatic application of the rationalistic method. The philosophy of Rousseau and the encyclopedists had led to the declaration of human rights. Out of this declaration, the strict logic of the men of the Great Revolution deduced Jewish emancipation. They formulated a regular equation: Every man is born with certain rights; the Jews are human beings, consequently the Jews are born to own the rights of man. In this manner, the emancipation of the Jews was pronounced, not through a fraternal feeling for the Jews, but because logic demanded it. Popular sentiment rebelled, but the philosophy of the Revolution decreed that principles must be placed higher than sentiment. Allow me then an expression which implies no ingratitude. The men of 1792 emancipated us only for the sake of principle.

As the French Revolution gave to the world the metric and the decimal systems, so it also created a kind of normal spiritual system which other countries, either willingly or unwillingly, accepted as the normal measure for their State of culture. A country which claimed to be at the height of culture had to possess several institutions created or developed by the Great Revolution; as, for instance, representation of the people, freedom of the press, Jury, division of powers, etc. Jewish emancipation was also one of these indispensable articles of a highly cultured state; just as a piano must not be absent from a drawing-room even if not a single member of the family can play it. In this manner Jews were emancipated in Europe not from an inner necessity, but in imitation of a political fashion; not because the people had decided from their hearts to stretch out a brotherly hand to the Jews, but because leading spirits had accepted a certain cultured idea which required that Jewish emancipation should figure also in the Statute book.

Only to one country does this not apply -- England. The English people does not allow its progress to be forced upon it from without; it develops progress from its inner self. In England emancipation is a truth. It is not alone written, it is living. It had already been completed in the heart before legislation expressly confirmed it. Out of respect to tradition, one hesitated in England to abolish the legal restrictions of the Nonconformists, at a time when the English had already for more than an age made no difference in Society between Christians and Jews. Because, a great nation, with a most intense spiritual life, does not allow itself to be guided by any spiritual current or blunder of the time, in England anti-Semitism is only noticeable in a few instances, and then only it has the importance of an imitation of Continental fashion.

Emancipation has totally changed the nature of the Jew, and made him another being. The Jew without any rights did not love the prescribed yellow Jewish badge on his coat, because it was an official invitation to the mob to commit brutalities, and justified them in anticipation. But voluntarily he did much more to make his separate nature more distinct even than the yellow badge could do.' the authorities did not shut him up in a ghetto, he built one for himself. He would dwell with his own, and would have no other relations but those of business with Christians. The word "Ghetto" is today associated with feelings of shame and humiliation. But the Ghetto, whatever may have been the intentions of the people who have created it, was for the Jew of the past not a prison, but a refuge. It is only historical truth if we say that only the Ghetto gave Jews the possibility to survive the terrible persecutions of the Middle Ages. In the Ghetto, the Jew had his own world; it was to him the sure refuge which had for him the spiritual and moral value of a parental home. Here were associates by whom one wished to be valued, and also could be valued; here was the public opinion to be acknowledged by which was the aim of the Jew's ambition. To be held in low esteem by that public opinion was the punishment for unworthiness. Here all specific Jewish qualities were esteemed, and through their special development that admiration was to be obtained which is the sharpest spur to the human mind. What mattered it that outside the Ghetto was despised that which within it was praised? The opinion of the outside world had no influence, because it was the opinion of ignorant enemies. One tried to please one's co-religionists, and their applause was the worthy contentment of his life. So did the Ghetto Jews live, in a moral respect, I a real full life. Their external situation was insecure, often seriously endangered. But internally they achieved a complete development of their specific qualities. They were human beings in harmony, who were not in want of the elements of normal social life. They also felt instinctively the whole importance of the Ghetto for their inner life, and therefore, they had the one sole care: to make its existence secure through invisible walls which were much thicker and higher than the stone walls that visibly shut them in. All Jewish buildings and habits unconsciously pursued only one purpose: to keep up Judaism by separation from the other people and to make the individual Jew constantly aware of the fact that he was lost and would perish if he gave up his specific character. This impulse for separation gave him also most of the ritual laws, which for the everyday Jew is identical with his faith itself; and also other purely external, often accidental, marks of difference in attire and habits received a religious sanction only in order that they might be maintained the more surely. Kaftan, Peoth, Fur Cap and Jargon have apparently nothing to do with religion. But they feel that these ties alone offer them connection with the community without which an individual, morally, intellectually, and at last physically, cannot exist for any length of time.

That was the psychology of the Ghetto Jew. Now came Emancipation. The law assured the Jews that they were full citizens of their country. In its honeymoon it evoked also from Christians feelings which warmed and purified the heart. The Jews hastened in a species of intoxication, as it were, to burn their boars. They had now another home; they no longer needed a Ghetto; they had now other connections and were no longer forced to exist only with their co-religionists. Their instinct of self-preservation fitted itself immediately and completely to the new conditions of existence. Formerly this instinct was only directed toward a sharp separation. Now they sought after the closest association and assimilation in place of the distinction, which was their salvation. There followed a true mimicry, and for one or two ages the Jew was allowed to believe that he was only German, French, Italian, and so forth.

All at once, twenty years ago, after a slumber of thirty to sixty years, anti-Semitism once more broke out from the innermost depths of the nations, and revealed to the highest of the mortified Jews his real situation, which he had no longer seen. He was still allowed to vote for members of parliament, but he was himself excluded from the clubs and the meetings of his Christian fellow-countrymen. He was allowed to go wherever he pleased, but everywhere he met with the inscription: "No Jews admitted." He had still the right of discharging all the duties of a citizen, but the nobler rights which are granted to talent and for achievements in those rights were absolutely denied to him.

Such is the existing liberation of the emancipated Jew in Western Europe. He has given up his specifically Jewish character; but the peoples let him feel that he has not acquired their special characteristics. He has Lost the home of the Ghetto; but the land of his birth is denied to him as his home. His countrymen repel him when he wishes to associate with them. He has no ground under his feet and he has no community to which he belongs as a full member. With his Christian countrymen neither his character nor his intentions can reckon on justice, still less on kindly feeling. With his Jewish countrymen he has lost touch: necessarily he feels that the world hates him and he sees no place where he can find warmth when he seeks for it. This is the moral Jewish misery which is more bitter than the physical, because it befalls men who are differently situated, prouder and possess the finer feelings.

Before the emancipation the Jew was a stranger among the peoples, but he did not for a moment think of making a stand against his fate. He felt himself as belonging to a race of his own, which had nothing in common with the other people of the country. The emancipated Jew is insecure in his relations with his fellow-beings, timid with strangers, suspicious even toward the secret feeling of his friends. His best powers are exhausted in the suppression, or at least in the difficult concealment of his own real character. For he fears that this character might be recognized as Jewish, and he has never the satisfaction of showing himself as he is in all his thoughts and sentiments. He becomes an inner cripple, and externally unreal, and thereby always ridiculous and hateful to all higher feeling men, as is everything that is unreal. All the better Jews in Western Europe groan under this, or seek for alleviation. They no longer possess the belief which gives the patience necessary to bear sufferings, because it sees in them the will of a punishing but not loving God.

They no longer hope in the advent of the Messiah, who will one day raise them to Glory. Many try to save themselves by flight from Judaism. But racial anti-Semitism denies the power of change by baptism, and this mode of salvation does not seem to have much prospect. It is but a slight recommendation for those concerned, who are mostly without belief (I am not speaking naturally of the minority of true believers) that they enter with a blasphemous lie into the Christian community. In this way there arises a new Marrano, who is worse than the old. The latter had an idealistic direction -- a secret desire for truth or a heartbreaking distress of conscience, and they often sought for pardon and purification through Martyrdom.

The new Marranos leave Judaism with rage and bitterness, but in their innermost heart, although not acknowledged by themselves, they carry with them their own humiliation, their own dishonesty, and hatred also toward Christianity which has forced them to lie.

I think with horror of the future development of this race of new Marranos, who are normally sustained by no tradition and whose soul is poisoned by hostility toward their own and strange blood, and whose self-respect is destroyed through the ever present consciousness of a fundamental lie. Others hope for the salvation from Zionism, which is for them, not the fulfillment of a mystic promise of the Scripture, but the way to an existence wherein the Jew finds at last the simplest but most elementary conditions of life, that are a matter of course for every Jew of both hemispheres: viz, an assured social existence in a well meaning community, the possibility of employing all his powers for the developments of his real being instead of abusing them for the suppression and falsification of self. Yet others, who rebel against the lie of the Marranos, and who feel themselves too intimately connected with the land of their birth not to feel what Zionism means, throw themselves into the arms of the wildest revolution, with an indefinite arriere penste that with the destruction of everything in existence and the construction of a new world Jew-hatred may not be one of the precious articles transferred from the debris of the old conditions into the new.

This is the history of Israel at the end of the 19th century. To sum it up in a word: The majority of the Jews are a race of accursed beggars. More industrious and more able than the average European, not to speak at all of the inert Asiatic and African, the Jew is condemned to the most extreme pauperism, because he is not allowed to use his powers freely. This poverty grinds down his character, and destroys his body. Fevered by the thirst for higher education, he sees himself repelled from the places where knowledge is attainable -- a real intellectual tantalus of our non-mythical times. He dashes his head against the thick ice crusts of hatred and contempt which are formed over his head. Like scarcely any other social being -- whom even his belief teaches that it is a meritorious and God-pleasing action for three to take meals together and for ten to pray together -- he is excluded from the society of his countrymen and is condemned to a tragic isolation. One complains of Jews intruding everywhere, but they only strive after superiority, because they are denied equality. They are accused of a feeling of solidarity with the Jews of the whole world; whereas, on the contrary, it is their misfortune that as soon as the first loving word of emancipation had been uttered, they tried to pluck from their hearts all Jewish solidarity up to the last trace. Stunned by the hailstorm of anti-Semitic accusations, they forget who they are and often imagine themselves in reality the bodily and spiritual miscreants whom their deadly enemies represent them to be. Not rarely the Jew is heard to murmur that he must learn from the enemy and try to remedy his feelings. He forgets, however, that the anti-Semitic accusations are valueless, because they are not based on criticism of real facts, but the effects of psychological law according to which children, wild men and malevolent fools make persons and things against which they have an aversion responsible for their sufferings.

To Jewish distress no-one can remain indifferent, neither Christian nor Jew. It is a great sin to let a race to whom even their worst enemies do not deny ability, degenerate in intellectual and physical distress. It is a sin against them and against the work of civilization, in the interest of which Jews have not been useless co-workers.

That Jewish distress cries for help. To find that help will be the great work of this Congress.

Address at the Sixth Zionist Congress

Max Nordau

1903

ADDRESS AT THE SIXTH ZIONIST CONGRESS
Basle, August 24, 1903

You will pardon me if I trouble you at the outset with a few personal observations. My name has been placed in error on the Orders of the Day. I came to Basle with the firm intention of only speaking if, in con-sequence of the trend of any discussion, I regarded it as my bounden duty, as the representative of numerous constituent groups, to place my views before you. Should this necessity not have arisen I wished to remain in my seat a silent listener, voting on occasion with the rank and file. I find critics in recent years have represented me as imagining myself to be a sort of tenor of the Congress, whose role it is to come and sing a few heroic notes, receive applause and then to gracefully retire. I was resolved to avoid even the appearance of this so just and disinterested a representation of my activity at the Congress. I am conscious of never having indulged here in idle oratory, though I can imagine that a realistic survey of the past and present of the Jewish people might appear purely academic to one who failed to realise that we had to begin our Argonaut journey by taking our bearings. This indispensable item of navigation is now accomplished. Henceforth we must engage in steering a straight course. Less than ever may this Congress become an academic assembly. Mere rhetoric, art for art's sake, has here no place. Here only sober, calmly intelligent business speeches may be delivered. For such a one I ask your indulgence.

Our President communicated to us yesterday two facts, which spread a hitherto unfamiliar light across our path. He conveyed to us the intelligence that the British Government is prepared to grant a concession of land to the Jewish people, not in the form in which such concessions are usually granted, not for the purpose of financial speculation and commercial exploitation, but with the authoritative expression of the wish of the British Government to evince its sympathy for the Jewish people and to help it in its endeavours to help itself. The Chairman further stated that the Russian Government had given him officially to understand that Russia was disposed to further our efforts for the settlement of Palestine.

That is then the diplomatic situation with which the Zionist movement is confronted. Four Powers, including the greatest that hold sway over the globe, have expressed themselves as favourably disposed, if not to the Jewish people, at any rate to the Zionist movement. His Majesty the German Emperor expressed his sympathy with our movement at its inception. The British Government is prepared to evince its sympathy in a very substantial and practical manner -- in the form of a grant of land. The Russian Government has declared its willingness to further our plans so far as they comprise the Jewish settlement of Palestine. The United States of North America has recently taken two diplomatic steps which justify the hope that when the time comes we shall not have to turn to them for sympathy in vain.

The fourth item of the Basle programme, on the granite composition of which the snarlers and back-biters will break their teeth, speaks in its necessary and deliberate terseness, which admits of no broad examination of details nor any expansion of its laconically expressed idea -- it speaks, I repeat, of the "steps for obtaining the assent of the Governments which are necessary for Zionism to achieve its end." This sentence has always had the good fortune of being regarded by every opponent of Zionism as a thorn in the side. Round this sentence the wit of our opponents has played the most. "This assent of the Governments," we were ironically told again and again, "you will never, never obtain. The Sultan will and can never grant you Palestine, for even if he were disposed to do so -- which will never be the case -- he would encounter the opposition of Russia, and on your sweet behalf the Sultan will not pick a quarrel with his most powerful neighbour. Russia will never allow the ground which has been trodden by the founder of the Christian religion ever to become Jewish." Our critics have once more tested the correctness and wisdom of the English saying "Never prophesy unless you know."

Russia, whom we were told to recognise and fear as the insurmountable obstacle in our path, Russia declares in a friendly way that it has absolutely no objection to the occupation of Palestinian soil by Jews.

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, cast your eye back upon the path which Zionism, after something less than seven years' existence, has covered in its present form. After barely a year's activity it called this Congress into being; a body to which none, but a few crazy Jewish opponents, denies the quality of legitimately representing the Jewish people.

All serious people recognise that we are the executive and deliberate representatives of the Jewish people. Since the first achievement, to which I have just referred, six years have elapsed. In these six years apart from everything else we have done one thing attracted in all possible ways the attention of the world to the Jewish question. Contemporaries do not often take account of the historical significance of events that take place before their own eyes. Posterity is usually juster; it is in a position to be so since it regards human affairs from a higher perspective, from a broader standpoint. Posterity will know how to appreciate the fact I have just mentioned. For until the rise of Zionism the non-Jewish world was assured by the persons, who till then had alone been recognised as the official representatives of Jewry, that there was no Jewish question, that the Jews were happy and contented. It had become, particularly in the last decades, since the emancipation of the Jews in the West, a fixed tradition of official Jewry to put on a pleasant face whenever it came into contact with non-Jews. The position of our celebrated "great Jew" has always been that he is eternally rubbing his hands, if he has not stuck them in the arm-holes of his waistcoat, or put them in his pocket to pay contributions to public -- generally anti-Jewish -- funds or institutions.

Whenever a Minister or Ruler on a journey or on solemn occasions received the official representatives of Jewry, the burden of the song was always: "We are happy under your Government, or under your administration, we are deeply grateful for the gracious protection which you grant us; we shall humbly endeavour to continue to deserve your grace and favour.

We cannot blame the Governments if with a parade of good faith they amazedly reply to the Jews who now complain, "What, you are not contented? You are complaining? That is something new! Your recognised representatives have always assured us of the contrary." I claim it as a great service rendered by Zionism that it has put an end to the humbug about being happy and contented, and to the comedy of gratitude. From the very beginning we boldly and distinctly said, "We are not contented; we regard our situation as a very bad one; we consider our treatment as discreditable and undeserved; we regard a fundamental change in our situation as a vital necessity; after the humiliating attempts we have made at assimilation with other peoples we have taken counsel with ourselves and we desire to live in our own way, in our own right, on our own soil." We have, I repeat, placed our wishes in all kinds of ways before the world, we have spoken to the nations as a people suffering from a wrong and demanding justice, wt have gone to the Governments. That, I repeat, may appear a small matter to contemporary observers; as a matter of fact it is a turning-point in the history of the Jewish people.

We have asked. Since the world began there have ever been but two methods of obtaining anything. These two methods may be succinctly stated in the words: Take it or ask for it.

We are neither in a position nor desire to take anything so we are thrown back upon the second method, that of asking. It is strange, but literally true, that before the rise of Zionism we absolutely did not ask. Among ourselves we heaved deep sighs, expressed longing desires in prose and verse, pressed each other's hands with significant looks, but we have never stood before the Powers, and in an unequivocal form openly and distinctly stated what we wanted. We can neither reproach ourselves nor others on that account. The Jewish people was in a state of chaos; it was unorganised; it was a human swarm; it did not even know itself what it wanted; it had no representatives competent to speak in its name; and as it did not know itself what it wanted, it was only natural that the Governments remained in ignorance. To have altered all that appears little, but in reality it is very much. We had asked! We had asked that Palestine should be open to our occupation.

Not from those to whom we appealed, not from official quarters, but from the numerous amateur diplomats with which the ranks of our opponents swarm, did we get the mocking reply, "What on earth do you imagine is going to happen? Do you expect the Powers are going to say to the Sultan: Now, then, just you give Palestine to the Jews or you'll have us to reckon with!"? To this we reply with a seriousness which the objection hardly deserves: "That has never been our idea nor our desire. The sovereign rights and the dignity of the Sultan shall never be infringed. The day on which we enter a Turkish Province shall for all time be a great and happy day in the history of the Ottoman Empire. All that we desire is to be placed by the Great Powers into official communication with the Sultan so that, after comprehensive discussion with His Majesty, in the course of which we confidently expect to convince him that an agreement with us would be to his advantage, at the final conference the Great Powers would be represented as participants, witnesses and guarantors. If it became apparent that it was impossible to come to an agreement with His Majesty the Sultan, if his unbending will shut us out of Palestine, then, still solemnly asserting our undying historical claims to the land of our fathers, firmly and resolutely adhering to the Basle programme, we should have to be patient and wait. We can afford to wait.

Make no mistake. We cannot afford to wait if we abandon ourselves to despair of our future, if we lay down our arms in abject surrender; for then we should rush at terrific speed to a most horrible downfall. But if we once again summon up courage, resolve to continue to live as a nation, have a clear and settled purpose, then once more shall we be the "everlasting people," am olam, and nothing nor anybody will be able to do us the least bit of harm. Then we shall wait patiently till better circumstances present themselves, and continue to renew, when the time comes, deliberately and with imperturbable tenacity -- which our enemies, if they please, can call by another uglier name -- our demands, till a situation arises in the politics of the world which will cause the Powers to deem it desirable to give us a hearing.

Auto-Emancipation

Leon Pinsker

1882

That hoary problem, subsumed under the Jewish question, today, as ever in the past, provokes discussion. Like the squaring of the circle it remains unsolved, but unlike it, continues to be the ever-burning question of the day. That is because the problem is not one of mere theoretical interest: it renews and revives in every-day life and presses ever more urgently for solution.

This is the kernel of the problem, as we see it: the Jews comprise a distinctive element among the nations under which they dwell, and as such can neither assimilate nor be readily digested by any nation.

Hence the solution lies in finding a means of so readjusting this exclusive element to the family of nations, that the basis of the Jewish question will be permanently removed.

This does not mean, of course, that we must think of waiting for the age of universal harmony.

No previous civilization has been able to achieve it, nor can we see even in the remote distance, that day of the Messiah, when national barriers will no longer exist and all mankind will live in brotherhood and concord. Until then, the nations must narrow their aspirations to achieve a tolerable modus vivendi.

The world has yet long to wait for eternal peace. Meanwhile nations live side by side in a state of relative peace, secured by treaties and international law, but based chiefly on the fundamental equality between them.

But it is different with the people of Israel. There is no such equality in the nations' dealings with the Jews. The basis is absent upon which treaties and international law may be applied: mutual respect. Only when this basis is established, when the equality of Jews with other nations becomes a fact, can the Jewish problem be considered solved.

An equality of this kind did exist in the now long forgotten past, but unfortunately, under present conditions, the prospect that will readmit the Jewish people to the status of nationhood is so remote as to seem illusory. It lacks most of the essential attributes by which a nation is recognized. It lacks that autochthonous life which is inconceivable without a common language and customs and without cohesion in space. The Jewish people has no fatherland of its own, though many motherlands; no center of focus or gravity, no government of its own, no official representation. They home everywhere, but are nowhere at home. The nations have never to deal with a Jewish nation but always with mere Jews. The Jews are not a nation because they lack a certain distinctive national character, inherent in all other nations, which is formed by common residence in a single state. It was clearly impossible for this national character to be developed in the Diaspora; the Jews seem rather to have lost all remembrance of their former home. Thanks to their ready adaptability, they have all the more easily acquired characteristics, not inborn, of the people among whom fate has thrown them. Often to please their protectors, they recommend their traditional individuality entirely. They acquired or persuaded themselves into certain cosmopolitan tendencies which could no more appeal to others than bring satisfaction to themselves.

In seeking to fuse with other peoples they deliberately renounced to some extent their own nationality. Yet nowhere did they succeed in obtaining from their fellow-citizens recognition as natives of equal status.

But the greatest impediment in the path of the Jews to an independent national existence is that they do not feel its need. Not only that, but they go so far as to deny its authenticity.

In the case of a sick man, the absence of desire for food is a very serious symptom. It is not always possible to cure him of this ominous loss of appetite. And even if his appetite is restored, it is still a question whether he will be able to digest food, even though he desire it.

The Jews are in the unhappy condition of such a patient. We must discuss this most important point with all possible precision. We must prove that the misfortunes of the Jews are due, above all, to their lack of desire for national independence; and that this desire must be awakened and maintained in time if they do not wish to be subjected forever to disgraceful existence -- in a word, we must prove that they must become a nation.

In the seemingly irrelevant circumstances, that the Jews are not regarded as an independent nation by other nations, rests in part the secret of their abnormal position and of their endless misery. Merely to belong to this people is to be indelibly stigmatized, a mark repellent to non-Jews and painful to the Jews themselves. However, this phenomenon is rooted deeply in human nature.

Among the living nations of the earth the Jews are as a nation long since dead.

With the loss of their country, the Jewish people lost their independence, and fell into a decay which is not compatible with existence as a whole vital organism. The state was crushed before the eyes of the nations. But after the Jewish people had ceased to exist as an actual state, as a political entity, they could nevertheless not submit to total annihilation -- they lived on spiritually as a nation. The world saw in this people the uncanny form of one of the dead walking among the living. The Ghostlike apparition of a living corpse, of a people without unity or organization, without land or other bonds of unity, no longer alive, and yet walking among the living -- this spectral form without precedence in history, unlike anything that preceded or followed it, could but strangely affect the imagination of the nations. And if the fear of ghosts is something inborn, and has a certain justification in the psychic life of mankind, why be surprised at the effect produced by this dead but still living nation

A fear of the Jewish ghost has passed down the generations and the centuries. First a breeder of prejudice, later in conjunction with other forces we are about to discuss, it culminated in Judeophobia.

Judeophobia, together with other symbols, superstitions and idiosyncrasies, has acquired legitimacy phobia among all the peoples of the earth with whom the Jews had intercourse. Judeophobia is a variety of demonopathy with the distinction that it is not peculiar to particular races but is common to the whole of mankind, and that this ghost is not disembodied like other ghosts but partakes of flesh and blood, must endure pain inflicted by the fearful mob who imagines itself endangered.

Judeophobia is a psychic aberration. As a psychic aberration it is hereditary, and as a disease transmitted for two thousand years it is incurable.

It is this fear of ghosts, the mother of Judeophobia, that has evoked this abstract, I might say Platonic hatred, thanks to which the whole Jewish nation is wont to be held responsible for the real or supposed misdeeds of its individual members, and to be libeled in so many ways, to be buffeted about so shamefully.

Friend and foe alike have tried to explain or to justify this hatred of the Jews by bringing all sorts of charges against them. They are said to have crucified Jesus, to have drunk the blood of Christians, to have poisoned wells, to have taken usury, to have exploited the peasant, and so on. These and a thousand and one other charges against an entire people have been proved groundless. They showed their own weakness in that they had to be trumped up wholesale in order to quiet the evil conscience of the Jew-baiters, to justify the condemnation of an entire nation, to demonstrate the necessity of burning the Jew, or rather the Jewish ghost, at the stake. He who tries to prove too much proves nothing at all. Though the Jews may justly be charged with many shortcomings, those shortcomings are, at all events, not such great vices, not such capital crimes, as to justify the condemnation of the entire people. In individual cases, indeed, these accusations are contradicted by the fact that the Jews get along fairly well with their Gentile neighbors. This is the reason that the charges preferred are usually of the most general character, made up out of whole cloth, based to a certain extent on a priori reasoning, and true at best in individual cases, but not admitting of proof as regards the whole people

In this way have Judaism and Anti-Semitism passed for centuries through history as inseparable companions. Like the Jewish people, the real wandering Jew, Anti-Semitism, too, seems as if it would never die. He must be blind indeed who will assert that the Jews are not the chosen people, the people chosen for universal hatred. No matter how much the nations are at variance in their relations with one another, however diverse their instincts and aims, they join hands in their hatred of the Jews; on this one matter all are agreed. The extent and the manner in which this antipathy is shown depends of course upon the cultural status of each people. The antipathy as such, however, exists in all places and at ail times, whether it appears in the form of deeds of violence, as envious jealousy, or under the guise of tolerance and protection. To be robbed as a Jew or to be protected as a Jew is equally humiliating, equally destructive to the self-respect of the Jews.

Having analyzed Judeophobia as an hereditary form of demonopathy, peculiar to the human race, and having represented Anti-Semitism as proceeding from an inherited aberration of the human mind, we must draw the important conclusion that we must give' up contending against these hostile impulses as we must against every other inherited predisposition. This view is especially important because it should persuade us that polemics are useless and that we should abstain from it as a waste of time and energy, for against superstition even the gods contend in vain. Prejudice or instinctive ill-will is not moved by rational argument, however forceful and clear. These sinister powers must either be kept within bounds by force like every other blind natural force or simply evaded.

In human psychology, then, we find the roots of the prejudice against the Jewish nation; but there are other factors not less important which render impossible the fusion or equalization of the Jews with the other peoples to be considered.

No people, generally speaking, likes foreigners. Ethnologically, this cannot be brought as a charge against any people. Now, is the Jew subject to this general law to the same extent as the other nationalities? Not at all! The aversion which meets the foreigner in a strange land can be repaid in equal coin in his home country. The non-Jew pursues his own interest in a foreign country openly and without giving offense. It is everywhere considered natural that he should fight for these interests, alone or in conjunction with others. The foreigner has no need to be, or to seem to be, a patriot. But as for the Jew, not only is he not a native in his own home country, but he is also not a foreigner; he is, in very truth, the stranger par excellence. He is regarded as neither friend nor foe but an alien, of whom the only thing known is that he has no home.

One distrusts the foreigner but does not trust the Jew. The foreigner has a claim to hospitality, which he can repay in the same coin. The Jew can make no such return; consequently he can make no claim to hospitality. He is not a guest, much less a welcome guest. He is more like a beggar; and what beggar is welcome! He is rather a refugee; and where is the refugee to whom a refuge may not be refused?

The Jews are aliens who can have no representatives, because they have no country. Because they have none, because their home has no boundaries within which they can be entrenched, their misery too is boundless. The general law does not apply to the Jews as true aliens, but there are everywhere laws for the Jews, and if the general law is to apply to them, a special and explicit by-law is required to confirm it. Like the Negroes, like women, and unlike all free peoples, they must be emancipated. If, unlike the Negroes, they belong to an advanced race, and if, unlike women, they can produce not only women of distinction, but also distinguished men, even men of greatness, then it is very much the worse for them.

Since the Jew is nowhere at home, nowhere regarded as a native, he remains an alien everywhere. That he himself and his ancestors as well are born in the country does not alter this fact in the least.

In the great majority of cases, he is treated as a stepchild, as a Cinderella; in the most favorable cases he is regarded as an adopted child whose rights may be questioned; never is he considered a legitimate child of the fatherland.

The German proud of his Teutonism, the Slav, the Celt, not one of them admits that the Semitic Jew is his equal by birth; and even if he be ready, as a man of culture, to admit him to all civil rights, he will never quite forget that his fellow-citizen is a Jew. The legal emancipation of the Jews is the culminating achievement of our century. But legal emancipation is not social emancipation, and with the proclamation of the former the Jews are still far from being emancipated from their exceptional social position.

The emancipation of the Jews is required as a postulate of logic, of law, and of enlightened national interest, but it can never be a spontaneous expression of human feeling. Far from owing its origin to spontaneous feeling, it is never a matter of course; and it has never yet taken root so deeply that further discussion of it becomes unnecessary. In any event, whether emancipation was undertaken from spontaneous impulse or from conscious motives, it remains a rich gift, a splendid alms, willingly or unwillingly flung to the poor, humble beggars whom no one, however, cares to shelter, because a homeless, wandering beggar wins confidence or sympathy from now. The Jew is not permitted to forget that the daily bread of civil rights must be given him.

So long as this people produces in accordance with its nature, vagrant nomads; so long as it cannot give a satisfactory account of whence it comes and whither it goes; so long as the Jews themselves prefer not to speak in Aryan society of their Semitic descent and prefer not to be reminded of it; so long as they are persecuted, tolerated, protected or emancipated, the stigma attached to this people, which forces it into an undesirable isolation from all nations, cannot be removed by any sort of legal emancipation.

This degrading dependence of the ever alien Jew upon the non-Jew is reinforced by another factor, which makes amalgamation of the Jews with the original inhabitants of a land absolutely impossible. In the great struggle for existence, civilized peoples readily submit to laws which help to transform their struggle into a peaceful competition, a noble emulation. In this respect a distinction is usually made between the native and the foreigner, the first, of course, always receiving the preference. Now, if this distinction is drawn even against the foreigner of equal birth, how harshly is it applied to the ever alien Jew! The beggar who dares to cast longing eyes upon a country not his own is in the position of a young virgin's suitor, guarded against him by jealous relatives! And if he nevertheless prosper and succeed in plucking a flower here and there from its soil, woe to the ill-fated man! He must expect the fate of the Jews of Spain and Russia.

The Jews, moreover, do not suffer only when they meet with notable success. Wherever they are congregated in large numbers, they must, by their very preponderance, hold an advantage in competition with the non-Jewish population. Thus, in the western provinces we see the Jews squeezed together, leading a wretched existence in dreadful poverty, while charges of Jewish exploitation are continually pressed.

To sum up then, to the living the Jew is a corpse, to the native a foreigner, to the homesteader a vagrant, to the proprietary a beggar, to the poor an exploiter and a millionaire, to the patriot a man without a country, for all a hated rival.

This natural antagonism is the source of numberless misunderstandings, accusations and reproaches which both parties rightfully or wrongfully hurl at each other. Instead of realizing their own position and adopting a rational line of conduct, the Jews appeal to eternal justice, and fondly imagine that the appeal will have some effect. And whereas the non-Jew should simply plead superior strength, the historical prerogative of the strong over the weak, he seeks to justify his attitude by a mass of accusations which, on closer examination, prove to be baseless or negligible. The impartial thinker, who does not desire to judge and interpret the affairs of this world according to the principles of some Utopian Arcadia, but would merely ascertain the facts in order to draw a conclusion of practical value, will not seriously charge either of the parties with responsibility for this antagonism. To the Jews, however, he will say: "You are foolish, because you stand there non-plussed and expect of human nature something which it has never produced -- humanity. You are also contemptible, because you have no real self-estimation and no national self- respect."

National self-respect! Where can we find it! It is precisely the great misfortune of our race that we do not constitute a nation, but are merely Jews. We are a flock scattered over the whole face of the earth, and no shepherd to protect us and bring us together. At best we attain the rank of goats, which in Russia are mated with racehorses. And that is the highest reach of our ambition!

It is true that those who claim to sympathize with us have always taken good care that we should have no respite in which to recover our self-respect. As individual Jews, but not as a Jewish nation, we have carried on for centuries the hard and unequal struggle for existence. Each man singly has sequestered his genius and energy for a little oxygen and a morsel of bread, moistened with tears. We did not succumb in this desperate struggle. We waged the most glorious of all guerrilla struggles with the peoples of the earth, who with one accord wished to destroy us. But the war we have waged -- and God knows how long we shall continue to wage it -- has not been for a fatherland, but for the wretched maintenance of millions of "Jew peddlers."

The nations of the earth could not destroy us bodily, yet they were able to suppress in us every sense of national independence. So now we look on with caution fatalistic indifference when in many countries we are refused such recognition as would not lightly be denied to Zulus. In the Diaspora we maintained our individual life, and proved our power of resistance, but we broke the common tie of national consciousness. Seeking to maintain our material existence, we were compelled very often to forget our moral dignity. We did not perceive that unworthy tactics, though forced upon us, have lowered us still more in the eyes of our opponents, that we were only the more exposed to humiliating contempt and outlawed existence, which has at length become our baleful heritage. In the great, wide world there was no place for us. We pray only for a little place somewhere to lay our weary head to rest. And as our claims diminished, our dignity vanished away.

We were the shuttle-cock which the peoples tossed in turn to one another. The cruel game was equally amusing whether we were caught or thrown, and was enjoyed all the more as our national respect became more elastic and yielding in the hands of the peoples. Under such circumstances, how could there be any question of national self-determination, of a free, active development of our national force or of our native genius ?

By the way, our enemies did not fail to make capital of this trait, though irrelevant, in order to prove our inferiority. One would think that a man of genius among them grew as blackberries on the hedges. The wretches! They mock the eagle who once soared to heaven and saw Divinity itself, because he can no longer fly after his wings are broken! Even so we have remained on the level with the great peoples of civilization. Grant us but our independence, allow us to take care of ourselves, give us but a little strip of land like that of the Serbians and Romanians, give us a chance to lead a national existence and then prate about our lacking manly virtues! Today we live under the weight of evils you have brought upon us. What we lack is not genius but self-consciousness, an appreciation of our value as men of which we were deprived by you!

When we are ill-used, robbed, plundered and dishonored, we dare not defend ourselves, and, worse still, we take it almost as a matter of course. When our face is slapped, we soothe our burning cheek. with cold water; and when a bloody wound has been inflicted, we apply a bandage. When we are turned out of the house which we ourselves built, we beg humbly for mercy, and when we fail to reach the heart of our oppressor we move on in search of another exile.

When an idle spectator on the road calls out to us: "You poor Jewish devils are certainly to be pitied," we are most deeply touched; and when a Jew is said to be an honor to his people, we are foolish enough to be proud of it. We have sunk so low that we become almost jubilant when, as in the West, a small fraction of our people is put on equal footing with non-Jews. But he who must be put on a footing stands but weakly. If no notice is taken of our descent and we are treated like others born in the country, we express our gratitude by actually turning renegades. For the sake of the comfortable position we are granted, for the flesh-pots which we may enjoy in peace, we persuade ourselves, and others, that we are no longer Jews, but full-blooded citizens. Idle delusion! Though you prove yourselves patriots a thousand times, you will still be reminded at every opportunity of your Semitic descent. This fateful memento mori will not prevent you, however, from accepting the extended hospitality, until some fine morning you find yourself crossing the border and you are reminded by the mob that you are, after all, nothing but vagrants and parasites, without the protection of law.

But even humane treatment does not prove that we are welcome.

Indeed, what a pitiful figure we cut! We are not counted among the nations, neither have we a voice in their councils, even when the affairs concern us. Our fatherland -- the other man's country; our unity-dispersion; our solidarity -- the battle against us; our weapon -- humility; our defense -- flight; our individuality -- adaptability ; our future -- the next day. What a miserable role for a nation which descends from the Maccabees!

Do you wonder that a people which allowed itself for dear life's sake to be trampled upon, and has learned to love these very feet that trample upon them, should have fallen into the utmost contempt!

Our tragedy is that we can neither live nor die. We cannot die despite the blows of our enemies, and we do not wish to die by our own hand, through apostasy or self-destruction. Neither can we live; our enemies have taken care of that. We will not recommence life as a nation, live like the other peoples, thanks to those over-zealous patriots, who think it is necessary to sacrifice every claim upon independent national life to their loyalty as citizens -- which should be a matter of course. Such fanatical patriots deny their ancient national character for the sake of any other nationality, whatever it may be, of high rank or low. But they deceive no one. They do not see how glad one is to decline Jewish companionship.

Thus for eighteen centuries we have lived in disgrace, without a single earnest attempt to shake it off!

We know well the great martyrology of our people and we would be the last to place the responsibility upon our ancestors. The demands of individual self-preservation necessarily sup- press in the germ every national thought, every united movement. If the non-Jewish peoples, thanks to our dispersion, deserved to strike through each of us the whole Jewish people, we had the resistance to survive as a people, but we were left too powerless to raise ourselves and carry on an active struggle in our own behalf. Under the pressure of the hostile world we have lost in the course of our long exile all self-confidence, all initiative.

Moreover, the belief in a Messiah, in the intervention of a higher power to bring about our political resurrection, and the religious assumption that we must bear patiently divine punishment, caused us to abandon every thought of our national liberation, unity and independence. Consequently, we have renounced the idea of a nationhood and did so the more readily since we were preoccupied with our immediate needs. Thus we sank lower and lower. The people without a country forgot their country. Is it not high time to perceive the disgrace of it all?

Happily, matters stand somewhat differently now. The events of the last few years in enlightened Germany, in Roumania, in Hungary, and especially in Russia, have effected what the far bloodiest persecutions of the Middle Ages could not. The national consciousness which until then had lain dormant in sterile martyrdom awoke the masses of the Russian and Roumanian Jews and took form in an irresistible movement toward Palestine. Mistaken as this movement has proved to be by its results, it was, nevertheless, a right instinct to strike out for home. The severe trials which they have endured have now provoked a reaction quite different from the fatalistic submission to a divine condign punishment. Even the unenlightened masses of the Russian Jews have not entirely escaped the influences of the ptinciples of modern culture. Without renouncing Judaism and their faith, they revolted against undeserved ill-treatment which could be inflicted with impunity only because the Russian Government regards the Jews as aliens. And the other European Governments -- why should they concern themselves with the citizens of a state in whose internal affairs they have no right to interfere?

Today, when our kinsmen in a small part of the earth are allowed to breathe freely and can feel more deeply for the sufferings of their brothers; today, when a number of other subject and oppressed nationalities have been allowed to regain their independence, we, too, must not sit a moment longer with folded hands; we must not consent to play forever the hopeless role of the "Wandering Jew." It is a truly hopeless one, leading to despair.

When an individual finds himself despised and rejected by society, no one wonders if he commits suicide. But where is the deadly weapon to give the coup de grace to the scattered limbs of the Jewish nation, and then who would lend his hand to it! The destruction is neither possible nor desirable. Consequently, we are bound by duty to devote all our remaining moral force to re-establishing ourselves as a living nation, so that we may ultimately assume a more fitting and dignified role among the family of the nations.

If the basis of our argument is sound, if the prejudice of mankind against us rests upon anthropological and social principles, innate and ineradical, we must look no more to the slow progress of humanity. And we must learn to recognize that as long as we lack a home of our own, such as the other nations have, we must resign forever the noble hope of becoming the equals of our fellow-men. We must recognize that before the great idea of human brotherhood will unite all the peoples of the earth, milleniums must elapse; and that meanwhile a people which is at home everywhere and nowhere, must everywhere be regarded as alien. The time has come for a sober and dispassionate realization of our true position.

With unbiased eyes and without prejudice we must see in the mirror of the nations the tragi-comic figure of our people, which with distorted countenance and maimed limbs helps to make universal history without managing properly its own little history. We must reconcile ourselves once and for all to the idea that the other nations, by reason of their inherent natural antagonism, will forever reject us. We must not shut our eyes to this natural force which works like every other elemental force; we must take it into account. We must not complain of it; on the contrary, we are in duty bound to take courage, to rise, and to see to it that we do not remain forever the Cinderella, the butt of the peoples. We are no more justified in leaving our national fortune in the hands of the other peoples than we are in making them responsible for our national misfortune. The human race, including ourselves, has hardly reached the first stage of the interminable road to perfection in human conduct, providing the goal is to be reached at all. We must, therefore, abandon the delusion that we are fulfilling by our dispersion a Providential mission, a mission in which no one believes, an honorable post which we, to speak frankly, would gladly resign, if the odious epithet "Jew" could only be blotted out of the memory of man. We must seek our honour and our salvation not in self-deceptions, but in the restoration of our national ties. Hitherto the world has not considered us as a firm of standing, and consequently we enjoyed no genuine credit.

If other national movements which have risen before our eyes were their own justification, can it still be questioned whether the Jews have a similar right? They play a larger part in the life of the civilized nations, and they have rendered greater service to humanity; they have a greater past and history, a common, unmixed descent, an indestructible vigor, an unshakable faith, and an unexampled martyrology; the peoples have sinned against them more grievously than against any other nation. Is not that enough to make them capable and worthy of possessing a fatherland? The struggle of the Jews for national unity and independence as an established nation not only possesses the inherent justification that belongs to the struggle of every oppressed people, but it is also calculated to win the support of the people by whom we are now unwanted. This struggle must become an irresistible factor of contemporary international politics and destined for future greatness.

At the very outset we expect a great outcry. Most Jews, grown timid and skeptical, will declare the early activities to be the unconscious convulsions of a crushed organism and certainly its execution and achievement is sure to encounter the gravest of difficulties and perhaps will be possible only after superhuman efforts. But since the Jews have no other way out of their desperate position, it would be cowardly to shrink from it in the face of heavy odds. But "faint heart never won fair lady" - -and, indeed, what have we to lose! At the worst, we shall continue to be in the future what we have been in the past, what we are too cowardly to resolve that we will be no longer: eternally despised Jews. We have lately had very bitter experiences in Russia, We are both too many and too few; too many in the southwestern provinces, in which the Jews are allowed to reside, and too few in all the other provinces, where they are forbidden. If the Russian Government, and the Russian people as well, realized that an equal distribution of the Jewish population would benefit the entire country, we might have been spared all our sufferings. Unfortunately, Russia cannot and will not realize this. That is not our fault, neither is it a consequence of the low cultural state of the Russian people. We have found our bitterest opponents, indeed, in a large part of the press, which might be supposed to possess education; the unfortunate situation of the Russian Jews is due, rather, purely and simply to the operation of those general forces, a consequence of human nature which we have previously discussed. And since it is not to be our mission to reform mankind, we must see what we have to do for ourselves under the circumstances.

Such being the situation, we shall forever remain a burden to the rest of the population, parasites who can never secure their favor. The apparent fact that we can mix with nations only slightly offers a further obstacle to the establishment of amicable relations. Therefore, we must see to it that the surplus, the unassimilable residue, is removed and elsewhere provided for. The burden is ours alone. If the Jews could be equally distributed among all the peoples of the earth, perhaps there would be no Jewish question. But this is not possible. Nay, there can be no more doubt that an immigration of the Jews en masse into the most progressive countries would be declined with emphasis. We say this with a very heavy heart; but we must admit the truth. And it is necessary to know the facts if we would improve our position.

Moreover, it would be a misfortune if we were unwilling to profit by the testimony of our experience which has practical value, the most important being the constantly growing conviction that we are nowhere at home, and that we must at last look for a home , if not a country of our own.

Another conclusion is that the sorry upshot of the Russian and Roumanian emigration is ascribable solely to the important fact that we were taken unawares; we had made no provision for the principal needs, a refuge and a systematic organization of emigration. When thousands were seeking new homes we forgot to provide for that which no villager forgets when he wants to move -- the small matter of suitable new lodgings.

If we would have a secure home, give up our endless life of wandering and rise to the dignity of a nation in our own eyes and in the eyes of theworld, we must, above all, not dream of restoring ancient Judaea. We must not attach ourselves to the place where our political life was once violently interrupted and destroyed. The goal of our present endeavors must be not the "Holy Land," but a land of our own. We need nothing but a large tract of land for our poor brothers, which shall remain our property and from which no foreign power can expel us. There we shall take with us the most sacred possessions which we have saved from the ship-wreck of our former country, the God-idea and the Bible . It is these alone which have made our old fatherland the Holy Land, and not Jerusalem or the Jordan. Perhaps the Holy Land will again become ours. If so, all the better, but first of all , we must determine -- and this is the crucial point -- what country is accessible to us, and at the same time adapted to offer the Jews of all lands who must leave their homes a secure and indisputed refuge, capable of productivization. We do not overlook the enormous external and internal difficulties involved in this, which is to be the life-long endeavor of our people. But most difficult of all will be the attainment of the first and most necessary prerequisite, the national resolution; for we are, to our sorrow, a stiff-necked people. How readily could conservative opposition, of which our history has so much to tell, nip such a resolution in the bud! If it should, then woe to our entire future!

What a difference between Past and Present! In unity and in serried ranks we once accomplished an orderly departure from Egypt to escape from a shameful slavery and conquer our land. Now we wander as fugitives and exiles with the foot of the Russian mob upon our necks, death in our hearts, without a Moses for our leader, without a promise of land which we are to conquer by our own might. We are driven through all the lands of all rulers; here we are ushered out with all politeness, that we may not introduce a plague; there fortune grants that we may be provided for somewhere, somehow, that we may be free and unmolested -- to sell old clothes, make cigarettes, or become incompetent farmers. It would be a euphemism to call it emigration. Ashamed and helpless the refugees stood on the frontiers and looked out of their hollow eyes for help. They received by way of answer a few barracks and a few thousand passports! Then a few more repatriations, another thousand bitter disillusionments, and the tide of public sympathy ebbs. All is quiet again, and our beneficent brothers in the West betake themselves comfortably to repose. The surging sea of yesterday is calmed, and recedes into the old marsh with the old creeping things.

Thus, for centuries we have been revolving perplexedly in a magic circle, allowing a blind fate to rule over us. The sorrows of thousands of years have made us only a folk of "Merciful Brethren," but have not produced any rational healers of our ills. We continue on the old beaten track seeking only for the palliative of philanthropy. But we refuse to attack our malady at the root, in order to effect a complete cure. Intelligent and rich in experience, we are as short-sighted and thoughtless as children; we have had no time to reflect and ask ourselves whether this mad race, or rather this mad rout, will ever come to an end.

In the life of nations, as in the life of individuals, there are vital moments which rarely recur, and which, according as they are utilized or not utilized, decisively affect their future. We are now passing through such a moment. The consciousness of the people is awake. The great ideas of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have not passed us by without leaving a trace. We feel not only as Jews; we feel as men. As men, we, too, wish to live and be a nation as the others. And if we seriously desire that, we must first of all extricate ourselves from the old yoke, and rise manfully to our full height. We must first of all desire to help ourselves and then the help of others is sure to follow.

But the time in which we live is adapted for decisive action not merely because of our own inner experience, not merely in consequence of our newly-aroused self-consciousness. The general history of the present day seems destined to become our ally. In a few decades we have seen rising into new life nations which at an earlier time would not have dared to dream of a resurrection. The dawn is already breaking through the darkness of traditional statecraft. The governments already incline their ears -- where it cannot be avoided -- to the clamor of the awakening of self-consciousness of nationalities. It is true that those happy ones who attained their national independence were not Jews. They lived upon their own soil and spoke one language, and therein they certainly had the advantage over us.

But what if our position is more difficult? That is all the more reason why we should strain every energy to the task of ending our national misery in honorable fashion. We must set out with resolution and self-denial and God will help us. We have always been ready for sacrifice, and we have not been wanting in resolution to hold our banner firm, if not high. We sailed the surging ocean of universal history without a compass, and such a compass must be invented. Far, far off, is the haven toward which our souls are turning. We know not even whether it be East or West. But for the wanderers of 2,000 years, the way, however, distant, cannot seem too long.

But how can we find that haven without first sending out an expedition! If we are for once so happyas to know what we want, and if only we are so resolved, we must go forward with all care and foresight, step by step, without undue haste and without digression. Of course, we have not the genius of a Moses -- history does not grant such leaders repeatedly. But a clear recognition of what we need most, a recognition of the absolute necessity of a home of our own, would arouse among us a number of energetic, honorable and distinguished friends of the people who would assume leadership, and would, perhaps, be no less able than that one man to deliver us from disgrace and persecution.

But what are we to do next, how should we begin? We believe that a nucleus for this beginning already lies at hand in the existing societies. It is incumbent upon them, they are called and in duty bound, to lay the foundation of that lighthouse to which our eyes will turn. If they are to be equal to their new task, these societies must, of course, be completely transformed. They must convoke a national congress; of which they are to form the centre. If they decline that function, however, and refuse to go beyond the limits of their present activity, they must at least depute some of their numbers as a national board, let us say a directorate, which will have to establish that unity which we now Lack and without which the success of our endeavors is unthinkable. To represent our national interests this institute must comprise the leaders of our people, and it must energetically take in hand the direction of our general, national affairs. Our greatest and ablest forces -- men of finance, of science, and of affairs, statesmen and publicists -- must join hands with one accord in steering toward the common destination. They would aim chiefly and especially at creating a secure and inviolable home for the surplus of those Jews who live as proletarians in the different countries and are a burden to the native citizens.

We do not, of course, propose united emigration of the entire people. The comparatively small number of Jews in the West, who constitute a small percentage of the population, and for this reason, perhaps, are better situated and even to a certain extent naturalized, may in the future remain where they are. The wealthy may also remain even where the Jews are not willingly tolerated. But, as we have said before, there is a certain point of saturation beyond which their numbers may not increase, if the Jews are not to be exposed to the dangers of persecution as in Russia, Roumania, Morocco and elsewhere. It is this surplus which, a burden to itself and to others, conjures up the evil fate of the entire people. It is now high time to create a refuge for this surplus. We must occupy ourselves with the foundation of such a lasting refuge, not with the meaningless collection of donations for emigrants or refugees who forsake, in their consternation, an unhospitable home to perish in the abyss of a strange and unknown land.

The first task of this national institute, which we miss so much and must unconditionally call into existence, would have to find a territory adapted to our purpose, as far as possible continuous in extent and of uniform character. In this respect, two countries, lying at opposite points of the globe, which have lately vied with each other for first place and created two opposite currents of Jewish emigration, present themselves. This division caused the failure of the entire movement.

Without plan, purpose, or unity, the last emigration must be regarded as a complete failure in having disappeared without a trace, but it has taught us what we should do and not do in the future. With a total lack of vision, reasonable calculation and prudent unity, it was impossible to recognize in the chaos of wandering, famishing fugitives a hopeful movement toward a clearly marked goal. It was no emigration, but a portentous flight. For the refugees the years 1881 and 1882 were a highway covered with the wounded and dead. And even the few who were so fortunate as to reach their goal, the longed-for haven, found it no better than the dangerous road. Wherever they came people tried to get rid of them. The emigrants were soon confronted by the desperate alternative of either roaming about without shelter, help or advice in a foreign land, or of wandering back shamefully to their no less alien and loveless home-country. This emigration was for our people nothing but a new date in its martyrology. But this aimless wandering in the labyrinth of exile, to which our people have always been accustomed, does not advance them a step; they rather sink deeper in the morass of their wanderings. In the last emigration no sign of progress toward a better state of things is to be observed. Persecution, flight, dispersion, and a new exile -- just as in the good old times. The weariness of the persecutors now allows us a little respite; will we be satisfied with it? Or will we rather use this respite to draw the proper from the accumulated experience, in order that we may escape the new blows which are sure to come!

It is to be hoped that we have not emerged from that stage in which the Jews of the Middle Ages vegetated miserably. The children of modern civilization among our people esteem their dignity no less highly than our oppressors do theirs. But we shall not be able successfully to defend this dignity until we stand upon our own feet. As soon as asylum is found for our poor people, for the refugees whom our historic and predestined fate will always create for us, we shall also rise in the estimation of the nations. Then we should not be taken by surprise by such tragic happenings as those in the last few years, happenings which are likely to be repeated in Russia and elsewhere.

If we already knew where to direct our steps, were we compelled to emigrate again, we could surely make a vast step forward. We must set vigorously to work to complete the great task of self-liberation. We must use all the resources which human intellect and human experience have devised, instead of leaving our national regeneration to blind chance. The territory to be acquired must be fertile, well-situated and sufficiently extensive to allow the settlement of several millions. The land, as national property, must be inalienable. Its selection is, of course, of the first and highest importance, and must not be left to off-hand decision or to certain preconceived sympathies of individuals, as has, alas, happened lately. This land must be uniform and continuous in extent, for it lies in the very nature of our problem that we must possess as a counterpoise to our disposition one single refuge, since a number of refuges would again be equivalent to our old dispersion. Therefore, the selection of a permanent, national land, meeting all requirements, must be made with every precaution and confided to one single body, through a committee of experts selected from our directorate. Only such a supreme tribunal will be able, after thorough and comprehensive investigation, to give an opinion and decide upon which of the two continents and upon which territory in them our final choice should fall. Only then, and not before, should the directorate, together with an associated body of capitalists, as founders of a stock company later to be organized, acquire a tract of land sufficient for the settlement, in the course of time, of several million Jews. This tract might form a small territory in North America, or a sovereign Pashalik in Asiatic Turkey recognized by the Porte and the other Powers as neutral. It would certainly be an important duty of the directorate to secure the assent of the Porte, and probably of the other European cabinets to this plan. Under the supervision of the directorate, the land purchased would have to be divided by surveyors into small parcels, which could be assigned according to the local conditions to agricultural, building, or manufacturing purposes. Every parcel laid off thus (for agricultural, house and garden, town-hall, factory, etc.) would form a lot which would be transferred to the purchaser in accordance with his wishes.

After a complete survey and the publication of detailed maps and a comprehensive description of the land, a part of the lots would be sold to Jews for an adequate payment at a price, exactly fixed in proportion to the original purchase price, perhaps a little above it. Part of the proceeds of the sale, together with the profits, would belong to the stock company, and part would flow into a fund to be administered by the directorate, for the maintenance of destitute immigrants. For the establishment of this fund the directorate could also open a national subscription. It is definitely to be expected that our brethren everywhere would hail with joy such an appeal for subscriptions and that the most liberal donations would be made for so sacred a purpose.

Each title-deed delivered to the purchaser, with his name entered and signed by the directorate and the company, must bear the exact number of the lot upon the general map so that each purchaser would know exactly the location of the piece of ground -- field, or building lot -- which he purchases as his individual property.

Assuredly, many a Jew, who is still bound to his old home by an unenviable occupation, would gladly grasp the opportunity to throw out an anchor to windward by such a deed and to escape those sad experiences so numerous in the immediate past.

That part of the territory which would be assigned to the directorate for free distribution, against the national subscription mentioned and the expected profits, would be given to destitute but able-bodied immigrants, recommended by local committees.

Since the donations to the national subscription would not come in at once, but say in annual contributions, the colonization, also, would be carried out gradually and in a fixed order.

If the experts find in favor of Palestine or Syria, this decision would not be based on the assumption that the country could be transformed in time by labor and industry into a quite productive one. In this event the price of land would rise in proportion. But should they prefer North America, however, we must hasten. If one considers that in the last thirty-eight years the population of the United States of America has risen from seventeen millions to fifty millions, and that the increase in population for the next forty years will probably continue in the same proportion, it is evident that immediate action is necessary, if we do not desire to eliminate for all time the possibility of establishing in the New World a secure refuge for our unhappy brethren.

Every one who has the slightest judgment can see at first glance that the purchase of lands in America would, because of the swift rise of that country, not be a risky, but a lucrative enterprise.

Whether this act of national self-help on our part might turn out profitably or otherwise, however, is of little consequence as compared with the great significance which such an undertaking would have for the future of our unsettled people; for our future will remain insecure and precarious unless a radical change in our position is made. This change cannot be brought about by the civil emancipation of the Jews in this or that state, but only by the auto-emancipation of the Jewish people as a nation, the foundation of a colonial community belonging to the Jews, which is some day to become our inalienable home, our country.

There will certainly be plenty of counter-arguments. We will be charged with reckoning without our host. What land will grant us permission to settle a nation within its borders? At first glance, our building would appear from this standpoint to be a house of cards to divert children and wits. We think, however, that only thoughtless childhood could be diverted by the sight of shipwrecked voyagers who desire to build a little boat in order to leave inhospitable shores. We even go as far as to say that we expect, strangely enough, that those inhospitable people will aid us in our departure. Our "friends" will see us leave with the same pleasure with which we turn our back upon them.

Of course, the establishment of a Jewish refuge cannot come about without the support of the governments. In order to obtain the latter and to insure the perpetual existence of a refuge, the molders of our national regeneration must proceed with caution and perseverance. What we seek is at bottom neither new nor dangerous to anyone. Instead of the many refuges which we have always been accustomed to seek, we would fain have one single refuge , the existence of which, however, would have to be politically assured.

Let "Now or never" be our watchword. Woe to our descendants, woe to the memory of our Jewish contemporaries, if we let this moment pass by!

The Jews are not a living nation; they are everywhere aliens; therefore they are despised.

The civil and political emancipation of the Jews is not sufficient to raise them in the estimation of the peoples.

The proper, the only solution, is in the creation of a Jewish nationality, of a people living upon its own soil, the auto- emancipation of the Jews; their return to the ranks of the nations by the acquisition of a Jewish homeland.

We must not persuade ourselves that humanity and enlightenment alone can cure the malady of our people.

The lack of national self-respect and self-confidence of political initiative and of unity, are the enemies of our national renaissance.

That we may not be compelled to wander from one exile to another, we must have an extensive, productive land of refuge, a center which is our own. The present moment is the most favorable for this plan.

The international Jewish question must have a national solution. Of course, our national regeneration can only proceed slowly. We must take the first step. Our descendants must follow us at a measured and not over-precipitant speed.

The national regeneration of the Jews must be initiated by a congress of Jewish notables. No sacrifice should be too great for this enterprise which will assure our people's future, everywhere endangered.

The financial execution of the undertaking does not present insurmountable difficulties.

Help yourselves, and God will help you!

The Picture in 1907

Address to the Jewish Colonization Society of Vienna

Dr. Arthur Ruppin

February 27, 1908 

I wish to thank the members of the Colonization Society of Vienna for the opportunity they have given me to tell them something about what I was able to observe in Palestine during my six months' stay there in the spring and summer of 1907.

My address will fall into two parts. The first will deal with that which I actually saw, in other words, with that which is. In the second part I shall attempt to suggest that which ought to be, in other words, what programmatic work should be undertaken on behalf of the Jews of Palestine in order to raise them to a higher economic level.

Every study of present-day conditions in Palestine must use as its starting point the manner in which the 80,000 Jews of that country immigrated -- beginning with the few thousand Sephardic Jews who were already to be found there a century ago.

Jewish immigration into Palestine cannot be subsumed under the same general heading as Jewish immigration into other countries. Whereas immigration into other countries has been motivated entirely by economic considerations, that is, by the impulse to find better economic conditions, the motives which impelled the Jews to migrate toward Palestine were not economic but predominantly religious.

This difference of motives finds clear expression in the composition of the Jewish immigrant groups. the Jews who have migrated from East Europeans countries to the United States are, for by far the greatest part, between the ages of 15 and 45, that is, the age of maximum earning capacity. But until twenty years ago the Jews migrating to Palestine went there almost exclusively to die in the Holy Land; persons of advanced age, who could not support themselves by work, but who had to be supported by charity while they devoted themselves exclusively to religious duties.

They could rely on this charity with a certain degree of confidence, for since the middle of the 19th century there has existed in Europe a widely ramified organization for the collection of funds for the support of the Jews of Palestine; every year large sums are collected and transmitted for that purpose. This is the famous Chalukkah. The distribution of the Chalukkah in Palestine is not guided by the relative needs of the recipients, it follows the simpler rule of the counting of heads. Every Jew who enters Palestine is added to the register, and is entitled to his proportionate share of the money sent into Palestine by the country of his birth. The per capita income from this source is fairly large in the case of the Hungarian Jews, since there are few of them in the country; for opposite reasons that of the Polish and Russian Jews is fairly small. The method of distribution of the Chalukkah has many defects, for there are Jews receiving Chalukkah who could very well support themselves by the work of their hands. Apart from this, the administration and distribution of such a fund is almost inevitably bound up with the evils of nepotism.

The Jewish population of Palestine consists of three distinct strata. The first is made up of those Sephardic Jews who have lived in the country for centuries, have become closely assimilated, in mores and in the general mode of life, to the local Arabs and who, side by side with Spaniolo, speak Arabic too. A good picture of the life of these Jews is furnished by the town of Saida (the ancient Sidon) where 2000 Jews -- all of them Sephardic -- may be found. They receive no Chalukkah, earn a difficult and pitiful living as small merchants and artisans, are poorly educated and of a not particularly high moral standing. The Jews of Morocco, Persia and the Yemen, who have come into Palestine of recent years, may be lumped together with this group.

The second stratum is composed of the Ashkenazic Jews who have come into Palestine during the last hundred years for religious reasons, and for whom the Chalukkah system exists. They have tended to concentrate in Jerusalem, but numbers of them are also to be found in Safed, Tiberias and Hebron, where they have settled side by side with the older Sephardic population, from who they keep aloof, however, on the ground of their superior Jewish learning. Safed with its 8000, Tiberias with its 5000 and Hebron with its 1000 Jews are very much alike. They are typical Chalukkah towns.

In this second stratum there is no economic life to speak of. The few occupations which have been taken up -- of which the principal is trading with the Bedouins -- bring in very little. Hence these cities present, to European eyes, a wretched picture of cultural and economic stagnation. There is no connection with the outside world. Newspapers and modern books are unknown in these places, and life goes on as it did a hundred years ago. The kindergartens of the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden and the schools of the Alliance Israelite find it extremely difficult to introduce a new education content into this population. The condition of these communities may be illustrated by the following incident. In Safed I visited a Jew who told me that his income amounted to eighty francs a month, and that he was therefore considered very well to do, and was much envied. The average monthly income of a Sephardic Jew is somewhere between thirty and forty francs.

In Jerusalem conditions differ from those which obtain in the three above-mentioned cities: the reasons being that, in addition to the original Sephardic and the later Chalukkah Ashkenazic populations, we find a considerable element, of recent growth, which earns its living by work; it is composed partly of Jews from Persia, Yemen, Bokhara and Morocco, and partly of young Jews of the modern type from Eastern Europe, who have come to Palestine under the influence of the Zionist idea. It is an exceedingly motley mixture of Jews from all the countries under the sun which makes up the Jewish population of Jerusalem. There are many interesting observations to be made on the diverse modes of life adopted by these Jewish settlers. The Bokharian Jew is generally well to do or even rich, and it is a matter of pride with him to have a handsome and roomy house in Jerusalem. The East-European Jew builds himself a small, wretched dwelling. Even more primitive is the e mode of life of the Yemenite Jew, who is happy to have any sort of home. Nevertheless these immigrants from Yemen are a valuable element for Palestine, for they are able, by virtue of the fewness of their needs, to compete successfully with the cheap labour of the Arabs. Apart from this, they are so accustomed to heavy physical labour that they can easily be transformed into agricultural workers, and from all appearances they will play a considerable role in this field.

In Jerusalem, again, have been concentrated the most important educational and hygienic institutes, There are the big hospitals, schools, orphan homes, the Bezalel Arts and Crafts School, the National Library, etc. Jewish influence in Jerusalem is, however, considerably smaller than might be expected for the fact that the Jews make up sixty to seventy per cent of the population. The reason for this apparent anomaly is that political influence is a consequence of economic power, and the Jews of Jerusalem lack economic power. It is still the Chalukkah which is the main support of the community. An increasing number of Jews may, indeed, be found turning to labour and trade; but this phenomenon is more or less of an experiment, which we hope will be successful and will grow in t he future. The fact that the Jews of Jerusalem are a majority finds expression in the Hebrew and Yiddish signs which cover the shops nearly everywhere. The post offices of the foreign governments have Hebrew notices, while the Turkish post office in the Jewish quarter even has a Hebrew rubber-stamp. A large mill has recently been acquired by Jews.

The third stratum of the Jewish population consists of those who have come into the country during the last twenty or thirty years as a result of the Chibath Zion, or the Zionist movement, some to take up agriculture, others to settle in Jerusalem, Haifa, or Jaffa -- where older Jewish communities already existed -- and to take up trade or some handicraft. Jerusalem has already been referred to above. There is little to say about Haifa; among the 2000 Jews to be found there, 1800 are Sephardic, 200 Ashkenazic. Some wealthy Russian Jews have founded here an oil and soap factory which gives employment to a large number of Jews. The opening of the Haifa-Damascus railroad has had a healthy influence on the harbour activities of Haifa, with a consequent improvement in the economic life of the city; this improvement has in turn been of benefit to the Jews, whose condition is relatively satisfactory.

This third stratum of Jews now under consideration received its largest addition in Jaffa, whose Jewish population of 8000 is divided equally among Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews, none of whom receive Chalukkah support. Jaffa differs from, let us say, Jerusalem, in not being under the pressure of an ancient and unproductive settlement, hostile to all innovation; this city has therefore become the centre of modern Jewish life in Palestine. Fifty years ago there were hardly any Jews in Jaffa; thirty years ago they counted 1000; within the last few decades the number has grown to 8000. It is in Jaffa that we find the beginnings of a modern industrial development. There is a large machine shop which employs about 100 Jewish workers.

The Jews also share in the export and import trade, but their role in this activity leaves much to be desired. The proximity of the Jewish colonies of Petach Tikvah, Rishon le Zion and Rehovoth has had an invigorating effect on the city, as the colonists sell their produce to Jaffa, and in turn make their purchases in the city. But very few Jews of Jaffa can be considered comfortably off; for the most part they still lead a hand to mouth existence.

Of considerable importance to Jaffa is the recently founded Hebrew Gymnasium, which is dominated by a modern and progressive spirit. Apart form this, the Gymnasium has adopted Hebrew as the language of tuition; it therefore serves as a means of spreading Hebrew through wider and wider circles of the Jewish population.

To all the foregoing must now be added a brief description of the Jewish colonies and Jewish agricultural life. The colonies have been founded within the last thirty years, and along two lines: some by young people who came out of Eastern Europe, bringing with them much enthusiasm and industriousness, but little by way of experience or economic resources; others by the programmatic colonization work of Baron Rothschild. With few exceptions (e.g., Rehoboth) the first type of colony went to pieces in the first few years, or found itself compelled to place itself under the protection of Baron Rothschild. The colonization work of the Baron has achieved much for Palestine and has created enduring values. enormous sums have, indeed, been swallowed up by it; nor can it be said that the colonies have come up o the expectations with which the founder may have started out. But the fault lies not with the work of the Baron, but with the fact that, when he resolved to undertake Jewish colonization in Palestine, he already found a number of Jewish colonies in a desperate condition, and was compelled, willy-nilly, to begin with these. Most of the mistakes which have been made in the colonization work may be traced back to this situation.

The first mistake which I must point out was the fact that the persons who were to be transformed into farmers did not know enough about agriculture. They had not been brought into the country according to plan; they had simply come, had installed themselves one way or another as agriculturalists, soon found themselves at the end of their means, and called for help. It is difficult to find among the Jews the right sort of human material for agriculture; there are, indeed, statistics of Russian, Galician and East European Jews who live by agriculture; but there seems to be a wide gap between these statistics and what I have observed personally in East Europe. The Jews who, according to the statistical tables, belong in the class of agriculturalists, are for the most part not farmers, but landowners, who lease out their lands, or agricultural day labourers, or else small cattle-breeders; in any case, they are not the type of farmer which is needed for Palestine. In consequence it appears altogether doubtful whether we shall find, anywhere in the world, Jews whose abilities and training would fit them to become successful farmers in Palestine. It will be necessary to put the land settlers thorough a period of preliminary training in the country itself so that they may win the necessary experience acclimatize themselves, become accustomed to the work, and in general become acquainted with the general conditions obtaining in Palestine.

The second mistake consisted in the fact that persons who were in desperate need suddenly found themselves, through the munificence of Baron Rothschild, in possession of considerable sums, and could without any effort on their own part obtain all sorts of equipment which other farmers must as a rule acquire slowly, through the years, and by the sweat of the brow. And the old rule still holds, that the man who acquires the means to a livelihood only after much effort, prizes and guards these means, while the man who has these means thrown into his lap will not know how to appreciate them. We therefore find in Palestine a vast difference between German and Jewish colonists in regard to the card which they bestow on their live and other stock. This has nothing to do with inferior ability on the part of the Jews but with the circumstance that the German colonist has created what he possesses by his own labour, and he treats it with more care, foresight and affection. The superior stability of the German on the land, again, is connected with the organic way in which he acquired, and grew with, his possessions; the Jew obtained his as it were overnight.

The third mistake was the system of administration, which blocked the development of a spirit of independence among the colonists. An agricultural expert was appointed for every group of colonies; his instructions to the colonists were binding, but the risk was carried, formally and legally, by the colonists themselves. A situation like this is impossible in the long run. I can imagine two methods of agricultural colonization. A man may work under the direction of an administrator, but without accepting responsibility. It is also possible for a settler to make his own decisions on his own responsibility. But it is hard for me to imagine a system under which the farmer must bear the responsibility while following the instructions of the administrator. It is for this reason that the Jewish colonist does not feel the same responsibility as the farmer who takes the risk for his own decisions. I will cite only one example of the disadvantages which result from this system of guardianship over the colonists. a tone time a number of Jewish colonies, under instruction from Baron Rothschild, planted a certain variety of grape. Later it was found that this variety did not pay. The consequence was that colonists were compelled to uproot the vines, and to ask the Baron to make good their losses. which he did.

The fourth mistake , it seems to me, lies in t the fact that many colonies are built on the culture of a single product; they go in exclusively for grapes, or oranges, or grain; as a result the risk is much greater; to this must also be added the consequence that such colonists are employed only during part of the year. During the remaining time they are condemned to idleness.

Now these mistakes did not escape the notice of the administrators, and for many years attempts were made to find a way out. Efforts were made to increase the self-reliance and independence of the colonists by limiting the competence of the administrators. For instance, the wine-cellars of Rishon le Zion, which were at first directed by the administration, were placed under the care of a committee of colonists. In choosing settlers for the colony of Ekron and for the recently founded colonies in Galilee, much care was exercised, and only those received land who were acquainted with Palestinian agriculture, in particular the sons of older colonists and agricultural workers. But was found impossible to undo all the harm which had resulted from the earlier mistakes. The old generation of colonists has been brought up in a spirit of complete dependence; whenever something goes wrong, they come running for assistance; it is only here and there, among the new generation, that we find more spirit.

In conclusion, we may say that the colonization work of the Baron was the enterprise of a rich man who wanted to indulge in the luxury of seeing a piece of work completed in less time than it should have taken by a process of organic growth. In any event, the money invested has not been lost. Baron Rothschild found himself reimbursed by the increase in land values, so that even the over-expenditure was made good. But from the point of view of the Jew who today wishes to settle on the land in Palestine, the value of the BaronÕs work cannot be over-estimated. Our position today is very different from what it would have been if we had had to start our colonization work form the beginning. How important the colonies are is proved by the role which the four or five German colonies in the country play as centres of support for Germany. How much more important for the Jews are the twenty five colonies which they can call their own. Mention should, indeed, be made of the inclination among the young manhood of certain colonies to migrate from the country; in particular is this true of second and third sons; the reason is that they can see no future for themselves in the country. Unfortunately they leave Palestine not as Syrians leave Syria, namely with the intention of making some money abroad and for returning with their savings; if they leave Palestine it is for good.

In contrast with the pitiful Arab villages, with their huts of baked clay, the Jewish colonies, with their wide streets, their strong stone houses and their red-tiled roofs, look like veritable oases of culture. The Jewish colonists have also contributed a great deal to the technical improvement of Palestinian agriculture. They have been particularly active in plantation work -- oranges, almonds and olives. The best proof of this success is to be found in the fact that the German colonists of Sarona employ Jewish workers in order to start plantations, and pay them at the high rate of five or six francs a day.

In grain farming the Germans are in advance of the Jews, but the Jews have been pioneers in the starting of plantations; they were the first to resort to deep well boring, and it is they who have brought the orange culture of the country to its present high level.

There is a lively spiritual activity in the colonies, and Jewish self-consciousness finds much stronger expression here than in the cities. Hebrew is rapidly gaining ground as the language of daily use. In the streets one hears the children speaking only Hebrew; it is from the colonies that the language thrusts its way into the cities. where it is already playing an important role.

Permit me now to devote a little attention to my second thesis: what can be done in Palestine? With regard to the cities, the answer is not difficult. We must liquidate the Chalukkah system, which still provides most of the Jews with the largest part of their income, by the substitution of work. In the last decade Palestine has been lifted to a new economic level, and the standard of life has risen not only among the Jews, but among the Arabs too. The latter are beginning to dress European fashion, and in this way they have increased the home market. Nevertheless, the purchasing power of Palestine is still low. We still see no prospect of so raising it as to absorb our 80,000 Jews in internal commerce and industry. The market is too small. Jews are, indeed, to be found in the import and export trade, which is almost exclusively devoted to agricultural products (grain and sesame), but here too only a relatively small number of Jews can make a living. there is, in my opinion, only one way of providing work for the Jews, and that is by the creation of industrial enterprises with large export possibilities. Certain articles can be produced in factories; some, indeed, are already being produced. But the erection and equipment of factories calls for heavy investment, and the absence of coal and iron in Palestine will always be a certain obstacle in the way of the development of heavy industry. A much better prospect is offered by the introduction of small industry, such as can be carried on in the home or in small workshops, with human instead of mechanical power. There is already one town in Palestine which supports itself almost entirely through small industry of this kind, namely Bethlehem, where practically the entire Christian population is engage din the production of sacred images and travellers momentoes made of mother-of-pearl, which find a market chiefly in America. The same is true of the Christians of Nazareth. The centre of small industry is, however, Syria -- chiefly Damascus. here it is mostly the Sephardic Jews who are employed in small industry. Form Damascus comes the well-known type of furniture pieces inlaid with mother-of-pearl or with mosaics of other woods; likewise utensils of beaten copper. Some 10,000 workers are said to be thus employed, one half of them Jews, so that the greater part of the Jewish population of Damascus supports itself through small industry. The earning in this line of work are small; nevertheless the unprejudiced observer detects a great difference between the life in Damascus and the life in Jerusalem. Wherever one passes through the streets of Damascus there is a busy life; here are people who have something to do and know something about the value of time. Jerusalem is, by contrast, like a city of the dead; its inhabitants have no constant occupation, and they are hard put to it to pass the time. I would therefore recommend, as the first step in the improvement of the economic condition of the Jews of Palestine, the introduction of small industry, and that preferably in Jerusalem, which contains two thirds of the Jewish population of Palestine. A beginning has already been made with the Bezalel Arts and Crafts School, founded in 1906. A well developed small industry could be of advantage to, and derive benefits from, the Bezalel school. As things are today, Palestine lacks a small industry which could absorb the pupils of the Arts and Crafts School, and put their training to use. On the other hand, a small industry would itself also benefit by the existence of the school.

It is only by an improvement in their economic condition that the Jews of Palestine will be able to get the full advantage of the high standard of education which they enjoy. Today the boy who has received a training in European languages simply does not know what to do with it; he is too educated to be satisfied with those occupations which are accessible to him in Palestine; he is unhappy in Palestine, and at the first opportunity migrates, so that it may be said that all the education which the Jews of Palestine receive only serves to drive them out of the country. Improvement of hygienic conditions is also important for the cities. City hygiene is the weakest point in the Turkish administration; in fact, it can hardly be said to exist at all.

I turn now to the colonies. Two questions arise at once: What is to happen with those colonies which already exist, and how shall colonization be extended, i.e. how shall we found new colonies? It will be necessary for the colonists to turn to mixed farming. They must not be content with plantations alone; they must also take up grain-growing. It is an immense disadvantage for the plantation colonists that during the many months when nothing can be done in the orchards, they practically forget their work, and in general find it difficult to overcome the habit of laziness into which they have fallen. This can be avoided if, side by side with the plantations, there is also the cultivation of grain. In this fashion a problem of prime importance, namely, the labour problem, will also be solved. Hitherto the plantation colonists have been able to employ Jewish workers for only part of the year. As the demand for workers increased in season, it was of course impossible to find Jewish workers in sufficient numbers; Arab workers were therefore engaged from the nearest village. The consequence has been that in many colonies more Arab than Jewish workers are employed at certain seasons of the year: which is a most undesirable state of affairs. If every colony had wheat cultivation as well as plantations, the Jewish worker could find employment all the year round.

Of very great importance is the problem of drawing the women into agricultural work. While in the German colonies nearly every woman has the dairy work to look after, nothing of the sort is to be found in the Jewish colonies, simply because the production of milk has not been undertaken. The production of fodder has been neglected, so that it is difficult to keep cattle; and thus neither milk nor butter can be bought in the Jewish colonies. But there is a great deal more to be done in this direction; more attention must be paid to chicken and vegetable farming than has been paid till now. While the Arabs make immense sums of money out of vegetable farming, the Jewish colonies have hardly begun to do anything in this field.

Important, too, is the extension of credit to cover agricultural enterprises. Mortgage credit, of the kind which has rendered invaluable service in Germany is, indeed, impossible in Palestine because of the peculiar legal complications bound up with the holding of land in the Jewish colonies; but as far as personal credit is concerned, a great deal can be done through the extension of the cooperative system, which at present has merely made a beginning.

Nor must we neglect the question of a network of roads between the colonies. It would be an excellent thing if the largest colonies of Judea could be connected with Jaffa by spur railroad lines; I understand that steps have already been taken to obtain these small concessions from the Turkish government.

And now, in closing, I turn to the question of how to proceed to the extension of our colonies. We must make sure, before we provide prospective settlers with land, whether as lessees or as owners, that they have a practical knowledge of Palestinian agriculture; they must also be accustomed to the country and its climate. Secondly, through the introduction of a system of mixed farming, we must make it possible for the colonists to put their labour to use throughout the entire year. Thirdly, before we help a colonist to become a farmer for himself, we must see to it that he is at least able to provide himself with live stock out of his own means.

But the problem before us is not easily solved;