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To you all I say that the existence and destiny of our people depend less on
external factors than on ourselves remaining faithful to the moral traditions
which have enabled us to survive for thousands of years despite the heavy
storms that have broken over our heads. In the service of life sacrifice
becomes grace.
Working Palestine
Among Zionist organizations "Working Palestine" is the one whose work is of
most direct benefit to the most valuable class of people living there--namely,
those who are transforming deserts into flourishing settlements by the labour
of their hands. These workers are a selection, made on a voluntary basis,
from the whole Jewish nation, an lite composed of strong, confident, and
unselfish people. They are not ignorant labourers who sell the labour of their
hands to the highest bidder, but educated, intellectually vigorous, free men,
from whose peaceful struggle with a neglected soil the whole Jewish nation
are the gainers, directly and indirectly. By lightening their heavy lot as far as
we can we shall be saving the most valuable sort of human life; for the first
settlers' struggle on ground not yet made habitable is a difficult and dangerous
business involving a heavy personal sacrifice. How true this is, only they can
judge who have seen it with their own eyes. Anyone who helps to improve the
equipment of these men is helping on the good work at a crucial point.
It is, moreover, this working class alone that has it in its power to establish
healthy relations with the Arabs, which is the most important political task of
Zionism. Administrations come and go; but it is human relations that finally
turn the scale in the lives of nations. Therefore to support "Working Palestine"
is at the same time to promote a humane and worthy policy in Palestine, and
to oppose an effective resistance to those undercurrents of narrow nationalism
from which the whole political world, and in a less degree the small political
world of Palestine affairs, is suffering.
Jewish Recovery
I gladly accede to your paper's request that I should address an appeal to the
Jews of Hungary on behalf of Keren Hajessod.
The greatest enemies of the national consciousness and honour of the Jews
are fatty degeneration--by which I mean the unconscionableness which comes
from wealth and ease--and a kind of inner dependence on the surrounding
Gentile world which comes from the loosening of the fabric of Jewish society.
The best in man can flourish only when he loses himself in a community.
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Hence the moral danger of the Jew who has lost touch with his own people
and is regarded as a foreigner by the people of his adoption. Only too often a
contemptible and joyless egoism has resulted from such circumstances. The
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weight of outward oppression on the Jewish people is particularly heavy at the
moment. But this very bitterness has done us good. A revival of Jewish
national life, such as the last generation could never have dreamed of, has
begun. Through the operation of a newly awakened sense of solidarity among
the Jews, the scheme of colonizing Palestine launched by a handful of devoted
and judicious leaders in the face of apparently insuperable difficulties, has
already prospered so far that I feel no doubt about its permanent success.
The value of this achievement for the Jews everywhere is very great. Palestine
will be a centre of culture for all Jews, a refuge for the most grievously
oppressed, a field of action for the best among us, a unifying ideal, and a
means of attaining inward health for the Jews of the whole world.
Anti-Semitism and Academic Youth
So long as we lived in the ghetto our Jewish nationality involved for us
material difficulties and sometimes physical danger, but no social or
psychological problems. With emancipation the position changed, particularly
for those Jews who turned to the intellectual professions. In school and at the
university the young Jew is exposed to the influence of a society with a definite
national tinge, which he respects and admires, from which he receives his
mental sustenance, to which he feels himself to belong, while it, on the other
hand, treats him, as one of an alien race, with a certain contempt and hostility.
Driven by the suggestive influence of this psychological superiority rather than
by utilitarian considerations, he turns his back on his people and his traditions,
and considers himself as belonging entirely to the others while he tries in vain
to conceal from himself and them the fact that the relation is not reciprocal.
Hence that pathetic creature, the baptized Jewish Geheimrat of yesterday
and to-day. In most cases it is not pushfulness and lack of character that have
made him what he is, but, as I have said, the suggestive power of an
environment superior in numbers and influence. He knows, of course, that
many admirable sons of the Jewish people have made important contributions
to the glory of European civilization; but have they not all, with a few
exceptions, done much the same as he?
In this case, as in many mental disorders, the cure lies in a clear knowledge of
one's condition and its causes. We must be conscious of our alien race and
draw the logical conclusions from it. It is no use trying to convince the others
of our spiritual and intellectual equality by arguments addressed to the reason,
when their attitude does not originate in their intellects at all. Rather must we
emancipate ourselves socially and supply our social needs, in the main,