10 Essays on Zionism and Judaism

Ten Essays on Zionism and Judaism

The present volume of translations from the Hebrew of Achad Ha-Am[1] differs in character from the volume of Selected Essays published in 1912 by the Jewish Publication Society of America. The earlier selection was confined, by the express desire of the publishing Society, to essays dealing with the broader aspects of Judaism and Jewish thought; essays of a more polemical character, in which the author has defined his attitude to the modern Jewish national movement, were designedly omitted. Of the ten further essays included in the present selection, only two belong to the former category, and these have been placed, out of their chronological order, at the end. The other eight essays all deal with one aspect or another of Zionism, and they form a series which will enable the English reader who is interested in the Zionist movement to follow its history under the guidance of one who is at the same time among its staunchest pillars and its most unsparing critics. The first[2] of the eightwhich is also the first essay written by Achad Ha-Ambelongs to the early viiiyears of the Jewish national movement, when the Zionist Organisation was unborn, and the very name Zionism uninvented. The last of the eightand the most recent of Achad Ha-Ams essays, for the war and ill-health have made him silent of recent yearsrecords his impressions of the practical results achieved by Zionism in Palestine up to 1911. As the background of these essays is for the most part unfamiliar to English readers, it will not be out of place to give here a brief sketch of the phases through which the Zionist movement has passed, in so far as that is necessary for a proper understanding of the criticisms and allusions in the essays themselves. The first organised form of Zionism took shape in Russia under the stress of the pogroms of 1880-81. Those pogroms, following a period during which the Russian Government had seemed to be working sincerely towards the emancipation of the Jews, and themselves followed by a whole code of restrictive legislation known as the May Laws, awoke into a blaze the national sentiment which had slumbered but had not died in the Russian Ghetto. They revealed the evils of galuthexile, life outside Palestinein all their hideousness, and turned mens minds to the active accomplishment of that escape from galuth for which during many centuries the Jew had only prayed. Chibbath Zion (Love of Zion) became an organised movement, and throughout Russia groups of Chovev Zion (Lovers of Zion) began to work for the settlement of Jews on the land in Palestine. At the head of the movement stood Dr. Leo Pinsker, who in his pamphlet Auto-Emancipation had outlined an ambitious scheme for the emigration of Jews en masse to some territory (not necessarily ixPalestine) where they could be their own masters. His proposal found no response among the emancipated Western Jews, to whom it was addressed; and as its realisation was obviously beyond the power of the oppressed and persecuted Russian Jews, its author turned to Chibbath Zion as the only means open to him of working for a national regeneration of Jewry. Events soon showed that Chibbath Zion was as yet unable to achieve so large an aim. The difficulties in the way of settling Jews on the land in Palestine were enormous, and the resources of the Chovev Zion were painfully limited. The national sentiment was not sufficiently alive in the Jewish masses to induce large numbers of them to brave the hardships and privations of life in Palestine for the sake of a national ideal. Any Jew whose primary object was to escape from pogroms and May Laws and to better his individual position would naturally prefer some country, like the United States, where economic life was already developed. The Chovev Zion attempted, rather unwisely, to make Palestine attractive to the less idealistically minded by exaggerating the possibilities of individual self-advancement which it held out. The natural result was disappointment and disillusion; and the Palestinian agricultural settlements (or colonies, as they are generally called) would have faded away altogether but for the generous assistance of Baron Edmond de Rothschild, of Paris. Thanks to him the first colonies pulled through, and after many vicissitudes were set on the road to independence. But the whole colonisation movement remained small and poor, and any hopes which might have been entertained of its bringing about even the beginning of a solution of the material problem of galuth were dissipated at an early xdate. Meanwhile, however, the Chovev Zion contributed to a national work of the first importance by helping to lay the foundations of a revival of the Hebrew language, especially in Palestinea development which, while it had nothing to do with the solution of any material problem, had very much to do with the stimulation of that national sentiment which is the only possible basis of a national as distinct from a purely philanthropic or economic movement. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 67667
Author: Ahad Ha'am, 1856-1927
Release Date: Mar 20, 2022
Format: eBook
Language: English
Publisher: George Routledge & Sons
Publication Date: 1922
Publisher Country: United Kingdom

Contributors

Translator: Simon, Leon, 1881-1965