The National Idea.
JEWISH nationhood is the keystone of the Zionistic arch. I shall never be tired, as long as men are in doubt, of repeating this truism. To understand Zionism the natural existence of the Jews must be appreciated; without it Zionism is a quack remedy; by its power only will the Jews succeed, or by it only will they be able to maintain their success.
That the Jews are a nation is practically indisputable. The modern endeavor of rabbis and casuists to deny Jewish nationality by laying all the stress upon citizenship—that is, confounding natural and political nationalism—is sheer sophism and is more likely to endanger the position of the Jews than any other doctrine that has been propounded from platform or pulpit. The man who denies his race—and nation has its origin in race—may, however honest he otherwise be, be regarded as bad a citizen as he is a Jew. It is not the purpose of this article to prove the claims to Jewish nationality, but rather to illustrate the utility of the idea; yet one word must be added on the nonsense of such phrases as “American” or “Englishman of the Jewish persuasion.” The perversion of truth contained in this utterance can be best realized if, given individual Jews have been born in these countries, one were to describe Jew as a “Scotsman of the Jewish persuasion,” “Greek of the Jewish persuasion,” “Spaniard of the Jewish persuasion,” “Cingalese of the Jewish persuasion,” and finally “Siamese of the Jewish persuasion.” The only people to whom these titles would apply are Scotsmen, Greeks, Spaniards, Cingalese, or Siamese converted to Judaism.
If the Jews were not a nation and had no national idea, the Jewish trouble would not be a sufficient impelling force to raise a movement capable of solving the Jewish trouble. A negative line of reasoning might suggest that were the Jews a disintegrated, dispersed mass of religionists they would have already disappeared, and therefore there would have been no Jewish question to solve. The Jewish national idea, age-old in prayer and tradition, the buoyant thought. of Jewry, is the re-establishment of the Jews in Palestine, and Zionism is Zionism because it turns towards that idea. Had there been no persecution, the Jew endeavoring to discover the wherefore of his Jewish existence might have found that'real life for the Jew could only be found in his own homeland. Tolstoi was puzzled for years by the problem “ Wherefore am I?” On the Jew the problem has been pressed from the outside, had he not settled it long ago in answer to all the attacks made upon him. Persecution has, however, pressed us onward, and if we examine that problem in all its bearings we find that the Jew is everywhere a minority; that his redispersal leads to the creation of new Ghettos generating new local Jewish questions, so that the satisfaction felt at the emigration of a million Jews from Russia is disturbed by the discovery of anti-Semitic flames smoldering under all kinds of ashes in odd corners of England, Ireland, and