Can Charity Build Up A Nation?
SINCE the "Tehuda B'Israel" was published (or appeared) about seventy years ago, our best men or, rather, our richest people have not ceased to invent schemes to convert the Jews into tillers of the soil. Reb Isaac Baer Levenson, it seems, must have been compelled to gather evidence from the Torah that the Jews may be colonists. Baron de Hirsch, who most likely had never read, or even seen the "Tehuda B'Israel," as a practical financier and a wise Jewish philanthropist, had understood that as long as we remain a people composed entirely of traders, we cannot be called a nation, but merely a group of persons of the same faith. Reb Isaac Baer Levenson, as a maskil and learned man of the old generation, had interpreted that, for the Jews, the tilling of the soil will not be only a way of securing a living for many poor families, but that it is also their duty to become tillers of the soil
Baron de Hirsch had thought of it as another kind of duty—a duty of charity: The Jewish colonies ın Russia, which Nicholas I, had created through the indirect influence of Reb Isaac Baer Levenson, remain up to the present time under the direct and stricet rule of the Russian Government, just as the Indians, for example, ın America remain even to the present day under the vigilant supervision of our national government. The colonies that Baron de Hirsch had established are not even yet independent, but have, after a lapse of a quarter of a century, with very few exceptions, remained dependent upon his successors, the IKA. The IKA. which is the only guardian of the Baron de Hirsch milions, is in duty bound to carry out his will honestly—to regard the Jewish eolonization movement as a charity.
The present movement (I do not wish to call it a new movement because with us
colonization is already quite an old story) wishes to invest the Jewish colonization movement with the national spirit. The question is: Can we call this movement a national one while in reality it is no more than another philanthropic enterprise on a larger scale?
One of our Jewish writers has already asserted his pride in opposition to our philanthropists by contending that the Jew looms a thousand mi:es above the Jewish capitalists, no matter how much our Russian, Galician, or Roumanian Jews should not take pride in themself. We can not, however, deny the fact that our Jews are the receivers and our philanthropists are the givers, and if the Jew, although a thousand miles above the capitalists, is a receiver, he must therefore’be ten thousand miles below them.
There is a passage in the Bible which says: “zedokah elevates an nation.” Our long Galuth had put a pecu:iar interpretation of charity upon the meaning of zedokah in the quoted passage. Just as our sages have imposed charity as a duty upon the Jews, that they must give as much as they can, just so have others made it a duty to accept as much charity as possible. One does not need to be a Zangwill to be able to write the “King of Schnaor- ners” and to know that there are among us such schnorrers who are like the kings, forever demanding more and yet more. To give charıty is, of course, a beautiful and noble deed; to accept charity is oftentimes a bitter necessity, but by making a constant practice of giving and receiving charity, a nation can most certainly not be elevated. To give charity means to do one a favor, but to take charity means to be contented with favors.
It is true that our position as a nation is an exceptional one. As a people we