The Maccabaean

THE opponents of Zionism consist of three classes: the indifferent, the assimilationists and the honest Jews. The indifferent are opposed not only to Zionism, but to any movement which would bring in a disturbing element into their smug selfcontentment. The means to bring them into our camp do not materially differ, therefore, from those to be used to rouse them to any ideal. The assimilationists, bent on destroying Judaism, must, of course, be irreconcilable enemies of anything that tends to perpetuate it. The honest Jews, however, do not differ from the Zionists in their aims of upholding Judaism and transmitting it to their posterity: the only obstacle to their joining our ranks lies in their clinging to certain views and beliefs promulgated by the assimilationists. Since they mean it honestly, they are accessible to arguments; and I shall subject their views to a critical analysis.

This last class is almost entirely limited to the heirs of the German Ghetto. When the old German Ghetto was about to break down its medieval walls, its leaders tried to adapt their old Judaism to the new conditions confronting them. The religious break in their lives, and the rationalistic-atheistic philosophy of the times, had emptied their soul of its Jewish contents; the virulence of the anti-Semitism and the political theories of the age were all factors in the concoction of their nostrum.

That nostrum had three ingredients. One ingredient was intended to meet the conception of the political state which then obtained. In agreement with the theory that state and nation are co-extensive and convertible terms, they denied Jewish nationalism. Judaism, they proclaimed, is merely a form of religious belief. We are Germans, or Frenchmen, of the Mosaic confession. Although modern political science has thrown the old notion of the state into the lumber-yard of outlived theories, the conservative nature of the Jewish char-

Scter still clings to the old-fogey nostrum, 'hich, at its best, was merely designed for outside consumption, and, as such, has failed ingloriously; for there is not a Gentile outside of the insane asylum, who could. be persuaded that the Jews are not a nation. And nobody could blame him for it. For aside from the fact that he is ever conscious of the racial difference between himself and the Jew, if he should look up the Dictionary of Political Science, he would find there the definition of Renan: "A nation is a body of men harving a common history, cherishing in common its achievements in the past, and holding com- ‚mon ideals for the future.” If the Jews, then, are not a nation, who are? This doctrine is, fortunately, limited to the heirs of the German Ghetto, a very small minority. If the great body of Jews should ever adopt this doctrine, they might one day awake to the fact that they had dug their own political grave. For the necessary corollary to it, and ın fact, the openly-stated doctrine, is that if we are a nation, we have no claım to citizenship. Since all Christians believe that we are a nation, and, in fact, can scientifically prove the correctness of their belief, our enemies could take us at our word and deny us citizenship. In a paper written some years ago, I have outlined the theory of the modern political state. A well-meaning son of the German Ghetto: remarked to me on reading it: “This is socialism!” To me that was a reminder of Russian conditions; whoever is against the bloody regime ıs dubbed a nihilist and anarchist

The second ingredient of the nostrum was intended as a panacea against anti-Semitism. The children of the Ghetto have, of course, suffered persecution in all countries; but the child of the German Ghetto was the most wretched victim. The effect of persecution in the Polish Ghetto, for instance, was merely, or chiefly, felt in the spheres of economics