No problem is so deep in gloom that this enlightenment cannot penetrate it.
But in order to be receptive of it, the Theorist must become as whole as the Doer has always been.
Thus is the Doer his prototype, his model.
The highest form of education is this: Concentration of all one's being.
We are being educated by the great dead, through his concentrated personality, now more vividly before our eyes than ever before.
There can be no liberation of Judaism, no road to a new Jewish people, before the problematical has been laid. Only thus can the creative instinct be loosened from its restraint, for the problematical hems in and circumscribes the creative. Spinoza is the great example of how the Jew may uncoil himself from his problems on the way to real understanding, that is, to spiritual unity and enlightenment.
The soil of Palestine will not transform us if we do not transform ourselves. It can only strengthen, assure and perfect.
There is, nevertheless, a species of transformation possible through the will. All creative Jews have known that.
Spinoza is the great prototype 'for the life intellectual. But what mostly concerns us Jews of to-day, who stand in a critical, decisive, transitional epoch, is not
the life intellectual but the life active. Theodor Herzl is a leader towards the life active.
While I write this, it all suddenly comes over me! Now, he would have been fifty years old.....
I never before understood as I do at this moment, this simple and ghastly fact that makes the heart stand still and tight- ens the lips.
As I feel now, as I never felt before, that we are orphaned.
And I know now, as I have never yet known, what we lack.
Not this or that program.
Not this or that method.
Not this or that enterprise.
Only power, greatness!
Theodor Herzl's choice of paths to the goal may have been a mistaken one.
But when he told of these paths, the soul of the millions quivered with yearning, with anticipation, with rejoicing!
With rejoicing over him!
Greatness, the greatness of his greatness, caused the dumb soul of the millions to awake, to stammer, to live!
And only out of such living can that new people be born, for which we yearn.
Pure force! Unity! Greatness!
Let Fate bestow upon us only this one thing.
HERZL
On the Sixth Anniversary of His Death
A stream of sparkling, throbbing light, A ray of God's own fire, Thrilled through his dormant, brooding soul, And tuned its sleeping lyre. And Herzl came!
The wrinkled brows were sleeked with hope, The rosy dawn was near, Corroding grief was fleeing fast, The hearts were full of cheer. And Herzl lived!
From sordid sod and surly men,To balmy skies he sped;And stifling grief choked ev'ry soul,And seething tears were shed.And Herzl died!
And dusk there came and darknes grim, And chilling winds of night: And pain-racked hearts in torture cried, The Light, where is the Light And Herzl And dusk there came and darknes grim,And chilling winds of night:And pain-racked hearts in torture cried,The Light, where is the LightAnd Herzl —?
—Bendinoh.