The Maccabaean

The Spiritual Aspects of Zionism

Dr. Hochman is one of the editor of the "Jewish Review," of London, a recently established magazine, which numbers among its contributors the best writers in Anglo-Saxon Jewry. He was born in 1883 and educated at Jew's and Universitycolleges, Berlin and Heidelberg. He received his doctor's degree at Heidelberg in 1907. He is the author of "An Ancient Hebrew Inscription at Oppenheim" and "Jerusalem Temple Festivities."

WE are very obviously at a turning and on the other the ideal of the point of Jewish history. A great po- prophets of Israel—the ideal of universal litical change in the condition of religion. The heirs of the Assyrians’ ideal Jewry is seemingly more near at hand than of universal empire were the Babylonians, we are prepared to recognize. Those most Persians, Greeks and Romans in turn, likely to benefit by the change believe while the ideal of universal religion passed in its immense. They are our brethren from Judea to Christianity and to the of Eastern Europe. Those most able to Mohammedan world. But in Rome as in secure the benefits for them and to pre-Islam the two ideals, so different in pare the way for the inevitable realization origin, were combined, and in both, the of enduring Jewish expectations are un- combination has proved untenable. The able to share the hopes they cannot un- Jews entered into and came out of the derstand. They are our brethren who Babylonian exile with the ideal of uni- enjoy the benefits of political emancipa- versal religion before them. Yet the old tion. Yet in spite of their aloofness, and identification of nationality and religion one might almost say in spite of the mis- was two intimate to be easily eradicated. directed activities of Zionists, the success They too hoped that the universality of of Zionism is destined to be one of the Judaism would bring with it a universality landmarks of the century, but only if of Jewish empire, and they too learned that Zionism be interpreted as Jewish nation- the combination was not to be. But the alism, and if nationalism be divested of Jews learned this lesson early. Deprived its territorial significance. A territorial of all possibility of empire, religion alone Jewish nationality whether in Palestine or remained to the Jew. For four centuries elsewhere is something of which Jewish after the loss of national independence history declares itself impatient, and ter- the Jew strove for the universality of ritorial nationality is altogether a thing Judaism only to learn that this also is of recent growth in the modern world, not to be. A universality involving uni- even as by its basis of conflicting national formity can be no manifestation of that interests it bars the way to the necessary divine unity which reveals itself every- and inevitable progress of Christian where in the harmony of infinite variety. civilization. If we look behind the The Jew learned to surrender the hope Renaissance we look upon a cosmopolitan for the universality of Judaism. He world stretching back in almost uninter- learned to know that h’s hope of uni- rupted continuity to the time of its origin versality can be only for the universal in the century of the great prophets of acknowledgement of the Fatherhood of Israel, the eighth century B. C. E. Bethe One and only God and with it of hind that date we find, almost everywhere, the brotherhood of all men. A brother- that religion and nationality went together. hood implies variety in individualities Moab was the people of Chemosh even harmonized by fundamental kinship. Israel as Israel was the people of the Lord. In shall be third with Egypt and Assyria, but the eighth century B. C. E. two new ideals Israel shall not stand alone as Conqueror rise into eminence. On the one hand before the Lord. Nations shall not dis- the Assyrian ideal of universal empire appear and Israel shall not cease from