ZIONISM AS A MORAL FORCE
ZIONISM has been created for a living people. It is the sub-conscious that has been called into being. We must go forward with determination against the forces of indifference. Above all, it is our children and our young people who must be trained to love and appreciate the blessings of the national spirit.
In this age our young people take nothing for granted. They rightly want to knowthe why and the wherefore of all things.And one of the questions they address totheir elders is this: Why should I lovea Jewish nation? What good will it do meto love the Jewish nation? This questiondemands an answer, and it will not do toreply with an appeal to tradition. Wemust give reasons.
We must show the evidence that Jewish national feeling will make them better men and women, strengthen their character, and help them to play a strenuous, a successful, a manly and a womanly part in life's game.
Men belonging to any nation are glad to work for their brethren. To do this work brings gladness into their lives, and gladness is a practical good. Life is dull and drab to many of us; and to have gladness poured into one's soul, to have the element of brightness and of joy added to our life, is certainly a great thing. And this can come to us from the cultivation of the national spirit.
In a great national work, our thinking is corrected. It is there we shall become clearer in thinking, accurate in reasoning, more level-headed in the business of life. In the Goluth we are in danger of thinking incorrectly, we have hardly a thought above our business; we see the things before us superficially. It is in national work that we shall learn the real value of working for our people and for their future.
We complain of the lack of discipline
among us. But we forget that it is only in normal national work that man's conduct is really disciplined. The spirit of reverence departs from the soul of a people that does not control its own conduct continuously for the strengthening of its sense of solidarity and mutual responsibility for the national life. We are in danger of becoming vulgar in a real sense if we withdraw from the cleansing influences of our history and from our national hopes.
Zionism gives us Jews a wider outlook on the life of our people. There is nothing more abhorrent to the strong, eager soul than a mean, narrow, mutilated life, that does not pass beyond the narrow confines of local interests and individual needs. Ruskin has said that there can be no great picture, no masterpiece of painting, without a vast expanse of heaven in it. This is also true of national life. There can be no wide outlook on life without the elorv of a living, hopeful nation.
Zionism brings us two gracious gifts— courage and hope. Every Jew needs a heart of courage to face life’s duties bravely, fearlessiy, victoriously. He needs courage to face the anxieties and strain of his exceptional position. He requires courage to be true to Judaism, to the standard of its great ideals. We Zionists find courage as well as hope in our work. When we suffer as Jews, it is Zionism that binds up the broken-hearted. We know that this suffering must cease, and we prepare ourselves for a fuller, a more normal life, and we are comforted. When assimilation rends us, it is Zionism that enters as a living force to wnite the scattered members of otr people.
And because of this—for being a corrective to our thinking, testing conduct, widening our horizons, giving us courage and bringing comfort—we may say with all sincerity that Zionism is a great moral force.