THEODORE HERZL IN HIS WRITINGS
T
Our bad and foolish habit of making one another ridiculous, is a remnant of slavish habits which we had acquired during centuries of oppression. A free man never considers himself ridiculous, and does not permit anyone to make him so. This is why I address myself first of all to those Jews who are spiritually free and strong.
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The world is in need of the Jewish State; therefore will it come to be.
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It is since the Basle days that the Jewish people are once more in possession of a representative body; this is why the Jewish State will arise in the Jewish Land.
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All Jewish Colonization plans must coalesce; that is demanded by the very nature of things: this is why it will come. All works must become one work; then it will succeed.
II.
What I am going to tell you, will partly appear to you as too simple, and partly as too phantastic. But it is the simple and the phantastic that do lead humanity. It is amazing, and it is well known with what little reason the world is being managed.
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But I should have to tell you finally what flags those are, and how I was going to unfurl them. And should you ask me sarcastically what a flag is, and answer, it is merely a stick with a rag at the end of it: Then will I tell you "no sir: a flag is more than that; it is with a flag that people are led anywhere; even into the Blessed Land.
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"It is for a flag that they live and die; it is, in fact, the only thing for which they are ready to die in masses once they have been trained to it."
Translated for The Maccabæan By DR. GEO. JESHURUN
Believe me, the politics of a people, especially of a people which is spread out over the whole of the world, is made up only of abstractions which soar very high upwards. Do you know what entered into the making of the German Empire? Dreams, songs, fancies, red-and- gold and black bands. And that in a short time. DBismark merely shook the tree which the dreamers had nlanted.
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I am neither a seer nor a prophet; but I confess: I hope, and I am convinced of it, that some day a mighty wave of enthusiasm will yet spread over the Jewish people.
III.
Zionism is the Jewish people a-moving.
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Zionism is the rehabilitation of Judaism before the return to the Jewish Land.
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Our activity can be expressed in one word: We organize the Jewry and build its future.
IV.
One can see that we cherish no extravagant dreams and aspire to nothing foolish or unjust; we merely strive to secure for our unfortunate people a work-a-day existence, as we believe that only through assured work may it expect moral and physical advancement.
This, and only this, is why we have undertaken to gather our people together in the name of one Single Ideal.
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Material security is the foundation of a vigorous morality; this is why we long for it with all our heart and strive with all our power to secure for our people that material security which it can possess only in a land of its own. And the moral vigor of a race which is spread all over the world is a matter of importance for the world.