The Jews were slightly influenced by the blind will to live. It is obvious that the physical process of living, had that been the aim and end of their existence, was not secured by their remaining Jews. Our history is filled with incidents of the self-immolation of whole sections of our people, scorning this will to live in order that the Jewish struggle for world sovereignty might succeed. Whence the patience of this long-martyred, persecuted and boycotted people? Was it for the sake of comfortable living? Or because every Jew felt within himself the inherent glow of a great cause, because he believed that the Jews are the chosen people, predestined to be the masters of the world?
Nietzsche had a better appreciation of Jewish life. He was not a Hebraic scholar, but he was under the influence of the Old Testament, and, glowing beneath the spirit of our great story, he perceived that the fundamental principles of Jewish life were will and freedom, which are identical.
The Jewish God is a free God, above Nature. The Jewish God is One. He creates good and evil, light and darkness. And free also is man, who can will to do what pleases him, and can be held responsible for what he does. Will has played a large part in the evolution of the Jewish idea, not the blind will of a slave, but the intelligent will of the future conqueror.
It is interesting to note that even such determinists as Boruch Spinoza and Karl Marx believed and declared their faith in the freedom of the human will. Spinoza evolved a moral philosophy which is balanced by the free consent of the individual. Marx, relying wholly on economic laws, makes such of the "revolutionary strength of the masses" which is, in another form, placing the reins of government in the hands of the individual.
Because the Jews have such an implicit faith in the free will of man, they look upon the future with eyes lighted with the desire for achievement. The Jewish future is not a definite program or form to which they must adjust themselves, impelled thereto by the blind force of social or economic influences but something which they themselves must forge out in accordance with their own ideals.
On the subject of the will, Nietzsche and Judaism are in harmony.
When the Jewish ideal of the future is studied, it is perceived that the "will to power" is the center of it all. The truth is not weakened by the fact that the Jewish struggle, or reaction, has been weakened, for the golus is not the normal state of life of the Jewish people.
All prophecy is an expression of supreme faith in the superiority of the Jews and their eventual domination over other nations. The Jewish capital will be situated at the "tops of the hills" and thither all nations will turn to learn its ways." The Jews are to have spiritual sway over the earth.
Only in our day has it been possible for a small class in Jewry to sieze upon the phrase, the "will to power," and drag it into the Jewish pulpit. But in their blind rush, they made merely to seize the form, while the content slipped away. I refer to the reformers of Judaism. They have made a great deal of the Jewish mission, but at the same time repudiated the movement for national restoration. What is their mission to preach the world the truths of Judaism but an expression of the will to power? And yet, inconsequentially, and illogically, they failed to ally themselves with the movement which is the only actual expression of the Jewish "power of will." All their preachings, therefore, lack point, and border on the absurd, for how is it possible to have a will to power without a power of will? Life has proven, however, that their Jewish mission has only the sound of the real thing. In truth, it lacks the aspiring and invincible power of theory which is destined to influence life. Reform Judaism instead of rising to the elevation of a dignified and powerful movement, has lost every vestige of Jewish pride and become the mouthpiece of every race and nation, that had its own power of will to realize.
The Zionists who took up the cudgels against these ineffectual reformers and missionaries re-enthroned the old Jewish will. They believe in the will to power, but first of all in the power of will.
Zionism is the belief in the power of will, the predominance of the human will over circumstances. It was no accident that the chief characteristic of the founder of modern Zionism was his will power. He was will incarnate, and as the basis of his program for the reconstruction of Altneuland he adopted the motto: "If you will it, it is no dream."