A Course In Zionism
We intend to publish, month by month, the syllabi first used in the class in Zionism of the Hadassah Group of the Zionist Training School, and adopted also by other groups. This is in response to a demand for a correspondence school in Zionism. We hope that these syllabi may be made the basis of Zionist Training Groups all over the country, which groups should affiliate formally with the Zionist Training School established this year by Hadassah and Young Judaea. The method of instruction should be as follows: Each student should have a copy of each syllabus, which should be used by the teacher as a basis for the discussion. Notes may also be taken. The course covers the Jewish situation and ideals, Zionist interpretation of Jewish history, the history of the Zionist movement, Zionist institutions, Palestinian life and institutions, and Zionism as a view of life. For further information, write to Miss Jessie E. Sampter, 31 West 110th Street, New York City, N. Y.
THE JEWISH SITUATION.
A.—ThHe JEws ARE A PeopLe. 1. Name “Jew” is a national name. 2. Likenesses and differences of scattered groups of Jews throughout the. world. 3. Religion and race formerly identical. ‘4. Jews recognized as a people by everyone except some Jews themselves. B.—CoNDITION OF THE PEOPLE, 1. Their numbers. (a) About twelve million in the world. (b) About six million in Russia. * (ce) About two million in the United States. (d) About one millon in New York Cty. 2. Their status: (a) In Eastern Europe, aliens. (b) In Western Europe, legally citizens, but distrusted by “natives.” (c) In America, at home in a land of immigrant aliens. (d) Persecution and prejudice. 1. Economic fallacy of prejudice against productive aliens. 2. The Japanese in Western United States compared to the Jews; their government protects them. 3. Their Individuality: (a) Strong in the lands of persecution. (b) Weak in the lands of emancipation. C.—THE OUTLOOK FOR THE FUTURE. 1. Assimilation. (a) Its Working in all Ages. 1. Slow increase of Jews in spite of prolific birth rate, due only partly to persecutions. Numbers: five million at dispersion, one million in the 17th century, twelve million to-day. (b) Its Causes To-day: 1. Scattered, small groups. 2. Economic intercourse. 3. Higher standards of culture of environment. 4. Wealth. 5. Desire for advancement. (c) Previous Preventives: 1. Economic exclusion. 2. Banishment to less cultured lands. 3. Prolifice birth rate. 4. Anti-Semitism. 5. Persecution and isolation. (d) Present Dangers: . 1. Religious disintegration. : 2. Wide dispersion. 3. Love of general knowledge. 4. Emancipation. 5, Decreased birth rate.
6. Industrialism. (e) The Alternative: 1. Assimilation, or 2. Persecution, segregation, poverty, or 3. Some other form of concentration. Nationalism: (a) The only dignified form of concentration is nationalism. (b) National aspirations were the safeguard of the people through the ages. (c) Shall we realize the ideal or renounce it?
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Jewish Encyclopedia ..... The Jews of To-day.....Arthur Ruppin Jewish Life in Modern Times.....Israel Cohen The Jews Are a People.....Hadassah Folder (2c.) We Will to Live.....Hadassah Folder (2c.)
SUGGESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION.
A.—1. Men call themselves Jews who are so only by birth, not by religion. A Jew means a member of that people which formerly had its nation in Palestine. 2. A Russian Hasid and an American Reform Jew have less in common religiously than a Reform Jew and a Unitarian. The Jewish bond is common history and ancestry and Jewish self-consciousness. 3, Religion is as truly national as art, even though it is intensely personal, like art. Formerly all religions were national. Even now, each nation has its dominant religion: Note Catholic Spain, Greek Catholic Russia, Protestant North America, Lutheran Germany. Note the difference between State religion and national religion. The former is vicious, the latter normal; the former tyrannical, the latter spontaneous. All ceremony is social. 4. It was never doubted by anyone until the anti-national reform movement. B.—1. These estimates, based on Ruppin’s book, are considered rather low. We have the numbers to make a nation, and the numbers in lands of oppression to make national aspiration inevitable. What is the Jewish hope in America? Can we safely increase indefinitely? 2. Aliens, everywhere, so long as we are Jews! One cannot legislate away hate and prejudice.. This prejudice is based on our being a conquered, subject people. If we were visitors from choice, it would disappear. But we have no home. The productive alien gives more to any land than he takes from it, as low wages testify. Yet he is envied by the nations. C.—1. (a) Jews have assimilated in all ages. In the middle ages, persecution as an actual destructive force, in torture and massacre, played no greater part in reducing the Jewish people than did its spiritual butchery, co-version. It was a natural selection that has strengthened the Jewish spiritual fibre by destroying the weak strains. (b,c,d) Present, past, and future, the conditions that lead to assimilation are: (1) a wide scattering of small groups, so that they lose the national consciousness produced by physical contact with their own kind (as in the western United States) ; (2) business and industrial intercourse with Gentiles, which breaks down Sabbath and dietary restrictions, and is prone, like all selfish rivalry, to weaken moral resistance; (3) the consequent breaking away from religious life, which is national, destroys the Jews’ only national expression in dispersion: (4) the attraction of all kinds of learning