The Maccabaean

ROFESSOR FELIX ADLER, leader of the Ethical Culture movement in America, and therefore properly to be considered as representative of his followers, recently delivered an address on "Zionism and Its Ideal" which was an excellent example of the refinements of misunderstanding and unconscious misrepresentation with which our opponents are forced to meet us. As Zionism is an ethical question, a challenge to the conscience of the Jew, and as Prof. Adler's point of view may be considered typical of at least the Ethical Culture Society, we can meet him upon this thoroughly Jewish plane of the righteousness of our cause and his.

He began by speaking of the idealism of the Zionist, which he could not fail to recognize. He spoke of idealism as the glow on the mountain, but in this case it appears that he failed to see the glow, but saw only the light in the eyes of those who beheld it. That there should be such a light in their eyes and that there should be a devotion, a readiness for self sacrifice and a nobility such as he found Zionism has aroused in numbers of people, ought to prove to him that the glow itself is there and that it is something very different from what he afterwards described.

Prof. Adler's objection to Zionism are not unusual.We have heard and answered them all many times.In brief, they are about as follows:

A home for the Jews in Palestine—that is, a haven of refuge—may be desirable, but a national state, in the usual state spirit, is to be depreciated.

To look upon the Holy Land as a source of Jewish inspiration, is a materialistic and sentimental point of view.

America is a home for the Jew.

Zionism is not religious, since the religious Jew always waited for divine intervention. Hence, presumably, it is not spiritual. The prophets on whose teachings we base our movement, are out of date.

Herzl, who it appears made Zionists of the Messianic people, had no Jewish background or Jewish knowledge.

Zionism is the result of Anti-Semitism, therefore purely materialistic (though he had called it an ideal).

It is a fine and noble martyrdom to endure prejudice.

Zionism is opposed to American patriotism. American ideals are different from Jewish ideals, and should claim our whole allegiance.

Zionism would not solve the problem of Russian persecution.

Palestine could not hold many of the Jews.

It is selfish of Zionists to be in haste to solve the Jewish problem when there are so many more important social problems to be solved.

After all, we would be dependent on other and stronger nations.

Two cannot agree, therefore cannot govern themselves.

The Jewish genius develops best in dispersion.

Zionism breeds prejudice between Jew and Gentile.

All nations finally disappear. Why not the Jewish nation?

The Basle platform says that we shall "create a publicly recognized and legally secured home." The

difference between nation and state is one rarely emphasized. We do not desire a political state in the sense in which the nations of Europe desire it. What we desire is only what the Jews desired on their return from Babylon, and that with which the prophets were satisfied when they reprimanded the kings for rebelling against the empire which protected them. We wish autonomy in Palestine, a homeland where the Jewish people can develop the Jewish life and the Jewish spirit, and we are willing to take this justice from whomever will give it to us.

The inspiration which we hope to get and do get from the Holy Land is quite a different one from the sentimental pleasure that comes of seeing a spot associated with history. To us prophecy is as much involved as history, and it is living and working for the Holy Land, not merely seeing it, which is our source of inspiration. In deed, most Jews when they first go to Palestine are sorely disappointed, but when they have labored and suffered there, they cannot bear to leave it, and when they do leave it, they cannot wait to return. To us the Holy Land means a special thing, the ideal of nationalism whereby the land is as the body and the people is as the soul, an ideal which excludes materialism and aggression in the “modern” national sense.

How can America be a home for the Jew, when it is not a home for the Jewish life? The Jew who is a Zionist does not think of himself as an individual, comfortable in one place or uncomfortable in another. He thinks of the Jewish people as an entity. He thinks of them, not in number, but in character, and he wants that character of his people, that selfhood, to develop freely in one spot, and to add riches to the Jew and to the world.

In the long terrible days of mediaeval oppression the Jew waited for divine intervention. He had to hold this doctrine or forego hope altogether. As soon as he saw some freedom and the power to act, he was willing to regard himself once more as the instrument of God.

In the deepest sense, the Zionist movement is a religious movement, in that there is probably not a Zionist living, whose underlying hope is not the Jewish people re-established as a righteous nation in the service of the ultimate ideal of national and international morality.

That the prophets are old is true. That we cannot accept their words and teaching without applying them to modern life is also true. The Zionist movement is the direct descendant of the prophets and is based upon their tradition as all life, all personality is based upon tradition. We cannot speak a word of any language without speaking traditionally, and we cannot be radicals without going back to the move.

a EEE EEE TE Van > Ka A 5 ee Da Herzl was not the creator of the Zionist movement. All that he did was to gather the various threads and organize them. Zionism is a folk movement, not the work of one man. Therein lies its strength and its compulsion. For about fifteen years before Herzl re-discovered his Judaism, there had been Zionist Societies and there had been colonization in Palestine.

That Zionism is the result of Anti-Semitism is a half truth and even a doubtful half truth. Anti-Semitism was the immediate cause of certain persons realiz-