The Maccabaean

THE present policy of the Zionist movement is being attacked from two sides. On the one hand, certain people who have suddenly and unexpectedly discovered that they are "cultural" Zionists fall foul of the Zionist movement because (as the Conjoint Committee puts it in its recent manifesto) it "regards all the Jewish communities of the world as constituting one homeless nationality," which needs a "political centre" in Palestine; whereas in their alleged opinion all that is desirable—or, indeed, permissible—is the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish "community" which shall be "a source of spiritual inspiration to the whole of Jewry." On the other hand, certain people of the Zionist antecedents are accusing the Zionist movement of abandoning the Basle Programme when it declares that it does not want here and now an independent state in Palestine, but wants the protection of a just Power until such time as the national Jewish settlement in Palestine becomes ripe for full self-government. There is in both criticisms (setting aside the question of their ingenuousness) much confused thinking and misunderstanding, which a brief analysis should suffice to dispel.

The new apostles of "cultural" Zionism, who sometimes openly proclaim themselves disciples of Achad ha-Am, seem to have got hold of the idea of Palestine as a "spiritual centre" in a very superficial way, without stopping to inquire what it involves. It is obvious that there can be no centre without a circumference. If you draw a circle, mark its centre, and then destroy the circle, there is no longer any meaning in speaking of the marked point as a centre. Palestine, then, can be a centre, a "source of spiritual inspiration," for Jewry only so long as Jewry hangs together and remains one. A certain cohesion between the Jewish communities of the world is involved in the very idea of a centre; and any Jewish community which loses that cohesion ceases to be a part of Jewry, even though its members may continue to profess the Jewish religion (or some form of it) and to observe the Jewish Law (or some part of it). It is, therefore, mere playing with words to suggest, as the Conjoint Committee does, that a Jewish community can at one and the same time desire and work for the establishment of a Jewish centre in Palestine, and pursue unchecked the path of "complete social and political identification with the nations among whom they dwell." If that phrase means anything at all, it means that the community in question loses its cohesion with other Jewish communities throughout the world, and therefore ceases to have any part or lot in the Jewish centre.

Let us look at the matter from another point of view. The "source of spiritual inspiration to the whole of Jewry" which the Conjoint Committee says that it wants to see in Palestine is to be a "community" of Jews. That "community" must be in some sense one. It cannot be a number of separate groups of Jews hailing from different countries and maintaining their different languages and customs and their separate organizations. Being one community, it must be one not only in religion, but also in a number of other things, including language. And if it is to be a "source of spiritual inspiration" to the whole of Jewry, there must be in every part of Jewry some people who understand its language and can interpret its message to the rest of their community —that is to say, not merely understand its language in

the sense of knowing what things it denotes by certain sounds or certain written characters, but are sufficiently in harmony and in touch with its spirit and its way of thought to be able to assimilate its ideas and ideals and absorb and pass on their influence. The Jewish communities of the Dispersion, therefore, must, through their representative men, keep closely in line with the mental and moral development of the Jewish "community" in the centre. And if the Jewish "community" in Palestine develops in such a way that its outlook on social and political questions becomes markedly different from, or perhaps even antagonistic to, that of the other nations among which Jews live, then its existence will be incompatible with "complete social and political identification" on the part of Jewish communities in the Diaspora.

Finally, let us inquire whether the idea of Palestine as a “spiritual centre” is compatible with the assertion of the Conjoint Committee that the Jews are primarily a religious body—that, as they put it, the Jewish religion is “the only certain test of a Jew.” Our new “cultural” Zionists will not deny that the Jewish “community” in Palestine may become “a source of spiritual inspiration” to the non-Jewish world as well as to Jewry. It has been so in the past, and its inspiration has been conveyed to the gentile world precisely through a teacher whom Jews have refused to recognize. Now the inspiration of Jesus is quite undeniably a religious inspiration; even the loosest use of terms cannot call it political or national. Yet the Conjoint Committee, while insisting that the Jewish religion is “the only certain test of a Jew,” claims for Jewry a special interest, and an interest of a spiritual kind, in the future of Palestine. But since there might again arise in the Jewish “community” in Palestine a religious teacher whose teaching would be rejected by Jews and accepted by a large part of the non-Jewish world, it follows that this claim is groundless unless the tie between Jewry and Palestine, and between Jew and Jew, is something other than a merely religious tie. If it were a merely religious tie, the emanation from the Jewish “community” in Palestine of a religious inspiration which Jews could not accept must have been followed in the past, and must be followed in the future, by the repudiation by the whole of Jewry of the notion that Palestine is its spiritual centre. Thus the position of Palestine in Jewish history is inconsistent with the notion that the Jews are a religious corporation ; and since in claiming Palestine as the home of their “source of spiritual inspiration” these new “cultural” Zionists appeal to its “great traditions,” and obviously choose it because of its place in Jewish history, it follows that their claim, too, is inconsistent with the notion that the Jews are a religious corporation. If, then, we must find some other name for the Jews as a body, we must call them, as all the world does, a “nation” or “nationality”; and so long as they have no home of their own, they may fairly be called a “homeless nationality.”

Thus the attempt to affirm the concept of a "spiritual centre" while denying the concept of "the Jewish people," as involving Jewish nationality in the fullest sense, breaks down completely. Both concepts are essential to the teaching of Achad ha-Am, and his pseudo-disciples either