A MESSAGE TO THE JEWS OF AMERICA FROM JUDGE JULIAN W. MACK
PRESIDENT OF THE ZIONIST ORGANIZATION OF AMERICA
BY the promulgation of the British Declaration and the taking of a large part of Palestine by the British military forces, Zionism has become a program of action. In order to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the British and Allied Governments for the restoration of Palestine and the settlement of the land by Jews the paramount duty of Jewry is to organize its forces. Every Jew interested in the future of his own people must be made to realize that it is his obligation and responsibility to share the burden of the whole people according to his ability. And the first obligation is to become a member of the organization which has made itself responsible for the realization of the Zionist ideal.
The work we have undertaken is stupendous in its implications and in its responsibilities. We have set out to restore a scattered people with little collective experience to a land long neglected where we must create the free conditions of a highly civilized life. In that life we shall have no room for internal dissension, we shall have no room for reactionary ideas, we shall have room only for the best there is in the Jew in the light of the progressive ideals that animate the progressive peoples of the world. And we shall draw for our idealism both upon the treasure house of the Jewish people, from their prophets and law-givers, and upon the experiences of the free and liberty-loving peoples, in order that the new center to be created shall be worthy of our glorious past.
To accomplish our objects we must organize every element of Jewry to provide the basis of strength for the Jewish land. The nature of our task, its broad statesmanlike qualities, its imposing dignity cannot be satisfied with a mediocre performance: it must be well and thoroughly done. A people engaged in building a homeland must be strongly knit together; the relation of each individual to the whole body must be direct and personal, not through the intermediary of any society.
Every Jew should know that the new form of organization which the last Zionist convention adopted was an act of sound generalship. It raises the Zionist Organization and its activity to new heights. It brings home to each man that the success or failure of Zionism depends wholly upon the success or failure of the activity of the individual Zionists. It makes the getting of new members a vital work, for every new member means one added to the number of persons engaged in furthering the success of the cause. It places the task of restoring the Jewish people to Palestine in the safe-keeping of the Jewish people themselves: each is individually responsible, and all together are collectively responsible. It mobilizes for this task the moral and material resources of the whole Jewish people, and insures its achievement on a large scale and in the ideal manner which the world expects from us and which we should expect from ourselves.
Let us all proceed, therefore, with the work of registering as members all Jews who desire to participate in the great historic task of rehabilitating the Jewish people in their own eyes, and in the eyes of the world.