The Maccabaean

ZIONISTS are now face to face with realities. Forty years ago a few Jews glimpsed the Jewish future and their achievement was some colonies in Palestine. Twenty-two years ago a clearer vision of the Jewish future came to others who set a world in motion, but it was motion produced by the friction of many necessary words. Today, the future merges into the present. The future is the immediate tomorrow. As always when action must spring from deeds, the glamour of the vision fades somewhat. The deeds must be many and complex if the future is really to be the present, so the vision may even for a time assume almost a commonplace, dream-lacking appearance. We must at all times bear in mind the results of what was initiated forty years ago, we willingly stand by the basic principles since enunciated in 1897, and we must reckon with the actual circumstances that confront us.

In many matters we need patience, the greatest of all aids to single-mindedness of purpose; in other cases we need the dash and courage of a cavalry leader. Moreover the Zionist leadership must now and again suffer to be misunderstood, and remain silent in the face of adverse criticism. Hardest of all things to do: we must think out our problem as a whole. Zionism discovered a Jewish policy. It states an end, but not all the means of achieving that end. Moreover, it did not state the end as a sudden happening incidental to a world war.

We could not, if we would, frame the Jewish policy apart from the problems that beset the rest of the world; we cannot limit our thoughts either to the views of the Zionist in Palestine, or to those of the Zionist who would gladly go to Palestine.

Least of all can we afford to imitate the methods of the anti-Zionists who seek to ignore the collective needs of Jewry and would have us detach each item on the long list of Jewish troubles from all others, and in addition isolate it from the economic, social and political conditions that prevail in all the lands of the diaspora. Instead of thinking “in space,” thinking out the problems as a whole means thinking in terms of time, of space, and of world association.

Jewish statesmanship at this juncture demands first of all that everyone “stand up and be counted.” Time and energy must be given for each one of us in enrolling the members in our organization. It is not the final sacrifice that we will be called upon to make, nor is it a final act. Nevertheless, it is an effort of deep political significance. Why? We are not the only people who will face the coming peace with divided counsels. But we are the only people who are divided between nationalists and denationalists. We have, therefore, to prove that the Zionist movement is exercising and expressing the will and wish of the vast majority of the Jewish people. Moreover, we are the only people who enter the court of nations with an organized expression of the will to be a domiciled nationality as a substitute for ownership of the land. Our plea for recognition and rights differs from that of other nationalities

only in the lack of possession. When they receive that recognition, the task before any other group is the organization of their national life. For us there will still remain the problem of the settlement of our people. This condition of non-possession compels great care in our interpretation of the Bill of Rights which, beginning with England, the great Powers have given us. We must be prepared to fulfil all our contracts to the letter. And if these contracts involve a great migration to Palestine within the next ten years, we must be prepared to work out all the measures necessary to make such a policy effective, not only from the point of view of the people settling but from the standpoint of that great future which we desire to create.

The diaspora which is our difficulty is still a blessing. It has taught us humility and tolerance. We shall not begin life anew in Palestine as an isolated group. Our leaders are mentally prepared, and I am sure our masses have the spirit that will enable us to live not merely at peace, but in friendship with our neighbors the Armenians, the Arabs, and the Syrians, and together with them we shall bring a new and permanently progressive civilization into the most harried area of the ancient world.

We enter the peace court with this great asset, that beginning with England, France and Italy, practically all of the Entente peoples, and finally, in a transparent manner, our own United States, give assent to the justice of our claims. These recognitions are the paper bridge of Jewish legend. Zionist statesmanship has still to metamorphose this paper bridge into one of steel and stone, so that our people can walk across in safety. This involves us in careful study of many intricate problems covering the whole alphabet of the physical sciences. Together with this must go an intelligent discipline of all Zionist forces. Everyone of us must think in terms of grim reality. This means we must not think in terms of yesterday, nor of the day before. We shall never be able to forget the hours of small beginnings and intense discussion, but we must train ourselves to act in terms befitting our new emprise.

Zionism is still the great Jewish adventure; the adventure of soul and body. But it is becoming an adventure along new lines. Our statecraft demands accuracy in thought as well as in action. We must achieve the immediately tangible; by our disciplined enthusiastic response we must write our own option, on our ever-possibly widening future. Our ghetto worlds are merely part of the problem. The military Jews of the Caucasus, the Arab-like Jews of Morocco, the Jewish boatmen of Salonica, the Jewish laborers of Yemen, the dreamers from Lithuania, the linguists of the Balkans, the practical-minded Jews of America, the people who would go because they love to go, the people who should go because their services are needed, the experts who will guide us scientifically, and the mere nationalist to whom victory is the be-all and end-all of life—all of them must be led to find their proper place in Palestine. And all of this must be done so that the old and the new yishuv blend into one harmonious, self-respecting, self-evolving Hebraic people.