When the sun sets on September 13th, the people that counts time from Creation will mark the end of a hundred years in its history. The eighth century in the sixth millennium of the Hebrew calendar will begin.
The history of mankind, examined from the point of view of its progress, is only the story of the periods between natural catastrophes or those catastrophes which mankind brings upon itself through hate and war. The century which has now come to an end (the period between 1839 and 1939), although heralded as the period of enlightenment and progress, did not essentially differ from the centuries that preceded it. Many armed conflicts and large-scale wars ravaged the earth and consumed life and treasure. In fact, this span of time has the dubious distinction of having been the period within which the first World War was fought and the second World War was begun. What will follow may be the subject of speculation but since the past is a preparation for the present, the future cannot be expected to be more than an extension of the latter. One could not indeed derive much comfort from this prospect were it not to be modified by the recognition that at least the present and future are subject to the dynamics of the human will, and to the powers of the human mind at its best, if and when these factors do come into play.
The story of the seventh century in the sixth millennium in retrospect would indeed to a monotonous tale of man’s inhumanity to man – not unlike the story of Jewish life of preceding centuries of exile and persecution – were it not for the dynamics of the Jewish will to live and of its proved ability to survive after seemingly crushing blows and to carry on along the path that started, four millennia ago, at Ur of the Chaldees. It is on this dynamic aspect of the past and the guidance that it provided for the future that our interest centers.
Light From America
As the drama of the seventh century in the sixth millennium opened, the scene was illuminated by the powerful rays of the light that was kindled in 1775 by the American Revolution. Derived from Hebraic sources, the proposition that “all men were created equal” hardened into a principle that was incorporated into the Constitution of the United States thirteen years later. Only an insignificant number of Jews who had trickled across the great expanses of the Atlantic came under the beneficent rays of this light. When, however, the French Revolution burst forth and the cry of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” resounded from the banks of the Seine to tyrant-ridden Europe, the most martyred of all members of the human family – the dispersed, oppressed and despised Jew – was emboldened to hope that for him, too, the era of enlightenment and progress would bring deliverance.
The fifty years that elapsed between the French Revolution and the beginning of the Seventh Century (1839) brought, however, only partial relief and proved the Great Hope to have been largely illusory for the Jews of Europe. The Jewish communities were teeming with excitement and expectancy. There was strife between the “enlighteners” who believed that all that their brethren would have to do to gain the desired emancipation would be only to shed a part of their ancient culture and “improve” the forms of their religious worship, and the “reactionaries” who were equally desirous of obtaining their natural rights but insisted on maintaining the loyalty that sustained their people for so long and bitter a period. But even the enthusiastic “enlighteners” were destined to recognize that at best Emancipation meant only a constant struggle for equal rights.
The Inquisition in Spain was officially revoked as late as 1834. The abolition of the legal disabilities against the Jews in the various Kingdoms and Provinces of Germany was not officially decreed until 1869 (to last only until April 1st, 1933 – 64 years!). Even in England, it was not until 1858 that Parliament passed the Jews Disability Bill. Baron Lionel de Rothschild was the first Jew to take a seat in Parliament, in the same year, without taking the oath “On the true faith of a Christian,” which was customary until then.
The light that was kindled in Independence Hall, Philadelphia and flamed into a mighty torch in the French Revolution, required more than half a century before its rays reached in 1848 the plateaus of Central Europe. A popular movement for freedom then reached a temporary zenith followed by swift reaction. Even so, Emancipation of the Jews, in a civic and economic sense, never crossed the Vistula River into the lands of the Russian Czars. True, under the guidance of Benjamin Disraeli, [the] first statesman of Jewish origin to become Prime Minister in England, the Berlin Congress, with the approval of Bismarck, took action to guarantee, by means of an international agreement, the civil and religious rights of Jewish minorities in Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania. But these “guarantees” were never taken seriously by any of the signatories. Romania, which long rivaled Russia in the art of Jew-hatred, has found it easy to evade its international obligations up to this day.
Origins of Hitlerism
The Seventh Century will be known in the history of our people as the span of time in which the most despicable figure that ever trod God’s earth made his appearance among the human species: the anti-Semite.
Not that hatred and persecution of the Jew were unknown or unpracticed before his arrival. Almost everything that the anti-Semite said and did with regard to Jews was said and done many times before. His contribution lay in the fact that he, the anti-Semite, made a “science” and, more often than not, a lucrative profession out of his hatred. Hitlerism, against which England and France have now declared war and against which the sympathies and cooperation of all civilized men are now so fervently invoked, rode into power, unchecked, on the Trojan horse of anti-Semitism. No one could or should have been deluded for the thing was not new. It was conceived and practiced and developed into a political science long before the Hitlerian pestilence made its appearance. It was “made in Germany” and bears the imprint of German politics.
Adolf Stoecker (1835-1909), chaplain at the Emperor’s Court, founder and leader of the “Christian Socialist” Party, was the true forerunner of Adolf Hitler. The term anti-Semite made its appearance in German letters in 1879, when – the irony of history! – Wilhelm Marr, an apostate and former Social Democrat, bewailed the “victory of Judaism over Germanism” in a pamphlet of that name. He founded in Berlin the first “Society of Anti-Semites.” Heinrich von Treitschte (1834-1896), a professor of history at the University of Berlin, was the first German scholar to formulate the foundations of “scientific anti-Semitism.” It suited the politics of Bismarck to employ anti-Semitism in his fight against the progressive elements and particularly against the Social Democrats in Germany, among whom Lasker, Edward Bernstein and Lassalle played a leading part.
The slush fund fittingly described in those days as the “Reptiles Fund,” at the disposal of the German Chancellor, unleashed a flood of “scientific anti-Semitism,” which became in 1880, and for many years after, the leading issue not only in Germany but also in Central Europe and elsewhere. The poisonous gases, foreshadowing Hitlerism, infected wide areas all over the Continent and embittered the lives of generations of Jews.
It never required much argument or persuasion to whip anti-Jewish feeling into fury. In 1840, the first year of the century saw the revival of the ritual-murder accusation. The celebrated Damascus case necessitated the journeys of Sir Moses Montefiore and Adolph Cremieux to the Orient and the unfolding of many efforts before the falsity of the accusation was established. The anti-Semitic agitation under the slogan (Hitler has not been original!) “The Jews are our misfortune” resulted in reviving ritual-murder accusations in Xanten, and in Konic, Prussia, and opened up a series of ritual-murder accusations against Jews in other lands, beginning with the famous Hilsner Affair (1899), in which the late Thomas Masaryk, founder and first President of Czechoslovakia, played a leading part as a defender of the Jewish name, and ending with the Beillis affair in Kiev, Russia, in 1913.
Under the Czars
In Czarist Russia where the largest segment of European Jewry was herded into the “Pale of Settlement,” the drama of Jewish survival against overwhelming odds was enacted during the major part of the century. The several Romanoffs differed only in degree of severity with which they carried through their programs of legalized oppression, forcible “enlightenment,” and outright curtailment of elementary rights of a Jewish population of nearly 6,000,000 souls. The height of cruelty was reached, however, with the anti-Jewish decrees and riots of 1880 which had their sequel in the regime of Nicholas II, the last of the Czars. His ignominious defeat in the World War and death at the hands of the Bolsheviki closed the saddest chapter in the history of Jewry.
It was within the crowded cities of the Pales of Settlement and on the steppes of Russia that Jewish vitality and ability to withstand the heaviest pressure was most severely tested and found not wanting. For Russo-Polish Jewry, yearning as it did for Emancipation and equal rights and persisting in its struggle for them, kept aloft the torch of Jewish loyalty and, unlike its more fortunate but Jewishly less sturdy brethren in Western Europe, it was never willing to attain its coveted Emancipation at a price like that paid by the upper stratum of French Jewry or so eagerly offered by some sections of German Jewry. East European Jewry, far from being ready to denounce its ancient culture and national characteristics, absorbed the ideas and ideals of the modernized West but constantly strove, through various means, to evolve a solution that would not conflict with its past or inner self. To be sure, no unanimity was ever achieved. Various schools of thought, flourishing under the impact of world events and the ideas for social and economic justice that arose in the West in the wake of the industrial revolution, warred with each other for dominance over the Jewish scene. However, the bulk of Russo-Polish Jewry, long the reservoir of Jewish tradition and intellectual strength, remained an immovable rock of Jewish loyalty, acting as a stabilizing and restraining influence on the flight from Judaism in the West.
It was precisely here that the dynamics of the Jewish will to live – and not only to live ad loco, but to seek release through initiative and through daring thought and unflinching action – flourished.
In the West
The flight from Judaism in the West, too, was by far incomplete. The constant remainder of Jewish misery in the East and the recurring pressure in the lands of full or partial Emancipation activated the best elements in Western Jewry. With the new wealth and influence that accrued to an ever-widening circle in France, England and parts of Germany, Western Jewry was in a position to undertake remedial action that was formerly not possible. Thus, the century witnessed the organization and development of Jewish organizations like the Alliance Israelite Universelle (established in 1860) and the Hilfsverein of German Jewry, the Foundation of Baron Maurice de Hirsch, which, after the death of the philanthropist, developed into the Jewish Colonization Association. These instruments of philanthropy rendered, indeed, great service to the masses of Jews in helping to solve some of the acutest problems of the day. Some of these instruments also served as vehicles for diplomatic action at special occasions and under particular circumstances. The first and the last mentioned also acted as disseminators of modern education and European culture, but they never went beyond the philanthropic gesture.
The “poor brethren” had ideas of their own. Drawing from the wells of Jewish yearning for justice, of loyalty to its national tradition and culture, of the ever-present memory of a Homeland lost but to be regained, and of the invaluable treasures of [an] original and unique culture, East European Jewry – fructified, to be sure, by the seeds of progress and enlightenment from the West – labored hard and steadfastly along the paths of creativeness to bring about its deliverance.
Sources of Hope
First in this development during the century was the revival of Hebrew letters. Taking its cue from the “enlighteners” of the West, East European Jewry avidly began the process of the Hebrew Renaissance, which culminated in a Modern Hebrew literature in which thinkers of the stature of Achad Ha’am and poets of the sweeping vision of Chaim Nachman Bialik came to the fore, a growth that flowered in the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language and in the cultural fabric that is now the foundation of the new Jewish life in Eretz Israel. Parallel to this process went the development of what was known in the middle of the century as “jargon” into Yiddish in which a galaxy of gifted novelists, poets and essayists gave expression to their creative genius and established vital and intimate contact between the Jewish masses and the thought and the feeling of the age. A powerful Yiddish press in the United States and in Eastern Europe arose to serve the Jew in his search for freedom at home or in his endeavor to find liberty and opportunity at more hospitable shores overseas and – last but not least – to advocate the realization of the vision of Zion, which he had been cherishing so long in the depths of his soul.
Religious Changes
In the field of religion, the century witnessed a mighty struggle against the alienating influences of the extreme forms of Reform Judaism, which in the early part of the Nineteenth Century threatened, if unchecked, to bring about disintegration of Jewry. As the period opened, a great champion of traditional Judaism appeared in Germany, the birthplace of its new rival, in the person of Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888). As the century rolled into eternity, the desire for adjustment to the outside world through shedding as much as possible of the original forms of Jewish religious observance was definitely checked in Europe [only] to be transplanted – on the crest of the German-Jewish immigration that followed the year 1848 – into the United States, where it was to arise as “American Judaism.”
Untouched by this struggle in the West, the stream of Jewish piety and learning continued in the East and brought to the fore such outstanding and widely recognized authorities on Jewish religious law as Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchcik of Brest-Litovsk, Rabbi Israel Salanter, who enriched the seats of traditional earning with his “Mussar” (ethics), Rabbi Samuel Mohilever (1824-1898), who was one of the first sponsors and leaders of the Chovevei Zion, and Rabbi Abraham Ha’cohen Kook, who became the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi in Palestine during the Mandate era.
Cultural Advances
Of Jewish contributions to civilization and the welfare of mankind, the century saw an abundance which can hardly be matched even by more numerous and more firmly established peoples. Ever since the seats of learning were opened to Jews with freedom of thought and expression, Jewish men of genius have left their imprint on nearly all branches of human thought. But three names need be mentioned: Albert Einstein, in physical science; Karl Marx in political science; [and] Sigmund Freud in psychology.
In the field of Jewish culture the outstanding contribution of the century is the development of what has been loosely called the “Science of Judaism,” but which actually represents a scientific evaluation and appraisal of the history of the Jewish people and the literary and cultural heritage of its ancient and medieval periods. The People of the Book, prolific and fruitful in the fields of religion and culture, somehow in the Diaspora lost their aptitude for the systematic recording of their history. This, too, has been remedied in the period under review. Within the century, there arose Jewish historians of note: Heinrich Graetz and Simon Dubnow, whose monumental works, complementing each other, made it possible for the scholar as well as the lay reader to familiarize himself with the authenticated history of the Jewish people.
Searching for a Solution
But more important and more interesting contributions towards a solution of the Jewish problem along three lines originated during the century and still are progressing with full impetus and vitality. These three developments burst forth into life almost simultaneously and stemmed from the same sources: the plight of the Jewish masses, the crying need for their deliverance, and the dynamics of the Jewish will to survive. They were (a) the emergence of American Jewry as the most numerous and powerful Jewish community in the world; (b) the formulation and partial fulfillment of Zionism; and (c) the birth of an organized Jewish labor class.
All three developments received their impetus from the 1880s, when “scientific anti-Semitism” raised its head in Germany and had its repercussion in the form of anti-Jewish violence in Russia with severe decrees of expulsion and persecution. The recently erected juridical structure of Emancipation in Central and Western Europe began to crack. The palliatives of Jewish philanthropic endeavor already then began to show their futility. Organization, based on an inspiring ideal and on self-help, was clearly the need, but recognition of this truth was slow in coming.
Origins of Zionism
Two rival thoughts strove for supremacy as lines of guidance for a mass of people caught in the maelstrom of history. The one – vaguely described as “love of Zion” – played on the strings of the Jewish heart and held out a distant hope for a Homeland that was never forgotten; the other, nurtured by the revolutionary ideas of an emerging proletariat, held out the promise of liberation through the ultimate Social Revolution. The first had just made its initial step on the sand dunes of Palestine under the yoke of the Turks. It had kindled the imagination of Orthodox Rabbis like Mohilever and Kalisher, on the one hand, and intellectuals and students, on the other hand, to whom the clear analyses of Moses Hess’ (1812-1875) “Rome and Jerusalem” and Leo Pinsker’s “Auto-Emancipation” made a strong appeal. “Love of Zion” made its entry into the students’ circles of the Russian universities and into the study rooms of Orthodox Rabbis and Hebrew writers, but it was yet to be equipped with the organization and the power to cope with the problem at hand. The promise of deliverance with the arrival of the social revolution was no less enchanting to the intellectual youth but it, too, required a long and slow struggle which involved many sacrifices and acts of heroism in collaboration with the slowly maturing non-Jewish proletariat before it could attain an initial success. The bulk of East European Jewry, whether in Russia or in Romania, or in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, was in dire distress and was, except for occasional philanthropic aid, unaided and unguided as it embarked on the great exodus to the Western hemisphere, to the sidewalks of New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia.
U.S. Jewry Emerges
Up to 1880, the Jewish population in the U.S. of America did not exceed 250,000 souls. The exodus that continued almost uninterruptedly from 1880 to a few months prior to the World War brought in its wake the great mass that now composes American Jewry, by now fully integrated into the economic, cultural and political fabric of these United States and which has demonstrated its great worth in an atmosphere of freedom.
The emergence of American Jewry is one of the greatest epics in the history of the Jewish people. This event remained not unrelated to the other two methods of salvation for the Jewish masses. When Herzl appeared in 1897 at the first World Zionist Congress and evolved the idea of political Zionism, he found a warm echo in American Jewry. When the Jewish labor movement began, first in the form of the Bund and several years later in Labor Zionism (the Poale Zion Party was established in 1901), they found their adherents among the Jews of America.
At this stage, the two trends merged, producing the most remarkable and admirable figure in the Jewish life of the century – the Chalutz, the Palestine pioneer.
A Jewish Homeland
It was American Jewry that coalesced into a united body when, towards the end and after the close of the World War, the need for political and relief action for war-stricken European Jewry and in behalf of the Jewish National Home in Palestine arose. It was American Jewry that clothed men like Louis Marshal and Felix M. Warburg in authority and strength to undertake and carry though a gigantic war and post-war relief program and followed, in ever-increasing measure, the leadership of Zionism, as exemplified by Louis D. Brandeis, Chaim Weizmann, Stephen S. Wise, Louis Lipsky and others, to further the realization of Zionism.
The outcome of the first World War, insofar as the Jewish people is concerned, was expressed in two acts of international scope and importance: (a) the insertion of clauses into the peace treaties with the newly established States, guaranteeing minority rights for the Jewish population; and (b) the issuance of the Balfour Declaration and the promulgation, under the aegis of the League of Nations, of the Mandate for Palestine. Of the first, hardly a shred has remained. Of the second, the present Yishuv, 500,000 strong, has emerged as an immovable reality that, for the first time since the destruction of Judaea, raised the issue of a Jewish State in the Land of Israel.
As the seventh century in the sixth millennium of the Hebrew calendar comes to a close, and as the second World War gets under way, the fate of the Jewish people and of Eretz Israel is again at stake. Again it is on American Jewry that the responsibility for timely, wise and effective action devolves.
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