It happened in the late fall of 1918. One of Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points jumped out of the sphere of idealistic aspiration and political speculation into stark reality. As if by magic, the resurrection of Poland, for 150 years a wish of patriots and a dream of poets, came to pass.
But no sooner was Poland given her independence than sad tidings began pouring in from various parts of the Republic then in process of formation. The oppressed and downtrodden Poles “celebrated” their freedom by committing what their leaders were pleased to describe only as “excesses” upon another oppressed and downtrodden people, the Jews, who had shared in the suffering and in the struggle for “your and our freedom.” Krakow, the ancient capital, distinguished itself with the duration and severity of its “excesses” against its Jewish population. Great was the shock. Warsaw was disconcerted and even alarmed. A group of newspapermen, including the writer, rushed by all sorts of communication to the scene of the excesses, to investigate and to report. After an exhausting effort that lasted throughout a night and a day and following a fierce struggle with the military censor to allow as much of the truth as was possible to be rescued from his “supervision” over the telegraph office, your war correspondent felt he was entitled to a night’s rest. However, there was no room in Krakow, all hotel rooms having been requisitioned for military use and the bewildered citizens were frightened and suspicious of strangers.
In that critical moment, my acquaintance with modern Hebrew literature came to my rescue. I recalled that Krakow, in addition to being the capital of the ancient Polish Kings, the site of the Wawel, a seat of learning and a scene of anti-Jewish excesses, was also distinguished by the residence in it of Osias Thon, the Hebrew essayist and philosopher, the Zionist theoretician and expounder of the Kantian philosophy.
I rang the bell of Dr. Thon’s comfortable apartment and presenting to him my strange request to be taken under his roof for this night, I obtained unexpectedly a close-up of a unique figure in Polish Jewry. Dr. Thon’s apartment, too, happened to have been overcrowded, but having seen my credentials and learning the purpose of my mission, he graciously placed at my disposal his library room.
“Here you may rest, or, rather, spend a restless night, if you are one of those fellows who cannot remain comfortable in the presence of valuable folios,” he said, ushering me in.
But after having bidden goodnight, Dr. Thon returned. Apologetically he explained that having learned of the work I had done during the day, he could not retire without getting a full picture of the extent of the excesses. With that ingratiating charm for which he was known, he intimated that a mere perusal of the copy of the wire I had dispatched to Warsaw would not do; he was anxious to know the situation in minute detail. A sleepless night in the library ensued.
Dr. Thon’s feelings alternated. In the deep, long hours of the night his emotions changed from sadness to gladness as he permitted his unexpected guest to listen to his thinking aloud.
* * *
“Sad, sad, my friend. ‘When a slave becomes king.’ These excesses, brutal and unpardonable, are the remnants of the slavery that had enmeshed a people that was once free. Painful as they are, and deeply disappointing, these events are perhaps only the birth pains of the new freedom. Patience, forbearance, tact and understanding must be our conduct.”
* * *
Born in 1870 in Lemberg and educated in the University of Berlin and in the Berlin College of Jewish Studies, Dr. Thon was an outstanding product of the post-Haskalah period. In him there was achieved an ideal blend of cultural patterns. In him Western methodology served as a handmaid to Eastern content. Accepted in 1897 as Chief Rabbi of the Krakow community, he was neither a pietist in the sense of the East nor a reformer in the fashion of the West. Better than any other description, the title Rav, in its original Hebrew meaning of “Master,” fitted him. By training, equipment and scholarly temperament he was primarily a master of science, of learning and of thought. The great Jewish communities on the European continent have to their credit what is distinctly a great virtue in Jewish leadership. Unlike their brethren across the ocean, they do not insist on clothing their spiritual leaders with the robes of priesthood in which a predilection to eloquence rather than to substance and a “holier than thou” attitude seems to be the dominant features. Instead they give preference to leaders who serve their people in the broader fields of the intellect rather than in the parochial functions of the parish. For such was the capacity in which Dr. Thon functioned, not only in his community of Western Galicia but in Polish Jewry as a whole and in the Zionist movement in general.
He was a member of that intellectual quarter whose three other members – Dr. David Neumark, Mordecai Ehrenpreis, and Micah Joseph Berditchevsky – have made lasting contributions to modern Hebrew and Jewish literature in the fields of philosophy, belles lettres, sociology and the reformulation of Jewish values. His own entrance into Hebrew literature was effected via a critical analysis of Herbert Spencer and a fundamental contribution on the philosophical foundations of Zionism. It was his ambition – so he confessed in later years – to erect, with the aid of the science of sociology, a thought structure which would prove to be “the scientific basis of Zionism.” Caught in the whirlwind of rapid events, Thon was too frequently compelled to leave his study for the performance of urgent functions in the social and political fields. Thus the great thought structure which he had striven to raise to full height has not gone up. But the essays which he wrote bear a close resemblance, in form if not in content, to that style of precision and logic of which Achad Ha’am was the originator and master in modern Hebrew literature. They may well serve as a foundation for a structure which may be reared by succeeding thinkers. Thus we see him devote his intellectual strength to a discussion of themes like “The Essence of Judaism,” “Construction and Destruction,” “National Literature,” “Nationalism and Zionism,” “Cause and Purpose,” “Laws of History,” “A Priori and Post Priori,” and “Party and People.” In all these essays, a thorough-going effort is being made to bring into accord the essence of Jewish national thought with the essence of the humanities, as formulated in Western Europe toward the close of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.
His generation differed from the preceding in the respect that it sought enlightenment not for the attainment of general non-Jewish culture but knowledge for the attainment of Jewish culture. The humanization of Judaism or the Judaization of the humanities is the goal of his intellectual search. An admirer and disciple of Achad Ha’am, he did not hesitate to lead the revolt in modern Hebrew literature against Achad Ha’am. He demanded what he described as an “extension of the frontiers,” outlined by Achad Ha’am for the Hebrew renaissance. He accepted Achad Ha’am’s basic principle of the historic development of Jewish content and form, but he himself went much further. “The essence of Jewish content in the future and the expression of our national soul in a distant age are unpredictable,” he contended.
Paying tribute to Achad Ha’am for his introduction of exactitude of expression and the application of scientific methods, he denied that Achad Ha’am succeeded in creating an “Achad Ha’amistic” school of thought. More particularly did he object to that Achad Ha’amistic concept of the Jewish aim in Palestine which gained wide currency, the famous formula of the “Spiritual Center.” He agreed that Palestine must and will become a center of Jewry, but not of the Jewish spirit. That he was unwilling to confine to Palestine alone. Diaspora Jewry, too, will continue to play its part in Jewry’s intellectual development. Yes, Eretz Israel must and will become a center of Jewish strength (not a “Merkaz Ha’ruach,” but a “Merkaz Ha’Koach”).
The depth of the spiritual significance which he regarded as the source of the Jewish National Renaissance is perhaps best determined by his charge that Zionism, after all its political successes and practical achievements in the post-war era, has not as yet been taken seriously either by the world’s political factors or by the Jewish people themselves. The President of the Zionist organization in Western Galicia and member of the Zionist Actions Committee, in his introduction to his collected works boldly says, “I have not discovered in any of the events and happenings, including the very encouraging issuance of the Balfour Declaration and the San Remo Decision, even one single figure of that deep earnestness with which the world is accustomed and compelled to regard a truly great and strong national movement.”
* * *
Dr. Thon wrote these words in the early ‘20s. How startlingly correct is their meaning towards the close of 1936, when the depth of Jewish desperation in Poland produces a Jewish Legion movement for the launching of a mad march to Palestine by hundreds if not thousands of young men without passports, visas, means of transportation or the slightest hope of reaching their destination or being admitted into their only [words missing]. These words assume prophetic significance when, against this background, British high officials in London and in Jerusalem formulate plans to so curtail Jewish immigration as never to exceed the natural increase of the Arab population within any given year.
Easily may we trace the source of Dr. Thon’s prognosis. To him Zionism, intellectually as well as physically, was “a historic necessity” from which neither the Jewish people nor the world can find an escape. He knew well that there is no escape, for he knew thoroughly the groundlessness of Jewish existence and the extent of Jewish misery in Poland.
As a member of Poland’s Constituent Legislative Body, the First Sejm, and as a frequently elected deputy from Western Galicia, as Chairman of the Polish-Jewish “Kolo,” the Club of Jewish Deputies, as the spokesman of the “Kolo” on major parliamentary occasions, as one of the moving spirits in the formation of the Jewish National Council in Poland, as a member of the Polish-Jewish delegation to the Versailles Conference and as one of the few authoritative voices of Zionism in the new Republic, Dr. Thon touched Jewish life at all angles and knew the extent of the problem and the extraordinary powers required for the solution. Unlike some hasty and bombastic leaders of Polish Jewry, he was not fond of the catchphrase which may for the moment help to excite an audience, but does lasting harm to the cause one seeks to serve. To him there were no “surplus Jews” in Poland. Not a million, not a thousand, not even a single Jew, economically suppressed and politically degraded, could with his blessing be delivered into the hands of political manipulators in the Polish Foreign Office for bickering and bargaining in the arena of national politics.
Dr. Thon’s method was different. His way was that of broad vision, of tactful negotiation, of persuasive argument, of organized action. In the midst of his vision for a new Jewish renaissance and in the harness of labor for its realization, he passed, at the age of 66, into history.
(Text taken from decomposing news clipping.)
No comments:
Post a Comment