Jewish state

“ But previous to the framing of a constitution, and during the creation of a new State, these principles assume great practical importance. We know and see for ourselves that States still continue to be created. Colonies secede from the mother country. Vassals fall away from their suzerain; newly opened territories are immediately formed into free States. It is true that the Jewish State is conceived as a peculiarly modern structure on unspecified territory. But a State is formed, not by pieces of land, but rather by a number of men united under sovereign rule. ”

“ There is no doubt, then, that even when the Jewish State is established the Jews will be able to settle in it only little by little, the determining factors being the resources of the people themselves and the degree of economic development reached by the country. ”

“ I have tried to meet certain objections; but I know that many more will be made, based on high grounds and low.
To the first class of objections belongs the remark that the Jews are not the only people in the world who are in a condition of distress. Here I would reply that we may as well begin by removing a little of this misery, even if it should at first be no more than our own.
It might further be said that we ought not to create new distinctions between people; we ought not to raise fresh barriers, we should rather make the old disappear. ”

“ The new Jewish State must be properly founded, with due regard to our future honorable position in the world. Therefore every obligation in the old country must be scrupulously fulfilled before leaving. ”

“ Economic distress, political pressure, and social obloquy have already driven us from our homes and from our graves. We Jews are even now perpetually shifting from place to place, a strong current actually carrying us westward over the sea to the United States, where our presence is not desired. ”

“ If it were really the aim of "Zionism" to bring the people back to Judaism -- to make it not merely a nation in the political sense, but a nation living according to its own spirit -- then the Congress would not have postponed questions of national culture -- of language and literature, of education and the diffusion of Jewish knowledge -- to the very last moment, after the end of all the debates on rechtlich and völkerrechtlich, on the election of X. as a member of the Committee, on the imaginary millions, and so forth. ”

“ The equal rights of the Jew before the law cannot be withdrawn where they have once been conceded; for the first attempt at withdrawal would immediately drive all Jews, rich and poor alike, into the ranks of revolutionary parties. ”

“ The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in perceptible numbers. Where it does not exist, it is carried by Jews in the course of their migrations. We naturally move to those places where we are not persecuted, and there our presence produces persecution. This is the case in every country, and will remain so, even in those highly civilized—for instance, France—until the Jewish question finds a solution on a political basis. ”

“ Jews accepted the new state of things. They bravely adapted themselves to the altered circumstances of their lot, and made the best of it. They had to live, though a hard and hurried and undignified sort of living it became. With a quickness which experience taught and self-interest quickened, they tried to make themselves useful and acceptable. Their own wants, as wayfarers in strange lands, made them swift to perceive the wants of others. ”

“ But should these gentlemen, who are quite satisfied with their lot, feel indisposed to do anything for their fellow-Jews who are unjustly held responsible for the large possessions of certain individuals, then the realization of this plan will afford an opportunity for drawing a clear line of distinction between them and the rest of Jewry. ”

“ A Jewish element in a nation is a desirable and almost an essential thing to have, but as soon as that element preponderates—as now—it becomes a danger to the State. Therefore it must be kept within 136bounds, and those Jews who refuse to conform to the customs of this country must be weeded out. ”

“ I believe that I understand Anti-Semitism, which is really a highly complex movement. I consider it from a Jewish standpoint, yet without fear or hatred. I believe that I can see what elements there are in it of vulgar sport, of common trade jealousy, of inherited prejudice, of religious intolerance, and also of pretended self-defence. I think the Jewish [76] question is no more a social than a religious one, notwithstanding that it sometimes takes these and other forms. ”

“ Those Jews who fall in with our idea of a State will attach themselves to the Society, which will thereby be authorized to confer and treat with Governments in the name of our people. The Society will thus be acknowledged in its relations with Governments as a State-creating power. ”

“ The Jew, for instance, must cease to be a Jew if he will not allow himself to be hindered by his law from fulfilling his duties towards the State and his fellow-citizens, going, for example, to the Chamber of Deputies on the Sabbath and taking part in the public sittings. ”

“ In the new world of the colonies, and in the United States, the numerous and prosperous Jewish communities, owing to their speaking European languages, are of course more readily recognisable as Jews, although, in America especially, the Judaism of these dispersed and transplanted Jews is not always in a very much better state of preservation than among the semi-savage sects of ancient civilisation. Among some American congregations Judaism seems to be occasionally rather a religion of sentiment and of complaisant remembrance, than of active and steadfast observance. ”

“ It is only in the North American Free States—at least in part of them—that the Jewish question loses its theological significance and becomes a really secular question. Only where the political State exists in its completeness can the relation of the Jew, of the religious man generally, to the political State, and therefore the relation of religion to the State, be studied in its special features and its purity. ”

“ It is all well enough to engage the plain Gentile people with one set of interesting things; the real thing is the one that has been put over. And that is the program whose sponsors also stand for the racial and national separateness of the Jews.
The idea that the Jews comprise a nation is the most common idea of all—among the Jews. Not only a nation with a past, but a nation with a future. More than that—not only a nation, but a Super-Nation.
We can go still further on the authority of Jewish statements: we can say that the future form of the Jewish Nation will be a kingdom. ”

“ But the Jew also can only conduct himself towards the State in a Jewish fashion, that is as a stranger, by opposing his chimerical nationality to the real nationality, his illusory law to the real law, by imagining that his separation from humanity is justified, by abstaining on principle from all participation in the historical movement, by waiting on a future which has nothing in common with the general future of mankind, by regarding himself as a member of the Jewish people and the Jewish people as the chosen people. ”

“ Higher and yet higher strata will feel tempted to go over. The expedition of the first and poorest settlers will be conducted by Company and Society conjointly, and will probably be additionally supported by existing emigration and Zionist societies.
How may a number of people be directed to a particular spot without being given express orders to go there! There are certain Jewish benefactors on a large scale who try to alleviate the sufferings of the Jews by Zionist experiments. ”

“ The land in which he lives does not appear to count. The Jewish people become a State within a State, living their own life, and cutting themselves off from the customs and ideals of the populations among whom they exist, and through whom they attain to material comfort. ”

“ The land which the Society of Jews will have secured by international law must, of course, be privately acquired. ”

“ Thus the Society will find out for the first time whether the Jews really wish to go to the Promised Land, and whether they ought to go there. Every Jewish community in the world will send contributions to the Society towards a comprehensive collection of Jewish statistics. ”

“ Depending for their support upon the urbans, and seeking to prevent the entrance of Jews into state service, which would have resulted from the granting of political rights to the Jews, the bureaucracy have acted in harmony with the middle classes in the attempt to make the Jews politically, economically, and culturally powerless. ”

“ The Christian State can only behave towards the Jew in the manner of a Christian State, that is in a privileged manner, by granting the separation of the Jew from the other subjects, but causing him to feel the pressure of the other separated spheres, and all the more onerously inasmuch as the Jew is in religious antagonism to the dominant religion. ”

“ We have learnt [147] toleration in Europe. This is not sarcastically said; for the Anti-Semitism of today could only in a very few places be taken for old religious intolerance. It is for the most part a movement among civilized nations by which they try to chase away the spectres of their own past.
LAWS
When the idea of a State begins to approach realization, the Society of Jews will appoint a council of jurists to do the preparatory work of legislation. ”

“ Oppression and persecution cannot exterminate us. No nation on earth has survived such struggles and sufferings as we have gone through. Jew-baiting has merely stripped off our weaklings; the strong among us were invariably true to their race when persecution broke out against them. This attitude was most clearly apparent in the period immediately following the emancipation of the Jews. Later on, those who rose to a higher degree of intelligence and to a better worldly position lost their communal feeling to a very great extent. ”

“ For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith Jehovah; because they called thee an outcast, saying, This is Zion, whom no man seeketh after" (Jeremiah xxx. 16, 17) .
What a picture of Israel! Some people are fond of drawing gloomy outlines of the present state of the Jews; and this may suit their tastes, for surely they could not present a darker one than what is here portrayed by God's own hand. The Jew is represented here as in a helpless and hopeless condition. He is helpless. ”

“ To the autocracy and the bureaucracy there was the added fear from their intellectual superiority and their zeal for education of their playing a powerful part among the liberal forces seeking political freedom. Indeed, the Jews, whose economic and cultural activities and interests bound them closely to Western Europe and were in themselves modernizing and liberalizing influences, growing all the stronger through the greater freedom offered them during the liberal epoch, excited the deep repugnance of the feudal forces now directing the destinies of the state. ”

“ It has been well said that, from that date to this, one cannot accurately speak of the ‘Jews of France,’ but only of French citizens professing the Jewish religion.69 Rabbis of the Jewish Synagogue, since 1830, have been considered to hold the same relation towards the state as curés of the Catholic church, receiving, like them, their salaries from the Government. Not only in the army and in the learned professions, but also in every class of society, the Jews of France march, nowadays, shoulder to shoulder with their fellow-countrymen. ”

“ Relations among religious and ethnic groups--between Jews and non-Jews, Muslims and Christians, Arabs and non-Arabs, secular and religious Jews, and among the different streams of Judaism--often were strained. Problems continued to exist, stemming primarily from the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Government's unequal treatment of non-Orthodox Jewish religious groups, including the Government's recognition of only Orthodox Jewish religious authorities in personal and some civil status matters concerning Jews. ”

“ Anti-Semitism increases day by day and hour by hour among the nations; indeed, it is bound to increase, because the causes of its growth [91] continue to exist and cannot be removed. Its remote cause is our loss of the power of assimilation during the Middle Ages; its immediate cause is our excessive production of mediocre intellects, who cannot find an outlet downwards or upwards—that is to say, no wholesome outlet in either direction. When we sink, we become a revolutionary proletariat, the subordinate officers of all revolutionary parties; ”

“ There is no constitution; however, the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty provides for freedom of worship, and the Government generally respected this right in practice. Israel's Declaration of Independence describes the country as a "Jewish state," and promises full social and political equality, regardless of religious affiliation. While the law explicitly guarantees freedom of religion and the safeguarding of "holy places of all religions," inequities exist. Israeli Arabs and other non-Jews generally were free to practice their religions ”

“ Prayers will be offered up for the success of our work in temples and in churches also; for it will bring relief from an old burden, which all have suffered.
But we must first bring enlightenment to men's minds. The idea must make its way into the most distant, miserable holes where our people dwell. They will awaken from gloomy brooding, for into their lives will come a new significance. Every man need think only of himself, and the movement will assume vast proportions.
And what glory awaits those who fight unselfishly for the cause!
Therefore I believe that a wondrous generation of Jews ”

“ But it is always easier to frame a law than to ensure its observance, and this was especially the case in Germany, which consisted of a great number of federal States, in which there was a great difference of opinion on many subjects, and especially as regarded the status of the Jews. The principle of Jewish equality, social and political, with the Christian inhabitants of every country, did make its way, but very slowly, and several generations passed before it came to be fully acknowledged. ”