those whom they wished to influence. Haskalah had made con- siderable headway against the obscurantism of those who opposed any and every change in Jewish life; and in the 'seventies of the 19th century the liberal policy of Alexander II. seemed to promise success to its efforts to modernize Russian Jewry. But already, within the modernist movement itself, another current of thought had set in. Perez Smolenskin, one of its most gifted champions, who spent the best years of his life in Vienna, had had the opportunity of seeing at close quarters what emancipation meant for Judaism. He had seen that in practice the ideal of being " a Jew at home and a man outside " did not work. Hence he became the advocate of a Jewish nationalism based on the "triple cord" of the Land (Palestine), the Law (Torah) and the Language (Hebrew). When, in 1880, the emancipatory tendencies of Alexander II. gave place to a wave of pogroms and a policy of systematic oppression, the seed sown by Smolen- skin bore fruit. While the great majority of the Russian Jews who fled from massacre naturally made for the economically developed countries of the West, where they could be readily absorbed, a few, inspired by the ideal of a national revival, found their way to Palestine, and in the face of incredible difficulties laid the foundations of Jewish agricultural coloniza- tion. Supported by the Chovevt Zion (Lovers of Zion) in Russia, and later more amply by Baron Edmond de Rothschild, of Paris, these pioneers succeeded in maintaining their footing in Palestine. They were followed by a small but steady stream of immigration, which included many vigorous and self-supporting elements. Innocent of any concern with international politics, these Palestinian settlers accepted the Turkish administration as they found it, and, thanks largely to its very indifference, were able to establish little settlements with complete internal autonomy, to live in their own way, to manage their own affairs, and, not least important, to create a system of Hebrew schools, by means of which the ancient language of the Jews was revived as the speech of the younger generation of Jews in Palestine. This new Palestinian Yishub (settlement), strengthened in the early years of the present century by a number of young men and women who went to Palestine with the ideal of working as labourers on its soil, became the basis of the political success which Zionism achieved during the World War. The historic connexion of the Jews with Palestine would not of itself have availed to secure recognition of Jewish national aspirations, had there not been this concrete evidence of the will and the ability of the Jews to rebuild Palestine and their own national life in Palestine.
Side by side with this practical colonization work, the develop- ment of Jewish nationalist theory went on in Hebrew literature. The implications of Smolenskin's idea were worked out more thoroughly, and from a standpoint more in consonance with European thought, by Asher Ginzberg (Achad ha- Am), one of the early leaders of the Clwvesi Zion, who has made his own the conception of Palestine as destined to be in the immediate future the " spiritual centre " of the Jewish people that is to say, the home of a corporate Jewish life expressing in all its aspects the true qualities of the Jew, and serving for that reason as a point of attachment and a source of spiritual influence for the Jews of all the world, who will find in their common associa- tion with the spiritual centre a new basis of unity and a new bulwark against absorption by assimilation. This conception, though by no means universally accepted as a complete statement of the philosophy of Zionism, has had a profound effect on Zionist thought for the last 30 years, and, though it designedly leaves on one side the political implications of Zionism, has contributed materially to the final shaping of the political claims of the movement.
The reaction against anti-Semitism has, however, played an important port in Zionist history. In 1882, after the terrible outbreak of pogroms in Russia, a Russian Jew, Dr. Leo Pinsker, published a striking pamphlet, in German, under the title of Auto- Emancipation, in which he argued that Judeophobia was an endemic malady among the peoples of the world, analogous to the fear of ghosts, and that the only solution of the " Jewish problem " was to be found in the establishment in some suitable
territory (not necessarily Palestine) of an autonomous common- wealth of Jews. While Pinsker thus took anti-Semitism as his starting point, -he yet showed a certain appreciation of the historical and psychological roots of Jewish nationalism; and when his own scheme of large scale emigration to a hypothetical Jewish territory met with no support, he was nationalist enough to throw himself into the Palestinian work of the Choveve Zion, whose first President he became. The later and more famous brochure of Dr. Theodor Herzl, DerJudensta at l (i8g6), elaborated independently a scheme similar to that of Pinsker, based entirely on the need of a refuge from anti-Semitism, and dis- regarding completely the inner springs of Jewish nationalism. Herzl's argument implies throughout that all would be well if only Jews were allowed to assimilate peacefully to their surround- ings; and to that extent he stood on the same ground as the assimilationist Jews of western Europe, who had for years been trying without success to alleviate the lot of the Jews of Russia and Rumania by bringing about diplomatic intervention with the Governments of those countries. He differed from them only in seeing the futility of their methods and the need for more radical steps. He did, however, assert the unity of the Jewish people (" we are a people, one people "), and the emancipated Jews of western countries, fearful of anything that might seem to cast doubt on their absolute identification with the nations among which they lived, could not accept a scheme based on such promises. With few exceptions, the Jews of the west met Herzl's appeal with indifference or hostility; it was the Chovevl Zion who rallied to his support with enthusiasm, less conscious of the difference between his philosophy and their own than of the value to their movement of his great personality, vision and influence. Thus there came about a fusion between the older Jewish nationalism, rooted in history and attached by its very nature to Palestine, and the newer so-called nationalism which demanded an autonomous territory in Palestine or elsewhere for those Jews who could not or would not assimilate to their European surroundings. The fusion was not effected without tears. At the first Zionist Congress (Basle, 1897) there was a struggle over the crucial question of the mention of Palestine in the programme of the movement. For Herzl's scheme of rapid mass-settlement scarcely any country could have been worse adapted than Palestine, with its restricted area, its neglected soil and its importance in international politics; but the nationalist instinct of the Russian Jews won the day, and theZionist organization tied itself down to the aim of " establish- ing for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law." 2 The trouble did not end there. For the C/tovevi Zion the gradual building up of a Hebrew life in Palestine Yishub Erez- I srae l wa s the fundamental nationalist activity. Herzl, on the other hand, deprecated any " infiltration " into Palestine so long as the conditions necessary for full autonomy were not secured. He desired the acquisition by the Jewish people still outside Palestine of a formal charter making Palestine its preserve; immigration on a large scale would follow. The failure of his efforts to secure a charter, and his premature death in 1904, ultimately gave the victory here also to the tendency represented by the Chovevt Zion. Thus Zionism emerged from the seven years of Herzl's brilliant leadership with its pre-Herzlian philosophy and policy substantially unchanged, but with very
1 The current translation " A Jewish State " is misleading. The prefix Juden has not the qualitative implications of " Jewish" ; the German Stoat does not connote political independence so definitely as the English " State "; and the emphasis in Judenstaat is on the first half of the compound, whereas in "Jewish State" it is inevitably on the second. "A Commonwealth of Jews" is a better rendering. This point is of some importance, because critics of Zionism have fastened on the term " Jewish State as implying a desire to set up a State based on religious tests than which nothing could be further from the idea of Herzl and of Zionists generally.
2 Offentlich-rechtlich gesicherte Heimstatte in the original German. The old translation " publicly and legally assured home (see 28988) is scarcely adequate. In article (4) of the Programme as there set out, " grants " should be replaced by " consents (Zustim- mungen). Zionism has never expected or asked for a financial grant from any Government.
