Sejarah Zionisme, 1600-1918/Volume 1/Bab 39

CHAPTER XXXIX.

DR. LEO PINSKER

His life and experiences—His Auto-emancipation—The old idea of self-help in Jewish teaching—Individual and national self-help—The revival of an old doctrine—An analysis of Auto-emancipation—The results of Pinsker’s idea.

Leo Pinsker (1821‒1891) was the son of the well-known Jewish scholar Simchah Pinsker (1801‒1864), the celebrated author of Lekute Kadmonioth (Wien, 1860), an important work on the history of the Karaites, and of other valuable Hebrew works. Pinsker was educated at Odessa, where he studied law at the local Richelieu Lyceum. Law, however, was not to his liking, and he went to Moscow, where he studied medicine and took the degree of M.D. He returned to Odessa and took up practice as a medical man. Shortly afterwards the Crimean War came to an end, and Odessa was full of soldiers suffering from typhoid fever. There was danger of an epidemic. Pinsker gave up his practice and devoted himself entirely to the stricken soldiers. This self-sacrifice was not overlooked by the higher officials, who brought it to the notice of the Czar Alexander II. (1818‒1881), and Pinsker received a generous reward. Pinsker, besides being an authority on medical matters, was one of the editors of the Russian-Jewish paper Zion. Educated as he had been in the dark days of the reign of Nicholas I. (1796‒1855), and witnessing the somewhat improved conditions brought about for the Jews by the accession of Alexander II., Pinsker believed for a time in emancipation and amalgamation; but after long years of observation and experience he came to take a different view. He was an eye-witness of the anti-Jewish riots in 1859, 1871, and 1881; and in the latter year, he issued a pamphlet in German, under the nom de plume “Ein Russischer Jude,” in which he most forcibly expresses the conclusions he had arrived at. It was entitled “Auto-emancipation,” of which an English version appeared in London some ten years later.¹ Self-emancipation was Pinsker’s great idea. Not that the idea did not exist before he preached it: as a matter of fact it is as old as Judaism. But Pinsker started his career as a Jewish nationalist by giving renewed expression to this idea of self-help, and from that moment he kept it in the very forefront of his aspirations and activities. Electricity is a comparatively recent discovery; it is only within the last half-century that it has come to be fully understood and harnessed for man’s purposes. But this mysterious power is not of recent birth; although unknown to man it was latent in the universe from the beginning. In the fullness of time inquiring minds discovered it and gave us our modern triumphs of power, of lighting and of communication. The analogy, though weak, may convey to us in a certain degree what happened in the case of the idea of self-help. It had permeated the Jewish nation from the beginning of the ages. The importance of free will and independent action had been a leading Jewish principle from time immemorial. But it needed the “Lovers of Zion” and the advent of a great interpreter to bring home the lesson to the Jewish people.

“Dedicated to Lieutenant-Colonel A. Goldsmid as a token of esteem for his zealous championship of Palestine colonisation.”

Self-help implies the duty of the nation to be on its guard and to use its own endeavours to secure its position. It implies the moral obligation of self-defence and of self-salvation by one’s own efforts and sacrifices, without the assistance and protection of others. The principle comes to the surface over and over again in the Bible, where we catch glimpses of a doctrine that is to be fully worked out only in the development of a national movement. The author of the Book of Joshua strikes the keynote of Israel’s duties when he says:—

“Be strong and of good courage;...” (Joshua i. 6).

“Only be strong and very courageous, ...” (Ibid. 7).

Phrases similar to those in Deuteronomy xxxi. 6, 7, 23. Joshua obeyed the precept, and abundantly realized the promise with which it was accompanied. The historical sections of the Bible are filled with this idea—every deliverance is attributed directly to the moral integrity of the Jew and to the help of his God. It is remarkable how large a place exhortations to courage hold in the Bible; we cannot easily count the “fear nots” of the Scriptures. And these are not merely soothing words to calm, they are quickening words, calling to conflict and to victory. This is the lesson which the individual as well as the nation had to learn. In the light of it may be read the whole history of Israel. The course of ages reveals a thousand ways in which Israel vainly tries to remedy the disaster into which it has brought itself by relying on the aid of others. Now it was Egypt (Isaiah xxx. 2, xxxvi. 6), now Assyria (2 Kings xvi. 7), now their own kings and nobles. When threatened by the Syrians, they made treaties with the Assyrians; when threatened by the Assyrians, they tried to strengthen themselves by the support of Egypt. The proved uselessness of reliance on others brought the nation at last to recognize the virtue of entire and obedient trust in God.

“Trust in the Lord with all thy heart,...” (Prov. iii. 5),

was a protest against self-sufficiency, self-conceit and vanity, and also against relying on others. Entire reliance upon God, implied in the words “with all thy heart,” is here appropriately placed at the head of a series of admonitions relating especially to God and man’s relations with him, inasmuch as such confidence or trust is a fundamental principle of all religion. The admonition does not mean that men are not to use their own understanding, i.e. to make plans and to employ legitimate means in the pursuit of their ends; but that, when they use it, they are to depend upon God and his directing and overruling providence. For there is a true and a false self-reliance: that which forgets God is ignorant and impious; that which recognizes Him as the source of all true intelligence is genuine and blessed.

“If thou art wise, thou art wise for thyself;

And if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it” (Ibid. ix. 12).

This was a proclamation of the principle of personality, the great truth that each individual, in his single personality, has been endowed with full and equal rights of self-determination and self-control. The old civilizations annihilated the rights of the many in the privileges of the few, and put the manhood of the masses under the heel of power. The very idea of common rights had scarcely dawned upon the minds of men. The grandeur of human personality, as complete and inviolably sacred in every individual, was not discerned. The idea, now so familiar to every civilized human being, that every man is entitled to all the rights of manhood on his own responsibility was originally Jewish. The meaning of the verse quoted above is clear: our wisdom or folly is our own affair, both in origin and consequences. We must reap as we sow, must bear the brunt of the conflict we have provoked.

This principle concerns nations as well as individuals. The book of Proverbs contains many maxims with regard to nations:—

“Righteousness exalteth a nation;...” (Ibid. xiv. 34).

National righteousness consists in the possession of a reverent spirit and the practice of justice, purity, and mercy. In this is a nation’s strength and superiority, for it will surely lead to physical well-being, to material prosperity, to moral and spiritual advancement, and to estimation and influence among surrounding nations. The Pagan view of an eternal, inevitable force coercing and controlling all human action was in conflict with the Jewish conception of a free human and national will: man is not a helpless creature, borne along by destiny. Man’s moral freedom and responsibility is at the very root of all Jewish teaching, and is most strongly emphasized with regard to the nation:—

“Is Israel a servant?

Is he a home-born slave?...” (Jeremiah, chap. ii. v. 14.)

A slave can be emancipated only by others, a free man emancipates himself. Hope comes to those who rouse themselves from dejection, and “power to him that power exerts.” History proves the practical folly, as well as the ingratitude and rebelliousness, of “Israel forsaking God.” When trust is placed in other powers they prove like Egypt—inactive, do-nothing (Isaiah xxxi. 7). The “captive daughter of Zion,” which is a poetical image for the Jewish nation, brought down to the dust by suffering and oppression, is commanded to rise and shake herself from the dust.

“Awake, awake,

Put on thy strength, O Zion;...” (Isaiah lii. 1).

“Shake thyself from the dust;

Arise, and sit down, O Jerusalem;

Loose thyself from the bands of thy neck,

O captive daughter of Zion” (Ibid. 2).

In these words Zion was exhorted to do her part, to put on her own strength. What we term in modern language “self-emancipation,” the Prophet, in his simpler phraseology, calls “Loose thyself.” When the bonds can be broken, break them; when the door can be opened, unbar it; when the way is clear, take it without hesitation and delay; and if this seems to be impossible, try and try again. God’s providence requires of men, as a condition of his assisting them, their own efforts. When the Jews were delivered from Babylon, those only were delivered who braced themselves for a great effort, left all that they had, confronted peril (Ezra viii. 31), undertook the difficult and wearisome journey (Ibid. xliii.) from Chaldea to Palestine, and made all sorts of sacrifices. They saved the nation. A small beginning was facilitated to some extent by the favourable decree of Cyrus, but the most important and essential part was left for the people to do itself.

“Put not your trust in princes,

Nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.” (Psalm cxlvi. 3.)

This psalm was evidently composed at a time of great national depression, when the community, sick of dependence on the favour of foreign princes, turned more and more to the thought of self-help coupled with a strong belief in the eternal righteousness and faithfulness of the “God of Jacob.” It bears evident traces of belonging to the post-exilic period, and the subsequent verses:—

“... The Lord looseth the prisoners;” (Ibid. 7)

“... The Lord raiseth up them that are bowed down;...” (Ibid. 8)

are an appropriate expression of the feelings which would naturally be called forth at a time immediately subsequent to the return from Captivity.

This idea was handed on as a legacy from the prophets and psalmists to the men of the Great Synod, and from the latter to the Jewish philosophers and teachers of the Middle Ages. No doubt it had vastly changed in form and in content; but in essence it was the same. Political independence was lost in course of time; and the place of the political state was taken by national unity and an unshaken belief in the Restoration of the people to its old land. In substance it was a combination of consciousness of the past and hope for the future that made Jewish life in the present worth living. The sluggard was still inert, the credulous man still trusted “in man in whom there is no help,” and had need of a live coal from the altar. But now it was not an angel that brought to man the purifying agency. The sufferings of the nation had been exalted far above the coal of the altar. National martyrdom had assumed a more intense and vivid meaning. It was more insistently set over against the thoughtlessness of a materialistic life.

When we read the maxim of Hillel the elder (112 ? b.c.e.‒8 ? c.e.) which Pinsker used as the motto of his pamphlet:

הוא היה אומר אם אין אני לי מי לי וכשאני לעצמי מה אני ואם לא עכשו אימתי׃ פרקי אבות א׳ יד׳

He used to say, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

And being for my own self, what am I?

And if not now, when?” (Ethics of the Fathers, chap. i. v. 14.)

We cannot help thinking that this aphorism, as well as the rule:—

”... ובמקום שאין אנשים השתדל להיות איש׃“ ב׳ו׳

“... and in a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.” (Ibid. ii. 6.)

refers not only to individual matters, but also to national duties. Several centuries later, Bahia ben Joseph Ibn Pakuda (fl. 1000‒1050), who devoted a whole chapter of his Duties of the Heart to the exaltation of trust in God, wrote:—

“Trust in God should not prevent man from doing his utmost in the way of human effort and enterprise. Likewise it is folly to put too much trust in benefactors, however powerful.”

The self-emancipation of the Jewish people is, accordingly, not simply a Jewish idea, it is the Jewish idea. This idea is not of the Ghetto, it is truly Hebraic; it may be opposed to some superstitious notions, but it is religious in the highest sense. Belief in predestination tended to make many Asiatic nations lethargic and indolent. Fatalism killed their energy and stopped all their progress. Relying on others was essentially fatalism. This doctrine was Babylonian; it was never Jewish.

“Ethiopia and Egypt were thy strength, and it was infinite;

Put and Lubim were thy helpers” (Nahum iii. 9).

This was the burden concerning Nineveh, but Israel trusted in God, i.e. in its Genius, in its own moral power, in its self-sacrifice and faithfulness to its ideals.

“That walk to go down into Egypt,

And have not asked at My mouth;

To take refuge in the stronghold of Pharaoh,

And to take shelter in the shadow of Egypt!” (Isaiah xxx. 2).

“Therefore shall the stronghold of Pharaoh turn to your shame,

And the shelter in the shadow of Egypt to your confusion” (Ibid. 3).

“Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help,...” (Ibid. xxxi. 1).

“... Both he that helpeth shall stumble, and he that is helped shall fall,

And they all shall perish together” (Ibid. 3).

In the period of the Second Temple, the Hellenists again made frantic efforts to be emancipated by the Greeks. The Jewish Law, which was the life and progress of the nation, was for them the stronghold of Jewish unity and the obstacle in their path. But the more they strove after equality with the Greeks, the more futile seemed their strivings. It was the loss of their faith in God and their nation that made them cast about for another power to deliver them. They preferred the attractions of Hellenic culture to Hebrew morality; Syrian power to the Divine Spirit; the material army of the Seleucides, whose forces they could count and whose weapons they could handle, to the unseen moral power of their nation. This was the sin of the Hellenists. When their success was at its height, they gave themselves with savage energy to the persecution of those of their brethren who remained faithful to their own nationality. With a zeal that far excelled that of the enemy, they hunted to death the innocent followers of the old prophets. But just when this persecuting fury was burning at its hottest, the Maccabeans came forward and exhorted the “captive daughter of Zion” to shake herself from the dust. Henceforth they became the blessed messengers of national self-help, and it was their chief joy to sing the glories of the Divine grace which enabled them to be more abundant in works than all others.

Was not Rabbi Akiba (50?‒132?) ben Joseph the spiritual hero and martyr, a preacher of self-emancipation? Did not the same idea inspire Judah Halevi [Abu al-Hassan al-Lawi] (1085(6)‒post 1140), Moses ben Nachman Gerondi [RaM-BaN]: Nachmanides: [Bonastruc da Porta] (1194‒1270?), Obadiah (Yareh) (circa 1475‒1500?) ben Abraham Bertenoro, and that splendid host of scholars who endeavoured to re-establish the ordination in Palestine, and to encourage the Jewish settlement, in that country, amidst terrific troubles and dangers, as well as Don Joseph Nasi [João Miguez]—(circa 1510‒1579), Duke of Naxos, who spared no effort to help his brethren to settle in the promised Land?

This same idea lies at the root of Pinsker’s conception. A clear-minded and quiet thinker, he was deeply impressed by the events of 1880‒1881. The grave anxieties through which the Russian Jews passed, and the awakening of anti-Jewish feeling in Western Europe, particularly in Germany, led him to reconsider the conventional Emancipation doctrine, in which he, like all highly educated Russian and Polish Jews, had formerly believed. Being a medical man, he may have seen the tortures of the victims; as an old inhabitant of Odessa, he no doubt remembered the anti-Jewish riots of 1859 and 1871; and now the eighties, with all their horrors, began. He then enunciated “the message of political Zionism.” “Pinsker, like all subsequent political Zionists, arrived at the idea of Zionism not through the problem of Judaism—through the necessity of seeking for a new foundation for our national existence and unity, in place of the old foundation, which is crumbling away—but through the problem of Jewry—through a definite conviction that even emancipation and general progress will not improve the degraded and insecure position of the Jews among the nations, and that anti-Semitism will never cease so long as we have not a national home of our own.” Pinsker discovered that the root causes of “our being hated and despised more than any other human beings ... lie deep in human psychology.”

“We cannot know whether that great day will ever arrive when all mankind will live in brotherhood and concord, and national barriers will no longer exist; but even at the best, thousands of years must elapse before that Messianic age. Meanwhile nations live side by side in a state of relative peace, which is based chiefly on the fundamental equality between them.... But it is different with the people of Israel. This people is not counted among the nations, because since it was exiled from its land it has lacked the essential attributes of nationality, by which one nation is distinguished from another.... True, we have not ceased even in the lands of our exile to be spiritually a distinct nation; but this spiritual nationality, so far from giving us the status of a nation in the eyes of the other nations, is the very cause of their hatred for us as a people. Men are always terrified by a disembodied spirit, a soul wandering about with no physical covering; and terror breeds hatred. This is a form of psychic disease which we are powerless to cure. In all ages men have feared all kinds of ghosts which their imaginations have seen; and Israel appears to them as a ghost—but a ghost which they see with their very eyes, not merely in fancy. Thus the hatred of the nations for Jewish nationality is a psychic disease of the kind known as ‘demonopathy’; and having been transmitted from generation to generation for some two thousand years, it has by now become so deep-rooted that it can no longer be eradicated.”¹

The great value of Pinsker’s doctrine does not lie in the fact of its originality in literature. Original to him—he undoubtedly came to his conclusion by his own reflection—it was not a discovery in the usual sense of this word: views of this kind had been expressed before him. Neither does its great value lie in its possessing the indisputable character of a scientific axiom. It may be said that although the Jews are perhaps the most perfect example of a spiritual existence in dispersion, still they are not quite unique in that respect. Other disinherited nations have existed more or less spiritually for many centuries in a degraded state of national homelessness, “lacking the essential attributes of nationality,” dispersed or dependent on other nations, and yet have not produced, even in a smaller degree, that fear which is evoked by a “disembodied spirit.” It may also be urged that the Jews were hated and branded by all sorts of calumnies and malicious accusations [Apion (fl. 15‒54 c.e.), Tacitus (55?‒post 117 c.e.)], mainly on account of their distinctiveness, their isolation, their different views and customs, and the inveterate prejudices of others—even when they had a land of their own. And although they may, and probably will, meet with the sympathy of some nations, which are not entirely blinded by prejudice, and whose interests may not clash with theirs, if they succeed in establishing their own home, still the supposition that they will no longer be hated by others, plausible though it may be, cannot claim any scientific certainty. It must be remembered that, apart from “demonophobia,” which is undoubtedly an important motive, hatred of the Jews is continually stimulated by a deep-rooted religious fanaticism, by economic competition and jealousy, by racial prejudice, and that it is rather a mixtum compositum of causes, conditions, passions, and interests too numerous to be destroyed by the removal of a few of them, and perhaps too various to be focussed in any single formula.

But that is not the main point. The psychology of anti-Semitism, as Pinsker formulated it, may be from a scientific point of view absolutely true, or it may be open to some criticism: the finest and most original achievement of Pinsker is rather that he was one of the first Russian Jews to treat the Jewish problem as a whole, and to treat it scientifically, while others deal only with fragments of it, and always in an apologetic spirit. The new synthesis, the new line of thought, foreshadowed by great minds in the past, but now fully disengaged and standing clearly revealed as the beacon-light of the future, was, to our mind, not his formulation of the causes of the problem, but his formulation of the programme—self-emancipation. Perez Smolenskin had voiced the demand of the Jewish conscience to maintain its historic tradition, and its condemnation of all that spirit of assimilation that betrays it with new formulas or deliberately denies it. Superior to Pinsker’s in being independent of the way in which the Jewish people is treated by others—to Smolenskin the fact of anti-Semitism was not one of fundamental importance—his message, eloquent as it was, suffered from being expressed in many different books, mixed up with other subjects, and confined to Hebrew readers, and thus cannot be compared with Pinsker’s concise and definite teaching. There were, however, many imperfections in that teaching. “Our great misfortune is that we do not form a nation—we are merely Jews.... And where shall we find this national consciousness?” How different Smolenskin and others, who spoke from a secure tower of faith! “When he wrote his pamphlet Pinsker did not yet regard our historic land as the only possible home of refuge; on the contrary, he feared that our ingrained love for Palestine might give us a bias and induce us to choose that country without paying regard to its political, economic and other conditions, which perhaps might be unfavourable. For this reason he warns us emphatically not to be guided by sentiment in this matter, but to leave the question of territory to a commission of experts.” He evidently saw in Palestine no more than a fraction of Asiatic earth, peopled by a certain number of inhabitants, while Smolenskin, David Gordon, and many others looked on it as the sanctuary of the nation, the historic centre, whence came the Jewish message to men, and the Jewish initiative in the world. Pinsker, like many others after him, had not yet realized at that time that one’s country is not merely a territory. Territory is only its basis; country is the idea that rises on that basis, the thought of a common history that draws together all the sons of that territory. But in spite of all these imperfections, Pinsker’s pamphlet necessarily led to faith in a national revival and to Palestine—not because of its arguments, but because it was a wonderful human document. Earnest, true, without a trace of affectation, Pinsker’s appeal bore the stamp of great sincerity, and if there was in his pamphlet some of the spirit of the prophets, this was essentially in his cry for self-help, in his warnings not to trust in others, in his appeal to national dignity and energy. To superficial minds, the idea of this modern scientist unconsciously re-echoing the warnings of the prophets not to trust in Egypt or in Assyria may seem exaggerated, but the apparently far-fetched comparison is absolutely sane, for it is based on the sanest of all conceptions—the unity of the Jewish national idea throughout hundreds of generations.

“He came to take part in the work of the Chovevé Zion.... He understood perfectly well that their work was very far removed from the great project of which he dreamt ... but when he saw a small group of men, with insignificant means, putting forth every possible effort to carry out a national project, small and poor though it was in comparison with his own ideal, Pinsker could not help lending a hand to those who were engaged in this work, seeing in them the nucleus of an organization, and the small beginning of the national resolution.”¹ He encouraged and supported the work of the Chovevé Zion (Lovers of Zion) as the first President of the Odessa Committee, and paved the way for modern Zionism. He died at Odessa, his native town, at the age of sixty-nine, on the 21st of December, 1891.