Studies in Jewish nationalism

Prefatory Note

I am much indebted to the editors of Asia, the Jewish Forum, the Menorah Journal, the Found Table, and Palestine for permission to reproduce in this volume essays which have appeared in the periodicals mentioned. The essays are reprinted practically as they appeared : in particular, I have not attempted to bring them up to date by altering the few passages in which the war is referred to, explicitly or by implication, as still in progress. Such changes as have been made are mostly verbal.

The conception of Nationalism, and of Jewish Nationalism in particular, which underlies these essays is derived from Achad ha-Am (Asher Ginzberg), the foremost of living Hebrew writers. Some of his essays have appeared in an English translation by the present writer ( Selected Essays ; Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, 1912). The German trans¬ lation [Am Scheidewege, 2 vols., Judischer Verlag, Berlin, 1913 and 1916) contains a wider selection. Among recent English books dealing with Zionism and the Jewish revival in Palestine the reader may be referred to Zionism and the Jewish Future, edited by H. Sacher (John Murray, 2nd edition, 1917) ; Palestine :

VI

PREFATORY NOTE

the Rebirth of an Ancient People, by A. M. Hyamson (Sidgwick and Jackson, 1917); Palestine of the Jews, by Norman Bentwich (Kegan Paul, 1917) ; and the History of Zionism, 1600-1918, by Nahum Sokolow (Longmans, 1919).

April 1920.

L. S.

Introduction

My old friend Mr. Leon Simon, who has at last sufficiently overcome his modesty to discard the role of translator and inspirer, and to issue a book of his own, has asked me to write him a few lines of intro¬ duction. He imagines, I fancy, that my chaperonage will in some measure promote the circulation of his book among non-Jewish readers. But the last role for which I feel I am cast is that of chaperon, and where Mr. Leon Simon and his master Achad ha-Am (Asher Ginzberg) are concerned I must frankly drop the part of impresario and profess myself a grateful disciple.

It is now many years since that I first encountered the ideas of the little group of young English Zionists of whom Leon Simon and Harry Sacher are the most distinguished representatives. My first recollection of Leon Simon goes back to 1902, when, as a Balliol scholar and the most brilliant classic of his year, he carried off the Ireland Scholarship ; but it was not till some years later that I made his personal acquaintance. In the previous year, the last of my undergraduate career, Harry Sacher came up to New College, where his more controversial brand of idealism was not viii INTRODUCTION

long in making its mark in our College debates and discussions. In 1905, interested in what I had learnt from him and others about the Jewish national move¬ ment, I procured journalistic facilities to attend the Zionist Congress held in that summer in Bale. It was there, at the bookstall of the Congress, that I first fell in with the writings of Achad ha- Am, in a volume of German translations of his essays and in an extremely interesting monograph by Mathias Acher (Achad ha ‘am, ein Denker und Kampfer der judischen Renaissance, Jiidischer Verlag, Berlin, 1903). It is the plain truth to say that the ideas contained in those two books and developed in the course of years of, unhappily too intermittent, discussion and intercourse with the English interpreters of Achad ha-Am, of whom Leon Simon is the foremost, have influenced me, in steadily increasing measure, ever since. Not only has Achad ha-Am laid his finger on a profound truth — a truth precious and service¬ able in any thinking and self-conscious community — but he has a message which is of peculiar interest and value for the present age : for more than half the perplexity and rancour under which the European peoples are labouring to-day would be cleared away as by magic if the simple teaching of Achad ha-Am . on nationality and kindred subjects had become, as I believe it is destined to become in the future, the common property of the civilised world.

I have spoken of Achad ha-Am’s and his disciple Leon Simon’s conception of nationality as simple : and so indeed it seems to me now, and would seem, I think, to anyone, lettered or unlettered, who had not first had his head filled with the shibboleths with which the politicians and the propagandists have made us increasingly familiar during the last hundred years.

INTRODUCTION ix

But, as my own experience has shown me, it does not seem simple or easily intelligible to the average Englishspeaking hearer or reader. Words like ‘ nation/ * nationalist/ ‘liberation/ ‘independence/ ‘self-deter¬ mination ’ call up so many confused and controversial associations that it is very hard to get a fair hearing for anyone who, like the author of these essays, stands back from the political struggles of the moment, and tries to see the problem of his nation, and of all self-conscious nations, steadily, critically and as a whole. I doubt whether the average non-Jewish reader will find these essays easy reading. I almost hope that he will not. But I am sure that if he will read them once, with the care they deserve, he will often find himself inclined to come back to them, and that when he turns to other writers on these and kindred subjects, he will discover how deeply, and with what lasting effect, the ploughshare of the Jewish thinker, with its keen analytical blade, has cut into the subsoil of his mind. Thus encouraged, he will be ready to welcome the good seed which, here as in the order of Nature, follows the ploughing, and to look forward, if not in this distracted generation then in the next, to the plenteous harvest for which sound ideas and faithful thinking sometimes have long to wait, but never wait in vain.

ALFRED E. ZIMMERN.

University College of Wales,

Aberystwyth,