Voices from the Past: Richard Gottheil:
The Aims of Zionism
In a peroration of a speech given in New York City on November 1 1898, Dr. Richard Gottheil defines the ultimate aims of Zionism. Then a professor of Semitic Languages and Rabbinical Literature at Columbia University in New York City, as well as President and co-founder of the American Federation of Zionists, Dr. Gottheil demonstrates how the dangers of assimilation are reconcilable with the Zionist cause.
I KNOW that there are a great many of our people who look for a final solution of the Jewish question in what they call "assimilation." The more the Jews assimilate themselves to their surroundings, they think, the more completely will the causes for anti-Jewish feeling cease to exist. But have you ever for a moment stopped to consider what assimilation means? It has very pertinently been pointed out that the use of the word is borrowed from the dictionary of physiology. But in physiology it is not the food which assimilates itself into the body. It is the body which assimilates the food. The Jew may wish to be assimilated; he may do all he will towards this end. But if the great mass in which he lives does not wish to assimilate him - what then? If demands are made upon the Jew which practically mean extermination, which practically mean his total effacement from among the nations of the globe and from among the religious forces of the world, — what answer will you give? And the demands made are practically of that nature.
I can imagine it possible for a people who are possessed of an active and aggressive charity which it expresses, not only in words, but also in deeds, to contain and live at peace with men of the most varied habits. But, unfortunately, such people do not exist; nations are swayed by feelings which are dictated solely by their own self-interests; and the Zionists in meeting this state of things, are the most practical as well as the most ideal of the Jews.
It is quite useless to tell the English workingman that his Jewish fellow-laborer from
For the Jew has this especial disadvantage. There is no place where that which is distinctively Jewish in his name or in his way of life is la mode. We may well laugh at the Irishman's brogue; but in
For such as these amongst us, Zionism also has its message. It wishes to give back to the Jew that nobleness of spirit, that confidence in himself, that belief in his own powers which only perfect freedom can give. With a home of his own, he will no longer feel himself a pariah among the nations, he will nowhere hide his own peculiarities, — peculiarities to which he has a right as much as any one, — but will see that those peculiarities carry with them a message which will force for them the admiration of the world. He will feel that he belongs somewhere and not everywhere. He will try to be something and not everything. The great word which Zionism preaches is conciliation of conflicting aims, of conflicting lines of action; conciliation of Jew to Jew. It means conciliation of the non-Jewish world to the Jew as well. It wishes to heal old wounds; and by frankly confessing differences which do exist, however much we try to explain them away, to work out its own salvation upon its own ground, and from these to send forth its spiritual message to a conciliated world.
But, you will ask, if Zionism is able to find a permanent home in
Nay! it would seem to me that just those who are so afraid that our action will be misinterpreted should be among the greatest helpers in the Zionist cause. For those who feel no racial and national communion with the life from which they have sprung should greet with joy the turning of Jewish immigration to some place other than the land in which they dwell. They must feel, for example, that a continual influx of Jews who are not Americans is a continual menace to the more or less complete absorption for which they are striving.
But I must not detain you much longer. Will you permit me to sum up for you the position which we Zionists take in the following statements: -
We believe that the Jews are something more than a purely religious body; that they are not only a race, but also a nation; though a nation without as yet two important requisites — a common home and a common language.
We believe that if an end is to be made to Jewish misery and to the exceptional position which the Jews occupy, — which is the primary cause of Jewish misery, — the Jewish nation must be placed once again in a home of its own.
We believe that such a national regeneration is the fulfillment of the hope which has been present to the Jew throughout his long and painful history.
We believe that only by means of such a national regeneration can the religious regeneration of the Jews take place, and they be put in a position to do that work in the religious world which
We believe that such a home can only naturally, and without violence to their whole past, be found in the land of their fathers — in
We believe that such a return must have the guarantee of the great powers of the world in order to secure for the Jews a stable future.
And we hold that this does not mean that all Jews must return to
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Zionist program. Shall we be able to carry it through? I cannot believe that the Jewish people have been preserved throughout these centuries either for eternal misery or for total absorption at this stage of the world's history. I cannot think that our people have so far misunderstood their own purpose in life, as now to give the lie to their own past and to every hope which has animated their suffering body.
Bear with me but a few moments longer while I read the words which a Christian writer puts into the mouth of a Jew. "The effect of our separateness will not be completed and have its highest transformation, unless our race takes on again the character of a nationality. That is the fulfillment of the religious trust that molded them into a people, whose life has made half the inspiration of the world. . . . Revive the organic centre; let the unity of
These are the words of the non-Jewish Zionist, George Eliot. We take hope, for has not that Jewish Zionist said: "We belong to a race that can do everything but fail."
This article also belongs to the following subjects:
Jewish History
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1860-1948: Early Zionist Age
Jewish History
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1948-Today: Modern Zionist Age
People
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1860-1948: Early Zionist Age
People
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1948-Today: Modern Zionist Age
Zionism
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Who is a Zionist?
Zionism
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Zionism and the Diaspora
Zionism
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Zionism Revisited
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Is the German- American considered any less an American?
The answer is "yes". He was considered less, has had his culture violently suppressed in the last 100 years, and has been extinguished in America, as have the Scandinavians and the Irish. They have become Americans, and their previous identities have been erased, consisting of little more than a few quaint songs, a handful of recipes, and a "Kiss me I'm Irish" bumpersticker. Is this what Gottheil proposes for American Jews?
German-Americans were so absorbed and assimilated (by tremendous social pressur and often force) that they gladly made war on their homelands and their tribe in order to prove their loyalty and full assimilation into an American identity.
Is this what Gottheil proposes for American Jews?
It is dangerous to look for parallels of non-assimilation in the experienes of other nationalities, for they all, without exception, become assimilated. It is the uniqueness of Jews that they alone among all the nations cannot and will not be assimilated. Gottheil is a lovely period piece of rhetoric which served its purpose by permitting Jewry to find cover behind other immigrant ethnic groups.
It no longer serves any useful purpose for Jews. Indeed, it is so archaic that it not only does it no longer persuade, but it casts the Jew in harsh relief against all other completely assimilated nationality in America. As Herzl was unafraid to point out, Jews are suspect precisely because they wil not assimilate. As Herzl recognized and fully accepted, suspicion and mistrust (and ultimately competition for recources and violence) are natural corollaries of non-assimilation. Arthur Hertzberg makes many of the same points so well in his writings elsewhere on this website....
By: William enigma (breich@dod...) - August 15, 2005
