A History of Zionism (15 page)

The Kattowitz conference has entered the annals of Zionist history as one of its most important milestones. In fact it was a very modest beginning. The thirty-six delegates were in general agreement that something ought to be done for Palestine, but there was no real attempt to define clearly the scope and purpose of the new organisation, let alone to consider ways and means of carrying out practical plans. Rich Russian Jews were reluctant to support Zionist initiatives and as a result the new organisation had hardly any funds at its disposal. The discussions at Kattowitz were taken up by such questions as whether one or two emissaries should be sent to Palestine and how much money should be allocated to the individual colonies.
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This and subsequent conferences of the Lovers of Zion clearly showed that it was basically a philanthropic, not a political association, and not a very effective one at that - they collected a mere 15-20,000 roubles a year. Some of its members emigrated to Palestine, but the great majority consisted merely of well-wishers and sympathisers. A movement of this kind could not make a substantial contribution towards solving the most burning issue facing Russian Jewry - that of emigration. About twenty thousand Jews left Russia in 1881-2, but only a few hundred went to Palestine, and in later years the disproportion became even more marked. When Pinsker wrote
Autoemanzipation
, and when Smolenskin and Lilienblum issued their manifestos and appeals, they had thought of more ambitious projects than the creation of a few tiny settlements in the Mutessariflik of Jerusalem and the districts of Nablus and Acre. The movement was torn by internal strife. The rabbis, led by Mohilever, tried to get rid of the ‘free-thinkers’, and Pinsker was gradually squeezed out of the leadership. These internal squabbles consumed much time and energy and temporarily paralysed the movement.

In the meantime the news from the colonies became more and more alarming. The lack of agricultural experience was taking a heavy toll, and there were no funds to see the settlers through their early setbacks. The land which had been acquired by the emissaries of Russian and Rumanian Jewry was stony or marshy and infested with malaria. They did not know that the planting of eucalyptus trees was indicated in conditions such as those obtaining at Hadera, and they would not have been able to carry out afforestation, for lack of means, even had they known this. Generally speaking, they had no idea what to grow or how or when to grow it. They lived in caves and wretched hovels, exposed to an unfamiliar and usually inclement climate. The original enthusiasm could not sustain them forever. Within a few years many of them had reached breaking point. Some returned to Russia, others went on to America. A few moved on to Jerusalem, assisted by Christian missions, since they failed to obtain the support of the local Jewish community. The whole venture seemed doomed. To save the colonies, Rabbi Mohilever and an English Christian Friend of Zion, Laurence Oliphant,
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enlisted the help of Baron Edmond de Rothschild and Baron Maurice de Hirsch, another noted Jewish philanthropist. Hirsch made his cooperation conditional on a contribution of 50,000 roubles on the part of Russian Jewry, and when this did not materialise he decided to concentrate his efforts on Jewish colonialisation in the Argentine. Rothschild was ready to help, and it was only owing to his support that Rishon, Zikhron, Rosh Pina and the other colonies survived. He also assisted in the establishment of two new colonies, Ekron and Metulla. With the arrival of another small wave of immigration in 1890-1 following the expulsion of Jews from Moscow, some more land was bought and two major colonies, Rehovot, south of Rishon le Zion, and Hadera, midway between Jaffa and Haifa, came into being. Altogether twenty-one agricultural settlements existed by the end of the century, with about 4,500 inhabitants, of whom two-thirds were employed in agriculture.

Rothschild did not trust the abilities of the colonists and insisted on direct supervision and control by his agents. A paternalistic régime was established, which was not at all to the liking of the Hoveve Zion. For Rothschild this was just another philanthropic scheme. Initially it caused much resentment among the recipients, but without his help the colonists would not have survived. It is estimated that during the 1880s the Baron spent about $5 million on supporting the settlements, whereas the Hoveve Zion were able to provide only about 5 per cent of that sum. Its support was limited in fact to Gedera, the original Bilu settlement. Under the supervision of Rothschild’s representatives vineyards were planted in Rishon and Zikhron; elsewhere the cultivation of wheat and of silkworms and the manufacture of rose oil was initiated. All these early trials were costly and some unsuccessful. The colonies became going concerns only during the first decade of the twentieth century when they began growing citrus fruits. The dependence of the colonists on Rothschild’s generosity had some negative consequences. At first there were many complaints about the interference of the baron’s agents in all their activities, but gradually the settlers came to take this for granted. They lost all initiative and became accustomed to turning to Paris whenever they encountered difficulties. Of their pioneering enthusiasm little was left when, after three decades, they had overcome their early troubles. The Zionist-Socialist convictions of the early settlers had given way to very different attitudes. By 1910 the settlers were owners of plantations employing mainly Arab workers. Their own children were sent for education to France, and a fairly high proportion of them did not choose agriculture or did not even return to Palestine. When a new wave of immigrants began to reach Palestine in 1905-6, the newcomers found it exceedingly difficult to obtain employment in these settlements, which preferred the cheaper and more experienced Arab labour. After this long philanthropic interlude the Zionist initiative thus became a strictly commercial venture. This was no doubt preferable to the degrading and unproductive existence of the old Jewish community in Jerusalem, which made organised begging a way of life, but it was hardly what the Lovers of Zion had dreamed about.

The decline of the movement was hastened by the insistence of the orthodox on certain biblical injunctions, such as the one which forbade the working of land each seventh year. The orthodox rabbis of Russia and Jerusalem insisted on strict observance of the Sabbatical year. But how could modern agriculture be combined with such outdated customs? The orthodox rabbis, meanwhile, were involved in a bitter quarrel with their ultra-orthodox colleagues as to whether the ethrogim (apples of Paradise needed for the ritual observance of the Feast of Tabernacles) should be imported from Corfu (as the latter demanded) or from Palestine, according to the wishes of the former. It is not surprising that a subsequent generation of Russian Zionists, which was to include Weizmann, was most reluctant to collaborate with the rabbis in their Zionist enterprises.

Pinsker and Lilienblum had been concerned with the future of the Jewish people, its national revival, the issue of mass immigration. Now, as leaders of the Odessa committee, they found themselves preoccupied with the livestock at Gedera and the question whether attacks by the inhabitants of Masmieh, the neighbouring Arab village, constituted a serious danger to the Jewish settlement. This was not what they had envisaged, and the conviction grew among them that their early approach to the problem had been mistaken. In 1891 and again in 1893 one of the leading younger members of the Odessa committee, Asher Ginzberg (Ahad Ha’am), was sent to Palestine, and in a series of articles entitled ‘The Truth from Eretz Israel’, he sharply criticised the methods pursued by the Lovers of Zion. Colonisation could be successful, he maintained, only if undertaken not in a hurry, but with practical sense and on an adequate scale. All these factors were missing in Palestine, which could not absorb the Jewish masses; it should be a cultural and spiritual centre but not the political or economic basis of the Jewish people.

In 1890 the Lovers of Zion were at last permitted by the Russian government to register as an association; previously they had had to pursue their activities in conditions of semi-legality. Now they founded an association for the promotion of farming and manufacture in Palestine and Syria, but the fact that the organisation was now legal did not give a fresh spur to its activities. The leaders of the Hoveve Zion, with their many sterling qualities, had neither the vision, the genius and ambition of leadership, nor the relentless energy needed to make a success of their movement. Internal dissensions further weakened it: Pinsker and Lilienblum, the secularists, were opposed by the rabbis and their followers. Only a few rabbis had been interested in the movement for a national revival, among them Ruelf of Memel, Pinsker’s close friend, Zadok Kahn of Paris, and Israel Hildesheimer, one of the leaders of German-Jewish orthodoxy. Later on, a great many were willing to support it, but only on condition that the movement would be religious in character. Lastly there were Ahad Ha’am’s disciples preaching cultural Zionism. According to their views the majority of the Jewish people were to stay in the diaspora and only a small, select group was to settle in Palestine. Such ideas were unlikely to serve as the basis of a political mass movement.

Organisationally and politically the Hoveve Zion was a failure, but although its visions did not materialise, thousands of its members and sympathisers continued to believe that one day their dreams would come true. These men and women were found not only in Russia and Poland; there were also small groups in Vienna and Berlin. Nathan Birnbaum, with a few friends of Jewish-Polish and Rumanian background, founded a national students organisation which, following a suggestion by Peretz Smolenskin, adopted the name
Kadima
, meaning both ‘forward’ and ‘eastward’. Birnbaum was a man of sharp critical intelligence and great ambition. His early essays reveal an original, sometimes prophetic frame of mind.
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He was a Zionist well before Herzl. Indeed, the movement owes its very name to him. Better than the Lovers of Zion he understood the importance of political Zionism. It was not sufficient to establish a few colonies whose economic and political existence was by no means secure. Zionism had to gain the confidence of the Turkish government. Birnbaum’s analysis of anti-semitism was more sophisticated than Pinsker’s and Herzl’s. As a Socialist he did not deny the importance of economic factors in history, nor did he believe that national hatreds (including antisemitism) would last forever. But he also realised that antisemitism was not primarily an economic phenomenon, that a revolution in the social structure would not by itself affect it, and that, lastly, it might take a thousand years to eradicate it. During this interim period Socialism simply did not have an answer to the Jewish question.

Birnbaum was isolated and desperately poor. His mother sold her little shop to finance her son’s literary efforts, which covered the publication of
Selbst-Emanzipation
, a Zionist fortnightly, in which, anticipating Herzl, he developed a plan for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, discussing in detail all the implications and refuting possible counter-arguments. Birnbaum had every reason to expect to be among the leaders of the Zionist movement when, following Herzl’s initiative, it received a new lease of life. But for a variety of reasons (partly through his own fault) he never found his place in the new movement. Soon he left it altogether and drifted from Zionism and Socialism to preaching an active, national Jewish policy in the diaspora, which only a few years earlier he had declared
a priori
impossible. The former Hebraist became a fervent advocate of Yiddish, the popular language which was anathema to most Zionists. The free-thinker joined the ultra-orthodox Agudat Israel, of which he eventually became a leading official. At every stage of his erratic intellectual development he defended his current views with great conviction. He lacked neither intellectual depth nor honesty but his instability disqualified him as a political leader.

Small groups of Lovers of Zion existed in many parts of the world. Newspapers and periodicals taking a special interest in the Jewish colonisation of Palestine were published from Bucharest (
Hayoez
) to Boston (
Hapisga
) and Baltimore. In Jerusalem there was a Zionist periodical, Ben Yehuda’s
Ha’or.
Max Bodenheimer, a German-Jewish lawyer, published a brochure in 1891 (
What to do with the Russian Jews
), followed two years later by another (
Syria and Palestine as a haven for Russian Jews
), in which he developed Zionist ideas quite independently of the Lovers of Zion or any other Jewish organisation. In 1896 the young engineer Menahem Ussishkin, brusque and opinionated but business-like and dynamic, took over the leadership of the Odessa committee. Ahad Ha’am established a little semi-conspiratorial
corps d’élite
, called
Bnei Moshe.
These men shared Ahad Ha’am’s views about the central importance of a cultural renaissance of the Jewish people; many of the later leaders of Russian Zionism belonged at one time or another to this group. Its immediate political importance was not very great, nor was it meant to be. Ahad Ha’am’s biographer says that Milton’s ‘They also serve who only stand and wait’ could well have been its motto.
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In Berlin a
Verein
of Jewish students from Russia had been founded in 1889. In this (the Russian-Jewish Scientific Association) young nationalists like Leo Motzkin, Nahman Syrkin and Shmaryahu Levin were active. Later on Chaim Weizmann became one of its members. They were desperately poor but full of ideas and enthusiasm. They met at the Hotel Zentrum on the Alexanderplatz where (as Weizmann recalls) they could get beer and sausages on credit.

I think with something like a shudder of the amount of talking we did. We never dispersed before the small hours of the morning. We talked of everything, of history, wars, revolutions, the rebuilding of society. But chiefly we talked of the Jewish problem and Palestine. We sang, we celebrated such Jewish festivals as we did not go home for, we debated with the assimilationists, and we made vast plans for the redemption of our people. It was all very youthful and naïve and jolly and exciting; but it was not without a deeper meaning.
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