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No. 3. Vienna, 18 January 1901. Fifth Year

The Year 1900.

By Berthold Feiwel.

II.

In the course of this year Zionism has developed, both outwardly and inwardly, in a measure with which we may not be dissatisfied.

If in certain countries — in Roumania, Bessarabia, South Africa — the Zionist propaganda was hampered by catastrophic events, in other countries there is to be recorded, by way of compensation, a notable swelling of the Zionist movement. With satisfaction, however, we must establish that even in the countries first named, in South Africa for example, the Zionist work set in again with full force at the very moment when the natural obstacles began to grow less.

Men are accustomed to draw the Zionist balance-sheet of a year from the results of its Congress. The abundance and the value of the work accomplished, the character and the significance of the resolutions which are to govern the Zionist work until the next Congress, form the standard for the judgment of our progress. But it would be as unwise as it would be unjust, in a work of such wide extent and of such rich content as Zionism is, to expect for every division of time some "great success." The Anti-Zionists, who keep a check upon our work, sometimes display in this an impatience that is positively touching. As though the "successes" could be determined beforehand to the day and the hour! It would be a mistake were a Zionist to make this "inability to wait" his own. Something else must take the place of impatience: the ambition to prepare successes with all one's strength — an ambition which may be insatiable in respect of the work done and still to be done, but which must not grow weary because the seed seems to it too slow in coming up.

The significance of the year now past lies for us in this, that much good Zionist seed has been scattered. In this year, too, not a little of consequence has been attained. But much that is greater and more important has been prepared, and will, so we hope, be brought to fulfilment in the years to come.

Let us also choose the Congress as the starting-point of our survey. With a certain justice many have seen its chief significance in the fact that it was held in London. That our Congress was not buried beneath the noise of the city of millions, that on the contrary it proved possible to direct the attention of the English politicians and of the widely-circulated English press upon the Congress, is assuredly an extraordinarily remarkable result. And it is gratifying that the English Zionists knew how to turn this fine result to the account of Zionism very soon. The action which our English fellow-adherents undertook upon the occasion of the parliamentary elections has brought it about that a great number of English parliamentarians have declared themselves ready to further the endeavours of Zionism, and will sooner or later have as its consequence a parliamentary treatment of Zionism. Assuredly a circumstance whose favourable influence upon the political side of Zionism is not to be under-estimated.

Yet there are many Zionists who see the essential significance of the fourth Congress in something else, namely in the fact that this Congress opened the way to an inward development of Zionism. The working programme of the Zionists has been enriched by the so-called programme of the present. This work of the present, which is devoted to the economic, physical, and intellectual raising of the Jews, serves directly and indirectly the idea of national self-help. It embraces an abundance of fruit-bearing activities which are to help the Zionists to lead the Jewish people back to its own nationhood, and to rear a people bodily more vigorous, intellectually higher, and economically better fortified than the one we now have. Perhaps "40 years of the wilderness" are appointed for us also, before we reach the Promised Land. In this time the Jewish poor and weak are to be upheld by the Zionists, and the people is to be prepared for the home. Those who perform this work have a mighty task before them, which is made yet harder by the many restrictions of the Goius. But the work must be done. The physical, econo-