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No. 41. | Vienna, 11 October 1901. | Fifth Year

Jewish Science.

I.

Upon the order of the day of the Fifth Zionist Congress there has been placed, among the questions of spiritual elevation, the item "Jewish Science" as well. There may well be many a worthy Zionist who stands before this item at a loss. What is Jewish science? To what end, and how, does one pursue Jewish science? Where is it? What has it to do with Zionism? And what with the questions of the spiritual elevation of the Jewish people? All this is not clear of itself. We must attempt to make plain the significance of a Jewish science and its connection with our endeavours.

A Jewish science may have a threefold sense. According to its point of departure it may be either a science of Judaism, or a science of the Jewish question, or a science of Zionism. In the first case it would proceed from the historical and present reality of the Jewish people; it would set itself as its aim the description and explanation of what is actually given, and would carry into it no practical points of view, save this one: to disengage unified developments out of the tangle of conflicting phenomena. In the second case it would have to occupy itself with an eminently practical problem, with the pathology of present-day Jewry and with the anomaly of its relations to the other peoples; it would not find it so easy as the science of Judaism to remain objective, for already in the choice of the material the purpose would have its say. More difficult still would the objectivity of a science of Zionism become; it would proceed not from a question but from an answer — from an answer which in most cases was found not scientifically but intuitively, at all events subjectively, and which is now to be established upon grounds; there the purpose might easily speak the decisive word, no longer merely in the choice, but also in the shaping, the interpretation and the valuation of the factual material.

Less satisfactory still do the two latter conceptions appear when one regards them from another great point of view. An analogy will show us this. These two conceptions recall the scientific treatment of current social-political themes — in the one case such a treatment undertaken by an impartial economist, in the other by a party scholar. The difference between the two cases we will not here take into account. But plainly both are mere patchwork, made for the day, if they do not attach themselves to the great traditions of the science of social life in general. They may not presume to wish to be more than an annexe and a transition. And only if they wish to be no more are they anything at all. Thus the science of the Jewish question or of Zionism too may not wish to be more than an annexe and a transition. But an annexe to what? A transition whither?

There can properly be but one Jewish science: the science of Judaism, which in part would of itself have to run out into a scientific treatment of the Jewish question and of Zionism (since it would furnish the historical and sociological explanation of their mutual relations), and in part could be supplemented by it, as theoretical political economy is by economic policy. But where is this science of Judaism?

I shall be answered: it is not there. And it will be added: and a science cannot be made.

That is correct. It is not there. And it cannot be made. It is not there, for there exists neither a delimited field of work that belongs to it, nor a defined method that is systematically applied within it. And it cannot be made, for science proper arises not out of plans, schemes and programmes, however full of good will these may be, but out of the far-seeing yet narrowly bounded research of men of knowledge. Plans and programmes are not its foundation but its gable.

And yet we speak not merely of a scientifically pursued Zionism, but of Jewish science. I grant that this expression is not entirely correct; it is to be retained only upon practical grounds. But if one accepts it for