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No. 48. Vienna, 28 November 1902 — 28 Marcheshvan 5663. 6th Year

A Quiet Celebration.

Dedicated to the pioneers of the colony "Rishon le-Zion" on the twentieth anniversary of its foundation.

אם לא את הדמעות, וקמצו יסרתם רב לכם אחי, עמלכם לא שוא הבאים וגב חם וסחתם ושלתם עתה רב לנו, אם נטוי הקו.

(Bialik; "Birkat Am".)

Some weeks ago, in Palestine, in the colony called "Rishon le-Zion," the twentieth anniversary of the colony's foundation was kept in all quietness and modesty. Very few among the Zionists, who ought surely to take an interest in it, knew of it; very few grasped the whole scope and significance of this jubilee.

It was in the year 1882. Those were terrible days, decisive moments for Jewry at large and for Russian Jewry in particular. All at once the fairest hopes of Russian Jewry were destroyed; the hand of fate fell upon it with crushing weight and all but ground it to dust. The inner struggles that had raged in the bosom of Russian Jewry, the struggles for enlightenment, for liberation from the fetters of tradition, had only just subsided, the victory having gone to the party of progress. It had cost many sacrifices, many a livelihood had been broken in that time, but the fetters of intellectual bondage were at last burst, the dams broken through; and the young in Israel looked into the future with eyes radiant with hope, and many fair and richly coloured pictures floated before them. And now, all at once, like a thunderbolt from a clear sky, the whole immense misery broke upon them, and they saw themselves forsaken from within as from without. Surrounded by the raging sea of unbridled popular passions, of boundless popular hatred, they beheld the utter shipwreck of all their hopes, and no other course remained to them but to take up the pilgrim's staff and secure for themselves a new home. In throngs the wretched, outraged, down-trodden victims of unchained brutality streamed into the countries of Western Europe and took ship, to begin a new life beyond the ocean and to know new sorrow. And while the poor Jewish people, headless, like a flock without a shepherd, was scattered in every direction, a new cry suddenly rang out: "Homeward, to our Holy Land, to the land of our fathers, to Palestine!" Lilienblum, Gordon, Smolensky, Zederbaum and others addressed kindling words to the Jewish people and awakened the national idea that slumbered within it. The idea of a Jewish nationhood, of a Jewish national — I might say, supra-individual — honour, which does not suffer itself to be humbly and cravenly defiled only to forget all rancour afterwards and forgive everyone, was coming into being. It was not yet a firm, matured idea that had attained full self-consciousness; it was only a phantasm without firm contours, a presentiment and a poetic foreboding; these ideas still lacked the garment of material form, and the way to their realisation was not yet clear. It seemed a vague piece of fancy, a foolhardy undertaking, to commend to the hunted Jewish people a neglected wilderness, the territories of an empire whose legal conditions were none too modern, as a refuge and a new homestead. But, strange to say: the kindling words of its poets caused the latent longing of thousands of years for the historic fatherland to thaw. A band of courageous men came together who, defying every obstacle, betook themselves to Palestine and there founded the first Jewish colony, the first Jewish centre, the germ of all future settlements, under the name "Rishon le-Zion," the first of Zion. It is a remarkable fact, one belonging to the domain of national psychology. Just as in a single individual the psychic act of willing must attain considerable intensity, great latent power, before it discharges itself in the physical act of doing and becomes materialised, so too in the life of a people a given idea must store up a certain quantity of energy before it can be translated into deeds, into historical events. Three hundred and ninety years ago, in the year 1492, the Jews of Spain found themselves in a situation just as desperate as, if not more desperate than, that of the Jews in Russia in the year 1882. They scattered to all the ends of the world then known; everywhere they carried with them their energy, their high culture and refinement, their adaptability, and before long, under some circumstances (as, for example, in Holland), they flourished into splendid communities.