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No. 51. Vienna, 19 December 1902 — 19 Kislev 5663. Sixth Year.

Opponents and Enemies.

(The Zionists and the Antisemitic Press.)

During the late election campaign a curious reproach was levelled at the Zionists and their allies by those who pass for the official representatives of Judaism. Very often, when at meetings or in our organs of the press we held up to the gentlemen of the Communal Board the register of their sins, the antisemitic press took note of these facts, so little flattering to the Jewish representatives, and spread them abroad among its own readers as well; one cannot say, in antisemitic or even merely in non-Jewish circles. For a great number of Jews, too, first learned from reading the antisemitic organs of the management of the "men of their confidence" and of the desiderata of the Opposition. The antisemitic papers themselves observed with a certain satisfaction that the leading circles of Jewry paid great attention to their articles. One may add: to those articles in particular which were little more than cuttings from the Jewish opposition papers. And the gentlemen in question could surely have acquired their knowledge of these articles far more directly and fittingly from the Jewish papers themselves — that is, had they wished to.

Since newspapers are open to everyone, we should have had no need to defend ourselves against the reproach that the antisemites took notice of our publications, were it not that behind this pointing to the practice of the Jew-hating papers there lurked a small calumny. It is hinted at what for some considerable time no one has dared to say aloud: You have shown Judaism its faults, and now the antisemites accuse us of the same vices. Antisemites and Zionists together find the same fault with us. Together! Do you take the hint, beloved — voter?

Often, too, there surfaced the much-abused reproach of "Chillul Haschem." Now that is the most convenient manner of defence against unwelcome attacks. One thrusts forward the divine authority where one feels oneself struck, and has the presumption to set against the blows, which would strike home only too sharply, one whose authority is protected as by a paragraph against lèse-majesté. One takes refuge behind His inviolability and wantonly clothes one's own ridiculous nakedness with His aureole. This blasphemous megalomania, which would make one's own faulty deeds appear as the sacrosanct emanations of a divine spirit, represents, when it is in good faith, the "grossest misunderstanding of a tradition snatched up by its words alone, and is, when paraded with evil intent, the most blatant, the most pronounced Jesuitry ever employed in political strife. This naive, or seemingly naive, effrontery of pushing God into one's own place and oneself into God's has, however, yet another presupposition: that one regards oneself as the embodiment of all Judaism and represents everything for which one is oneself to blame as a fault of Judaism.

But whom have we attacked, and why have we attacked? A certain group of persons has, in our view, ill discharged the duties of its mandate. In the exercise of their honorary office they laid far too much weight upon the honour, too little upon the office. Above all, however, they had more than once forgotten that Judaism in particular must of necessity make quite special demands upon its representatives. No doubt a Protestant church councillor who performs such work as every warden of the congregation must accomplish has done enough for his community. Whoever, therefore, we had cause to reproach might still, by ordinary civic standards, have an irreproachable record — if he had one otherwise. To Judaism, however, that is of little help. With us the want of merits must already count as a fault. Where someone in a place in which he ought to have been of use merely remained idle, there he has in reality done harm, for he has taken from another the opportunity of being useful. He has sinned against Judaism, even if he did no more than fail to divine the remoter possibilities of furthering it.