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No. 3. Vienna, 16 January 1903 — 17 Tebeth 5663. 7th Year.

Judaism — Zionism — Germanism.

By Hugo Schachtel, Breslau.

It seems high time that Zionism should be deepened and made more inward, that the whole intellectual content of Zionism, with all its consequences, should be laid bare, discussed, and so far as possible settled. The need for this makes itself felt above all among the Zionists of Western Europe. Two German fellow Zionists have lately expressed some thoughts on the subject in "Die Welt," Dr. Jeremias and Dr. Friedemann. On the arguments of the former I should like to say something more here. This seems to me all the more important because in our German organ Elias Auerbach believed he could very quickly dispose of Jeremias's contentions with an article which, characteristically, bore the heading "Needless Cares." Dr. J. has indeed himself made some reply in the "Jüdische Rundschau," but I believe that the question here raised ought nevertheless to be discussed before a larger public. It concerns above all the problem of the inward relation between Judaism, specifically Zionist Judaism, and Germanism. A. says there, among other things: "And here I should like to ask Dr. Jeremias, although he is a valued and vigorous fellow worker, as I ask the adversary: 'Who tells you, then, that I have less love for German culture than you? Do you bow in deeper reverence before the heroes of the German spirit than I? Were you brought up more in German learning than I? Do you read Goethe and Schiller more fervently? Can you grasp the national rebirth of the German people more keenly than I, who work for the national rebirth of my own people? You should just hear how I speak of German culture to a member of another nation!'"

These, in my opinion, are phrases!

I spoke in much the same way when I had not yet fully grasped Zionism myself. Others believe they can speak so to wholly naïve opponents. But surely not to serious men. And that is precisely what Jeremias intends by his article: that we should learn to speak with the adversary seriously, deliberately and logically, that we should avoid phrases, that we should speak not merely to the feelings but above all to the understanding.

Auerbach does not deny that the German and the Jewish nature are, in the last resort, different things, discordant things, opposites. He himself speaks of the discordant elements in the German Jew. Only he does not keep properly apart the fact that the Zionist who is conscious of them strives to reconcile them by becoming wholly a Jew, while the non-Zionist, if he feels the discord at all, strives to do so by becoming still further absorbed in Germanism, or else seeks to get over it, in inconsistency of thought and of fact, with petty palliatives.

Now Jeremias says that conversion to Zionism is frequently preceded by "a hard struggle with one's attachment to the cultural possessions one has grown to love"; Auerbach (the sentence becomes fully intelligible only in the context of the whole article) turns this into a "renunciation of the love of German culture," which means something quite different, and says that this struggle is a false word.

With him, he says, it is merely a "regretful feeling that his nature is formed of discordant elements." But he writes further: "One thing, however, I feel truly and deeply: the longing to get out of this condition." Well, is that not a struggle? And a struggle with one's attachment to a culture is surely something other than a renunciation of the culture itself. That is something altogether impossible. A culture that I have taken into myself I can never again banish from myself. It is another matter if I do not retain such attachment to the culture in which I grew up as to wish, without more ado, to instil it into my children.

We are striving, after all, for a Jewish culture of our own. Auerbach, who does not even admit any kinship between the German and the Jewish nature, will surely