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No. 28. | Vienna, 10th July 1903 — 15th Thamuz 5663. | 7th Year

To Our Esteemed Subscribers!

During the Congress a daily special edition of "Die Welt" will appear in Basle, which will publish the proceedings of the Congress in comprehensive fashion. By means of this special edition, which will be delivered daily free of charge, we wish to inform our subscribers of the proceedings of the Congress immediately and in authentic form.

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The Editorial Office and Administration of "Die Welt".

The Present Situation of the Jews and Zionism.

It is the tragic element in the history of the Jewish people that it does not make its history itself. From the moment when it forfeited its statehood and had to set foot upon foreign soil, there can no longer be any question of a "Jewish history" pure and simple. "History of the Jews" is at most what one may call it, if one wishes to comprehend under the name of "history" the fortunes and the path of suffering of Jewry since the rising of Bar Kochba.

And therein lies the tragedy of the Jewish people. We are a people, a nation, and yet for 2000 years we have ceased to be counted among the peoples.

It is not an unsatisfied sense of political honour that makes us see in this very circumstance the saddest element of our national history. Alas! We Jews have grown modest. Too long already have we gathered up, beneath the richly laden tables of the nations, the crumbs contemptuously thrown to us, to demand impetuously that we resume the place at the table and in the council of the nations which we once held and then lost. Long since have we given up playing the part of wounded vanity.

The tragedy of the Jewish people lies not alone in the fact of political dependence and unfreedom, but in the consequences which this fact must of necessity draw after it. The Jewish people cannot guide and steer its fortunes and its history independently, ergo — it is guided and steered. Here is the evil from which Judaism has suffered since the beginning of the Exile. Or let us say it plainly: the Jewish people is a plaything in the hands of the nations among which it dwells. The Jews are not masters of their fate. There is no rule that can be recommended to the Jews whereby they might render their situation more favourable. They cannot possibly please the whole world; they cannot possibly be so good that nothing would be found to censure in them. There lies the tragedy of our people.

Nor has time brought our people any help. Neither the great Revolution, nor the Declaration of the Rights of Man, nor yet all the achievements of an age which exercised a redeeming influence upon all other peoples, have brought us any essential improvement. Even in the countries where we are emancipated and placed on an equal footing with the other citizens of the State, we are at the mercy of hazard and chance. A political upheaval, or merely a change of régime, standing in absolutely no connexion with Jews and Judaism, is often attended by the gravest consequences for the Jews.

And as to how matters stand with the fate of our fellow-nationals in those countries where they are bare of every right, of that we were favoured only two months ago with a little sample which filled not only us but the whole of civilised humanity with the utmost horror. And truly, is there a higher tragedy than to have to know that the life and existence of the greater part of the Jewish people depends upon the caprice, the whim, or the political conviction of a single man who happens to be a minister? This tragedy is not lessened by the circumstance that the head of a free and mighty State intercedes in word and deed for these most unhappy of all men; it is only heightened by the sad consciousness that even the advocacy and intervention of one of the mightiest of the present day will change nothing much in the condition of our poor brethren.

In our time, then, when the Jews of all countries have been stirred to reflect upon their own situation, it is all the more natural that the attention of the Jews should turn in increased measure to Zionism. For it is Zionism that has recognised the sore spot on the body of Judaism and has also made its healing its task. And it is Zionism which, in cor-