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No. 43 — Vienna, 23 October 1903 — 2 Marcheshvan 5664. — 7th Year.

Quo vadis?

It is not otherwise my habit to wrangle with the representatives of the views of days gone by. That is useless labour. We do not understand one another, and all respect for the good will and the irreproachable bourgeois conduct of such people cannot prevent us from combating, in the sharpest manner, the system that they represent.

This time, however, I should like to offer a reply. The matter is as follows. Herr Dr. Siegmund Meyer, advocate, of Hanover, whose enthusiastic attachment to Judaism and whose zealous labours on behalf of German Jewry are, according to the "Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums in Berlin," universally known — I say this without irony — has published in the said paper, under the title "Quo vadis?", a rather long article which deserves an answer, and indeed a perfectly clear answer. It deserves one all the more because since the last Zionist Congress things of the kind have frequently been put forward in Germany.

Upon the first part of the article, which deals with the expediency of academic study among the Jews, I do not intend to enter more closely. That is a chapter which, notwithstanding the author's assurance to the contrary, is only loosely connected with the two other questions he treats, the relief action for the Polish-Russian Jews and the Jewish national movement. I will not so much as point out that this question of excessive university study has long since called forth the opposition of the Zionist leadership. Nor will I follow the advocate, who pleads for the creation of "middle classes" and lower classes, into this field; for such a train of thought is so unscientific that a serious rejoinder forbids itself. Unfortunately one cannot, even in theory, alter so simply, at will and pleasure, the social stratification whose causes appear to have escaped the advocate.

Only to his remarks on the relief action for the Polish-Russian Jews, and to his rejection — to say nothing worse — of the Jewish national movement, shall a response be made on this occasion. The introduction, which concerns itself with a sort of characterisation of the Polish Jews, is — the advocate will pardon the harsh expression — so silly that it must call forth regret. Regret for the Polish Jews, who are exposed to such crass superficiality and such incredible misapprehension. To prove that I am not bringing unjust reproaches against Dr. Meyer, I will cite a few flowers from this part of the article. "The Polish Jews do indeed profess the same God as we, but worship Him in a different form," Dr. Meyer reports in deadly earnest. I hope that Dr. Meyer does not mean a specifically German God, else even this precious remark is incorrect. That the Polish Jews in Hanover, despite the "well-ordered institutions" of the Hanover congregation, have their own shochet and their own divine service is, according to Dr. M., "a gross abuse." Then Herr Dr. M. continues: "If it is true that we are dealing with two different rites, comparable, say, to the differences between the Greek and the Roman Catholic Church (ispsissima verba!), then the moral obligation to care for such co-religionists as belong to another rite would surely appear to be considerably diminished." It is astonishing that Herr Dr. Meyer does not examine the moral obligation towards such co-religionists as belong to the same rite as he — let us say, the Hanoverian — without their observing all the ritual prescriptions which have surely found their proper expression in the "well-ordered institutions" of his congregation! Where, then, is the boundary at which a diminished obligation is to set in? But Herr Dr. M. goes on: "To this is added a consideration of a practical kind. The whole body of Jews in Germany is so small in proportion to the numerical strength of the Polish-Russian Jews that, even if it were willing to sacrifice its entire fortune and to place its entire intelligence exclusively at the service of this cause, it could nevertheless bring about no decisive turn for the Polish-Russian Jews as a whole." This "consideration of a practical kind," which must in the end lead one to withdraw from every social labour, I will not examine here. Seriously to combat such an objection in a Zionist paper would mean repeating what has been said a thousand times. Had the Doctor come to know Zionist work, he would probably not have put forward a practical consideration of this kind at all. Here only the train of thought