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No. 11. — Vienna, 11 March 1904 — 24 Adar 5664. — 8th Year.

Zionism in Hungary.

(On the National Conference of the Hungarian Zionists.)

No exhaustive survey, no far-reaching portrayal of Hungarian Zionism is to be offered in these lines, but merely a brief review of what exists, a brief glance into the future. And precisely now, when the Hungarian Zionists are assembling in the old coronation city on the Danube, in Pozsony, at the place where decisive and fateful resolutions for the Hungarian Jews have so often been taken, it seems to be the time to consider what has been achieved and to weigh the labours of the near future.

It is significant that a number of the most eminent Zionists were born in Hungary, such as Dr. Herzl, Dr. Nordau and many others besides, and that Zionism has nevertheless not won in Hungary that diffusion and that influence which it has already gained in other lands where Jews dwell. This is all the more striking since, precisely among the great masses of the Jewish population of Hungary, the love of Zion has never been extinguished, nor has any considerable assimilation taken place at all; and since, on the other hand, a great number of influential men have from the very beginning regarded the movement with the warmest sympathy, have openly identified themselves with the Zionist programme, and have nevertheless held entirely aloof from any organisation.

In Budapest, to name only a few by way of example, the well-known poet Kiss Josef, the former deputy Mezei Ernő, Max Viola, the author of the novel "Zweierlei Juden" which appeared in the "Welt", Doctor Samuel Krauss, professor at the National Seminary, the Rabbi Dr. Weiszburg, at one time editor of the periodical "Jövő", which was most friendly to our movement, and many others have for years been adherents of Zionism, or at least well disposed towards it; and yet, with the exception of the academic club "Maccabäa", there is in the whole capital no Zionist society, no propaganda is carried on — although there would by no means be any want of a public receptive to Jewish and Zionist interests. That there should be no lack of leaders the above list already proves, to which must be added, in the first place, those already within the organisation.

Before we proceed further, we must above all establish that the Hungarian Jews by no means form a uniform mass, but on the contrary belong to the most varied groups, for which very reason the tactics and propaganda of Zionism must be arranged in the most varied manner, the programme — which of course remains ever unaltered — being explained and brought home to the several circles of the Jewish population in the language and the habits of thought familiar to them. Since the year 1869 a mighty cleavage into Orthodox and Neolog has run through the whole of Hungarian Jewry, and there is surely no land in which the waves of strife, of hatred and of mutual contempt rose so high as in Hungary. There was a time when the adherents of the two tendencies treated one another as two alien confessions, when people spoke of conversions from the one confession to the other, of mixed marriages, and even in statistical works carefully separated the several adherents. The harm which this deep-going division has caused, and which still persists to this day, can never again be made good — and it is an exceedingly gratifying success of Zionism that in every place in Hungary where it has unfolded its beneficent activity it has softened this antagonism and united the adherents of the different tendencies in common work. Within both groups, moreover, there are still a great number of differences and gradations, and the picture changes completely from one part of the country to another; and whereas, for example, in the north-east the population is exceedingly pious and belongs to the Chassidic tendency, while the intellectuals living among them are entirely irreligious and Jews in name only, there are again other districts where both tendencies display an exceedingly active Jewish life, while in other parts of the country no trace whatever of such a life is to be observed, indeed where the greater part of the members of the congregation — except on a few holy days and in paying the congregational-