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No. 19. — Vienna, 6 May 1904 — 21 Iyar 5664. — 8th Year.

Jewish Efforts towards Organisation.

If anything is fitted to convince us Zionists that we are upon the right path, it is above all the undeniable fact that the influence of the views we represent is making itself ever more plainly manifest in every stratum of Jewry. It matters little in this whether this comes about through a clear recognition of the connection between various phenomena in the life of Jewry and the demands of our programme, or whether our idea has already gained such power that the Jews unconsciously conform to its dictates. For one who has for some time attentively observed the life of the Jews and its reflection in literature, art and the press, this assertion needs no lengthy demonstration. But even those who concern themselves with such matters only from time to time can no longer fail to see, if they are able and willing to see, what a revolution has taken place, for example, in the views of the Western Jews with regard to Judaism, the foundations of its existence, and its prospects of a better future worth the struggle.

A fact capable of furnishing fresh evidence is the constitution of the Union of German Jews, which took place last week — on the 24th of April. The principal report to the assembly fell to Professor Philippson, the same man whose efforts to bring about a German Jewish Congress met with no success not so very long ago. Now he has, after all, achieved something similar, amid the applause of many of his former opponents. To be sure, one must not forget that in the meantime much that is sad has befallen the whole of Jewry, and that a good many have come to see clearly that Philippson's idea was no chance notion, nor one contrived by the study lamp, but the formulation of a wish that had already, in one form or another, pressed itself upon almost all earnest Jewish men in Germany.

The Union of German Jews would not have been founded had not the necessity of a general organisation made itself felt so urgently that everything contrary to it was bound to recede of its own accord. One must not forget how, precisely among the so strongly assimilated German Jews, great resistance naturally had to be overcome before a general recognition of the value of such a Jewish organisation could prevail. If the Union has nevertheless come into being, that simply proves that the views of the German Jews must have changed fundamentally. From the district and provincial unions, from the associations of rabbis and teachers, from the defence societies, and even from the German-Israelite Communal Federation and the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith, down to this Union, a long road had to be travelled in the whole outlook of the German Jews as well. That it has been travelled, that the Union now exists — in this our idea has without doubt had a share, however much one may deny it or seek to disguise it.

Indeed, whole sentences of the programmatic declarations read as though they had been taken from the minutes of a Zionist Congress or from the set speech of a Zionist orator. Yet that was assuredly not the case. The outlook from which these declarations sprang must simply have come to resemble our own. And since it is not we who have changed, the conclusion follows that this change in our direction must have taken place on the other side.

It is very gratifying to us that the signs of the victorious advance of our idea are multiplying. But it is not for that reason that we wish to offer some reflections on the founding of the Union of German Jews. That our idea will prevail we Zionists take for granted, because we are convinced that Zionism is nothing artificial, nothing sprung from some theory or other, but represents a natural form of development of Judaism, the necessary consequence of the attempted and so wholly misunderstood assimilation, which is itself likewise a natural phase of our history. It is not, therefore, the irresistible advance of our idea alone that may