Nordau Calls on Jews to Forge Their Own Nation

Max Nordau (1849–1923) cofounded, with Theodor Herzl, the World Zionist Organization in 1897. His first work, Die Conventionellen Lügen der Kulturmenschheit (The Conventional Lies of Civilization), published in 1883, critiqued modern society for its failure to relate to humanity’s “natural” characteristics. His Entartung (Degeneration) of 1893 drew even more directly on his training as a physician by lamenting the effects of civilization on the healthy physiques of modern humans. Nordau saw Zionism as a means to combat the “degeneration” he identified in modern society. Excerpted here is his 1905 definition of Zionism.

The generations that were under the influence of the Mendelssohnian rhetoric and enlightenment — of reform and assimilation — were followed in the last twenty years of the 19th century by a new generation which strove to secure for the Zionist question a different position from the traditional one. These new Jews shrug their shoulders at the talk of Rabbis and writers about a “Mission of Judaism” that has been in vogue these hundred years.

The Mission is said to consist in this, that the Jews must always live in dispersion among the nations in order to be unto them teachers and models of morality and to educate them gradually to a pure rationalism, to a universal brotherhood of man, and to an ideal cosmopolitanism. They declare this Mission to be a piece of presumption or folly. More modern and practical in their attitude, they demand for the Jewish people only the right to live and to develop in accordance with its own powers to the natural limits of its type. They have found, however, that this is impossible in a state of dispersion, as under such circumstances prejudice, hatred, contempt ever pursue and oppress them, and either inhibit their development or else tend to reduce them to an ethnic mimicry. Thus, instead of their being originals worthy of their existence, this striving at imitation will mold them into mediocre or wretched copies of foreign models. They are therefore working systematically to make the Jewish people once again a normal people, which shall live on its own soil and discharge all the economic, spiritual, moral and political functions of a civilized people. . . .

This goal is not to be attained immediately. It lies in a near or a more distant future. It is an ideal, a wish, a hope, just as Messianic Zionism was and is. But the new Zionism, which is called political, is distinguished from the old religious Messianic Zionism in this, that it repudiates all mysticism, and does not rely upon the return to Palestine to be accomplished by a miracle, but is resolved to bring it about through its own efforts. . . .

The new Zionism has partly arisen out of the inner impulses of Jewry, out of the enthusiasm of modern educated Jews for their history and martyrology, out of the awakened consciousness of their racial fitness, out of their ambition to preserve the ancient stock to as distant a future as possible and to follow up the worthy deeds of ancestors with worthy deeds of descendants. . . .

But it is also partly the effect of two influences that have come from without: first, the national idea that has dominated European thought and feeling for half a century and determined international politics; secondly, Anti-Semitism, under which the Jews of all countries have to suffer more or less. . . .

The national idea has educated all nations to self-consciousness; it has taught them to feel that their peculiarities are so many valuable factors, and it has inspired them with the passionate wish for independence. It could not fail to exert a deep influence upon educated Jews. It stimulated them to reflect about themselves, to feel once again what they had unlearned, and to demand for themselves the normal destinies of a people. This task of re-discovering their national individuality, although not free from pain, was lightened for them by the attitude of the nations who isolated them as a foreign element and did not hesitate to emphasize the real and imagined contrasts, or rather differences, existing between them and the Jews. . . .

The national idea has, in its extravagances, deteriorated in different directions. It has been distorted into Chauvinism, transformed into an imbecile hatred of foreigners, besotted into grotesque self-deification. Jewish nationalism is quite secure from these self-caricatures. The Jewish nationalist does not suffer from vanity; on the contrary, he feels that he must put forth unremitting effort to render the name of Jew a name of honor. He discreetly recognizes the good qualities of other nations, and eagerly strives to acquire them so far as they harmonize with his natural powers. He knows what terrible injuries have been wrought upon his originally proud and upright character by centuries of slavery and denial of rights, and he endeavors to heal them by strenuous self-education. But while Jewish nationalism is secure from distortion, it, moreover, is a natural phase of the process of development from barbarian self-seeking individualism to the status of noble manhood and altruism, a phase the justification and necessity of which can be denied only by him who knows nothing of the laws of organic evolution and is utterly void of historical sense. . . .

Anti-Semitism has likewise taught many educated Jews how to find the way back to their people. It has had the effect of a severe ordeal, which the weak cannot withstand, but from which the strong step forth stronger, or rather with a keener self-consciousness. It is not correct to say that Zionism is merely a gesture of defiance or an act of despair in the face of Anti-Semitism. Doubtless many an educated Jew has been constrained only through Anti-Semitism to attach himself again to Judaism, and he would again fall away if his Christian compatriots would welcome him as a friend. But in the case of most Zionists, Anti-Semitism was only a stimulus causing them to reflect upon their relation to the nations, and their reflection has led them to results that must remain for them a permanent intellectual and spiritual possession, even if Anti-Semitism were to vanish completely from the world. . . .

Let it be clearly understood. The Zionism that has hitherto been analyzed is that of the free and educated Jews, the Jewish élite. The uneducated multitude that cling to old traditions are Zionistic without much reflection, out of sentiment, out of instinct, out of affliction and longing. They suffer too grievously from the misery of life, from the hatred of the nations, from legal restrictions and social proscriptions. They feel that they cannot hope for any permanent improvement of their position so long as they must live as a helpless minority in the midst of evil-disposed majorities. They want to be a people, to renew their youth in intimate touch with Mother Earth, and to become master of their own fate. A certain proportion of this Zionistic multitude are not altogether free from mystical tendencies. They allow Messianic reminiscences to flit through their Zionism, which they transfuse with religious emotions. They are quite clear about the goal, the national re-union, but not about the ways to attain it. Yet upon them, too, has been borne the necessity of putting forth their own efforts, and a vast difference exists between their organized activity with its voluntary labors and the prayerful passivity of the purely religious Messianist.

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