Zion

The ray of the morning star will light up and shine: And the cymbal, and the tympanum, and the foregrips, And silver, and goods, and shrines, Let's take it to the old house, to Palestine. (See F. M. Dostoevsky. Diary of a writer, 1877). There are sacred symbols and world ideas that make the innermost strings of the heart tremble: for example, the Christian Constantinople and the cross on St. Sophia, or the liberation of the Holy Sepulcher from the hands of the infidels. The question of Palestine and the establishment of Israel on the land given and promised to it by God should have a similar significance for the Jewish and Christian heart (I emphasize this “and” three times). In the days of great world achievements, when the hidden roots of history are revealed, this idea flared up again, and this question came to the surface as another, close one, subject to resolution, if not today, then tomorrow. Raising the question of granting Palestine, in one political form or another (and, of course, with the exception of the greatest Christian shrines), as a national home to Israel excites the soul with absolutely exceptional excitement, for the destinies of the Christian world are mysteriously and immutably connected with the spiritual destinies of Israel. Non-earthly calculations for power, wealth and influence are guided by those representatives of the Jewish people who rightly see in overcoming the “golus”, diaspora, dispersion the basis for the spiritual revival of their people and yearn not only for liberation from the “Pale of Settlement”, or a new right to dispersion, but also settled life, the right to an original existence. Dostoevsky knew about this loyalty of the Jews to Zion, who wrote (after the quoted verses of Kukolnik): “I repeat, I heard all this as a legend, but I believe that the essence of the matter certainly exists, especially in the whole mass of Jews, in the form of an instinctively uncontrollable attraction.” And Vl knew no less about this, of course. Soloviev, according to whose image in the last era of history Palestine is an autonomous region inhabited and governed mainly by Jews; He attributes to them the last uprising against the world emperor-Antichrist. Zionism as a national movement among Jewry, which necessarily led to the posing of the question of a place of settlement and, ultimately, of Zion, arose at the end of the last century - not only under the influence of anti-Semitism and persecution, but also to no less extent due to the fear of assimilation and secularization of Judaism, in which, in the characteristic expression of one Jewish writer, “a modern Jew no longer knows why he is a Jew, why he should remain a Jew,” so that “to preserve the Jews for Judaism, there are only two means: external oppression or the termination of the Diaspora.” 1 Providing Jews with the opportunity to form a strong national center under the auspices of the most powerful states of Europe, to restore here a full national life with their own language, economy, rights, to create, in the words of the competent researcher of the situation of the Jews Ruppin, 2 “seeds of national crystallization” (einen nationalen Kristallisatios Kern schaffen), should not be considered as a means of resolving the “Jewish question” in the internal life of European states, in particular in Russia, and first of all, the Zionists themselves do not see it that way, who do not at all entertain the idea of dragging a significant majority of their compatriots with them to Palestine. 3 As a place for colonization, Palestine in the near future could not acquire even approximately the importance that, for example, America has. Let us assume that the Jewish question as a legal and economic problem, considered from the point of view of “human and civil rights,” will receive the most radical solution, in the sense of a complete equalization of rights, but this will not in the least degree be resolved spiritually; on the contrary, it will only then be posed with new urgency both in the general consciousness and in the self-awareness of the diaspora, which will be faced with a choice between assimilation and national extinction (which seems completely impossible to me) or the open affirmation of its national face; and in connection with the latter, the question of a national center inevitably arises. This sacred center of Jewry is solely and exclusively Palestine - the land given to Israel by God himself. In the writings of the prophets, which are revered alike by the Christian and Jewish worlds, there seem to be direct indications of the aspirations now arising. In them, the Land of Judah is promised a second time to Israel. “And it shall come to pass,” we read in the prophecy of Isaiah, “on that day that the Lord will again stretch out His hand to bring back to Himself the remnant of His people, which will remain in Ashur, and in Egypt, and in Pathros, and in Cush, and in Elam, and in Shinar, and in Hamath, and in the islands of the sea. And he will raise up a standard for the Gentiles, and will gather together the exiles of Israel, and will gather together the scattered Jews from the four corners of the earth.” (Isa. 11, 10–12). “After many days you will be needed; in the last years you will come to a land delivered from the sword, gathered from many nations, to the mountains of Israel, which were constantly desolate, but now its inhabitants will be brought back from the nations, and they will all live in safety.” (Ezek. 38:8). And these are our common prophecies, Christian and Jewish: is their fulfillment really approaching? After all, there was a diaspora in the era of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, but then it had its focus and its heart in it. And the existence of such a center will help Israel now to carry out its internal work, to overcome the tragic duality and spiritual struggle that has been going on in the soul of Israel at all times. The greatest difficulty for Zionism now lies in the fact that it is unable to restore the lost faith of its fathers and is forced to be based on the national, or cultural-ethnographic principle, on which no truly great nation, much less a Jewish one, can establish itself. For Dostoevsky was truly right when he wrote: “And one cannot even imagine a Jew without God.” He even adds: “Moreover, I don’t even believe in educated atheist Jews” (which I could not repeat after him). The opportunity to remain alone with oneself, outside the atmosphere of the diaspora, on that sacred land that contains the remains of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and here to listen to the voice of one’s religious consciousness - will not for Israel be the beginning of the most salvific religious self-examination and self-purification, a new spiritual birth? We have an immutable prophecy about this, which we never dare forget, reverently bowing before the judgment of God’s election: “I do not want you, brethren, to be ignorant of this mystery, that a hardening has happened in Israel in part, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: “The Deliverer will come from Zion and turn away misfortune from Jacob” (Rom. 11:25-6). Times and deadlines are approaching. A new idea lit up in the historical sky, and along with other sacred names, history also pronounced the holy name of Zion. There are signs that the “Jewish question” in various senses is entering a new aggravation, and its tragic hopelessness is felt with renewed vigor in the Diaspora. And at this time, when the ray of the Future lights up, there is hope for the possibility of a new formulation of the age-old question. Oh, let her not deceive! Dr. Tsolshan. The racial problem (with a theoretical basis for the Jewish question). Moscow. 1914. Pp. 422, 441. Arthur Ruppin. Die Juden der Gegenwart. Eine sozialwissenschaftliche Studie. 2 Auflage. Koln und Leipzig. 1911. Pp. 287. Here see an excellent description of the situation of modern Jewry. "If Jews were evicted from Europe to Palestine, the same process of return would be built that almost 2500 years ago returned part of the Jews from Babylonian captivity to Palestine. Both now Europe and then Babylon was the center of high culture and assimilation of Jews. Only a small part could decide to exchange the prosperity of Babylon for the Palestinian desert, as would have happened with European Jews now. And that’s all Then, from this handful of Jews, the Jewish people with their own culture grew.