CONSERVATIVE ZIONIST THOUGHT: SOLOMON SCHECHTER’S “ZIONISM: A STATEMENT”

CONSERVATIVE ZIONIST THOUGHT: SOLOMON SCHECHTER’S “ZIONISM: A STATEMENT”

(The following text is abridged from a pamphlet first published on December 28,1906, and reprinted in Schechter’s Seminary Addresses, New York, 1959).


To me personally, after long hesitation and careful watching, Zionism recommended itself as the great bulwark against assimilation. Zionism declares boldly to the world that Judaism means to preserve its life. It shall be a true and healthy life, with a policy of its own, a religion wholly its own, invigorated by sacred memories and sacred environments, and proving a tower of strength and of unity not only for the remnant gathered within the borders of the Holy Land, but also for those who shall, by choice or necessity, prefer what now constitutes the Galut.


The term Galut is here loosely used expressing, as I have often heard it, the despair and helplessness felt in the presence of a great tragedy. And the tragedy is not imaginary. It is real, and it exists everywhere. It is a tragedy to see a great ancient people, distinguished for its loyalty to its religion, and its devotion to its sacred law, losing thousands every day by the mere process of attrition. It is a tragedy to see sacred institutions, as ancient as the mountains and which Israel for thousands of years shrank from no sacrifice to maintain, destroyed before our very eyes and exchanged for corresponding institutions borrowed from hostile religions. It is a tragedy to see a language held sacred by all the world, in which Holy Writ was composed, and which served as the depository of Israel ’s greatest and best thought, doomed to oblivion and forced out gradually from the synagogue. It is a tragedy to see the descendants of those who revealed revelation to the world and who developed the greatest religious literature in existence, so little familiar with really Jewish thought, and so utterly wanting in all sympathy with it, that they have no other interpretation to offer of Israel’s scriptures, Israel’s religion, and Israel’s ideals and aspirations and hopes, than those suggested by their natural opponents. We are helpless spectators in the face of these great tragedies; in other words, we are in Galut. This may not be the Galut of the Jews, but it is the Galut of Judaism, or, as certain mystics expressed it, the Galut of Hanefesh, the Galut of the Jewish soul wasting away before our very eyes.



I belong to that class of Zionists that lay more stress on the religious-national aspects of Zionism than on any other feature peculiar to it. The rebirth of Israel ’s national consciousness, and the revival of Israel ’s religion, or, to use a shorter term, the revival of Judaism, are inseparable. When Israel found itself, it found its God. When Israel lost itself, or began to work at its self-effacement, it was sure to deny its God. The selection of Israel, the indestructibility of God’s covenant with Israel, the immortality of Israel as a nation, and the final restoration of Israel to Palestine, where the nation will live a holy life on holy ground, with all the wide-reaching consequences of the conversion of humanity and the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth --- all these are the common ideals and the common ideas that permeate the whole of Jewish literature extending over nearly four thousand years.





“Only when Judaism has found itself, when the Jewish soul has been redeemed from the Galut, can Judaism hope to resume its mission to the world.”




The reproach that Zionism is unspiritual is meaningless.. However, the imputation is as old as the days when the name Pharisee became a reproach, and it is not to be expected that the Zionists would be spared. The Zionists are no saints, but few movements are more free from the considerations of convenience and comfort, and less tainted with worldliness and other worldliness than the one which they serve.



The work in which Zionism had to engage first, and in which it will have to continue for many years to come, was the work of regeneration. It had to re-create the Jewish consciousness before creating the Jewish state. In this respect, Zionism has already achieved great things. Foremost of all, Zionism has succeeded in bringing back into the fold many men and women, both here and in Europe , who otherwise would have been lost to Judaism. It has given them a new interest in the synagogue and everything Jewish, and put before them an ideal worthy of their love and their sacrifice.


But, while Zionism is constantly winning souls for the present, it is at the same time preparing for us the future, which will be a Jewish future. Only then, when Judaism has found itself, when the Jewish soul has been redeemed from the Galut, can Judaism hope to resume its mission to the world. History may, and to my belief, will repeat itself, and Israel will be the chosen instrument of God for the new and final mission; but then Israel must first effect its own redemption and live again its own life, and be Israel again, to accomplish its universal mission. The passages in the Bible most distinguished for their universalistic tendency and grandeur are the verses in Isaiah and Micah, and there it is solemnly proclaimed: “Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem .”


Our sages have themselves given expression to this correspondence between the universalistic and the nationalistic elements in Judaism. A solemn declaration, thus they declare, has the Holy One, blessed be He, registered: “I will not enter the heavenly Jerusalem , until Israel shall come to the earthly Jerusalem .” Not in conflict but in consonance with Israel ’s establishment of the divine institutions in their full integrity in God’s own land, will be the triumph in all its glory of the Kingdom of Heaven .