Jews -- Periodicals; Jews -- United States -- Periodicals
To assure the foundation, to justify the conception of a Jewish State,
a number of powerful arguments other than above indicated have been
brought to bear. The problem of race was attacked,[4] and a consequent
demolition of the basis of Reform Judaism undertaken, whereby the
racial identity of the Jew became demonstrated and a comparative
racial purity established. In turn, the claim of the anti-Semites that
the Jewish race indeed existed, but to the peril of Western
civilization, received scientific annihilation. At the most, the Aryan
race was proclaimed a myth and Teutonic superiority a lie;[5] at the
least, a justification of the Jewish race was achieved upon its
contribution to civilization: in metaphysics, of the vision of reality
in flux; in morals, the conception of the value of the individual; in
religion, the conception of Jehovah as a moral-arbiter; in culture, a
literature of basic inspiration for the western world.[6]
_The Moral Right of the Jewish Race to Survival_
That this race, definable in identity and valuable in content, is
being either crushed by force or dissipated by freedom, raises on one
hand the next question for creative Zionism, and constitutes on the
other the problem which Zionism in its aspect as a "solution" assails.
The question: Has this race, facing destruction, a moral right to
survival? is in the instinctive, Darwinian sense unnecessary. Every
race has a right to survive if it can prove its right by surviving;
however, like most evolutionary thinking, this is tautological.
Nevertheless, an affirmative answer[7] has been advanced, based on the
conception of values recognized since Aristotle; whereby was
demonstrated the intrinsic value of the Jews as witnessed by their
virility and capacity for an intelligent enjoyment of life, which
their social customs, religious ideals, and cultural ethos have
created for them, and which have won for them the title "_Am Olam_,"
the perpetual people; and their instrumental value in the preservation
and enrichment of life for the Western world at large, as witnessed by
their contributions to civilization outlined above.
To the final question: How may the destruction facing a race, worth
the saving, be averted? the Zionists, as already shown, answer: Let us
establish a Jewish State. It now remains to explain how this answer
can be made effective.
_The Program of the First Zionist Congress_
Although Herzl, like Pinsker, at first was indifferent as to the
location of the State, Palestine was decided upon at the First Zionist
Congress for the following practical reasons:[8]
1. Palestine is, of inhabitable and sufficiently uninhabited lands,
the nearest to Russia and Roumania, where the greatest number of Jews
are undergoing physical suffering.
2. It is not ruled by Christians, and penal discriminatory laws
against Jews are not there in force.
3. Conditions of Oriental life are in accord with the stage and
condition of life reached by Jews in Eastern Europe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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