Why Do the Jews Need a Land of Their own?

by Sholom Aleichem (1898)

"For the Lord will have
compassion on Jacob,
and will yet choose Israel,
and set them in their own land. "
-Isaiah 14:1

Why do Jews need a land of their own? Some question! There are people who would add another question. And they would be right. Why should Jews not want a country? If Jews are a nation, why should they be worse than all other nations? It's as though they were asking you what do you want a home for? Naturally everyone should have a home. What else? Stay outside? If you consider it at bottom, properly, it isn't just like that. The question is, what does one want a home for, a home of his own? Does a man need a home of his own?

Jews have a saying for it-better a rich tenant than a poor landlord. But when does that apply? When there are houses galore and houses are cheap, and landlords fight each other to get you as a tenant. Everybody after you, wants you! But what if the boot is on the other foot? What if you've been a tenant all over the place, and you've got a reputation-between ourselves-as a bad tenant, so that you can't get into a house anywhere, and you have nothing left but to stay outside, under God's Heaven! What do you do then?

More than eighteen hundred years we have been dragging around as tenants from one house to another. Have we ever tried thinking seriously-how long? How much longer? What will be the end of it?

In these eighteen hundred years we have gone through, all sorts of times. There was a time when houses were plentiful, and every- one was happy to have us as a tenant (Nobody, indeed, came to blows over us). It didn't last long. They soon got fed up with us, and we were told to pack up and clear out. Go and find another lodging!

In these eighteen hundred years we have had all sorts of times. Occasions when we pulled ourselves together and recovered from our wanderings, hoping that any minute now Messiah would come, we would get over all our troubles, and be on a level with everybody else. It didn't last long. Before we could look round to see where in the world we were, we were again miles under, in the depths of despair.

That's what happened with us in the last few years, when people became wise, and the world was full of knowledge. The word haskalah (education) brought us a lot of new words, noble, highsounding words, like humanity, justice, emancipation, equality, brotherhood, and suchlike words that looked good and fine on paper and did your heart good to look at them.

What came of all these fine words you know by now. And if you don't know, try and read Dr. Max Nordau's speech at the Zionist Congress in Basel, and you will see that all these fine words remain no more than fine words. At bottom our position remained bitter and black. Worse than before.*[*"The Jewish Congress in Basel," report by Doctor Mandelstamm, Yiddish by Sholom Aleichem (Warsaw 1897).]

That our position is bitter and black we had known before. We heard the story from our grandfathers of old, terrible, wonderful tales, of a Pharaoh in Egypt who had plagued us, a Haman who had ended up in disaster, a Titus who had collapsed in ruin, an Inquisition, and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal and other places. And more such tales with which our history is full. We witnessed many of them ourselves. Seen them with our own eyes, read about them in the newspapers. Only those who went to the congress opened our eyes, painted a picture of our position all over the world, and we discovered that even in those countries where we envied our brothers, thought they were living happily, it was nothing of the kind. We had been mistaken. It turned out that things are nowhere good for us; they are terribly bad. We are hated everywhere. They can't stand us anywhere. And as if to provide evidence for what we say, France came out with the notorious Dreyfus trial, and the hatred whipped up against the famous French writer Emile Zola, who wanted to put right the injustice committed against this innocent man Dreyfus. Who of you all hasn't read about that amazing trial? Who among you has been indifferent to the injustice committed before our eyes now at the end of the nineteenth century? And where? In France! "Spit on Zola!" "Death to the Jews!" That's what the anti-Semites shouted in Paris.

The Jewish Congress in Basel drew the right conclusions about the position of our brothers throughout the world, and conside ing these conclusions we learned three things:

1. They hate us everywhere, in the whole world.
2. The situation is so bitter and black that it can't go on any longer.
3. We must find a way, but one that will work.

A. Let's consider it well, why do they hate us? we ourselves know (we don't have to pretend among ourselves) that we are no better and no worse than the rest. We have all the good qualities and the bad that all people have. And if it happens sometimes that we go a little too far, we have, to compensate, other qualities that outweigh the faults. Only what? The hatred against us is so great and so deeply ingrained that no one will consider our good qualities, and our faults are flung at us at every step, all the time.

What is the cause of this hate?

We won't go into long discussions, turning the pages of histo- ry, to get to the bottom of it. Where does this hatred come from? It is an old, persistent disease, an epidemic, God forbid! that goes by heritage from generation to generation. It sometimes happens that our enemies can't themselves say why they hate us. It's a real tragedy. God's own curse that has come down on us these many, many years. And going back to this question, let us make a strict account. Why should they love us? Can we demand of people that they must love us? Who are we among the nations? What are we, and what big noise do we make amongst the other nations in Europe that they should love us?

Who are we? Sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who once had our own land. We sinned and were driven out and dispersed over the whole earth, and so we wander about among strange nations for nearly two thousand years, like a lost orphan child, who is kept only for pity's sake. He is thrown a crumb, tossed a bone, and little notice is taken of him. If there is anything some- one wants to say to him, it is said straight out, without mincing words. And if he doesn't catch on, he gets it in the neck.

What does the orphan do then? He hides. He pockets the blow and wipes his lips as if nothing had happened. He's a stranger! Everywhere a stranger! So as long as the native, the one who belongs, finds things going well and easy, feels comfortable, earns enough for his needs, the stranger can get by, more or less. But when the native feels cramped, crowded out, with competition growing, and his earnings going down, then the stranger assumes enormous bulk, looks gigantic. All the troubles in the land seem to stem from him. And people begin to murmur. At first under their breath, then louder and louder. "What do we want these strangers here for!"

It only needs one to say it first, and the others follow. No arguments will help. No facts and figures, to show that the stranger too is a human being, that he has also to eat, and that he can help in the common task, can be of use. Nobody will listen. Nobody wants his usefulness. Take it somewhere else, they say. We don't want it. Get out!

So what are we? We are foreigners, aliens everywhere.

Now there is a second question-who are we? Meaning, are we a People, a nation, or not? What is called a nation, and what are the signs of a People? A People should first of all have a country. A people should have an ideal. That means an idea, a thought towards which the whole People will strive, devoted to it heart and soul.

We lost our land. Where is our ideal? To have a land we must want it. That means we must all have one wish, and will, one idea, and thought. That is unity. What unity we have now we all know well enough. Our enemies accuse us from the start, saying that we have too much unity. They say about us that all Israel are brothers. All Jews are one Jew. We, of course, know how much truth there is in that. Wish it on the anti-Semites to have our unity. If one of us says yes, the other will say no. If one says kosher, the other will say treif. And what one finds pleasing, the other dislikes. He wants it, so I want the opposite. Two Jews have three opinions. When one says this, the other says yes, but not like that. The other man's opinion isn't worth a pinch of snuff. No need to listen when somebody else is talking. There is no elder, and surely no wiser. Because we are all wise. Kulone Chachomim. We are all wise men. We all know what is going on in the world. We knew it long ago, long before that other man is trying to tell us. So what's all this about an idea that will link us all together-our whole People? Take a ride, for instance, to Berditchev, a Jewish town. Stop a Jew there, in the street or in the synagogue and put the question to him- Excuse me, Mister Jew, what is your ideal? And what's going on here about Zion and Zionism?

He'll look at you as if you were mad, a man with time to think about ideals, a loafer, a drifter, a waster of time. Ideal, shmideal, Zion and Zionism. You tell me rather how's business! Have you anything in your mind to turn an honest rouble?

I said Berditchev not as an exception. But as an example. The same sort of place. The same sort of thing will hold good in Kovno, in Riga, in Shnipishok, anywhere you like. They say the whole world is one town. And I'm not saying that all Berditchev Jews or all Shnipishok Jews are all so taken up with the chase after the rouble. Or that nobody there is interested in Zion and Zionism. I'm only saying that most Jews are miles and miles away from such things, things that don't contribute to their takings. And if there are Jews in every town who devote themselves to things like Zionism, they are no more than a few single individuals.

The argument is that Jews are poor, badly off. They must all chase after the rouble to keep going. But that argument is false. To begin with, not all Jews are poor. Thank God, we have plenty of wealthy Jews (and I am not speaking of the magnates, the really, truly rich, for where does it say that aristocrats like these, millionaires, must read little booklets written in Yiddish?). I'm talking of the middle-class Jews who have both time and the mind to devote themselves to such things as Jewish affairs. And on the other hand, the worse things are with Jews, the more and more often they have to think of these things on which their own happiness and the happiness of the entire Jewish People depend. Bad times and bad conditions getting worse every day demand that all Jews must come together, be driven together, all with one wish and one will, one purpose, one ideal. Brothers, there is something missing. The spirit is missing, the folk-spirit that we lost all this time that we have been dragging around here and there.

So what are we? Well, we have our religion. We have our own language. And, of course, there are a few million of us, people who pray from the same prayer book, who keep the Sabbath, eat matzoth at Passover time, hamantaschen at Purim, a smear of honey at Tabernacles, and -

That's all? Nothing more? If so the world is almost right when it says we are not a nation, but just a lot of stiff-necked, stubborn people-what we are told we are, every day!

Again, what are we? How about our ideal? Where is our "Jerusalem thy city" that we repeat day by day? What of "Next year in Jerusalem and Ani ma amin ?-Our I believe"-our princi- ples of Jewish faith? And our form of greeting to each other- "Live to see Messiah"!

True! Only we mustn't fool ourselves. We know well enough how a Jew speaks these words. Our question is, what has he in mind while he speaks those words-his shop, his mill, the forest where he has a lumber lease from the landowner, or his shares on the stock exchange, or far away in Yehupetz, at the Market Day Fair. As for living to see Messiah-good! Why not? If Messiah comes riding along to collect Jews and take them to Eretz Israel at his expense, on condition that each of us, all of us must go on that journey, and the moneyed ones go first!

Jews have such a delightful sacred ideal, and all they do is make fun of it!

No, brothers! We remember Jerusalem every day, but what we have in our minds is Yehupetz. Eretz Israel has till now been a place where old Jews go to die. Zion till now was a word, a fine, beautiful name that we find in our holy books, with other lovely old names, like Wailing Wall, and Mother Rachel's Tomb-all names that should move our hearts, should evoke memories, conjure up pictures of our glorious past.

"Zion, how fare your wandering children?" That's a line from a poem by one of our greatest Jewish singers and patriots, Rabbi Judah Halevi. That was his question to us!

But the words, alas, fly by swiftly, leave an impression with us for a moment, and vanish.

Judah Halevi was drawn to Zion all his life, till he went there and was killed there. "Where shall I find wings," he asked, "to fly there, to bring my broken heart to Zion, the Holy Land? That I should fall with my face to the ground, embrace the holy earth, kiss the dear stones, the sacred dust, the holy graves!"

And that is where he was killed.

Unhappily, our Jewish People know little of this great Jewish poet and his intense love of Zion. Our people no longer feel what they once felt about this majestic name Zion. It seems that the wound must be so old that the pain is no longer felt, insensible. That is not surprising, for after all, this long Golus, this wandering from one land to another, suffering such things as the Spanish Inquisition, and more, much more, and still retaining some fragments of humanity, is itself an achievement, a miracle. Such a miracle as only God can work, God and his Torah, this little Pentateuch, our spiritual Fatherland, this community of soul!

This fact alone, that we hold on to our Jewishness so long, that we have not been wiped off the face of the earth like many others, nations who have left no trace behind-that itself is proof that we can and with God's help will be a nation with all the signs and symbols of a nation.

That leaves us with the third question. What bonds have we with the other nations? No bonds at all!

There were times indeed when there was some talk of our being kindred, having bonds. Shem and Japhet wanted to marry into us. We were on the point of intermingling-assimilation. Both sides deluded themselves. It seemed that we were brothers, body and soul. We on our side were prepared for it, and to show how delighted we were with the match we started aping them in every way, with everything-dress, speech, behavior, manners in the house and outside. With our festivals. With our names- Abraham became Anton; Jeremiah, Jerzy; Getzl, Maxim. The women followed suit. Hannan became Gertrude; Esther, Isabel; and Dvoshe, Cleopatra! Everyone tried to outdo the other. All wanted to show that "I am not I "

What came of it? Nothing! Worse than that! It finished up with rows and scandals. What can we do if we are not really equal sides? we can't impose friendship by force. It won't work!

There are the three main reasons why they hate us, always and everywhere. They hate us because we are strangers and because we want to eat. They hate us because we are a nation without a land and without an ideal. They hate us because we do not have equal links with the nations. We only push the cart from behind, leaping and jumping and grimacing all the time to attract attention. In one word they hate us and hunt us more and more as time goes on, more and more brutally. I hope I'm wrong.

B. Because as we go on things keep getting worse, and things are becoming so dangerous that it cannot possibly continue as in the past. When they reminded us of our faults and revived all the old accusations against us, we responded by finding excuses, trying to justify ourselves, to show that we are not as bad as they made out. You will see that we are right if you give us a little more time, a lit- tle more freedom to speak. "Give us a chance to educate ourselves, give us education, and you will see that we are an entirely different people."

Now, when we see plainly that being on the defensive will not help, that self-vindication gets us nowhere, that since we are a nation like all other nations, that we will never mix and mingle with other nations, and that we are hated everywhere in the whole world, we must look for some other way to assure our existence; we must find our own remedy. Our help is in ourselves alone.

C. What is our help, what is our remedy? Our wise men have long pondered this question, have written a great deal about it, our scholars, our providers and protectors-and they have found only one way Jews must have an ideal. And the ideal must be a land. In a word, Jews must have a land, their own land.

Only sixteen years ago a great man, Dr. Pinsker, published a little pamphlet with the name "Auto-Emancipation." It caused a stir in the Jewish world. "To end our troubles," Dr. Pinsker said, "we must have a land. But not to wait for someone to give us the land. We must find a land ourselves, a piece of earth, a corner, that is our own, no matter where it is, so long as it is ours."

Does a Jew realize what lies in these few simple words-"a piece of earth, a corner that is our own"? Does a Jew feel how necessary and how advantageous it is for each and every one of us, and for the whole community, for us all? Does a Jew ever think what we would have looked like among the nations of the world if we had a piece of land somewhere, our own small corner-that we would be no longer paupers, wandering gypsies, outcast and unwanted!

Dr. Pinsker had given a lot of thought to the subject, and he had concluded that only a land of our own can bring us salvation. He laid the first stone of that great structure which our people created afterwards. For he was followed by other Jewish writers who discussed and considered the matter. It started a search over the world for a land where we could settle Jews who had got stuck like a bone in the throat in the countries where they lived. One said Palestine. Another Argentina. A third Brazil. Some thought Africa would be the place. Others plumped for Cyprus. Back of beyond! God knows where! There is an apt saying-a big world, but no room to sit down. None of the other nations came out to welcome us, to say Sholom Aleichem, were in no hurry to invite us in, but on the contrary fought over us like those seven towns when a synagogue cantor applied for a job, each wanting some other town to take him on. The conclusion was reached that if Jews wanted to live as a nation, there is no other way but to go there, to the ancient Holy Land of our forefathers, the land of the patriarchs. We were shown with all the necessary evidence that every other way was wrong, was false, that the Jewish People are too much divided already, split up, scattered, and dispersed. What we need is a merkaz, a center.

The question, "Wohin?" ("Where to?") ceased to be the question. Disappeared from the agenda. The organization "Chovevei Zion" was formed then, and it still exists. Though it is true that when the emigration started, more Jews went and still go to America, the heart of each immigrant lies over there, in the land of our Fathers, Palestine, Eretz Israel, Zion-those words are heard often among our people, everywhere, even in distant, free America. We already have in Palestine a good many fine colonies that Baron Edmond de Rothschild founded. We also have our own colonies there, where our brothers distinguish themselves with their work.

But time has shown that the colonizing of Palestine is proceeding too slowly. The number of Jewish people grows and their poverty grows more. Jews need, most of all, a land of their own, where they can go and settle openly, not having to sneak in as in the past. These are the words of Herzl, who convened the first Jewish Congress held in Basel.

Indeed, Dr. Herzl did nothing new by using these words. He said almost the same thing that Dr. Pinsker had said sixteen or seventeen years before. The difference was that Pinsker spoke in general terms, that Jews must have a country, and Herzl came out openly before the whole world with the demand that Jews must have a country, their own land, and pointed straight at Palestine. Dr. Pinsker poured out his bitter heart quietly, reasonably, without fuss or clamor. While Herzl demanded publicly, to the whole world, a ready-made Jewish state. I refer to Herzl's Judenstadt, which made a stir, not only among Jews, but also among other people.

"A Jewish state," Herzl said, "is necessary not only for us, but for the whole world. For it is the only way to get rid of the unhappy Jewish Question... Of course, as long as the idea of a Jewish state, a Jewish land remains the idea of one or a few people, it will be no more than a very fine idea, and that's that. But as soon as it becomes the idea of the whole People, it will not be difficult to carry it into effect."

"The Jewish People," Dr. Herzl proceeded, "cannot and must not be destroyed. We will not be destroyed because our enemies will not allow it. We will not be destroyed, and this is proved by our nearly two thousand years of suffering, and we are still here. We must not be destroyed, because that is not desirable. Some leaves may fall off, but the tree remains. And that we should not be destroyed, we must have a land. Our own land ...Time now," says Herzl, "for us to reveal our mission to the world, for all we will do in our new land will be to the good not only of our people, but of everyone, all mankind."

"Palestine or Argentina?" Herzl asks, and this is how he answers his own question. "The Jewish people will say thanks for every piece of land that will be given them, to settle there freely, to develop their powers and their energies and abilities. The difference between Argentina and Palestine is that the Holy Land, Zion, is bound up with our ancient history. The very name Eretz Israel is enough to attract the love of the Jewish people."

Herzl went on to present his plan-how Jews should make their land purchases in Eretz Israel, and how in time a Jewish state would develop there, of course, with the consent of the sultan and of all the European powers.

It would take a whole book to reproduce the plan in its entirety. Yet everybody will understand that building a grand edifice like that is no easy matter. It is a work not for a year or even ten years. As the saying goes, "Things don't work as fast as we talk." Jews must first of all understand the idea properly, grow accustomed to it, get done with the question we posed before, "Why do Jews need a land of their own?"

"That means we must see to it that all Jews should feel and understand how necessary and useful it is. We must see to it that this idea should be the ideal of the entire People. We must see to it that our wives and sisters should understand it, so that our children will be brought up under our national flag, so that our children should be Jewish children, who will not be ashamed of their People ...Jews must return to the Jewish People before they return to the Jewish land."

Professor Schapira had this to say at the Basel Congress: "If our ancestors had contributed each year the shekel from the time we lost our state, we could by now have enough funds to buy the whole of Eretz Israel."

I think this is a mistake. With this amount of money we could have bought half of the whole world. Does it mean that because our parents didn't do it, we mustn't do it either? What a great legacy we would leave our children and our children's children. They will inherit this holy ideal from us, the ideal that will go with us, a heritage from generation to generation. A land, our own land- that will be the ideal among all Jews the world over. Our children, or our grandchildren may live to see it. We ourselves perhaps, too.