Notes in Response to the Zionist Cause

3 Shevat 5663 [January 31, 1903]

From all the Zionist essays emerge that which we see with our very eyes: their entire purpose and effort is to instill the supposition among Jews that the Torah and its commandments are merely a means for upholding the collective, but not an obligation upon the individual. This is an idea that can easily be instilled within the youths of our nation who are willing vessels for such a view. And once they have accepted this idea as true, they will automatically deem themselves completely exempt from the Torah and its commandments, thinking that they do not need these means, especially when they have at their disposal a different strategy to uphold the collective. They explain to themselves that were there but one Jew in the world, then there would be no need to observe the Torah and the commandments. Only when there are many (may the Lord increase them) do we need the Torah and the commandments as a means to sustain them as a society. But now nationalism assumes the place of religion and it is [the proper] means to maintain society.

And due to this supposition, one who enters the Zionist Organization no longer considers himself obligated to observe the Torah and the commandments at all. Consequently, there is no hope that at some future time he will return to such observance. Even were he to be ground in a mortar (Proverbs 27:22), he would not repent, for in his reckoning he is a proper Jew because he is a loyal nationalist.

Thus, from these logical foundations, it is clear that the Zionist idea has not only failed to draw close those distant from Judaism but, to the contrary, has driven them even farther. Even worse—it has driven proper Jews to change their minds (God save us!), causing them to uproot from their hearts any concept of the Torah’s sanctity, belief in God, or the observance of practical commandments. By this, they [Zionists] have completely stripped them of the commitment to the Torah and its commandments, and have embedded in their hearts the idea that with nationalism they are complete Jews. It follows that whoever is captured in their traps ([also: corruption,] Lamentations 4:20) or anything ancillary to it shall descend into hell with no hope (God forbid) for life in the hereafter.

The Zionists—obviously their leaders but also their followers who are drawn after them unwittingly—with deliberate intention, guile, treachery, and wicked machinations—have committed an evil deed: to implant within hundreds of articles and thousands of heart-capturing aphorisms—written in Yiddish, Hebrew, and state languages—their primary supposition that the entire essence of Judaism is nationalism.

Anyone with even a little sobriety must admit the truth: the national awakening of Herzl and Nordau did not stem from some godly feeling aroused in their souls.

Our [God-]fearing brethren love the Holy Land due to the godly sentiment within them. They yearn for and desire God; they wish to serve Him. This is why they wish for the place chosen by God, He who chose Zion and Jerusalem. This love exists in their innermost sentiment, in the most essential and internal love of this place. They would truly kiss its ground, and this was their entire lot in life: to merit that God would bring them to the Holy Land, the yearning of every heart and soul.

This, however, is not the source of the Zionist awakening among the leaders of Zionism, especially Herzl and Nordau. The proof of this is that when Herzl was in the Holy Land he further alienated himself from God, desecrating the Torah and its law in public. He entered the holy city of Jerusalem after the onset of the Sabbath and walked upon the site of the Temple. Even basic humanity dictates that it was unbefitting for him to desecrate the Sabbath publicly in a holy city and even more so in the place of God’s sanctuary, to do that which is evil in the eyes of God—God have mercy! Certainly this was done emphatically for no other purpose than to demonstrate the principles of their impure system—that the whole matter of Judaism is nationalism. And the head of the Zionists erected the idol of nationalism—that is, the rebellion against God and the denial of the Torah and its commandments—upon the site of God’s sanctuary.

Indeed, the true reason for the awakening of the Zionist leaders—they who mislead, incite, and tempt the nation of Israel away from God and toward Zion and Jerusalem—is because the slack limbs of the Jewish body in the diaspora have already mingled and united with the gentiles, as far as becoming one nation with them.¹ Thus, a Jew in Germany considered himself a German, in Austria an Austrian, and in England an Englishman, and likewise in all the other lands. He thought that this was his nation and homeland, that the government was his, [as if he] were like all other citizens who resided in that land and lived their lives in peace and happiness (as it is perceived by the ungainly minds of such Jews); and so they married gentile women to become one nation with them.

The Holy One wishes for the redemption of Israel through his Messiah, and Israel can only be redeemed through repentance. Therefore, God brought an enemy against His people to oppress and harass them—the antisemites of each and every country. And when the antisemites grew powerful, they began to separate the Jews from the gentiles of the countries, reminding them that they were Jews by persecuting them, even calling upon other gentiles to join them. And whenever these [assimilated Jews] applied to the princes and nobles of those lands, whose company they used to share and with whom they had wished to find their place, they [the gentile aristocrats] looked down at them as foreigners and distanced themselves from them. These Jews aspired to be on the level and status of the aristocrats and noblemen of their lands, and so, the more the gentiles pushed them away and distanced them, the more they aggressively climbed their way upward and exalted themselves, to boast in their own riches and wisdom—for they despised the practice of submission.

Our Orthodox brethren are well aware that they are under the yoke of exile and must be submissive in every status and economic condition. For even in those times when we had Jews who walked among the nations’ noblemen, and who would stand before kings, they did so submissively, knowing that they were in exile [under the dominion] of another nation. They knew that they had to bear the yoke of exile because it is the will of God, who inflicted it on us as penance for our sins until He has mercy upon us and redeems us, may it be shortly in our days, Amen. For this reason, even when this heavy yoke was placed upon them, even after all the persecutions and exclusions that have beset them, they still found a place under the sun for themselves: for it is the nature of the soft to withstand the hard.

Indeed, these [Jews] who think that they are no longer in exile at all—that they are Germans, Frenchmen, or Englishmen, and that the state in which they reside is their home and country—completely lack in their natures the quality of submission. Thus, due to the aforementioned exclusions and persecutions, they lost a place of their own, and even their very existence. For our Orthodox brothers, their existence is in being Jewish by observing the Torah and its commandments, whereas these Jews—their existence consists of being Germans, etc. So once they were firmly rejected, they had no existence whatsoever. However, they had to have some existence by which they could identify themselves. But how could they identify themselves, given that they had no wish to observe the Torah and its commandments? Their solution was that they now wanted to be a nation and government, and by this have their identity.

And this is the only reason for their national awakening and their return to the People of Israel. They wish to be nothing but a nation, a Jewish nation. The cause of their awakening is necessity, for they are compelled to have an identity. And the place most fitting for this purpose is of course the Land of Israel. But I have no doubt that Herzl and Nordau do not truly care whether it is the Land of Israel or some other land, for this is secondary to their primary idea: to be a people with a government. And apparently at the Third [Zionist] Congress, one person proposed Cyprus [as a homeland], and Herzl allowed a discussion of that proposal. It was only dismissed because the Zionists of our country protested loudly.

Indeed, the path to actuating this idea within our brethren, that it should be a nation and government of its own, is to arouse within the nation the nationalist idea, for through this they will begin the national awakening by which they would acquire an identity of their own.

This alone, however, is not enough. For they must also separate the nation from the Torah and its commandments (God have mercy), or at the very least, weaken them as much as possible, making nationalism override the Torah. Because it is well known that those who are loyal to the Torah and its commandments are unlikely to change or transform.

Above all, Jews who are loyal to the Torah and its commandments cannot transform into a people who wish to forcefully exit from exile and redeem themselves with their own power; this contradicts the strong faith and hopes of Israel, who yearn and await the salvation brought by our righteous Messiah, shortly in our days, Amen. It is he who will redeem us in body and spirit, and by that they will ascend to the highest level. This hope, entrenched in their souls, is what gives their spirits some rest. And this is precisely the reason why they survive the bitter exile and strengthen themselves by observing the Torah and its commandments. In this hope—and not in the promise of Herzl to have a kingdom unto themselves where they will lead physical lives (even if we accepted the mistaken thought that this is feasible)—they find the pleasure of their soul. And in [Herzl’s] hope alone they could not survive under the yoke of exile. Rather, they could do so only with the hope of their redemption and the salvation of their souls, when God will redeem us by the righteous Messiah soon in our days, Amen.