In the Days of the Storm

Now the days of the pogroms came, and the hands of the masses were raised against the Jews to strike and destroy them. Socialism disgusted me. Not from the idea, which I still hold even more strongly and intensely, since it is in the core of Judaism and the foundation of its Torah, but from those socialist activists. For I saw deeds and read writings that proved clearly to me, that those heading the central committee of the socialists supported the evildoers and ordered their activists to use the mischief of the masses and incite them against the Jews, to kill and destroy, to incite the masses to rage and to teach them to plunder and murder, to start with the Jews and to finish with the property owners. It is very easy to incite the mob to do scandalous acts and to pave the way for robbery touching upon the Jews, because even the highly placed did not oppose it. I became aware of all this, and my heart jumped from me, and I saw just how little the Jews should collaborate with those who work for the general good. After examination and observation, I had a clear consciousness, that the Jewish people has no other strategy to be saved and to exist except to become a nation standing on its own. But where is the place that could be right for such a purpose?

So, the question then arose of settling the Land of Israel, and the first to raise it were Peretz Smolenskin and David Gordon, the publisher of Ha-Magid, but I was very skeptical about the possibility of settling in the Land of Israel, not the physical possibility, but the spiritual one. I was very worried by the Orthodox Jews, by the rabbis. I was afraid of the atmosphere of the Land of Israel, which is full of the ancient spirit, and I could not believe that the Maskilim might pour their spirit upon the new settlement, since most of the “Maskilim” opposed the settlement of the Land of Israel, because most of them were from the assimilated [group]. And the Hebrew Maskilim, that is, the “correspondents” in the periodicals, did not appear to me as civilized people, for I knew them, that most were boorish, ignorant, and empty of all European education (Haskalah).

I clarified my thoughts and doubts in my long letter to my friend David Gordon (Ha-Magid, 1882, no. 39) and then my heart was taken by the fine idea that the salvation of the Jews would come if sixty thousand Jews gathered in a single place in [the United States of] America, where then, according to law, they could establish a special state for themselves, and the Jews would have a particular government, established on knowledge and education. And I had no doubt that our magnates and mighty ones, especially abroad, would all be aroused as a single man to help their brethren leave the land of blood [i.e., Russia], and would support the pioneers to establish a solid position. For after the recent blows—I said to myself—the eyes of the magnates would be opened to see that their trust in self-beautification of finding favor in the eyes of the gentiles was vain. But I saw actions that proved my error and showed that I did not yet know who were the Jewish magnates. And then no alternative for the salvation of Israel lay before me except in the land of our ancestors, as I clarified and explained my ideas in my article, “Set the Hosts into Motion” (Ha-Magid 1882, no. 19).¹