Читать книгу Discourses of Keidansky - Bernard G. Richards - Страница 6

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Word flashed across the cables that Dr. Theodore Herzl and other leaders of the Zionist movement had held a favorable interview with the Sultan of Turkey, and the followers of the cause—the restoration of Palestine to the Jews—were all in a flutter of gladness. As it was interpreted by the faithful, the vague, meagre cablegram meant that the Sultan was willing, that he was hard up, and that the Holy Land was for sale. And who could doubt when this was announced by the New York Yiddish dailies, under four-column headlines? No one could doubt but the jester. He said that this only proved that the Yiddish papers also had big type in their composing rooms. He said that the truth about a certain movement could not be found in any party organ. In fact, if one wanted the absolute truth about anything he would advise him to go home and sleep it off.

But serious and sane folk will ask no jester for advice. The jester can only add to the sadness of the nations; but he cannot impair the faith of the believers. So the Zionists were rejoicing while their opponents were debating in the lighter vein, and laughing at the mistakes of the so-called new Moses and the errors of his followers.

The news had also reached Keidansky's circle, and the question was taken up again for consideration. They were all at Zarling's on Leverett street, where the "kosher" eatables are inviting, where tea is Russian, the newspapers Yiddish, and the attendant members of one industrious family, ranging from several bright pupils of the grammar school up. The poet, the young lawyer, the short-sighted medical student who has for many years been writing a scientific work, the Anarchist orator in embryo, the flower vendor and undiscovered inventor of an ingenious self-lighting lamp and a wonderful fuel-saving stove—they were all there, and, of course, Keidansky was with them. They all sat about a little round wooden table in a corner of the big dusky store, pouring out wisdom and drinking tea. The long row of "kosher" Vienna wurst hanging over Zarling's brass-railed counter were mocking and menacing the vegetarian of the group as he was munching a cheese sandwich.

They were all heartily opposed to Zionism. Each one had the solution for the social problem, which would also settle the Jewish question, and Keidansky said that it was highly problematic whether there was such a thing as a Jewish problem. However, they all had plans for making this a better world, plans which the Jews were eminently fitted to help to carry out, and the benefits of which they would reap in the form of an ideal state of society, with universal brotherhood, and without racial hatred and anti-Semitism. They took Zionism severely, scathingly to task, and as there was no Zionist present it was an easy victory. The Jewish State was nipped in the bud, or rather abolished ere its establishment. The poet and the orator sailed heavily into the "dubious personality of Dr. Max Nordau," one of the leaders of the movement, and thus again avenged themselves on the man who, in his gentle booklet on "Degeneration," so wantonly threw so much mud on their revolutionary idols. Reference was made to the demolishing review of the Doctor's book by the only and original G. Bernard Shaw, and Whitman and Wagner and the others were saved.

Keidansky listened silently to all that passed, looked into a book and sipped his tea. If the conversation was not good he could find something in his book, and if the book was not interesting he could at least enjoy his tea. So he once said when told that he was not attentive and not true to the spirit of "the order of midnight tea-drinkers."

Everybody had spoken, and I turned to Keidansky for a word. "Sometimes," he said, "I am Zionist, and all longings leave me and I yearn for naught but the realization of the old, long-cherished, holy dream that our people have carried along with them and fondly caressed through their cruel exiles of the ages—the restoration of our never-to-be-forgotten home, Palestine. The passion for the race returns, the old feeling of national pride and patriotism comes back and takes its old place, the consciousness of Israel awakens within me, and I am completely swayed by the mastering desire to see Judea 'emancipated, regenerated and redeemed.'

"I feel again the unity I have forgotten. The old Messianic hope looms up big before me. The Heimweh of the long-lost wanderer, the grief-stricken, menaced nomad takes possession of me. I feel the terrible danger of dissolution: it is so bitter to stare destruction in the face, to contemplate annihilation of so long and so miraculous an existence. I feel that there is no place like his old home. The homeless Jew must return to Palestine. The big world is too small. It has no room for him. Good or bad, he is always offensive, and he is exalted only to be cast down into an abyss of misery. Civilization is not even civil, and it has no hospitality for its earliest light-bearer. The world is a wretched ingrate. We have given everything, including the means of future salvation; we receive nothing but calumny, and are doomed to everlasting damnation. 'We have given you your religion,' we say to the Christians. 'That's nothing,' they answer; 'it has not affected us in the least.' And they prove it. They keep on baiting and persecuting and killing their neighbours, not as themselves. What must we do? Get back our old home, though we have to pay for it. There, at least, will we find 'a crust of bread and a corner to sleep in.'

"We must have a common cause, an object of unity, a centre of gravity, in order to survive as a people, and this is what we can have in the proposed Jewish State.

"And what an inspiring picture it will be of Israel, bruised and bleeding from the travail of his long, futile travels, at last straightening up his back and returning home to rebuild his national life and his temple in Palestine. There he will create an ideal republic, fashioned after the teachings of the prophets and the lessons he has received from the teachers of the nations—a republic that will teach the world justice and righteousness. 'And from Zion shall issue the law, and the word of God shall go forth from Jerusalem,' and our poets to come shall sing new psalms to God on the banks of the Jordan, in the shades of Lebanon and in the beautiful gardens of Sharon and Carmel. I have never been there, and though I have gone through life without a geography, yet I seem to remember all these places. The grand, vigorous Hebrew language shall come to life again and we shall have a glorious literature of Israel's resurrection. Ah, how beautiful the vision that looms up as I contemplate these things! And then—"

Keidansky ceased speaking, paused, and asked for another glass of tea.

"And then?" I asked.

"Then," he continued, "the mood passes, the feeling alters, the picture that a fleeting fancy has thrown upon the canvas of my view, fades, a change comes over the spirit of my dream. I remember that I am no longer the pious little boy praying in the synagogue of Keidan, 'a year hence in Jerusalem.' The greater vision appears before me, the larger ideal comes back, and Keidansky is himself again. Sometimes I am a Zionist, but only sometimes. The rest of the time I am as strongly opposed to it as any of you, because with all my imputed universalism I have great hopes for my people, and because I have marked out a greater role for Israel to play in the history of the future than being a mere little bee building a little hive in a tiny obscure corner of the globe."

Here the medical student protested that a man cannot be both for and against an idea at the same time, that those who are not with us are wrong and against us, and that Keidansky is a "long distance off"—for he said, "scientifically analyzed"—

"Scientifically analyzed, you are a bore," Keidansky broke forth infuriated, "and don't interrupt me when I am solving problems and making history. Be consistent, boys, and do not ask me to be so. Give me, at least, the right that you grant to a character in fiction, the right to be irrational, illogical, and, above all, superbly inconsistent. I am a character in life and nothing is so fictitious. At times, I want to be with all, feel with all, believe with all, see the beauties of all ideals, and also point out the great fact about them—that they are all fatal—and yet that to be without ideals is baneful and deadly. I cannot be partial, and that is why they expelled me from DeLeon's Socialist Labor party. Partiality is destructive to art, and I might have been an artist, if I had had the patience and self-abnegation and a lot of other requisites and things.

"But to return to the larger vision, which eclipses the dreamlet of Zionism. The Jew must not be relegated to an obscure corner of the world, to a little platform whereupon he will recite a piece in an unknown tongue. I want a big stage for him—the world. I want a great play for him—all its multitudinous activities. For he is a wonderful actor. He has versatility, illusion, imagination and dramatic power. It is an inspiring part he plays in the world-drama. So let the play go on, and do not ask him to waste his energies and bargain with the Sultan for a bit of barren land that has been taken from him so long ago. He has a bigger task to perform, a larger mission to fulfil.

"He must live among the nations and help them in their upward struggle for a higher civilization and a nobler life. If there are evils to be abolished he will help abolish them, and if there are dire problems, why, he has brains, which he loans more often than money. And this is the spectacle that I gloat over and glory in seeing: Israel among the nations, the saviour and the outcast, the redeemer and the rejected, the revered teacher and truant student, the honoured guest and persecuted resident, helping nations to make their histories, here and there, writing great words in them, ministering to their arts and helping to humanize humanity. To be persecuted and oppressed by the nations is inconvenient and annoying, but to make music, paint pictures, write books, sing songs, mould statues for them—how superb! Ah, what a tragedy to be a Jew, and yet, how glorious! The nations need the Jew and he must not desert them in their hour of need, and if he is true to his best self and keeps on growing he will not die and vanish as a people. In any case 'tis nobler to die for a good cause than to live in impotence. So let the Jew remain, with whatever nation he abides, and as a good citizen help it grow great and good, and show that Ibsen was right when he called us the aristocracy of the race. Let not, I say to the Zionists, the Jew be like the little boy who runs away from school after he receives a thrashing and before he has taught his teacher a lesson. To sacrifice for Dr. Herzl's scheme our vast opportunities in the world, which owes us so much, and to which we are so indebted, would be selling our birthright for a mess of pottage. So let us remain. We can do so much in so many countries with the teachings and spirit of Judaism. We, too, are frail and have many faults, but we can improve where there's lots of room and plenty of opportunities.

"Life is a melodrama, and in the latter acts the long-lost brothers, Jew and Christian, who have for so long waged war against each other, will recognize, understand each another, and perhaps, things will end happily, after all.

"Meanwhile we will forgive France for the Dreyfus affair, because of her perfect prose and beautiful poetry. I will even forgive Captain Dreyfus for having been such a bore, if he will stop writing books. Let the Jews remain in Russia instead of going to Palestine, for think of the love of freedom that tyranny engenders! Think how good all our oppressions have been in that they made us love liberty and truth. Think what a chance to shed blood for freedom there will yet be in Russia. Our people should remain there. Things are changing. What a fine literature it is producing, and how noble Russia is—underground.

"Away with your petty neutral little State, I say to the Zionist; the State to be bought on the instalment plan from the Sultan, to be built on the soil of superstition, where the Jews will go back to their traditional customs and fall asleep. The land is barren and sterile, and I do not believe in starvation, even on holy land. Even the orthodox must have a religion; but they will never acquire it in Palestine. They will cling to the old. They will not progress. The Bible—and I bow my head in reverence for that great work of fiction—will never be edited and revised as it ought to be, in Palestine. Judaism will not grow in Palestine. The Jews will cling to the letter, and the spirit of it will starve. God save the Jews from Palestine. Judaism there will not grow; it will stagnate and die. The Jews must live among the destroying forces of civilization. It is only when they outgrow their obnoxious superstitions and down-dragging traditions that they become great."

The speaker waxed warm; his eyes flashed with enthusiasm, his voice grew loud.

"I want none of the Jewish State," he said. "The whole world is holy land. Wherever there are good, honest people is holy land, and from every corner of the earth shall issue the law, and the word of God shall go forth from every place, including my garret. Give us a big stage, give us the world, give us the universe, and let me watch it from its centre—my garret at 3 Birmingham Alley; let me watch the great and glorious play with Israel's heroic part in all the activities and growth and progress of the world, and I will 'thank whatever gods there be.' And this is my larger dream; a better, more humane world, created by the brotherhood of men, with Israel as peacemaker and fraternizer. Amen."