Читать книгу History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume 3 of 3. From the Accession of Nicholas II until the Present Day - Dubnow Simon - Страница 10

Both political and spiritual Zionism have their roots in the same common ground, in "the negation of the Golus": in the conviction that outside of Palestine – in the lands of the Diaspora – the Jewish people has no possibility of continuing its existence as a normal national entity. Both political and spiritual Zionists have their eyes equally fixed upon Zion as the anchor of safety for Judaism, whether it be in its material or in its spiritual aspect. Neither doctrine had formulated a clear idea of the future destinies of the Jewish Diaspora, that is, of the destinies of the entire Jewry of the world, minus the section settled in Palestine. The political Zionists evaded the question as to the fate of the Jewish people in case their aspirations should not materialize, and, faithful to the motto proclaimed by Nordau, were ready, as it were, to sentence the entire Diaspora to death, or to a life worse than death, in the eventuality of the Palestine charter being refused. The cultural Zionists protested against this hypothetical Zionism, insisting that the Diaspora would preserve its national vitality by mere contact with a small cultural center in Palestine. But how the tremendous bulk of the Diaspora Jewry should be organized for a Jewish life on the spot, how it should be enabled to liberate itself from the political and cultural pressure of the environment – that question remained unanswered by both wings of Zionism. An answer to this question could not be found by considering merely the last stage of Jewish history, but by viewing the latter in all its phases, beginning with the ancient Greco-Roman and Eastern Diaspora. Such an answer, based upon the entire Jewish past, was attempted by the doctrine of "Spiritual Nationalism," or, more correctly, "National-Cultural Autonomism." Its fundamental principles have been formulated by the present writer in his "Letters Concerning Ancient and Modern Judaism."23