Ten Essays On Zionism And Judaism by Achad Ha-Am

Author:Achad Ha-Am [Ha-Am, Achad]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-07-19T04:00:00+00:00

SUMMA SUMMARUM

(1912)

This is a summary not of facts and figures, but of impressions stored in my mind in the course of sixty days during which our national work enveloped me in its atmosphere and engrossed my every thought: ten days at Basle during the Tenth Congress, and fifty days afterwards in Palestine.

Fourteen years have passed since I saw a Zionist Congress (the first), and twelve years since I witnessed the condition of our work in Palestine. My object in revisiting both the Congress and the land was not, as before, to go into details, to collect material, in the shape of facts and figures, for the solution of certain practical problems. On this occasion I opened my mind wide to the different impressions that crowded in on me from all sides; I allowed them to enter and to dissolve of themselves into a single general impression—a kind of mental summary of all that I saw and heard in connection with our movement and our work in and out of Palestine. I am of those who stand on the threshold of age and look back on many long years of work and struggle, of victories and defeats, of pain and of joy. A man in this position finds it necessary at times to turn his thoughts for a while from questions of detail, and to take a more comprehensive view, so that he may find for his own satisfaction an answer to that broad, fundamental question which occasionally disturbs his sleep: What is the purpose, what the result, of all this work which has occupied your life and consumed your strength?

It was this necessity that took me on this occasion to Basle and to Palestine. And let me confess that it is a long time since I spent such happy days as those of my travels. Not that all is now right with the movement; not that the sun has shone on our work, and driven away the shadows, and spread light and joy everywhere. We are still a long way from such a happy consummation. Even to-day the shadows are many; if they are less in one place, they are more in another. But one fact is becoming increasingly clear: our work is not an artificial product, a thing that we have invented to give the people something to do, as a palliative for the national sorrow. That idea might be entertained if aim and achievement corresponded, if the work were done for the purpose of attaining that result which it is in fact attaining. If that were so, one might doubt whether the attainment of this result were really necessary for the nation, and whether the whole business were not artificial. But that is not the case. Since the beginning of the movement the workers have had one goal in view, and have been unconsciously approaching another. This dualism is the surest sign that the driving force is not reasoning reflection, but something much deeper: one of those natural

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