On the Establishment of the Brit ha-ivrim

The following is an expanded version of a speech given at the inaugural con- ference of the Brit Ivrit Olamit (World Hebrew Union) in Berlin, on 21 June 1931. The original Hebrew text was initially published as “Le-irgun ha-golah ha-ivrit” [On the Organization of the Hebrew Diaspora] in: Moznayim 3 (1931), no. 9, 2–5; no. 10, 2–8, and then reprinted with extensive footnotes containing excerpts from his intervening articles on the subject in: Simon Rawidowicz, “Im lo kan – hekhan?” [If Not Here, Where?], Lvov 1933, 10–40.

Yehonathan Chipman translated this text into English. Italic passages in Hebrew are shown bold in the translation.

Honorable Assembly,

In times past, when people would gather for a cultural conference of this sort, they would discuss the value of the Hebrew language, the Hebrew spirit, the People of Israel and its nature, and so forth. They would argue whether it was possible for Hebrew to become a widespread spoken language in the Diaspora and similar questions. Happily, today we are free from this type of discussion. In all the lands of the Diaspora, there exist – even under the most difficult conditions – various kinds of Hebrew kindergartens and schools. In practice, life itself has made its decision: it is possible, it is permitted, it is fitting, and it is desirable that it be so. One may argue today about the nature of the Jewish people and their spirit, just as people did decades ago, but nobody disagrees as to the value of the Hebrew language for the life of Jewry in the Diaspora. Even among the circles of assimilationists in Western Europe this idea has become accepted in practice, so that we no longer need to discuss these questions that have meanwhile found their solution, if not in their desired completeness.

All that is left is to emphasize that we have not gathered here in order to save the language. Moreover, we have not gathered only in order to save Hebrew culture. If our only goal were the language and its values, we could have consigned this task to one of the museums, to a society for antiquities, or to some literary-aesthetic association. We almost certainly could have found a society of Christian scholars among the Germans or the English, who would have taken upon themselves the task of preserving the Hebrew language so that it not disappears from the earth. But the issue that confronts us today is not that of language, but the question of the spiritual survival of the People of Israel in the Diaspora. We are not simply

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a “Sprachverein,” we have not come together to “save” this “beautiful, surviving, unique” language, but rather to save |11| the People of Israel, which has been swept away after the Great World War, and struggles for its very cultural existence.

The Spiritual Existence of Israel in the Diaspora!

– This is the question that we are proclaiming before the world, and whose solution we are discussing here.

We have come together in order to take action. But if there is no theory, from whence can action derive? The theory must precede the action, and if there is no philosophy there can be no action. Or perhaps one ought to say that the failure of the Hebraist movement in the Diaspora only came about because it failed to create its own philosophy. A movement that does not remove the obstacles from the path of its philosophy, that does not adhere to the basis of its thought – will in the end not survive. And I would like to speak to you briefly today about the philosophy and theory which, in my opinion, must precede the action that demands its realization from us. This theory is an introduction that contains a condition, even though it does not serve here as a basis per se. The action is the main thing, and not the theory, but an action that is preceded by a theory endures, whereas an action that does not have a theory of its own does not strike roots. Those who stand watch over the philosophy will also perform the action.

I would add that the hints of the theory and the plans of action that I am going to suggest to you, I do on my own. The “Preparatory Committee”

of this conference is not responsible for either my theory or for my action.

They are the views of an individual, and I do not speak in the name of any group.

◊◊◊

My answer is that the ideology that has thus far been implanted as the basis of our Hebrew cultural approach in the Diaspora is not able to sustain and nourish a creative Hebrew movement in this Diaspora. The society of “The Seekers of Good and Wisdom” during the generation of the Meassefim [contributors to the Haskalah journal Hame’assef (The Collector)] and the society of “The Lovers of the Hebrew Language” in Russia before the Great War were motivated by aesthetic and linguistic ideals, by love of

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the language, and by the recognition that the new Judaism had nothing left but the language alone. Such is not the case for our Hebrew cultural enterprise in the Diaspora following the war years. On the one hand, it is conditioned by the political circumstances that were created in post-war Europe; on the other hand, this enterprise is integrally connected, like a candle to its wick, with |12| the Zionist idea. Insofar as it derives from Zionism, it is based upon the doctrine of the spiritual center of Achad Ha-Am, from whose waters all of us drink. But this is also the weak point of our cultural activity in the Diaspora and serves as the basis for some other details with which I do not have the time to deal. However, we must spend some time on this one point, as we set out to renew our enterprise and to give it stature.

I cannot argue here against a number of the assumptions of Achad Ha-Am’s doctrine of the spiritual center. Some of my thoughts on this subject have been published in other articles, but most of them I have been unable to publish due to the lack of Hebrew literary organs in which it is possible to discuss – at length, in depth and in a serious manner – the fundamental questions of our life and destiny in the Diaspora.8 I shall offer here one idea, from which you may infer my views regarding the rest. For the purposes of our enterprise, it will suffice to allude to one of the basic

8 I suggested some of my ideas regarding the negation of the Diaspora in my lecture in the Bet Am Ivri in Berlin in early 1929 in a discussion with Dr. J[akob] Klatzkin.

Hints of my criticism of the accepted Zionist outlook can be found in my article

“Le-shem ḥiddush sifruteinu” [On the Renewal of Our Literature], in: Ha-Olam, 2 December 1930, 971 f.; 9 December 1930, 994 f.; 16 December 1930, 1014 f. The article found an echo in the Hebrew and Yiddish press (see for example: Anon- ymous, A sheyvet oder a folk? [A Tribe or a Nation?], in: Der Yidisher Zhurnal, Toronto, 6 March 1931, 4). Asher Barash was aroused by it to raise at a meeting of writers in Tel Aviv the question of “Sifrut shel shevet ve-sifrut shel am” [The Lit- erature of a Tribe and the Literature of a People], in: Moznayim 2 (1931), no. 38, 8–11). In my article “Shtei she’elot she-hen aḥat” [Two Questions That Are One], in: Moznayim 2 (1931), no. 44, 7–9; no. 45, 8 f., I attempted to raise by allusion the basic question of the Diaspora and to remove it from the limited area of literature.

See also my articles “Halakhah u-ma’aseh. He’arot aḥadot la-knesiyah ha-ivrit be-Berlin” [Theory and Practice. Some Remarks on the Hebrew Congress in Ber- lin], in: Ha-Olam, 1 December 1931, 936 f.; 8 December 1931, 958 f.; 15 December 1931, 978 f.; 22 December 1931, 998 f., and “Shutafut shel kiyyum” [Partnership of Existence], in: ibid., 19 May 1932, 291–293; 26 May 1932, 306–308; 2 June 1932, 322–325.

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errors in the doctrine of the “spiritual center.” This is the doctrine that, as I said, undermines the life of our enterprise in the Diaspora. I find the decisive fault in the lack of the idea of creativity and of the creative element.

At the center of Achad Ha-Am’s doctrine is the concept of imitation. He sees life as an imitation of that which has already passed. The past serves as a source of imitation for the present, while the present serves as a source of imitation for the future. Today imitates yesterday, and tomorrow will imitate today. From this doctrine we may infer, although it is not explicitly stated: Homo homini simia – man is a monkey to man. Not a voracious wolf, not a forgiving God |13| – but rather an “aping” monkey. Nationalism is based upon imitation (“imitation of competition”), and assimilation is likewise based upon imitation (“imitation of self-effacement”). Achad Ha-Am sees imitation as a spiritual law, both social and metaphysical, in the sense of a first principle or fundamental law (we shall not discuss here the positivistic schools in whose footsteps he follows). All of Achad Ha-Am’s teaching is as remote from the idea of creativity as the leading speaker of the previous generation was remote from Immanuel Kant, the father of the idea of “synthesis” and spontaneity. (I do not mean to say here that Achad Ha-Am does not know of the concept of creativity, but rather that one must properly understand the place of “creativity” in his thought.) It seems to me that even creativity in the Land of Israel is seen by him as only an imitation of the work of creativity that was undertaken in this land thousands of years ago. Achad Ha-Am asks: What is the People of Israel lacking? And he answers: A center for imitation. How shall this center of imitation be built? For this, he has no place other than the Land of Israel. The act of imitation to be undertaken in the Land of Israel of the life that existed when the People of Israel was on its soil will in turn serve as a basis for imitation by the Diaspora. In this way Achad Ha-Am, and many other spokesmen of Zionism and of the Hebrew movement, have fallen captive to the thicket of mechanistic ideas upon which I cannot elaborate here in detail. I cannot deal with the issue of consciousness, with the relationship between our own consciousness and those things that exist in the external world, whether we only recognize those things that we ourselves create, whether these exist prior to our synthetic creation of them and outside of it – this question has no place here. However, the following idea must serve us as a basic axiom: we only live – I mean life in the highest sense – that life which we ourselves create, and insofar as we create it. That which we do not create, we do not live. And if matters are thus regarding an individual, how much more so regarding a community, a collective, a nation. The collectivity enjoys that which comes from

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other collectivities, on the one hand deriving benefit and on the other giving benefit. However, its true life, its supreme life, its original life, is none other than the creation of its own soul. If the former were angels, human beings, or even less – we are creators. If we do not create, we do not exist.

The People of Israel lacks political freedom, independence, economic and cultural freedom. A center of imitation will not save us. Wherever a community of Jews lives – there exists a center of Jewish creativity. The Land of Israel has nothing to fear from these centers of creativity. On the contrary, it needs them. Diaspora Jewry will achieve |14| complete unity and accept upon itself the yoke of the Land of Israel, will bear the suffering of its building – not out of imitation, not out of a desire or hope to imitate, but rather out of its own creativity, because its creativity will necessarily carry an unbreakable connection with its fellow Jews in the Diaspora and with the Land of Israel created by them. And when I come to advocate the idea of creativity in place of the idea of imitation, I do not mean to say that the idea of imitation is improper, that there are not decisive elements of imitation in spiritual and social life! We only wish to refute its position of primacy. It cannot serve as the model for our approach to life. The primary principle must be creativity! If there were no creativity in the world, if the world as a whole did not demand creativity, the turmoil of creation – there would be no place for the power of imitation and similar forces in other spheres of life.

Hence, of necessity we must free ourselves, first of all, from the hypnosis of the idea of imitation, as if the “periphery” could live and exist solely on the strength of imitation. And after we have recognized that Diaspora Jewry can only exist by virtue of its own creativity, and despite all the numerous obstacles that stand in the way of our creativity in the Diaspora that we do not ignore, it has no other mode of existence than this. Even if its creativity will never attain the heights of perfection, it must nevertheless follow this path. After this, we must also free ourselves from the second assumption of spiritual Zionism that we do not ignore – namely, that the Land of Israel alone can solve the question of the Jews. Just as Diaspora Jewry cannot by itself resolve the question of Judaism, so too the Land of Israel alone – the Land of Israel as it is in the present and in the near future – cannot resolve the question of the culture of the Jews that is desired and sought, of which scores of generations have dreamed and for which they have sacrificed their lives. From this we may infer the following: the total culture of the People of Israel, that which is suitable for an ancient people, for a nation that has the Torah, Prophets, and Writings,

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and is capable of being transmitted, cannot come into the world except through shared creativity between the Land of Israel and the Diaspora.

The future culture of the People of Israel – culture in its fundamental and comprehensive sense –

has Two Partners:

These two partners are the inhabitants of the Land of Israel and Diaspora Jewry. How many “shares” in this partnership belong to the Land of Israel

|15| and how many to the Diaspora?9 There is no point to debating the division of shares or arguing over the question of the equality of rank between the two partners  – not for purposes of litigation and not for bargaining. Let the history of the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth centuries come and decide. We shall leave our destiny in their hands. So long as the majority of the People of Israel is found in the Diaspora – and not as a numerical majority alone – there cannot and will not be a complete Jewish culture without the creative participation of Diaspora Jewry. Our culture in the Land of Israel cannot achieve its longed-for Hebrew and

9 In my article “Shutafut shel kiyyum” I clarify the concept of partnership: “We should not understand this partnership as it is in real life … This partnership means a basic partnership, not a partnership for a certain purpose, but a partner- ship for life and death, … an ever-lasting partnership … As in other basic ideas, it contains both affirmation and negation simultaneously. Its affirmation affirms the world and its negation negates the world … The partnership means that neither of the two partners is independent and neither can fully exist without the other … This is not a partnership of two self-standing parts … but of two halves, halves of the whole, which brings them together, two each of which of necessity needs the existence of the other. This is a partnership that will and necessity compel … It lives and exists in the hand of fate … If one partner leaves this partnership he is removing himself from the world because he has no other means of existing … in order to visualize this partnership-approach …” I further say: “This is a partner- ship of the face … could the existence of one side be imagined without the other?

Is it possible that one side will not adhere to the rules of life, the rules of being and its absence to which its friend, the other side, is also subjected? Could it be that one side will absorb the light of the sun and the other side will be radiating with an ‘artificial sun’?! Could it be that one side would bleed and the other side has some undefinable liquid? As we said: there is not one face but two sides of the face, and even the face of Israel consists of two sides … but not of two authorities.

In essence the accepted Zionist monism is nothing but an imagined monism … In the accepted view lies the concept of one-sidedness … and in our conception of partnership we advance into a new level of unity in the question of Israel, the unity of the face of the People of Israel and its fate.”

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human completeness unless all those portions of Jewry that desire Jewish life participate in its creation. (And here too one may see how great is the danger of “Negation of the Diaspora” – that negates Jewish existence and creativity in the Diaspora, thereby seeing fault in our Jewish renaissance, cutting it in half  – but here is not the place to |16| elaborate on this question.)10 If the revival of Jewry is a joint enterprise, then one must place the methods of our cultural enterprise under the scepter of criticism in order to establish it in its new place. In any case, we must forego the monopoly of the solution of the Land of Israel. We say: The question of spiritual Judaism in the Diaspora must be resolved within the life of the Diaspora itself, and through creative partnership of the Diaspora in the creativity of the Land of Israel. In the Land of Israel itself, there are some people who have begun to recognize this. However, in the Diaspora there is still a great deal of sancta simplicitas, and not every “holy simplicity” is truly holy, fructifying life and thought.

Diaspora Jewry does not merely receive, is not only influenced; it must also give, must also be a partner – not a lessee, not a sharecropper, not a day laborer, not an expeditor, not a group living on charity – but a partner.11 And as we have already said elsewhere: Until now we have

10 See my article “Leshem ḥiddush sifrutenu”: “Now it became clear even to the radical negators of the Diaspora that just as the Diaspora needs the Land of Israel, so does the Land of Israel needs the Diaspora (and I do not mean ‘fundraising’

and the like). Without a living and creative Diaspora Jewry, the Land of Israel will not be developed and will not be able to achieve the task placed upon it by history. Therefore, I say: All who negate the Diaspora – negate Diaspora Jewry, and eventually will negate even the Land of Israel! The negation of the Diaspora or its affirmation? No, the negation of Jewry or its affirmation! That is the question.”

I am going to devote another article to the ideas of the negators of the Diaspora elsewhere.

11 See my article “Leshem ḥiddush sifrutenu”: “The Diasporas do not live unless they create, and we have a double and multiple duty to nurture the creative power of this Jewry, if we want it to be connected also to the Land of Israel. To the extent that the creative power of the Diaspora will decline, so will the creativity in the Land. Do you want to turn Diaspora Jewry into a kind of import–export company?

In other words – to make it on the one hand a company for sending money and people to the Land of Israel and on the other hand a company for receiving assets and spiritual values from the Land of Israel? All who view Diaspora Jewry only as such a company and ignore the necessity for creativity that is implanted in any living being – undermine the existence of Jewry in the Diaspora, as well as the