zutot 14 (2017) 99-111 ZUTOT: Perspectives on Jewish Culture brill.com/zuto brill.com/zuto

‘It Brings Generation to Generation:’ An Introduction and Annotated Translation of Ben- Mossinson’s ‘Land and Language in the Evolution of ’

Judah M. Bernstein New York University

Abstract

In 1916, Hebrew educator and Zionist official Ben-Zion Mossinson embarked on a mul- tiyear stay in America following his expulsion from Ottoman Palestine. He joined forces there with other prominent Eastern European and Palestinian Zionist envoys – Shemaryahu Levin, Menachem Sheinkin, and Baer Epshtein, to name a few – all of whom worked as itinerant propagandists, crisscrossing the country in search of potential donors and new recruits. While in America, Mossinson published his brief reflections on the and the essence of Jewish culture, ‘Land and Language in the Evolution of Zionism,’ and delivered speeches based on this ­article. ‘Land and Language,’ translated below from the original Yiddish, sheds light on the contours of Zionism in America during the war.

Keywords

Zionism – American Jewish history – ethnic nationalism – immigration and diaspora

Ben Zion Mossinson was born in Andreyevka, Yekaterinoslav Province, in the Russian Empire in 1878. He received a thorough yeshiva education, and like many of his Jewish male and female peers in fin de siècle Russia, pursued aca- demic studies in Central Europe. In 1906, he earned a doctorate in philosophy

* I would like to thank Gennady Estraikh for his kind help translating and interpreting Mossinson’s article. I also wish to thank Joshua Teplitsky for his generous guidance.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/18750214-12141Downloaded069 from Brill.com10/04/2021 03:35:25PM via free access 100 Bernstein in Berne, Switzerland.1 As an adolescent he joined the Hibbat Zion move- ment, attended Zionist Congresses, and worked as a matif tziyoni, or a Zionist preacher, traveling throughout the Pale of Settlement in the service of Zionism. He moved to Palestine in 1907, becoming rector of Herziliyah, the Hebrew- speaking Zionist gymnasium in Jaffa. In 1912 Mossinson visited the United States for the first time to raise money for the gymnasium, giving speeches in New York City, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and elsewhere.2 Following his expulsion from Palestine in 1916, Mossinson spent another three years in North America, roving the continent to raise funds for Zionist causes. He arrived at a critical moment. Where the war had decimated Zionist operations in Europe, American Zionists under the leadership of attorney Louis Brandeis had garnered unprecedented support for the movement in the United States. During these years membership tallies grew, massive annual donations to Palestine-related causes were raised, and the movement won the backing of important cultural, political, and financial elites. In 1916, Brandeis was appointed to the United States Supreme Court, but he continued to over- see Zionist affairs. His allies, such as the federal judge Julian Mack, the Harvard law professor Felix Frankfurter, and the Reform rabbi Stephen Wise, managed day-to-day operations until the summer of 1921.3 Scholars who have sought to explain the movement’s growth during and immediately following the war have focused mostly on the activities and contributions of Brandeis and his associates, and have typically overlooked the influence of foreigners like Mossinson. Yet, the schedules of Mossinson’s speaking tours in America give the impression that Mossinson was more instrumental in spreading Zionist propaganda than most. Between November 1916 and March 1917, for example, Mossinson visited Jews in cities and towns in Washington, Oregon, California, Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, as well as locations in Canada. Upon his departure from the United States for Palestine in April 1919, Jewish newspapers estimated that over the course of his 39 month stay Mossinson had passed through 138 cities and towns, some as many as ten times. He delivered a staggering 638 lectures in total – 177 in 1916, 161 in 1917,

1 For details on Mossinson’s life, see the DYF editorial, ‘Dr. Ben Zion Mossinson’ (in Yiddish) April 25, 1919, as well as a second article about him published in the same issue. See also the entry on Mossinson in Encyclopedia for the Pioneers and Builders of the New (in Hebrew) (Vol. 2, 645). Retrieved from http://www.tidhar.tourolib.org/tidhar/view/2/645. 2 For a report on a speech Mossinson delivered at Cooper Union in New York in 1912, see The New York Times, ‘Palestine to Solve Jewish Problem,’ January 23, 1912. 3 For Zionism in America during the war and under Brandeis, see M.I. Urofsky, American Zionism from Herzl to (New York 1976) 133–150.

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224 in 1918, and 76 in the first four months of 1919. The press also credited him with raising half a million dollars for Zionist causes, making Mossinson one of the most productive propagandists of the war years.4 Observers agreed that Mossinson cut a magnetic presence on the dais. They praised his mellifluous voice, the ‘smoothness’ of his oratory, and the ‘imag- ery of [his] language,’ and marveled at the simplicity and accessibility of his speeches.5 His article ‘Land and Language’ suggests, however, that the content of Mossinson’s speeches were just as important as his speaking style.6 While the article may appear at first glance to be a generic statement of Zionist prin- ciples, when situated in an American context it becomes a commentary on the leadership of American Zionism as well as an appeal to its primarily immi- grant-based rank and file. In ‘Land and Language,’ Mossinson offered a ver- sion of Zionism that on one hand departed from the philanthropic-oriented Zionism articulated by more prominent figures of the movement during World War I, and, on the other, spoke to the cultural traumas of the immigrant experi- ence.7 Analyzing this piece, a version of speeches he often delivered, will thus provide insight into the variants of American Zionism during the war.

4 For totals, see DYF, ‘Dr. Ben Zion Mossinson’ (in Yiddish), April 25, 1919; Jewish Exponent, ‘Dr. Mossinsohn Leaves for Palestine,’ February 5, 1919. 5 Chicago Sentinel, ‘When Jews Get Together,’ February 10, 1916; Yidishe Velt, ‘Giant Crowd Hears Dr. Mossinson in Anshei Emes Synagogue’ (in Yiddish), September 8, 1916. 6 See Dos Yidishe Folk (henceforth DYF), September 14, 1917, for the original, and Maccabean, ‘Palestine and Hebrew in Zionism,’ October 1917, for Lotta Levensohn’s English translation. I translated Mossinson’s Yiddish original independently in order to verify Levensohn’s ver- sion, which I found to be, on the whole, a faithful rendering of Mossinson’s article. I pres- ent Levensohn’s translation below, along with my own emendations, suggestions of more accurate translations, and explanatory footnotes that shed light on Mossinson’s original piece. An article of Mossinson’s discussing themes similar to those in ‘Land and Language’ can be found in Jewish Advocate, ‘Palestine in Jewish Life,’ September 20, 1917. For a speech of Mossinson’s on the same topic, see, for instance, Yidishe Velt, ‘Dr. Mossinson’s Hebrew Lecture Thrills Audience’ (in Yiddish), September 30, 1916. 7 It is worth noting, however, that Mossinson also possessed great cachet among other sec- tors of American Jewry, specifically some Jews of Central European descent born in America or arriving long before the war, and second generation immigrants, or those who either migrated to America at a young age or were born in the United States to immigrant parents. This was at least in part because Mossinson proved articulate not just in Yiddish but also in German and English. In any case, understanding why these other Jews embraced Mossinson requires further analysis that cannot be presented here. I attempt to explain this phenom- enon in chapter 3 of my dissertation, ‘Birthland or Fatherland’: A New History of American Zionism, 1897–1929 (New York University 2017).

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‘Land and Language’ heralded the extinction of what Mossinson called the ‘philanthropic Zionist,’ or the Zionist who supports the construction of a refuge for the Jewish oppressed but feels no commitment or attachment to the land of Palestine and the revival of Hebrew. In so doing, Mossinson advanced an oblique criticism of the reigning figures of the Zionist movement in America at that time. When Mossinson wrote of Zionists who ‘emphasize their loyalty to their native countries, [and speak] not for themselves, but for their poor breth- ren “in the East,” ’ one detects a veiled admonishment of what he felt was the leadership’s inadequate interest in the Zionist cultural project. Such reputable, native-born Zionist doyens as Brandeis and Mack offered a version of Zionism in which the role of the American Jew was to support from afar the building of a refuge for oppressed Jews elsewhere. This refuge, Brandies and Mack pre- dicted, would ultimately evolve into an America in miniature in the Middle East, a progressive Jewish home in Palestine.8 Their Zionism did not encom- pass Mossinson’s almost mystical connection to the land or his firm commit- ment to fostering a Hebraic cultural renaissance there and in the diaspora. At the same time, Mossinson appealed to Eastern European immigrants and their children, a substantial portion of the movement’s rank and file. ‘Land and Language’ depicted the Jews as a people without a vernacular and lack- ing a land, bereft of a shared history and a usable past. Such an argument was meant to resonate with Jews of Eastern European extraction who had endured the alienating effects of the immigration experience, they knowing person- ally what it meant to lack a homeland and a language of their own. For many Jewish immigrants, the places from which they had departed, small towns and cities in the Pale of Settlement, were ruled by a draconian Czarist regime they despised. It could never constitute a glorified fatherland as it did for millions of Polish, Lithuanian, and other immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe who had come to America during the same decades as Jews and looked back at their places of departure as homelands. Moreover, the traditional Jewishness

8 On that synthesis specifically as it relates to Brandeis, see Urofsky, American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust, 118 and 150. On Mack and others, and on the American Zionist elite’s tepid attitude regarding cultural renaissance, see Y. Shapiro, Leadership of the American Zionist Organization, 1897–1930 (Urbana, IL 1971) 71–75. For other research on the ways American Jews utilized Zionism to espouse their loyalty to America, and to craft a synthe- sis of Americanism and Zionism, see B. Halpern, ‘The Americanization of Zionism, 1880– 1930,’ American Jewish History 69–1 (1979) 15–33; O. Schiff, ‘The Integrative Function of Early American Zionism., The Journal of Israeli History 15–1 (1994) 1–16; Z. Segev, ‘European Zionism in the United States: The Americanization of Herzl’s Doctrine by American Zionist Leaders – Case Studies,’ Modern Judaism 26–3 (October 2006) 274–291.

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9 On the difficulties of institutionalizing traditional Judaism in immigrant New York, see J.S. Gurock, Orthodox Jews in America (Bloomington, IN 2009) ch. 3. 10 Ewa Morawska made a similar argument to explain the appeals of ethnic nationalism to Slavic immigrants in America, but balked at applying her argument to America’s Jews. Morawska felt that American Zionism differed in that it had a ‘resolutely apolitical and nonideological, cultural-philanthropic orientation.’ See Morawska, ‘Changing Images of the Old Country in the Development of Ethnic Identity among East European Immigrants, 1880s–1930s: A Comparison of Jewish and Slavic Representations,’ YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science (1993) 297. The content of Mossinson’s speeches, and his article below, indi- cate that the same search for an idealized fatherland present among Slavic nationalists in America was in evidence among Zionists in America at that time. 11 In other speeches and articles Mossinson advanced a related claim, insisting that only Zionism could ensure the survival of the shtetl heritage that immigrants had supposedly lost after they had left Eastern Europe. See, for example, Yidishe Velt, ‘Giant Crowd’ (in Yiddish), September 8, 1916, and Jewish Advocate, ‘Palestine in Jewish Life,’ September 20, 1917.

zutot 14 (2017) 99-111 Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 03:35:25PM via free access 104 Bernstein and effectively as did Mossinson, Shemaryahu Levin, often spoke about the ruptures of immigration. Because they had left behind the robust Jewish life of the old world, Jews in America, Levin often asserted, had become unmoored, lacking in any connection to their history and culture, and only Zionism could heal the breach.12 Notwithstanding their trenchant critique of Jewish life in America, men like Mossinson and Levin were wildly popular orators among Yiddish- and even non-Yiddish-speaking audiences.13 ‘Land and Language’ suggests, then, that in order to understand Zionism in America in the early 20th century, it is crucial to examine the popular figures who purveyed Zionism far and wide, as well as the contents of their speeches. Doing so will reveal that whereas many Zionists indeed deployed their nation- alism in the service of displaying their devotion to America, others embraced Zionism as a way to ameliorate the ruptures of immigration and the challenges of acculturation. It will also indicate that what may have appealed to American Jews of the immigrant generation was not necessarily Zionism’s promise to produce a new Jew in a faraway land, but rather to preserve and reinforce the historical and cultural bonds that had allegedly linked Jews across space and time. Figures like Mossinson thus signal the diversity and appeal of Zionism in America during these years, and demand further research. …

12 See, for example, DYF, ‘The War and the Jewish Question’ (in Yiddish), September 18, 1914; Jewish Advocate, ‘Connecticut Edition,’ December 18, 1914; and Oyf Der Voch, ‘Hebrew Cultural Work in America’ (in Yiddish), June 14, 1918. Mossinson quoted Levin in ‘Land and Language.’ See this translation, second-to-last paragraph. 13 Besides for the massive audiences they drew at speaking engagements, covered exten- sively in the Jewish press, a number of other sources reveal Levin’s and Mossinson’s popu- larity among ordinary Jews. A few examples: Maccabean, January 1917, reported on the Haverhill, MA, Zionist society’s intention to host a booth at the upcoming bazar which would sell, among other things, an autographed copy of one of Levin’s books and an autographed picture of Mossinson; the memoir of Menachem Frieden, in which Frieden recalled personally appealing to Mossinson and Levin upon deciding that he wished to migrate from America to Palestine, A Jewish Life on Three Continents: The Memoir of Menachem Mendel Frieden (Stanford, CA 2013) 271 and 278; and M. Weisgal’s memoir, in which Weisgal remembered the impression he made on his soon to be in-laws when he had his close friend Levin escort him down the aisle at his wedding: ‘[F]or my in-laws (…) the presence of such a celebrity was world-shaking. Our friendship [i.e. Weisgal’s and Levin’s] was regarded by them as the outstanding achievement of my life, so far my only one.’ M. Weisgal, … So Far; an Autobiography (New York 1972) 63.

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Land and Language in the Evolution of Zionism14 Dos Yiddishe Folk, September 14, 1917; Maccabean, October 1917

By: Dr. Ben-Zion Mossinson Original translation by: Lotta Levensohn15

In the twenty years that have passed since the , the move- ment has grown and matured. Zionism has spread from a handful of individu- als until it has become one of the most important factors of Jewish life; and it has achieved recognition from the outer world to such a degree that when the Great Powers of the world came to consider a broad solution of the Jewish ques- tion, they turned to the Zionist organization.16 But Zionism has done much more than that, for it has grown and matured inwardly as well, as can best be seen by the prominent place of the Jewish Land and the Jewish Language in the course of the twenty years of the official existence of the movement. In the early beginnings, neither the Land nor the Language played an impor- tant role in the Zionist philosophy or the Zionist organization. When I speak of the Zionist organization, I do not refer to the group that came from the old ranks of the Chovevei Zion with their definitive attitude towards the Land and their problems of Hebrew culture. 17 I mean the new Zionist elements and the Zionism of the Congresses. Palestine18 was discussed and concessions were made to the Hebrew language, but, in a sense, both were abstract concepts – anemic and lifeless.19 Practical work in Palestine was a concession to the

14 The title Levensohn offered, ‘Palestine and Hebrew in Zionism,’ is inexact. 15 An intellectual, founder of the American women’s Zionist organization, Hadassah, and an American migrant to Palestine, Levensohn is a fascinating figure in her own right and deserves a separate study. For a brief biographical sketch, see E.L. Goldstein, ‘Lotta Levensohn,’ Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia (1 March 2009), http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/levensohn-lotta. 16 As the article was written before the issuance of the , it is not clear what Mossinson had in mind here. 17 The Hovevei Zion, or Hibbat Zion, were a small group of rabbis, intellectuals, and phi- lanthropists who organized and funded the piecemeal colonization of Palestine between 1884 and World War I. The movement had chapters throughout Europe, and even boasted a few beyond Europe, but the majority of its activity occurred within the Russian Empire. Mossinson engaged in much propaganda work for the Hovevei Zion in the first decade of the 20th century. 18 Mossinson always referred to the land as ‘Eretz Yisrael,’ never ‘Palestine.’ 19 With the convening of the First Zionist Congress in 1897, the Hovevei Zion’s fledgling colonization projects were overshadowed by Theodor Herzl’s ‘political Zionism,’ or

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Chovevei Zion, whom congress delegates did not desire to estrange. The extent to which Palestine was not an essential factor in the Zionism of that time is evidenced by the facility with which, after six Congresses, a large number of the organized Zionists were able to exchange the idea of the land for a land.20 And the Language! That was a beautiful dream, a concession to the cultural Zionists – or, as it used to be privately phrased – to the ‘group of idlers.’21 In fact, no one took it seriously.22 Very different is the view taken now, both in the conception of Zionism and in the Zionist organization. The Land has been woven in the Zionist fabric, and Palestine has already become the Jewish centre – for creative Zionist activ- ity, at the very least. These last difficult years have demonstrated clearly that every achievement in Palestine is precious to the hearts of Zionists. The orga- nization has realized, without reservations, that the achievements in Palestine furnish the best possible basis for political negotiations affecting the future of the Jewish people. What sacrifices have not been made to uphold the Zionist positions in Palestine! Palestine as a concept and as a practical factor has stamped itself deeply on the Zionist organization and its imprint on wider Jewish circles is hardly less strong. The Language, too, has become an objective fact. The reports of the Zionist conferences in Russia – and in America, too – teem with proof of the impor- tance of Hebrew in Zionism. This is not the case, as many seem to believe, because practical Zionism triumphed over political Zionism at the Tenth

Herzl’s attempts to coax a Great Power into providing the Zionists with a charter to legal- ize Jewish colonization of Palestine. Many Zionists who had at one time affiliated with Hovevei Zion heaped criticism on Herzl and the other political Zionists for their oppo- sition to piecemeal colonization and their lack of interest in fostering Zionist-Hebrew culture. 20 Mossinson alluded to the Uganda proposal. The Sixth Zionist Congress in 1903 debated a fleeting offer from Britain for Jews to colonize a portion of East Africa. The proposal rent the movement into two factions: ‘territorialists,’ or those delegates who sought a refuge for persecuted Jews, whether it be in Palestine or somewhere else, and ‘Zionists for Zion,’ or those who refused to accept any replacement for Palestine. 21 Mossinson used the Hebrew ‘hevra batlanim’ here. Levensohn’s translation retained the Hebrew in transliterated form. Cultural Zionists hoped to establish a cultural center in Palestine that would catalyze the revival of Hebrew and regenerate Jewish culture in the diaspora. Though at the time cultural Zionists, most notably Ahad Ha’ʾam, were fiercely critical of the ‘practical’ Zionist school, or those who supported small-scale colonization of Palestine even in the absence of a charter, by the war years they were often conflated, as Mossinson did in this article. 22 This line is left out in the original translation.

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Congress.23 The real reason is much deeper, and constitutes the motif of the development of Zionism over a span of twenty years: It is the triumph of the idea of Zionism as the Jewish Renaissance over the philanthropic Zionism of the early congresses. Zionism and philanthropy – no logical extremes could lie farther apart. Philanthropy is elicited by suffering in the present.24 It affects the giver as well as the recipient. The giver entertains a self-complacent satisfaction at his own goodness: he is now free to go on his own way and live his own life.25 The recipient, on the other hand, reacts with a certain humility and submissive- ness. He must accept unquestioningly whatever is given, and the manner of giving. Zionism, as an idea, strives to nullify this relationship between giver and recipient. Self-emancipation, self-expression, those are the actual aims of Zionism. Zionism and Philanthropy are antithetical, and yet – Zionism was philanthropic in its early years. How often did one hear prominent Zionists, in the intimacy of social discus- sions, emphasize their loyalty to their native countries. They spoke, it seems, not for themselves, but for their poor brethren ‘in the East.’ The Russian and Roumanian Jews were the excuse for Zionism. Thus the status of giver and recipient, with its attendant psychological consequences, was created in the Zionist organization. It logically followed that the Land and the Language could play no important part in a Zionism that was mainly philanthropic. The policy of grab26 was the farthest reach of the philosophy expressed by Zangwill at the Sixth Zionist Congress in the name of the philanthropic group

23 At the Tenth Zionist Congress in 1911 Herzl’s successor to the presidency of the Zionist Organization, David Wolfsohn, was replaced by Otto Warburg. Warburg was a Zionist of the ‘practical’ school, or someone who supported small-scale colonization of Palestine even in the absence of a charter. Figures like Mossinson also viewed the Tenth Congress as the moment where the movement became more invested in cultural pursuits like the founding of a university in Jerusalem, a gymnasium in Haifa, and the promotion of Hebrew language and literature. 24 Levensohn’s translation of the Hebrew word ‘rahmanut’ was inexact. Better would be: ‘Philanthropy is rooted in pity, and this feeling of pity influences the giver as much as the recipient.’ 25 Levensohn elided a few sentences here. Better would be: ‘Through the giving of charity, the giver liberates himself from his pity-impulse, and now he can go on his way and live his life as he pleases. This liberation stems in large part from a sense of satiety, from a “my heart rejoices” kind of feeling.’ ‘My heart rejoices’ is a Hebrew expression that appears in Talmud Bavli, Bava Metzia 83b. 26 Mossinson used the Hebrew expression ‘le-ʾolam tikakh.’ An alternative translation could be: ‘Always take the offer!’ Cf. Y.H. Brenner’s usage in the novella, ‘Two Lists’ (in Hebrew), Ahiasaf (Warsaw 1903) 107.

zutot 14 (2017) 99-111 Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 03:35:25PM via free access 108 Bernstein when the Uganda question came up.27 And, supplementing that, another prominent English Zionist said bitterly, ‘Those Russian Jews! I do not under- stand them. It is Chutzpah [probably the only Hebrew word in the gentleman’s vocabulary]. They are given a land. What right have they to choose?’28 That was the clearest exposition of the philanthropic attitude. Philanthropy knows only the present. It cannot envisage yesterday or tomorrow, and therefore neither the Land nor the Language can have a place in its scheme of things. Whatever is given away is good – any land and any language. Beggars may not be choosers. Only as the idea of the Jewish Renaissance permeated Zionism did Palestine and Hebrew begin to come into their own. The Uganda question had an important bearing on these factors. The rigidly philanthropic Zionists who pitied ‘our unfortunate brethren in the East’ left the movement, and strayed from the national idea into the desert wastes29 where they sought a territory for their poor brethren. Those who remained became convinced that they must be Zionists for their own sakes,30 for their own souls’ salvation.31 And

27 Renowned English belletrist Israel Zangwill was one of the leading proponents of the Uganda offer. When the Sixth Zionist Congress ultimately voted against it, Zangwill left the Zionist movement to found the Jewish Territorialist Organization (ITO) with the goal of finding a refuge for Jews, whether in the Middle East or some other location around the world. 28 A better translation would be: ‘What right have they to make demands?’ It is not clear whom Mossinson quotes here. The quote made reference to the oppositionist forces in the Zionist Congress, the so-called ‘Zionists for Zion,’ who voted against the Uganda plan, hence their ‘great chutzpah.’ The majority, though by no means all, of the oppositionists hailed from the Russian Empire. 29 A more literal translation would be: ‘deserted fields and empty forests.’ The original Yiddish idiom, ‘visteh felder un pusteh velder,’ is alliterative. 30 The phrase ‘Zionism for its own sake’ or ‘Zionists for Zionism alone’ was common among Mossinson’s cohort of Eastern European Zionist propagandists in America. See, for instance, Menachem Sheinkin’s article in DYF, ‘Zionism for its Own Sake’ (in Yiddish), May 11, 1917. The phrase is most likely a Yiddish rendering of Sinn Fein (Gaelic, mean- ing: for ourselves), the group of Irish nationalists that made headlines around the world when they organized a failed uprising against Britain in April 1916 known as the Easter Rising. For an explicit linking of Mossinson’s language and the Irish nationalist group, see A. Goldberg, ‘Irish Freedom and Zionism’ (in Yiddish), Morgen Zhurnal, December 14, 1921, who mused about Zionists in America during the war, ‘Though our methods were not the same as the Sinn Fein, our goals were unmistakably “Sinn Fein” – it had to be for itself alone.’ For more on the connection between Zionism and Irish nationalism in America in the early 20th century, see my ‘“The Two Finest Nations in the Word”: American Zionists and Irish Nationalism, 1897–1922,’ Journal of American Ethnic History 36–3 (Spring 2017) 5–37. 31 Mossinson employed the kabalistic concept here of tikun neshamah.

Downloadedzutot from Brill.com10/04/202114 (2017) 99-111 03:35:25PM via free access MOSSINSON’S ‘LAND & LANGUAGE IN THE EVOLUTION OF ZIONISM’ 109 being personally concerned, they discriminated in their Zionism. It became for them the movement of the Renaissance, which naturally involved the Land and the Language. What is a land in the life of a people? It is the history of that people, concise, concentrated, intensive.32 Tens of volumes of written history cannot vie with standing on the soil that produced that same history. It is as if all the genera- tions that sprang from that soil passed before the vision of the beholder, as if the inheritance that all those generations left in the blood and nerves of the their descendants were quickened into new life. The land brings generation to generation. It is a vital history. The soil tells the tale of the generations whose sweat transformed the wilderness into a Paradise.33 The historic landmarks speak loudly and distinctly, though without words, of the blood that was shed for the land, of victory and defeat, of joys and sorrows. And the hills and the valley, the rivers and the lakes, all the panorama of the Land, weave themselves into the national ideals of beauty, and become a part of the spiritual life of the generations. The Land is the spinal cord, and the generations the vertebrae. The lands holds them together straight and strong.34 And the language. The language is not a mere sheaf of words, to be easily substituted by the words of another tongue, or translated. He who possesses such a language is poor indeed in the treasures of the spirit. A word in a lan- guage is a dynamo-technical symbol, embodying whole series of ideas, emo- tions, experiences, shadings, nuances. As the word passed down the file to the generations, each modified its meaning, added to it, polished it, enriched it, and finally passed it on as an inheritance to the later generations. All of that cannot be translated, it can only be lived. When the words of such a language are spoken, with all their inherited richness, the depths of our natures are stirred, the finest fibres of our souls vibrate to their resonance. We become one with our people, one with our own generation, a link in the long chain of generations that have gone before and are to come after. The inner meaning of a land and a language are instinctively clear to every child of a normally constituted people, though he may be unable to formulate it consciously. If it be unconscious, it is all the deeper. With us it is somewhat

32 Perhaps a better translation would be: ‘It is a patched-together and concise, but also deeply influential history of a people.’ 33 Mossinson employed the religiously laden Hebrew term gan eden here. 34 A more literal translation would be: ‘The land is the white streak in the spinal cord, it is the vertebrae, and the many generations are held together equally and proudly like the many bones in the back.’ The Yiddish idiom Mossinson used, ‘der vaiser pam fun dem rumen-markh,’ or as I have rendered it, ‘the white streak in the spinal cord,’ is an obscure anatomical reference that I had difficulty translating.

zutot 14 (2017) 99-111 Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 03:35:25PM via free access 110 Bernstein different. Our physical contact with our Land lay in the remote past. Our Language was only half alive, – used only in the synagogue and in solemn cere- monial moments of our lives. Our back had become bent, our creative faculties numbed. But the connecting links with the Land and the Language were not altogether severed.35 Psychologically, in our memories and in our hopes, we have carried Palestine with us. We have forgotten the Hebrew Language, but not denied it. Besides its use in the synagogue and the Cheder, it still formed a bond between Jews speaking various so-called Jewish languages. Ashkenazim and Sephardim, Bokharans and Persians, even the black Abyssinian Falashas, found the key to their souls in the few Hebrew words they still knew. As Zionism has developed into the movement of the Renaissance, yesterday and to-day have been linked up in preparation of the morrow. Therefore we must return to the Land of yesterday and the Language of yesterday. This logical necessity has brought Palestine and Hebrew into the forefront of Zionist striving. A stream of new blood has been infused into the Zionist movement and into Jewry in general by the simple fact that a tiny fraction of the Jewish people has resumed contact with the national soil, and has, with perfect naturalness, revived the national language tongue. The liberation of the Russian Jews has had a vital significance for the devel- opment of Zionism.36 It is not only that the sword of Damocles is no longer suspended over the heads of the millions of Russian Jewry, that they will now be able to consider their own problems and work unhindered for their won future. It is not only, as Dr. Schmarya Lewin has so beautifully put it, that ‘The Moses who has come to the Russian people must awaken the yearning for the Messiah in the Jewish people, for what is the Jew but the protagonist of the Messianic ideal.’37 Much more than that is involved. The Russian Revolution has freed the Jews of Russia, and its hoped-for corollary is that neighboring countries, like Roumania and even Poland, may initiate a new policy towards

35 Levensohn elided the line: ‘Our spinal cord has been ailing but has not been severed.’ 36 The Jews of Russia were emancipated following the February Revolution of 1917. Mossinson was writing before the October Revolution of 1917. 37 Shemaryahu Levin was a member of the Inner Actions Committee of the Zionist Organization during World War I. Marooned in the United States for the duration of the war, he established there the Provisional Emergency Committee of General Zionist Affairs, which was led by Louis Brandeis between 1914 and 1916. Levin proved to be an accomplished propagandist and effective fundraiser, traveling across America many times in the service of Zionism. Mossinson, in fact, came to the United States upon Levin’s urg- ing that the American Zionist leadership invite him. See Selected Letters of Shemaryahu Levin (in Hebrew) (Tel-Aviv 1966). For aspects of Levin’s biography prior to the war, see his memoir, Exile and Revolt: Shemaryahu Levin’s Memoir (in Hebrew) (Tel-Aviv 1967).

Downloadedzutot from Brill.com10/04/202114 (2017) 99-111 03:35:25PM via free access MOSSINSON’S ‘LAND & LANGUAGE IN THE EVOLUTION OF ZIONISM’ 111 the Jews. Then the problem of ‘our poor brethren in the East’ will be no more, and the death-knell will have sounded for the last relics of philanthropy in Zionism. There will be no more objects of compassion. Zionism is a movement for self-regeneration. He who wills to be a Zionist must will it for its own sake, for the longed for rejuvenation of his Land and his Language. Zionism has grown. It gained ground in its twenty years of life in all circles of Jewry. Yet far more important than the spread of the organization has been the quiet evolution from philanthropy to the spiritual-national renaissance.

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