Jews Are Aliens Outside Palestine Says Bialik at Welcome Reception in London: at Home Only in Palest

Jews feel alien outside Palestine, Mr. Ch. N. Bialik, the Hebrew poet Laureate said, speaking last night at a reception given in his honour at the Kingsway Hall, presided over by the Rev. J. K. Goldbloom, Chairman of the Executive of the English Zionist Federation. The treasures which Jews build up in the countries of the Diaspora, he said, are constantly passing out of Jewish hands. Often, as in Spain, at the time of the expulsion, they have to go and leave all they have accumulated behind. And even in other ways Jewish treasure is constantly passing out of Jewish hands. In Germany through intermarriage 11 milliards of Jewish money had passed to non-Jews. That was the Jewish indemnity paid to Germany. It was worth recalling, he thought, that the indemnity which France had paid to Germany after the war of 1870 had amounted only to five milliards. The same thing was happening in Jewish life in Russia, in America, and elsewhere, too. Nothing stable could be built up by Jews in the Diaspora. They were not creating for themselves, but for others. What Jews achieved in various fields of activity was not accounted to Jews, but to the people of the country in which they lived. In the Diaspora, also, the Jew came into a foreign heritage. He continued work that had been started by others. He was not creating anything that was distinctively Jewish. The Jewish people must cease to be a more imitator aping the ways and the civilisation of other peoples.

In Palestine, Bialik went on, the Jew, while pursuing his own private avocation, felt that he was pursuing at the same time the common Jewish good. The Jew in Ecetz Israel had the feeling which he had never had before, that what was being created there was for the common Jewish good. It was not as in the Diaspora, where there was a clear line of demarcation between the private good and the national good. It was that spirit that made the heart glad when one passed Jewish workmen building a new house in Palestine. You right pass thousands of houses being built in the Diaspora, he said, and it was of no moment, but in Palestine it was a joy to feel that another vacant stretch of land was being built over – for the benefit of the community at large.

Another reason for joy and pride in the work in Palestine, Bialik said, was that only in Palestine did one get the feeling that the permanence of Jewish possessions and Jewish treasures was being safeguarded. It put an end to the process of the last 2,000 years of Jewish history, during which there had been that constant transition of Jewish treasures from Jews to non-Jews. Palestine was changing all that. The expression of Jewish life was being given permanence there. The Jew in Palestine felt that he was engaged in work that was deeply spiritual and creative. In the work of the Jew in Palestine, and in the work of Jewish culture there, he said, he included the shoemaker, the builder, and the artisan together with the artist and the poet. All were builders in Zion. It was only a pity that the upbuilding of Palestine was thought by some to be a matter of contributing to Palestine funds, or buying a shekel. The true Zionist, he said, is the man who lives in Palestine and gives his all, who gives himself to Palestine.