A really entirely satisfying answer to the Jewish question will never be found in the countries of the world in which Jews for the time being must live. However good our surroundings may be yet we are living in the Galuth. The fight for the genuine equal status of the Jew begins only when all Jews as Jews demand such equal status. A demand of the time is that Jews trust themselves to the Jewish national ideal. Zionism is creating a new backbone for the Jewish people.
These declarations were made by Kurt Blumenfeld, President of the Zionist Federation of Germany at a recent convention in a discussion of “The Zionist Task in Germany Today” according to a report in the “Rundschau” which has reached this country.
Zionism, says Dr. Blumenfeld, is convinced that the Jews can show their value only in their quality as Jews.
Zionism had to destroy the idea that the Jews have neither the right nor the task to modify the character of Germanism. Therefore we are prepared to respect the peculiarity of the German kind. But, we demand also respect for our special kind and condemn any discrimination, he said.
Therefore though there are absolutely no reasons for the establishment of minority rights — on the contrary, this idea is rejected now as it was at the 15th meeting in 1918, — yet, Jewish schools are nevertheless necessary, as only in such schools can the real Jewish development be furthered and Jews be brought up in such an atmosphere that they will not so easily succumb to non-Jewish influences. The more Jewish life can be developed in freedom, the higher the safety of a dignified relationship between Jews and non-Jews. It is even the only safety.
“Zionism,” he stated, “endeavors to give Jews a new orientation about Jewish matters. It admits that the German Jews participate to a very high degree in German culture, but it declines to boast about this, and certainly to conjure our dead of the World War to be our advocates before an inimical world. Zionism regards it as unimportant to what extent the Jewish soul is mixed with German kind and it believes that the overemphasis of the non-Jewish elements has led to the error that one can become part of his surroundings. Assimilation of the Jews as a whole has failed. It makes no practical difference whather one group of Jews avers that we are a ‘little different’ (that we are not a people but a group having the same fate) etc., or whether another group declares simply that we are ‘different’. The return to the self-conscious Jewishness must be effected, and out task is to show that only this can bring happiness. It is a demand of the time that the Jews trust themselves to the national Jewish ideal.
“But never should we succumb to words lying in every Nationalism, also in the Jewish. Only the fact of realization can finally help the idea. The goal and fact is Palestine, though for the time being, a considerably large number of Jews has to live in the states outside. Our antagonist is no longer assimilation, but communism.
“Only Zionism will safeguard us from dissillusonments, only Zionism can direct
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
