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IDEALS OF JEWISH RACE

THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT. “The Ideals and Aspirations of the Jewish Race” was the subject of a thoughtful address given before the members of the Huddersfield Rotary Club by Dr. J. H. Kahn. As reported in the Huddersfield Examiner, Dr. Khan said that modern European civilisation had been built up on the foundations of three distinct cultures—the Roman, the Greek and the Jewish. For their conceptions of beauty, and even for the beginnings of scientific knowledge, they must turn to the Greeks for the original inspiration. Architecture owed nothing to Jewish influences, and among the Jews sculpture was frowned upon as akin to idolatry. For models of political institutions, Imperial organisation, and military campaigns the palm must be given to the Romans. PROPHET MORE POPULAR THAN THE SOLDIER.

The supreme idea that emerged from the Jewish civilisation was the conception of monotheism and the idea of social justice. There were occasional military victories; there was a period of comparative Imperial splendour under Solomon; but the national character reached its greatest heights in defeat. The national figure was the prophet, and not the soldier. Among names for the children Samuel was more popular than Saul. The prophets were nation-builders, but they had none of the mere romantic patriotism of “my country right or wrong” type. They were intelligently passionate; they were incapable of moral compromise. Through the prophets the national energies turned towards the discovery of fundamental truths about the universe, and the embodiment in actual life of fundamental principles based upon those truths. The surrounding nations, with idols as their gods, associated their religion with the local dispensation of justice. In contrast rath this the Jews developed a standard of universal justice, ideals of social purity, and a more systematic and generous attitude to other races. At the destruction of the Temple by the Romans, Jews, who appreciated the value of precious things, left the golden ornaments to their fate and saved the Bible. A NATION BY FORCE OF THE SPIRIT. Speaking of the oppression, persecution, and massacre to which Jews had been subject since their dispersion, Di. Kahn remarked that they remained a nation on terms new to mankind. “They l\ad no country, no rulers, no instruments of war. They were powerless, defenceless and scattered. They learned the lesson of remaining a nation by the force of the spirit alone, by clinging to an ideal, a tradition, a faith.”

The reason for the persecution lay in a superstition that had sunk deep into the minds of nations —the idea of complete solidarity of the servants of the master State or power group. The mediaeval State demanded the right of the majority to dictate the standard of the outer life and even of the inner thought of all the individuals of that State. In the name of orthodoxy, science and philosophy in the Middle Ages meant heresy and death. THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT. Referring to the l-esettlement of Jews in Pidestine, Dr. Kahn said that the idea of returning to their old home had never been absent from Jewish minds during centuries of persecution. Jews in every country had benefited the literature, science and art of that country. But that was not, enough. There was a demand as a racial entity to develop a culture peculiarly their own. Only in Palestine could the Jew take up again the thread of his national history and begin over again the pursuit of his ideal.

PIONEER ACHIEVEMENTS. Dr. Kahn spoke with pride of the achievements of the Jewish colonies In Palestine. Jews had been given only the moral and political right to go to Palestine —no more. They had not even been given the waste and ownerless lands. Land had to be bought and reclaimed. The Zionist organisation had undertaken problems of sanitation and public health. Swamps had been drained and cleared of malaria; clinics had been founded which dispensed treatment to Arab and Jew alike. Water drained from the swamps had been used for the irrigation of the land. Wells that made the land fruitful in Biblical days had been cleaned out after centuries of neglect. The pioneers who tilled the soil and made the roads were not an illiterate peasantry, but included numbers of intellectuals, of university men and women who love;! the soil they worked. A Hebrew University had been founded in Jerusalem, and the waters of the Jordan had been harnessed to supply the land with electrical power. A SPIRITUAL CENTRE.

Palestine, it was computed, would he able to absorb about 3,000,000 ot the 14,000,000 Jews in the world. Those 3.000,000 would far outweigh in importance fhe millions who would remain outside Palestine; they would form a spiritual centre which would give the remainder a true conception of their birthright and their destiny.

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Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/MS19330508.2.10

Bibliographic details

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 135, 8 May 1933, Page 2

Word Count
796

IDEALS OF JEWISH RACE Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 135, 8 May 1933, Page 2

IDEALS OF JEWISH RACE Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 135, 8 May 1933, Page 2