Zionist library for boys and girls · 1908-01-01 · 4 · p. Seite 3

-3- History by Gractz, showed to him that the Jews are a people. But apart from this his philosophic thoughts and the study of the Prophets led him to the conclusion that the Jews are a people. \ Have not the prophets foretold a unity of all nations, and Peace on earth? And how canthere he peace on earth if even one small nation is not completely free from oppression, T . e factors brought Hess ."back to Judaism. The reality of life (Damascus, anti-Semitism)f Philosophy, and the fight for national freedom of the various countries * Germany, Italy, etc. He published a hook "Rome and Jerusalem", in which ho exclaims jo37ously "I am hack with my people again". In this hook Hess says clearly that the Jews will always remain stranger's among the European peoples - even if they gain full emancipation, and that they will never be respected as long as thcj have no national soil. He says that the Jewish race is indestructable and that the Jewish national feeling cannot be uprooted. He also declares in his book, Xhat the Jewish people Yd 11 only become a "normal" people - that is a people who can till the soil with their own hands - if they return to their soil. In e^ile they will always remain traders. Hess declares that the only solution to the Jew* ish problem lies in the return to Palestine. He even suggests how this-can be put into practise. A fund must be raised, he says, sufficient to buy as many towns, fields and vineyards In Palestine as possible. Then a society organised specially for this purpose, would gradually have to buy hills, dales and villages which it would hire out to colonists.;Jews from all parts of the world, from Russia, Poland, Germayshould