Zionist library for boys and girls · 1908-01-01 · 4 · p. Seite 5

=5nation, to take part in the spiritual and intellectual warfare going on within the House of Israel, on the one hand, and "between our people and the surrounding civilisation on the other. Por tho' the Jews have lived amongst the nations for almost two thousand years, they cannot, after all, "become a mere part of the organic whole* A thoughi which I "believed to "be forever "buried in my heart, has "been revived in me anew. It is the thought of my nationalit^r, which is inseparably connected with the ancestral heritage, and the memories of the Holy Land, the Eternal City, the birthiolace of the belief in the divine Unity of Life, as well as the hope In the future brotherhood of men.... "The great teachers of the Imowledge of God were always Jews. Our people not only created the noblest religion of the ancient world, a religion which is destined to become the common property of the entire civilised world, but continued to develop, keeping pace with the progress of the human spirit. And this mission will remain, with the Jews until the end of days, i.e. until the time when according to the promise of our prophets, the world will be filled with the knowledge of God.... "Nothing is more foreign to the spirit of Judaism than the Idea of the salvation of the individual which, according to the modern concpetion, is the cornerstone of religion. Judaism has never drawn any line of separation "between the individual and the family, the family and the nation, the nation and humanity as a whole...» "Judaism would have shared the fate of 0" ther religions which were fossilized through their dogmas and which will finally disappear through the conflict with science, had it not been for the fact that its teachings are the products of life, Judaism is not a passive religion, but an active factor, which has coalesced with the national consciousness into one organic whole. It is primarily the expression of a nationality whose history for thousands of years