The Solution of the Problem

Julius T. Loeb, “The Solution of the Problem,” Jewish Daily News (New York, NY), Jan. 26, 1906. https://www.nli.org.il/he/newspapers/ytb/1906/01/26/01/article/42 

THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM.

By Julius T. Loeb, Washington, D. C. 

    Some weeks ago it was suggested that a National Congress, representing all classes and shades of opinion amidst our people, be convened in New York City for the purpose of creating a bulwark of defense for Jews in the lands of their oppression. The plan, however, seems now to have been abandoned; and, instead we hear of the desultory conventions from various Jewish quarters, and of varying bent and drift. It seems to me that the wisest step in the direction of solving the Jewish problem would be mutual understanding, and the adoption of one public platform by and for the Jewish people. 

    In my humble opinion, Zion is the panacea. I see no other plausible remedy for all or any of the troubled conditions. The Jew can only then be freed from his pitiful flight and cease to be a prey to blood-thirsty enemies when he shall have a secured home which he might call his own. I do not know what other schemes may be suggested by our leaders of thought but I am certain of this one thing, that so long as the Jew, homeless and unprotected, will persist in clinging to their faith of his ancestors, Jewish persecution will not cease, and the Jewish question will ever be the torturesome perplexity of the world. Our people can not but choose between a complete assimilation renationalization. The gentle advise was often given us that we lose our identity and lose no more. Yet we feel that the Jew has a right to exist; that he has still a mission to fulfill on this earth, and that he must not sell for personal convenience the birthright which is his own. As he was first to annunciate all godly principle and human civilization, so he much be the last to yield. And not until his doctrine of all-embracing morality shall have permeated every human soul, and all mankind be set on equal plane under the fold of One Universal Father and God.

    If this be the motive of the Jewish existence, per se, none must hesitate to come forth and aid in providing for a stronghold of Jewish Nationality and Jewish independence. None but a traitor can at this critical moment keep aloof and isolate himself when duty calls for concerted action.

    I can say it for a certainty, that the worst enemies of Jews and Judaism to-day are those who offer a palliative instead of permanent cure. It needs no prophet to predict that some day, either they themselves, or their posterity after them, will repent this cruel apathy and shortsightedness. 

    Can it be that those Jews who have the means and the power to bring about deliverance will now remain silent, and leave the unfortunates to their fate, with all the gloomy prospects before them? Can it be that our benefactors and caretakers are blind to the necessary consequences of a continued state of captivity, surrounded by a strange atmosphere of either open or covert prejudice and ill-will? Can it be that they regard the millions of our people beyond redemption, and inferior to all others in their possibilities for a wholesome development and a qualifying for home-rule and self-government? It is, therefore, that they style the proposed Jewish Settlement a Ghetto State? One may have expected a more charitable opinion and wiser course of action on the part of these philanthropists of ours.

    Let only the Jew be given the opportunity to lift himself out of the mire of his degrading exile, and he will soon prove worthy of his calling and well able to take care of himself. 

    Let the Jew be made free from constant batterings of his powerful oppressors and the sneers of a dissenting world. Let him be made free from the acquired prejudice against his own by reason of national divergency. Let him have a free scope of action and a pure atmosphere, unsullied by the atmosphere of conditions and creeds—when, then, he will advance in human dignity and cultivate a generation of men and women possessed of modern culture and refinement together with the ennobling principles of Israel’s faith, which demands a well-regulated and holy life, and which knows of none other but the God of the Universe, the Lord of all creatures. And in such manner only will Israel become a blessing unto himself and others, as he was ever destined to be.

    To the right-thinking and unbiased mind Zionism is a perfectly natural and practical scheme. The sooner it is carried into execution, the better for Jews and humanity at large.