Page 152 - The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages - Alfred Rosenberg

The Track of the Jew through the Ages

Palestine" was to be created. Soon thereafter there followed, on the
stimulus of Prof. Schapira of Heidelberg, 297 the establishment of a
Jewish National Fund. The possessor of land acquired through it
was henceforth no longer a colonist but only a tenant; in this way
land speculation was removed and the farmers, in spite of great
financial support, were nevertheless forced to work whether they
wanted to or not.
Most important, above all, was that the Jews were expressly
designated as a nation in the Zionist programme. Now, they have
always been that, and an especially characteristic one besides, but
since they were at the same time citizens of all states they found it
good not to emphasise their national consciousness. For whenever
new unpleasant machinations were discovered, they always took
cover behind the "state citizen" or "religious community" and
discarded the uncomfortable membership in the Jewish race.
That was the age-old principle; if a Jew had acquired even
a small income it was immoderately exaggerated by his Jewish
comrades as Jewish virtue, but if one traced Jewish mass cheating
(as today) it was said that the Jews could not be made responsible,
they were to be perceived as state citizens, as religious members,
but not as a uniform nation.
All the honest peoples fell for this, in itself truly baseless,
snare; as a state citizen a Jew could do everything that he could not
have done as a Jew.
Thus it was understandable that this public emphasis on
the national standpoint was sometimes painful to many Jews, both
assimilated and orthodox, and they envisaged the emergence of laws
for foreigners.
Rabbi Blumenfeld indeed says: "The attempts at
denationalisation of the 19th century have only led to a masking by
which the non-Jews have not allowed themselves to be deceived", 298
but that is not right, for many innocent people believed in the
amalgamation of the Jews into the German state- and national

297
[Zvi Hermann Schapira (1840-1898) was a Zionist who worked as assistant
professor ofmathematics at Heidelberg University from 1 887. In 1 884 he suggested
the idea of establishing a Jewish National Fund to acquire land in the Palestine.]

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