this passionate ideal, itself
inhibited the realization by emphasizing the redemption as
miraculous, as a consummation to come in its own time without man's
effort, and indeed in spite of man's will. And so, except for the
sporadic and meteoric fiascos of mock-Messiahs, the Jews--this most
practical of people--continued in hope and prayer to watch the
centuries creep by. Frequently the hope flowered into the songs of a
Judah Halevi or Ibn Gabirol, songs as sweet as have blossomed in the
medieval garden; and the prayer found expression in a poignancy
attributable only to the racial genius which created the Psalms; but
until the nineteenth century the dream preserved all the qualities of
a dream.

_A Crusade for A Birthright_

On August 29, 1897, a congress convened in Basel, Switzerland,
comparable in Jewry to the Council of Clermont; for in this congress
two hundred and four Jews, acting as delegates of their people from
half the countries in the world, assembled at the call of Theodor
Herzl to go crusading for the recovery of Palestine. This difference,
among others, may be apparent--the Christians sought the recovery of a
grave; the Jews, of a cradle. Palestine was to be a cradle in two
senses; this Congress, the first body representative of all Jewry to
be convened in the Diaspora, claimed the land of Israel not by virtue
of a death, but as a birthright, and furthermore hoped to find its
recovery the opportunity for the rejuvenation of a people.

Quoting from his book, "The Jewish State"[2]--a book journalistic in
style, but trumpet-toned in the note it sounded for political
Zionism--Theodor Herzl offered the following definition of Zionism
after the first Zionist Congress (1897): "Zionism has for its object
the creation of a home, secured by public rights, for those Jews who
either cannot or will not be assimilated in the country of their
adoption."[3] Zionism, in a word, is not the last truism in a weary
debate, nor a new verse to an old song; it is, on the contrary, a
definite answer to a perplexing and imperative question. What are
these Jews who cannot or will not be assimilated, and why cannot or
will not they be assimilated? This question constitutes what is known
as _the Jewish problem_, or, for those who deny or dislike the term,
_the Jewish position_; and this question must first be fully stated
before the Zionist or any other answer can be intelligible.

_The Isolation of Medieval Jewry_

The J