Pessimism With A Purpose

Vohin Gehen Mir? (“Where Are We Going? Jewish Migration, Past and Present.”)
by Jacob Lestchinsky.
New York, Jewish National Workers’ Alliance, 1944. 135 pp. $1.00.

Mr. Lestchinsky is a sociologist and economist, especially interested in the factual-statistical aspect of Jewish life, in which field his contributions have been of considerable value. He is also an excellent journalist, investing his data with dramatic quality and contemporary pertinence. But Mr. Lestchinsky is a writer with a “purpose,” he is a sociologist with a point of view, and it is not always easy to determine whether his point of view serves to illuminate and coordinate his discrete facts and objective data, or compels him to lend undue emphasis to some of the facts and to interpret them in such a way as to distort them.

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In this book Mr. Lestchinsky is concerned with Jewish migrations—their socio-economic compulsions, their character and consequences. When he deals with the past, Mr. Lestchinsky treads on pretty solid ground. The nexus between his theory and his facts is visible to the eye and no special optical instruments are necessary. His guiding thesis contains a measure of truth and has been accepted by some students of Jewish history. He holds that the admission of Jews into a given country, the degree of tolerance accorded them, and their subsequent oppression or expulsion, are invariably conditioned by their economic relationship to that country. As long as the Jew can perform a useful and sometimes indispensable function, his presence is welcome—or at least not frowned upon—but as soon as that function can be filled by non-Jews, he is no longer wanted: the honeymoon is over. Obviously, it is not the function that ceases to be important; but the Jewish performer of that function becomes superfluous.

The process has moved on several levels: Jews were allowed to engage in pursuits that involved great physical and financial hazard, or were insufficiently remunerative and were looked down upon. At times they were encouraged in their middle-class activities by the feudal aristocracy of an economically backward country wishing to stave off the development of a native bourgeoisie with a revolutionary “potential.”

Mr. Lestchinsky is convinced that, despite the progressive role of the Jew in the early stages of capitalism and despite his emancipation—indeed, because of it—the same relationship has prevailed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Emancipation has given the Jew equality, but it has also produced economic anti-Semitism—an anti-Semitism directed primarily against the Jewish middle classes but also reaching out to Jewish workers and other groups, especially in periods of depression and crisis. It is no sheer accident that over four million Jews have found it expedient in the last hundred years to leave their Central and East European homes and seek a chance to live elsewhere.

Viewing the international scene, Mr. Lestchinsky becomes utterly pessimistic and sees the Jews as a helpless and unwelcome minority everywhere, as “strangers” in “lands of bondage.” His pessimism is not confined to Europe but also encompasses South America and the United States. Everywhere, he feels, the Jews are sitting on top of a volcano. At best they will be required—and in most instances, following the line of least resistance, will do so of their own volition—to surrender their national selfhood, their cultural distinctness, and to assimilate; at worst they may be subjected to pogroms and dealt with in Nazi fashion. Mr. Lestchinsky does not pretend to be a prophet and does not insist unreservedly that such is the fore-ordained fate of Jewish Americans; but when his Cassandra-like pronouncements are impugned or decried he points to Germany, suggesting that there too in the halcyon anti-Nazi days Jews were confident, incredulous and complacent.

His pessimism vanishes, however, when he talks of Palestine and here Mr. Lestchinsky’s heart fills with hope. It is the only bright spot in the world—bright in its actuality and in its promise. Here the Jew need not fear that his economic role will soon be exhausted and his national distinctness become a thorn in the flesh of the majority. Emigration directed, therefore, toward Palestine has meaning and validity both for the individual Jew and for the Jews as a nation.

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Mr. Lestchinsky’s pessimism is not “metaphysical,” nor is it “nihilistic”; it is “practical” pessimism with a purpose—indeed with a mission. It is an inordinate exaggeration of one phase of Zionism—its contempt for, and its disbelief in, the Diaspora. This kind of Zionism overlooks all the difficulties of its own program.

Indubitably, some of the dangers pointed out by Mr. Lestchinsky are very real, but they are not overcome by creating the impression that Palestine can now accommodate all the Jews of Europe and that Zionism can solve all our problems and avert all our tragedies. The truth of the matter is that the Jews are a world people, whether we like it or not, and they will remain a world people for a long time to come. Hence, while building Palestine, we must not divert our attention from Europe and must not relinquish our position and rights there or elsewhere. The most “realistic” approach to the “Jewish question” is also the most universal one—the approach grounded in the realization that our welfare, our “destiny,” is inseparable from the “destiny” of mankind and that only a free and democratic society can guarantee our safety, security and dignity as individual Jews and as a people. The world is shrinking and hatred travels fast, and our “salvation” cannot be achieved in any one corner of the world unless it is at the same time part of a free world.

As yet not a single country with a long tradition of democracy in theory and practice has succumbed to totalitarianism. The United States is such a country. There are now some five million Jews here; their children and their children’s children will live here too. Whatever our Jewish philosophy may be—Zionist or non-Zionist, religious or secularist—all of us must envisage our future in connection with America’s democratic future and the emergence of “one world.” We must help shape that future. There is no other way.