Zionistic thoughts:
Anticipations and Survivals - Part 2
Students of jurisprudence know (and who knows so well as the Jew?) that the laws and statutes of every nation are not all observed and obeyed at all times in the same degree; that in all countries and in all ages there are certain laws, be they new or old, which are perfectly valid according to the statue book, and are yet disregarded by those who administer justice, and are wholly or largely ineffective in practice.
This double polytheism, natural and national, has its source, therefore, not in an
accidental error of judgment, but in the real needs of the human soul and the conditions
of human life in primitive ages. Since these needs and these conditions did not idffer
materially in different countries, it is no matter for wonder that among all ancient
peoples we find the same faith (though names and external forms vary): a faith in
nature-gods, who help man in his war with nature, and in national gods, who help the
nation in its war with other nations. But in some cases the belief in the nature-gods is
more prominent, in others the belief in the national godsl this is determined by the
character and history of the particular nation, by its relation to nature and its status
among other peoples.
Hence, when the abstract idea of the Unity of God arose and spread among the Israelites in early days, it could not possibly be anything but an anticipation. Only a select few had a true and living comprehension of the idea, compelling the heart fo feel and the will to follow. The masses, although they heard the idea preached times without number by their Prophets, and thought that they believed in it, had only an external knowledge of it; and their belief was an isolated belief, not linked with actual life, adn without influence in practice. It was in vain that the Prophets labored to breathe the spirit of life into this belief. It was so far removed from the contemporary current of ideas and feelings, that it could not possibly rood itself firmly in the heart, or find a spiritual thread by which to link itself with actual life.
The author of the Book of Judges has a way of complaining of the fickleness of our ancestors in those days. In time of trouble they always turned to the God of their forefathers; but when he had saved them from their enemies, they regularly returned to the service of toerh gods, "and remembered not the Lord their God who had delivered them from all their enemies round about." But, in fact, our ancestors were not so fickle as to change their faith like a coat, and alternate between two opposed religions. They had always one faith-- the early double polytheism. Hence, in time of national trouble, of war and persecution at the hands of other nations, "the children of Israel cried unto the Lord their God." It was not that they repented, in the Prophetic sense, and resolved to live henceforth as believers in absolute Unity. They turned to the God of their ancestors, to their own special national God, and prayed Him to fight their enemies. When the external danger was over, and the national trouble gave way to the individual troubles of each man and each household, they returned to the everyday gods of nature.
It was only after the destruction of the Temple, when the spirit of the exiled people had changed sufficiently to admit of a belief in the Unity, that the Prophets of the time found it easy to uproot the popular faith, and to make the idea of the Unity supreme throughout the whole range of the people's life. it was not that the people suddenly looked upwards and was struck with the force of the "argument from design;" but the national disaster had strengthened the national feeling, and raised it to such a pitch that individual sorrows vanished before the national trouble. The people, with all its thoughts and feelings concentrated on this one sorrow, was compelled to hold fast to its one remaining hope: its faith in its national God and in the greatness of His power to save His people, not merely in its own country but also on foreign soil. But this hope could subsist only on condition that the victory of the Babylonian king was not regarded as the victory of the Babylonian gods. Not they, but the God of Israel, who was also the God of the world, had given all countries over to the king of Babylon; and He who had given would take away. For all the earth was His: "He created it, and gave it to whoso seemed right in His eyes." [Rashi on Gen.i.I]. Thus at length the people understood and felt the sublime teaching, which hitherto it had known from afar, with mere lip-knowledge. The seed which the earlier Prophets had sown on the barren rock burst into fruit now that its time had come. When the Prophet of the Exile cried in the name of the Lord, "To whom will ye liken Me and make Me equal?...I am God, and there is none else," his words were in accord with the wishes of the people and its national hope; and so they sank into the heart of the people., and wiped out every trace of the earlier outlook and manner of life.
This national hope, as embodied in the idea of the return to Palestine, affords, in a much later age, an instance of a "survival."
It is a phenomenon of constant occurrence, that an object pursued first as a means
comes afterwards to be pursued as an end. Originally it is sought after not for its own
sake, but because of its connection with some othe robject of desire; but in course of
time the habit of pursuing and esteeming the first object, though only for the sake of the
second, creates a feeling of affaction for the first, which is quite independent of any
ulterior aim; and this affection sometimes becomes so strong that the ulterior aim, which
was its original justification, is sacrificed for its sake. Thus it is with the miser. He
begins by loving money for the enjoyment that its use affords; he ends by forgetting his
original object, and develops an insatiable thirst for money as such, which will not allow
him even to make use of it for the purposes of enjoyment.
This article also belongs to the following subjects:
Jewish History
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1860-1948: Early Zionist Age
People
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1860-1948: Early Zionist Age
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