Theodore Herzl

Mauschel is an anti-Zionist. We have known him for a long time, and we have always been disgusted when we looked at him, when life brought us close to him or even into contact with him. But the disgust we felt for him was always accompanied by pity; we looked for mild, historical explanations for the fact that he was such a distorted, deformed and shabby fellow.

And then: he is, after all, our fellow-countryman - even if there is not the slightest reason for us to think anything of his comradeship. We told ourselves that we had to put up with him, indeed that it was our high task to ennoble him, that we would all grow from this task, and with a kind of romantic tenderness or weakness we took care of him because he was a rascal. If Mauschel did a mean thing, we endeavoured to cover it up. When Mauschel was base, we reminded the world of the greats of our people. When Mauschel compromised us all, we were ashamed or secretly fumed - but we kept quiet.

Mauschel has finally done something worthy of praise, something that brings us honour and through which he compensates us for many things that we had to endure because of him. He has renounced us. Mauschel, that's a nice move!

But we are talking about Mauschel without having properly introduced him. Who is this Mauschel? A type, my dear friends, a figure that recurs throughout the ages, the dreadful companion of the Jew, and so inseparable from the Jew that the two have always been confused. The Jew is a man like others, no better, no worse, at most intimidated and embittered by persecution, and of great steadfastness in suffering. Mauschel, on the other hand, is a distortion of human character, something unspeakably base and repulsive. Where the Jew feels pain or pride, Mauschel has only abject fear or a sneer on his face.

In hard times, the Jew straightens himself up, while Mauschel, on the other hand, becomes even more humiliated. When times get better, it is a reminder for the Jew to be lenient, to tolerate others, to work for the common good; Mauschel, however, becomes insolent and arrogant. The Jew harbours in his tormented heart an inextinguishable longing for the attainment of higher levels of culture; Mauschel pursues only his own dirty business behind progress and reaction. The Jew endures poverty with dignity and trust in God; in wealth, his heart opens wide to the weary and burdened, and he voluntarily taxes his well-being through great gifts. Mauschel is a miserable scrounger in poverty and an even more miserable show-off in wealth.

The Jew loves art and scholarly exercises; these were often and for a long time his entire consolation in the seclusion imposed on him by a hostile society. Even art and science are practised by Mauschel for the sake of mean advantage. Thus, at all times, one could even see merchants and craftsmen of deep, shamefully secretive education among our people - the Jew appeared in such guises. Once his name was Baruch Spinoza, he ground spectacles and looked at the world sub specie aeterni. And in the same way one could and can see rabbis, writers, lawyers and doctors who are merely mischievous profit-seekers - Mauschel appears in such guises. The Jew is capable of rigidly and honestly resisting the government of his country out of conviction, or of openly professing to be its supporter.

Mauschel hides behind the most anti-state oppositions and secretly stirs them up when he doesn't like the ruling authority, or he takes refuge under police protection and shows off when he is afraid of an overthrow. That is why the Jew has always despised the Mauschel - and the Mauschel again calls him a fool. And these two, who have always been separated by the deepest enmity of their natures, have always been confused with each other. Isn't that a terrible misunderstanding?

As if, at some dark moment in our history, an inferior mass of the people had fallen into our unfortunate nation and been mixed with it, so these irreconcilable, inexplicable contrasts appear. Since we have always been the weakest of the weak, as long as the nations have remembered, the representative of our national character was not the Jew, but Mauschel. Strong nations are judged by their best sons, weak ones by their worst.

The Germans are a nation of poets and thinkers because they produced Goethe, Schiller and Kant. The French are the brave and witty ones because they gave rise to Bayard [1] and Duguesclin [2], Montaigne, Voltaire and Rousseau. We are a nation of hagglers and crooks because Mauschel proliferate and plays stock market tricks. Mauschel has always provided the pretexts for attacking us. Mauschel is the curse of the Jew. The Jew has always instinctively felt this, and it may often have happened that good Jews have distanced themselves from the people and the faith of their fathers because they were no longer able to endure this community. Thus, Mauschel weakened Judaism both internally and externally.

But the time came, our time, when even the escape from religion can no longer free the Jew from solidarity with Mauschel. The race! As if Jews and Mauschel were of the same race. Of course, it was difficult to prove otherwise, and before anti-Semitism, Jews and Mauschel seemed forever, indissolubly, irrevocably linked. In such times, many a Mauschel is likely to fall away from Judaism, but certainly not a Jew. Then Zionism emerged - Jew and Mauschel had to take a stand on this question. And now, for the first time, Mauschel has rendered the Jew a moral service of unexpected greatness. Mauschel renounces the community, Mauschel is anti-Zionist!

Let us not be misunderstood. We are not as stubborn and crazy as people would like to portray us. We do not declare every opponent of our views and our movement to be a bad guy. There are very honourable, very respectable reasons why a Jew cannot or will not participate in this popular movement for his own person; but that does not mean he has to suspect and fight against it. The attitude of a Jew who does not want to go along with the Zionist movement is actually self-evident: he sets himself apart. He is so completely assimilated into his environment of other faiths that the fate of the Jews no longer concerns him.

Perhaps it was only out of decency and pride that he did not tear the outer bond. He doesn't care about his former compatriots, so he can be sure that they don't want to know anything more about him either. But the further he has already strayed from Judaism, the more respectfully he will have to regard the stirrings of this people's consciousness that is alien to him. Perhaps he will also understand that this movement will not make his situation worse, but better. It enables him to break away from the old people, to join another, to which he feels more akin, without shameful concession. He is simply not a Zionist, but he is not an anti-Zionist either. He remains neutral, cool, foreign. And if he is inwardly in balance, he will, as a foreigner, approve and support the philanthropic intentions of the Zionists, as do our Christian friends who belong to the most diverse peoples.

Mauschel, on the other hand, is anti-Zionist, in a noisy, harassing way. Mauschel sneers, scolds, slanders and denounces. Because Mauschel senses that he is finally in trouble. He guessed this immediately, even before Zionism unmasked all the tricks, in an almost ingenious way. Mauschel has also hastily issued a treacherous catchphrase against the Zionists: they are Jewish anti-Semites. We? We, who, regardless of our acquired position and our advancement, profess to be Semites before the whole world, uphold the cultivation of our old ethnicity, stand by our poor brothers. But he realised in a flash what we are. We are Mauschel's enemies. Mauschel had as good as resigned himself to anti-Semitism.

In the cultural countries, the Jews are only concerned with honour. Mauschel shrugs his shoulders: what does honour mean? Why do you need honour? If business goes well and you're healthy, the rest can be endured. In the worst-case scenario, Mauschel turns his gaze into the distance, but not to Zion, but to some country where he might be able to take refuge with another nation. Once there, he soon plays the chauvinist, gives lessons in the new patriotism and suspects everyone who is not like him. In doing so, he commits the strange inconsistency of renouncing the Jews and at the same time speaking in their name. So it happens that we sometimes have to hear from serious friends of our cause the remark: ‘The Jews themselves don't want to know anything about Zionism.’ The Jews? Not at all. Only Mauschel does not! No true Jew can be anti-Zionist, only Mauschel is.

So be it. That frees us from him. That is one of the first, one of the most beneficial consequences of our movement. We will breathe a sigh of relief when we are completely rid of these people, whom we had to treat with secret shame as fellow citizens. They don't belong to us - but neither do we belong to them! Are we beginning to see what a healthy people's movement our Zionism is; how will we manage to purge ourselves of the disgraceful elements? Away with the rotten toleration. We need no longer blush at Mauschel's pranks, we need not conceal them, we need not sensitively defend them.

Ah, are we fools? Well, we're not that crazy to take responsibility for Mauschel any longer. Even more: the enemy should be treated like an enemy.
Get off the pulpit, Mauschel, which you are misusing as a protest rabbi! Let us first return to the cleansed synagogues where good Jews pray as rabbis for the poor. Out, Mauschel, from all representations of the Jewish people you claim not to know. And if it is true that only the oppressed, not the powerful, are attached to Zionism, then the combined strength of the unfortunate should be mobilised. Let's see how things turn out if we boycott Mauschel in all areas. If we formally segregate all those who oppose our national co-operative, we will see a strangely mixed society in these outcasts.

There is the financier who has such a bad conscience that he is afraid of an equally suspicious Mauschel, the journalistic blackmailer, and feeds him. There's the lawyer with a clientele that is on the edge of the law. There is the masked politician who now runs, exploits and devalues socialism. There are the dubious businessmen, the false honourable, the hypocritical pious, the lying bourgeois, the resourceful exploiters . . .

Mauschel, watch out! There is a movement that even the enemies of the Jews admit is not contemptible. The idea is to initiate an outflow of unhappy, economically and politically severely threatened people to a permanent home with legal safeguards. Are you against that, Mauschel? You want to prevent this through perfidy because you see no immediate advantage for yourself? What have you ever done for your ‘brothers’?
You have dishonoured them, you have harmed them, and now when they want to help themselves, you stab them in the back.

Mauschel, watch out! Zionism could do as Tell does in the legend. When Tell prepares to shoot the apple from his son's head, he has a second arrow ready to use. If the first shot misses, the other is to serve as revenge. Friends, the second arrow of Zionism is destined for the Mauschel's chest!

Notes

[1] Bayard is a magical bay horse in the legends derived from the medieval epic poem Chansons de geste.