The world as I see it, Albert Einstein [sci fi books to read TXT] 📗

glory in our ancestors and our history and once again take upon
ourselves, as a nation, cultural tasks of a sort calculated to strengthen
our sense of the community. It is not enough for us to play a part as
individuals in the cultural development of the human race, we must also
tackle tasks which only nations as a whole can perform. Only so can the Jews
regain social health.

It is from this point of view that I would have you look at the Zionist
movement. To-day history has assigned to us the task of taking an active
part in the economic and cultural reconstruction of our native land.
Enthusiasts, men of brilliant gifts, have cleared the way, and many
excellent members of our race are prepared to devote themselves heart and
soul to the cause. May every one of them fully realize the importance of
this work and contribute, according to his powers, to its success!

The Jewish Community

A speech in London

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is no easy matter for me to overcome my natural inclination to a
life of quiet contemplation. But I could not remain deaf to the appeal of
the O.R.T. and O.Z.E. societies*; for in responding to it I am responding,
as it were, to the appeal of our sorely oppressed Jewish nation.

The position of our scattered Jewish community is a moral barometer for
the political world. For what surer index of political morality and respect
for justice can there be than the attitude of the nations towards a
defenceless minority, whose peculiarity lies in their preservation of an
ancient cultural tradition?

*Jewish charitable associations.

This barometer is low at the present moment, as we are painfully aware
from the way we are treated. But it is this very lowness that confirms me in
the conviction that it is our duty to preserve and consolidate our
community. Embedded in the tradition of the Jewish people there is a love of
justice and reason which must continue to work for the good of all nations
now and in the future. In modern times this tradition has produced Spinoza
and Karl Marx.

Those who would preserve the spirit must also look after the body to
which it is attached. The O.Z.E. society literally looks after the bodies of
our people. In Eastern Europe it is working day and night to help our people
there, on whom the economic depression has fallen particularly heavily, to
keep body and soul together; while the O.R.T. society is trying to get rid
of a severe social and economic handicap under which the Jews have laboured
since the Middle Ages. Because we were then excluded from all directly
productive occupations, we were forced into the purely commercial ones. The
only way of really helping the Jew in Eastern countries is to give him
access to new fields of activity, for which he is struggling all over the
world. This is the grave problem which the O.R.T. society is successfully
tackling.

It is to you English fellow-Jews that we now appeal to help us in this
great enterprise which splendid men have set on foot. The last few years,
nay, the last few days, have brought us a disappointment which must have
touched you in particular nearly. Do not gird at fate, but rather look on
these events as a reason for remaining true to the cause of the Jewish
commonwealth. I am convinced that in doing that we shall also indirectly be
promoting those general human ends which we must always recognize as the
highest.

Remember that difficulties and obstacles are a valuable source of
health and strength to any society. We should not have survived for
thousands of years as a community if our bed had been of roses; of that I am
quite sure.

But we have a still fairer consolation. Our friends are not exactly
numerous, but among them are men of noble spirit and strong sense of
justice, who have devoted their lives to uplifting human society and
liberating the individual from degrading oppression.

We are happy and fortunate to have such men from the Gentile world
among us to-night; their presence lends an added solemnity to this memorable
evening. It gives me great pleasure to see before me Bernard Shaw and H. G.
Wells, to whose view of life I am particularly attracted.

You, Mr. Shaw, have succeeded in winning the affection and joyous
admiration of the world while pursuing a path that has led many others to a
martyr's crown. You have not merely preached moral sermons to your fellows;
you have actually mocked at things which many of them held sacred. You have
done what only the born artist can do. From your magic box you have produced
innumerable little figures which, while resembling human beings, are compact
not of flesh and blood, but of brains, wit, and charm. And yet in a way they
are more human than we are ourselves, and one almost forgets that they are
creations not of Nature, but of Bernard Shaw. You make these charming little
figures dance in a miniature world in front of which the Graces stand
sentinel and permit no bitterness to enter. He who has looked into this
little world sees our actual world in a new light; its puppets insinuate
themselves into real people, making them suddenly look quite different. By
thus holding the mirror up to us all you have had a liberating effect on us
such as hardly any other of our contemporaries has done and have relieved
life of something of its earth-bound heaviness. For this we are all devoutly
grateful to you, and also to fate, which along with grievous plagues has
also given us the physician and liberator of our souls. I personally am also
grateful to you for the unforgettable words which you have addressed to my
mythical namesake who makes life so difficult for me, although he is really,
for all his clumsy, formidable size, quite a harmless fellow.

To you all I say that the existence and destiny of our people depend
less on external factors than on ourselves remaining faithful to the moral
traditions which have enabled us to survive for thousands of years despite
the heavy storms that have broken over our heads. In the service of life
sacrifice becomes grace.


Working Palestine

Among Zionist organizations "Working Palestine" is the one whose work
is of most direct benefit to the most valuable class of people living
there--namely, those who are transforming deserts into flourishing
settlements by the labour of their hands. These workers are a selection,
made on a voluntary basis, from the whole Jewish nation, an Иlite composed
of strong, confident, and unselfish people. They are not ignorant labourers
who sell the labour of their hands to the highest bidder, but educated,
intellectually vigorous, free men, from whose peaceful struggle with a
neglected soil the whole Jewish nation are the gainers, directly and
indirectly. By lightening their heavy lot as far as we can we shall be
saving the most valuable sort of human life; for the first settlers'
struggle on ground not yet made habitable is a difficult and dangerous
business involving a heavy personal sacrifice. How true this is, only they
can judge who have seen it with their own eyes. Anyone who helps to improve
the equipment of these men is helping on the good work at a crucial point.

It is, moreover, this working class alone that has it in its power to
establish healthy relations with the Arabs, which is the most important
political task of Zionism. Administrations come and go; but it is human
relations that finally turn the scale in the lives of nations. Therefore to
support "Working Palestine" is at the same time to promote a humane and
worthy policy in Palestine, and to oppose an effective resistance to those
undercurrents of narrow nationalism from which the whole political world,
and in a less degree the small political world of Palestine affairs, is
suffering.

Jewish Recovery

I gladly accede to your paper's request that I should address an appeal
to the Jews of Hungary on behalf of Keren Hajessod.

The greatest enemies of the national consciousness and honour of the
Jews are fatty degeneration--by which I mean the unconscionableness which
comes from wealth and ease--and a kind of inner dependence on the
surrounding Gentile world which comes from the loosening of the fabric of
Jewish society. The best in man can flourish only when he loses himself in a
community. Hence the moral danger of the Jew who has lost touch with his own
people and is regarded as a foreigner by the people of his adoption. Only
too often a contemptible and joyless egoism has resulted from such
circumstances. The weight of outward oppression on the Jewish people is
particularly heavy at the moment. But this very bitterness has done us good.
A revival of Jewish national life, such as the last generation could never
have dreamed of, has begun.