ABSTRACT
The social barometer of present Galut life forecasts stormy days. The soaring of commodity prices, the exorbitant military budgets, the feverish and unsuccessful efforts of diplomacy to check the growing war spirit, the constant rise of tax levies and interest rates, and the vacillating stock exchange—all these indicate that people are approaching the end of the industrial prosperity. When Zionism appeared as a modern, positive force, two ideologies were current in Jewish life. One was the Orthodox ideology which accepted messianism literally and pinned its hopes for national salvation on the miraculous; the other was the Haskalah ideology which preached the adaptation of the Jew to universal culture. Prior to Zionism, assimilation, as advanced by the Haskalah champions in their fierce struggle with orthodoxy, was the only ideology of the upper classes of the Jews who came in constant contact with the analogous groups of other nations.
