ABSTRACT
The gifted essayist who writes under the name of “Achad Ha-am,” explicitly affirms that the Jew has no mission, that he never had one, and that the notion is a myth, born, within the last hundred years, of the struggle for Jewish emancipation. If there is one characteristic axiom of Jewish theology, it is that which affirms the missionary character of Israel. That the Jew has been chosen for even a larger aim than his own personal uplifting, that he holds his spiritual wealth in trust for humanity, whom it is eventually to enrich and bless—this is a cardinal doctrine of the Rabbinic religion. A good Jew is God’s missioner, though he raise not a finger to admonish, speaks never a word of exhortation. Let the Zionist and the territorialist who hold that, denied a land of his own and the advantages of a commonwealth, the Jew is a blunted instrument in the hands of God, ponder the fact.
