Leon Pinsker: Grandfather of Zionism?

Above all, Pinsker was practical. Auto-Emancipation is a case study that acknowledges difficult circumstances and proposes possible solutions to overcome them. His idea of a fund to purchase land for settlement and development by Jewish immigrants predated the establishment of the Jewish National Fund by 19 years.

Pinsker realized, even in 1882, the need for a “congress of Jewish notables” comprised of the most prominent members of Europe’s Jewish community, to speak as one voice on behalf of the Jewish people.

 He also understood the imperative of cooperating with the day’s governments and empires if the Jewish homeland were to ever become a reality. Dangerous times called for fantastic ambitions grounded in practical considerations and realities.

 Foremost for Pinsker was the failure of Eastern European Jews’ Aliyah to Ottoman-controlled Palestine. Of the 35,000 who immigrated to Palestine during that period, over half abandoned the project within several years due to inexperience in settling a new land and harsh Ottoman opposition. Pinsker wanted the next wave of immigrants to learn the lessons of their predecessors’ shortcomings.

As a Syrian and an Arab, I was taught even at the university level that Israel was a “European colonialist project”; that some European Jews showed up one day in 1948 and established their “entity”. Reading Auto-Emancipation was a revelation. I consider it the best introduction to the necessity of a Jewish state. I found it so remarkable that I had it professionally printed and bound with Herzl’s “The Jewish State”.

 It is a work I refer to frequently for inspiration. I can think of no other small text that so superbly makes the case for Israel, long before the name existed for a country.

Pinsker’s work is also relevant to the civil rights protests currently taking place in much of the world. As he wrote concerning the situation of his fellow European Jews, “legal emancipation is not social emancipation.”

 From its very founding, the modern Zionist movement faced circumstances that by all logic should have made it unfeasible. And yet, here we are, 138 years after Leon Pinsker felt the need to pen his pamphlet anonymously, and the state he envisioned stands accepted and respected among the nations of peoples. Reading Auto-Emancipation is to be inspired in so many ways. “If you will it, it is no dream.”

We are so fortunate to be living in an age where the dream that seemed impossible in the late 19th century is now a reality.