(Address delivered by Ze`ev Jabotinsky on the third anniversary of the death of Jacob De Haas)

"I was in South Africa when I heard the news of his death. There are more than ten synagogues in Johannesburg, but the rumour of his death reached only one of them. De Haas was perhaps the greatest of the Zionists of America, that Zionism by which the construction of the Land of Israel today is supported. The Rabbi of the single aforementioned synagogue is a Revisionist.

The synagogue itself was full. Men, women and children. The rich, the middle classes and the poor. There were no representatives of the old Zionist `leadership.` They boycotted De Haas. Of course, as always with regard to boycotts in South Africa (and everywhere else) this bothered no-one and the synagogue was packed. My friend Shlomo Ya`acobi, who was with me as part of the same delegation, and I myself tried to explain to them who De Haas was and what he had done in his life. We explained that whilst still a young man in London, he absorbed the spirit of a British education, and was among the first to understand the importance of the call of Herzl. He attended the first Zionist Congress, and was among Herzl`s close advisors during his first visit to London. On Herzl`s advice, he left behind him the chance for a fine journalistic career, which he had already begun in London, and left for America to make the `complacent ones` into Zionists. We told of how he then set to work. And how difficult it was at that time, and of his successes and failures. And of his book on the history of the Land of Israel, and his Jewish Encyclopedia, and of the extraordinary impression made by his wise, impassioned words as he opened the first sitting of the founding conference of the New Zionist Organisation in Vienna in 1935.

And together with those gathered at the synagogue we became engrossed in a great psychological riddle: before us was one of the first of the first ones, a man who heard the earliest speeches of Herzl, one of the few remaining who remembered the First Congress in Basel. And after 37 years, he came to us to act as the chairman at the foundation meeting for a second Zionist movement, new and independent. What is the significance of such an event, especially when we are discussing a man who worked day and night on behalf of the ideals of Herzl?

He was not the only one among us who remembered the First Congress, at which the `Basel Program` was adopted, and the foundation stone laid for the old Zionist Organisation.

Ze`ev Tumkin, who passed away during his tenure as Chairman of the Organisation of Zionist Revisionists, was also at the First Congress, and was held in affection by Zionists from all over the world until he became a Revisionist. What is the meaning of this, when a man of this stature becomes the leader of a party which in its earliest days (in 1923) was a small minority, seemingly without a chance of realising its objectives?

The meaning is contained in a single factor: the first ones - the real first ones, longed in their youth for a great pillar of fire, and they saw it in Herzl and so followed him. In time, Herzl`s pillar of fire turned into a grey cloud, a tedious affair without content or dynamism, and so the first ones became divided into two types: the former first ones, and the eternal first ones. Amongst those of the first type, the hunger for content and dynamism had abated, whereas those of the second type remained as they had been in their youth, with the same longing for a great pillar of fire.

Therein lies the great secret, and not only of the first ones.

Cast an eye on the `most recent` , on the members of the present generation. Among them, too, one finds the same division between those who long for the pillar of fire, and those content with `spiritual fuel.` I do not wish to say by this that the first ones were good, and the present generation bad. I do not even wish to make propaganda for my party. I admit, for example, that those who go to the radical left are also to be numbered among the people longing for the pillar of fire, though not, heaven forbid, in the Jewish sense. From the Jewish point of view, they are to be numbered among the slaves, the swallowers of insults, though this is another matter. When a Jew becomes a communist, he agrees to his destruction in return for an illusory hope of a world transformed.

And when a Jew comes to us, especially a young Jew, he stands up and announces before the whole world: `I demand justice, and if I do not get it, the world will be transformed into a wasteland. In a place where I am a king among other kings - there the idea of progress will be realised. But if it is my fate to be cast outside of the framework, then I do not care if the rest of you go up in flames. And I will even help with this. There is no redemption for the world if I have no part in it. In the beginning, God created my demand.

This stance, whether or not one finds it attractive, is a stance worth living, suffering and fighting for.

The Revisionists and the Communists are today the two sole contestants for the soul of the Jewish youth. Others are conducting a contest for the belly of the Jewish People, but there there are no youth.

It matters nothing to me, who will get the belly. Because the physical resources and assets are propelled along by the souls, and we will achieve the souls. This is my kaddish (mourner`s prayer) on the third anniversary of the death of Ya`acov De Haas."
 

Ze`ev Jabotinsky,
13.8.40