which had showed them flowers, but had given them
no fruit. In a work, _Sinat 'Olam le-'Am 'Olam_ (_Eternal Hatred for the
Eternal People_, Warsaw, 1882), Nahum Sokolov proved, like Smolenskin
before him, that anti-Semitism was ineradicable, that the fight against
the Jews was a fight to the death, that even emancipation helps little
to remove the animosity innate in one people against another, and until
the "end of days" foretold by the prophets of yore there will never
cease the eternal hatred to the eternal people. This became the dominant
opinion. It dawned upon many that the only salvation for the Jews lay in
becoming a nation once more. A yearning for a new fatherland and a new
country seized young and old. The times were auspicious. Cosmopolitanism
was everywhere giving place to nationalism. The little Balkan States had
broken the yoke of Ottoman rule, and become self-governing nations since
1878. In Poland, Hungary, and Ireland, home rule was advocated with
fervor that threatened a revolution. Italy and Germany became united
under their own king or emperor. And the Russian Jews, tired of the
constant conflicts with the surrounding peoples, experienced the desire
which had prompted their ancestors to be like all the other nations.

Sokolov's sentiments were reinforced in an anonymous pamphlet written by
Doctor Leo Pinsker (1821-1891), one of the foremost physicians of
Odessa. His _Auto-Emancipation_ (Berlin, 1882) is now recognized as the
forerunner of Herzl's _Judenstaat_, which appeared fifteen years later.
Pinsker accepts as an axiom what Sokolov had tried to demonstrate as a
proposition. Jew-hatred, he claims, like Lombroso in his work on
anti-Semitism, is a "platonic hatred," a hereditary mental disease,
which two thousand years' duration has so aggravated as to render it
incurable. As the Jewish problem is international, it can be solved only
by nationalism. He admits some of the charges brought against the Jews
by anti-Semites, but Jewish failings result from Christian intolerance.
In a land of their own they will develop into a Muster-nation, a model
people.

The wretches--cries he--they mock the eagle that once soared
sky-high, and saw divinity itself, because he can no longer fly
after his wings are broken! Give us but our independence, allow
us to take care of ourselves, grant us but a little strip of
land like that of the Servians and Rumanians, give us a chance
to lead a nati