IN THE MARGIN OF THE ATLANTIC CHARTER
The Sabbath after its Publication, August 16th, 1941
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YESTERDAY, as I was thinking of a subject for this Sabbath’s address, my mind was occupied with the first few words of the Haftorah. **Isaiah XLIX, 14.“But Zion said, the Lord hath forsaken me, and the Lord hath forgotten me”.
I was thinking of the Midrashic remark on the redundancy of expression in this sentence. “The Lord hath forsaken me, the Lord hath forgotten me”. Is not that the same? Or as the Yalkut††Yalkut Shimoni, ibid. puts it: “What is the difference between being forsaken and being forgotten”?
I did not get very far with my thoughts, when I happened to pick up my newspaper and read the momentous declaration that had been issued the day before over the signature of the leaders of the great democracies of the U.K. and the U.S.A. While reading the declaration I began to understand what the prophet meant when he made Zion say: “The Lord hath forsaken me, and the Lord hath forgotten me”. I began to understand what was meant by being abandoned and what again by being forgotten.
I had before me this historic document with its eight points. And I asked myself: What will be the practical consequences arising from this declaration for us Jews?
There was, for instance, point 3, stating that the two governments “respect the right of all people to choose the form of government under which they will live”. And I said to myself: The right of all people. Does this mean that we Jews too shall have the right to choose the form of government under which we wish to live?
And point 3 went on to say that the two statesmen “wished to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them”. Very good. And are not Jews too one of those nations who have been forcibly deprived of their sovereign rights and of self-government? True, this is an old story. It happened very long ago. But the Jewish nation is still there, and is bleeding from a thousand wounds because of the consequences of that old story. And I said to myself: Do they really mean what they say? Are they going to restore to us, too, those rights of sovereignty and self-government of which we have been forcibly deprived?
Then, there was the most important point 6 declaring that “after the final destruction of Nazi tyranny they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries …” Where are our own boundaries? Do they intend to give us our own boundaries back? And I said to myself: I wonder, is this the right explanation of point 6 as far as Jews are concerned?
But point 6 said much more. It also stated that the two great democracies were aiming at a peace “which will afford assurance that all the men in all lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want.” Involuntarily I began thinking: Are not Jews “the men in all lands”? And is it not the case that millions of us never had a chance “to live out their lives”? And from time immemorial has any nation known less of freedom from fear and want than the Jews? Now, however, this will be changed. Never again will it happen that corrupt and incapable governments will tell the world that all the trouble and rottenness in their countries is due to the fact that they have too many Jews. No, this will not happen again. For there it stood in black and white “that all men in all lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want”. And I said to myself: I wonder, is this what is meant by point 6?
Bitter memories were roused by the perusal of the next point. “Such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance”.
In the last few years Jews have enjoyed the freedom of the Seven Seas in a most peculiar way. There were many death-ships crammed with Jews, traversing the high seas and oceans “without hindrance”. The only thing from which they were hindered was to stop traversing the high seas and to land the hundreds and thousands of the innocent victims of international insanity, to land them safely somewhere in this world. They had to go on “traversing”, hunted from port to port, “enjoying” the freedom of the seas. Does it follow from point 7 that never again will this be repeated, and Jews too will be able to traverse the oceans like any other human beings, with a definite goal and destination in front of them and knowing in advance the haven where they will set foot on solid ground?
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I wondered whether I was right in applying this noble declaration, the first important step towards the establishment of a New World, to the Jewish problem.
And I must confess that there is not the slightest ground for doing so. No, we were not meant. We have no right to say “present”. Not that there is no sympathy with the persecuted Jewish nation. On the contrary, we believe that the two great personalities in whose name the declaration was issued are among our best friends. And yet, we were not meant.
Whenever plans and schemes for a New World are put forward from responsible quarters and you ask the question: How will these plans and schemes affect the Jews? there is never a clear and satisfactory reply forthcoming. Somehow, Jews are never meant. In spite of the many good intentions and sympathy and understanding for the Jewish cause, Jews are systematically forgotten. We have suffered most in the present world catastrophe; our lives and our rights were the first to be sold in those shameful years when great nations bought peace by sacrificing the weak and powerless. European Jewries will probably never recover from the blows which they have sustained. But so far, not a single responsible word has been uttered on the subject of what is to happen after the war to the millions of homeless, uprooted, and broken Jews in Europe.
There is a definite policy of not mentioning the question at all, not mentioning the fact that a nation against which the whole world has sinned is waiting for justice and is expecting that the wrongs be righted.
There is a definite policy of not even mentioning the word Jew. When Jews of Palestine, who have voluntarily joined the fighting forces, lose their lives on the battle-fields, they are referred to as Palestinians. For people might be embarrassed to hear that Jews are fighting for Jewish rights.
So far, we do not appear on the map that is being drawn for the future. We are being systematically forgotten.
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Thinking of all this I began to understand the words of the Haftarah. “But Zion said: the Lord hath forsaken me, and the Lord hath forgotten me”. The difference between “forsaken” and “forgotten” becomes quite clear.
There are those who will never forget us, who are obsessed with the idea of the Jew. Everywhere they behold him, in everything they suspect the hand of the Jew. They are our enemies. And as God often gave us up to our enemies, we often had cause to complain: “the Lord hath forsaken us”. Not forgotten: abandoning us, punishing us, He must have thought of us. “The Lord hath forsaken me”—it was Zion’s cry in the past. But now, it will appear as if a new form of the Jewish tragedy is about to develop. There might be a New World, a world with less hatred and wickedness and stupidity than the one we knew in the past. Maybe, who can tell, even a world without Jewish persecutions. But a world in which Zion will have to mourn: “the Lord hath forgotten me”, for it will be a world in which the Jew will be forgotten.
This is indeed the kind of future our friends among the nations are preparing for us. For quite a while, perhaps, we shall have rest from bodily persecution. We shall most probably be complimented on our loyalty and good citizenship. Once more we shall be granted an impressive collection of human rights. No doubt, we shall again be decorated with a festoon of minority treaties. But it may easily happen that the future New World will not want to know that we are Jews, that we are a nation and that a nation cannot live on rights alone and on treaties, that a nation must have a home, and that there must be a plan for the Jewish nation, that this plan is an international responsibility and its execution must be part and parcel of a New World.
I cannot but fear that we are about to be forgotten. In the past it was “the Lord hath forsaken me”; now, it seems to be “the Lord hath forgotten me”.
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Yet we are not to be forgotten for ever; we have not feared that. For did not we hear God answer Zion’s call: “**Isaiah XLIX, 15.Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, these may forget. Yet will not I forget thee”.
The solution of the Jewish Problem may be deferred, it may be postponed: it cannot be suppressed for ever, for it is an intrinsic part of a just world order. There cannot be two different measures of justice, one for the nations and another one for the Jews. No, we do not fear that our right may be forgotten in a New World of justice. That can never happen and will never happen. We do fear, however, that the imperative demand for a New World may be ignored. In fact, we are quite certain that a generation that does not possess the moral courage to be thorough in introducing the Rule of Justice on earth, a generation that is not prepared to deal justly with all men and all nations without a single exception, is doomed to failure. We are much afraid that the tendency to forget us, not to mention our needs and our rights, again indefinitely to postpone the just solution of the Jewish Problem, is a grave symptom that once more the creation of a New World will be postponed and in its place we shall be given only our old, out-worn world, patched up anew.
The greatest service we Jews can render humanity at this juncture is to insist courageously on the right of our nation. To the same extent as we convince the nations that justice must be granted to the Jew, we shall have convinced them that relationships between men and nations, be they strong or weak, rich or poor, black or white, must be governed by the dictates of sanity and decency.
Let no one be forgotten in a New World!