The Delegation to Jerusalem, 1898.
I've previously posted here on President of the Zionist Organisation, Lithuanian Jew David Wolffsohn (2nd in from the right), telling the Eighth Zionist Congress that the Jewish people must yet conquer the world. I've now found an article in The Nation, from September 1907 about Wolffsohn's threat. It insisted that he meant conquer the world spiritually, but went on to say that the Jews can hardly mumble about the occasional pogrom, if they see their mission as divinely inspired:The president of the Hague congress is reported to have brought its sessions to a close with the fervent utterance that Israel would yet conquer the world. The conquest, of course, is to be a spiritual one. It is the same position taken by Mr. Zangwill in the years of his earlier enthusiasm, when he exalted the role of Israel as a prophet among the nations and wanted a new Jewish kingdom in Asiatic Turkey as a refuge and defence against persecution. Now, it is a fair argument to advance that if the Jewish race really aspires to the role of missionary among the peoples of the earth, it must not object to the incidentals that go with the exercise of a divine mission. The prophet has never had an easy time of it, and the priest is not supposed to hanker after the pleasures of home life, or quiet, or rest from labor. Viewed from this point, events like Kishenev or Blalystok are not the crimes usually considered, but the inevitable consequences of such a role as Jewish millennial champions look forward to. If a Jewish state is really to be founded, it must be done on a practical, and not on a Messianic basis.
