The Synthetic Personality (On Chaim Arlosoroff's first yahrzeit.)

A. Levinson.

If I had to characterise the tragically killed Chaim Arlosoroff in one short sentence, I would say: a synthetic personality. And truly, it is hard to find in the family of our leading individuals a personality in whom the sharpest contrasts of human nature and the mystical contrasts of our fateful life merge into such a harmonious unity. This synthesis surely owes much to the union of blood and spirit, of East and West. The [unclear] branches of the young, cut-down tree grew up in a bright and broad Western European world, but the hidden physical roots were stuck in the ghetto, in the house of the sharp-witted grandfather from Romny, in the environment of struggle for a grey, sad life... The fusion of both elements does not come at once. For a short time the West dominates: the young, proud German does not recognise the Jew in himself. And when he begins to recognise him, he does not feel the East European Jew in himself. Until the decisive accident comes: Arlosoroff, seeking a way to humanity, finds... himself. And he rewards first of all himself with his discovery: his artificially restrained spiritual powers are freed, tear stormily toward revelation, break all obstacles and seek an outlet in deeds, in large-scale, concrete deeds.

Arlosoroff's intellect contained a remarkable mixture of contrasts: as a product of Western Europe, the subconscious tendency to psychological and linguistic assimilation was organically foreign to him, but at the same time the deeply rooted exile psychology of the East European ghetto Jew was also foreign to him; with his spirited mind he always embraced basic phenomena and the fundamental problems of the movement, and at the same time had an eye and ear for the smallest details, for all side phenomena and facts; going through all the unavoidable zigzags of the political and diplomatic art, he did not for a moment lose his moral balance, his deep faithfulness to his own convictions and feelings. Laden with much knowledge, armed with acumen, he supplemented his lack of experience with a powerful sense of intuition, which led him faithfully along the edge of difficult political trials. Thoroughly rationalist, he laid everything out in logical syllogisms, analysed with a cold, steel-hard logic, and at the same time had a deep spiritual inclination toward art and poetry, quenching this deep thirst in his own poetry and in the study of foreign poetic works. And over these deeply human contrasts hovered a single enlivening spirit of humour, the spiritual cement that united these contrasts into the remarkable wholeness called: Arlosoroff.

The synthetic is the basic trait of his nature and his intellect; he shapes his "I" into the highest perfection, the perfection of contradictions. His course of life and creation is doubly unified, just like the earth, which turns both around its axis and around the sun: he personally rises with giant strides, strides with a spiritual leap, but the national ground on which he walks also moves, but slowly, tragically slowly: such is the logic of our upbuilding. Arlosoroff understands not to measure our historical process by personal steps; he prefers the objective, cruel laws of development to subjective good-hearted impulses; he dares to risk his authority for unpopular conclusions; he dares, at 26 years old, to write that one does not make political attacks with "phrases and magic formulas", that political struggle without real economic conquests is 99 per cent "gymnastics in an empty void". Arlosoroff does not bridle Jewish history; he bridles those who want to violate it, who want to hasten its end, exploiting the frivolity and credulity with which the mob has always treated all false messiahs.

And by the same path he came to his ideological synthesis, people's socialism. On the morrow of the great World War he — at 19 — wrote in the preface to his "People's Socialism": "Cursed is he who leaves a plague-ridden city and does not even think of disinfecting himself." The capitalist world lay in bloody ruins. The Jewish people, which suffered most from the rotten world order, is going to build its own home, a hygienic new and free life — should we not disinfect ourselves of the poisonous microbes that have devoured humanity? But one must disinfect with one's own means and with effective means. Trotsky, Singer, Adler, Diamand — these are good "world citizens" who all their lives fought against their people; on the other side, the Jewish street swarms with pseudo-socialists who merely translated foreign socialist teachings and brought the people more harm than benefit. Not socialism of Jews and not socialism for Jews. But there is an elementary, higher socialism: Jewish socialism, people's socialism. National and social liberation as an indivisible, organic process of revival of the whole Jewish working people.

And a still higher synthesis: idea and realisation. Realisation means struggle; it demands breadth, a clever view of the perspectives of development, and the strength of self-control — not breaking, stabbing, destroying, but healing, building, creating: cleverly filling the abyss between estates, classes, peoples, with a healthy real-political sense, with a clear view of the future perspectives — and at the same time without any concessions on the great historical ideal. A small historical episode: the bloody May events of 1921. Amid confusion and hysteria, the 21-year-old Arlosoroff, with a moderation and cold-bloodedness unusual for us Jews, formulated his position toward the Arabs: in the days when the whole Jewish press and official Zionist policy belittled the Arab opposition, presenting it as merely an intrigue of the Mufti and of political intriguers, Arlosoroff had the courage to call the child by its name, as an Arab political movement with which we must seek a way of understanding; certainly for the murderers in Jaffa in 1921 there exists a criminal code, but with the Arab people we must seek peace. The history of all peoples has shown that where two mighty vital interests collide, there is no other way than a compromise by both sides. But for such a compromise to come about, the Jewish side too must be strong, no less than the Arab, because a strong one has never yet come to terms with a weak one. And to be strong means to build, to realise. To be strong means not to lose time in the great world race of two cultures. Arlosoroff carried the clock of Zionism in his pocket. Through "what is the hour"? A bullet from a black hand cut short his life. Arlosoroff is dead. His clock goes on...