These dreamy youths, however, heartbroken and disgusted with a civilization which had failed to redeem its promises, proved but poor material for laying the foundations for a future nation.  It was as with the Darien Company organized by William Paterson when Scotland was sorely distressed, and the Champ d’Asile, by the remnant of Napoleon’s grand army—­a fine idea, but the men and the means were wanting to execute it.  The colonies in Palestine fared no better than those in America.  They were opposed by the Government from without and by many of the orthodox Jews from within.  The former, though claiming to be glad to see the Jews emigrate, though declaring to the Jewish delegation that pleaded for mercy, Zapadnaya graniza dlya vas otkrita ("the Western frontier is open to you"), was still, Pharaoh-like, reluctant to see so many “undesirable citizens” leave, and prohibited the formation of organizations to accomplish the end.  The orthodox were against the movement on religious grounds, because it was “forcing the end” of Israel’s trouble before the destined day of God arrived.[11] But with the “nineties” the movement received a strong impetus.  Alexander Zederbaum, the publisher of Ha-Meliz, succeeded in obtaining a charter (February 9, 1890) for the Association for the Aid of Colonization in Palestine and Syria.  Such eminent rabbis as Mordecai Eliasberg, his son Jonathan, Samuel Mohilever, N.Z.Y.  Berlin, and Mordecai Joffe espoused the cause, and set the example for their less prominent colleagues.  When the question arose whether Jewish agriculturists in Palestine are obliged to observe the Biblical injunction not to till the ground in the seventh year (shemittah), Rabbi Isaac Elhanan Spector of Kovno, the leading rabbi and Talmudist of his time, decided, in opposition to the Jerusalem rabbinate, that the law had ceased to be effective with the destruction of the Temple.  Baron Edmond de Rothschild of Paris also came to the rescue of the colonists, and, more important still, there began an immigration of Russo-Jewish farmers into Palestine, of the class, numbering about ninety-five thousand souls, whom Arnold White described as “an active, well set-up, sun-burnt, muscular, agricultural people, marked by all the characteristics of a peasantry of the highest character.”  With them the colonies began to flourish, the debts were paid off, and a better regime set in.  “There was no crime or drunkenness,” says Bentwich, “in those settlements, and the only usurer was a Russian peasant, who charged the Jewish borrowers thirty-six per cent for loans.  If ever I saw practical religion carried into daily life, it was among those brave and sober Hebrew ploughmen."[12]

Whatever may be one’s views on Zionism, there can be no doubt that it has proved a power for good in Russia.  It introduced new ideals and revived old expectations.  It has accomplished, in a measure, the fond hope of the Maskilim and awakened within the Russian Jew a feeling of self-respect and a “consciousness of human worth.”  Different and contending elements it has coalesced into one.  It has, above all, brought back to the fold the doubting Thomases and careless Gallios, even the avowed scoffers, among the Jewish youth, and imbued them with courage and pride,[13] and given them a new shibboleth, Meine Kunst der Welt, mein Leben meinem Volke ("My art for the world, my life for my people").