The Ashkenazi Revolution

131symbolic practices. It is a fact that after the death of Herzl, there werepeople who accomplished great deeds in this, or some other way. Peoplewho were influenced by Herzl, like Wolffsohn, donated the first largemonetary contributions, which laid the foundation for the Zionistphilanthropic establishment. The Herzlite Eliezer Hoofien built the “AngloPalestine Company”, which served as the beginning of the great institutionknown as the National Bank of today. The great activists of today are thesuccessors of Herzl, even if they are unaware of this and do not admit it,since he was the greatest of the Zionist activists and he was the man whopaved the path for far-reaching action. The relinquishment of Ugandaunavoidably involved a limitation on activities within the small confines ofthe Land of Israel under Turkish rule.2The relinquishment of Africa was linked with yet another change, whoseimportance was much greater than the limited opportunities for activism inthe Land of Israel. I am speaking of a change that transcends the plane ofthe Ashkenazi People and goes to the plane of the confederacy of peoplesthat was composed of the Ashkenazi People, the confederacy of peoples ofthe Sephardo-Mizrahi and bottom-dwelling peoples. For both of these, theAshkenazi People and the Confederacy of Jewish Peoples, are separateentities, and their identities were even more different and distant in the daysof Herzl. The Ashkenazi People was then a great people, which stoodfirmly upon the soil of the new era, a people that dwelt upon onegeographical plane, and that spoke one clear language that expressed everyconcept in its most exact detail. This religious, linguistic and historic unity,and the other wonderful qualities of the Ashkenazi People, laid thefoundation for a modern and wonderfully effective political entity. Theimage of the Sephardo-Mizrahi Coalition of Nations, to which becameattached the bottom-dwelling peoples of the “peripheral People of Israel”,was completely different in its national subdivisions and in its distantgeographies. Completely lacking in this periphery are the basic strengthsthat were so common within the Ashkenazi framework. Here we find atotal lack of geographical, linguistic, historical and religious unity. Here