The Ashkenazi Revolution

87cost, its cooperative ties to the Sephardic leaders. For this connection wasentirely harmful, and a stumbling block, to Ashkenaz.The Ashkenazi Question was a question of the population of Europe butwith an added severe and tragic element due to the foreignness of the Jews.At its core, this question was one of the burning questions that were createdbecause of the great population growth of Europe in the 19 th and 20 thcenturies. There were other European peoples for whom the drama of theirpopulation problem was no less than that of Ashkenaz. Around 20 millionEnglish migrated, in the 19 th century, from the British Isles to thecontinents on the other side of the ocean. If not for this outward migration,there would have taken place, in the British Isles, which was not sufficientto provide its increasing population a decent livelihood, more terrible riotsand bloodshed. Population-political pressure was intense also in Ireland,Italy and Poland, and only the speedy pace of outward migration preventeda fateful explosion. The great, and sustained, migration of Russian farmerseastward, to the provinces near the Urals and the Caspian Sea, and later toSiberia, was a decisive factor in maintaining political stability in the stateduring the years preceding the revolution.History presented an ultimatum to the Ashkenazi People to migrate fromEurope, and in all haste. This ultimatum even dictated, for this greatmigration, the destination, which could only have been one of the larger,and almost empty, lands beyond the ocean. As a European people, it wasdecreed upon the Ashkenazim to follow the peoples of Europe. They werenot able to change the course of history. Under these conditions the Landof Israel was relegated, from the beginning and retroactively, to, at best,second place as a solution to the Ashkenazi Question. This is true forseveral reasons. Firstly, the territory of the Land of Israel is small and thepaucity of its resources prevented the settlement of a nation numbering 15million, and that could have reached tens of millions. Secondly, theterritory of the Land of Israel does not exclusively belong to theAshkenazim, but to all members of the Confederacy of Jewish Peoples.Because of this it was not possible to establish, upon the Land of Israel, anideal Ashkenazi state, which would have developed, entirely without