Paper wrappers. 8vo. 31 pages. 23 cm. First edition. In German. Title translates as: “Before the Wandering Tempest. ” Printed in the pamphlet series “Jüdische Zeitfragen No. 1” (Jewish Contemporary Issues, no. 1) in the year 1919/5679. Nathan Birnbaum (1864–1937) , a writer (early pen name: Mathias Acher) , philosopher, one of the originators of Zionist ideology, later a leader of religious Judaism. He was an early proponent of Zionism, founding “Kadimah, ” the first Jewish nationalist students' organization (1882) with the aim of criticizing assimilation and setting up a Jewish nationalist consciousness. “After the Second Zionist Congress (1898) Birnbaum made a fundamental turn in his political thinking: He became a spokesman for "diaspora nationalism, " publishing articles in which he severely criticized Herzl's "diplomatism, " the "inorganic" nature of the Zionist movement, and the Zionist "negation of the Diaspora, " its culture and language (Yiddish) . He gradually withdrew from Zionism, affirming that "Israel comes before Zion, " i. E. , that the striving for Ere? Israel must not entail neglect of the Jewish People itself. His concept was now that of an interterritorial nation, comprising and integrating all existing Jewish groups which had a cultural life of their own. The most important group in his eyes was the Yiddish-speaking one in Eastern Europe. … He repudiated his own former "pagan-Jewish" life in Gottes Volk (1917) , with further editions in 1918 and 1921 (translated into English under the title Confession, 1946) . In Vom Freigeist zum Glaeubigen (1919) he described his spiritual development. Upon the refounding of the Agudat Israel World Organization (1919) he became its first general secretary. At that time, after the war, revolution, and pogroms in Eastern Europe, he devoted much effort to the problem of emigration and endeavored to enlist general Jewish cooperation toward regulating on a big scale what amounted to an unorganized, panic mass flight. His book Im Dienste der Verheissung (1927) contains a critical analysis of the "activism" of the Orthodox as a grafting of fashionable ideologies onto an organism that was inherently of a different nature and suggested to the "activists" a more fruitful field – the gigantic task of creating the necessary material preconditions toward effecting a metamorphosis. ” (2007 Encyclopedia Judaica) Subjects: Jews -- Restoration. Judentum. Migration. OCLC lists 20 copies worldwide. Lightly soiled front cover, soiled back cover. Pages aged, browned, but clean. Good+ condition. (GER-36-43)