The eminent Zionist scholar and Jewish philosopher Martin Buber (1878-1965) said to the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore in 1926 that the Jewish purpose should be:
“pursuing the settlement effort in Palestine in agreement, nay, alliance with the peoples of the East, so as to erect with them together a great federative structure, which might learn and receive from the West whatever positive aims and means might be learnt and received from it, without, however, succumbing to the influence of its inner disarray and aimlessness.”
(This was part of a letter to the New York Times I wrote on January 23 1995 from Scarsdale where I lived at 36 Lynwood Road, the house of an aunt, for two years or so, while working in Greenwich and battling in the Ninth Circuit and US Supreme Court in a battle against racism and corruption that continues to this day.)
Postscript January 23 2008:
I had lost the reference to these words of Martin Buber. I have now found them again thanks to Dr Martin Kaempchen:
Independent Indian: Work & Life of Professor Subroto Roy 