The Maccabaean

YOU have all, no doubt, been deeply stirred, as I have, by the accounts of the last Basle Congress—another milestone of our Zionism. Most events lose in importance and conspicuousness by repetition. The Zion Congress, on the contrary, gains immensely in significance at each recurrence, and becomes more and more, a wonderful and unique manifestation—a latter day miracle, one might almost call it. Once again the trumpet blast has sounded, and the peoples have gathered from far and near; the chosen knights have entered the lists, and the challenge rings out loud and long, for all the world to hear — Jewry and non-Jewry — not, as of old, to the succour of some lonely damsel held captive against her will, but for a captive nation held fast in strange bonds she cannot break, and in dire distress. The combat has waged with modern weapons, the clash of debate, the fire of glowing speech, and now the echoes have died down, the vision has passed and faded. The Congress has scattered and eagerly we ask : With what result? What has been accomplished? Are we nearer to the Promised Land? What does the assurance of the Sultan mean, and practically, how far does the legal establishment of the Colonial Bank carry us? But not even our great leaders themselves can answer these questions. In the closing words of his speech Dr. Herzl says: “How quickly or slowly the schemes we have prepared will enter into operation, we cannot say. That does not depend upon us here. We can lay the installation, but we cannot supply the power. The power must be supplied by the Jewish Nation, if and when it will.”

But these words are sufficient. In this spirit, with this motive, we are content to wait, to hope, but above all to act, to work. Zionism itself is an answer to so many doubts and questions; it has already breathed the breath of life into dead bones; it has given a new impetus and incentive, a new motive power for action, in so far as it has aroused the Jews to the idea that they are, or can be, if they choose, the masters of their destiny, not the passive slaves of circumstance and surroundings, at the mercy of any community, whether adverse or friendly, in which they may happen to dwell; that they and they alone,

can cut “the knot of contrariety,” and break the vicious circle which has seemed ever more and more to close around them. The Zionism of to-day — our modern 20th century Zionism — is not alone a proof and test of the vitality of the Jewish people, but it has furnished a new type, and a new ideal for the race, in the person of its leaders — foremost, modern men who know well the world and its ways, its promises and its prizes, and who have turned aside from these, to cast their lot among the poor and the despised, to champion this “lost cause,” and lead this “forlorn hope,” as the world views it.

The moral consciousness of the race has been profoundly stirred and compelled to take cognizance of itself. Each individual Jew has been brought face to face with his Judaism, however much or little it may mean to him, and forced to meet honestly and squarely all the facts and conditions — the rationale of his existence as a Jew — among Jews — and among Christians. There is no longer any excuse for ignorance or subterfuge or self-deception. Zionism throws its searchlight over the whole range of Jewish consciousness, the outward and inward field of vision far and near, revealing Jewish life as a whole, a unity and not in detached segments that give no clue to its identity; bringing into view the high places and the low, the black shadows, the huddled or aimlessly-moving shapes, the glaring contrasts and inconsistency, all the bewildering tangle of our mixed and incongruous nationality.By what strange tie, we ask ourselves, by what anomaly of destiny, are we, the favored of the earth, linked to these unfavored ones — the vagrants of humanity, wearing their motley garb of nationality, and yet nowhere at home among the nations, speaking their strange jargon, which none but themselves can understand — aliens everywhere and always, even among us, their brethren. Read Dr. Nordau’s speech and the picture he gives us of a poverty-stricken people — the world’s proletariat, crushed to the earth by their own helpless weight, as well as by the iron bands of oppression and persecution that surround them, and so far as we can see, doomed forever to this fatal wheel of their wretched existence, endlessly revolving upon itself and yet making no progress — this homeless misery,