The Maccabæan
EDITORIAL PAGES
J. DE HAAS EDITOR
THE TABERNACLE IS BROKEN
THE Day of Memorial is over, the Day of Atonement will be passed by when this issue reaches our readers and the Feast of Tabernacles is at hand. A verse in the old “grace after meals” supplicates “renew the tabernacle, which has fallen.” It still lies low, this tabernacle, which is both the habitation and the symbol of Israel’s glory.
But the Succoth is erected amid song and mirth, with simple joy and blessing by those whose hearts are stirred to the tune of the old Jewish life—and the symbol of sojourney, the record of history, and the sign of separateness still finds place amongst these. They who do not understand the beauty of these things, not merely as ideas, but as observance, understand nothing of the passion and the hope of Israel. The eye that glistens at sight of the Jewish booth is alive to spiritual beauty and human aspiration. The celebrant of Succoth is working for Israel's future. Disraeli, seeing into the heart of human endeavor, said well: “A race that persist in celebrating their vintage, although they have no fruits to gather, will regain their vineyards.”
THE GOVERNMENT AND ROUMANIA
THE conscience of America has appealed to the conscience of Europe to bring about a change in the situation in Roumania. In this case it is not the literati, but the American Government, through the Secretary of State, which, in the name of humanity, has remonstrated against oppression.
Et apres? says the cynic. The Government has, for reasons of state, not published the European answers to its circular note. The result to read in this silence is practical failure. European diplomatists are loath to raise the Roumanian Jewish Question since the Berlin Treaty has been broken by a greater power than the Balkan principality, and Roumania might urge that its anti-Semitism is but a concentration of the forces working more deviously elsewhere.
America's kindness and public spirit will not be lost upon the Jews, and in the end this circular will not have been wasted, but we have to remember a very old saw and accept it as our one line of conduct: If I am not for myself, who shall be for me? Israel must help itself.
AND WHAT NOW?
THE heart of Israel is troubled. The year 5662 closes, the saddest in twenty; the darker, perhaps, because in the second year of a new century of the modern era we have seen an anti-alien Immigration agitation in England, an unparalleled assault on the Jews of New York, and we are confronted with the solution of the Roumanian problem.
What now? We are often told that Zionism exists by making a riot out of every street brawl, by giving international importance to every insignificant incident. Let that pass. The situation in Roumania is critical. Not merely we, but the political world says this. Europe can do nothing, the Roumanian Government is determined to make life impossible for the Jews in Roumania. These facts were known in February—what has been done by September. to face the situation and meet its necessities?
What have all these rich and mighty Jewish bodies done toward finding a new home for these Jews; what scheme of settlement have they planned out ? We do not bandy words. We want neither pulpitistic vagueness or soft diplomatic nothings. There is a fact as hard as rock before Israel. The Jew who understands what the unsettlement and resettlement of 250,000 persons means, who knows the glaring failures of the unmethodi-cal Russo-Polish migration—the blood and tears it cost—that Jew cannot rest easy at this juncture. He is entitled to ask the men who claim to lead him: What are your plans ?
We Zionists have our answer, we have our plan and our organization, we lack only means, we foresaw and prepared; there is no getting from that; we must din this into the ears of the slowly awakening Jews who do not understand us theoretically—our platforms can at least help them to understand us practically. We ask; every Jew in his heart asks our rich philanthropists—What now?