The Maccabæan
EDITORIAL PAGES.
J. DE HAAS, EDITOR
A BRISK MONTH
THIS has been a busy month, full with the affairs of the Jews, fuller even than meets the eye to those who can read beneath the surface of events and permit themselves to watch what is in progress in the east of Europe. The silent, brooding, unchanging East is changing, though the gradations are not conspicuous, and men have noted more the terror of cholera in Jerusalem than those financial schemes, which, though not intended philanthropically, will one day remove the possibilities of cholera from Jerusalem, and of malaria from Palestine.
It has been a month of brisk doings at home and abroad, of Zionism and anti-Zionism—and as we sow so shall we reap—and even a winter harvest is not all stubble.
RABBINICAL FIREWORKS
RABBIS and Rabbinism have played no inconsiderable part in the affairs of the month. There has been the inauguration of the Theological Seminary, Rabbi Hirsch's proclamation of a new exodus out West and last, chronologically, Dr. Silverman's anti-Zionistic outbursts at Temple Emanu-El. To deal with the latter first. Dr. Silverman has been handled freely, we may say even scourged, by the communal press. Not a little of this ill feeling, apart from what he actually said, was due to a generous and chivalrous championing by the press of what was an open pact, that the pulpit of Temple Emanu-El should remain neutral ground on Zionism while the emeritus Rabbi and the present incumbent held contrary opinions.
For our own part we are not sorry Dr.Silverman has spoken out. A considerablenumber of Rabbis have indeed been unbur-dening themselves lately on the movementthrough causes not difficult for us to distinguish and to delineate. The press, whichhas to be a wee bit diplomatic, has had grudgingly to acknowledge the advance and the
growing stability of the movement. The way of success is remote to them, but sneering impossibility is no longer in tune with the obvious facts.
The Rabbis, then, to put it plainly, have consciously or unconsciously concerted to break a last lance, to ride a last charge at full tilt against us, to recover their ground and maintain the allegiance of their congregations to "my-doxy." Short sighted Rabbis, Max Nordau warned them of their coming quandary in 1898 at the Second Congress. Truth is on the march—pulpit banging will not stay its progress.
We are glad the Rabbis have spoken—they have said nothing. But even so we have the opportunity, and welcome it, of putting “the cloth” in its right position, that of demonstrating that whatever mental vagaries may have been bred of their exuberant verbosity, sane Israel does not regard any Rabbinic utterance as sacrosanct, not to be touched, commented on, and even flung to the four winds of heaven when such utterance is a gleaning of the straw and stubble broken and cast out in ancient debate. If a Rabbi indulges in a controversial topic in the pulpit, it is open to all of us free born sons of Israel to strike with all the weapons of debate, and the more often this is done on all subjects the sooner will we have careful thought offered from synagogue and temple lecture. The lead we now offer will make an end of the bouquets of fireworks which Rabbis have hitherto provided their congregations on Sabbath and Sunday mornings.
DR. SILVERMAN IN PARTICULAR
DR. SILVERMAN, who has enjoyed the utmost publicity throughout the controversy started by himself, probably has spoken the most and said the least. Much was un-Jewish; a good deal in bad taste. It is not a man who thinks who refers to Machpelah as an artificial grave; nor is it exactly Rabbinical, pulpitisic or in good form to speak of Jews as "dregs" and vaguely to suggest that the Zionist leaders are humbugging the people, to say nothing of casting aspersions on the financial integrity of those in charge of public funds. All these things might be true, and yet Zionism may be correct, true, worthy of faith and support. Yet there was little else in Dr. Silverman's ad-