The Maccabæan
EDITORIAL PAGES
J. DE HAAS, EDITOR
RABBIS VARIOUS
The rabbis of the Southern States are up in arms against us. Their opposition is welcome; it proves that Zionism has made sufficient headway in their territory to call forth opposition—the best tribute yet paid to the advocates of the cause. But these Rabbis vary. The Rev. Dr. Sale of St. Louis regards the Zionist as the real Jew hater, the enemy of Israel. The proposition is absurd, and before we can afford to waste space on him, he must up and prove his syllogism. The Rev. Dr. M. Samfield at the second annual conference of the Southern Rabbinical Association presented his colleagues with the presidential opinion:
“Zionism—let us not despise it because like the hope in the coming of a personal Messiah, it is a sentiment which rose from the emotional depths of the Jewish heart, but let us not embrace it as a part of our faith and as the only means of salvation for the persecuted Jew. Whilst we sympathize with the Zionists because of the unfavorable aspect their cause has assumed since the last Basle Congress, we also emphasize that Zionism is foreign to the spirit of the optimistic Judaism as we hold it dear, and as the Southern rabbinate is almost entirely free from Zionistic tendencies let us individually, collectively and offcially declare against it. Whenever it should come to pass that Zionism stands only for the colonization of persecuted Jews in any country suitable for that purpose and for concerted action in behalf of the oppressed without religio-political aspirations, we will espouse their cause and co-operate in such laudable undertaking.”
We thank the Rabbis in convention assembled who do not despise us, but we hardly need their generous sympathy at this juncture; for, whatever happened at Basle
that they regard as “unfavorable aspects,” the need for their protest is an evidence of our general success.
our general success. As to their offer of support, its conditions must remain unacceptable; every general effort which is not charitable is political; and even charitable movements have political aspects. The bogey of "politics" seems to affright men only when Jewish matters are at issue; and yet all sound action must be along political lines. Therefore we are afraid in our turn that the Southern Rabbis hide their opposition behind a cloud of words rather than behind clear reasoning.
A PHILOSOPHICAL RABBI
The Rev. Dr. Shulman, of New York, recently combatted Zionism with a “Universal Judaism;” but as his paper has not been published, the opportunity to reply to him has not presented itself. Another Rabbi, Rev. Alfred Moses, of Mobile, Ala., presents a philosophic reply to Zionism by arguing the “Cosmopolitanism of the Jew.” The “dangerously encroaching progress of the Zionistic idea’ moves him to open up the antithesis. Here is a man after our own heart. He presumes upon no narrow, petty issues. “Because Zionism is acting as the solvent in many minds, the weight of the anti-Zionistic argument must rest upon the claims that cosmopolitanism has been the saving quality in Jewish history.” So he states his case, and seeks to support it, by claiming that “the history of Israel is as much an account of the influence of the world upon the Jewish consciousness as of its own inner growth.” Moreover, he reminds other Rabbis that, “Zionism must not be met with weapons of sarcasm, with cant and verbage, but with the full armament of historical verity, as a pseudo-philosophy of Judaism propped upon a misconstruction of the past and a misconception of the future.”
To prove that we misconstrue the past, Dr. Moses claims that Judaism has always been more or less under cosmopolitan influence; in other words, “the mind of the Jew has been deeply affected by the mind of the world.” Now, no thinker will deny that Judaism has been affected by the actual life of the Jew; but the absorption of an idea does not destroy the individual ab-