Musing at the Cross Roads
STOOD at the cross roads where the ’ roads lead East and West, North and South. I pondered over the problem of Jewish life and half awake indulged my fancy for dreaming by picturing the future. At times I shuddered as the clouds lowered, and a gloomy melancholy crossed my mind, tincturing my thoughts with sad misgivings for Israel’s future. Again, as the sun’s rays pierced the gloom and spread -the dark- ning clouds to the four winds, the glowing light enthused me and the warming influence tinged my blood. I saw spread before me the bright and vivid life, the restored energy, the crowning achievements, the brilliancy of Jewish life in God’s own land, the Jew’s home, Oldnewland.
I looked to the East,—and Oh! what wretchedness! what squallor! what misery and suffering! My heart went out to my Jewish brethren in Satan's lands. "Hell is here on Earth," I cried, "but Oh! How shall they be helped? Must they fight and win their battle there in Russia? There in Roumania? Who will live to see the outcome? Who so hard hearted as to wish to see it successful tho' the issue may be?"
A hand rested upon my shoulder and roused me from my gloomy reverie, and involuntarily I turned about so that I stood facing full westward.
““Westward is the tide of immigration, Westward lies Israel’s hope,” so spoke the stranger standing by my side, his hand stretched before him. “I am a type of the emancipated Jew,” the stranger went on to say, “whose fathers suffered untold woes in Eastern Ghettoes.
Breathing this free air, unhampered in my life or thoughts, I solved my own problem and so must every Eastern Jew who wants to live as God meant he should."
He left me as strangely as he had come, and perplexed and thoughtful, I said to myself, "If our hope lies here in America, then why do some of America's foremost Jewish citizens, leaders in finance and science, community leaders and philanthrophists, point Eastward to Russia and Roumania, saying wisely and earnestly, 'the Jewish problem must be solved there!' And if it must be there in Russia and Roumania, then why do other leading American Jews, equally worthy of our support, insist that Russia's hords must be brought to these shores? Somebody is surely proposing the wrong remedy!"
Deep were my thoughts and sad my heart, as picture after picture passed before my eyes of the never ending tragedy of Jewish life, and as I half turned about, facing now directly Northward, I beheld in the distance a column of dust rising low above the ground. From its midst there arose a dark object as that of one bent on reaching a destined point. The object came nearer and by straining my eyes, I soon beheld the features of a brother Jew, of cold mien, intellectualized forehead, eyes of philosophical glow, mouth delicately chiselled by chastened speech.
"Whither, my friend," I loudly hailed him, and as he drew up close to me, I added, "Brother Jew, at these cross roads I stopped to ponder over the problem of Jewish life. I am deeply perplexed and