truistic in their national life and care much more for the interests of others than for their own interests. Most of the Jews who try to get rid of Judaism do not act so because their Jewish feelings have been weakened, but because they think that their national death is necessitated by their love for their country, —for the Jews too belong
Zu dem Stamme jener Asra,Die da sterben, wenn sie lieben . . .
The theory of Jewish Nationalism which declares Jewish productivity to stand in exact proportion to the strength of Jewish consciousness will convince them of their error. It will show them that their national self-sacrifice is not only superfluous, but also harmful, standing on exactly the same line with the suicide of that blue-jacket of Heine's who, trying to prove his love to his captain, threw himself into the sea, shouting, "I'm dying for Captain Jackson!" Instead of
killing themselves nationally, these Jews had better lead an active, vigorous life —in the interests of Captain Jackson. A Jewish population, deeply rooting in its national soil, clinging to the traditions of a great past and holding up the ideals of a still greater teaching, will be a most valuable and stimulating factor in the public and civic life of any country. A Jewish element, inwardly un-Jewish, without the backbone of national conviction and without the hold of a national hope, is of little value to its country, only an arithmetic addition to the numbers of its population. The thinking Jew in examining the different solutions of the Jewish problem cannot be in doubt. Accepting the doctrine of Assimilation he will be lost to himself and lost to his surroundings. In taking up and carrying out the theory of Jewish Nationalism he will be a blessing to himself and a blessing to the other nations.
Peretz Smolenkin
A Study of the Man and His Ideals.
WAS it irony born of bitterness, or regret for a life misspent, which wrested this self-accusation from Smolenskin at so many stages of his short but strenuous life? It was not the conscience-pricks of repentance which brought him on his knees confessing his sins before the altar of the world. It was not Smolenskin the man, who wandered from the trodden path —it was his restless, irreconcilable spirit which sent him staggering along life's highways. His was a singular, mystic
soul which does not seem to have felt at home in its own body. It roved like a lost spirit gone astray from its native hearth —groping about like a "blind man in the dark," ever seeking that something which it could neither find nor define. It was a wilful, unmanageable soul, too, which would not be subdued by any superficial force. In intensity and vehemence it resembled a hurricane, which, as it swept the prairies of Jewish life, never failed to stir the many-layered heaps of fanaticism