rich, between the secularly educated and the orthodox, between bourgeois and revolutionist, socialist and Zionist. True singers of the Ghetto, they glorify by their song the name.ess physical and spiritual sufferings ‚of those poor beings who live closely crowded together in cellars, not knowing wherewith they will nourish their families on the morrow, not knowing whether the next hour they will be massacred by bands of murderers or will be compelled to enıigrate to the Ghettos across. the seas,—those poor creatures who, in spite of these unspeakable torments, supported by the great monuments of the Jewish past, have been able to maintaın a hicher sniritual life.
The most typical and also the most brilliant representative of these ghetto singers is Morris Rosenfeld, the Russian-Polish cheder boy, who in Holland polishes diamonds, in London tailors in sweat-shops, in New York chains himself to the car of Jewish journalism and incidentally writes Jargon songs that are counted among the purest pearls of modern lyrical poetry.
What a difference between the conditions of life of the poets of western Europe and these ghetto singers of the East! Sons of beggars, painfully supporting themselves by manual labor or the serfdom of journalism, driven over the surface of the earth like leaves torn away by the storm of their national misfortune, miserable confinement, amid crowding and wretchedness, surrounded by self-sacrificing but uncu:tured women and by the tradıtional troop of children, they sing in the scanty moments which they steal from their aightly rest the sadly ironical, the deeply stirring song of their people, they sing the ancient Jewish can- ticle of faithful fanıily love—priests as galley slaves. Honor them, for they are the bearers and guardians of the Jewish national spirit in exile.
The beginning of the redemption will be in a natural way, by the desire of the Jews to settle in Palestine and the willingness of the nations to help them in this work.—Hirsch Kalisher (1836).
Land Tenure and Jewish Nationalism
Mr. Clement Salaman delivered a lecture at the London B'nei Zion Association during the month, on "Land Tenure and Jewish Nationalism."
Mr. Salaman briefly traced the development of the present system of land tenure in England from feudal times, and sketched the evils which arose therefrom so far as it applied to agricultural and urban lands. He showed how the people had been driven off the land, and that now 2,250 persons owned together almost half the enclosed lands of England and Wales, the remaining half being owned by 147,000. It was no exaggeration, then, to speak of the English as a !andless people, for seventy-seven per cent. of the population was urban, and the bulk property-less. The landlords of England and Wales all told did not exceed 166,000. The anti-Semitice accusation of being a parasitie people was therefore as app:icable to the English as it was to the Jews.
Mr. Salaman said that it might be thought that, having pointed out the evils of private ownership, he was going to advocate some system of Land Nationalisation. He was not a Socialist, but an Individualist. His own instinct, backed as it was by Hebraic tradition, prompted him to declare without hesitation that the basis of their land system must be ownership. That ownership might be limited if necessary to occupying or cultivating ownership, but ownership it must be if the best work of a man was to go into the soil and the best result to come out of it. Turning to the requirements of to-day, the lecturer said that the miserable material condition of the bulk of the Jewish people necessitated that something should be done and that the community ought to take the matter in hand and devise some means of stimulating Jewish enterprise on the soil. He advocated the organization of agricultural schools in England, but could not say anything in favor of work in Palestine.