The Maccabaean

I.

Archaeologists tell of a wonderful observation made at the disintermed Egyptian mummies. Amid the wrappings that hold the royal corpses together an ancient grain of wheat has sometimes found its way. As a test, the servants threw it into good soil—and lo, a green blade sprouted up. The power of growth that had been treasured up in the little capsule had not been destroyed.

Our forefathers appear to have learnt the art of treating mummies from the old Egyptians. But they have excelled their instructors. When our nation died politically, they wrapped it up in the bandages of the ceremonial law and laid it away in the sarcophagus of the Ghetto. But when the cover of the sarcophagus is removed, when the bandages are unrolled, a greater miracle than that of the grain of wheat occurs—the mummy itself opens its eyes, it rises up and lives. We are to-day astonished witnesses of such an awakening. The Jewish poetry of the present is only one of the manifestations of the mighty process of resurrection of a nation that had been pronounced dead—the most fascinating, however, and the most astounding. Fascinating, for it reveals the genius of the Jewish people in its purest, most glorious form, since here the revivifying process, far removed from the strife of political parties, echoes in beautiful rhythms. Astounding,

Author of "The King of Zion," "Manru," "Abarbanel," etc.

for the Jewish literature of to-day in its luxuriant fullness almost reminds one of a piece of fireworks that has seemed to been already burned out, rising as a thin, pale thread of light, and just as it seems to be wholly extinguished suddenly bursts into many colored rays in the dark sky.

II.

This wealth of color is imparted to Jewish poetry by its exceptional position among the literatures of modern nations. We should look in vain for another nation active in literature, whose harp exhibits so many strings and sounds in so many idioms. The Jews to-day write in all the Germaniec, S:avie, and Romanie languages, in Hungarian and Arabie. But their writing promises, nevertheless, a character peculiar only to itself. For even in this respect, the Jews display their characteristic manysidedness and feeundity. They have two national languages, the IIebrew and the Jewish.

The modern renaissance of Hebrew is a phenomenon well known to scholars. It is known that not only does the unbroken stream of theological literature flow on in this language broader than ever before, that not only do innumerable annuals, weeklies, and dailies serve their particular purposes, but also that gifted story-tellers and poets again make use of those classic tones that once issued from the lips of the prophets and psalmists. It is impossible to deny the