children running about with bare, brown legs, talking Hebrew, playing in Hebrew, “the hope of the Jewish future,” and when he told a simple incident of being unable to find children in a school because they were out tending to the cows and the goats, with that singular responsiveness to quiet effects which is seen in audiences at times, for the first time the silence was broken by an outbreak of spontaneous and delichted .annlancse.
The evening was closed with an address by the Rev. H. Masliansky, after which the large audience arose and sang the "Hatikvoh."
When asked by a Baltimore journal what
he thought would be the outcome of the controversy, Dr. Friedenwald later said he hoped that the men who had made the charges would recognize the error of their views and in fairness and justice make public correction of their statements."
"The reply was made because the entire Zionist body and many non-Zionists felt outraged," said Dr. Friedenwald. "The charge is admittedly without any foundation, in fact, and in theory it is false and un-American. It bears the stamp of 'Made in Germany.' In Russia it is now the weapon of the reactionaries, who on this pretext are trying to keep Jews out of the Duma."
Mr. Schiff on Zionism
CRITICS who misrepresent us deliberately deserve no reply; but the critics who err through ignorance of the aims of our movement, deserve to be enlightened. To this latter class one of the most eminent of our recent critics, Mr. Jacob H. Schiff, no doubt belongs, and his strictures, recently delivered before the Jewish Chautauqua Society, therefore, ought to be refuted.
Briefly stated, Mr. Schiff's encyclical against the Zionist "heresy" consists chiefly of three distinct points, or parts of the same argument subdivided into different classes.
The first is, "That it (Zionism) is but an empty, foolish dream, never to be realized at all, or if perchance it will ever become a reality it is, at the very best, a matter of the distant, dim future."
Second, that we are not a nation but merely a religious community, a cult, an aggregation of worshippers of the same God and ritual.
And, thirdly, that "America and America only, is the future home and destiny of our race."
A closer application to the study of all great human movements will refute his first and basic assertion, that Zionism is a "foolish and empty dream" impossible of realization at the
present or at some distant date. No movement when first initiated ever held out the prospect of immediate or speedy realization. Its devotees have always recognized that it may require decades for their cherished ideal to become deeply enough ingrained in the peoples minds and to be converted into a living reality. Yet they were not deterred from plunging into the depths of an uncertain combat, realizing that justice and humanity were on their side. and being, perhaps, in spite of their reasoning selves, impellcd to .enter.the lists regardless of consequence to themselves. The representatives of the powers are now assembled at the capital of the Dutch gravely discussing propositions relating to the long-preached universal peace, which, as they all know. and quite frankly admit, has not the prospect of immediate or even speedy realization.: Nevertheless, they are there, deliberating upon and discussing most gravely these “chimeras of a distant future,” realizing that no movement would ever have the slimmest chance if some venturesome dreamer would not start an agitation in his own day, and oblivious to the gibe of the scoffer and the contemptuous pity of the “practical” man, set to work perseveringly for his ideal.