THE MACCABAEAN
The Grand Parnass of London
Swaythling's Relation with Herzl and Zionism
In a private note attached to this article, which we believe will be read with deep interest everywhere, Mr. de Haas observes: "The moment I read the announcement that Lord Swaythling was dead, I felt I could unfold one of the chapters of Zionism, without involving too many of those who are alive and were participants in the making of that history. Silence and secrecy were Herzl's foibles. I still feel constrained to follow his injunctions as long as the secrets—which in my own judgment, need never have been secrets—involve men who are still alive. This perhaps will make this sketch of facts somewhat less full than it could be made. At the same time I am moved to this writing, because it affords me an opportunity to put Herzl right in the eyes of the newer Zionists. It has become the fashion to treat him as an heroic legend or to bend his theories towards those now prevalent. I have endeavored to get the actual man, and some of his real wishes into this account of the transactions with Lord Swaythling. I am still looking forward to an intimate sketch on Herzl and the Mesopotamian incident by Prof. Richard Gottheil—a chaper that has not been written, and the facts observed at close range, at Basle, by Leon Zolotkoff and Dr. Syrkin.
SHAKESPEARE tells us at least twice of the instability of the world's recollection of man's virtues, whilst the Jews fervently exclaim, "achri Mous Kodoshim." Death, the rabbis say, if I remember aright, death is so much of a punishment that it wipes out sin, and I presume a natural belief in this doctrine causes us to drop the critical faculty whenever we learn that a prince has fallen in Israel. The late Lord Swaythling came close to being a prince, in more than one sense. He was to be admired for his dogmatic consistency in an age when every spiritual leader straddles, and when rich men have as a rule no positive religious opinions. He was not made suave by millions. He belonged by birth to the provincial English Jewish middle-class, and not even a peerage could make him change his spots. He was all for the letter of the law, and the man to pay for the upholding of the letter. He exhibited his fullest dignity when he presided at the meetings of the London Schechita Board, and I always willingly
reported those uninteresting meetings, because he looked the part, and played it with so much earnestness. Elsewhere I have called him the last of the balebattim, for not only was he the richest of them all, but he had that spirit. I could always see any of three centuries when I looked into his kindly, heavy Jewish face, and he had that face, despite a thousand Maurice Fishbergs.
Swaythling deserves what few Jews have achieved, biography. For he was a man of opinions, a strong man, a man of the orthodox people in every sense of the term, and a constructionist. He hated Claude G. Montefiore, and Israel Abrahams, and all that class of reformers with undisguised hatred, and he fought them everywhere, and always paid for the fight. He nearly wrecked the London community on several occasions, only they yielded, He was the hardest man Chief Rabbi Adler had to deal with, for he would not take the richest orange in exchange for the lemon of the law. And he was a wonderful fighter, for he fought Lord