The Maccabaean

In the tense struggle for self-preservation which the Jewish people waged against assimilatory forces throughout the ages of the Diaspora, the weapons employed were intellect and spirit. A nation, when oppressed with foreign influence and dominion will frequently resort to the ordinary weapons of fire and sword, provided it still inhabits its own soil. And, needless to say, this mode of conflict against the oppressor has been common to all the nations of the earth. The Jewish people, however, exhibits the unique and remarkable example of a nation which was wrested away from its soil, scattered under all forms of foreign dominion, subjected to all forms of alien persecution and influence, but which, nevertheless waged an age-long and successful struggle for its preservation. All other nations succumbed as soon as they were incapacitated from wielding their weapons of sword and fire. The Jewish people, however, as soon as the sword was wrested from their hands, unsheathed a much more trenchant weapon called intellect and armored themselves with an impenetrable armor called spirit, for by intellect we mean principally self-consciousness, and by spirit the will to live.

Now, among all peoples and at all times, that individual who could best wield the weapons which ministered to the preservation and welfare of the nation, was ever hailed and cherished as the hero. And strange, indeed, are some of the types of heroes which the exigencies of the struggle have called forth. Poland, a nation oppressed and torn asunder by a tug-of-war of three world-powers, has in the course of its struggle for national self-preservation evolved a type of hero, sung about and glorified in the literature of the people, whose particular brand of heroic traits, under happier auspices, would have received naught but hatred and contempt. The Polish poet Slowacki in his Lambro and Kordjan glorifies deceit and treachery when directed against the enemy. In his

Wallenrod, Mickiewicz, the greatest Polish poet, glorifies a hero, who, at his death, jubilantly confesses the hypocrisy and treachery which characterized his struggles against the foe.

Whether through the mysterious chance of life, as some would say, or by a species of divine election, as others claim, the Jewish people has been remarkably fortunate in that its struggle has called forth the sublimest type of hero the mind can conceive. The man of intellect and spirit, the teacher and martyr, the man who could keep alive the national self-consciousness and strengthen the will in the face of persecution became the national hero. It is only in the last decade that the civilized world has timidly and waveringly begun to transfer its allegiance and laurels from the brazen forehead of the man who "doth deftly kill" to the humble brow of the silent sufferer and uplifter. But even in the brutal days of the Judges a Jewish hero must needs have been not only a great soldier but also a man of justice, a judge. Throughout the Diaspora, every Ghetto-Jew was characterized by a heroism, not at all glamorous, hidden to the eye of the vulgar which craves for the spectacular, but, by far, more fraught with the intensity of genuine heroism than the dashing glitter of the uniformed slayer. The epic of the Ghetto-Jew has still been left unsung.

In consequence, then, of the role which intellectual strength has played in the maintenance of Jewish individuality, in consequence of the fact that the scholar became the hero, the highest ideal for the life of the individual became scholarly achievement combined with religious devotion. Intellectual preeminence alone was not sufficient. That alone could not save the nation, because very frequently the man in whom cold intellect predominates is characterized sometimes by a dilettantism which dissipates his energies, or more frequently by what is called "scientific objectivity," a frame of mind