The Maccabaean

SINCE the first inception and propagation of the so-called modern movement, Zionism, the chief opposition directed toward it by the enemies within our own ranks— and they have been by far the more numerous and intensely more bitter than those from without—has been centered not so much against its ultimate aim as against its fundamental principle. That the eventual closing of the doors against immigration by the hitherto most friendly countries, the United States and England, is a question of but a very few years, is a fact that has been borne home even to the most optimistic of us; and that a haven of refuge must be found for our unfortunate brethren of Russia and Roumania, that also has become very obvious,—the Zionists contending the most logical country to be Palestine, while the anti-Zionists with their usual consistency are conducting experiments everywhere but in the land where the Jewish hope and longing has so long been centered. Against this aim propre of the movement these opponents have lately drawn off their artillery, the chief firing being now directed against the cornerstone, Jewish Nationalism. Yet it is this very principle of the Movement that has gained it its warmest disciples and staunchest supporters.

Time was when the enemies of Zionism thundered forth from pulpit and press against the theory that the Jews were other than a religious sect. The ridiculousness of their position soon becoming apparent, they changed their tactics and sanctioned the theory of the Jews being a race, which having been granted, they considered that they had made provision for the Jewish future. But in the meantime, they stubbornly resisted the impulse to look overhead at the dark and threatening cloud drawing near.

The problem before the Jewry of today is twofold. The first is concerned with removing as many as possible of the oppressed and persecuted Jews of Russia and Roumania to their ancestral home in Palestine where they will be able to live the

normal life of human-beings, free from physical and moral bondage. This is a vital problem. Not less vital, however, 1s the battling against the external forces which, inthelandsof freedom are slowly and increasingly sapping the life-blood of that very part of Jewry which ought to be its mainstay. I refer to the forces of assimilation. There is one, and only one remedy—Jewish Nationalism. But it is this very remedy which has caused so much opposition to the Zionist Movement. For, in spite of the fact that the Jewish e:nan- cipation is nearly a century old, the cringing ghetto-spirit still retains its powerful grip upon us; it is the fear of what our non-Jewish neighbors may think of us that has caused the stubborn resistence to Jewish Nationalism. For it is an acknowledged fact that the Jew is always the most loyal of the loyal citizens of every country where any degree of freedom is granted him and often where it is not. And it is the fear of being thought unpatriotic, disloyal, that cause the Jew to be disloyal to himself and to the most holy instincts which he has inherited.

Jewish Nationalism is responsible for the fact that the Jewish spirit still retains the strong hold upon our younger generation which religion, for various reasons, whether as Orthodoxy or Reform, has failed to do. Without it, multitudes of our fellow-Jews would long ago have drifted so far away as to be forever lost to us. For the thinking Jew cannot but perceive that a people with such a magnificient history, altho separated from its native soil and political centre during a dispersion of twenty centuries, a people that retains to such a marked degree its racial and national proclivities, a vitality still pulsing so strongly, and with such an intense desire to live—such a people has a destiny to fulfill which is not absorption.

Jewish Nationalism is responsible for the renaissance of the Hebrew language and literature and also for the revival of Jewish culture. Lastly, it is responsible in a