The Maccabaean

THE NEW YORK

PUBLIC LIBRARY

642793

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS R 1914 L

THE convention was called to order at 10:30 a. m., by the Chairman, Mr. Louis Lipsky.

The delegates were formally welcomed to the city by the Director of Charities and Correction, Dr. Harris R. Cooley.

Mr. Lipsky, after giving Dr. Cooley the assurance that Zionism is a practical movement, built on a firm and lasting foundation, introduced that well tried leader of the movement, Dr. Harry Friendenwald.

A year ago I was travelling through Palestine, through the land which I had been longing to see since my childhood, the land which cradled our nation and nurtured it during its grandeur and glory, the land in which our hopes for the future greatness of our people are centered,—the land which to the heart of every true Jew, has always been and ever shall be the Holy Land. I journeyed to this land to feast my eyes upon its beauties of mountain and valley, of river and lake, of sea and of sky, to visit the holy shrines made dear to us by names we learned to love as children and to venerate as we grew older. But more than this, I journeyed to this land to seek my brethren .... and bring word again. And the message which I have the honor to bring to you to-day is the message from our brethren in the land of Israel.

I found the colonies enjoying varying degrees of prosperity,—the prosperity of success after long and difficult trials, the prosperity of slow but definite growth. On meeting with the individual colonists, I recognized in them a lofty idealism joined

with readiness to endure privation and hardship and the consciousness that they are pursuing a noble purpose, destined to benefit our whole people and to uplift our name throughout the world. Their settlements are garden-spots, their fields, their vineyards, their orchards are oases in a land which has been devasted by ignorance and neglect. Their homes, their schools, their synagogues and their town- halls are primitive, but beautiful in their simplicity. And their local self-government and courts of justice are proof of their high ability in public administration, for they enjoy the complete confidence not only of the colonists, but of their neighbors, the Arabs, as well. But there are also evidences outside the colonies, of a new pulsating life, a fresh and healthy Jewish life. In the suburb of Tel aviv, in Jaffa, a new garden-city of modern villas and broad streets, with the beautiful High School in its midst, you will find a Jewish life that differs from the life of Jewish communities elsewhere in the world, in its blending of modernity with intense Jewish-