The Maccabaean

Tue play at revolution and counter-revolution at the banks of the Bosphorus is now again in full swing, and. he would be a bold man who would venture to prophesy ihe turn of things sometime ahead. If it is fortunately not within my province to join in the general speculation as to the future of Turkey, the developments in Ottoman Jewry are, externally and internally, not without anxiety. For some time past, it must be admitted, there has been fair hope that the personal disputes that have agitated leading Jewish ceircles in Constantinople, especially those in official relationship with the Chief Rabbinate, have at last come to an end, and that a satisfactory, though not permanent, settlement may henceforth allow the Jewish authorities in the Turkish capital to devote themselves to the many problems .now pressing for a solution. The chief struggle around the Haham Bashi Haim Nahum was between the Jewish Nationalist elements in Constantinople and certain anti-Ziohist persons, The disputes were not always carried :on by fair means, or even with any regards for Jewish interests, and it will be recalled that Herr Wolffsohn, as head of the Zionist organization, had to make a public appeal to the Alliance Israelite to make its great influence in Constantinople felt in the desirable direction of peace between all sections of Turkish Jews.. The long-drawn-out contest (has ended with a compromise, The difference between the Lay Council and the Chief Rabbi concluded with the resignation of that body and the ultimate formation of a Council in which Nationalists and anti-Nationalists were evenly distributed. If it demonstrated any new fact it was that the Zionist element had grown to such strength in the Turkish capital. that it could no longer be eliminated from the direction of Jewish affairs in the centre of the Ottoman Empire,

The external problems which confront the Turkish Jews in these unsettled days will be tackled in the spirit which reigns within. As events have shown, the. Jews will be regarded as a negligible quantity. if they, unlike any other of the nätionalities of the Ottoman Empire, have neither program nor policy. Greeks, Armenians, Bulgars, Arabs, not to speak of the Albanians, have all been demanding separate treatment according to local circunmstances or traditions. The Jews alone have not wanted anything. It was not, of course, indespensable under all circumstances to adopt separatist tendencies, and the Jews, as the most disinterested among Ottoman nationalities, did not feel the desire tö augment troubles of the dominant race by putting forward special claims of their own. Such a wise forbearance might not only be desirable for tactical reasons, but was, no doubt, adopted as a demonstration of confidence in the Turk, whose traditional friendliness towards the Jews is still a notable feature in his otherwise hotly contested rule over alien nationalities, But it cannot be gainsaid‘ that the Jews, too, would have stood to gain by the ihoped-for decentralization which was to have ushered in a new era of peace and strength in the history of the Ottoman Empire. The attempt to consolidate the Empire by ‚turning everybody into Turks has been a lamentable failure, for the policy which has been adopted on the banks of the Neva, or the Spree, is not at all capable of being carried out on the Bosphorus. Unfortunately for the Turks, they are only strong in their military capacity, and quite incapable of influencing cultural races with such intellectual traditions like the Greeks of the Jews. Such, indeed, is the Jewish weakness of assimilation that in the ıheyday of the Turkish Revolution there was wild talk about translating the Bible, Talmud, and Prayer Book into Turkish,