The Maccabaean

Whatever may be said about the likelihood of Palestine's becoming a great economic and political center of the Jewish race, there is little doubt that it is rapidly developing into an intellectual and spiritual center out of all proportion to its comparatively small population. Several distinct causes are contributing to produce this result. On the one hand, there is the conscious, ceaseless effort on the part of "Cultural Zionists," and on the other hand the environment, the conglomeration of dialects introduced by Jews coming from all the quarters of the globe, and the ubiquity of soul-stirring remains of our people's ancient glory are producing a renaissance unique, in its way, in the history of the world.

As a measure of this recent intellectual and cultural development in Palestine, we may take the Jewish periodicals that are being publishea at Jaffa and Jerusalem. It is almost superfluous to state that these periodicals are all in Hebrew; for in spite of the fact that a very large proportion of the Jewish population is foreign-born and was hence accustomed to read Yiddish or other journals previously to their settling in Palestine, yet every attempt to establish Yiddish papers in Palestine heretofore has met with signal failure. Such is the wonderful effect of the “purging atmosphere of Erez Yisroel.”

The most interesting of all Palestinian journals, and perhaps of all Hebrew journals, is the “Ha-Poel Hazair,”’ published at Jaffa as the

official organ of the Workingmens Organization of the same name. The members of this organization are not outspoken socialists, though they are inclined in that direction. The great ideal of their lives, to which they are sacrificing their careers and fortunes, is Zionism. Not Zionism in the political or philanthropic sense of some occidental Jews, but an intense yearning to continue the thread of our nation’s existence, to produce by their daily toil the metamorphosis so desired by all: the changing of the Jew from a tribe of bargainers and peddlers into a nation of producers, with a firm soil under its feet. The HaPoel Hazair” accordingly contains bitter attacks upon those who would reduce the work of colonization in Palestine to a mere business proposition. They are extremists, insisting upon the use of Hebrew and Hebrew only as a medium of intercourse in Palestine and, above all, upon Hebrew labor in the colonies. The journal is exerting an ever-increasing influence not only in Palestine but also in the lands of the Diaspora.

There is another weekly issued by workingmen in Jerusalem, Haachduth ("Unity"). In contradistinction to the Jaffa publication it is an outspoken Socialistic paper. It is in fact the organ of the Poalei Zion and proposes to strengthen class consciousness among the Jewish workingmen in Palestine and to lead the attack against Capitalism in about the same manner as their comrades in other countries. How-