swore our ancestors in Babylon. They were quite sincere; it is perhaps easier to forget the right hand than the right land—and they kept their oath. When the battle-rams and the legions of Antiochus laid the country waste they sharpened the weapons which their country forged for them—great physical and spiritual power combined—and produced a leader who was a saint and a hero in one, a priest-general—Judas Maccabeus, who saved the Jewish country for four centuries and Jewish honour for eternity.
When the cruel hand of Titus finally tore us away from our ancestral soil after a resistance unparalleled in the annals of human history—not before four-fifths of our people gave their lives on the battle-helds— those who remained alive were still unconquered, for they took their soil with them in captivity. They surrounded themselves with countless emblems, as souvenirs of their fatherland. In our prayers, in our liturgy, in our daily life, in our festivals, in our customs, in joy and in sorrow—ever and everywhere we kept green the memory of Palestine.e In Madrid and Lisbon, in Prague and Worms, in Frankfort and Nea- pol, in Paris and Lincoln— we still remained citizens of Jerusalem. Our rabbis sat bent over the age-worn folios, propounding the “precepts concerning the soil.” Our poets sang: “Zion, dost thou not enquire?” and “I am in the West, but my heart is in the East.” On the anniversary of the loss of our independence the whole nation in every part of the globe sat, and wept, and fasted, and mourned the great national calamity, as though it occurred but yesterday. The Jews more devoutly inclined, rose at midnight, and in heart-rending tones recited “‘Chzos,” the midnight prayers for the restoration of our homeland. Never for a day, for an hour, did we forget the land of our cradle. We lived with Palestine, and when we died we put some of its soil on our eyelids that the sacred soil be always with us. . . Does the world’s history know of another example of such love and devotion to a fatherland? Time had no effect on it; lands and climes did not modify it; wars and revolutions did not change it; persecution and torture only strengthened it. The lover remained faithful to his love! True and faithful till death—and after!. . .Has ever a deeper romance been conceived by the imapination of a poet?
But what is the cause of such limitless devotion and unequalled faithfulness?
re al Ed mr a eh a ee Again the answer to me seems plain—-Jew and Palestine are indissolubly combined. The real Jewish character is the natural character of the land. Jewish psychology is modeled on the Palestinian climate; dreamy yet stern, harmonious, yet full of contrasts, heavenly and spiritual, yet earthly and practical. . . This is perhaps the secret why the Jew can so easily adapt himself to all climates and all environments. As long as a Jew retains his true character he is consciously or unconsciously a Palestinian. His attitude toward Palestine is the most reliable thermometer for measuring his degree of Jewishness. The finest and deepest Jewish characters in ancient as well as in modern times were always Palestinian. With some particularly fine characters, as that of Halevi, Heine, Disraeli, the love for Palestine filled their souls to overflowing. . .Like a fountain it burst forth from time to time with such irresistible force that it heeded no consequences of conditians or environment and silenced all selfish and material considerations. There is, however, not a single Jewish heart in the world in which a hidden chord will not respond to the magic touch of the memorv of Palestine. Some people as-
cribe it to religious emotion. I prefer to call it Jewish psychology. Be it as it may, the fact remains that this chord often sounded wonderful melodies. Some of its finest melodies we heard in our own times, melodies that sound at least as deep and as sweet as the soul-melodies of other nations. . . .
Does not, indeed, the heroism of the “Bilu” remind us of the venture of the Pilgrim Fathers?—those tender university students who exchanged the college auditorium for the untilled field, the pen för the plough, the wealthy. home and brilliant prospective careers for fever-contaminated marshes. . . . They suffered hunger and thirst, privation and fever, but persevered and succeeded in paving the first path and laying the first foundation of the New House of Israel. . . Outside the colony of Cheverah there is a flower-decked little cemetery hiding the bones of these heroic pioneers. This cemetery is perhaps the finest emblem of Jewish patriotism, a patriotism consecrated with the purest blood of the purest hearts. This “Bilu”—what a beautiful chapter in the romance of Zionism! and Herzl? That Western Jew brought up in a non-Jewish sphere, that aristocrat, that homme-de-salon, who wore under his stiff European shirt the tenderest of Jewish hearts, in whose dreamy eyes fay hidden the eternal dream of a suffering nation, who, twenty centuries after his Babylonian ancestors, whom he resembled in features and figure, triumphantly repeated the oath: “If I forget thee, oh Jerusalem!” Herzl, who, meteorlike darted across our sky, like a sudden flash of light, kindling on its way the hearts of hundreds of thousands with new hope and new vigour. His convening of Congress, uniting a scattered people, his interviews with kings, Popes, statesmen, his audience with the Sultan, his feverish activity, his building up of institutions and his premature death—what a wonderful legend woven in the Romance of Zionism!
And Nordau—with a head of a Socrates, a sardonic smile of a doubter but with the tongue of an Isaiah— Nordan the skeptic, the isolated, the proud, the fearless Nordau, who pilloried the hypocrisy of Christian Europe, who gave the lie to modern civilization, Nordau surrendering himself unconditionally to the dream and ideal of his great-small people! Is this not a wonderful, a glorious page in the Romance of Zionism! And Wolfsohn whom, too, we prematurely lost, that merchant-idealist, and because of this, very typical Jew, a man with a head full of financial calculations, and a heart full of noble aspirations. . . Will the Romance of Zionism not assign to him a place of honour?
And what of Warburg, whom Zionism turned from a Berlin professor of botany into a Palestine Company promoter. . . . and what of our latest great leader in America—Brandeis—whose mighty hammer of crushing logic falls with such irresistible effect on the rusty bars of assimilation. . . . What marvelous episodes in the Romance of Zionism!
I see the Jewish youth all over the world whose minds are attuned to the new ideas and ideals of Judaism, who full of vigour and energy, are waiting for the mot d’ordre to lift the banner of Zion and to carry it proudly to its destination, The Jewish youth all over the world is engaged in reading and pondering over the great Jewish work—the Romance of Zionism. The work we have accomplished in our fatherland, the colonies we have built, the schools we have estab- lıshed, the language we have revived. the vinevards