When the fatal struggle with Rome began there were some so-called practical politicians in Judea who tried to point out to the people the uselessness of resistance. What! to rebel against Rome, the mistress of the world, the victor of a thousand battles, Rome who conquered Greece and Macedonia, Gaul, Britannia and Germania? Absurd! Impossible! So, for instance, argued the practical king Agrippa the Second, but the Jews remained deaf to such warnings. They preferred exile to spiritual slavery. In the spiritual world there should be no arbitration. This is probably why they never even aspired to make proselytes. "Proselytes," says the Talmud, "are hard to Israel like leprosy." For a proselyte can, at best, be only a partial Jew. In the Roman period of national assimilation, when ideas and ideals were interchanged between nationalities; when all sorts of concessions and compromises were made; when the entire world seemed to have turned topsyturvy, when slaves of yesterday became lords of today, Israel alone remained steadfast and immovable, and when a hurricane of revolutions swept over the old world—this marvelous people buried its head in the sands of its traditional past in order to preserve its soul for a great future.
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So long as the Jew could live in peace with his own conscience all was well. The world despised him, per-
secuted him—but who is the world? Is it the depraved, debased, demoralized pagan Rome? or is it the Crusaders and papal Christianity which presumably came to displace paganism, but more firmly established it after depriving it of its original aesthetic beauty? The Jew was conscious of his moral and spiritual superiority, and this gave him sufficient strength to bear his physical torture with fortitude. Even the world which was so cruel to him had a sub-consciousness of this superiority. When the Christian world treated him with cruelty he treated it with contempt. The greater the persecution the tighter he shut himself up: in his own shell—the visionary world of his ancestral home. The Temple was no more, so every synagogue became his "Mikdash Meöt”—his little Temple, where he still offered his old prayers, still sang his old psalms, always turning his face towards the East, towards Zion. He surrounded himself with a thousand souvenirs of his fatherland. In Spain, in the neighborhood of Toledo, he builds towns naming them Palestinian names—Eshtoal, Joppa, etc. His national faith is stil a force-vivante with him; his tribulations only a temporary transitory evil from which his Messiah would‘ soon relieve him. This is the secret of the preservation of the Jewish nationality. Here is the key to the solution of the eternal rıddle. The red sea of exile was crossed by the People of Israel with the: magic staff—the ideal of Zion.
Tip the Scales
HADASSAH is now distributing little folders whereby we hope to raise money for the urgent need of the Jews in Palestine who are suffering through the war. An appeal must be original and unique to touch us now, for it would seem that our Jewish conscience has been dulled by the very enormity of our obligation. And since we have all heard numerous appeals, and have all given something, we mistakenly suppose we have done our duty. We have not done our duty until we cannot possibly give more.
Now Hadassah is asking for something other than money; for our gold and our silver in any form, the unused, the discarded, the forgotten. Hadassah will bear our burdens of gold and silver, and have them converted into money. We are shown a picture of a scale whereon our bits of unvalued metal counterbalance the unthinkable woe of our people in Palestine. And we are asked to detach, sign and mail a postal card which will bring a collector. It is made as easy as possible.
How appealing is this plan! There are several things in its favor. First, it promises to be remunerative—and how much we need the money! It also makes giving easy. That may reflect ignobly on the giver, but it counts in these hard days. One can give, without spending. Then, also, there is a nobler side. Many feel that in giving money they shirk a home responsibility. But in giving jewels and silver they give what is their very own—a personal gift in which no others can be involved.
But to me the idea appeals most because it is romantic. I love to remember that we are doine now
what our ancestors did when they brought gold and silver and jewels for the building of the tabernacle in the wilderness. "And Moses spake unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying: Whosoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it, an offering of the Lord, gold and silver. And they came, every one whose heart stirred him up, and every one whom his spirit made willing, both men and women, as many as were willing-hearted, and brought bracelets and earrings and rings and tablets, all jewels of gold."
It is given to us to live again this poetry, this romance of the free-will offering. This high emprise, this spirit of nobility, we are asked to share with our romantic people in ancient times.
But how dare I speak of romance in the face of the horror, the starvation, the stark, ugly suffering caused by this frightful war? Can one dream dreams. on a battlefield? Yet our ancestors in the wilderness built the ark and tabernacle in the face of hunger,. of desert thirst, of danger and horror. And they were consecrated at Mt. Sinai in the midst of fire and earth- auake.
Our people in Russia to-day are fleeing from nowhere to nowhere from the clutches of death. Our precious little villages in Palestine, the little tabernacle of a new exodus, are threatened with destruction. Why all this suffering? It is nothing new. For two thousand years we have been constantly driven and threatened and starved and murdered. How did we contrive to exist, to endure? We contrived to exist and to endure because of a romance—the romance of the Jewish nation.
Not only Zionism, but Judaism, is a romantic force. That is why so many refuse to listen to us in this materialistic age. All nationalism is romantic. But Jewish nationalism is supremely so, for it is the ro-