The Maccabaean

IE HILST I, a fugitive from hearth and > GS N home, separated from all that are dear Y iss Y to me, was listening with an anxious \e 4 heart to the thunder that resounded [Je eier) . . Aies=732 across the Continent, a friend who ORIZAR rSc# received the “Jewish Chronicle 7 ZINNS brought me, early in October, 1914, the news tnat David Woltfsohn had died fourteen days previously. The news overwhelmed me. It even made me forget for a moment the tremendous events of which we are the astounded witnesses. I know that my poor friend had been ailing severely. He had been suftering for some years, but the news had been more favorable just before the outbreak of the war. Since then I had not been able to hear anything from him, as there was no further postal communication between Germany and France. He had been dead fourteen days, and I had no knowledge of it. Letters and telegrams from friends in Holland, England, Switzerland, Austria and Germany, who wished to inform me of Wolffsohn’s decease, reached me in some cases after five weeks, and in other cases not at all. And in the daily newspapers which are accessible to me here I found not a word about the sad event. They mention every lieutenant of six or seven foreign armies who has fallen on the battlefield; but for a great Jew whom the world lost too soon, they cannot spare a line. We alone bewail our dead. It is therefore all the more our sacred duty to mourn for them and to honor them as they deserve.

I shall write only a few words about Wolffsohn, over whose coffin the grave has closed without my being able to throw even a handful of earth; a few words, but honestly felt. I shall refrain from hyperbole: it would have seriously displeased the friend who was taken from us, for he was simple and modest, and the consciousness of his own worth never degenerated into an overestimation of himself.

a ER rer a Te Fe zn SE na 2 re m rede Fr nn te ik It is not my intention to sum up the place that David Wolffsohn occupied in Zionism, or to describe the ideas and actions that characterized his seven years’ direction of the affairs of our organization. I could not do it without exercising some criticism, without tempering praise with reserve, without referring to questions of the day and ruffling the susceptibilities of the living—all of which I want to avoid. No strange note shall be heard in my lamentation for the dead; my grief shall be restrained and shall not be diverted by a discussion of the objects of Zionism and of the various methods of its solution.

The great creative spirits, like Moses, who cement a multitude of human beings into a people, determine its fortunes right into an invisible future and endow it with life's ideals, the courage of existence and the strength of self-support occupy a peculiar place in history. They remain solitary, dominating, free from all possible comparison. Still they must have successors, for the people cannot dispense with leadership, and the legacy of the great departed must be fostered and administered. Herzl had a nature like that of Moses. Wolffsohn would have regarded it as blasphemy had anybody wished to place him beside the creator of the Zionist congresses and organiza-

tion. But he was the Joshua of this Moses, and that certainly constitutes sufficient fame for him.

Wolftsohn had one of the finest qualities of a complete man; he was capable of unreserved admiration and self-forgetful submission. He looked up to Herzl with a veneration bordering on devotion and fervor; he willingly made himself a servant of his plans and intentions, and found his complete moral and spiritual satisfaction in placing at the disposal of the beloved leader, in indeiatigable self-sacrifice, everything that he possessed in respect of strength and wealth, energy in the execution of carefully conceived plans, experience and dexterity in the practical work of organization, cleverness, astuteness and knowledge of the world and of mankind. He was the embodiment of that Nibelungen loyalty, which the 'Teuton claims as the heroic virtue of his race and which he certainly would not admire so highly and praise so loudly if it were not so rare among his people. Among us Jews, it is comparably more frequent, and Wolffsohn has given us a splendid example of it.

a A a DT a Ve rt Tri ET Herzl appreciated the unconditional devotion of his follower, and favored him in return with his complete confidence. He initiated him into his most secret and final plans. He disclosed to him without reluctance even the veiled chimeras, which he would never have liked to show to others, even near friends, lest he should appear an incomprehensible dreamer in their eyes. He made him his executor, guardian of his children, and receiver and keeper of his diaries, to which the public cannot yet lay any claim. And when he passed away Wolffsohn suddenly found himself the cynosure of all eyes. For many years he had been in the shadow. Now he stood in the glaring sunlight, which had hitherto shone exclusively on his leader, and this brightness, this glamor terrified him. For all ostentation was alien and repulsive to him; he recognized his limitations and his modesty was noble and touching. At the death of Herzl he was forced to direct the affairs of the Zionist Organization, whether he wished it or not, as they could not be left in the lurch; but he could not grasp the idea of undertaking the leadership with all due form and ceremony, and of becoming the proper successor of Herzl. When, in May, 1905, he came with Dr. Katzenelsohn, Dr. Bodenheimer and other friends to me at Carlsbad, where, owing to severe illness, I was undergoing a cure, and urged me with a vehemence which I was then almost too weak to resist, to take upon myself the leadership of the movement, he literally, lost all self-control when I exclaimed: “What a mistake you are making, my dear friend! Don’t you see that you, and you alone, are the chosen one, the predestined guardian, the natural testamentary heir, and even the intestate heir of Herzl?” It needed long persuasion before he could make up his mind to yield to my arguments. Even when the subsequent Congress thoroughly shared my opinion and elected him constitutionally as President of the Inner Actions Committee (Central Executive), he had not yet risen to a proper sense of the legitimateness of his leadership, and he wanted to regard himself merely as a sort of regent for the temvorarv discharge of the leadership.