The Maccabaean

a happy remnant of the Jewish people under a flag of their own, side by side with groups already existing under all sorts of conditions, would vitiate the citizenship of Jews in America or elsewhere, is another way of saying that the Jewish citizen is not to be trusted unless the bulk of his people are kept in perpetual exile as Hnctagee far hie onnd hehavinr

Let those who so reason speak for themselves. For my part, when I take my stand under the Zionist banner,

I repudiate the implication of that argument. Admitted to citizenship in the land of my adoption on equal terms with members of other nations, I am not afraid to meet any test of my civic allegiance that my comrades in adoption have to meet. I will bring my credentials not in the form of aloofness from the most idealistic enterprise of our times, but rather in the form of high-spirited devotion to the cause of that nation whose teachings have civilized the world.

THE article that the writer was to contribute to the Hadassah number of the Maccabaean had the appropriate feminine touch. It was to discuss Junior Zionist Education from the mother's point of view. Experience with several children has, however, not enabled the mother to formulate either a scheme of education or its a vague, generalized way, and such ideas as she has lack a distinctly maternal character. Begging grace of the editor, therefore, she will eliminate the qualifying possessive, and proceed to discuss the problem of education that confronts us as if she were —let us say—

The first question to be asked of any educational system is, “What is its aim?’ That the aim affects the methods no one can question, nor is it difficult to find examples of the variety of effects in these days when all are, for example, acutely aware of national distinctiveness. The German system, having in view the making of a drilled, obedient citizen of a militaristic state, adopts methods which, if they increase efficiency, diminish initiative. The German schoolboy, the traveler says, walks demurely to school in the morning, his book-satchel strapped to his shoulder, The schoolboy whom we know runs and whoops and swings his books at the end of a strap. He is being made into the citizen of a republic, where increasingly the individual’s liberty is safeguarded, and at the same time an ever keener and keener sense of group relationship, of civic duty, of social bonds is developing. Every system aims more or less consciously to fit the child into its group, whether it be the smaller group of the family or the larger one of the state. With the men of broadest outlook, this fitting of the child to its group is in the hope of developing in it a still larger social sense embracing mankind. _ 0 \

The problem of making American citizens in an American state is comparatively simple. The whole environment tends to the same end. This neutralizes errors in the formal educational system. To be sure, in the large centers of population the cry goes up that the presence of a huge foreign element threatens the unity of impressions the child should receive ; but no American is fundamentally pessimistic about the ultimate outcome. He feels pretty sure that the strongest element in the melting pot is American, and that element will cause the mass to dissolve. So that whether we have the old red schoolhouse or a Gary system, an American citizenry will be produced, American despite irregularities in the results. \

Is the Zionist trying to train a citizen of Zion? In the homeland, the problem would be analogous to the Amer-

ican or the German educator’s. The Jew in exile, quite apart from any question of Zionism, has always had his special educational problem, a very real and perplexing problem, but free from certain complications to be un- raveled by the Zionist. What relation shall a child have, not to a concrete state, but to a movement, a hope? The Zionist has every difficulty that the Jew in general has. Jewish education, covering a vast history, a language belonging to an entirely different family from any of those in the ordinary curricula, a varied literature, must be obtained in addition to that of the American citizen, in fragments of time, at the fag end of the day -andthe week, in time which by all modern physicians’ rules ought to be free for physical development. It must be acquired despite the alien environment, which often instils ignorant contempt. It demands an additional tax on the parents’ purse over and above what the other citizens have to pay for an education that turns out good men and good citizens; for we Jews ask more: our children must learn to be good men and good citizens and good Jews. Must, in addition to these requirements, the Zionist burden: his child with the task of becoming a good Zionist ? : \

This question must be approached from another angle. What is the adult’s relation to such a movement? Chiefly one of service. The movement confers only spiritual benefits on its adherents; it exacts of them spirit and work and money. Is a child actually to do such service? Or is he not rather to learn the spirit and acquire the equipment that will enable him to perform the service upon reaching his majority? The child’s business in life is to be educated, to grow.

If in the future we are to continue to live in the golus as we have lived in the past, little service will be required of. the majority of us Jews. Self-sacrifice there will be plenty of occasion for, as there has been even martyrdom in the past; but that is negative. It means doing without, foregoing the fullness of life to attest loyalty to our faith, It does not mean the positive, joyous giving of self for the sake of obtaining real advantages for our whole people. For the fulfillment of the Zionist hope, it is more than ever necessary that our children should receive a good, thorough Jewish education. With Hebrew again recognized as a living tongue, how can a mere smattering suffice? With a people consciously attempting to make present and future history, how can the history of the past be allowed to become a string of names and dates? With a new Hebrew literature in the making, how dare we risk a discontinuity in literary tradition, or let any of these spiritual treasures belong wholly to a hierarchy ? This Jewish education is not to be taken from the schools.