The Maccabaean

The Zionist asks, however, that it be informed by the nationalistic spirit, the spirit of optimism as to our people's future.

16 L1UlUTC. Will this same training give the spirit of service? Children themselves cannot practice the service for the movement that is the adult’s chief relation to it. It must be remembered that the child of the American citizen does not enter the army, does not vote, does not sweep the streets, does not pay taxes, does not render the state any service- At the age of twenty-one, he votes—quite naturally if of the right sex. If the training he has received be the ordinary training of the American child, he will in maturity do all sorts of service to his fellows, through the organization of the state, through charitable institutions, through his church, through his club, even through hie hieinece

At a certain point in the small child’s development, social instincts appear naturally. They are rendered abortive or are perverted only if a false system of training or injudicious environment fails to give them free play. If the child has opportunity in his home, in relation to his family group, to practice littlé services himself and to see them practiced by the adults, he will‘learn the spirit and the art of service. If he has similar opportunities in his school, where he gets a glimpse of broader relations to teachers and to fellow-pupils, he will learn the same lesson. These instincts and attitudes broaden and develop markedly in the adolescent period, the period of clubs and gangs, and tend to take into their purview all mankind. That period is the teacher’s opportunity and ‘his pons asinorum, Let the adolescent but suspect the imposition of adult standards on his immature consciousness, or ‘of adult restrictions upon his spirit of independence, and he will chafe at the guiding hand. With him the leader or guide or teacher outside of the class room’ must walk warily, leading, but not seeming to lead, stimulating, inspiring as a counsellor, not constraining as an'autocrat.

= The Jewish school uses much of the spare time of the child for study. The Zionist club leader must take care not to absorb the rest of it, to interfere with the hours of

play or rest, or in any way break the rules laid down by hygienists and pedagogues.

517 5-23 aiiu Pry savattty- As was just said, his chief opportunity lies in the period of adolescence, uncared for by the Jewish school, before the adult business of life has begun, the period in which youths tend to form social groups. Of this period, Professor Stanley Hall says it is a time when large ideals. prevail, when young people become so broadly humanitarian that they overlook the small immediate duties of everyday life. A movement like Zionism might well fill a need of this age, for the Jewish people is a little nearer to each Jew than all humanity, and far larger than the family or neighborhood group. Scattered as it is over all the earth, with its history extending backward through ‘all the ages, and its hope for the future, it is linked ‘to all timec and all neonlec

₪ רייו ה Cen. שי .ל Professor 1181( groups the studies particularly suitable to this period of a boy’s life in a way that is suggestive again for the Zionist worker, for they are exactly the branches that might be made effectual in the Zionist club life of the young. He lays stress, for example, on rhet- oric, under which head he chiefly discusses the value of debates. The Zionist worker has a fertile field of debate in the topics connected with the movement, It is:a rival of American politics in that respect. -Another subject literature im עטס +1 emphasized by Hall is the drama. modern Hebrew and in the vernacular but kept pace with our needs, Jewish legend and tale and current events “would afford fine dramatic and histrionic opportunities to the young Zionist. And when Hall discusses the very great value of the race epic and the Bible, why, we inevitably think, the Bible is our very own, our race epic. As for history, the last category in Hall’s groups of studies. ours. as we said before. is world-embracing.

To sum up, the youth whose sense of loyalty has been quickened by proper educational methods and by wholesome group life, whose sympathies and vision have been broaden by glimpses of his kinship with the community and all mankind, will, when he comes to shoulder the obligations of adult life, not fail his people in service.

Through the watches of the night,By your side, my child, my hope,When the lamp is burning bright,Comes a moment when it flickers,

Burns most bright, then seems to die.By your side, my child, my hope,

Do I hear your helpless cry,Then once more the flame I kindle,

Watch it burn throughout the night. By your side, my child, my hope, Keep you ever in my sight, Hold you to my breast till dawn.