The Maccabaean

Why should she not be a sewing circle, she alone? In more than one case such a "lonely" Zionist has been the nucleus for a new chapter, indeed a host in herself. And naturally within the chapters, several of which count their membership into the hundreds, there is room and need for limited group organization for specific service. Into all these groups non-members are admitted. Their aim is education, integration.

They consist so far of Sewing Circles, with a reader on Jewish themes, of ‘Reading Circles, of Study Circles for the study of Zionism, Jewish History, Hebrew or Jewish literature, and more intensive than any of these, of groups of the School of Zionism, where under definite instruction students are preparing themselves consciously for more efficient Zionist work. We need the open meeting and the private meeting. We need the club and the natural social grouping of friends. We need every form of group activity that will raise the individual to the possible level of service for her people. Above all, we wish to make every Zionist woman in America feel that she belongs and fits into a Zionist group, large enough and intimate enough to include all kinds of Zionist women and all groups of Zionist women, and that group 1s Hadassah.

THE SCHOOL OF ZIONISM

MISINFORMED persons have believed that Hadassah came into existence as a society to undertake a practical Zionist task in Palestine. Hadassah came into existence as a Study Circle. Originally it was a group of about twenty-five women who met regularly to study Zionism. It seems to us no accident that some of the most active workers in Hadassah to-day were members of this original study group. To educate others equally efficient—of whom we have far too few—Hadassah three years ago organized in New York City a School for the instruction of Zionist workers. This School began with thirty students. To-day the School has three hundred students in groups throughout the country and is also guiding the work of other Study Circles and Reading Circles, an uncounted number. It has prepared a text book on Zionism and has made an arrangement with the Federation of American Zionists, whereby all those who have fitted themselves to do Zionist work in any specific field are to receive a certificate to that effect—or shall I say a commission ?— through a Board of Examiners and Cer- tifiers appointed by the Federation of American Zionists. Thus Hadassah hopes to do a service to Zionist education in America, constantly to raise the standard of educational efficiency. And since education is of special interest to women, one of our aims is to create Zionist teachers and leaders, to prepare our members for more effective work in the Young Judaea organization as organizers and leaders especially of girls’ clubs. This is Hadassah’s practical work in America. For our School is not an academic School. It is an avoca- tional School.

WORK IN PALESTINE

FOUR years ago Hadassah established in Jerusalem a Nurses' Settlement House with two Jewish-American trained nurses. Excepting only the Bezalel School, this was the first time that a Zionist institution had penetrated into the old Yishub of Jews in Palestine. The two nurses supervised a previously instituted system of Jewish mid-

wives in those poverty-stricken quarters where families live in one room on the bare ground and where the only Maternity Hospital was a Christian missionary hospital in which children were often forcibly baptized and convalescing mothers were subjected to conversion. Many of these mothers were mere children themselves, an easy prey through youth, ignorance and poverty. The nurses put themselves also under the direction of an eye specialist, and in the Jewish schools of Jerusalem gave thousands of treatments for trachoma, the contagious eye disease that scourges the East. They trained probationers to help in this work, and what is perhaps even more important than the marked decrease of the disease among school children, they helped arouse to this evil the social conscience of Jerusalem. In children’s clubs in the Settlement House they taught personal hygiene. They became a social force among the Jews. In America they became a Zionist force. Their letters, instinct with life, showed us our land through fresh American eyes. And many a Jewish woman, heretofore a vague lover of Palestine, began to feel that sense of personal responsibility for her people which is the heart of Zionism as it is of Judaism.

THE WAR

"Set our work began with a larger vi- - sion is clear: District visiting nursing in all the cities and Jewish villages; a Maternity Hospital, a system of Maternity Hospitals and-Nurses’ Training Schools

throughout Palestine. War came. And as it happened to all the world, so too it shattered our dreams, but gave us tasks to replace them. When for personal reasons both our brave nurses were forced to leave Palestine early in 1915, our work was. altered but not interrupted. A Jewish woman physician in Jerusalem is continuing the supervision of the midwives, and under the auspices of Hadassah is conducting a policlinic for women and children to replace the Settlement House which had to be closed. The probationers continue with the treatments for trachoma. And when from Alexandria in Egypt came word of need for identical nurses’ service among those Jewish refugees who were our own Palestinians, we sent over to them one of our trained nurses. She is now head nurse of the refugees’ hospital and has sanitary supervision 01 the encampments. So mucli for bare facts. We have gripped our tasks and hold fast to them. Until now, we have lived through tthe war. Every Jew knows—at least he has heard—what the Jews are suffering in Europe. Every Zionist knows, however indirectly, what the war has done to Palestine. But.to those of us who are the agents of some specific fund for work over there, the terrible news comes week by week, blow upon blow, a shattering of what we build, a consuming fire of hunger and disease that makes inadequate everything we do. We know—every Zionist should know—that we Zionists do not come near to meeting the need, that we cannot feed and support an imprisoned population. The officially recognized agency for general Jewish relief is also sending $45,000 a year to Palestine for immediate relief, for food and _ clothing. This, too, is far from adequate. Palestine is like a huge concentration camp. Prices have risen to four times the normal. Medicines cannot be procured. “The crowd at the policlinic is immense,” writes our physician, for there is no other agency which now cares for those cases that apply to us. Our assistants can no longer live upon their small wages. Our former budget will not carry the work. And Hadassah strains to quadruple its budget in order to meet the depreciation of currency in Turkey. Every dollar we give will buy only 25c worth of relief. Then we must give four dollars for one. We know of starvation where no food can be given; of disease, where no physician, no medicine can -be procured. We know—for do we not have access to detail upon detail?—that conditions are far worse than we can portray them. It is as if we had been there and seen the terror we dare not describe. No, we would: not describe nor present such pictures of hopelessness and horror as for instance 6 Belgian Relief Committees have published. Is it merely our sensitiveness that protects the callousness of others, or is it not our inherent hope, our faith in ultimate redress, and our dependence upon the Zionist ideal to carry us forward and onward, that make us hesitate to appeal merely to pity and mercy, where we have the right to make the absolute demand upon justice? We are going to ask for much more when the hunger-cry is stilled. More and still more. Tt is a debt that grows with the paying.