The Maccabaean

with discrimination. To begin with, no experienced observer, speaking with the careful deliberation of a man who is on his guard against sweeping statements, no experienced observer will be guilty of any such assertion as this: that we can separate human beings of any class into sheep on the one side and goats on the other. To say that a rabbi is sincere or insincere, if it means more than a thoughtlessly sweeping approval or condemnation, is to contend that his guiding principle is, as the case may be, idealistic aspiration or sordid ambition.

Here it is that Zionism assists us in classifying men as brave, weak or bad, so far as any classification can be relied upon in the presence of exceptions. The courageous idealist, unless he is afflicted with a loss of intellectual elasticity, will soon discover his affinity with a movement which does not measure success or health by material prosperity, which has faith in the capacity of the Jew for self-help, which feels deeply the homelessness and outlawry of the Eastern Jew, which is concerned to save the individuality of Jews and Judaism, rather than timidly to protect one's share in the Western flesh pots; the weak, the morally indolent, the amiably genial, the victims of intellectual arrest of development will profess sympathy with the movement to the extent of acknowledging the reviving force of its enthusiasm; they may assist its work where the benefits are proven; but they will be on their guard against being counted among its professed followers; while the sodden Philistine without ideals, the sordid money-grabber, the political wirepuller, the sleek toady, together with rabid partisan, cold egotist and purblind fanatic, will find a topic to their liking, a chord to harp on with tireless monotony, with biting venom, in the fact that Zionism leaves their party slogans cheap and meaningless, refutes all their shallow misinterpretations of Jewish history, exposes their camp as empty and their professions as void of spiritual worth.

Who, then, I ask myself, is my co-religionist, in the deeper sense? Is it he who avows, even preaches,

dogmas of the vital, spiritual implications of which his real soul-life is completely ignorant? Is it he whose bearing, whose practice, whose converse, whose jokes and sneers, whose tastes and cravings stand in direct contradiction to the hollow rhetoric of his professions? Whose daily life and whose natural speech know nothing of the spirituality which he apostrophizes in public utterances, whose sordid and mercenary habits have nothing in common with the visions and ideals he so glibly invokes? Whose lips may do homage to the presence and the dominance of the Supreme Being, but whose subconscious self, as it peers through the rags of conventional disguise, utterly denies Him ?

It is the underlying principle, the moving spirit of what we are that stamps us as religious, which makes us Jews in the worthiest sense, not the mental acceptance and the insistent, empty avowal of a doctrine which has no touch with the mainsprings of our conduct, with the direction of our most intense desires.

So that it may happen, on the other hand, that he who utterly rejects the dogmas of Judaism, he who fancies himself emancipated from all religious allegiance or religious authority, may be, not only a finer type of Jew, but, unconsciously, unintentionally, a more faithful follower of Judaism itself, more thoroughly imbued with the Jewish spirit, more completely in harmony with Jewish aspirations than many of those to whom their Judaism is a mere skeleton of philosophemes or a calendar of habits.

My co-religionist, then, is not so much he who shares my theological convictions, my ceremonial practices, my outward observances, but rather he whom I feel to be at one with myself in devotion to the higher life, in the brotherly feeling for the sorrows and distresses of the Jew the world over, in confident hopefulness for the future of the Jew and in willing self-sacrifice for the sake of that future.

Oft in my dreams there comes to me A vision in the night, Of a loved land of holy Mystery Whose streams of crystal bright Like Jewels gleam adown her hills, And through her valleys green, Where joyous songbird ever trills The ling'ring hours between.

Robed in the garb of nationhood Rejuvenated, strong, In all the virile strength that stood ’Gainst centuries of wrong; I see her take rightful place— By God and nature planned— The mother of a fruitful race, A free and Sovereign land.

Freedom's bright glow is on her brow,The light within her eyesThat tells her subject Sisters howFrom bondage to arise;And from the land beyond the SéasHer exiled children throng,To hail her newborn destiniesWith pageant and with Song.

Commerce once more has found a home,And Art and Science vie,Where Israel's shrine and Civic domeRise proudly to the sky.Industry's pleasant hum is heardIn factory and mill.As Nature by new forces stirredWorks out a nation's will.

Thus in that very inspired hourI beheld Jehudah Malevi the Sire,When in a Speech of matchless power,He voiced his Soul's desire:"Am Hamlochos," Mother-Queen,The world's brightest gem,Palestine, "of purest ray serene,"In Freedom's diadem.