The Maccabaean

And all of us, I, and the misty valleys, and the gleaming mountain-tops, and the limpid sea, awakened by my jubilant shout, join in a new song, a song of praise, a song of life. . .

Trrrrr . . . Oh, the deuce! How that whistle frightened me! Time for work already, and I have not yet breakfasted. Yisroēlik will scold, and Zillah

will pucker her little forehead and purse her rosy But tonight you will go rowing on the lake with me. When I tell you all about it you will beg me, yes, on your bended knees you will beg me to take you along.

WE are living in a time when two things are becoming clear to the entire civilized world. One is that the Orient must count for much more in our lives than it has ever counted before. Second, that the destiny of principle of nationality in the world is only just beginning to be understood, and whatever we do with the principle of nationality in the future we must recognize and make place in the world for that vital intense creative nationality, the Jewish nationality. We are living in an age when internationalism in the sense of the community and brotherhood of nations is strengthening its hold upon us, and this kind of internationalism we all want to see grow and prosper. But the internationalism which aims at the wiping out or suppression of nationalities—for that we neither are nor want to be ready. We want only that internationalism which preserves nationality. Nationality is fundamental, because it means continuance of experiments in living together.

We have to live in this world experimentally; that is to say, we want to devise those systems of laws, those institutions, those interpretations of the family, of property, or religion, of education, which shall best serve the interests of mankind. What are these laws? Who knows? We can only know through allowing the national experiments to go on, only thus can we compare and test them. Every nationality has this obligation to try and experiment, to experiment with those laws which best express its own genius. In some way, for example, the Russian family is different from the French family, the French family is different from the German family and the German family is different from the English family and the English family is different from the American family, and the Jews have their own conception of what the family means. These conceptions have a right to be heard and a right to their freedom and development in the full national life within which they can blossom out and express themselves. The life of humanity as it comes to flower and fruition in all that we call culture is a varied garden of institutions and these institutions draw their sap from the soil and the soul of historic community of memories, experiences and hopes. The life of every nationality as embodied in art, religion, science, and the conduct of life has its root in the soil of its land and, therefore, the whole of humanity is impoverished when any nation is uprooted and the whole of humanity will be impoverished unless every strong national stock has a chance to show what is in it and to develop itself in experimental life on its own homeland. The first point then is that Jewish nationality must have a fair chance for national self expression.

Now the second point which flows from it seems to me to be this: That nationality wherever it exists must be

an all-round partnership in the things that go to make up a state. Whatever happens to the Jewish people in the future I hope that the expression of their national life will be an all-round expression. I heard suggested that the Jewish state in Palestine shall be under the protection of some great power, of Great Britain, or the United States of America. Now it is perfectly true that a budding state must be under the protection of some greater power. But in the aspirations of the establishment of a Jewish state let me plead to see to it that the Jewish state is self-protective, that is, that it does its distinctive and adequate part in the maintenance of its own distinctive life. It will mean a great deal to the self-respect of Jewry the world over if the Jewish state established in Palestine is self-protective.

In my observation of Jews and Jewish communities in the countries I have visited I have seen one difficulty —the difficulty of specialization. The Jew has not spread himself in all lines, and that is because political life has been denied to Judaism. The restoration of political life will mean a great deal to Judaism if what will be estab lished in Palestine, let me insist again, will be self-pro tective. I do not mean that the Jewish state is to refuse aid, but rather that it shall be an end in itself, a community of ends. The time has come when states can no longer be isolated and self-sufficient. To live each must have the strength of all. Yet this living through others is for the sake of the life of each, and the life of the whole. The self-protective character of the Jewish state thus allows and requires that behind this incipient state shall be the moral strength of world.

My third point is that the sentiment of Jewish nationality as the sentiment of nationality in all peoples is profoundly religious. Every nationality has religious roots and should experience its attitude in its own life, laws, and institutions. There flows from this an important corollary. One, that the destiny of the Jew does not lie in the direction of becoming a religious neutral. I am afraid that there is a tendency on the part of the Jews to become religious neutrals and: to see the Jewish destiny in making the communities in which they live religiously neutral. Internationalism in the Jew it appears to me runs parallel with the laws of religion, I do not‘ believe that the Jewish people really wants to become itself religiously neutral or to make the communities in which the Jews live religiously neutral. Now that puts Judaism in a real dilemma; either it plunges in the religion of the adopted community or it hopes and strives for the soil where it can have free scope for the new expression and new development of its own religious impulses. That is one of the deep things-in Zionism. Zionism is a solution of this dilemma. \