THE MACCABAEAN
possibilities of Palestine. The tendency among the colonies has been not to concentrate in a few places, thus paving the way for all the evils of large modern cities, but to establish small independent colonies. Agriculture and not trade are looked upon as the primary need of the new establishment in Palestine, thus building up a rejuvenated, healthy proletariat who shall live literally close to the soil, literally owning the land of their fathers and making of it a blooming garden, when each man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and shall no longer be made afraid.
I have tried to suggest some of the analogies between the national Italian cause and the national Jewish cause —the practical realization through political needs of an age-long idealistic hope kept alive by the poets and the philoso phers, the conflict between the advocates of religious and
political means for accomplishing that end, the difficulties presented by the internal problems of the two peoples, the attachment to the soil and to the ancient cities associated for two thousand years with the national history, the world-wide importance given at last to formerly insignificant national questions. Two nations of ancient culture clustering around a holy city have sought unity out of dissension, with a restored language, a renewed culture, an enlarged vision, a purified self-consciousness, a new sense of responsibility toward their own possibilities of development. Perhaps the new Jewish state, whose form we dimly see, may accomplish in one generation as great, as impressive, political and industrial miracles as have occurred in Italy, assuring for the Jewish people a great nation, one out of many free and nnited._
The Palestine Restoration Fund Campaign
THE FIRST MONTH of our campaign for the Palestine Restoration Fund has passed. We are endeavoring to raise a first instalment of one million dollars for the redemption of the Jewish Homeland by March 1st. One-half of our time has already elapsed. At this halfway post, it is well to pause a moment and take stock of our position with absolute frankness.
We have, to date, collected one hundred thousand dollars in cash. We have, in pledges, about half a million dollars more. But pledges are not money in bank. Moreover, this first hundred thousand and half million represent the ‘‘easy money’ of our campaign, the gifts and pledges of those who contribute practically without solicitation. The donors and pledgers are largely our own people. /
The next nine hundred thousand of cash and the next half million of pledges will therefore be infinitely more difficult to get. What does that mean for our organized Zionists? The handwriting on the wall is perfectly legible to everyone who does not deliberately blindfold himself.
The goal we have set ourselves will not be attained unless every Zionist takes upon himself the responsibility of success or failure.
Every Zionist consists of two individuals for the purposes of our recovery of Palestine and, therefore, for the purposes of this Million Dollar Campaign.
In the first place, he belongs to the organization, and, in this capacity, must take upon himself a full share of the work done by the organization toward raising the Restoration Fund. He must be willing to serve diligently on committees engaged in special activities, and he must attend conferences, mass meetings and other gatherings where money is being raised or enthusiasm aroused for our cause.
In the second place, he must act as an individual Zionist. His sole aim in life, for the next twenty-eight days, should be to make come true, in so far as he personally can, the two-thousand-year-old dream of his people. His share of the work at present is to raise as much of the million dollars singlehanded as he can. 116 must let no Jew escape him. If he believes sincerely that our repatriation in Palestine has at last become possible, in fact has been brought within plain sight by the British Declaration and General Allenby’s conquest of Jerusalem, then he cannot fail to infect every Jew he encounters with his own enthusiasm and faith.
Let every Zionist set himself, individually, a goal, fix a certain sum of money which will represent his personal debt to the Restoration Fund; and then let him go out and get that sum within the time-limit set.
Zionists of America! The hour has come when you are to be tested by your works. One million dollars is not a great sum in comparison with what our people have already given for causes less vital to our race. The Opportunity of twenty centuries is battering at our doors. It is our duty to wake our fellow-Jews out of their fatal torpor. The world regards our willingness to raise this first instalment of a mighty Restoration Fund as the test of our hunger for Zion. During the next month, surely, we will prove our insatiable and immortal appetite for Zion by raising twice one million dollars for the ransom of Erez Israel.
NATIONAL FINANCE COMMISSION,HENRY ALSBERG, Secretary.