The Maccabaean

THE BEGINNINGS OF PALESTINIAN COLONIZATION

DIE ERSTE SCHRITT FUN YISHUB EREZ ISRAEL. By ISRAEL BELKIND. Price, $1.00. Publisher, Dr. H. Guelman, 245 East 24th Street, New York.

There are no stories so dear to the heart of the American school-child as those which deal with the exploits of the early settlers, of the felling of trees, the building of log cabins, the adventures with red-skins. What is more romantic than to break paths through primeval forests, to explore unknown streams in a canoe, to cook a savory mess of fish over a roaring fire, to suffer untold hardships—of this the child is but subconsciously aware—in order to extend the limits of man’s domain into the wilderness?

It is true that no land and no people has a history so teeming with romantic interest as ours. But I venture to say that of all the chapters in our chronicles, the one that will find most favor in the eyes of the Palestinian school children of the future will be the account of the beginnings of the Jewish national renascence in the nineteenth century, of the valiant bands of pioneers who faced sickness and privation and danger unhesitatingly in order that the first colonies might be founded. Unfortunately, our Zionist literature is curiously poor in material of this kind. With our racial propensity for the abstract rather than the concrete, we have dwelt too exclusively on the theoretical side of national rehabilitation; and even when we have written of Palestine and the colonists, we have confined ourselves to generalities and statistics. We have neglected the hundreds of half humorous, half pathetic, but altogether human and lovable anecdotes, which alone, as every historian knows, can make period, place, and people live before the eyes of the reader.

In Hebrew and Russian there exists a certain amount of literature of this kind, notably the recollections of Dr. Hissin of Jaffa, published years ago in the Rassvyet. In English we have practically nothing. But those of us who read Yiddish are now given the opportunity of acquainting ourselves with the Palestine of the eighties and nineties, with the Jaffa of a time when Tel-Aviv was as yet undreamed of, with the Bilu groups so rich in enthusiasm and so poor in money. No one can be more fitted to be our guide through those arduous times than Mr. Israel Belkind. Himself a leader of the Bilu movement and one of the earliest arrivals in Palestine, he took an active part in the founding of several colonies and later witnessed their transformation from desolate tracts of land into flourishing towns. Mr. Belkind has not eliminated the human element from his recollections. He tells us of the men with whom he worked and hoped, of their virtues and faults, and his style is so vivid and natural that we seem to have known them ourselves.

The book is made up of a number of chapters which may be read independently of each other. Especially interesting are those which tell of the founding of Rishon 1’Zion and its subsequent history, of Gederah and its bellicose Arab neighbors, of the growth of Petach Tikvah and the vicissitudes of Yessod Hama-

alah. No eulogy can give the reader so favorable an impression of Mr. Belkind's narrative as a direct quotation.

“Hayyim Scherzer lived in Mikveh Israel, not in the French settlement, but in a house on the Jerusalem road. All the Jews who passed there would interrupt their journey to get a drink of cold well water or to plunge into the spring in his garden from which one of the Mikveh Israel orchards was irrigated. Hayyim was a tanner. In his young days he had played the flute, and this accomplishment earned him the nickname of Hayyim Pfeiffer. He was much ashamed of this youthful folly, and became incensed whenever anyone referred to it. The practical jokers of his time were wont to come into his garden and call to him: “Good morning, Reb Hayyim Scherzer, may we have a glass of cold water?’ Hayyim would run to bring them an ice cold draught right from the spring, after the due enjoyment of which they would depart, crying to him as they went: “Good day to you, Reb Hayyim Pfeiffer!” And poor Hayyim would fly after the retreating guests with a heavy bludgeon in his hand and murder in his heart. .. .”

". .. Shortly before Pines had built a little wooden shed in Gederah, a barrack of boards five meters long and five meters wide. Here it was that the twelve colonists established themselves. They slept on benches which they put up along the walls. On one side of the shed they threw up three walls and a roof. At first this enclosure served as a stable for the donkey and a store-room for their tools. But later it was transformed into an apartment for new arrivals.”

But we must resist the temptation to quote the whole story. The reader will seek out its fascinations for himself. Mr. Belkind’s book is valuable for the light which it throws on Palestinian conditions and the history of Jewish colonization, and moreover it has additional worth as a presentation of a distinctive side of Jewish psychology. And last, but not least, it is eminently entertaining and readable.

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This study of the Biblical limits of the Promised Land by Samuel Hillel Isaacs has been published in excellent typographical form by his daughter Jeanette Isaacs Davis. Preparing the book with a loving memoir of her father, she gives us an attractive picture of the domestic scholar devoted to Jewish traditions, a figure beautifully characteristic of old time Jewish life. The work of such self-taught men was always fundamentally Jewish, and its value lay less in its absolute conclusions than in its contribution of essentially Jewish facts and knowledge to the literary or historic questions at issue. As we would

By SAMUEL HILLEL ISAACS, Edited by JEANNETTE ISAACS DAVIS. Chicago, 1917.

The author of this work on the boundaries of Palestine as described in the Bible wished to have his conclusions published and made known in time for them to guide the discussion on Jewish rights at the American Jewish Congress. Since Mr. Balfour’s historic Declaration, his geographical discussion of the limits of Palestine has become timely and valuable to an increased degree.

therefore expect, we have in this geographic study a valuable corrective to the many non-Jewish studies on the boundaries of Palestine. For instead of its being a scientific discussion touched by Biblical and Jewish knowledge, it is an exposition of Biblical and Jewish knowledge tonched hy the madern ecientifie enirit

The author’s purpose is to identify the limits of the Promised Land as mentioned in Numbers XXXIV, 1-12. The southern boundary, from the extremity of the Dead Sea to the Brook of Egypt, Wadi El Arish, leaves little room for discussion. The western boundary, the Mediterranean Sea, is as undisputed as is the southern part of the eastern boundary, from the Sea of Kinnereth down the Jordan to the Dead Sea. The difficulty arises with the northern border—Mt. Hor, the entrance to Hamath, Zedad, Ziphron, Hazar Enan. Although Hamath is well known, it is not certain what is meant by “the entrance to Hamath,” and none of the other places has been identified with certainty. We are therefore reduced to theories for identifying this northern border line. The usual theory draws it eastward from about the latitude of Sidon. Another theory traces the line considerably further north, from about the latitude of Tripolis. This would include the Beirut section. Our author rejects both these theories, and, going further even than Esthori Ha-Parchi, he includes the whole coast from the extreme north to the extreme south. According to him, the western border of Palestine runs from the Gulf of Issus or Alexandretta to the border of Egypt. He supports his theory by following the Jerusalem Targums (and the Tosefta) in identifying Hor Hahar with Amanus. He then endeavors to identify the entrance to Hamath, Zedad, Ziphron and Hazar Enan so as to make the northern border of Palestine run eastward from the extreme northern end of the coast. He joins this northern border to the eastern border by again following the Jerusalem Tar- gums in identifying Shepham with Apamea. The result is that, according to his identifications, the true Palestine is the whole of the narrow rectangular strip between the coast on the west, and on the east the Jordan line extended northwards parallel with the coast.

This conclusion that the Biblical limits of the land extend northwards twice as far as we have usually assumed, is hard to reconcile with the facts of history. The Palestine that was in Jewish hands never included the Hittite territory bordering on Cilicia and Cappadocia. The district around Antioch has never been regarded as being within the limits of the Holy Land,

But a more serious conflict, both with Biblical theory and with Biblical history arises in the definition of the eastern border. Our author following the text in Numbers, holds the Jordan to be the extreme eastern limit of the land. But the parts of Transjordania including Moab, Ammon and Gilead, or, as they were later known, the tribal portions of Reuben, Gad and Manasseh, or the still later Peraea of Herod Antipas and the Tetrarchy of Philip, including Gaulonitis, Trachonitis and Batanea, were districts which for centuries were part of Jewish territory. These have an indisputable historical right to be included in a modern Jewish Palestine. They have,