The Maccabaean

measure of recognition for the Congress, whereupon an amendment was proposed by Dr. S. Schulman, in the shape of a stipulation, requiring that all discussion of Zionism be tabooed at the Congress. To the blank amazement of the Anti-Zionists, this amendment was overwhelmingly defeated, almost shouted down. It was the first intimation of the fact that the Conference, as a body, favored an open-minded attitude towards Zionism and would not be a party to pro- scrintions or muzziines of anv kind.

But the Congress-controversy tended, more and more, to arouse antagonisms to a white-heat rage. At the Congregational Council of Baltimore (January, 1917) it looked as if a resounding clash were imminent between Zionists and Anti-Zionists. A local Jewish paper, edited by a cluster of Reform Rabbis, several of whom are virulent Anti-Zionists, indited inflammatory editorials, imploring the convention, at that epochal moment, to put its seal of condemnation on Zionism; at the gathering itself, while excitement ran high at times, surcharging the atmosphere, the matter was adroitly and cautiously evaded.

en eee ne It was, no doubt, this disappointment, coupled with the hot recriminations that followed the elections to the Congress, which prompted the chief editor of the Baltimore sheet, in his presidential message at the Buffalo convention (July, 1917) to ask the Conference for a “statement” in “disfavor” of “nationalism, in plain words, for a formal excommunication of Zionism and Zionists as such.

What occurred is in too recent memory to call for detailed rehearsal.* The convention came dangerously near adopting a strong profession of liberalism, deprecating the proscription of Zionism which was simply “an interpretation of the best method of conserving Judaism”; it never could have been brought to vote for the clear-cut condemnation of “political Jewish nationalism” which had been recommended by 21 out of 23 members of the respective committee. It finally, by a three-fourths vote, passed a conciliatory resolution which contented itself with vindicating the “mission” and disapproving of “any and every unreligious or anti-religious interpretation of Judaism and of Israel’s mission in the world,” but which implicitly rebuked the president, in the opening paragraph, by reminding him that differences of opinion “have always existed in Israel,” and in the closing paragraph by warning him that “at a time of universal conflict” it was not for the Conference to “emphasize the differences that divide us, but those sacred principles which all Jews hold in common and those great tasks which it is our paramount duty at the present moment to promote,” etc. .In other words, the attempt to read the Zionists out of Judaism was given a crumb of comfort in a highly diluted sentiment, while the attempt itself was deprecated as both unJewish and untimely.

And the present situation? Five of the largest Reform congregations of the country (New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, San Francisco, New Orleans) are ministered to by declared Zionists; the Chairman of our Provisional Committee, of all the rabbis of the country the most vigorous

* The whole complicated battle was reported, at the time, by the writer (American Jewish Chronicle, July 13, 1917.)

and most widely influential, is a Reform rabbi. The propagandists of Zionism, as they tour the country, are welcomed cordially to the pulpits of some of the convinced anti-Zionists, even aided in their tasks by those of them who cannot withhold their admiration from the magnificent men and women whose fine personalities and kindling enthusiasm our cause commands; there are others who meet the champion of Zionism with a frown, who not only deny him the hospitality of their pulpit, but refuse to attend his meetings, who even exercise their influence to the uttermost to prevent and forbid attendance by their people. There are those among them who regard the coming of the Zionist speaker as an unwarranted intrusion, as a personal affront; there is an instance of one rabbi who viewed the advocacy of Zionism by a speaker of national eminence, before an audience partly composed of his own members, as an unethical interference with his pastoral work, outrageous enough to justify a complaint in open session of the Conference.

To look beyond one’s cabined burg into the vast Jewish world, doctrinaire Reform is the merest ridiculous excuse for an Anti-Zionism which has no genuine basis whatever, except with the very fewest, in theological dogma or historical interpretation, least of all in fervid mission-enthusiasm: it is, the Western world over, a social cleavage, in the first line, and a matter, in the second line, of vivid or pallid Jewish consciousness, of an intense or a moribund sense of all-embracing Jewish brotherhood. The type of Protestrabbiner needs no Reform-formula about the beneficence of dispersion and the despotism of the mission, to make him protest; it is the social instinct of alarm on behalf of civic standing and material possessions, the social solidarity with timid capital and fluttered snobdom, it is the utter estrangement, socially and Jewishly, from the East-European brother, together with all the conservatively stubborn and unteachable habits and tendencies that inhere in petrifying insti- tutionalism, it is these which make prosperity everywhere (with rare exceptions) synonymous with Anti-Zionism.

The Reform Rabbi is in the habit of extolling the prophet as "dreamer," of priding himself upon Israel as "the saving remnant," of echoing all the glorious sentiments which look for truth and power to the spirit, for nobleness among the humble and obscure, for the visions of the future among the persecuted and ridiculed.

But the incumbent of a high-salaried pulpit is apt to be a conservator, rather than an innovator, a tory rather than a radical, a priest, not a prophet; he cannot, except rarely, feel with the masses; he is a guardian of vested interests; he must study tact, the golden mediocrity, the infallible Philistinism which enable him to say the word and do the thing which will please, both non-Jew and Jew.

Whenever, if ever, the multitudes of the prosperous will adopt Zionism into fashion, they will be followed, reluctantly, by their spiritual leaders, last of all by those whose unillumined dogmatism, whose cold-hearted egotism, whose bitter animosity against what an eminent Reform rabbi has designated as "the latest form of Jewish idealism," have cut off their retreat.