The Maccabaean

WARTIME France is not merely a land of ruined towns, darkened cities, and bloody battlefields. That battle line whose mighty contortions are tracing the message of a world’s redemption, against the desolation of Northern France, is but the heroic fringe of a huge “camp of the nations,” brave and colorful. It is true, one meets with few lackadaisical cosmopolitans on holiday bent. France is full of the vivid nationalists of the world, who, united in a mighty effort toward peace and liberation, are laying the foundation of the internationalism that is to be. The Zionist, wandering about with open eyes amid such company and in such an atmosphere, cannot help but discover traces of the New Judaea here and there. Among the myriad impressions which in his journeyings he will accumulate, and among the ‘reflections which these experiences will call forth, there necessarily will be some that center about Zion and Zionism. This paper is merely the narration of a series of such impressions, some subjective and some objective, but all very real and very recent.

The journey to France and our arrival in Paris took place at a time of the year when Zionist sensibilities are particularly keen and the heart is open to Zionist impressions. On Shabboth Hazon we were still on board ship. A small congregation consisting of about fifteen soldiers and five or six cabin passengers had met for short services. More ominous than the prophetic foreshadowing of doom which breathed in the words of the Haftarah was the news that had come that morning by wireless over miles of death-infested ocean, that the German hordes had crossed the Marne and were slowly creeping on Paris. We reached the French capital on the eve of Tisho b’Ab. The next day was one not alone of sorrowful memories but of dread expectancy. At last came Shabbath Nachamu and with it the marvellous word from the front that American troops had been hurled into the conflict at the critical moment— that the Germans were in flight across the Marne. God was again speaking comfortingly to the heart of France, to the heart of Jerusalem, to the heart of civilization. Between that Sabbath on board ship and that glorious Sabbath in Paris, my heart had experienced all the pangs of Zion’s desolation and all the anticipated joys of her restoration,

for at that moment Paris and Zion were in the grip of the same mighty destiny.

Again and again one came face to face with Zionism in Paris. Paris in these days is not merely the capital of France, she is the capital of civilization. At night when shrouded in darkness, unrelieved save by the faint. glimmer of tiny lamps suspended here and there, her beauty is all the more alluring because it can only be guessed at—she gives the impression of some mystic dream city, a city in the abstract if you will, belonging to no place and time, a city engaged in heroic combat with weird monsters of the air that come out of the night and disappear into the night shrieking as they go. In the light of the sun the city gains reality once more. It is again a city of France but not merely a French city. In the dread days of the bombardment when almost two million civilians had left Paris, she appeared more than ever the capital of the world. Her streets were full of the uniforms of all the allied armies. All the races of Europe, of America and of the Orient were to be seen in her cafés. Not stray tourists these, each bent on his own pleasure, but all awaiting the common call that was to summon them from the ease of the city to the rigors of the field. In the churches and synagogues of Paris on the Sabbath day, every congregation embraces the whole world. Once at the hour of sunset, when the gardens of the Tuileries were bathed in the red splendor of the setting sun, and when the windows of the Louvre were afire with golden flame and the Arc de Triomphe was darkly sil- houetted against the red, I saw two Algerians kneeling on the sands by the lagoon, their red fezzes just so many flashes of the scarlet sunset, and for the moment the sands of Paris and the rolling sands of the desert voiced the same prayer. It is no wonder, therefore, that one should meet with the pioneers of the new Zion in these streets through which all the vital forces of the world were surging.

I can scarcely describe with what keen delight I received the news that the Medical Unit was to pass through Paris on its way to Palestine and that a reception was to be tendered it in the assembly hall of the great Synagogue in the Rue de la Victoire. There was first the Zionist's pride that the vanguard of the new Zion was to be granted official recognition in Paris where all the allied world was assembled.