The Maccabaean

tion with the Jewish people; and the mere fact that a man may continue to call himself a Jew while denying Jewish nationality, though it proves nothing as to the real character of the Jewish people, does prove that the Jewish consciousness can take on strangely attenuated forms in exile. The Jewish consciousness in Palestine escapes this attenuation on the one hand, and on the other hand the association of Jewishness with the “under dog.” Jewish solidarity there is neither the solidarity of a ghetto nor that of a “Jewish community,” but that of a nation. This fact was recognized and emphasized by Professor Sylvain Lévi, the only one of my colleagues on the Commission who could not predicate nationality of the Jewish people as a whole without going through a mental revolution.

The national consciousness of Palestinian Jewry finds its most obvious expression as yet in love for the Hebrew language. Not that everybody, even in the new Yishub, insists on speaking Hebrew at all times and seasons. Other languages are spoken freely enough, and will, no doubt, continue to be for some time to come. But it is when Hebrew is attacked, and particularly when it is attacked in the domain of education, that the national consciousness rises up to defend itself. Before talking to certain young people in Jerusalem I had scarcely realized what the "language-struggle" of 1913 meant for the new Yishub. It called forth an amount of enthusiasm and of effort which in a fully-fledged nation hardly anything short of a war would arouse. It left a deep impression on the younger generation, and the Hebrew songs which it occasioned will be heard for long in the land. For a Palestinian

parallel to the state of feeling which was created between the Hebraists and the Hilfsverein party one would probably have to go back over two thousand years to the anti-Hellenist struggle which culminated in the Maccabaean rising. The result of the conflict was not only the rout of the Germanizers, but also the establishment of a new network of Hebrew schools. To many of us here the whole policy of the Hebraists seemed at the time to be of doubtful wisdom. We did not hold it proven that the Hilfsverein was definitely out for Germanization of the schools, and we did not see any compelling necessity for the Yishub and its friends outside Palestine to undertake the heavy burden of supporting duplicate schools. Events which could not then be foreseen have certainly justified the “extremists” of those days, and the Yishub is better equipped to meet the happy change of political circumstances, both in the strength of its national consciousness and in its actual equipment of Hebrew schools, than it would have been if a compromise with the Hilfsverein had been attempted and carried through. As was said in an article which appeared in a recent number of the Zionist Review, the maintenance of the schools through the trying period of the war is “the one bright feature which stands out in the Jewish life” of Jerusalem; and it is in the Hebrew schools that we have the surest guarantee of a healthy national development in the future, which will gradually bridge over the culf between the old Yishub and the new.

Of some other expressions of the Jewish national consciousness in Palestine I will say something in the next (and concluding) article of this series.

HERE is an extract from a letter just received by the Zionist Organization of America from Sergt. Max Tieger, 306th Infantry, A. E. F., who sends $163 for the Palestine Restoration Fund, and a batch of newly enrolled members for the organization. In this letter he tells, among other things, of the convert he made in a quiet spot of Argonne Forest —a convert who had been a sincere disciple of the assimilationist-mission ideal against which Zionism is the protest.

"The mere mention of 'Palestine' itself seemed to be sufficient, in the majority of cases, for a contribution. In rare instances was it necessary to point out to the men that they were duty-bound not only to the Allied cause in general, but particularly to their own—the Jewish cause—and that it is just as much up to us 'over here' to cooperate with the Zionist Organization in the establishment of the new Jewish Republic, as it is to you 'over there'. You will notice a few non-Jewish names on the list. These broad-minded fellow-soldiers, in sympathy with the Zionist movement, insisted on my accepting their contributions.

One of the Jewish contributors, a Jew of the assimilator and former anti-Zionist type (now nearly extinct) was at first opposed to my collection, basing his arguments on the contentions of certain of our American reform rabbis, viz.: that Judaism is only a religion and our 'mission' on earth is a religious one only; that the Jews are not a distinct race and therefore not justified in concentrating in Palestine, and so forth. However, after a heart to heart talk in a quiet spot in the Argonne Forest, I left him feeling satisfied that his liberal contribution was made to a most worthy cause. He is now a Zionist on whom I can count for another contribution in any future Zionist work which I may be engaged in. In many instances the boys vied with each other in raising the amount of their donations; in some cases they shared with the Fund on a fifty-fifty basis.

"Tell our comrades in the U. S. A. that Zionism prevails among the Jewish soldiers of the A. E. F. We are ever ready to do our all for Palestine, and if they will do theirs, the efforts of our immortal Herzl will not have been in vain."