The Maccabaean

this assumption—songs that were laments de profundis, songs that repeated the names of Stepan and Marianna like a threnody over his dead life. . .

AR UAMUUT UWUEL MID UVA Ile . . . His heart yearned after his teacher of Jaffa. Thither he went with wife and children, in due course of time, leaving the little colony of converts behind him. Of his own free choice, he entered our little group of earth workers, of “volunteer convicts,” and took up his lodging in an obscure dwelling in Neveh Zedek street, Jaffa. Between his own work and that of his wife, who did the washing and mending for our little group, the couple managed to make a living. A born leader among men, the counsellor of a village of Russian peasants and later on a notable in a settlement of converts, he soon became the declared favorite of our group-—a Baal Teshuvo whose single-hearted repentance no Nngp rnnla Anınıhr+r uhn heard him nrav Lıır fayara’ WW

When the work of our group in Tel-Aviv was finished and done, when all the little mounds were planed down and all the ruts filled up and all the streets of Tel-Aviv laid out to perfection, most of our little group left Eretz-Israel and scattered over the seven seas. But Zalman was bound to the soil. He became the sweep and street sprinkler of Tel-Aviv and the gardener of its public park, a man eternally wedded to the sod, a planter of trees and flowers. True to the counselling of Rabbi Kuck, he digged and shovelled and scattered seed—but could he dig deep enough into Holy Soil to bury his erstwhile life, the memory of a village beauty and of the children begotten on her body? No one knows.

Like a true Baal Teshuvo, he felt after a while that the

VERSE

As One That Goes By Night

As one that goes by night Following a Voice that cries, And has no further light Than one small lantern gives his faltering eyes, So toward my land I go, Step by step and bit by bit, And my next step I scarcely know, So faintly lit. As one that darkly goes, Called by a Master hid, And stumbling forward, knows Only from whence, only by whom, he is bid, So do I go toward thee, Trembling, alert, lest vision fail! Though small and faint the lamp whereby I see, It shall not pale.

Wild winds toss angrily,Fill us with dread:Grey clouds vex ceaselessly,Lower o'erhead:Sleet sweeps relentlessly,

load imposed upon his shoulders by Rabbi Kuck was not heavy enough, that digging the soil was a reward rather than an atonement for his sins. He felt that only the hardest, the most perilous task shouldered for love of land and people should be his in expiation of twenty-five years of apostasy. And so he went and joined the Ha-Shomerim to brave nocturnal peril, to guard the land against Arab raids, to live down Sin by standing face to face with Death— ha was hinino his ma o . .

His time came with the world war. At its outbreak the Turkish Government began to war against Jews, especially against Zionists. Among the first to take up the gauntlet thrown down by the Turkish persecutors was Zalman. Right at the outbreak of the war he took ship for Egypt to enlist in the British Army, whose campaign, to him, was a Holy War to wrest Eretz-Israel from the infidel and to turn it over to the Jews. He joined the Jewish legion—now famous in song and history—in Alexandria, and with his fellows-in-arms was dispatched to the Dardanelles, under the command of Colonel Patterson. As the oldest legionnaire, his colonel singled out Zalman for a difficult exploit—the transport of cattle for the commissariat of the British Army from the Greek island of Lemnos to the Dardanelles. Hearing of the British withdrawal from Gallipoli, he landed with his last freight in Alexandria. And there I met him on my way to America, in good health and spirits. Apparently he had worked out the salvation of his soul. A legionnaire, he will have his share of the soil he helped to defend. . . . His last words to me on parting were:

“Auf Wiedersehn in free Eretz-Israel!”

To Palestine

O Palestine, too long the seas of Hate Have tossed thy vessels on the distant shores, All heavy laden with the precious stores, To feed a hungry world; too long has Fate, Ages’ unconquerable potentate, Driven thy seamen sons into the field, Infested seas; too long have been defiled Thine own pure shores by pirate bands ingrate. But now thy vessels are returned once more— Behold the battered sides, the shattered masts, The sails storm-rent by raging ocean blasts. Yet do they sail in toward thy lovely shore, As proudly as thy lofty cedars stand, To guard the seamen’s home and fatherland.

Affliction

Stings us that roam,Wand'ring in poverty,Yearning for home;Stumbling on blindly,Weeping for home.