The Maccabaean

IN my sketch of Joshua Stampfer I have given some account of Petach-Tikvah, the truly first-born of the new Zionist Eretz-Israel 'way back in 1871 and robbed of its title of primogeniture by an accident, as Esau was by fraud. Something more remains to be told of this orthodox-frume firstling among the Zionist colonies, so as to give the background to the story of its three stalwarts, three Paladins of the early Ha-Shomerim, Sender Hadad, Abraham Shapiro, and Mendel Koppelman. As a laborer in the colony, I have met Abraham Shapiro and Mendel Koppelman face to face. The third, Sender Hadad, had died long before I reached Holy Soil. The names of the three are known all over Palestine in song and story, among Jews and Arabs, and beyond the boundaries of Eretz-Israel, in Transjordania and among the Bedouin-tribes of the desert. Their story is part of the story of Petach-Tikvah, of troubled times in the new Eretz-Israel, of the Ha-Shomerim that guard its dwellings and acres. and of the early homeward drift of the Eternal People.

In the foregoing sketch, I have given a brief account how Joshua Stampfer came to Jerusalem from a yeshib far-off Hungary; and how he found there, after much searching and tribulation, six yeshiba-bachurim possessed of some savings and tired of a life of learned dependency, ready to join him in an effort to rebuild with their hands the land of their fathers. These six, with Stampfer at their head as a seventh, sought and won followers among the Talmud students of the four holy cities—Jerusalem, Hebron, Saphed and Tiberias. The little band sent messengers before them, like Joshua, the son of Nun, and Caleb, the son of Jephune, to espy the land for a fit site to work, to live and to pray upon. After a great many vain errands, they came to the ancient site of Antipatris, a whilom fortress at the shore of the rapidly flowing Yarkon river and there they struck a bargain with the Arabs of Mleben village for the purchase of land. The Arabs were greedy, the landowners quarrelsome and tricky, the Turkish law of real property difficult to comply with and the palms of the local authorities itching for bakshish. In due time, however, the negotiations were concluded, the titles of ownership settled, and the enthusiasts of the new Zion took possession. The first agricultural season taught them the bitter lesson, that they could not live amid their newly-bought acres, the land being malaria-stricken for want of sanitation. The colonists not only stood their ground but they attracted new settlers of the same frame of mind with them every month in the year. When they became aware of the unwholesome character of their first dwelling-places, they removed their huts and tents to an Arab village named Jehudia a little hill- hamlet in serener air, five miles away from their Petach-Tikvah acres. There they built their homes, digging a deep well, living at Jehudia but cultivating their acres in the lowlands of Petach-Tikvah, which in time they redeemed from the curse of fever by drainage and the planting of eucalyptus trees. When they had redeemed the land and made it fit to live in, they returned to their own colony of Petach-Tikvah. Meantime, the Arab tribes from whom they had bought land, took envious notice of their prosperity. The Bedouins began to make mighty inroads upon colonial ground, to steal horses and cattle, to plunder and beat

people upon the highroads, to fell trees, choke wells and cisterns, and do all manner of wanton mischief. No true relief was to be had from the Turkish authorities. The officials took money, gave promises a-plenty and little protection.

It was then that the far-famed organization of mounted Jewish guardsmen, the Ha-Shomerim, sprang into existence. As a laborer in Palestine, I have for years watched their ways. I have sat at meat with the men that guard the lives, dwellings and acres of the new Zion; I have seen them bestride their mounts, rifles slung across their shoulders, and gallop away, their burnooses fluttering in the wind, many a time at sundown when I came home from my work in the fields; and at sunrise, many a day, when I went to work, I heard the horse-hoofs of the home-coming clattering down the road, and the shouts of the riders in the cool morning air as they drew nearer, gripping their reins. The fame of some of them has circled the globe, but none of their number were known more widely than Sender Hadad, Abraham Shapiro and Mendel Koppelman.

The one of the three that rose earliest to fame among Jews and Arabs alike was a young village blacksmith of Petach-Tikvah named Sender (Alexander) and surnamed Hadad (storm-god) by the Arabs on account of his stormy temper and many warlike exploits in night-raids and skirmishes with marauding Bedouins. He was described to me as a giant of a man, six feet high and of a girth to match his height, with muscles like whip-cords, huge fists, and a temper that made him court danger by day and night. A heavyweight mounted on a splendid Arab horse, he rode into the thick of every fight, scattering, by sheer fury of onslaught, superior numbers of Bedouin invaders with a handful of dare-devil followers. He died, not as he had wished, in a fair fight, but shot from ambush one night as he rode out on duty.

Abraham Shapiro came with his father —one of the pioneers of Petach-Tikvah—as a little child from Russia. His boyhood was spent in the midst of the early guerilla warfare against the colony, and as a half-grown lad he joined the Ha-Shomerim. He became an expert trailer and captor of Arab criminals and cattle-robbers, an indefatigable follower of tracks and clues, alert, rapid on foot or horseback, apt at disguise, fearless, speaking Arab like a native, a man wonderfully versed in the ways of nomads and fellahin. His trailing of offenders led Shayk Ibrahim Michal, as the Arabs called him, all the way into Northern Syria and southward to the desert, and from the sea-coast to the faroff wilderness of Moab. As his name and fame became known, the other Jewish colonies throughout the country began to retain this terror of evildoers on special errands of investigation and detection. He became a power in the land, a friend of wealthy Arab shayks who concluded treaties with Bedouin tribes, in the name of Jewish communities scattered from Jaffa to Transjordania. He became a guide and guardsman of Zionists seeking new settlements. Once a group of settlers negotiated for land far off, behind the hills of Moab, among semi-savage tribes—half-naked nomads who acknowledged the laws of neither God nor man. But even there the name of Shayk Ibrahim Michal and the glory of his exploits had penetrated—the savages deferred