The Maccabaean

(Concluded)

IV

“YOU must henceforth stand upon your own legs. You need not apprehend, however, that I intend to leave you unprepared to face your difficulties. My interest in the colony and its welfare remains unabated. I insist that everyone of you, from this on, must make his own living. In two important regards, I shall continue to render financial aid until I am satisfied that it is needed no longer. First, there are those among you who, without any default of their own, cannot at once and without some transition-measures become economically self-dependent. Such members of the colony, provided they show by their deeds that they are alive to the necessity of becoming independent as speedily as may be, will be individually helped a little while longer. Then there are the collective needs of the colony to be considered, which require capital that cannot as yet be raised through municipal levies, such as irrigation work, road-building, and so forth. This burden, likewise, I am willing to sustain for some time, if you turn to labor with a will.”

A colonist thereupon ventured to defend the settlers and, in the course of his remarks, said that there are flaws to be found in everything—even the sun has its dark spots. The Baron retorted:

“It is your duty to be and to keep yourselves altogether blameless, for the sake of the people whereof you are a part. Sunspots do not compromise the sun or the planetary system, but for the sake of your own reputation and that of others, you must be spotless. You are in an exceptional position. There are 40,000 of our brethren in Jerusalem, but they pass their lives in obscurity—no one pays heed to their doings. You, on the contrary, are occupying the most conspicuous position of all the Jews of the globe, who look upon you as their hope, their pride, as a model for their communal life upon terms of freedom—and that’s why you cannot afford to sink below the level of that ideal which has brought both you and me hither. If you persist in losing sight of it, then my place is not at your side.”

To straighten out the colonial accounts and to put the settlement on the road toward economic self-dependence, the Baron turned the administration over to the “Ica” (Jewish Colonial Association), the officials of which put the entire settlement upon a business-like footing. True to his word, however, Baron Rothschild did by no means withdraw his helping hand. He bought new land, whenever the influx of the new yishub made an enlargement necessary, he took a vigilant and never-ceasing interest in the new Zion of his fostering care, he came on another visit shortly before the outbreak of the war, and after the Balfour Declaration he lent his aid and countenance to Professor Weizmann’s Palestine Committee.

V

Zichron Jacob, named after the Baron’s father, has always been his favorite among the settlements of his own

rearing. It is a lovely corner of the olden home, where Jewish men and women work with their own hands and prosper to this day. Among the many gifts wherewith its founder endowed it, there is a fine library. The librarian, an elderly man, well known to the Baron and in his confidence, one day opened his mind to me, when the speech turned around to Jewish millionaires and their ways:

“Of course,” said he, “you may trace, if you like, all this flourishing Jewish life around you to a rich man’s whim. And so it is, in a way—a rich man’s whim borne upon a national current of the times and reacting upon it. What of that? Compare our rich men’s whims with those of their Gentile compeers, and you will find that they do not reflect any discredit either upon our millionaires or upon the nation at large.

“As for instance: I daresay you have heard of Sir Moses Montefiore, our international shdadlon of the Victorian age? There are any number of stories current about him, true ones and myths—I can tell you if you like, a true one, which somehow failed to get into general circulation: Whenever the old Knight—a true Knight-errant of oppressed and forsaken Israel—went to some court or cabinet-minister to intercede for his own people, he went in a carriage of state, bearing in place of an escutcheon or heraldic device the one word Jerusholayim for an inscription. A rich man’s whim, I grant you—but a noble one in its defiant loyalty. You may call the old man capricious —but at least he was not one of those pitiful snobs to whom Jerusalem is a painful reminder of hidden origin.

“Then there was that other Baron—de Hirsch. Himself a metropolitan resident of Paris, Constantinople, Vienna, he hated the barrenness of big towns and the sterility of urban pursuits. An immense pity swelled in his bosom for the people of stony pavements, the people divorced from the soil—his own people. His Argentinian scheme was a rich man’s whim, no doubt—but at least it was not a cockney fancy of the race-track or the opera-house. He dreamt of a Voelkerwanderung back to the soil—and his dream, in part, came true!

“But the grandest of millionaires’ fancies are those of our Baron—of Edmond de Rothschild. Take hold of this volume and look at its contents, but handle with care—there are only three copies extant in the world—one in the Baron’s private library, another in the library of the Paris National Museum—and this.” I took hold of a portfolio, large-sized and in costly binding, containing building plans and sketches of gorgeous mural decorations—some thirty-odd folio pages of sumptuous parchment. The librarian explained:

“It is a souvenir—a memorial in leather and parchment of one of the grandest millionaire’s dreams that was ever dreamed. To make you understand: in Jerusalem, at the Wall of Wailing, the Baron underwent an emotional crisis. Of course, he had heard of the Wall of Wailing before—but face to face with it and its mourners, he was overpowered. It seemed to him, and justly so, I think, that the long-drawn agony in front of this ruined wall was a