The Maccabaean

WOULD you be practical? Be impractical. Would you build on solid ground? Build first in the air. After all, the conventional simile is wrong in using brass, stone, etc., as the image of the imperishable. Brass, stone and the like crumble and disintegrate, but the only imperishable material I know of is air. . . .

Cities built of marble and granite have long ago mouldered into dust. But the City of God always lives and will live, because built in and on air. Its walls are such stuff as beautiful dreams are made of. Its shining pinnacles are gilded with the vision of prophets. It is not exposed to attack by enemies, its towers cannot be broken down. And the vitality of Jerusalem —the true and only Eternal City—is also due to this: that it is the nearest approach on earth to the airy edifice of the Ideal; the love, the hopes, the dreams of the ages, rather than the time-tinted slabs of stone, hold its reality. "And thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise!"

You need but dream long enough to awaken to the realization of your dream. Only sudden awakenings are rude and disenchanting. But if you dream the long night through you will have reason to smile with the first rays of the dawn. Has not Israel had the long night of the Galuth to weave his dreams in?

You practical men, so-called, do not know what victory our every defeat holds. You have not learned the Art of Waiting. How impractical you are! You live and work by rule of thumb. You see no further than to the end of a ledger-sheet. And you build for the day. You seek certainty; therefore you are a constant prey to uncertainty. We idealists are the only truly practical men in the world; our spirit of venture holds the greatest assurance of success. Has not Israel proved himself pastmaster in the art of waiting, visioning and venturing?

Practical men, so-called, have their place in the world. They provide, they are, the machinery for the proper functioning at the proper time of the Ideal. But what is an engine in itself without the current? Scrap iron. Glorified junk. The Ideal is the electric current, the source of power and the power itself, the dynamic element, which supplies the "spirit that lives in the wheels." The Ideal, indeed, cannot work without wheels and wills, but it can live without them; and this means that it may be delayed until the machinery is ready, but it cannot be rendered impotent. It must win. Have we not won just because we have upheld an Ideal, a vision, a seemingly hopeless dream?

Ah, sneer as you will, if you would gain a sure victory, you must uphold, you must champion, a Lost Cause. Lost Causes have a queer way of winning in this world. The matter of a few centuries—ten or twenty, or more—is a trifle to those who reckon with eternity. Zionists—Jews—have won at San Remo because theirs was, by all the reckoning of the worldly-minded, a Lost Cause. There is tremendous vital power that resides in these Lost Causes, and at San Remo the Allies released the power of Santa Gerusalemme.

Santa Gerusalemme—Jerusalem the Holy—but now:

Gerusalemme Liberata—Jerusalem the Liberated. Liberated because Holy, because Ideal. . . .

* * *

In the face of the victory of our cherished Ideal, let us rejoice and be glad. But let us rejoice with the dignity and sobriety and solemnity that befit those who have battled in the name of the Ideal. The mobs may shout and jubilate. We shall be quiet. We shall not lift up our voice boisterously in the street. Our joy runs too deep for vociferation. Sobriety demands that we take account of the forces that have ensured our victory. These forces, too, are not on the surface. They do not reside in ourselves, so we shall not indulge in personal self-adulation. They reside in the deep places of the world, among the other ideal forces that sway God's universe. They are, in the truest sense of the term, profoundly religious forces: "Zion shall be redeemed with righteousness!"

Sobriety further demands that we be on our guard against the peculiar dangers attending the flush and fever of victory. What was said on the score of Lost Causes has its counterpart in the proposition that Victorious Causes have a way of losing out. The very assurance of victory is a snare and a pitfall our Cause must avoid in the moment of triumph. The dynamic force, the vital push, throbbing in Lost Causes, and which is apt to become feeble and flabby through the satiety of success, we must know how to take over into the conduct of our now Victorious Cause. Let us not lose sight of the fact that before us lies the most stupendous mass-venture a nation ever undertook—that of redeeming a land, settling a people, building a civilization.

The highest demand of the becoming sobriety of the moment, then, is that we regard San Remo only as the first step towards Santa Gerusalemme. The greater task is still ahead. The greater problem still remains to be solved. Deeper doubts, graver uncertainties, obstacles almost superhuman but—thank Heaven!—not super-Jewish, await the heroic pioneers. Assurance? God forbid—we must not lull ourselves into premature assurance. Vigilance has ever been the price of freedom, and it still is the price of Jewish Freedom. And the birth-moment of Freedom requires even greater vigilance, for it is its danger-moment.

The moment of the descent of the Ideal into the Real is the critical moment of testing. When our air-castle solidifies into stone and comes down on terra firma it faces the risk of toppling over. Ours must be the wisdom to impart to the material structure the same miraculous strength it possessed while yet floating insubstantially in the air. Many Ideals fail to meet this practical test—ours must not, ours will not!

* * *

Ours will not, provided we do, as suggested, take account of the true forces that made our victory possible. These are, as said, ideal forces. And there is a particular danger now, when we must hie ourselves to the practical task of building and reclaiming, that we might forget the Ideal and become engrossed in mere "business."