The Maccabaean

I AM filled with rage and grief. I am almost speechless with rage, for it is something I am not used to express. But I must speak, however incoherently, however passionately, for you must hear, you who will be soothed with soft phrases, you whom the betrayer will also beguile, as he has beguiled me; you whom he would rob of will and purpose as glibly as he has spilled my blood and my tears.

This year for the first time in Jerusalem, this Passover. I tried to forget. I forced my aching and apprehensive heart to the joy and peace of redemption. But my wine was salt as with tears. A young soldier who had fought in the Jewish Legion for the British, a Palestinian —a school teacher in the Tackemini School in time of peace—was my host. In his house of two rooms, with his wife and his four little children, I broke the unleavened bread and chanted my tale of freedom in my own Hebrew tongue. About us, from little Jewish houses, nestled on the ground, came the voices of other Jews, singing songs of redemption. We were in Jerusalem, our city; but we said: “Next year in Jerusalem rebuilt!”

All that day the young master of the house had been in hiding, with other young men, somewhere in Jerusalem, prepared to defend the Jews against threatened attack. The day had passed quietly; nothing happened. Our hearts were relieved; we shrank as ashamed from our own sadness. In the bare, whitewashed little room, with its uncarpeted stone floor (he earns £14 a month) the host leaned on a large white cushion, reclining on his horse-hair sofa; his wife, in white, went back and forth, her baby on her arm, from the house to the tiny kitchen-shed in the yard. The two babies cried and were put to bed before the Children of Israel had crossed the Red Sea. The older ones, aged four and five, stayed awake until the Almighty slew the Angel of Death that slew the butcher. They were stalwart spirits, round-cheeked and rosy, fit heirs of their soldier-father. Babies of Jerusalem, lisping in Hebrew!

THE EDITOR.

Miriam, wide-eyed and apprehensive, opened the door in the night for Elijah to enter, and smiled with relief when he was not there.

But we prayed for Elijah! Could Elijah save us?

Elijah, save us! Spirit of Herzl, comfort us! All our apprehensions were as a child's fear; the realization as a strong man's terror.

Sunday morning, Easter Sunday, second day of Passover, third day of the Moslem festival of Nebi Musa. Peace had entered my heart. All was quiet. Hope deferred is still hope.

Three times the British Administration had allowed Arab agitators—not our simple, kindly Arab peasant neighbors, but demagogues and tools of Western imperialism—to organize anti-Zionist demonstrations in the streets of Jerusalem. Threats of murder were printed and spoken unchecked. Riot had once broken out, a Jew had been beaten. No wonder our young men organized for self-defense. Mornings at six, for weeks past, they had awakened me with their drilling in the neighboring Laemel School, with the shouting of Hebrew words

of command. Heart-sick I had lain abed, and their courage gave me courage for life.

Hope deferred is still hope.

But Easter Sunday was quiet. The day of danger was thought past.

Then came the alarm. Riot in the Old City. Inflammatory speeches, stones thrown, shop windows broken, shops looted, Jews wounded, Jews slain.

Old men were going to and from the wailing wall for their Passover prayers. Upon them fell the mob of incited rioters.

They began to come in, stretcher after stretcher, into the gate of the Rothschild Hospital of the American Zionist Medical Unit. Old Jews with long beards and gentle eyes, with bleeding, bandaged heads and broken limbs, with