The Maccabaean

"a calamity" in the public press. He and others of his ilk took instant alarm at the association of Palestine with spiritual influence; that seemed to be giving the whole case away to Zionism. Their misgivings, however, were, in the end, overcome by those of their side who wished to clear the Conference of the charge of coolness to Palestine.

The majority sentiment as adopted has not yet been published and must, consequently, be quoted from memory; the part of it which was used by the New York Times for editorial comment constitutes but a fragment of its wisdom. Even that portion, however, boasts a passage as ungainly as "we are ready to help in the work of rebuilding Palestine for some Jews," as if anybody had to be warned off from deporting all Jewry to the Holy Land, and another saw to the effect that "the whole world ought to be its (the Jewish people's) home," as if that sacred and blissful dispersion of ours had needs to be made popographically complete.

There are other things in that majority report which will astound the men who voted for it without a second reading: the most amazing of them consists in a brand-new theory, evidently the chairman's latest fancy, according to which Israel cannot be held redeemed until every last spark of racial and religious prejudice will have died out in the hearts of men; the fifty-six voters who answered the roll-call have given endorsement to this latest birth of time in the way of fantastic doctrine, a rather cruel sort of prognostication which defers the Geulah to the Greek Calends, largely for the pleasure of disputing the correctness of titles like Geulah convention and Geulah parade.

One unique feature of the debate must not be overlooked: the curious rôle assumed by the redoubtable editor of the American Hebrew. He came loaded with stories out of the omniscience of his European experience. The trustworth- iness of the appalling tales he disclosed, illustrative of the wickedness and menace of Zionism, may be readily gauged by the first of his revelations, to the effect that in Palestine San Remo had awakened so little enthusiasm that no celebration was held at all in Jerusalem. It was the merest child's-play to nail the statement on the instant by reading part of K. Seelman's report of the imposing Jerusalem celebration ("Yesterday" in Haaretz of April 28th), as was promptly done by the writer, who paid no further at-

tention to subsequent distortions. The American Hebrew has been guilty, in the course of the last year or so, of more than one infraction on the elementary ethics of reliable journalism; it would be difficult, however, to discover anywhere as patent an inversion of fact as is conveyed in the assertion, editorially made, that "many a Zionist rabbi, upon roll-call, voted the majority report;" it is an unquestionable fact that not one solitary Zionist rabbi did so vote. Such are the lengths to which the spirit of factionalism can drive the tools of anti-Zionism.

For the rest, it was the supreme irony of the convention that, by universal admission, the one address which was voted the finest in spiritual tone and the most impressive in fervid religiousness was delivered by an eminent Zionist layman, Professor I. Leo Sharfman, of the University of Michigan. Encomiums couched in superlatives were lavished upon him by men whose pulpit staple has been, for years, the thesis that Zionism is irreligious.

The Central Conference of American Rabbis thus has again the satisfaction of being yoked, in stubborn opposition to Zionism, with the Jewish Socialist Federation which, the other day, deprecated the Jewish Palestine in even more forcible terms. At the time of the American Jewish Congress we had witnessed the same incongruous fellowship of Reactionary with Radical, when just only those two— petrified Reform Judaism and atheistic Socialism—were found sulking in their tents.

Yet it is instructive to learn that, just as British Labor meets the complicated problems of our era after a far maturer and more intelligent fashion than do the manifestos of American Labor, even so one must go to the London Jewish Guardian to find a reception of the British Mandate and an attitude towards a Jewish Palestine which, if consistently anti-Zionistic and, for that reason, inadequate in the comprehension of historic lessons and indispensable needs, is, at least, carefully phrased, conscious of the epochal crisis and alive with Jewish feeling.

American democracy has a few things to learn from British parliamentarism, even if our forms of government may be superior; so has American anti-Zionism a thing or two to learn from its British allies, even though they be fewer in number and not as slavishly shackled to the sacred German roots of the Reform movement.

My harvest is full, saith the Lord,I have reaped the fruit of the sword.

I have planted a vine that was goodWith sweetness and hardihood,But my children strove for the wineThough the vineyard they tended was mine:Now their wine is their blood.

Their sin is full, saith the Lord,They have reaped its fruit with the sword.

The shout of the reapers shall cease, No more shall their harvest increase; The quick shall be still as the dead, For over them all will I spread My tabernacle of peace.