spirit, and set me down in the midst of the valley, and it was full of
bones; and He caused me to pass by them round about, and, behold, there
were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry. And
He said unto me: ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ And I answered:
‘O Lord God, Thou knowest’. Then he said unto me: ‘Prophesy over these
bones, and say unto them: O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord:
Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones: Behold, I will cause breath
to enter into you, and ye shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you,
and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put
breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the Lord.’
So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was
a noise, and behold a commotion, and the bones came together, bone to
its bone. And I beheld, and, lo, there were sinews upon them, and flesh
came up, and skin covered them above; but there was no breath in them.
Then said He unto me: ‘Prophesy unto the breath, prophesy, son of man,
and say to the breath: Thus saith the Lord God: Come from the four
winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.’ So
I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came into them, and
they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great host. Then
He said unto me: ‘Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel;
behold, they say: Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost: we are
clean cut off. Therefore prophesy, and say unto them: Thus saith the
Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up
out of your graves, O My people; and I will bring you into the Land of
Israel. And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your
graves, and caused you to come up out of your graves, O My people. And
I will put My spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I will place you
in your own land; and ye shall know that I the Lord have spoken, and
performed it, saith the Lord.’
EZEKIEL 37. 1‒14.
PALESTINE
THE very name Palestine stirs within us the most elevated sentiments.
There is no country, no matter how important in itself, to which
such sublime memories attach themselves. From our earliest youth,
our imagination, nourished on the sacred traditions of the Hebrew
Scriptures, loves to transport itself to those heights where of old
pious souls heard in each echo the voice of God, where each stone is a
symbol of divine revelation, each ruin a monument of divine anger. The
followers of three religions turn with veneration towards these ruins
of 2,000 years. All find consolation in that land, some by its memories,
others by its hopes. Even sceptics are ready to render historic justice
to the great events of which it was the theatre: thus the description
of this land and its story have a palpitating interest for all.
S. MUNK, 1863.
THE LAST CORPSES IN THE DESERT
UP, wanderers in the wild, and come away!
Long is the journey yet and long the fray.
Enough of roving now in desert places――
There lies a great, wide road before your faces.
But forty years of wandering have sped,
And yet we leave six hundred thousand dead.
Dishonoured let them lie, across the pack
They bore from out of Egypt on their back.
Sweet be their dreams of garlic and of leek,
Of flesh-pots wide, of fatty steam and reek.
Around the last dead slave, maybe to-night,
The desert wind with desert beast shall fight,
And joyously to-morrow’s dawning shine
Upon the firstlings of a mighty line,
And lest the sands with all their sleepers start,
Let each man’s footfall sound but in his heart.
Let each man in his heart hear God’s voice say:
‘A new land’s border shalt thou cross to-day!
‘No more the quails from heav’n, no more light bread――
The bread of toil, fruit of the hands, instead.
‘No more wild tents pitched under heaven’s dome――
Another kind shall ye set up for home.
‘Beneath His sky, the wilderness outside,
God has another world that reaches wide,
‘Beyond the howling desert with its sand,
There waits beneath His stars the Promised Land.’
CH. N. BYALIK, 1896.
(_Trans. Helena Frank._)
ZIONISM
ONE thing is to me certain, high above any doubt: the movement will
continue. I know not when I shall die, but Zionism will never die.
THEODOR HERZL, 1898.
* * * * *
ZIONISM is the lineal heir of the attachment to Zion which led the
Babylonian exiles under Zerubbabel to rebuild the Temple, and which
flamed up in the heroic struggle of the Maccabees against Antiochus
Epiphanes. The idea that it is a set-back of Jewish history is a
controversial fiction. The great bulk of the Jewish people have
throughout their history remained faithful to the dream of a
restoration of their national life in Judea.
The Zionist movement is to-day the greatest popular movement that
Jewish history has ever known.
LUCIEN WOLF, 1910,
_in Encyclopaedia Britannica_.
* * * * *
ALL over the world Jews are resolved that our common Judaism shall
not be crushed out by short-sighted fanatics for local patriotism; and,
in so far as Zionism strengthens this sense of the solidarity of our
common Judaism, we are all Zionists.
I. ABRAHAMS, 1905.
THE BRITISH DECLARATION ON PALESTINE[37]
NOVEMBER 2, 1917――APRIL 24, 1920
ENGLAND, great England, whose gaze sweeps over all the seas――free
England――will understand and sympathize with the aims and aspirations
of Zionism.
THEODOR HERZL, 1900.
* * * * *
FOR the first time since the days of Cyrus, a great Government has
hailed the Jews as one among the family of nations. This is much
more than a Jewish triumph. It is a triumph for civilization and for
humanity. It will mean releasing for mankind, as a great spiritual
force, the soul of our people.
JEWISH CHRONICLE, NOVEMBER 9, 1917.
* * * * *
A LAND focuses a people, and calls forth, as nothing else can, its
spiritual potentialities. The resurrection of the Jewish nation on its
own soil will reopen its sacred fountains of creative energy. Remember
the days of old. After the proclamation issued by Cyrus, the mass
of the Jewish people still remained in Babylon. All told only 42,000
men, women, and children took advantage of the king’s proclamation
and followed Ezra back to Zion, the land of their fathers. But compare
the contribution to civilization made by these men with that of their
brethren who remained in the Dispersion. The handful of ‘Zionists’ and
their descendants, because living on their own soil, changed the entire
future of mankind. They edited and collected the Prophets, wrote some
of the fairest portions of the Scriptures, formed the canon of the
Bible, and gave the world its monotheistic religions. As in the days
of Cyrus, the overwhelming majority of Jews of to-day will continue
to live where they now are, praying and working in absolute loyalty
for the land of their birth or adoption, and ever beholding their peace
in its welfare. Only a remnant shall return. But it is the national
rejuvenation of that remnant that will open a new chapter in the annals
of the human spirit.
J. H. HERTZ, 1917.
* * * * *
FOR millions of poor and hundreds of thousands of prosperous Jews
Mr. Balfour’s announcement had the serene sound of a long-expected
Messianic message. The day that witnessed Great Britain’s decision to
stake the whole of the Empire’s power in the Jewish cause is one which
can never be blotted out from the world’s history.
MAXIMILIAN HARDEN, 1917.
JUDAISM AND THE NEW JUDEA
I
THE return to Zion must be preceded by our return to Judaism.
THEODOR HERZL, 1897.
* * * * *
ISRAEL is a nation by reason only of his religion, by his possession of
the Torah.
SAADYAH GAON, 933.
* * * * *
ISRAEL, to the Rabbis at least, is not a nation by virtue of race
or of certain peculiar political combinations. The brutal Torah-less
nationalism promulgated in certain quarters would have been to them
just as hateful as the suicidal Torah-less universalism preached in
other quarters. And if we could imagine for a moment Israel giving
up its allegiance to God, its Torah, and its divine institution, the
Rabbis would be the first to sign its death warrant as a nation.
S. SCHECHTER, 1909.
* * * * *
WE will return to Zion as we went forth, bringing back the faith we
carried away with us.
MORDECAI M. NOAH, 1824.
II
ISRAEL’S contribution to the common treasure of humanity will ever
be primarily religious. Wide sympathy, ready help, and absolute
self-determination must therefore be accorded in the New Judea to
Jewish religious learning, Jewish religious institutions, and Jewish
religious life. They alone contain the secret of Israel’s immortality.
The story of Israel’s ancient kinsmen――Moab, Ammon, Edom――though these
remained on their own soil, loses itself in the sands of the desert,
while the story of Israel issues in eternity. Why? Israel alone had the
Torah, and it is that which endowed him with deathlessness. And Israel
will remain deathless――as long as Israel continues to cling to the
Torah. Without the Torah, Israel’s story will also lose itself in the
sands of the desert, _even on its own soil_.
The New Judea must be the spiritual descendant of old Judea, and the
mission of Judea, new or old, is first of all to be Judea.
J. H. HERTZ, 1918.
* * * * *
I LIKE to think of Jewish History as standing ever at the centre point
of its path――having as much to look forward to as to look back upon;
and the events of to-day, with their special message to Israel, must
surely fortify us in this view, and speed us to make good our efforts
for our people and for the nations.
A. EICHHOLZ, 1917.
III
THE TESTIMONY OF THE NATIONS
_ENGLAND, awake! awake! awake!
Jerusalem thy sister calls.
Why wilt thou sleep the sleep of death
And close her from thy ancient walls?_
_Thy hills and valleys felt her feet
Gently upon their bosoms move;
Thy gates beheld sweet Zion’s ways:
Then was a time of joy and love._
WILLIAM BLAKE.
WORLD’S DEBT TO ISRAEL
WE Gentiles owe our life to Israel. It is Israel who has brought us the
message that God is one, and that God is a just and righteous God, and
demands righteousness of his children, and demands nothing else. It is
Israel that has brought us the message that God is our Father. It is
Israel who, in bringing us the divine law, has laid the foundation of
liberty. It is Israel who had the first free institutions the world
ever saw. It is Israel who has brought us our Bible, our prophets,
our apostles. When sometimes our own unchristian prejudices flame out
against the Jewish people, let us remember that all that we have and
all that we are we owe, under God, to what Judaism has given us.
LYMAN ABBOTT.
* * * * *
AT a time when the deepest night of inhumanity covered the rest of
mankind, the religion of Israel breathed forth a spirit of love and
brotherhood which must fill even the stranger, if he be only willing
to see, with reverence and admiration. Israel has given the world true
humanitarianism, just as it has given the world the true God.
C. H. CORNILL, 1895.
ISRAEL AND HIS REVELATION
THE religion of the Bible is well said to be _revealed_, because the
great natural truth, that ‘righteousness tendeth to life’, is seized
and exhibited there with such incomparable force and efficacy. All, or
very nearly all, the nations of mankind have recognized the importance
of conduct, and have attributed to it a natural obligation. They,
however, looked at conduct, not as something full of happiness and joy,
but as something one could not manage to do without. But ‘Zion heard
of it and rejoiced, and the daughters of Judah were _glad_, because of
thy judgements, O Eternal!’ Happiness is our being’s end and aim, and
no one has ever come near Israel in feeling, and in making others feel,
that to righteousness belongs happiness! As long as the world lasts,
all who want to make progress in righteousness will come to Israel for
inspiration, as to the people who have had the sense for righteousness
most glowing and strongest.
This does truly constitute for Israel a most extra-ordinary distinction.
‘God hath given commandment to bless, and He hath blessed, and we
cannot reverse it; He hath not seen iniquity in Jacob, and He hath not
seen perverseness in Israel; the Eternal, his God, is with him.’
MATTHEW ARNOLD, 1875.
ISRAEL, GREECE, AND ROME[38]
FOR a philosophic mind there are not more than three histories of real
interest in the past of humanity: Greek history, the history of Israel,
and Roman history.
Greece has an exceptional past. Our science, our arts, our
literature, our philosophy, our political code, our maritime law,
are of Greek origin. The framework of human culture created by Greece
is susceptible of indefinite enlargement. Greece had only one thing
wanting in the circle of her moral and intellectual activity, but this
was an important void; she despised the humble and did not feel the
need of a just God. Her philosophers, while dreaming of the immortality
of the soul, were tolerant towards the iniquities of this world. Her
religions were merely elegant municipal playthings.
... Israel’s sages burned with anger over the abuses of the world.
The prophets were fanatics in the cause of social justice, and loudly
proclaimed that if the world was not just, or capable of becoming so,
it had better be destroyed――a view which, if utterly wrong, led to
deeds of heroism and brought about a grand awakening of the forces of
humanity.
One other great humanizing force had to be created――a force powerful
enough to beat down the obstacles which local patriotism offered to
the idealistic propaganda of Greece and Judea. Rome fulfilled this
extraordinary function. Force is not a pleasant thing to contemplate,
and the recollections of Rome will never have the powerful attraction
of the affairs of Greece and of Israel; but Roman history is none the
less part and parcel of these histories, which are the pivot of all the
rest, and which we may call providential.
ERNEST RENAN, 1887.
* * * * *
NONE of the resplendent names in history――Egypt, Athens, Rome――can
compare in eternal grandeur with Jerusalem. For Israel has given to
mankind the category of holiness. Israel alone has known the thirst
for social justice, and that inner saintliness which is the source of
justice.
CHARLES WAGNER, 1918.
* * * * *
AMONG the theocratic nations of the ancient East, the Hebrews seem to
us as sober men in a world of intoxicated beings. Antiquity, however,
held _them_ to be the dreamers among waking folk.
H. LOTZE, 1864.
WHAT IS A JEW?
WHAT is a Jew? This question is not at all so odd as it seems. Let us
see what kind of peculiar creature the Jew is, which all the rulers and
all nations have together and separately abused and molested, oppressed
and persecuted, trampled and butchered, burned and hanged――and in spite
of all this is yet alive! What is a Jew, who has never allowed himself
to be led astray by all the earthly possessions which his oppressors
and persecutors constantly offered him in order that he should change
his faith and forsake his own Jewish religion?
_The Jew is that sacred being who has brought down from heaven the
everlasting fire, and has illumined with it the entire world. He is the
religious source, spring, and fountain out of which all the rest of the
peoples have drawn their beliefs and their religions._
_The Jew is the pioneer of liberty._ Even in those olden days, when
the people were divided into but two distinct classes, slaves and
masters――even so long ago had the law of Moses prohibited the practice
of keeping a person in bondage for more than six years.
_The Jew is the pioneer of civilization._ Ignorance was condemned
in olden Palestine more even than it is to-day in civilized Europe.
Moreover, in those wild and barbarous days, when neither life nor the
death of any one counted for anything at all, Rabbi Akiba[39] did not
refrain from expressing himself openly against capital punishment,
a practice which is recognized to-day as a highly civilized way of
punishment.
_The Jew is the emblem of civil and religious toleration._ ‘Love the
stranger and the sojourner’, Moses commands, ‘because you have been
strangers in the land of Egypt.’ And this was said in those remote
and savage times when the principal ambition of the races and nations
consisted in crushing and enslaving one another. As concerns religious
toleration, the Jewish faith is not only far from the missionary spirit
of converting people of other denominations, but on the contrary the
Talmud commands the Rabbis to inform and explain to every one who
willingly comes to accept the Jewish religion, all the difficulties
involved in its acceptance, and to point out to the would-be proselyte
that the righteous of all nations have a share in immortality. Of such
a lofty and ideal religious toleration not even the moralists of our
present day can boast.
_The Jew is the emblem of eternity._ He whom neither slaughter nor
torture of thousands of years could destroy, he whom neither fire nor
sword nor inquisition was able to wipe off from the face of the earth,
he who was the first to produce the oracles of God, he who has been for
so long the guardian of prophecy, and who transmitted it to the rest of
the world――such a nation cannot be destroyed. The Jew is everlasting as
is eternity itself.
LEO TOLSTOY.
THE BOOK OF THE AGES[40]
THE Bible is the book of the ancient world, the book of the Middle Ages,
and the book of modern times. Where does Homer stand compared with the
Bible? Where the Vedas or the Koran? The Bible is inexhaustible.
A. HARNACK.
* * * * *
WITHIN this awful volume lies
The mystery of mysteries:
Happiest he of human race
To whom God has given grace
To read, to fear, to hope, to pray,
To lift the latch, and learn the way;
And better had he ne’er been born
Who reads to doubt, or reads to scorn.
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
* * * * *
HOW many ages and generations have brooded and wept and agonized over
this book! What untellable joys and ecstasies, what support to martyrs
at the stake, from it! To what myriads has it been the shore and rock
of safety――the refuge from driving tempest and wreck! Translated into
all languages, how it has united this diverse world! Of its thousands
there is not a verse, not a word, but is thick-studded with human
emotion.
WALT WHITMAN.
THE BIBLE, THE EPIC OF THE WORLD[41]
APART from all questions of religious and historical import, the Bible
is the epic of the world. It unrolls a vast panorama in which the ages
move before us in a long train of solemn imagery from the creation
of the world onward. Against this gorgeous background we see mankind
strutting, playing their little part on the stage of history. We see
them taken from the dust and returning to the dust. We see the rise and
fall of empires, we see great cities, now the hive of busy industry,
now silent and desolate――a den of wild beasts. All life’s fever is
there, its hopes and joys, its suffering and sin and sorrow.
J. G. FRAZER, 1895.
* * * * *
WRITTEN in the East, these characters live for ever in the West;
written in one province, they pervade the world; penned in rude times,
they are prized more and more as civilization advances; product of
antiquity, they come home to the business and bosoms of men, women,
and children in modern days.
R. L. STEVENSON.
* * * * *
THE Bible thoroughly known is a literature in itself――the rarest and
the richest in all departments of thought or imagination which exists.
J. A. FROUDE, 1886.
THE BIBLE IN EDUCATION[42]
CONSIDER the great historical fact that for three centuries this
Book has been woven into the life of all that is best and noblest in
English history; that it has become the national epic of Britain, and
is familiar to noble and simple, from John o’ Groat’s to Land’s End;
that it is written in the noblest and purest English, and abounds in
exquisite beauties of a merely literary form; and, finally, that it
forbids the veriest hind who never left his village to be ignorant
of the existence of other countries and other civilizations, and of
a great past, stretching back to the furthest limits of the oldest
nations of the world. By the study of what other book could children
be so much humanized, and made to feel that each figure in that vast
historical procession fills, like themselves, but a momentary space
in the interval between the Eternities; and earns the blessings or the
curses of all time, according to its effort to do good and hate evil?
T. H. HUXLEY, 1870.
* * * * *
THE greater the intellectual progress of the ages, the more fully will
it be possible to employ the Bible not only as the foundation, but as
the instrument, of education.
J. W. GOETHE.
THE BIBLE AND DEMOCRACY
THIS Bible is for the government of the people, by the people, and for
the people.
JOHN WYCLIF, _in Preface to first
English Translation of the Bible_, 1384.
* * * * *
THROUGHOUT the history of the Western world the Scriptures have been
the great instigators of revolt against the worst forms of clerical
and political despotism. The Bible has been the Magna Charta of the
poor and of the oppressed; down to modern times no State has had a
constitution in which the interests of the people are so largely taken
into account, in which the duties so much more than the privileges of
rulers are insisted upon, as that drawn up for Israel in Deuteronomy
and in Leviticus; nowhere is the fundamental truth that the welfare of
the State, in the long run, depends on the uprightness of the citizen
so strongly laid down.... The Bible is the most democratic book in the
world.
T. H. HUXLEY, 1892.
* * * * *
WHERE there is no reverence for the Bible, there can be no true
refinement of manners.
F. NIETZSCHE.
THE HEBREW LANGUAGE
A QUIVER full of steel arrows, a cable with strong coils, a trumpet of
brass crashing through the air with two or three sharp notes――such is
the Hebrew language. The letters of its books are not to be many, but
they are to be letters of fire. A language of this sort is not destined
to say much, but what it does is beaten out upon an anvil. It is to
pour floods of anger and utter cries of rage against the abuses of the
world, calling the four winds of heaven to the assault of the citadels
of evil. Like the jubilee horn of the sanctuary it will be put to
no profane use; but it will sound the notes of the holy war against
injustice and the call of the great assemblies; it will have accents
of rejoicing, and accents of terror; it will become the trumpet of
judgement.
ERNEST RENAN, 1887.
REBECCA’S HYMN
WHEN Israel, of the Lord beloved,
Out from the land of bondage came,
Her fathers’ God before her moved,
An awful guide in smoke and flame.
By day, along the astonished lands,
The cloudy pillar glided slow;
By night, Arabia’s crimsoned sands
Returned the fiery column’s glow.
There rose the choral hymn of praise,
And trump and timbrel answered keen,
And Zion’s daughters poured their lays,
With priest’s and warrior’s voice between.
No portents now our foes amaze,
Forsaken Israel wanders lone;
Our fathers would not know Thy ways,
And Thou hast left them to their own.
But present still, though now unseen!
When brightly shines the prosperous day.
Be thoughts of Thee a cloudy screen
To temper the deceitful ray.
And oh, when stoops on Judah’s path
In shade and storm the frequent night,
Be Thou, long-suffering, slow to wrath,
A burning and a shining light!
Our harps we left by Babel’s streams,
The tyrant’s jest, the Gentile’s scorn;
No censer round our altar beams,
And mute are timbrel, harp, and horn.
But Thou hast said, ‘The blood of goat,
The flesh of rams, I will not prize;
A contrite heart, a humble thought,
Are Mine accepted sacrifice’.
SIR WALTER SCOTT, 1820.
MOSES[43]
TO lead into freedom a people long crushed by tyranny; to discipline
and order such a mighty host; to harden them into fighting men, before
whom warlike tribes quailed and walled cities went down; to repress
discontent and jealousy and mutiny; to combat reactions and reversions;
to turn the quick, fierce flame of enthusiasm to the service of a
steady purpose, require some towering character――a character blending
in highest expression the qualities of politician, patriot, philosopher,
and statesman――the union of the wisdom of the Egyptians with the
unselfish devotion of the meekest of men.