Chapter M: Trumper (5)

DR. CYRUS ADLER
LOUIS D. BRANDEIS
DR. LEE K. FRANKEL
PROF. FELIX FRANKFURTER
PROF. ISRAEL FRIEDLAENDER
PROF. RICHARD GOTTHEIL
DR. MAX HELLER
DR. JOSEPH JACOBS
DR. KAUFMAN KOHLER
JUSTICE IRVING LEHMAN
JUDGE JULIAN W. MACK
DR. J. L. MAGNES
PROF. MAX L. MARGOLIS
DR. H. PEREIRA MENDES
DR. MARTIN A. MEYER
DR. DAVID PHILIPSON
DR. SOLOMON SCHECHTER
HON. OSCAR S. STRAUS
SAMUEL STRAUSS
JUDGE MAYER SULZBERGER
MISS HENRIETTA SZOLD
FELIX M. WARBURG
DR. STEPHEN S. WISE

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VOLUME I JUNE, 1915 NUMBER 3

CONTENTS

THE POTENCY OF THE JEWISH RACE _Charles W. Eliot_ 141
ISRAEL AND MEDICINE _Sir William Osler_ 145
THE WAR FROM A JEWISH STANDPOINT _Richard Gottheil_ 150
O SWEET ANEMONES: _A Song_ _Jessie E. Sampler_ 158
"PATHS OF PLEASANTNESS" _David Werner Amram_ 159
THE JEWISH GENIUS IN LITERATURE _Edward Chauncey Baldwin_ 164
JEWISH WORTHIES: JOCHANAN BEN ZAKKAI _Abraham M. Simon_ 173
ZIONISM: A MENORAH PRIZE ESSAY _Marvin M. Lowenthal_ 179
FROM COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY: _Activities of Menorah Societies_ 194
NOTES _of The Intercollegiate Menorah Association_ 200

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THE MENORAH JOURNAL

VOLUME I JUNE, 1915 NUMBER 3

The Potency of the Jewish Race

BY CHARLES W. ELIOT

For many centuries the Jews have had no country of their own or even national headquarters. They have been scattered among many nations, all more or less unfriendly, and some cruelly oppressive; yet they have retained, under the most adverse circumstances, the capacity to earn their livelihood, to bring up families, and to maintain the great traditions of their race. The main reason for the indestructibility of the Jews is that they early embraced certain invaluable ideals, and have struggled towards them indomitably for thousands of years.

_Races and Ideals_

The principal difference between races is difference of ideals. Whenever several distinct races come to live side by side on the same territory in the bonds of a peaceful and coöperative fellowship for all common public purposes, it will be found that they have all reached common political and social ideals, although in regard to many racial attributes and even in regard to religious beliefs they remain distinct.

The assimilation of different races can be brought about only by a gradual acceptance of the same ideals and aspirations. For several centuries this process of assimilation has been going on in many parts of the earth, and is now going on at an accelerated pace, resulting in larger conceptions of nationality and larger political or governmental units.

_The Influence of Lofty Ideals on the Jewish Race_

The Jewish race affords the strongest instance of the influence on a human stock of lofty ideals, persistently held wherever on the face of the earth a fragment of the race has planted itself. In all generations and in all environments the Jews have succeeded in competition with other races to a remarkable degree. Among a poor population they are less poor than their neighbors; among a free and prosperous population the Jews become richer and more prosperous than the average. Confined in unwholesome Ghettos, they retain to an astonishing degree their health and vitality, helped doubtless by the dietary and sanitary directions given in their ancient Scriptures. Deprived of the right to bear arms in many countries, and, therefore, unable to resist savage attack, they remain inextinguishable. Wherever they become prosperous they develop an extraordinary community feeling, and take care of their own poor or unfortunate. In short, in all generations and in all their various environments they have exhibited, and still exhibit, a remarkable racial tenacity and vigor. It is manifest that this normal success of the race is not due to any especially favorable material conditions, but to the rare strength and significance of its ideals.

_"The Noblest of Human Ideals": Jewish Monotheism_

What are these ideals? What have they been for thousands of years? The first of the Jewish ideals has been that of one God--the noblest of all human ideals--early attained, and persistently clung to by the whole race. Mohammedan monotheism is noble, and is the main source of the strength of those races which have embraced the religion of Mahomet; but the Mohammedan doctrine of One God arrived thousands of years after the Jewish, and never was so pure. The most significant sentence in the English speech is the first sentence of the Hebrew Bible--"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." That is the first of the Jewish ideals, to which the race has been true in all environments, in weal and in woe; and that belief has delivered it from many sorts of enfeebling and degrading terrors and superstitions.

_The Ideal of the Family_

Another Jewish ideal which has counted for much in the history of the race is the ideal of the family--pure, honorable, and sacred. The veneration of ancestors, which has been an important part of the religion of China and Japan, is only an undue exaggeration of the Hebrew commandment, "Honor thy father and thy mother." The Jewish race has seen fulfilled the promise which is the last phrase of that commandment, "that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee," although in many lands and not in any land of their own. The organized human society most likely to prove durable or permanent is that which possesses and maintains in theory and practise a lofty ideal of the family. The reverence shown by children toward their parents and the devotion of parents to their children, which prevail in Jewish families, are both more intense than is usual in Christian families. These sentiments yield infinite good in any human society; they produce, and pass on from generation to generation, purity of life, family honor, and a real consecration of the best human affections. That is the second potent Jewish ideal.

_The Ethical Ideal of the Ten Commandments_

The third effective ideal is the ethical teaching contained in the Ten Commandments, the most compact and yet comprehensive code of morals ever written. These ethical principles have been held before the Jewish race for thousands of years wherever it has lived, in good times and bad, an ideal toward which the race has always struggled, though with frequent lapses. This code contains the institution of the Sabbath Day, which by itself accounts for much of the extraordinary endurance of the race.

The Jews have always been distinguished for their respect for learning and their zeal for education. In the Ghettos of Europe, under the most discouraging conditions, their Rabbis kept alive the ancient learning, and through many centuries gave the elite of the rising generation some mental training, when no instruction was to be had by the masses of mankind. A persecuted race, provided it retains its vitality and elasticity, receives admirable training in loyalty to its ideals. In the case of the Jews this was a loyalty not only to race, but to religion; and religious loyalty is the finest and most sustaining of all loyalties. The religion of the Jews emphasizes an ideal to which the Jewish mind and heart have responded ardently from the earliest times--the ideal of righteousness. Loyalty to this ideal includes loyalty to race, family, religion, and all righteous persons. The Jews believe that righteousness alone exalteth a nation, a family, or a man.

_Will the Jewish Race Meet the Test of Liberty?_

For two thousand years the Jews have led their daily lives under exposure to bodily harm, injustice, and all sorts of disaster, and under such grievous trials have preserved their ideals. The race is now to be put to another and severer test. In the free countries of Europe and America the Jews enjoy complete political and industrial liberty. They were for centuries excluded from most professions, arts, and industries, and were driven into trade and money-lending. Now all callings are open to them. In the Middle Ages there were only a few directions in which a successful Jew could safely spend his money. Now he can spend it in any direction--wisely and beneficently, or foolishly and ostentatiously. Will the race bear liberty as well as it has borne oppression? The liberty, which is the only atmosphere in which the strongest men and women can develop, often causes the downfall of weak-willed human beings. Rich Jews, like other rich people, are in danger of becoming luxurious--the more so because the race has been cut off from military service, and has not been addicted to out-of-door sports. The worst destroyer of sound family and national life is luxury. If the race is to meet successfully the test of liberty, it will get over its apparent tendency of the moment towards materialism and reliance on the power of money, hold fast to its social and artistic idealism, and press steadily towards its intellectual and religious ideals.

Israel and Medicine

BY SIR WILLIAM OSLER

In estimating the position of Israel in the human values we must remember that the quest for righteousness is Oriental, the quest for knowledge Occidental. With the great prophets of the East--Moses, Isaiah, Mahomet--the word was, "Thus saith the Lord"; with the great seers of the West, from Thales and Aristotle to Archimedes and Lucretius, it was "What says Nature?" They illustrate two opposite views of man and his destiny--in the one he is an "_angelus sepultus_" in a muddy vesture of decay; in the other, he is the "young light-hearted master" of the world, in it to know it, and by knowing to conquer. Modern civilization is the outcome of these two great movements of the mind of man, who to-day is ruled in heart and head by Israel and by Greece. From the one he has learned responsibility to a Supreme Being, and the love of his neighbor, in which are embraced both the Law and the Prophets; from the other he has gathered the promise of Eden to have dominion over the earth on which he lives. Not that Israel is all heart, nor Greece all head, for in estimating the human value of the two races, intellect and science are found in Jerusalem and beauty and truth at Athens, but in different proportions.

_Medicine in the Talmud_

It is a striking fact that there is no great Oriental name in science--not one to be put in the same class with Aristotle, with Hippocrates, or with a score of Grecians. We do not go to the Bible for science, though we may go to Moses for instruction in some of the best methods in hygiene. Nor is the Talmud a fountain-head in which men seek inspiration to-day as in the works of Aristotle. I do not forget the saying:

"_In uns'rem Talmud kann man Jedes lesen,
Und Alles ist schon einmal dagewesen_."

With much of intense interest for the physician, and in spite of some brave sayings about the value of science, there is not in it the spirit of Aristotle or of Galen. It is true we find there one of the earliest instances in literature of an accurate diagnosis confirmed _post mortem_. A sheep of the Rabbi Chabiba had paralysis of the hind legs. Rabbi Jemar diagnosed ischias, or arthritis, but Rabbina, who was called in, said that the disease was in the spinal marrow. To settle the dispute the sheep was killed, and Rabbina's diagnosis was confirmed.

_The Role of Jewish Physicians in the Middle Ages_

In the early Middle Ages the Jewish physicians played a role of the first importance as preservers and transmitters of ancient knowledge. With the fall of Rome the broad stream of Greek science in western Europe entered the sud of mediævalism. It filtered through in three streams--one in South Italy, the other in Byzantium, and a third through Islam. At the great school of Salernum in the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries, we find important Jewish teachers; Copho II wrote the Anatomia Porci, and Rebecca wrote on fevers and the fœtus. Jews were valued councillors at the court of the great Emperor Frederick. With the Byzantine stream the Jews seem to have had little to do, but the broad, clear stream which ran through Islam is dotted thickly with Hebrew names. In the eastern and western Caliphates and in North Africa were men who to-day are the glory of Israel, and bright stars in the medical firmament. Three of these stand out preëminent. The writings of Isaac Judæus, known in the Middle Ages as Monarcha Medicorum, were prized for more than four centuries. He had a Hippocratic belief in the powers of nature and in the superiority of prevention to cure. He was an optimist and held strongly to the Talmudic precept that the physician who takes nothing is worth nothing. Rabbi ben Ezra was a universal genius and wanderer, whose travels brought him as far as England. His philosophy of life Browning has depicted in the well-known poem, whose beauty of diction and clarity of thought atone for countless muddy folios.

_Maimonides: Prince Among Physicians_

But the prince among Jewish physicians, whose fame as such has been overshadowed by his reputation as a Talmudist and philosopher, is the Doctor Perplexorum--_dux, director, demonstrator, neutrorum dubitantium et errantium!_--Moses Maimonides. Cordova boasts of three of the greatest names in the history of Arabian medicine: Avenzoar, Albucasis, and Averroes (Avenzoar is indeed claimed to be a Jew). Great as is the fame of Averroes as the commentator and transmitter of Aristotle to scholastic Europe, his fame is enhanced as the teacher and inspirer of Moses ben Maimon. Exiled from Spain, this great teacher became in Egypt the Thomas Aquinas of Jewry, the conciliator of the Bible and the Talmud with the philosophy of Aristotle. He remains one of Israel's great prophets, and while devoted to theology and philosophy, he was a distinguished and successful practitioner of medicine and the author of many works highly prized for nearly five centuries, some of which are still reprinted. He says pathetically, "Although from my youth Torah was betrothed to me and continues to live by me as the wife of my youth, in whose love I find a constant delight, strange women, whom I took at first into my house as her handmaids, have become her rivals and absorbed part of my time." The spirit of the man is manifest in his famous prayer, one of the precious documents of our profession, worthy to be placed beside the Hippocratic oath. It ends with: "In suffering let me always see only my fellow creature."[A]

_Jewish Physicians and Medieval Popes_

In the revival of learning in the thirteenth century, which led to the foundation of so many of the universities, Hebrew physicians took a prominent part, particularly in the great schools of Montpelier and of Paris; and for the next two or three centuries in Italy, in France, and in Germany, Hebrew physicians were greatly prized. But too often the tribulations of Israel were their lot. As one reads of the grievous persecutions they suffered, there comes to mind the truth of Zunz' words: "_Wenn es eine Stufenleiter von Leiden giebt, so hat Israel die hochste Staffel erstiegen._" Their checkered career is well illustrated by the relations with the Popes, some of whom uttered official bulls and fulminations against them, others seem to have had a special fondness for them as body physicians. Paul III was for years in charge of Jacob Montino, a distinguished Jewish physician, who translated extensively from the Arabic and Hebrew into Latin, and his edition of Averroes is dedicated to Pope Leo X. In my library there is a copy of the letter of Pope Gregory XIII, dated March 30th, 1581, and printed in 1584, confirming the decrees of Paul IV and Pius V, which he regrets were by no means held in observance, "but that there are still many among Christian persons who desiring the infirmities of their bodies be cured by illicit means, and especially by the service of Jews and other infidels. . . ." It was at Mantua that a Jewish physician, Abraham Conath, established a printing press, from which the first Hebrew works were issued.

_Names of Distinction in Later Centuries_

Throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries in France, Germany, and Italy we meet many distinguished names in the profession, and in his _Geschichte der Jüdischen Aertz_ Landau pays a very just tribute to their work. Only a few are met with in England. Isaac Abendana, a Spaniard, practised in Oxford and lectured on Hebrew at Magdalen College. We have at the Bodleian Jewish almanacs which lie issued at the end of the seventeenth century, and a great Latin translation of Mishnah. He afterwards migrated to Cambridge. A more important author was Jacob de Castro Sarmento, a Portuguese Jew, who became licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in 1725, and Fellow of the Royal Society in 1730. There is in the Bodleian an interesting broadsheet from the Register of the London Synagogues respecting charges made when his name was proposed at the Royal Society. He contributed many papers to the Philosophical Transactions, and was the author of several works. In the eighteenth century Jean Baptiste de Silva, of a Portuguese Jewish family, became one of the leading physicians of Paris, consulting physician to Louis XV, and the friend of Voltaire, who remarks, "_C'était un de ces médecins que Moliere n'eut ni pu ni osé rendre ridicules_." One of the special treasures of my library is a volume of the Henriade superbly bound by Padeloup, and a presentation copy from Voltaire to de Silva, given me when I left Baltimore by my messmates in "The Ship of Fools" (a dining club). Voltaire's inscription reads as follows:

"_A Monsieur Silva, Esculape François. Recevez cet hommage de votre frère en Apollon. Ce Dieu vous a laissé son plus bel héritage, tous les Dons de l'esprit, tous ceux de la raison, et je n'eus que des Vers, hélas, pour mon partage._"

_The Achievement of Recent Years_

In the nineteenth century, with the removal of the vexatious restrictions, the Jew had a chance of reaching his full development, and he has taken a position in the medical profession comparable to that occupied in the palmy Arabian days of Cordova and Bagdad. In Germany particularly, the last half of the century witnessed a remarkable outburst of scientific activity. Traube, who may well be called the father of experimental pathology; Henle, the distinguished anatomist and pathologist; Valentin, the physiologist; Lebert, Remak, Romberg, Ebstein, Henoch, have been among the clinical physicians of the very first rank. Cohnheim was the most brilliant pathologist of his day; to Weigert pathological histology owes an enormous debt, and, to crown all, the man whose ideas have revolutionized modern pathology, Paul Ehrlich, is a Jew. In America Hebrew members of our profession for many years occupied a very prominent position. The father of the profession to-day, a man universally beloved, is Abraham Jacobi, full of years and honors; and the two most brilliant representatives in physiology and pathology, Simon Flexner and Jacques Loeb, carry out the splendid traditions of Traube and Henle.

I have always had a warm affection for my Jewish students, and the friendships I have made with them have been among the special pleasures of my life. Their success has always been a great gratification, as it has been the just reward of earnestness and tenacity of purpose and devotion to high ideals in science; and, I may add, a dedication of themselves as practitioners to everything that could promote the welfare of their patients. In the medical profession the Jews had a long and honorable record, and among no people is all that is best in our science and art more warmly appreciated; none in the community take more to heart the admonition of the son of Sirach, "Give place to the physician, let him not go from thee, for thou hast need of him."

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote A: I am told by authorities that the attribution of this prayer to Maimonides is doubtful. Where is the original?]

The War from a Jewish Standpoint

BY RICHARD GOTTHEIL

The war in Europe presents problems for the Jews which must be faced no matter what the consequences may be. These problems are of two kinds, due to the fact that we are members of a race that is scattered over the whole earth, and the units of which are to be found in the four corners of the globe. In this way a double set of duties is entailed upon us. On the one hand, we have to take our rightful place as citizens of the different countries in which we live: to accept all the burdens that go with such citizenship, and to partake of the joys and sorrows that are its inevitable accompaniment--in a word, to take the advice of the Rabbis of old and "seek the welfare" of the country in which we live. But this obligation is so self-evident, and the problems raised by it solve themselves so naturally, that they need no further thought. In point of fact, the patriotism of the Jews for the lands in which they live has been demonstrated on so many occasions that only blind ignorance or wilful misrepresentation can call it into question. At the present moment, in all the armies that are at the front, our brethren are doing service even beyond their numerical proportion.

_The Toll Paid by the Jew_

It is to the second set of problems that I venture to call attention--those Jewish problems that concern ourselves in particular, that deal with our relations to and with our fellow Jews--problems which I am afraid are not always present in our minds. For one reason or another, they are apt to be forgotten, to slip into the background through sheer negligence. Indeed, in many cases we are fain to put them intentionally into a corner and remove them discreetly from sight. It has needed a great world event at this time, as it has in the past, to bring many of us to reason and to a realization of our duty. The titanic struggle in which so many of the nations of the world are engaged has come to remind us also of our position as Jews and to recall to us our relations with the past, our connections with the present, and our hopes for the future. It is indeed true that none of the great political movements that have affected the world have passed by without in some special manner affecting the Jewish people. As we look back through history and allow our thoughts to run down the highway of the ages, we perceive the effects such struggles have had upon the Jew. We think of the time when ancient Babylonia stretched out its arm from the East to gain a foothold on the Mediterranean and to grasp the power of the world. What was the effect upon the Jews? The Babylonian captivity. Many hundreds of years after, Rome--the Babylonia of the West--lunged out toward the East in the same search for universal dominion; and we still observe the Ninth of Ab in commemoration of the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem. Again some centuries passed us by, and we come to the inevitable conflict between Christianity and the rising power of Islam. Who was it but our own Jews who suffered most as the crusading hordes moved through Europe--our own Jews who were driven before them from the Rhine into what at a later time became the great national Ghetto in Poland? And now in this twentieth century, as a people, and in proportion to its numbers, which body of men, women and children is paying the most exacting toll to the forces of destiny? Again it is the Jew.

_"The Belgians of All History"_

We all have the greatest possible sympathy for the Belgian people and for the Belgian land. Yet how much greater has been the suffering of the Jewish people--the Belgians not of a day but of all history? In Eastern Europe, in Poland, in Galicia and in parts of Russia, at least two or three millions of Jews have suffered from the ravages of a war waged with a bitterness that exceeds all bounds. Invading armies have passed and re-passed over their homes--miserable as they were even in times of peace. False accusations have been launched against them so that they have been regarded as enemies by both sides and treated as such. Thousands have been driven from their homes to congest villages already filled to overflowing or to increase the want and suffering indigenous to towns and cities. An amount of anguish and pain has been caused such as the Jews have never known in all their long tramp through the ages. What have we done, we Jews in America, to assuage even a part of this pain? What measures have we in view, when once the war shall be over, to regain for these people the possibility of living, to bring back for them a little of that which they have lost through no fault of their own and in no cause which is theirs? In most cases the only right permitted to them is the right to suffer, and they must in addition pay the price of that suffering. As we think of all these circumstances, is it not proper and meet that we should ponder the whole situation in which we Jews find ourselves today?

I believe that it is eminently the moment to do so. We refuse to believe that the great waste of human life and energy now going on in Europe is a waste pure and simple. We refuse to believe that some purification is not to result from the fire through which mankind is passing, and that some sanity in handling human affairs is not to follow the evident insanity with which we are now confronted. Something a little more stable because a little more reasonable must appear at the end to replace the inconstancy and unrest which have up to now characterized the relations of peoples to each other. And as we hope this for the world at large, we are hopeful too that full attention will be given to those problems which concern the Jews specifically. I wish then to indicate the chief among these problems, in order that we may ourselves see clearly the road that must be taken.

_The Prospect in Russia and Poland_

First and foremost, of course, rank the questions that concern the Jews in Russia. Quite apart from any consideration of the general problems affecting that country, the case of the Jews in Russia and Poland demands a settlement that shall make existence bearable for them, and which at the same time shall not run counter to the real and vital interests of the Russian people. Nay more; such existence must not only be bearable. It must be of a kind that will place the Jews upon a level with the other inhabitants of the Empire and will give them the necessary opportunity to develop whatever talents or capabilities they possess. It is not for us to prescribe in what manner and by what means this shall be accomplished; and I use the word "must" not in the sense that any compulsion is to be applied to Russia in this respect, but rather as an expression of the certainty that the trial through which the Czar's land is now passing is of such a kind as to purge her necessarily of all traces of national and religious intolerance. This feeling cannot be expressed in better words than those used by M. Bourtzeff, the well-known reactionary, when he said, "We are convinced that after this war there will no longer be any room for political reaction and Russia will be associated with the existing group of cultured and civilized countries."

Proof that such feelings are making their way among the most intelligent portion of the Russian population is shown by the remarkable document put forth some weeks ago over the signatures of noted Christian professors, litterateurs, and members of the Duma, in which the plea is made for the removal of all restrictions that at present shackle the Jews. "Let us understand," they say, "that the welfare and the power of Russia are inseparably bound up with the welfare and liberties of all the nationalities that constitute the whole Empire. Let us then conceive this truth. Let us act in accordance with our intelligence and our conscience, and then we are sure that the disappearance of all kinds of persecution of the Jews and their complete emancipation, so as to be our equals in all rights of citizenship, will form one of the conditions of a real constructive imperial policy." And we are the more persuaded that these views will prevail when we remember that Russia has been brought into closer contact with just those nations of Europe where Jewish emancipation has been most perfect and has brought forth the best fruits. It is unthinkable that these nations should fail to put their influence on the side of Jewish freedom in Russia when European accounts are finally balanced.[B]

_The Broken Faith of Roumania_

In the second place, any regulation of the Jewish status in Europe must of necessity include Roumania. The injustice of the Government's attitude in that country is even more pronounced than it is in Russia. For Roumania is bound to a certain course by a "scrap of paper." At the Berlin Congress of 1878, one of the conditions upon which statehood was granted to Roumania was that the rights of free citizenship should be conferred upon the Jewish inhabitants in the principality--who, it may be remarked in passing, were among the oldest residents there. Roumania gave her solemn promise to carry out this condition; but by political subterfuge of the most brazen kind she has circumvented the whole spirit of the demand. The Roumanian Chamber passed a law to the effect that only Jews who had been naturalized by it were entitled to citizenship; and as the Chamber refused to naturalize more than a handful each year, the provisions of the Berlin Treaty have been as good as void. When quite recently--in 1913--during the progress of the last Balkan War and prior to the intervention of Roumania, the Roumanian Jews volunteered to serve in large numbers, the proposal was brought forward to grant the rights of citizenship to all Jews who had entered the army. Yet this proposal was voted down; and the condition of the Jews has remained as it was prior to 1878. They are inhabitants in a country, subject to its laws, liable to all duties placed upon citizens--but they are themselves prohibited from becoming citizens. It is intolerable that such a condition should be allowed to continue; and if right is to take the place of might in the inevitable re-arrangement of the community of European nations, the status of the Roumanian Jews must be one of the Jewish problems to be solved.

_The Hope of Regaining Palestine_

There is a third Jewish problem the importance of which perhaps even transcends the two just mentioned; transcends because of the interest that attaches to it and because of its vital import to every Jew the world over. I refer to the problem of Palestine, which is wrapt up with the very existence of the Jews and which symbolizes the hopes that have been nurtured throughout the centuries. We know that the Jew in his inevitable march westward has kept his face turned towards the East; that in prayer and in meditation his gaze has rested upon that country which enshrined at one and the same time his origin and his future aspirations. It is true that up to within some forty years that aspiration remained in large part a pious wish; and that though it was cherished as coming to realization "quickly and in our day," very few attempts were put through to arm the Almighty with human effort. At best, God-fearing and pious Jews removed to Palestine, either to immerse themselves there in study and contemplation, or to end their days in the odor of sanctity.

But the last twenty-five years have witnessed a conscious effort to make of Palestine a rallying point for the Jewish people, a place where Jewish life may be lived to its fullest extent and which may serve as a beacon light to all parts of the Diaspora. Many a waste place has been made to blossom again; and much of the culture and learning acquired by the Jews in the long centuries of toil and effort has been made available to revivify the Land of Promise. With infinite pains and untold sacrifices the Jewish pioneers went forward in their peaceful effort to regain the soil of their forefathers. Colonies have been founded there; primary schools, high schools and technical institutions have been established, and many of the forces have been started that make the foundation for a permanent settlement. This conscious effort can not have been put forth in vain. Palestine represents the goal of our endeavor. And any settlement after the war that has in view the general problems involved will be forced to take cognizance of the just hopes that we Jews place in the future of that country and the just rights that the Jewish people believe they possess and have acquired there. The form in which such rights shall be expressed is not a matter for discussion at present. The fact alone is of importance. In the past the world has applauded the fight made by the Poles for their national existence; it has followed with interest the Greek War of Independence, the Italian striving for unity, the Irish endeavors for racial autonomy, and the Alsatian effort after independent expression. It must and will appreciate and esteem the attempt made by the Jews to re-fashion their anomalous status and to re-create the statehood that they lost nearly two thousand years ago.

_The Collapse of Principles Held Sacred by the Jews_

Our concern, however, in the present world conflict goes further than our own immediate affairs, and meets those interests which we have in common with the rest of humankind. Much as we deplore the wanton destruction of property, much as we bewail the reckless loss of life, we mourn especially the diminution of ethical standards and the perversion of our whole outlook on life. For this means the lapse of much for which our own teachers have stood, the forfeit of many a principle which has been dear to the Jewish heart. Let me touch lightly upon three points out of the many that come to mind.

First of all, what we must deplore most is the defiance to law and to its reign which has become so marked a characteristic during the present war. The agreements arrived at in conventions, the bases of treaties, the binding character of compacts, and the sanctity of engagements--all seem to have been thrown into one melting pot. The mere fact that the expression "a scrap of paper" has become a household word, bandied about by orators and scribblers, shows the distance we have descended into the abyss. The whole structure of our international relations seems to have fallen to the ground and the labored work of centuries to have been undone in a few months. Now, the Jews have been from the earliest times a people that have laid the greatest possible stress upon the rule of law; so much so, that their own laws were supposed to have divine sanction. In olden Jewish times everything was regulated by law--man's relation to his fellow men, to the state, and to God; to such a degree that we have been blamed often for being a law-ridden people. We cannot, therefore, remain oblivious to the fact that the sanctity of law has now been rudely called into question and its authority greatly weakened. As Jews we must be deeply concerned in assisting the European world back to a full consciousness of the majesty and eminence of the rule of law.

But more than that, it was part of our earliest teaching that "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." What clouds of hatred have not been blown from one line of trenches to the other! What volumes of spleen have not been sent from one country to the other! In countless speeches, in newspapers and in books, the doctrines of dislike, of animosity, of deepest malice have been preached. Men have been taught to look upon certain neighbors as born enemies, to see in those who do not speak their own tongue not only a stranger but an enemy. Back of the soldiers under arms, back of the cannons with their deadly missiles, stand millions of loathing men and women shooting darts of odium that reach further than any shell and that are more poisonous than any gas. When shall we be able once again to preach the beautiful teaching of the prophet, "Have we not all one Father; hath not one God created us all?"

And lastly, we must bear in mind that the Jews have been opposed from of old to the rule and reign of might as represented by the God of War. In a syllabus on the history of the Peace Movement just published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, it is passing strange to find that the Old Testament is entirely overlooked and that from the first point, "The Cosmopolitan Ideal among the Greek Philosophers," the jump is made at once to the second, "Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace." And yet we know that in the outlook of our greatest teachers and philosophers the vision of peace loomed large and powerful. "Ye shall not teach war any more," said one of our greatest. And for another the true sign of his prophetic mission is that he preached peace. How sadly these teachings have been belied in the present war we know only too well.

_Is War Necessary and Good?_

In many circles it has been held that development is possible for the human race only with the concomitance of war. What wonder--when modern teachers have preached just such a necessity? Even so great a religious leader as Luther said, "War is a business divine in itself, and is as necessary as eating or drinking or any other work." Should we then wonder that a historian such as von Treitschke has added, "War is the last revealer of power. God will see to it that war always recurs as a drastic medicine for the human race,"--or that another historian, Delbrueck, should have said, "What beauty was to the Greek, holiness to the Hebrew, government to the Romans; what liberty is to the Englishman, war is to the Prussian." Nietzsche, one of the greatest of modern apostles, has based many of his theories upon "a violent repudiation of any faith or tradition which recognizes a power of right and justice lying beyond our impulsive nature; an identification of self-restraint with degeneracy and of self-assertion with health; a search for happiness in the conquest of others rather than in self-conquest; a substitution of the Will to Power for the Darwinian Will to Live, with the consequent intensification of the unconscious and instinctive struggle for existence into a battle for conscious mastery; and a sharpening of the competition of life, with its self-observed rules of fair play or its traditionally imposed limitations, into a glorification of war as the supreme test of strength, obtaining its justification in success."

In a very remarkable article which appeared in the _Nineteenth Century_ for last September, written by a man evidently most religiously minded, appears the following: "Is the heart of England still strong to bear and to resolve and to endure? How shall we know? By the test? What test? That which God has given for the trial of people--the test of war. The real court, the only court in which this case can and will be tried, is the court of God. This twentieth century will see that trial, and whichever people shall have in it the greater soul of righteousness will be the victor. The discovery that Christianity is incompatible with the military spirit is made only among decaying people. While the nation is still vigorous, while its population is expanding, while the blood in its veins is strong, then on this hope no scruples are felt. But when its energies begin to wither, when self-indulgence takes the place of self-sacrifice, when its sons and daughters become degenerate, then it is that a spurious and bastard humanitarianism masquerading as religion declares war to be an anachronism and a barbaric sin."

_The Jewish Answer_

The Jewish attitude in regard to this great problem before the world can be dealt with in a very few words. These words have already been given to us in the twentieth chapter of Exodus: "If thou wilt make an altar, thou shalt not wave thy sword over it; for if thou wavest thy sword over it thou hast polluted it." It has been emphasized by the prophet Jeremiah when he said, "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might. Let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glorieth, glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth Me, that I am the Lord who exerciseth loving kindness, judgment and righteousness on the earth." To this I will add only one single word of the Rabbis: "The whole Torah exists solely for the sake of the ways of peace." This ideal of peace has been the guiding star of Israel for which the Jew has prayed morning, noon and night, and I trust that the young men of the Menorah will be true to that which the Menorah typifies, and will assist in the spreading of its light by upholding the reign of law, the reign of love, and the reign of peace.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote B: In the last number of THE MENORAH JOURNAL, Mr. Jacob H. Schiff ventured to suggest the reverse influence, and to intimate that the association of England with Russia was having an adverse effect upon the Jews in England. While Mr. Schiff does not tell us upon what evidence he bases his views, I venture to guess that it consists largely of the mistrust and ill-will caused in England by a small coterie of German-born bankers and their following. But Mr. Schiff must know that this ill-will is in no way connected with the fact that the men referred to are members of the Jewish race. Most of them have never taken the least interest in Jewish affairs, some even have ostentatiously kept themselves quite apart from any connection with them. And what is more, the feeling against them is shared by Jews as well as by non-Jews in England.

Perhaps more serious still is Mr. Schiff's presentment concerning German anti-Semitism. To speak simply of "a certain anti-Semitic tendency in Germany" is to coat the truth with so much honey as almost to reverse its meaning. Anti-Semitism in Germany, and especially in Prussia, has kept the Jews far from any positions of importance in university life, on the bench, and in all state and military affairs. And to add that the war "will crush out most of this anti-Semitic tendency" is to fly in the very face of well-ascertained and authenticated facts of very recent occurrence. In _Harper's Weekly_ for February 6th of this year (p. 122), a series of such facts is adduced. Nor can Mr. Schiff forget that forced conversion away from the Jewish faith and communion has nowhere taken on the dangerous proportions it has in the Fatherland. Russia, it is true, has martyred many Jewish bodies; German "Kultur" has quenched too many Jewish souls. History will have to decide which has done the greater hurt to the Jewish cause.]

O Sweet Anemones

BY JESSIE E. SAMPTER

_This Song is one of a series put into the mouth of a nationalist Pharisee of Jerusalem living through the times of the coming of Jesus to Jerusalem and the later development or perversion of Jesus' ideals by Paul._

O sweet anemones on Sharon's plain,
Light dancing seraphim of sun and rain,
Was he not one of us, was he not ours?
And yet he saved not us, O crimson flowers!

As stars that bloom in heaven, full-bloom and still,
As native stags that leap from hill to hill,
As you, dear blossom-stars, on native plains,
So planted here, with God, our home remains.

I, too, would perish here, where he has died,
But felled by horse and spear, not crucified;
I, man of peace, would pour, O Rock of God,
My freedom or my blood on Zion's sod.

When pagans sweep thy fields with withering blast,
My heart is sanctified to death at last;
Its taste is honey-sweet within my mouth,
For we that drink with God can dread no drouth.

O sweet anemones on Sharon's plain,
A spring shall come for us, to bloom again,--
To God a day, to us a thousand years,--
Who still remembers, lives, refreshed with tears.

"Paths of Pleasantness"

_The Study of the Jewish Law_

BY DAVID WERNER AMRAM

"_Her paths are paths of pleasantness, and all her ways are peace. She is a tree of life to those that lay fast hold on her, and happy is every one that retaineth her."--Prov. 3:17, 18._

One of the methods by which the Jewish people managed to survive endless misery and persecution during eighteen centuries of dispersion and protect themselves from the continuous bombardment of their social and moral citadels was by taking refuge in the study of the law. The study and observance of the law, both civil and religious, saved the Jews from degeneration and vulgarization, and preserved for them the humanizing memories of the thoughts and deeds of their forebears. Through their common interest in the law and its study they kept in touch with one another throughout the lands of their dispersion, they kept alive their feeling of brotherhood and the memory of their ancient independence, and translated this memory into a hope for the re-establishment of the State, a hope which has never died.

"_The People of the Law_"

The term "the people of the law" has often been applied to the Jews in the opprobrious sense that they are a people who deal according to hard and strict rules, untouched by the qualities of love and mercy.