THE ETERNAL CITY OF THE ETERNAL PEOPLE
JERUSALEM, the hearth of pure religion, the home of prophecy, the sacred fountain of the word of God, is the very emblem of the deathlessness of the spirit. With its 4,000 years’ history it is coeval with the Jew, and is as unique among cities as is Israel among the nations. Like the Jew, this Holy City of Israel—the spiritual capital of humanity that has for ages been the magnetic pole of the love and reverence of mankind—is deathless; fire and sword and all the engines of destruction have been hurled against it in vain. A score of conquerors have held it as their choicest prize; and more than a dozen times has it been utterly destroyed. The Assyrians burnt it and deported its population; the Romans slew a million of its inhabitants, razed it to the ground, passed the ploughshare over it, and strewed its furrows with salt; Hadrian banished its very name from the lips of men, changed it to ‘Aelia Capitolina’, and prohibited any Jew from entering its precincts on pain of death. Persians and Arabs, Barbarians and Crusaders and Turks, took it and retook it, ravaged it and burnt it; and yet, marvellous to relate, it ever rises from its ashes to renewed life and glory. And now, on the very day that 2,080 years ago Judah Maccabee rescued it from the heathens, the Holy City has passed into British occupation! What a privilege it is to have lived to see such a world-historic event! A new future, with undreamt-of possibilities, opens before thiseternal city of the eternal people. But in the future, as in the past, it will proclaim the prophetic teaching of the Maccabean festival: ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts’.
J. H. HERTZ, at the Thanksgiving Service for the Taking of Jerusalem by H. M. Forces, 1917.
ARISE, shine, for thy light is come
And the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.
Lift up thine eyes round about, and see:
They all are gathered together, and come to thee;
Thy sons come from far,
And thy daughters are borne on the side.
Then thou shalt see and be radiant,
And thy heart shall throb and be enlarged.
Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated,
So that no man passed through thee,
I will make thee an eternal excellency,
A joy of many generations.
Thy sun shall no more go down,
Neither shall thy moon withdraw itself,
For the Lord shall be thine everlasting light,
And the days of thy mourning shall be ended.
ISAIAH 60. 1, 4–5, 15, 20.
רֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה
NEW YEAR
INTO the tomb of ages past
Another year hath now been cast;
Shall time unheeded take its flight,
Nor leave one ray of higher light
That on man’s pilgrimage may shine
And lead his soul to spheres divine?
Ah! which of us, if self-reviewed,
Can boast unfailing rectitude?
Who can declare his wayward will
More prone to righteous deed than ill?
Or, in his retrospect of life,
No traces find of passion’s strife?
With firm resolve your bosoms nerve
The God of right alone to serve;
Speech, thought, and act to regulate
By what His perfect laws dictate;
Nor from His holy precepts stray,
By worldly idols lured away.
Peace to the house of Israel:
May joy within it ever dwell!
PENINA MOÏSE, 1838.