The Allied Countries and the Jews

by H. G. Enelow

"Is there not something," asks Mr. Watts-Dunton, "in the very soil upon which we are born, in the very atmosphere above it, that aids in molding our characters, if not our destinies?" In the case of Israel this question must be answered in the affirmative. Historians agree that the character of Palestine had much to do with the molding of the character of the Jewish people and directing its destiny. Such diverse scholars as Solomon Judah Rapoport, the celebrated rabbi of Prague, and Miss Ellen Churchill Semple, the eminent American representative of Anthropologic geography, agree in this view. It is for this reason that we have a right to say, with the ancient rabbis, that Palestine and Israel are inseparable.

Moreover, it is an error to assume that when the Jews were forced to leave Palestine, first by the Romans, and then by the various foes of Israel who seized it, it ceased to play a part in their lives. There are those who believe that in the life of human beings two sentiments, or forces, mean a great deal more than the actualities of the moment, namely, memory and hope. How often do not these two—memory and hope—mean more to us than the experience of the present?

This is what happened to the Jew in regard to Palestine after he was driven from its purlieus. He kept on clinging to it, as both his most cherished memory and most precious hope. It was the favorite theme of his meditations. It was the central subject of his prayers. It was the inspiration of his Muse. Never poet wrote more fervid poems of love than those the medieval poets of Israel addressed to Zion.

Throughout the ages Palestine continued to form the heart of Jewish theology and optimism. Time and again Rabbis of piety and prominence sought to make it anew the centre of religious scholarship and spiritual authority, as did Rabbi Joseph Caro in the sixteenth century, and though they failed, they personified the Jews undying love for the Holy Land.

It is this profound and indestructible love that Judah Halevi voiced in that elegy of wondrous beauty and pathos, which burst from his soul when, as an aged man, having left behind him all that was dear to him in his native Spain, he journeyed, in the year 1140, to Zion, to behold her desolated beauty and to kiss the dust of her stones. And this love has been shared by Jews everywhere throughout the ages.

"The cradle of our lives," says Mr. Watts-Dunton, "draws us to itself wherever we go." This has certainly been true of Israel. The cradle of his history, Palestine, has drawn him to itself, wherever he went. It remained his dream, the land of mystic love and longing, and as such it was even more beautiful, more precious in his eyes than when his in reality.

It is remarkable, however, that in recent years the dream again has begun to turn into a reality. After a forsaking of hundreds of years, with but scant interruption, Palestine again has become a centre of Jewish habitation and happiness. The story of this renewal is one of the most stirring, and most romantic, in the variegated history of the Jew.

For these many centuries the Jew had dreamed and prayed for Palestine. It had been the theme of his reveries. But it was forty years ago that men arose and decided that the time had come for making the dream come true. In different quarters the plan was advanced for settling Jews on the soil of Palestine, in order thus to restore the ancient land and also to help solve the problem of Jewish persecution and distress. It is noteworthy that among the pioneers of this plan were not only Jews, but also Christians, such as Warder Cresson, the first American consul in Jerusalem, who became a convert to Judaism, and Laurence Oliphant, the English philanthropist, who was unofficially supported by Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury.

The persecutions in Russia and Rumania emphasized the need of some radical measure for the improvement of the Jewish situation. Thus, in 1870, we see the beginning of a new Jewish colonization in Palestine by the founding of an agricultural school, Mikweh Israel, which is followed in 1878 by the founding of the colony Petah Tikwa, and in 1882 by the colony Rishon Le-Zion.

The men who founded these colonies were real pioneers; they had the ideals and the courage and the self-sacrifice of real pioneers, and no one can read their story without marveling at their endurance and achievements. It was their valiant struggle that led to the organization of the Hoveve Zion Societies in Russia and England and other countries. It also gained for them the support of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, and particularly the devoted and generous assistance of Baron Edmond de Rothschild, whose munificence saved the movement in its most critical period. As a result, numerous sections of the Holy Land have been reclaimed from the waste of centuries, and there were before the War prosperous Jewish colonies in Judea, in Galilee, and beyond the Jordan, noted for the bounty and variety of their products, as well as for the health and happiness of their inhabitants.