A Book of Jewish Thoughts. Various

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      MOTHER England, Mother England, ’mid the thousands

      Far beyond the sea to-day,

      Doing battle for thy honour, for thy glory,

      Is there place for us, a little band of brothers?

      England, say!

      Long ago and far away, O Mother England,

      We were warriors brave and bold;

      But a hundred nations rose in arms against us,

      And the shades of exile closed o’er those heroic

      Days of old.

      Thou hast given us home and freedom, Mother England,

      Thou hast let us live again,

      Free and fearless, ’midst thy free and fearless children,

      Sharing with them, as one people, grief and gladness,

      Joy and pain.

      For the Jew has heart and hand, our Mother England,

      And they both are thine to-day—

      Thine for life and thine for death—yea, thine for ever!

      Wilt thou take them as we give them, freely, gladly?

      England, say!

      ALICE LUCAS, 1899.

THE JEW’S LOVE OF BRITAIN12

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      IS it a matter of surprise that so goodly a number of our brethren offered themselves willingly among the people? One of the masterpieces of eloquence bequeathed to us by classic antiquity is the funeral oration delivered by Pericles on those who had fallen in the Peloponnesian War. He dilates upon the sources of Athens’ greatness. He portrays in glowing colours how justice is there equally meted out to all citizens, from the highest to the lowest, how all are under the aegis of freedom, and all equally inspired by obedience to law. And he continues: ‘Such a country well deserves that her children should die for her!’ The members of the House of Israel have always faithfully served the country of their birth or their adoption. But surely England deserves that we, her Jewish children, should gladly live and die for her: since here, as in no other country, the teachings of Holy Writ are venerated and obeyed. Here, as in no other Empire in the world, there breathes a passionate love of freedom, a burning hatred of tyrant wrong.

      HERMANN ADLER, at the unveiling of the Memorial to the Jewish soldiers who fell in the South African War, 1905.

TO ENGLAND

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      LINES OF A RUSSIAN JEW

      IN childhood I learned to love thee,

      Thy name was a legend to me;

      I dreamt of a distant great island,

      Where men may be strong, yet be free.

      And I, who the clatter of fetters

      Have heard in my childhood and youth,

      Do bless thee for giving me refuge,

      And faith in the triumph of truth.

      Thou art not my stepmother, England,

      My sister of mercy thou art;

      For thee in the hour of thy trial

      A brotherly love fills my heart.

      P. M. RASKIN, 1914.

JUDAISM AND THE JEW IN AMERICA

       I

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      LIKE the river that takes its rise in the distant hills, gradually courses its way through the country, passing alike through sublime landscape and hideous morass, offering its banks for the foundation of great cities, its waters enriched and modified by the tributaries that gradually flow towards it, until it at last loses itself in the ocean: so Judaism, taking its rise among the mountains of Sinai, slowly and steadily has advanced; passing alternately through a golden age of toleration and an iron age of persecution, giving its moral code for the foundation of many a government; modified by the customs and modes of life of each nation through which it has passed, chastened and enriched by centuries of experience—shall I say, as I said with the river, that it, too, at last loses itself in the great sea of humanity? No! rather like the Gulf Stream, which, passing through the vast Atlantic Ocean, part of it, and yet distinct from it, never losing its individuality, but always detected by its deeper colour and warmer temperature, until it eventually modifies the severe climate of a distant country: so Judaism, passing through all the nations of the old world, part of them, and yet distinct from them, ever recognized by its depth and intensity, has at last reached this new world without having lost its individuality. And here it is still able, by the loftiness of its ethical truth and by the purity of its principles, to give intellectual and moral stamina to a never-ending future humanity.

      M. H. HARRIS, 1887.

II

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      WE, more than any other nation on the globe, recall the happy day when the light of promise first dawned in a modern Canaan, overflowing with the milk and honey of humane kindness, in a land symbolized by the torch of the goddess of liberty, whose soft, mild, yet penetrating rays are reflected o’er all the scattered sons of much-tried Israel, whom she so benignantly beckons to these shores.

      ALEXANDER KOHUT, on the 400th Anniversary of the Discovery of America, 1892.

THE DELUGE OF FIRE

       (1914–1918)

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      MANKIND craves the conviction that the agony and tears and suffering of these hundreds of millions of belligerents, constituting the vast majority of the human race, are not in vain; that somehow good will come of all this infinite woe.

      In old Jewish books there is a wondrous legend of a second СКАЧАТЬ