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No. 22. — Vienna, 29 May 1903 — 3 Sivan 5663. — 7th Year

Schewuoth.

I saw how a whirlwind came out of the north, a thick cloud and a fire that spread about it . . . Ezekiel I., 4.

W. With fresh green we adorn our synagogues, with fresh green our homes. A joyful festival is to be kept, the remembrance of the time in which our great leader Moses proclaimed the Ten Commandments to our fathers and to our children, and set up the pillars of morality for all times and all peoples. And at the same time the festival of the first-fruits, when our forefathers, masters in their own land, went up to Jeruscholajim to offer the first-fruits to their God. Through the glorious districts heavy with standing grain they journeyed devoutly, surrounded by the shining splendour of the garden which their industry had made of their land, towards the festival, full of their God and of the beauty which the blossoming and ripening of His earth had given to their souls.

Long ago the land of our ancestors was taken from us. Thousands of years have passed since those days. The reflection of the beauty of that time, of the happiness of that time, they have not been able to take from us. In the stifling Ghetto, where dust and mould caused everything that blossomed, everything that comforted the eye, to wither beneath their fine, heavy covering, it was Schewuoth that with its young green gave the oppressed a piece of nature, the fragrance of the earth. In their festively decked synagogues they remembered the burnt-offerings and the meal-offerings, the fire-offerings of sweet savour, the loaves of the first-fruits, the first-fruits of their land, the harvests of their soil.

Thus Schewuoth has remained a festival of beauty for all who knew their people and loved its festivals and its memories. Though under the scorching rays of the sun of Emancipation the green in the temples and houses may have withered, there, where that fiery glow penetrated but slowly, it had kept its comforting freshness. And since we began once more to think of ploughing our own soil and of bringing our first-fruits as an offering, the green had become more joyous and more glorious, even as our souls had grown more thirsty for the sight of it.

And when at the last Passover we began to count the seven weeks which separate us from Schewuoth, we hoped once again to be able to keep a joyful festival, which the beauty of late spring was to adorn with shining colours. Well! The festival drew near, but alas! "I saw how a whirlwind came out of the north, a thick cloud and a fire that spread about it—" And the whirlwind broke the blossoms, the cloud veiled the sun, and the fire, the fire seized the dwellings of our brethren and consumed them, and made their wives widows and their children orphans.

And we keep the festival of the Revelation. For thousands of years we have preached to the nations: "Thou shalt not kill!" Invite them into your synagogues! Now once again, alas, for how many times now, the occasion has come to preach to them of your mission. Truly! Unteachable are your pupils, and poor are the teachers! For a few thousand years already you have been teaching them Ten Commandments, and still they have not grasped what a Jewish child has learned in the first years of its life — the Ten Commandments!

Where are the reverend preachers who sing our people to sleep with the sugary melody of its mission? Who rob it of its resilience, its defiance and its strength! Who know that for thousands of years it has been soothed with the glory of a supposed mission, and who still have the courage and the hardness of heart to see it suffer on! Who wrap themselves in the mantle of the Confession, of whose threadbare and ragged state they cannot find a word to say before their great ones, and from whom the misfortune of their brethren cannot draw even one of their cheap — no, not cheap, but at any rate professional — funeral orations, unless processions of petitioners are sent to them or they are positively compelled to do their duty. Who babble to the poor about the mission and do not take the trouble to go as missionaries to our enemies and tell them, who have need of it, and not us, of the sublimity of our teaching?

Where are they, the leaders of Israel, who live in their palaces and take their ease, while their brothers are murdered, their sisters violated, little children tortured and torn in pieces or dashed against the walls? Where are they who smile scornfully when others labour and suffer for the redemption of their brethren? Where are they who reach with enthusiasm into their pockets when, for un-Jewish or anti-Jewish purposes, hundreds of thousands are to be