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No. 42. — Vienna, 16 October 1903 — 25 Tishri 5664. — 7th Year.

The Feast of Tabernacles Is Over.

W. The Feast of Tabernacles is over! Now the booths are pulled down; all the bright-hued decoration that made the Sukkah seem so splendid to the children is taken down, and, seen close at hand, it proves to be poor paper or glass trinkets; and the children wonder and are dismayed, just as we wonder and are dismayed when we look closely at the glittering, imposing things of life.

How much more would the children wonder if one told them that this frail booth, covered with a little foliage and mostly put together from a few wretched boards, is the aptest symbol of the Jewry of to-day? We will not tell them yet. They will find it out for themselves soon enough, and others will see to it that they know. Slowly one flower after another will wither for them; the lush green foliage, through which sun and stars shine so gaily, will dry up, and the booth will grow brittle and fall to pieces, fall to pieces...

And they will comprehend the tragedy of their people, which builds wretched board huts with a roof of leaves while the others raise proud palaces that defy all the ravages of time; which must content itself with paper and other trinkets while the others are uplifted by the radiant splendour of the beauty of an immortal native art. And they will understand the tragedy of their people all the better when they remember the pain-quivering lips of their fathers, who still had to give thanks for this booth and to praise the Lord who "let them live to see this season and has preserved them unto this day." Those will be evil hours for them, and it may then easily come about that the weaklings and the fearful turn away from this poor people and themselves help to destroy what remains of the booths. But the strong, the courageous, will set about building other, firmer houses, which will not, like the booths, hide themselves from the hostile glances of strangers in the narrow corner of a courtyard, but will rise defiant and mighty upon free soil, upon the soil for which our fathers yearned and which is promised to our children also, upon the soil of our ancestral home, in the land of our past and of our future.

Those who come after us will know how to build, if we too help them to it. We must tell them of our people, of its former strength and glory, of its later weakness and degradation. And we must impress upon them the words of the Prophet: "... It is a people robbed and spoiled. They are all scattered in holes, and they are hid in prison houses. They are become a prey, and none delivereth; a spoil, and none saith: Restore!" So that they may know that only their own labour avails them. So that they may learn from us that they must build upon themselves alone, that their defiance may grow strong and their strength, but still more their love for their people. That they may celebrate the old festivals with sadness and with rejoicing create new ones for themselves: festivals of labour, festivals of life, festivals of hope and of fulfilment.

Nor shall we conceal from them that the road to our goal, which, as we hope, will be theirs also, is a long and thorny one. We shall encourage them when their impatience is ready to despair of reaching the goal, and we shall warn them not to let themselves be beguiled by our enemies. That will be for us and for them a hard school of the most toilsome labour and of expectation often deceived; but it will also steel them in their struggle and make them able to hold out.

We shall prepare them for how much misfortune of their fellow-countrymen they will have to witness, and for how powerless is all that help which would heal such misfortune of a people with alms. They will learn to distinguish between the superficial, easily roused and easily forgotten pity of the moment and the deep, unchanging compassion that fills a whole soul. We shall show them that the one brings forth quite other results than the other, and that patchwork is often harmful, because it mostly hinders the one who has been fobbed off with it from striving himself to help himself for good, because it often