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No. 30 | Vienna, 22 July 1904 — 10 Ab 5664. | 8th Year.

"Comfort ye, comfort ye my people!"

Our day of mourning is past; our time of mourning has remained. For a thousand years and nearly a thousand more we have lamented on the ninth of Ab, and now we must lament as of old; for our people's misfortune has not yet departed, and our holiest lies in ruins. And holy to us is everything in the land of our fathers, not the Temple alone. Our mourning gaze clings to the gloomy Wall that has already drunk so many tears, to the wretched ruins of the halls which once, in proud splendour, filled the nations with awe, to the decayed city, to the wasted and neglected land. And all the blood that was shed and all the bitter tears in vain — a joy to our enemies, a mockery even to many of our brethren!

Woe to Zion and her dwelling-place! Clasped by a thousand hopes, it could not wholly vanish, and yet neither could it rise again from its destruction. Already they were ready to give it up for lost, those who look only upon deeds and not upon tears. Then the people rose anew, and, as though it had been taken from them only yesterday, lifted up its voice and demanded its land. But he, our Leader, created for his people the place from which it could assert its right with earnestness and dignity as never before.

Our Leader! How he loved this people, how he yearned for the land! With his fiery spirit, with his deeply devoted heart, he held both in his embrace and bore their sorrows with that bliss which only selfless love bestows. Both he would redeem, people and land, and no hour passed for him in which he did not think of his goal and strive after it.

He loved this goal, which so many derided. The many, "Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits!" But he believed in his people and in the redemption of the land, and that they would remain in misery only so long "until the spirit be poured upon them from on high".

And this spirit he would bring us, and has brought us. It was the spirit of love and of justice, of courage and of self-reliance. He strengthened and uplifted us, and in a vision of the future showed us our people in peaceable habitations and our land in its bloom.

Then our longing grew more ardent and drank up our tears, so that we could see our way with clear eyes and look even our misery boldly in the face. And when on the ninth of Ab we united our mourning with that of our people, our wish only grew more burning, our hope still more confident, that we should turn this mourning into joy. Thus he gave our lives strength and beauty, and to our people new hope for the future.

Then came the weeks of mourning again. And they took from us our Leader. O, the immense, the unbearable grief! Woe for the extinguished light that illumined our way and beautified our goal! Woe for the love that has died to us, for the strength that has vanished from us!

Hotter flowed our people's tears on the ancient day of misfortune, and more sorrowfully than ever rang its laments. But we stood tearless. Too much had we to bear for us still to weep, too much to lament aloud. Yet deeper still grew our compassion, and hotter still our longing for peace. And we thought of that which he had seen as a sacred duty and had impressed upon us.

And it was to us as though we heard his voice: "The Lord was wroth with me for your sakes, and would not hear me. I might not go over, that I might see the good land that is beyond Jordan, that goodly mountain, and Lebanon. But ye are my disciples. So go and comfort, comfort the mourners."

Yet thus did a great one speak before him: "Comfort ye, O comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye to the heart of Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her time of suffering is accomplished, that her iniquity is atoned for; for she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins."

And we gathered our courage on the ninth of Ab, and we now cry out to our people: "He has gone from us, but his spirit has not forsaken us, his legacy shall never fade from us. We will not grow faint