Page:Palestine Exploration Fund - Quarterly Statement for 1894.djvu/196

160 and we hope that a fair proportion of the amount needed will come from Jewish pockets. It is true that much of the work proposed in Jerusalem will interest Christians rather than Jews. But Jews have too deep an interest in the Holy Land as a whole not to feel concerned in all which relates to its hills, its streams, and its valleys. The love of Zion has been the one note of idealism in many a sordid ghetto. Projecting themselves beyond their poor environment, beyond the scorn and reproach of the present, the pent-up dwellers in the ghettos have found in this love for Zion, this love for a past Zion, again to be gloriously restored in the ideal future, both comfort and hope. The most touching, the most inspired specimens of mediæval Jewish poetry are the songs of Zion by Jehuda Halevi. This sweet singer of Spain was the first to revive the affectionate idealisation of Zion in modern times, but his example was followed by others, and thus the Jewish liturgy knows of no more eloquent and pathetic accretions than the marvellous elegies or Kinnoth wrung out from the souls of generations of Jews, and voiced in the poems which author after author put forth as lasting monuments of his love and his longing.

"Sad would it be were we Jews of to-day to fall behind our predecessors in their love for the Holy Land. The new schemes for colonising Palestine, of which the last few years have seen the vigorous birth, the flourishing colonies already dotted here and there in various parts of the land, testify to the persistence in our days of the old enthusiasm. But action may be stimulated by enthusiasm, it cannot be fed on it. Jews must give an earnest of their affectionate regard for Palestine by bearing their share of the cost of exploring it. Who can over estimate the wonderful increase that has been made in the significance even of the Psalms and the Prophets by the closer knowledge we possess now of the topography of the places and sites about which the sacred records speak? Then, those who indeed love Zion will wish to know more of it; and to know more of it, they must help, substantially and soon, those who are willing to undergo the privations and difficulties of exploration in rather unsettled and certainly uncomfortable districts. We regret to have to say that Jews in the past generation have not borne their share in the labour or expense of exploration. In the Middle Ages some of the most accomplished and successful travellers were Jews. Nowadays, the traveller's instinct seems to have been transformed into a mere desire to visit the pleasure resorts of the Continent. We should be proud to see some Jews employed in the active work of exploration, but their absence makes it even more strongly incumbent on the community to offer solid help of another kind. Glancing over the donations chronicled in the last Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund, we find absolutely no Jewish names in the list. It is true that there are a handful of Jewish annual subscribers to the Fund, but the names should be numbered by scores not units. This last appeal, coming at the moment when new work is about to be undertaken by the same competent hands who have done so much already, ought not to be made to the Jewish community in vain. The hospitalities of the Maccabeans should be completed by the generous subscriptions of the community at large. In this way an old and serious reproach will be wiped out, a reproach that has long been hurled against us with only too much force. The most destructive of adverse criticisms are the condemnations that are deserved."