he was but a youth, driven into action by hellish injustice. he had hitherto taken scant notice of all these parties that had sprung up for the confusion of his people—these hybrid, kaleidoscopic combinations of russian and jewish politics—but as he fled from the philosophers through the now darkening streets, his every nerve quivering, it seemed to him as if the alphabet had only to be thrown about like dice to give always the name of some party or other. he had a nightmare vision of bristling sects and pullulating factions, each with its councils, federations, funds, conferences, party-days, agenda, referats, press-organs, each differentiating itself with meticulous subtlety from all the other parties, each defining with casuistic minuteness its relation to every contemporary problem, each equipped with inexhaustible polyglot orators speechifying through tumultuous nights.
well, it could not be helped. in the terrible nebulous welter in which his people found themselves, it [420]was not unnatural that each man should grope towards his separate ray of light. the russian, too, was equally bewildered, and perhaps all this profusion of theories came in both from the same lack of tangibilities. both peoples possessed nothing.
perhaps, indeed, the ultimate salvation of the jews lay in identifying themselves with russia. but then, who could tell that the patriots who welcomed them to-day as co-workers would not reject them when the cause was won? perhaps there was no hope outside preserving their own fullest identity. poor bewildered russian jew, caught in the bewilderments both of the russian and the jew, and tangled up inextricably in the double confusion of interlacing coils!
the parties, then, were perhaps inevitable; he must make his account with them. how if he formed a secret samooborona committee, composed equally of representatives of all parties? but, then, how could he be sure of knowing them all? he might offend one by omitting or miscalling it; they formed and re-formed like clouds on the blue. a new party, too, might spring up overnight. he might give deadly affront by ignoring this jonah's gourd. even as he thus mused, there came to him the voices of two young men, the one advocating a p.p.l.—a new party of popular liberty—the other insisting that the new volksgruppe of all anti-zionist parties was an unconditional historic necessity. he groaned.
it seemed to him as he stumbled blindly through the ill-paved alleys that a plague of doctors of philosophy had broken out over the pale, doctrinaires spinning pure logic from their vitals, and fighting bitterly against the slightest deviation from the pattern of their webs. but the call upon israel was for action. [421]was it, he wondered with a flash of sympathy, that israel was too great for action; too sophisticated a people for so primitive and savage a function; too set in the moulds of an ancient scholastic civilization, so that, even when action was attempted, it was turned and frozen into philosophy? or was it rather that eighteen centuries of poring over the talmud had unfitted them for action, not merely because the habit of applying the whole brain-force to religious minuti? led to a similar intellectualization of contemporary problems—of the vast new material suddenly opened up to their sharpened brains—but also because many of these religious problems related only to the time when israel and his temple flourished in palestine? the academic leisure and scrupulous discrimination that might be harmlessly devoted to the dead past had been imported into the burning present—into things that mattered for life or death.
yes, the new generation chopped the logic of zionism or socialism, as the old argued over the ritual of burnt-offerings whose smoke had not risen since the year 70 of the christian era, or over the decisions of babylonian geonim, no stone of whose city remained standing. the men of to-day had merely substituted for the world of the past the world of the future, and so there had arisen logically-perfect structures of zionism without zion, jewish socialism without a jewish social order, labour parties without votes or parliaments. the habit of actualities had been lost; what need of them when concepts provided as much intellectual stimulus? would israel never return to reality, never find solid ground under foot, never look eye to eye upon life?
but as the last patch of sunset faded out of the strip of wintry sky, david suddenly felt infinitely weary of [422]reality; a great yearning came over him for that very unreality, that very 'dead past' in which pious jewry still lived its happiest hours. oh, to forget the parties, the jangle of politics and philosophies, the tohu-bohu of his unhappy day! he must bathe his soul in an hour's peace; he would go back like a child to the familiar study-house of his youth, to the beth hamedrash where the greybeards pored over the great worm-eaten folios, and the youths rocked in their expository incantations. there lay the magic world of fantasy and legend that had been his people's true home, that had kept them sane and cheerful through eighteen centuries of tragedy—a watertight world into which no drop of outer reality could ever trickle. there lay zion and the jordan, the temple and the angels; there the patriarchs yet hovered protectively over their people. perhaps the milovka study-house boasted even cabbalists starving themselves into celestial visions and graduating for the divine kiss. how infinitely restful after the milovka market-place! no more, for that day at least, would he prate of self-defence and the horrible modern.
he asked the way to the beth hamedrash. how fraternally the sages and the youths would greet him! they would inquire in the immemorial formula, 'what town comest thou from?' and when he told them, they would ask concerning its rabbi and what news there was. and 'news,' david remembered with a tearful smile, meant 'new interpretations of texts.' yes, this was all the 'news' that ever ruffled that peaceful world. man lived only for the holy law; the world had been created merely that the law might be studied; new lights upon its words and letters were the only things that could matter to a sensible soul. [423]time and again he had raged against the artificiality of this quietist cosmos, accusing it of his people's paralysis, but to-night every fibre of him yearned for this respite from the harsh reality. he rummaged his memory for 'news'—for theological ingeniosities, textual wire-drawings that might have escaped the lore of milovka; and as one who draws nigh to a great haven, he opened the door of the beth hamedrash, and, murmuring 'peace be to you,' dropped upon a bench before an open folio whose commentaries and super-commentaries twined themselves lovingly in infinite convolutions round its holy text. immediately he was surrounded by a buzzing crowd of youths and ancients.
'which party are you of?' they clamoured eagerly.
