ck it up by the roots, strip off the leaves and bark, shave off the
knots, and smooth it at top and bottom; put it where you will, it will
do no harm, it will never sprout. You may make a handle of it, or you
may throw it on the bonfire of scoured rubbish. I don't see why our
rubbish is to be held sacred any more than the rubbish of Brahmanism or
Buddhism."

"No," said Mordecai, "no, Pash, because you have lost the heart of the
Jew. Community was felt before it was called good. I praise no
superstition, I praise the living fountains of enlarging belief. What
is growth, completion, development? You began with that question, I
apply it to the history of our people. I say that the effect of our
separateness will not be completed and have its highest transformation
unless our race takes on again the character of a nationality. That is
the fulfillment of the religious trust that moulded them into a people,
whose life has made half the inspiration of the world. What is it to me
that the ten tribes are lost untraceably, or that multitudes of the
children of Judah have mixed themselves with the Gentile populations as
a river with rivers? Behold our people still! Their skirts spread afar;
they are torn and soiled and trodden on; but there is a jeweled
breastplate. Let the wealthy men, the monarchs of commerce, the learned
in all knowledge, the skilful in all arts, the speakers, the political
counselors, who carry in their veins the Hebrew blood which has
maintained its vigor in all climates, and the pliancy of the Hebrew
genius for which difficulty means new device--let them say, 'we will
lift up a standard, we will unite in a labor hard but glorious like
that of Moses and Ezra, a labor which shall be a worthy fruit of the
long anguish whereby our fathers maintained their separateness,
refusing the ease of falsehood.' They have wealth enough to redeem the
soil from debauched and paupered conquerors; they have the skill of the
statesman to devise, the tongue of the orator to persuade. And is there
no prophet or poet among us to make the ears of Christian Europe tingle
with shame at the hideous obloquy of Christian strife which the Turk
gazes at as at the fighting of beasts to which he has lent an arena?
There is store of wisdom among us to found a new Jewish polity, grand,
simple, just, like the old--a republic where there is equality of
protection, an equality which shone like a star on the forehead of our
ancient community, and