occupy it, modern theorists have
likewise, and with some reason, discovered in Palestine a land of
promise.

Basing their faith in the inherent demand for social justice which
racial genius, as witnessed in the Deuteronomic experiment and the
whole social trend of the prophetic writings, has created as a
permanent characteristic of the Jew and which the injustice of
centuries has accentuated, a group of Jewish socialists have entered
the Zionist cause in the hope of establishing a form of the
communistic principle as a foundation for the new society. The
communistic ownership of land is particularly urged. Past experiments
of this nature--the Brook Farm and the French Commune as a small and a
large example--have failed partly for lack of scientific guidance and
sufficient exact knowledge of actual conditions, and partly because of
the social unfitness of the participants. Social Zionism, however, has
secured for its director an acknowledged authority in communistic
economics, Dr. Franz Oppenheimer of the University of Berlin; and it
is counting on the Jewish heritage of social instinct to furnish the
proper human material for its purpose. Amos, the herdsman of Tekoa,
who came down from his mountain in 750 B. C. to storm at the
capitalistic greed of Israel, raised the first plea in history for
social justice. The successful consummation of the prophet's ideal in
the new Israel would be a contribution to the world distinctly Hebraic
and possibly the most valuable of the modern Jew.

_The Yearning for a Spiritual Revival_

To Ahad Ha-'Am,[12] the leading writer of to-day in Hebrew, a
"spiritual revival" should be the desideratum of the Zionists.
Spiritual is of course not used in the restricted religious sense, but
as the opposite of material. Although Ahad Ha-'Am concedes the
establishment of a center in Palestine to be a necessity, he considers
it only a means to the end of an "awakening" of spiritual forces in
art, morals, and national consciousness among Jewry at large; and, to
hasten this end, he urges the establishment of a University, an
art-school, and bands of workers in the spirit--poets, painters, and
all manner of creators--for he conceives the Jews not to be a young
race who must climb from satisfying the needs of the belly to the
needs of the brain, but an old people who can and must satisfy both
demands together.[13]

Finally, the great mass of European Jewry, who weep on the Ninth of
Ab, who send th