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Palestine Without Zionism
\X/hat an Artist Sees When Looking at Erez Israel
R VRELY have I seen a land so rich in con-
t asts in its scenery as Palestine. Now the
tortile plains near Jaffa are rich in orange
roveSi a flaming world glows under the shining
ureen leaves—now, at Jericho, the land suddenly
suilo several hundred yards below the sea level.
Through a range of naked pink rocks the road
descends to the burnt-out shore of the Dead Sea.
Hut a glorious beach sweeps its broad curve
around Haifa Bay and lofty palms
stan d magically outlined against the
blue Southern sea. Dark and dreamy
with its green-black conifers Mount
Carmel stands over the city. From
there at night 1 see the lights of
Haifa swarming like bees over the
ocean. Imperceptibly they yield to
the low-hung stars of the Orient.
Sudden eucalyptus-lined roads lead
tar inland to Lake Genezareth. The
trees were planted in this malarial
region because their fantastic ally
rapid-growing roots absorb the water
trom the deep swamps like so many
sponges. A ghastly heat hovers over
the black basalt shore of the Lake of
(lenezareth, whose water, green with
algae, swarm with mysterious life—
subtropical fish, for example, that
carry their eggs and young in their
mouths.
At night the jackals laugh on these
sere plains. Here, too, stand the re
mains of a beautiful Roman syna
gogue, the ruins of Capernaum. Everywhere the
scene is flecked with the dark spots of Bedouin
tent>, black as the goat hair of which they are
woven. The white sheep are tinted henna on
their heads and backs. They stand in circular
formation in the unshaded waste, their heads
meeting in the center that each may rest in the
shadow of another.
A curious and graceful color effect in the desert.
In Samaria the Bedouins live in domed mud-
huts standing one next to the other, forming a
village of bee-hives surrounded by a mud wall.
•Hen and beasts sleep together; both must crawl
through the tiny hole that is the entrance. And,
;is 1 often saw, they pay little heed to ceremony
<>r rules of precedence as they crawl in.
Ao less than in the fascinating contradictions
scenery Palestine is full of contrasts of an
logical nature. It is the country of great Bib-
ind lengendary events, the land of the Jews
t the Crusades. But also the land of Islam.
' \ itably problems cross and recross one an-
here everywhere. It could not be otherwise
country where—at the edge of the Plain of
aelon—the most ancient Moslem mosque of
'tine stands hardly a stone’s throw' from the
Communist settlement of the Jews; where
night, in the very place that, according to
tradition, has thrice served as the burial-
nd of John the Baptist, I lately witnessed
marriage ceremonies of a Bedouin tribe
d dances and wildly erotic sw'ayings of de-
tul frankness.
be hills and plains, the olive trees and lakes
alestine lie hazy under a mist of mysticism-
sunset the silhouette of Mount Zion w ith its
cypresses stands out miraculously against the
tiful Palestine sky. The crowm of magically,
mcingly lovely Jerusalem is the emerald dome
e Mosque of Omar, in its perfection perhaps
By ERNA PINNER
Erna Pinner is a great artist. Her drawings
of animal life are famous throughout the world.
On one of her numerous trips around the globe
she visited Palestine. Miss Pinner, a Jewess
born in /• rank fort—is not a Zionist—she is just
an artist. Her impressions of the Holy land
are for that reason extremely interesting.
THE RIGHT TO WEEP
The scene at the Hailing Hall depicts the right of the
Jewish people to pray and weep over the lost
glories of Israel.
the most enchanting edifice of the East.
No temples, almost no architectural relics re
main to us from the Biblical period of the skillful
and gifted people of Israel. It is a curious fact
that the Jew's have left no artistic monuments in
Palestine. Presumably they created none to en
dure through the ages; and probably there never
existed a specifically Israelitish style.
In some quarters it is believed that this may
be brought back to the Biblical laws that forbade
a national development in the plastic arts on the
grounds of religious dogma. But it is likely that
the lews were deficient in truly great architectura
feeling, or that they despised this art because of
the glorious role it played in the culture of their
hated foes, the Egyptians.
At any rate, the famous Wailing Wall can by
no means be regarded as an example of Jewish
architecture. It is merely a fragment of a wall,
and nothing more. But it provides an opportunity
for the study of the various shadings of what
remains of Orthodox Judaism. At times indeed,
one feels transported back to the Middle Ages.
For Palestine today has at least as many dif
ferent sorts of Jews as Christian religious orders.
\t the Wailing Wall, which is visited principally
by the proletariat, the most conspicuous are the
Sephardic Jews, dark-skinned black-haired, fez-
wearing. Beside them the Polish Jewish tx>ys
are ethereally white and delicate pink, with their
long blond curls hanging down from their tem
ples. The Ashkenazim are tall men in striped
silk caftans and long plush coats, on their hea s
fur caps shaped like wagon-wheels. The color
T
SOUTHERN ISRAELITE *
ful lustre of their appearance gives them the air
of Rembrandtesque figures. Then there are
Syrian and Galician, German and Hungarian,
Bucharian and Persian Jews, each in his national
garb.
Ihe ceremonial at the Wailing Wall consists of
a never-ending praying that waxes ecstatic when
the sacred scroll of the Torah is brought out. The
women sit on empty gasoline cans still bearing
the label of an oil company. Should
any one stay too long at the wall, or
begin a discussion of important events
of the day there, the beadle shows
him the way out, that room may be
made for others.
The scenes that take place when
the Torah is unrolled are comparable
only to the finest mass-scenes of
Reinhardt. But this dramatic ecstasy
is touchingly transfigured by the aura
of the fanatic power of medieval
Judaism. The scene is genuinely
medieval.
These worshippers at the Wailing
Wall have absolutely nothing in com
mon with the Zionists. The Zionists
arc the active force of the Jewish
movement in Palestine. It is their
aim to populate Palestine with Jews,
that they may become the dominant
factor, whether as a minority or a
majority.
They arc confronted by the obsta
cle of the great numerical superiority
of the Arabs; moreover, the country is adminis
tered under a British mandate. Hence all ener
gies are bent primarily upon pure agriculture.
In these endeavors, too, the most different orienta
tions occur, depending upon the political or agra
rian program favored by the various conolists.
I visited a large number of the Jcw'ish settle
ments. Perhaps the most striking sight was that
of lofty-browcd, bespectacled men and bob-haired
women working in the fields. Viewed kaleido-
scopically and as a whole the Zionist colonies, from
the wine-cellars of the Rothschild villages to the
agricultural settlements of Dagania, represent
every social and political system whose problems
our modern world must solve. This makes the
Palestine of today extraordinarily interesting from
a social point of view.
The magic of Palestine appeared to me again
at Nazareth, at the Wall of Mary, where women
born in the twentieth century walk in Biblical at
titudes, balancing on their pretty heads gasoline
cans filled with water.
Despite the new' ideas the old order prevails in
this land. The wells and flocks and men are the
same as two thousand years ago.
Palestine is a very small country. But because
it is the Holy Land of three great faiths its out
line on our maps is always larger than is strictly
accurate. Only a few thousand square miles—
but where else in the world do so many contrasts
exist side by side in so small a space? So many
contrasts in ideology and scenery, in architecture
and men?
Copyrighted 1932 lor The SottHfis laAiun
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