# Old-New Land/Book 1/Part 6

(page 25)
Kingscourt and Friedrich spent several days in the old land of the Jews. Jaffa made a very unpleasant impression upon them. Though nobly situated on the blue Mediterranean, the town was in a state of extreme decay. Landing was difficult in the forsaken harbor. The alleys were dirty, neglected, full of vile odors. Everywhere misery in bright Oriental rags. Poor Turks, dirty Arabs, timid Jews lounged about-indolent, beggarly, hopeless. A peculiar, tomblike odor of mold caught one's breath.
They hurried away from Jaffa, and went up to Jerusalem on the miserable railway. The landscape through which they passed was a picture of desolation. The lowlands were mostly sand and swamp, the lean fields looked as if burnt over. The inhabitants of the blackish Arab villages looked like brigands. Naked children played in the dirty alleys. Over the distant horizon loomed the deforested hills of Judaea. The bare slopes and the bleak, rocky valleys showed few traces of present or former cultivation.
"If this is our land," remarked Friedrich sadly, "it has declined like our people."
"Yes, it's pretty bad," agreed Kingscourt. "But much could be done here with afforestation, if half a million young giant cedars were planted-they shoot up like asparagus. This country needs nothing but water and shade to have a very great future."
"And who is to bring water and shade here?"
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"The Jews!" And Kingscourt swore a great cavalry oath.
It was night when they reached Jerusalem-a marvelous white moonlit night.
"Donnerwetter!" shouted Kingscourt. "I say, this is beautiful!"
He stopped the cab which was taking them from the station to a hotel, and called to the guide, "You stay here, and tell that camel of a driver to follow us slowly."
"Let's walk a bit, shall we, Dr. Loewenberg?" Again turning to the guide, the old man asked, "What's the name of this region?"
"The Valley of Jehoshaphat, sir," replied the man meekly.
"Then it's a real place, Devil take me! The Valley of Jehoshaphat! I thought it was just something in the Bible. Here our Lord and Savior walked. What do you think of it, Dr. Loewenberg? ...Ah, yes! Still, it must mean something to you also. These ancient walls, this Valley..."
"Jerusalem!" cried Friedrich in a half-whisper, his voice trembling. He did not understand why the sight of this strange city affected him so powerfully. Was it the memory of words heard in early childhood? In passages of prayer murmured by his father? Memories of Seder services of long-forgotten years stirred in him. One of the few Hebrew phrases he still knew rang in his ears: "Leshana Ha-baa be-Yerushalayim,"-"Next Year in Jerusalem!" Suddenly he saw himself a little boy going to synagogue with his father. Ah, but faith was dead now, youth was dead, his father was dead. And here before him the walls of Jerusalem towered in the fairy moonlight. His eyes overflowed. He stopped short, and the hot tears coursed slowly down his cheeks.
Kingscourt smothered a few "Devils!" in his windpipe, motioned violently to the coachman behind them to stop, and slipped silently a few paces behind Friedrich.
The latter came out of his trance sighing and embarrassed.
"Forgive me, Mr. Kingscourt," he murmured, "for making you wait here. It was...I feel...so peculiar. I don't know what it is."
But Kingscourt linked arms with the young man, and spoke with unusual gentleness. "You, Friedrich Loewenberg, I like you."
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Arm in arm Jew and Christian approached Jerusalem the Holy City by the white light of the moon.
Jerusalem by daylight was less alluring-shouting, odors, a flurry of dirty colors, crowds of ragged people in narrow, musty lanes, beggars, sick. people, hungry children, screeching women, shouting tradesmen.. The once royal city of Jerusalem could have sunk no lower.
The travelers viewed all the famous sites, buildings, and ruins. They walked down the noisome little lane that leads to the Wailing Wall, and were revolted by the appearance of the praying beggars there.
"You see, Mr. Kingscourt," said Friedrich, "we have really died dead. There's nothing left of the Jewish kingdom but this fragment of the Temple wall. And though I fathom my soul to its depths, I find nothing in common with these traffickers in the national misfortune."
He had spoken loudly, without realizing that he might be overheard. Besides the praying beggars and the guides, there was present a gentleman in European clothing who turned and spoke to them. His German accent was foreign but cultured.
"You seem to be a Jew, sir, or of Jewish descent."
"Yes," replied Friedrich, somewhat taken by surprise.
"If that is so, perhaps you will allow me to correct your error," continued the stranger. "More remains of the Jews than the stones of this ancient bit of masonry and these poor wretches here who, I grant you, ply no wholesome trade. The Jewish people nowadays should be judged neither by its beggars nor by its millionaires."
"I am not rich," declared Friedrich.
"I see what you are-a stranger to your people. If you ever come to us in Russia, you will realize that a Jewish nation still exists. We have a living tradition, a love of the past, and faith in the future. The best and most cultured men among us have remained true to Judaism as a nation. We desire to belong to no other. We are what our fathers were."
"Excellent!" cried Kingscourt.
Friedrich shrugged slightly, but exchanged a few civil remarks with the stranger, and then went on. When they turned to .look back from the end of the lane, they saw the Russian Jew sunk in silent prayer beside the Wall.
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That evening they saw him again at the English hotel where they were staying. He was dining with a young lady, evidently his daughter. When they met later in the lobby, the conversation of the morning was resumed without any sense of restraint. The Russian introduced himself as Dr. Eichenstamm. "I am an oculist," he explained. "My daughter too."
"What!" cried Kingscourt. "Is this young lady a doctor?"
"Yes. She studied under me at first, and later in Paris. Now she is my assistant. A very learned person, my Sascha."
The young lady doctor blushed at her father's praise. "Oh, papa!" she cried deprecatingly.
Dr. Eichenstamm stroked his long gray beard. "One may say what is true," he said. "We are not here solely for pleasure, gentlemen. We are interested in eye diseases. Unfortunately, there is no lack of them here. Dirt and neglect revenge themselves. Everything is in ruins here. And how beautiful it could be, for it is a golden land!"
"This country?" inquired Friedrich incredulously. "The milk and honey description is no longer true."
"It is always true!" cried Eichenstamm enthusiastically.
"If only we had the people here, all else would follow."
"No," asserted Kingscourt decisively, "there's nothing to be expected from people."
Dr. Sascha turned to her father. "You ought to suggest that the gentlemen see the colonies."
"Which colonies?" asked Friedrich.
"Our Jewish settlements," replied the old gentleman. "Don't you know anything about them either, Dr. Loewenberg? They are the most remarkable phenomenon in modern Jewish life. Societies in Europe and America, the so-called 'Lovers of Zion,' promote the transformation of Jews into farmers in this old land of ours. A number of such Jewish villages already exist. Several rich philanthropists have also contributed funds for the purpose. Our old soil is productive again. You must visit the Jewish villages before you leave Palestine."
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"We could if you cared to," shouted Kingscourt to Friedrich, who promptly assented.
The next day they went up to the Mount of Olives with Eichenstamm and Sascha. On the way they passed the elegant residence of an English lady.
"You see," said the Russian, "that new mansions can be erected on our ancient soil. Very good idea to live up here. My own dream too."
"Or at least to have an eye clinic," smiled Dr. Sascha.
From the top of the mountain they admired the view of the hilly city and of the wide circle of mountains that flowed down in stony waves to the Dead Sea.
Friedrich grew thoughtful. "Jerusalem must have been beautiful," he said. "Perhaps that is why our ancestors could never forget it, and always wanted to return."
"It reminds me of Rome," cried Eichenstamm. "A splendid city, a metropolis, could be erected upon these hills once more. What a view from here! Grander than that from the Gianiculo. Ah, if my old eyes might still see it. ..."
"We shall not live to see it," said Sascha wistfully.
Kingscourt marveled silently as he listened to their fantastic notions. When they were alone again, he said to Friedrich, "A remarkable pair, that doctor-father and the doctor-daughter. So practical and yet so foolish. I always imagined the Jews quite different."
The next morning Kingscourt and Friedrich said farewell to the Eichenstamms and drove out to the colonies. They looked at Rishon-le-Zion, Rehobot, and other villages that lay like oases in the desolate countryside. Many industrious hands must have worked here to restore fertility to the soil, they realized, as they gazed upon well-cultivated fields, stately vineyards and luxuriant orange groves.
"All this has come into being during the last ten or fifteen years," explained the head of the village council of Rehobot, to whom Eichenstamm had referred them. "The colonization movement began after the persecutions in Russia in the early 1880's. But, there are villages more remarkable than ours. There's Katrah, for instance, founded by university students who forsook their books for the plow. Such peasants are to be found nowhere else in the world-cultured men working in the fields."
"That's a strong card!" cried Kingscourt. Still greater was their surprise when the village president called on the young men of Rehobot to mount their horses. A sort of Arab fantasy was performed in honor of the visitors. The youngsters galloped far off into the fields, threw their steeds about, and rushed back again shouting, throwing guns and caps into the air mid-career and catching them again. Finally, they rode home in single file singing a Hebrew song.
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Kingscourt was beside himself with delight. "May salty lightning strike me! These fellows ride like the devil! That was the sort of thing my great-great-grandfather during the attack at Rossbach-"
But Friedrich was little interested in these manifestations of sound and joyous life, and was glad when they left the villages and returned to Jaffa.
The yacht was under steam. They left the sunny strand of Palestine in December, and steered toward Port Said, where they anchored for two days, and then sailed on through the Suez Canal. On the evening of December 31, 1902, they entered the Red Sea. Friedrich relapsed into deep melancholy. In that mood nothing mattered to him.
After the sun had set Kingscourt called him to the foredeck.
"This evening," said he, "we shall dress for dinner. Here's the menu. Plenty of silvernecks on the ice."
"What's the occasion, Mr. Kingscourt?"
"Don't you know, man! It's the last day of the year. That's no ordinary date, if dates have any meaning at all."
"They have no meaning for us," answered Friedrich listlessly. "Timelessness begins for us now. Isn't that so?"
"Yes, yes, of course. But it's a damned queer day. At midnight we shall sink Time into your Red Sea. Then, with the end of the stupid epoch in which we have been doomed to live, we shall think of something big...I'm having an excellent punch brewed, too. That's the most genuine thing in the universal depravity."
They celebrated. The ship's cook outdid himself. The wines were excellent. Kingscourt, a mighty drinker before the Lord, drank three times as much as Friedrich, and remained quite fresh and clear-headed. But his young companion felt a mist rising before his eyes, and heard Kingscourt's voice as in a dream when the clock struck twelve.
"Midnight!" boomed Kingscourt. "Die, Time! I empty my glass to your death. What were you? Shame, blood, depravity, progress. Put up your glass, man, my isolated contemporary!"
"I can drink no morel" stuttered Friedrich.
31
"Weak generation!...You ought to be standing on tiptoe here. A classic region! Here your old Moses performed his greatest deed....They went through dryshod. Obviously it must have been just at ebb tide. And that donkey of a Pharoah went right into the flood! No magic, But it's the very naturalness of the thing that impresses me. The simplest means! But one must see those means, be able to make use of them. Just think how poor a time that was, and yet what your old Moses achieved. If he were to come back today and see all our marvels-railways, telegraphs, telephones, machines, this yacht with her screw propeller, electric searchlights-he would understand nothing at all. For three whole days" probably, things would have to be explained to him. But after that he would understand everything. And what do you think he would do then? He'd laugh-laugh-grimly-terribly. Because with all this wonderful progress, humanity doesn't know which way to turn. In private life one comes to the conclusion that humanity is base. But, taking it by and large, one discovers that it is merely stupid. Infinitely stupid, stupid, stupid! Never was the world so rich as now, and yet never have there been so many poor. People starve while corn lies moldering. It's all the same to me. The more perish, the fewer the ingrates, liars, and traitors will be left in the world!"
Friedrich spoke thickly. "Don't you think, Mr. Kingscourt, that people would be much better if they were better off?"
"No! If I believed that, I should not be going off to my lonely island; I should have stayed in the midst of humanity. I should have told them how to better themselves. They needn't wait to begin. Not a thousand years, not a hundred, not even fifty. Today! With the ideas, knowledge, and facilities that humanity possesses on this 31st day of December, 1902, it could save itself. No philosopher's stone, no dirigible airship is needed. Everything needful for the making of a better world exists already. And do you know, man, who could show the way? You! You Jews! Just because you're so badly off. You've nothing to lose. You could make the experimental land for humanity. Over yonder, where we were, you could create a new commonwealth. On that ancient soil, Old-New-Land!"
Friedrich heard Kingscourt's words only in a dream. He had fallen asleep. And, dreaming, he sailed through the Red Sea to meet the future.