The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1912-08-03
Continued from page ~
THE JEWS IN JERUSALEM.

Outside the city these precepts be-
come even more difficult of observ-
ance. From the gates a wire is
stretched-known under the name of
"heroub"-to mark plainly the limit of
the Sabbath walking distance. Further
than this limit good Jew, aspiring to
Abraham's bosom, cannot carry about
his person any handkerchief, snuff
box, umbrella, or even money.
The Restoration of Zion.
Politically all the Jews who are
Turkish subjects are under the juris-
diction of the Grand Rabbin'' of the
Sephardim. Great influence is also
given him by the fact that he is
charged with the distribution of the
offerings streaming in all the time
from the various societies established
in the European capitals for the pur-
pose of promoting the Restoration of
Sion.' Funds from the Universal Jew
ish Alliance of Paris, from the friends
of Zion in Vienna, from the societies
for Jewish colonization in London,
Berlin and Amsterdam, and also the
private enterprises of Rothschild,
Hirsel and Montefore, are supporting
the INDECENT Jews in Palestine and
helping them to SETTLE little by little,
in all the ruined places which were
once famous and 1ourishing in other
periods of Jewish history.
1t appears, however, on the whole,
that the outlook for a establishment
of the Jewish race in Palestine in a
fourishing or, at least, self-supporting
sees the Jews of Jerusalem wailing
against the ruins of the ancient tenn
pie now incorporated in the walls of
Omar's Mosque, he realizes that they
belong hopelessly to the past. Every
Friday evening they assemble in long
straight lines at their wailing place,
mumbling with a peculiar swing of
the head, long chapters from the
prophets, especially from Jeremias,
and praying with cries and tears OF
despair for the coming of the Messiah
Physical and Spiritual Condition.
Even their external appearance
spells poverty and detection. Most of
them wear sort of long coat, creased
and patched as a rule, and variety
of headgear, from a simple cOnical
cap to an immense fur affair very
wide-brimmed. Some old men with
long white boards still maintain a sort
of patriarchal majesty, others would
offer to a realistic painter the best
models to represent Rapacity and
Usury with their winking, eager eyes,
their hooked noses, their faces framed
between two buckles of hair hanging
from their foreheads. The resignation
they show in their dirty condition does
not make them less repelling.
The spectacle of the Jews wailing at
the ruins of the temple is worth the
rhetoric that has been expended on it
1t reveals the spiritual side of the
Jewish mind; the wonderful aspira
lions of a race ordinarily supposed to
be occupied only with the pursuit OF
money. Whatever they are in the rest
of the world, they come to Jerusalem
in order to have the right and con
ISOLATION of weeping against some stone
blocks, waiting for Him who is ex
pected to come, or, at least, in order
to lay down their body on the sacred
land of Abraham. A strange race AND
mysterious, indeed, this people whose
life is made up of Expectation, who
hand down from generation to genera
ton their indestructible Hope. They
smile at light which nobody else
sees, and which recedes increasingly
before their very eyes.
One is moved to pity at the sight Of
such misery and such faith and is
tempted to repeat to these men hoping
against hope the words of the Ange
to the Disciples of the Lord: Men o.
Galilee, why stand We looking up tt
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