Abstract

The Triumph of Mordecai

Each morning paper is the lurid reflection of fiery facts and forces which have set the world aflame during the centuries, and which are now blazing with redoubled fierceness. Each new hour seems an epitome of all that men have ever wrought and wrecked. All the influences that have gone to the making or the marring of the body politic, individualism, nationalism, internationalism, strut together upon the stage of the moment, so full of sound and fury that one is deafened by the clamor. All the medieval manifestations of savagery, invasions of Huns, descents of "blonde beasts" upon defenceless towns and coasts, slaughters of Christians by Turks, massacres of Jews by Christians, confronts all in daily columns. When writer George Eliot championed in the book "Daniel Deronda," Jewish hopes of Zion, seemingly shadowy then, but close to gleaming realization in these contemporary days, which see all dreams both good and bad come true. George Eliot's creation, Mordecai, who tottered upon the scene in "Daniel Deronda" a full score of years before the first gathering of Zionists at Basle, had little honor in his brief hour. A consumptive Jewish workman in threadbare apparel, he seems, with his choking cough, his yellow face, his skeleton hands, to invite from all men pitying regard rather than reverent attention.