JEWS AND PALESTINE.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VII, Issue 2126, 7 December 1920, Page 8

JEWS AND PALESTINE.

NATION'S SPIRITUAL CENTRE.

DISTINGUISHED VISITOR'S VIEW. - A distinguished member of the Jewish race, Mr Peretz Hirshbein, accompanied by Mrs Hirshbein, is on a visit to New Zealand. Born in Grodno, Russia, Mr Hirshbein left that district seven years ago on a world tour, which, when he was in America, was interrupted by the outbreak of war. The War over, he has resumed his tour. Mr Hirshbein is well known as a writer. His activity as an author began in Russia in 1905, when his first play appeared in print, and since then some 35 other plays have followed. In addition he has produced .two volumes of travel impressions, and no doubt a third one which ha is compiling now "will contain a reference to his impressions on New Zealand. Poems and essays have also come from Mr Hirshbein's pen. All his works have been in the Yiddish language, his plays having- been produced at the Jewish Theatre, New York, but a Boston firm is now preparing English translations for publication. Mrs Hirshbein, under her maiden name of Esther Shumiatcher, has also 'produced two modern dramas, fairy tales for children, and several prose poems. Great hopes for the Zionist movement are expressed by Mr Hirshbein, who looks for the time when the Jews will once, more be rogarded as a nation and not as a people without a country scattered throughout the world. The proposal to make Palestine the home of the Jews, he said to a representative of the Wellington "Post," would achieve this. He did net for a moment think that all the Jews throughout the world would immediately concentrate in Palestine. For the modern Jew Palestine was not looked upon so much as a place where his body should get rest; it was more a place where his soul should rest —the great spiritual centre of the Jewish nation. The present was the worst time in the history of the Jews. In Russia Minor hundreds of thousands of Jews had been massacred Since the War; in cities where there had been, say, about six thousand Jews there was now no trace of Jewish life. But Mr Hirshbein went on to say that he would Hate to see an immigration to Palestine which took the form of an escape from fear. He looked to the time when there would be in Palestine a great university in which Yiddish literature and language would be developed, and whence would emerge great Jewish scientists, doctors, musicians, etc. Until the Jews had their own fatherland the race would never get credit for its Professor. Einsteins, its Fritz Kreislers, its Hoffmanns, and others.

He hoped that within 10 years the Jews •would be given a free hand in Palestine, and that they would be able to transform it by, means of irrigation and electrical development. Already a wellknown engineer (Eothenberg) had drawn up a scheme and, if, as he expected, he could get a charter from the British Government, he planned to irrigate and electrify a large part of the country in two years. Mr and Mrs Hirshbein will visit Botorua and Auckland before leaving New Zealand for Australia, South Africa, India, Palestine, England, and Prance.