It was during the last session of the Permanent Mandates Commission which examined the execution of the Palestine Mandate, that one of the distinguished members rose to ask of Sir Herbert Samuel, High Commissioner of Palestine, an explanation of a subject which he thought was most important and needed enlightening.
During the discussion, mention was made several times of the Jewish "Back to [the] Land Movement." There is an obvious misstatement in this expression, the distinguished member claims. So far as is known, the Jews are not very fond of engaging in farming and therefore there cannot be any back to the land movement.
Sir Herbert Samuel, who was thoroughly cross-examined by the Commission on all phases of Palestine development, and on more than one occasion during the meeting served as an expert on Jewish life, furnished an explanation to the Commission.
The Jewish people is a reminiscent people and its memories date back many centuries to when agriculture was the main basis of Jewish existence in Palestine and elsewhere, he stated.
What a pity that the report of the Jewish Agricultural Society of America, covering its twenty-five years of activities had not yet, at the time of the Commission meeting, been published.
According to this report the number of Jewish farmers in the United States has increased in the last twenty-five years from several hundred to 75,000. The amount of land cultivated by Jewish farmers in the United States is no less than one million acres. The products produced by Jewish farmers in all parts of the Union include all branches of agriculture: wheat, corn, oranges, tobacco and poultry.
Petaluma, the "World's Egg Basket," the pride of California farmers, contains a considerable number of Jews. One witty observer, upon returning from California, stated that if the author of the "Song of Songs" (whether it was King Solomon or not), had he seen the poultry industry on the sun-kissed hills of Petaluma, would easily have compared his beloved bride, not to the "Sheep flocking down the Gilead," but to the poultry feeding on the Jewish farms.
Perhaps the distinguished member of the Permanent Mandates Commission in Geneva would have been spared the anxiety over the correctness of the Jewish "Back to the Land Movement."
Another twenty-five years' activities of the Jewish Agricultural Society in America may be helpful in removing many other anxieties in different directions.
Fifty thousand Jews in the United States are adherents of what is commonly known as Christian Science. That people who are in mental and physical distress should be willing to accept a doctrine which offers relief, is and should not be surprising. The history of religion shows that all religious sects had their beginning in offering relief and healing.
Dr. Albert Einstein, the author of the relativity theory, once was asked to summarize, in a scientific manner, the relativity of Jewish life to the life of other nations. He put in very descriptive and convincing way. It was, he said, the well-known phenomenon of mimicry. Birds living in tropical forests usually grow feathers the colors of which are identical with the leaves and grass of the surrounding landscape.
Dr. Clifton Levy, although not as famous as Einstein, has apparently set out to give additional proof to Einstein's definition of the mimicry. Since there is a powerful Church of Christian Science, and since there are many persons of Jewish origin seeking, in distress, relief of what they believe to be religion and science combined, why should there not be a Jewish Science?
Well, there is a Jewish Science, Rabbi Levy claims, and has found a number of followers.
There is no harm in this and no one can resent it. They only resentment which might be voiced is his reference to Maimonides, the clear thinker, philosopher and physician of the Twelfth Century.
What Maimonides attempted to do was reconcile the Greek philosophy dominant in his time and the natural science advanced by the Jews and Arabs in Arabic Spain, with the Bible. To declare him as authority for a Jewish Science can only be equaled with an attempt to prove that Copernicus paved the way for the League of Nations idea.
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