"Here is
one of them. Mr.
Levinsky, David Levinsky, the cloak-manufacturer."
The announcement made something of a stir.
Mrs. Wolpert brought us tea. From the ensuing conversation I
gleaned that these people, including Tevkin, were ardent Zionists
of a certain type, and that they were part of a group in which the
poet was a ruling spirit. When I happened to drop a remark to the
effect that Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, was a dead
language, Wolpert exclaimed: "Oh no! Not any longer, Mr.
Levinsky. It has risen from the dead."
The other two chimed in, each in his way, the burden of their
argument being that Hebrew was the living tongue of the Zionist
colonists in Palestine
"The children of our colonists speak it as American children do
English," said Tevkin, exultingly. "They speak it as the sons and
daughters of Jerusalem spoke it at the time of the prophets. We
are no dreamers. We can tell the difference between a dream and
a hard fact, can't we?"--to the other two. "For centuries the tongue
of our fathers spoke from the grave to us.
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