Are you Zionists? ‘I asked.

‘Yes, but orthodox Zionists,’ came the quick answer.

In this short dialogue, spoken in one of the miniature shops of the bazaar inside the old Jaffa Gate at Jerusalem, you have the problem of modern Jewry. Imagine a room, nine feet by six, with three blank walls; the fourth side is open, and serves as window and door-way. There you have the shop. Its proprietors are two Jews of very typical appearance, clothed in flowing gabardines and soft felt hats (which are always worn), and bedecked with one cork-screw curl of hair on each side of the face. The elder would easily do for a scribe of the time of Our Lord, while the younger, with his olive-complexioned and gentle face, might pose for the Christus at Oberammergau.

By means of a jargon of English, French and German, with an occasional word of Hebrew, we managed to do business as well as to learn a little of each other’s history and opinions. Neither of them, I learnt, was born in Palestine. The elder came thither from Russia about thirty years ago; the younger from Hungary. They were evidently of the strict and old-fashion sect, ‘exceedingly zealous of the traditions of their fathers.’ The old man one day tapped his forehead and said in broken English :

‘The Bible and Talmud here.’

I never thought of doubting him; nor would you, had you been in the Jerusalem synagogues and seen the old men reciting the Scriptures in Hebrew at a tremendous rate, without apparently paying much attention to their bibles.