OUR TEACHER 



BY SAUL DRUCKER 



"A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, 

 and loving-kindness, rather than silver and gold." 



And because he had chosen as he did, his mourners, 

 whose names are legion, will cherish the good name he 

 left and keep the heritage of loving-kindness he gave 

 them, with greater pride and care than if it had been 

 silver and gold bequeathed. 



Born in Russia, that most unfortunate of all birth- 

 places for the Jew, Hirsch Loeb Sabsovich in the early 

 adolescence of his manhood, while still a student at the 

 University, keenly realized the efforts made by the anti- 

 Semitic government to dwarf the Jew both physically 

 and mentally, and cripple his opportunities. He knew 

 the futility of appealing to the justice of officials who 

 excused their mediaeval persecutions and cruelties under 

 the plea that the Jew is a consumer and not a producer; 

 he knew, too, the several spasmodic and theatrical at- 

 tempts made by the government to make the Jew a 

 producer of the soil, which had suffered disastrous fail- 

 ure, naturally enough, because the Jew had neither the 

 knowledge nor the wherewithal to become a soil pro- 

 ducer. It was then that the conviction took firm root 

 in his mind that nothing like being a producer of the soil 

 would bring independence and happiness to his people, 

 and gradually the "Back to the Soil" Movement origi- 

 nated in his brilliant brain. 



He immigrated to the United States, and at once inter- 



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