| Joseph Friedlander, comp. The Standard Book of Jewish Verse. 1917. | | | | Israel | | By Israel Zangwill |
| | | HEAR, O Israel, Jehovah, the Lord our God is one, | |
| But we, Jehovah, His people, are dual and so undone. | |
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| Slaves in eternal Egypts, baking their strawless bricks, | |
| At ease in successive Zions, prating their politics. | |
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| Rotting in sunlit Rumania, pigging in Russian pale, | 5 |
| Driving in Park, Bois, and Prater, clinging to Fashion’s tail; | |
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| Reeling before every rowdy, sore with a hundred stings, | |
| Clothed in fine linen and purple, loved at the courts of Kings; | |
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| Faithful friends to our foemen, slaves to a scornful clique, | |
| The only Christians in Europe, turning the other cheek; | 10 |
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| Priests of the household altar, blessing the bread and wine, | |
| Lords of the hells of Gomorrah, licensed keepers of swine; | |
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| Coughing o’er clattering treadles, saintly and underpaid, | |
| Ousting the rough from Whitechapel—by learning the hooligan’s trade; | |
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| Pious, fanatical zealots throttled in Talmud-coil, | 15 |
| Impious, lecherous skeptics, cynical stalkers of spoil; | |
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| Wedded ’neath Hebrew awning, buried ’neath Hebrew sod, | |
| Between not a dream of duty, never a glimpse of God; | |
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| Risking our lives for our countries, loving our nations’ flags, | |
| Hounded therefrom in repayment, hugging our bloody rags; | 20 |
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| Blarneying, shivering, crawling, taking all colors and none, | |
| Lying a fox in the covert, leaping an ape in the sun. | |
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| Tantalus-Proteus of Peoples, security comes from within; | |
| Where is the lion of Judah? Wearing an ass’s skin! | |
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| Hear, O Israel, Jehovah, the Lord our God is One, | 25 |
| But we, Jehovah His people, are dual and so undone. | | | | |
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