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reference to the repeated refrain of Zionists, the
burden
of Zionists (“Next year in Jerusalem”). And it is a reference to the political burden of Jerusalem on British imperial shoulders, given the British Mandate in Palestine.
    In the penultimate stanza, there is an oblique reference to the Balfour Declaration (1917)—which pledged British support to the Zionist hope for a Jewish national home in Palestine, with the proviso that the rights of non-Jewish communities should be respected. “And burdened Gentile o’er the main, / Must bear the weight of Israel’s hate / Because he is not brought again / In triumph to Jerusalem.” Israel, of course, meaning the Jews of the Diaspora.
    The poem’s argument is that Islam and Judaism are battling and have battled for Jerusalem, Zion, ever since the fatal split between Abraham’s offspring. This is the biblical story from Genesis that Kipling’s poem draws on. Hagar was the Egyptian handmaid of Sarah, Abraham’s legitimate wife. When Sarah was no longer able to bear children, she begged Abraham to lie with Hagar, so that she, Sarah, might “obtain children by her.” Ishmael was the son of Hagar by that union.
    It is the first recorded example of surrogacy.
    When Hagar conceives, Sarah decides that she, the barren wife, is held in contempt by her maid. She asks Abraham to intervene. He shifts the responsibility to Sarah—arguing that Hagar is
her
maid.
    Sarah deals harshly with Hagar who then flees, only to be accosted by an angel of the Lord—who persuades her to return, to submit to Sarah, with the promise of this reward: her seed will be so multiplied “that it shall not be numbered for multitude.” This is Islam.
    Isaac is the legitimate son of Abraham born to Sarah by special dispensation—she was then aged ninety. Hagar and Ishmael are then cast out—Sarah’s preference, which Abraham is advised by God to follow. Ishmael is preserved, however, because he is the son of Abraham and God promises Ishmael that he will be the founder of a great nation (i.e., Arab Islam).
    The
burden
of Kipling’s poem is the Jewish Diaspora: “Then they were scattered North and West.” Pogroms and persecution follow: “And every realm they wandered through / Rose, far or near, / And robbed and tortured, chased and slew, / The outcasts of Jerusalem.”
    The further burden is Kipling’s sense of the triumphant survival of Zionist aspiration over every oppressor and tyrant: “So ran their doom—half seer, half slave— / And ages past, and at the last / They stood beside each tyrant’s grave, / And whispered of Jerusalem.”
    What follows might appear to be tinged with prejudice. It refers to Jewish financial acumen. It forgivably caricatures Jewish movie moguls. But it is replete with respect for Jewish tenacity and the refusal of the Jews to intermarry and assimilate. “We do not know what God attends / The Unloved Race in every place / Where they amass their dividends / From Riga to Jerusalem. // But all the course of Time makes clear / To everyone (except the Hun) / It does not pay to interfere / With Cohen from Jerusalem. // For ‘neath the Rabbi’s curls and fur / (Or scents and rings of movie-kings) / The aloof, unleavened blood of Ur, / Broods steadfast on Jerusalem.” Ur was ruled by Chaldeans, so the line means that Jewish blood was kept pure even when Abraham lived in Ur.
    The moral of Kipling’s poem, as opposed to its burden, is in the last stanza: “Yet he who bred the unending strife, / And was not brave enough to save / The Bondsmaid from the furious wife, /
He
wrought thy woe, Jerusalem.”
    Kipling
isn’t
blaming Sarah, the fierce wife. He’s blaming Abraham for cowardice, for the failure to exercise authority invested in him. He should have been the arbitrator. So the allegory is an allegory of rule—justice should be impartially exercised rather than being left to the disputants. The white man’s burden.
    T HE G ERMANS
    Kipling is rabidly