New blood continues to pour into America from across the Atlantic bringing with it new ambitions, new ideas and new ideals. In 1894, a youth twelve years of age, came to the United States with his parents. He came from Kurland, then a province of Russia, but still clinging to the use of the German language. This province was responsible for many battles among the European nations in the early part of the Nineteenth Century, but is now part of the Latvian Republic. The youth spoke the language of his native land with a mixture of Yiddish. A year later, when I was associated with the editorial staff of the Daily Jewish Courier, my duties took me to the Synagogue Ohave Sholom, on a certain Sunday afternoon, to attend the ceremony of the Bar Mizvah of this immigrant youth, who only a year before had come from Kurland. It was an extraordinary event, for the lad, whose name was Max Schulman, on the occasion of his Bar Mizvah, was to deliver a "Pilpul" (a dissertation of Talmudic scholasticism.) I listened attentively to the young man, who recited whole passages from the Talmud and the Bible and quoted sayings of the great Rabbonim, Tanoim, and Amoroim, wherein he pointed out many major contradictions and paradoxes. Steadily he preceeded, building up arguments and tearing them down, producing quotations from obscure sources to sustain his premises, 2his brow furrowed with the intentness of his efforts to reconcile the obvious contradictions of the Talmud. How little this Pilpul impressed me is evident by the fact that not one single phrase or word uttered by him has been retained by my memory and I venture to assert that even Max Schulman himself no longer remembers even the salient points of his dissertation, but only that he spoke a long time to the large audience who came to listen, most of whom were Talmudic scholars, deeply engrossed in the Pilpul. But I can not forget the scene and the impression made on me by this boy - little more than a child - holding an assembly of men silently absorbed by the intricacies of his arguments.....Years later, Max Schulman at the head of a strong group of the mid-western Zionists was strongly opposed to the policies of the administration of the Federation of American Zionists and was especially against Louis Lipsky, president of the organization, but when Schulman and his group reached the city where the annual convention was held and found that there was a strong organized opposition to Lipsky, he immediately joined forces with the Lipsky administration and the latter was reelected. He never stated or confided the reasons to any person for his change of mind, but those who knew him asked for none; they knew that Max Schulman preferred existing evils of the old leaders to the 3unknown possible benefits of the new. By reason of his leadership in Zionist circles, he was inevitably drawn into leadership in all communal affairs, especially those of orthodox Jewry, conversely by virtue of his position in communal matters, his position in the Zionist ranks was greatly strengthened. Every leader is subject to criticism - even Moses, the son of the midwife, Yochebed, did not escape severe censure of those who themselves craved leadership - and Max Schulman, who is far from being worthy of comparison with Moses, encountered much more criticism than most leaders. But it must be admitted that for almost two decades he carried the Zionist movement of Chicago and of several of the mid-western states on his own shoulders, and when the history of American Zionism will be written fairly and not for the glorification of any individual, a great part in it will be assigned to Max Schulman.