Part 14

Ernest Renan defines a nation as "a great solidarity constituted by the sentiment of the sacrifices that its citizens have made and those they feel prepared to make once more. It implies a past, but is summed up in the present by a tangible fact--the clearly expressed desire to live a common life." In sum, the Jews throughout the Middle Ages, which was prolonged for them until a little less than two hundred years ago, comprised a nation as virtual in point of their own claim and its recognition by other nations as in the days when they were established in Palestine. Renaissance, Reformation, and the rediscovery of the world by science failed to make an impression on the thick ghetto walls; and Jewish isolation, even as late as the eighteenth century, may be vividly realized by thinking of Rousseau and Voltaire in contrast with the contemporary lights of Jewry--Elijah Gaon and Israel Besht,[8] men as medieval as a gargoyle.

The French Revolution with its early philosophy of naturalism and humanism and its later political expression in liberty, equality, and fraternity, razed the physical and spiritual walls of the ghetto and set up the "Jewish problem." Following the Revolution, four currents of thought and action, working both simultaneously and successively, causing, reacting upon, and intermingling with one another, affecting the Jews now favorably and now unfavorably, went into the making of this problem. To deal with Emancipation, Enlightenment, Nationalism, and Anti-Semitism in detail would consume a volume, but an outline of their bearing on the present situation is essential.

_Emancipation and Enlightenment_

Emancipation may be defined as the removal of the civil disabilities from the Jews, following the acceptance of liberal principles by the European governments. The process was a gradual one. In 1791 the French Assembly passed the vote for the complete emancipation of the Jews, which procedure was ratified and firmly established by the Napoleonic regime. Belgium (1830), England (1846), Sweden (1848), Denmark and Greece (1849), Prussia (1850), Austria (1867), Spain (1868), Italy (1870), and Switzerland (1874) followed the lead of France. The Balkan States in the treaty of Berlin (1878), upon pressure from Disraeli, agreed to the emancipation of the Jews as one of the conditions for securing their own freedom; Roumania has been notoriously delinquent, however, in adhering to the terms nominated in the bond.[9] The removal of civil disabilities brought the Jew into a wide contact with the Christian. This resulted for the Jews in liberalization of outlook and liberation of capacities and talents, in an abandonment of the "jargon" for the national tongues, in a precipitation into the Haskalah movement (to be described in the next paragraph), and in a restatement of their leading religious doctrines, which amounted to a surrender in theory of their nationality and their destiny as a Chosen People to be restored to Palestine. For the Christians the removal of Jewish disabilities resulted in the necessity of either accepting or rejecting the Jew's claim to be an equal and a fellow-countryman.

The Enlightenment, or Haskalah movement, broadly speaking, comprises the Jewish absorption of secular learning, particularly in literature and science, the abandonment of the study of the Talmud for modern subjects, and the adoption of farm and craft life.[10] Moses Mendelssohn in Germany and Lilienthal in Russia were the first great protagonists of these radical departures; and the movement, which in part led to the demand for Emancipation and in part resulted from it, further removed the differences between Jew and non-Jew, at least from the standpoint of the former, and further removed him from his religious and historical past, perceptibly weakening and in many cases practically destroying the medieval sense of solidarity. Each Jew adopted the culture of his native country, and so one Jew became virtually a foreigner to another. Haskalah, in a word, is a looking outward on the part of the Jew; for all its virtues this movement had the consequence of blunting racial consciousness and blurring racial identity.

_Nationalism and Anti-Semitism_

All might have been well but for the presence of a third and conflicting element. While the Jew became infected with the universalism of the Revolutionary spirit, the majority of Europeans were absorbing and developing the particularistic implications of '89. Nationalism is the self-consciousness of a people, and it found its European expression in the creation of the modern States of Germany, Italy, Hungary, Greece, and the small Balkans. It is a race's recognition of itself, a looking inward, and it leads to the pursuit of racial ideals and development of racial qualities--an inward expansion which, indifferent to the charge of chauvinism, can only be secured by an outward discrimination. The Jew and the Christian had changed places since medieval times: the Jew now stood for a universal society and a universal church, and the Christian for exclusion and separation upon racial bases. Emancipation thus brought the conflict directly to the attention of the strong majority, namely, the Christians, and anti-Semitism was their answer.

In its restricted sense, anti-Semitism is a scientific stick used to beat the Jewish dog with. After impartial, impersonal scientific investigation, French and German scholars[11] demonstrated the racial inferiority of the Semite to the Aryan, enumerated the inherent Semitic qualities as greed, special aptitude for money-making, aversion to hard work, clannishness, obstrusiveness, lack of social tact and of patriotism, the tendency to exploit and not to be overly honest. Ernest Renan adequately sums up the anti-Semite position when he claims for the Aryans all the great military, political, and intellectual movements of history.[12] The Semites never had a comprehension of civilization in the sense in which the Aryan understands the word; they were at no time public-spirited.[13] In fact, intolerance was the natural consequence of Semitic monotheism.[14]

In the wider sense,[15] anti-Semitism is the modern word for the old and apparently ineradicable hatred of the Jew, partly dependent, as G. F. Abbott well shows,[16] not only upon Christian faith, but upon the Christian frame of mind and feeling--a hatred to which the Nationalism of the nineteenth century furnished a reasonable fuel, which found a social expression in ostracism and rioting[17] and a political expression in the formation of the Christian Socialist Party in Germany (1878), and similar parties in Austria and Hungary (1882-99), seeking the suppression of equal rights for Jews, the Dreyfus affair in France (1895), and the open, violent persecutions in Roumania--all aimed at annulling the privileges granted by the Emancipation. Clerical, economic, and social opposition to the Jews combined to support the nationalistic contention summed up in the words of Heinrich von Treitschke (Professor of History, University of Berlin): "Die Juden sind unser Unglück."[18] This essay is not concerned with the truth of the contention; suffice that it is advanced, supported, and acted upon.

_The Jewish Situation in the Four Zones_

A review of the Jewish situation is now possible. But before presenting this review, a definition of two words which will be frequently used may not be irrelevant. The _Jewish problem_ is taken to mean an immediate concrete maladjustment where life and property are imperiled, much as we speak of the Mexican problem. The _Jewish position_, on the other hand, is taken to mean a social, cultural, or spiritual disharmony or repression, much as we speak of the position of the Poles in Galicia and Russia.

The Jewish situation falls naturally into four geographical zones. The first, which contains the _problem_ in its most serious aspect, is Eastern Europe, including Russia, Poland, and Roumania, where are settled six of the twelve million Jews of the world.[19] In this zone, the Jews are for the most part maintaining medieval solidarity and separation, are suffering from medieval repression and persecution; but on the other hand, (and this appears to be the determining factor in the gravity of the _problem_), the Russian Jew is by no means a necessity to the Russian in any way similar to that in which the medieval Jew was a necessity to the medieval Christian. The eastern Jew is beginning to expand with the leaven of the Haskalah, and is simultaneously strangling for lack of the release and exercise of his powers afforded by Emancipation. The Russian and Roumanian, in what they believe to be the preservation of Nationalism, are determined on crippling or destroying the inimical and unassimilative factor in their population; and although the Russian is politically medieval, he is economically modern and considers himself restrained by no need of Jewish money.[20] The outcome for the Jews is economic impoverishment, social persecution, political enslavement, and spiritual degeneration.[21]

The second zone includes Austria, Germany, and to a minor degree France, where are settled approximately three millions of Jews. Save in Galicia, where political and racial turmoil is constantly giving the Jewish situation the sombre tinge of a _problem_, the Jews are finding themselves, for the most part, in a precarious _position_. Nationalism demands that they surrender their racial identity and proclivities; anti-Semitism declares upon the verdict of science that such surrender is impossible, and substitutes repression, assimilation, or extinction. The Jews in attempting to satisfy the conditions by entering fully into all the activities of national life arouse through their success only greater hostility; and the situation becomes converted into a vicious circle.

France to a large degree and England comprise the third zone, where the Jewish _position_ is identical with that of the fourth zone, the United States, save in one important detail. The Jews in these two zones, numbering only one-and-a-half million, have entered freely into the national life about them, and, except for minor social disabilities which can only make the judicious smile, have been accorded equality, with the result that the Jew _qua_ Jew is exposed to complete assimilation. The distinction between the third and fourth zone is that in England and France, anti-Semitism based on Nationalism is a potentiality (though the recent Aliens Bill and Chesterton trial would suggest that it might be more than this), whereas the open-door theory of settlement which created the United States militates basically against race-discrimination. The Jew of England and America does not face persecution nor repression, but a gradual and apparently pleasant extinction.

The medieval Jew found himself a necessary, well-paying, if not honored, guest in the households of Europe; but the day when the Jew resolved on adopting the life and manners of his host, the host resolved on drawing tightly the family lines. The modern Jew has discovered it necessary either to convince the obdurate host, who points to a scientifically certified chart of the family-tree, that he too is of blood germane, or take himself to lodgings in the cellarage. And yet--a third possibility here insinuates itself--why may not the Jew set up housekeeping for himself?

_The Vain Effort of Reform Judaism_

The medieval Jew would have accepted without hope the unfortunate predicament; the modern Jew, nerved with a distillation of the Revolutionary "rights of men" and confident that he was not combating the implacability of a religious hatred, adopted expedient and remedial measures, the chief of which, since they form the opposition to Zionism, will be outlined.

To justify Emancipation before and after it was secured, assimilative doctrines of a peculiar type, known as Reform Judaism,[22] whereby the essentials of Jewish life were to be separated and saved, constituted the main attempt of the Jew to demonstrate that he was a member of the households of Europe and not an intruder. Reform Judaism began as a result of the Haskalah by simplifying and beautifying, according to European standards, the Orthodox religious service (Germany 1810-20), and ended by abandoning the Messianic Restoration, the doctrine that Israel is in exile and that the prophecies are literally to be fulfilled. The expediency of these measures is apparent. To refute the anti-Semitic charge of racial inferiority, the existence of the race as a separate entity was denied, and the necessary scientific backing has lately been secured.[23] To meet the Nationalists, Israel's national hopes were declared void, and it was strongly urged that the basis of a modern nation is citizenship and not race.

The Reformers proceeded further and maintained that the Jewish people were themselves the Messiah, whose mission was "to spread by its fortitude and loyalty the monotheistic truth all over the earth, and to be an example of rectitude to all others,"[24] whose goal was "not a national Messianic State, but the realization in society of the principles of righteousness as enunciated by the prophets;"[25] wherefore, it was not only just that they receive citizenship, but religious duty compelled the Jew to demand it.

The Jewish religion was considered the essential possession of the Jewish people--so essential that it was to be maintained at the sacrifice of assimilation; but nowhere is it made apparent how a religion can be maintained without a people, how a people can be maintained without separation, and how separation can be maintained without abandoning the no-race, no-nation propositions. If these are abandoned, the Jews are precisely where they began--another circle whose viciousness is becoming obvious and is resulting in the constant discarding of Jewish rite and form, until the religion which was to be prized and saved is fast becoming a watery Unitarianism, and its adherents are allowing themselves, where permitted, to become completely assimilated. Reform Judaism which began as a compromise is ending as a surrender. The final and unanswerable objection to Reform Judaism as a solution is that the majority of Jews will not even in theory accept it. The devotion to race, religion, and separation is too strong. The Gentile in asking the Jew to assimilate is undoubtedly right; the refusal of the Jew undoubtedly is not wrong; and the ring of true tragedy becomes audible.

_The Palliative Measures of Philanthropy_

Contemporary with the unsuccessful attempt at clearing up the Jewish _position_ in western Europe, palliative measures were undertaken to solve the _problem_ in eastern Europe. In 1860 the Alliance Israelite Universelle was founded at Paris with the following purposes in chief:[26]

1. To work everywhere for the emancipation and moral progress of the Jew.

2. To give effectual support to those who are suffering persecution because they are Jews.

The Alliance began by distributing pamphlets and calling the attention of western governments to eastern injustice; it gradually, however, undertook practical work. Influenced by Rabbi Kalischer, religious enthusiast, a farm school (Mikveh Israel) was established at Jaffa; and after the Russian persecutions of 1880-82, active colonization for the relief of refugees became the chief work, in which the Alliance received substantial aid from Baron de Rothschild. Meanwhile Baron de Hirsch, another philanthropist of international proportions, dedicated millions to the foundation of colonies in Argentine and Palestine. In the latter place the Hirsch activities were incorporated under the title of the Jewish Colonization Association ("IKA", 1891), working in harmony of aim with the Alliance and with still a third movement--one more of the people--styled Chovevei-Zion (Lovers of Zion). The only activities of the Chovevei-Zion, a general term attached to small and ardent semi-affiliated societies throughout Europe and America, with which we are here concerned are the philanthropic; and their services in this respect were haphazard and negligible.[27]

To cast up briefly the sum of practical work accomplished by 1898: 94 schools in Asia and Africa,[28] and 25 colonies in Palestine supporting 5,000 Jews.[29] Such philanthropy is to be considered an attempt, however valiant and noble, to empty the sea with a pail--with a leaking pail.

Thus, upon a review of the situation, three alternatives present themselves: (1) Maintenance of the _status quo_ with its dull round of persecution and degradation on one hand, and the soul-destroying life in the Fool's Paradise of Reform Judaism on the other; (2) Amalgamation with the surrounding peoples--a grim race-suicide; (3) Re-establishment of a national center where, perhaps not the entire people, but a remnant can be saved.

(_To be concluded_)

_As Greece stands for art and Rome stands for law and order, so Judaea stands for morality, and so it occupies an exalted position in history. The Menorah Society comes to the University with a challenge and defies us to ignore at our peril that which Judaism has contributed to civilization and which we have derived from it. We have derived our own religion from it, and that spirit of Puritanism which was so closely connected with the settlement of the new world._--_From an Address before the Cornell Menorah Society by President Jacob Gould Schurman of Cornell University._

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Psalm_ 79.

[2] _Der Judenstaat_ (Vienna, 1906); English translation, edited by J. de Haas.

[3] Theodor Herzl, "The Zionist Congress," _Contemporary Review_, v. 27, p. 587.

[4] I. Abrahams, _Jewish Life in the Middle Ages_ (Philadelphia, 1897), p. 49.

[5] Jacob S. Raisin, _The Haskalah Movement_ (Philadelphia, 1913), p. 33.

[6] James H. Robinson, _History of Western Europe_ (Boston, 1904, 2 vols.), vol. 1, p. 246. Addison & Steele, _The Spectator_ (London, 1823), No. 495, p. 710.

[7] L. Zunz, _The Sufferings of the Jews During the Middle Ages_ (New York, 1907).

[8] S. M. Dubnow, _Jewish History_ (Philadelphia, 1903), p. 156.

[9] Lady Magnus, _Outlines of Jewish History_ (London, 1888), p. 301 et seq.

[10] Raisin, _The Haskalah Movement_, Chap. III.

[11] S. Phillippson, _Weltbegerende Fragen_ (Leipsic, 1868) Edouard Drumont, _La France Juive_ (Paris, 1886).

[12] Ernest Renan, _Études d'Histoire Religieuse_ (Paris, 1862), p. 85.

[13] _Idem_, p. 88.

[14] _Idem_, p. 87.

[15] H. Graetz, _History of the Jews_ (Philadelphia, 1891), 5 vols., vol. V., p. 318 et seq.

[16] G. F. Abbott, "The Jewish Problem," _Fortnightly Review_, vol. 93, p. 742.

[17] _The Jewish Encyclopedia_ (New York, 1901, 10 vols.), under "Anti-Semitism."

[18] _Idem._ and _ibid._, quoting from Preussiche Jahrbücher, 1879.

[19] _American Jewish Year Book_ (Philadelphia, 1913-14), p. 215.

[20] Arnold White, "Europe and the Jews," _Contemporary Review_, vol. 72, p. 738.

[21] American Jewish Year Book, 1906-07, p. 24-90. Tables showing, for period of 3 years in Russia (1903-06), 254 pogroms, in which 3,973 Jews were killed and 14,034 wounded. C. R. Conder, "Zionists," _Blackwood_, vol. 163, p. 598, states on authority of Dr. Farbstein that 70 per cent. of Galician Jews are beggars and 50 per cent. of Russian Jews are paupers.

[22] _Jewish Encyclopedia_ under "Reform Judaism."

[23] Maurice Fishberg, "The Jews" (New York, 1911).

[24] _Jewish Encyclopedia_ under "Reform Judaism."

[25] _Idem._

[26] _Jewish Encyclopedia_ under "Alliance Israelite Universelle."

[27] Cohen, _Zionist Work in Palestine_, p. 157.

[28] _Idem._

[29] _Idem_, under "Agricultural Colonies in Palestine."

The Third Annual Convention of the Menorah Societies

I. The Public Meeting

_The Third Annual Convention of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association was held at the University of Cincinnati, in the city of Cincinnati, on Wednesday and Thursday, December 23 and 24, 1914. The third session, on Wednesday evening, was a public meeting in the University auditorium. Abraham J. Feldman, President of the University of Cincinnati Menorah Society, formally welcomed the convention, and introduced Chancellor Henry Hurwitz as the Chairman of the evening. Mayor F. S. Spiegel brought the greetings and welcome of the city of Cincinnati. Dean Joseph E. Harry extended a welcome in behalf of the University, and Dr. Kaufman Kohler, President of Hebrew Union College, welcomed the convention in behalf of his institution and of the Jewish community. Professor I. Leo Sharfman of the University of Michigan, President of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association, spoke on "The Menorah Movement," and Dr. H. M. Kallen of the University of Wisconsin delivered an address on "The Jews and the War." For the substance of Dr. Kallen's address see his article on page 79. The other speakers spoke in part as follows:_

DEAN J. E. HARRY

In behalf of the University of Cincinnati, I bid you welcome. I confess that I can agree with the statement made in your declaration of the nature and purpose of the Menorah Societies, that modern civilization is chiefly a product of three ancient cultures, or to be more exact, I should prefer to say two, since the Roman is but a continuation of the Greek, and we cannot understand ourselves without understanding and having direct reference to the character and work of both the Greek and the Hebrew minds.

Two principal elements have entered into the spiritual life of the modern world. The past and the present are one and inseparable, and you cannot destroy the former without doing positive damage to the latter. The roots of our civilization lie in the soil of antiquity, and you cannot destroy and disentangle the fibers of the growing tree of civilization from the far-off centuries that are gone, without injuring the whole organism. "If we were to wipe out all the records of the past, what a series of inexplicable riddles would our own history present, and if we were to blot out entirely every reference to ancient writers, or were to blow away all the perfume that has been shaken down from the vestments of those writers, how blurred and how scentless would the fairest and most fragrant pages of our own great poets and historians appear!"

What we need to-day, what our country needs more than anything else, is thorough, really liberally educated men, and not merely men who are supposed by the general public to be educated, simply because they have passed through a college, because in some quarters the business of education has, alas, fallen into the hands of men who are not themselves liberally educated; and so as an ardent advocate of the humanities, with hope that the Intercollegiate Menorah Association will contribute to the laying of greater stress upon the value of the study of the humanities in our college curriculum, I bid you God-speed, and again extend to you the cordial greetings of the University of Cincinnati.

DR. KAUFMAN KOHLER

I do not know whether you have observed that Cincinnati is somewhat akin to the city of Rome as well as to the holy city of Jerusalem--it is a city with many hills. On this hill here, facing one another for friendly and harmonious coöperation, the two institutions of learning in which we especially, the Jewish community, take particular pride--the University of Cincinnati, which so prominently and in ever expanding proportion stands for the humanities, for classical culture, for the professional and scientific branches of secular knowledge, and on the other hand, the Hebrew Union College, which stands for the mother religion of civilized humanity and for the progressive spirit of Judaism and of Americanism. In this rather insignificant incident the Jewish community may well find a great principle expressed. With his face towards the East from which issues the light of day, where was cradled the faith of Israel, the Jew, ever beholding in classical wisdom and knowledge the sister of his faith, proceeded with the westward march of civilization in order to make religion, by the reason and research of the ages, a great, progressive power, ever regenerating his spiritual heritage and rejuvenating that religion of his own as it goes on through the centuries.

This fact, however, of a continual intellectual and spiritual progress of Judaism, is altogether too rarely recognized by the surrounding Christian world, even by its men of light and leading or by its seats of learning, because the New Testament is looked upon by altogether too many as the death warrant of the Old Testament, as if the sun of civilization had stood still over Israel ever since its seers and singers and sages of yore voiced the Divine message. Nor does the Jewish man of culture and college training as a rule appreciate the wondrous achievements of the Jewish genius since the very dawn of history until our day, in the whole domain of learning and science, or of ethical and religious culture.