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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Zionism and Anti-Semitism, by
+Max Simon Nordau and Gustav Gottheil
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Zionism and Anti-Semitism
+       Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil
+
+Author: Max Simon Nordau
+        Gustav Gottheil
+
+Release Date: January 7, 2008 [EBook #24186]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ZIONISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jeannie Howse, Bryan Ness and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+book was produced from scanned images of public domain
+material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ZIONISM
+
+_and_
+
+ANTI-SEMITISM
+
+
+
+
+_Zionism_
+
+AND
+
+_Anti-Semitism_
+
+
+
+BY
+
+MAX NORDAU
+
+
+AND
+
+GUSTAV GOTTHEIL
+
+
+
+NEW YORK
+FOX, DUFFIELD & COMPANY
+1905
+
+
+
+
+_Copyright 1902_
+_FREDERICK A. RICHARDSON_
+
+_Copyright 1903_
+_SCOTT-THAW COMPANY_
+
+_Copyright 1905_
+_By FOX, DUFFIELD & COMPANY_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                        PAGE
+
+ZIONISM. _By Max Nordau_                                   9
+
+ANTI-SEMITISM IN EUROPE _By Gustav Gottheil._             47
+
+
+
+
+ZIONISM
+
+BY
+
+MAX NORDAU
+
+
+
+
+ZIONISM
+
+
+Among the persons of the educated classes who follow with any
+attention all the more important movements of the times, it would now
+be difficult to find one to whom the word "Zionism" is quite unknown.
+People are generally aware that it describes an idea and a movement
+that in the last years has found numerous adherents among the Jews of
+all countries, but especially among those of the East. Comparatively
+few, however, both among the Gentiles and the Jews themselves, have a
+perfectly clear notion of the aims and ways of Zionism; the Gentiles,
+because they do not care sufficiently for Jewish affairs to take the
+trouble to inform themselves at first hand as to the particulars; the
+Jews, because they are intentionally led astray by the enemies of
+Zionism, by lies and calumnies, or because even among the fervent
+Zionists there are not many who have probed the whole Zionist idea to
+the bottom, and are willing or able to present it in a clear and
+comprehensible fashion, without exaggeration and polemical heat.
+
+I will endeavor to furnish readers of good faith, who are not biased,
+and have no other interest than that of gaining authentic information
+about a phenomenon in contemporary history, as concisely and soberly
+as possible with all the facts, as they really are, not as they are
+reflected in muddled brains, or distorted and falsified by
+calumniators.
+
+
+I.
+
+Zionism is a new word for a very old object, in so far as it merely
+expresses the yearning of the Jewish people for Zion. Since the
+destruction of the second temple by Titus, since the dispersion of the
+Jewish nation in all countries, this people has not ceased to long
+intensely, and hope fervently, for the return to the lost land of
+their fathers. This yearning for, and hope in, Zion on the part of the
+Jews was the concrete, I might say, the geographical, aspect of their
+Messianic faith, which in its turn forms an essential part of their
+religion.
+
+Messianism and Zionism were really, for nearly two thousand years,
+identical conceptions, and without caviling and hair-splitting
+interpretation, it would not be easy to make a distinction between the
+prayers for the appearance of the promised Messiah, and those for the
+not less promised return to the historical home,--both of which stand
+side by side on every page of the Jewish liturgy. These prayers were,
+until a few generations ago, meant literally by every Jew, as they
+still are by the simple believing Jews. The Jews had no other idea
+than that they were a people which as a punishment for its sins had
+lost the land of its forefathers, which was condemned to live as
+strangers in strange lands, and whose great sufferings would first
+cease when it was again assembled on the consecrated soil of the Holy
+Land.
+
+This gradually changed about the middle of the eighteenth century,
+when enlightenment first began to find its way into Jewdom, in the
+person of its first herald, Moses Mendelssohn, the popular
+philosopher. The faith of the Jews became more lukewarm; the educated
+classes, where they did not simply convert themselves to Christianism,
+began to regard the doctrines of their religion in a rationalist
+manner; for them the dispersion of the Jewish people was a final and
+unalterable fact; they emptied the conception of the Messiah and of
+Zion of every concrete meaning, and arranged for themselves a singular
+doctrine, according to which the Zion promised to the Jews was to be
+understood only in a spiritual sense, as the setting up of the Jewish
+monotheism in the whole world, as the future triumph of Jewish ethics
+over the less sublime and less noble moral teaching of the other
+nations. An American rabbi reduced this conception to the striking
+formula, "Our Zion is in Washington." The Mendelssohn teaching
+logically developed in the first half of the nineteenth century into
+the "Reform," which deliberately broke with Zionism. For the Reform
+Jew, the word Zion had just as little meaning as the word dispersion.
+He does not feel himself in any diaspora. He denies that there is a
+Jewish people and that he is a member of it. He desires only to belong
+to the people in whose midst he lives. For him Judaism is a purely
+religious conception which has nothing whatever to do with
+nationality. The land of his birth is his fatherland, and he will know
+of no other. The idea of a return to Palestine excites him either to
+indignation or to laughter. He answers it with the well-known, silly,
+would-be witticism, "If the Jewish state is again set up in Palestine,
+I will ask to be its ambassador in Paris."
+
+The thinking Jew did not fail, however, to perceive, in the course of
+time, that Reform Judaism is a half measure, a compromise, which like
+every compromise, contains the germ of destruction, as it cannot for
+one instant resist logical criticism. Whom shall the Reform Judaism
+satisfy? The believing Jew? He rejects it with the greatest
+abhorrence. The unbelieving Jew? He despises it as hypocrisy and
+phrase-mongering. The Jew who really desires to break with his
+national past and to be absorbed by his Christian surroundings? For
+that Jew, Reform Judaism does not suffice; he goes a step farther, the
+step that leads to the baptismal font. Still less does it satisfy the
+Jew who desires to guard Jewdom against destruction and to preserve it
+as an ethnical individuality. For to him an openly expressed
+abandonment of all national aspirations is synonymous with a
+self-condemnation of the Jewish people to a perhaps slow, but sure,
+death. Reform Judaism without Zionism, that is to say, without the
+wish and the hope for a reassembling of the Jewish people, has no
+future. At the best, it can only be regarded as a somewhat crooked
+path that leads to Christianity. He who desires to reach that goal can
+find straighter and shorter routes.
+
+
+II.
+
+And so it has come about that the generations which had been under the
+influence of the Mendelssohnian rhetoric and enlightenment, of reform
+and assimilation, have, in the last twenty years of the nineteenth
+century, been followed by a new generation which seeks to take up a
+standpoint other than the traditional towards the question of Zion.
+These new Jews shrug their shoulders at that twaddle which has been
+the fashion among rabbis and _literati_ for the last hundred years,
+and which boasts of a "Mission of Jewdom," said to consist in this,
+that the Jews must live forever in dispersion among the peoples in
+order to act as their teachers and models of morality, and to educate
+them gradually to pure rationalism, to a general brotherhood of
+mankind, and to an ideal cosmopolitanism. They declare the mission
+swagger to be either presumption or foolishness. They, more modest and
+more practical, demand only the right for the Jewish people to live
+and to develop itself, according to its abilities, up to the natural
+limits of its type. They have become convinced that this is not
+possible in dispersion, as, under that condition, prejudice, hatred,
+and contempt continually follow and oppress them, and either stint
+their development, or force them to an ethnical mimicry which
+necessarily makes of them, instead of original types with a right to
+existence, mediocre or bad copies of foreign models. They therefore
+work methodically with a view to rendering the Jewish people once more
+a normal one, which lives on its own soil, and accomplishes all
+economical, intellectual, moral, and political functions of a
+civilized nation.
+
+The goal cannot be reached at once. It lies in a future more or less
+near. It is an ideal, a desire, a hope, as the Messianic Zionism was
+and is. The new Zionism, which has been called the political one,
+differs, however, from the old, the religious, the Messianic one, in
+this,--that it disavows all mysticism, no longer identifies itself
+with Messianism, and does not expect the return to Palestine to be
+brought about by a miracle, but desires to prepare the way by its own
+efforts.
+
+The new Zionism has grown in part only out of the internal impulsions
+of Judaism itself, out of the enthusiasm of modern educated Jews for
+their history and martyrology, out of the awakened consciousness of
+their racial qualities, out of their ambition to save the ancient
+blood, in view of the farthest possible future, and to add to the
+achievements of their forefathers the achievements of their posterity.
+
+On the other hand, Zionism is the effect of two impulses which came
+from without,--first, the principle of nationality, which for half a
+century ruled thought and feeling in Europe, and governed the politics
+of the world; secondly, Anti-Semitism, from which the Jews of all
+countries have more or less to suffer.
+
+The principle of nationality has awakened self-consciousness in all
+the peoples; it teaches them to regard their peculiarities as
+qualities, and gives them a passionate desire for independence. It
+could not, therefore, pass over the educated Jews without leaving a
+trace. It induced them to remember who and what they are; to feel
+themselves, what they had unlearned, a people apart; and to demand for
+themselves a normal national destiny. This slow and painful work of
+the recovery of their national individuality was rendered easier by
+the attitude of the peoples, who eliminated them from among themselves
+as a foreign element, and put stress, without consideration or
+courtesy, on the real and imaginary contrasts, or at least
+differences, between themselves and the Jews.
+
+The principle of nationality has, in its exaggerations, led to
+excesses. It has been led astray into Chauvinism, abased to idiotic
+hatred of the foreigner, degraded to grotesque self-worship. From this
+caricature of itself the Jewish nationalism is safe. The Jewish
+nationalist does not suffer from self-inflation; he feels, on the
+contrary, that he must make tireless efforts to render the name of Jew
+a title of honor. He modestly recognizes the good qualities of other
+nations, and seeks diligently to acquire them in so far as they
+harmonize with his natural capacities. He knows what terrible harm
+centuries of slavery or disability have done to his originally proud
+and upright character, and seeks to cure it by means of intense
+self-training. If, however, nationalism is on its guard against all
+illusions as to itself, this is a natural phase in the process of
+development from barbaric selfish individualism to free humanism and
+altruism,--a phase the justification and necessity of which can only
+be denied by him who has no comprehension whatever of the laws of
+organic evolution, and is totally lacking in the historical sense.
+
+Anti-Semitism has also taught many educated Jews the way back to their
+people. It has had the effect of a sharp trial which the weak cannot
+stand, but from which the strong emerge stronger or more confident in
+themselves. It is not correct to say that Zionism is but a "gesture of
+truculence" or an act of desperation against Anti-Semitism. It is true
+that more than one educated Jew has been moved only by Anti-Semitism
+to throw in his lot again with Jewdom, and he would again fall away if
+his Christian fellow-countrymen would receive him anew in a friendly
+spirit. But, in the case of most Zionists, Anti-Semitism only forced
+them to reflect upon their relation to the nations, and their
+reflection has led them to conclusions which would remain a lasting
+acquirement of their mind and heart, even if Anti-Semitism were to
+disappear completely from the world.
+
+Be it well understood; the Zionism analyzed above is that of the
+educated and free Jews,--the Jewish elite. The uneducated mass,
+clinging to the old traditions, is Zionist without much reflection,
+from feeling, from instinct, from distress, and yearning. They suffer
+too much from the hardships of life, from the hatred of the peoples,
+from legal disabilities, and social outlawry; they feel that they
+cannot hope for any lasting amelioration of their situation so long as
+they must live as a powerless minority among a hostile majority. They
+desire to become a nation, to rejuvenate themselves by close contact
+with mother earth, and to become once more the masters of their
+destiny. This Zionist mass is still in part not quite free from
+mystical tendencies. It allows its Zionism to be pervaded, to a
+certain extent, by Messianic reminiscences, and blends it with
+religious emotions. They have certainly a clear idea of the aim, the
+reassembling of the Jewish nation, but not of the means. Still, even
+they have realized already the necessity of themselves making efforts,
+and there is a vast difference between their active readiness for
+organization and their spirit of sacrifice, and the pious,
+prayer-indulging passiveness of the purely religious Messianist.
+
+
+III.
+
+The new or political Zionism has had here and there forerunners, whose
+first appearance dates back to the early half of the nineteenth
+century.
+
+In the beginning of the eighties terrible persecutions broke out in
+Russia without any apparent reason, persecutions which cost hundreds
+of Jews their lives, destroyed the prosperity of thousands more, and
+induced tens of thousands to turn their backs on the land of their
+birth. This calamity brutally aroused the Jews from their
+hundred-year-old illusions and brought them again to a sense of
+reality. A Russian Jew, Dr. Pinsker, at that time wrote a small
+pamphlet entitled, "Auto-Emancipation," which was already a prelude to
+the modern political Zionism, and sketched all its motives without
+however developing them symphonically. He, at any rate, it was who
+gave its watchword to the whole movement: "The Jews are no mere
+religious community, they are a nation. They desire again to live in
+their own country as a united people. Their rejuvenation must be at
+the same time economical, physical, intellectual, and moral."
+
+The Jewish youth of the middle schools and universities of Russia were
+profoundly affected by Pinsker's arguments. They began to found
+national Jewish societies. A number of students who studied at foreign
+universities became in their new surroundings apostles of Dr. Pinsker's
+idea, and found adherents here and there, for the most part among the
+young Jews of Vienna. Others preferred action to word, example to
+sermon, abandoned their studies, and emigrated to Palestine in order to
+become peasants there,--Jewish peasants on historically Jewish soil.
+Deeply moved by this idealism of a peculiarly enthusiastic elite,
+cooler headed Jews in Russia and Germany began also to form societies
+in order to support from a distance the Palestine settlements of the
+Jewish pioneers. This took place without any combined plan and with no
+clear notion of the aim and the means. The societies were not
+conscious of the fact that they felt and acted as Zionists. They did
+not perceive the connection between the Jewish colonization of
+Palestine and the future of the whole Jewish nation. It was in their
+case rather an instinctive movement in which all kinds of obscure
+feelings are dimly discernible,--piety, archaeological-historical
+sentimentality, charity, and pride of pedigree. At any rate, the minds
+of the Jews were prepared, the feeling was in the air, Jewdom was ripe
+for a change.
+
+As is always the case in such historical moments, the man also
+appeared whose mission it was to express clearly the ideas obscurely
+felt by many, and to proclaim loudly the word they were waiting to
+hear. This man was Dr. Theodor Herzl. He published in the autumn of
+1896 a concisely written booklet, "Der Judenstaat" (The Jewish State),
+which proclaimed, with a determination that till then had no
+precedent, the fact that the Jews are a people who demand for
+themselves all the rights of a people, and who desire to settle in a
+country where they can lead a free and complete political existence.
+
+"Der Judenstaat" has become the real starting point of political
+Zionism,--the starting point, not the programme. Herzl's book is still
+the subjective work of a solitary thinker who speaks in his own name.
+Many details in it are literature. It is not easy to draw a sharp
+boundary line between the sober earnest of the social politician and
+the imagination of the prophetical poet. The real programme had to be
+a collective work which was certainly based on Herzl's book, and
+inspired by Herzl's visions of the future, but which rid itself of all
+fantastic details, and was built up solely from the elements of
+reality.
+
+Herzl's book was at once greeted by tens of thousands of Jews, chiefly
+the young, as an act of redemption. It was not to remain merely
+printed paper, but should be transformed into a practical creation.
+New societies were founded everywhere, no longer with a view of the
+slow, petty settlement of Palestine by means of groups of Jews
+creeping surreptitiously as it were into the country, but by the
+preparation for an emigration "en masse" into the Holy Land, based on
+a formal treaty with the Turkish Government, guaranteed by the Great
+Powers, by which the former should accord the new settlers the right
+of self-government.
+
+The premises of political Zionism are that there is a Jewish nation.
+This is just the point denied by the assimilation Jews, and the
+spiritless, unctuous, prating rabbis in their pay. Dr. Herzl saw that
+the first task he had to fulfil was the organizing of a manifestation
+which should bring before the world, and the Jewish people itself, in
+modern, comprehensible form the fact of its national existence. He
+convoked a Zionist congress, which in spite of the most furious
+attacks and most unscrupulous acts of violence,--the Jewish community
+of Munich where the congress was originally intended to be held
+protested against its meeting in that town,--assembled for the first
+time in Basel, the end of August, 1897, and consisted of two hundred
+and four selected representatives of the Zionist Jews of both
+hemispheres.
+
+The first Zionist congress solemnly proclaimed in the face of the
+attentive world that the Jews are a nation, and that they do not
+desire to be absorbed by other nations. It vowed to work for the
+emancipation of that part of the Jewish race which is deprived of all
+rights, and which is dragging out its existence in undeserved misery,
+and to prepare for it a brighter future. It puts its aims on record in
+a programme unanimously adopted with the greatest enthusiasm. This ran
+as follows:--
+
+"Zionism works to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine
+guaranteed by public law.
+
+"For the reaching of this goal the congress proposes to adopt the
+following means:--
+
+"(1.) The well-regulated promotion of the settlement of Palestine by
+Jewish agriculturists, artisans, and manufacturers.
+
+"(2.) The organization and knitting together of the whole Jewish
+community by means of proper local and general institutions, in
+accordance with the law of the different countries.
+
+"(3.) The strengthening of the Jewish self-respect and national
+consciousness.
+
+"(4.) Preparatory steps for obtaining the consent of the governments,
+which is necessary for the achievement of the aims of Zionism."
+
+
+IV.
+
+The first congress did not separate without having created a lasting
+organization. It elected a "Great Committee of Action," in which all
+countries with a somewhat considerable Jewish population are
+represented, and which in its turn selected a smaller "permanent
+committee" with its headquarters in Vienna, under the presidency of
+Dr. Herzl. It was followed in the three ensuing years by three
+further congresses, in 1898 and 1899, again in Basel, and in 1900 in
+London. The number of the delegates rose in 1898 to two hundred and
+eighty, in 1899 to three hundred and seventy, and in 1900 to four
+hundred and twenty. At every succeeding congress the regulations for
+election were more strictly enforced, the mandates more closely
+examined, and at the present moment the congress, which has become a
+permanent institution of the Zionist Jewdom, and which met for the
+fifth time in December, 1901, again in Basel, can with justice claim
+to be the real representative of one hundred and eighty thousand
+electors.
+
+He who desires to know what the Jews who have been represented at the
+congress have done up to the present time to realize the programme of
+Zionism drawn up by the first congress, has only to compare the
+various points of this programme with the facts we are going to
+record.
+
+"(1.) The well-regulated promotion of the settlement of Palestine by
+Jewish agriculturists, artisans, and manufacturers."
+
+Zionism rejects on principle all colonization on a small scale, and
+the idea of "sneaking" into Palestine. The Zionists have therefore
+devoted themselves preeminently to a zealous and tireless advocacy of
+the uniting of the already existing Jewish colonies in Palestine with
+those who until now have given them their aid and who of late have
+inclined towards the withdrawal of their support from them. The
+Zionists have also prepared the way for founding factories in the Holy
+Land, which will give employment to the Jewish workmen there, and have
+assured, by according a yearly subvention, the future existence of the
+model Hebraic school in Jaffa, which was about to close its doors for
+want of funds. They take care that the existing and promising
+beginnings of a Jewish colonization shall be looked after and
+maintained till the movement will be possible on a large scale.
+
+"(2.) The organization and knitting together of the whole Jewish
+community by the means of proper local and general institutions in
+accordance with the law of the different countries."
+
+The Zionist Jewish community is at present organized in both
+hemispheres in about nine hundred societies, which display great
+activity. In the matter of organization covering the whole of Jewdom,
+Zionism possesses national federations of its societies,--the "great"
+and the "smaller committee of action," and the congress which
+maintains a permanent secretarial office in Vienna. The cost of this
+apparatus is covered by the voluntary yearly offerings of the
+Zionists, to which offerings the name of the old Jewish coinage is
+applied, and which accordingly are known as "shekels,"--their amount
+being in America forty cents, and in Western lands a unit of the
+coinage (one mark, one franc, one shilling, etc.). The payment of the
+shekel gives the right of vote for the congress. Zionism possesses its
+official organ, "Die Welt," published in German in Vienna. Its ideas
+are further set forth in about forty other periodicals in the Hebrew,
+German, Russian, Polish, Italian, English, French, and Roumanian
+languages, and in the Jewish-German and Judeo-Spanish jargons. Its
+American organ is the periodical, "The Maccabaean." It has founded
+numerous schools, Toynbee Halls, and educational institutes, and has
+recently begun to acquire a share in the administration of the Jewish
+communities, in order to devote their resources, more than has
+heretofore been the case with the anti-national or unthinking leaders,
+to the promoting of national Jewish instruction, education, and
+culture.
+
+"(3.) Strengthening of the Jewish self-respect and national
+consciousness."
+
+The Zionist societies use every effort that the members and the Jewish
+masses in general may know the history of their nation, and become
+acquainted with the sacred and profane literature in the Hebrew
+tongue. They teach the Jews to hold their heads high, to be proud of
+their descent, and to despise the Anti-Semitic lies, calumnies, and
+insults. They care, in the measure of their strength, for the
+amelioration of the hygiene of the Jewish proletariat, for its
+economic improvement by means of association and solidarity, for
+well-directed education of children, and for the instruction of the
+women. They give the young students a goal for their efforts and an
+ideal in life. They preach the duty of leading a faultless, spiritual
+life, the rejection of a crude materialism, into which the
+assimilation Jews, on account of the want of a worthy ideal, are only
+too apt to sink, and strict self-control in word and deed. They found
+athletic societies in order to promote the long neglected physical
+development of the rising generation. They give a new impulse to the
+celebration of Jewish historical feasts and memorial days. In many
+instances they even make themselves outwardly conspicuous by wearing
+insignia. The Zionist regards it as contemptible to conceal his
+nationality. He wishes to be recognized as a Jew, and as he always
+behaves himself in a natural, unaffected way, plays no comedy of
+imitation, wishes to deceive nobody about his extraction and identity,
+intrudes upon no one under a false flag, his relations to his
+Christian neighbors and fellow-countrymen are sounder, truer, more
+frank and dignified than those of the assimilation Jew, who makes
+painful and useless efforts, which disgust every Christian possessing
+a modicum of good taste, to hide the fact that he is a Jew.
+
+"(4.) Preparatory steps to obtain the consent of the governments
+necessary to achieve the aims of Zionism."
+
+Several of the governments whose opinion will eventually be decisive
+in the matter have been, by means of memorials, reliably informed of
+the aims of Zionism; and there has been no want of very important
+encouragements and promising expressions of sympathy with its
+tendencies.
+
+For the moment the committee of action is trying to obtain from Turkey
+a charter for the colonization of such land in Palestine as can be
+disposed of, and which at present is lying waste, and for the opening
+of its neglected resources. The exploiting of such a charter is not
+possible without considerable sums of money. In order to be armed
+financially for the time that Turkey will accord such a charter, the
+second Zionist congress (1898) decided to found a national Jewish bank
+institute, the "Jewish Colonial Trust," with its headquarters in
+London. This resolution was carried out the following year (1899). The
+bank has been brought into being. Its capital in shares is two million
+pounds sterling. It can, by the statutes, start business when one
+eighth of this capital, two hundred and fifty thousand pounds
+sterling, has been actually paid up. This has already been done.
+
+Another financial instrument of Zionism is the "National Fund,"
+created by the fifth congress (1901), which is raised by voluntary
+subscription and which is to amount to two hundred thousand pounds
+sterling. The half of this sum is to be devoted to the purchase of
+land in Palestine, the other half to remain an intangible common
+property of the Jewish people, which will by means of compound
+interest and gifts continually increase, so that at important
+junctures the interest may be used for great national purposes.
+
+
+V.
+
+I have taken pains to show, in as brief and as objective a manner as
+possible, what Zionism is, what it desires to do, how it came into
+being, and how it has developed up to the present. I have also
+repeatedly mentioned that its most violent opponents have arisen from
+the Jewish community.
+
+Many of them content themselves with libeling and insulting the
+leaders of the Zionist movement. This kind of hostility they who are
+vilified can afford to despise. Men who, without expecting the
+slightest advantage to themselves, out of the purest, most unselfish
+love for the unhappy ones of their race, out of reverence for their
+forefathers, out of a general spirit of philanthropy, have made the
+greatest sacrifices in money, time, strength, and health, in order to
+elevate their people and to free millions of innocent, persecuted men
+from the bitterest misery, have the right smilingly to shrug their
+shoulders when irresponsible fanatics or pitiable paid scribes
+reproach them with self-interest or with vanity.
+
+Besides these opponents of a lower type, there are others who do not
+merely lie and slander, but also seek to argue. They delight in
+comparing the apostles of Zionism with the false Messiahs like the
+notorious Sabbathai Levi, who have appeared only too often in Jewish
+history, and who have always done the greatest mischief to the Jewish
+people they have deceived. To compare Zionism with the vagaries or
+impostures of false Messiahs of the Sabbathai Levi kind, presupposes
+great foolishness or great bad faith. Zionism is precisely
+characterized by the complete absence of any mystical element. It
+promises its adherents no miracles; on the contrary, it continually
+impresses on them that their emancipation from a situation they find
+intolerable can only be the result of their own work, the fruit of
+their long, strenuous, and combined efforts.
+
+People declare Zionism to be a dream, and deny that its practical
+realization is possible. To objections of this category the Zionists
+have a hundred times given a sufficient answer. This simple negative
+criticism can be passed over. Its only real refutation is in deeds,
+such as the Zionists have already performed and as they intend further
+to perform.
+
+The one point which probably forever excludes the possibility of an
+understanding between Zionist and non-Zionist Jews is the question of
+the Jewish nationality. Whoever maintains and believes that the Jews
+are not a nation can indeed be no Zionist; he cannot join a movement
+which is only justified when it is admitted that it desires to create
+normal conditions of existence for a people living and suffering
+under abnormal conditions. He who, on the contrary, is convinced that
+the Jews are a people must necessarily become Zionist, as only the
+return to their own country can save the everywhere hated, persecuted,
+and oppressed Jewish nation from physical and intellectual
+destruction.
+
+Many Jews, especially those of the West, have, in their heart of
+hearts, completely broken with Judaism, and they will probably soon do
+so openly, and if they do not break away, their children or
+grandchildren will. These desire to be entirely absorbed by their
+Christian fellow-countrymen. They resent it as a great annoyance when
+other Jews proclaim that they are a people apart, and desire to bring
+about an unequivocal separation between themselves and the other
+nations. Their great and constant fear is to be denounced as strangers
+in the land of their birth, of which they are free citizens. They fear
+that this will be more than ever the case, if a large section of the
+Jewish people openly claim for themselves rights as an autonomous
+nation, and still worse, if anywhere in the world a political and
+intellectual center of Judaism should really be created, in which
+millions of Jews would be grouped together, united as a nation.
+
+All these feelings on the part of the assimilation Jews are
+comprehensible. From their standpoint they are justified. These Jews,
+however, have no right to expect that Zionism should for their sake
+commit suicide. The Jews who are happy and contented in the land of
+their birth, and who indignantly reject the suggestion of abandoning
+it, are about a sixth of the Jewish nation, say two millions out of
+twelve. The other five sixths, or ten millions, feel themselves
+profoundly unhappy in the countries where they reside, and they have
+every reason for doing so. These ten millions cannot be called upon to
+submit forever unresistingly to their thraldom, and to renounce every
+effort for redemption from their misery, merely in order that the
+comfort of two million happy and contented Jews may not be disturbed.
+
+The Zionists are, moreover, firmly convinced that the misgivings of
+the assimilation Jews are unfounded. The reassembling of the Jewish
+people in Palestine will not have the consequences which they fear.
+When there is again a Jewish country, the Jews will have the choice of
+emigrating thither, or of remaining in their present home. Many will
+doubtless remain, and will prove by their choice that they prefer the
+land of their birth to their kindred and to their national soil. It is
+barely possible that the Anti-Semites will still throw the scornful
+and perfidious "stranger!" in their face. But the real Christians
+among their fellow-countrymen, those who think and feel according to
+the teaching and examples of the Holy Writ, will be convinced that
+they do not regard themselves as strangers in the land of their birth,
+and will then rightly comprehend the real meaning of their voluntary
+renunciation of a return to a land of the Jews, and of their fidelity
+to their homes and to their Christian neighbors.
+
+The Zionists know that they have undertaken a work of unexampled
+difficulty. Never before has the effort been made to transplant,
+peacefully, in a short space of time, to another soil, several million
+people from various countries; never has it been attempted to
+transform millions of physically degenerate proletarians, without
+trade or profession, into agriculturists and cattle breeders, to bring
+townbred hucksters and trades people, agents, and men of sedentary
+occupation again into contact with the plough and the mother earth. It
+will be necessary to accustom Jews of different origins to one
+another, to train them practically to national unity, and at the same
+time to overcome the superhuman obstacles of difference of language,
+unequal civilization, and of the manners of thought, prejudices,
+likes, and dislikes of foreign nations, brought severally from the
+lands of their birth.
+
+What gives the Zionists the courage to begin this labor of Hercules is
+the conviction that they are doing a necessary and useful work, a
+work of love and civilization, a work of justice and wisdom. They
+desire to save eight to ten millions of their kindred from intolerable
+suffering. They desire to free the nations among whom they now
+vegetate from a presence which is considered disagreeable. They wish
+to deprive Anti-Semitism--which everywhere lowers public morals and
+develops the very worst instincts--of its victim. They wish to make
+unquestionable producers out of the Jews at present reproached with
+being parasites. They desire to fertilize with their sweat and till
+with their hands a country that is to-day a desert, until it is again
+the flowering garden it has once been. Thus will Zionism in an equal
+degree serve the unhappy Jew and the Christian peoples, civilization
+and the economy of the world; and the services which it can render,
+and wishes to render, are great enough to justify its hope that the
+Christian world, too, will appreciate them, and support the movement
+with its active sympathy.
+
+
+
+
+ANTI-SEMITISM
+
+IN EUROPE
+
+BY
+
+DR. GUSTAV GOTTHEIL
+
+
+
+
+THE TRUE NATURE OF ANTI-SEMITISM IN EUROPE
+
+
+Anti-Semitism would be simply ridiculous if it were not so terribly in
+earnest. People who make that word a war cry upon a whole race ought
+to know its meaning, especially if it is to express the chief reason
+for their hostility. Before they prefix the "anti" to a word they
+should be sure that they understand the "pro," lest they be found to
+fight shadows merely, specters of their own creation. But how far is
+this the case? How many ever tried to learn the sense of the
+designation under which they have enrolled themselves? Suppose we ask,
+"What does Semitism mean?" Only this, must be our answer,--that it is
+a summing up of the ruling dispositions, habits, mental endowments,
+and moral peculiarities of all the races comprised under the name of
+Semites, so named from their supposed descent from the eldest of the
+three sons of Noah. So ineradicable are these features supposed to be
+that, no matter where the races have lived or are now living, no
+matter what stage of civilization they have passed through or have
+reached now, no matter what influence non-Semitic races have exercised
+upon them, they remain essentially the same. What are these features?
+Who will formulate the precise standard by which a descendant of Shem
+is unfailingly known and set apart from those of Ham or Japhet? When
+we consider that we are pointed back for the meaning of Semite to
+antediluvian times, that is to say, to one of the oldest myths of the
+world, we must admit that it would indeed be the wonder of wonders if
+a large section of mankind have a family likeness so clear that they
+are marked off from the rest. And this, despite the long ages that
+have passed since the supposed separation of the sons of Noah and
+their wide dispersion; despite their triumphs and defeats in wars, in
+state building, and church formation; despite the wide diversity
+between them in their literature, their philosophy, their art, their
+trades and industries. Are the Semites still characterized by the same
+gifts and tendencies of mind and heart, ruled by the same passions,
+subject to the same limitations, as were their ancestors in all their
+generations?
+
+Among them there is a fraction, and that fraction again scattered over
+vast areas, in various states of civilization, and under diversified
+kinds of governments, enjoying liberty and rights of citizenship in
+the one, and groaning under relentless oppression in the other,--are
+they still none other than Semites? Are they so permeated with Semitic
+features that they can never amalgamate with their surroundings and
+become full-weighted citizens of the state where they pitch their
+tents,--offer them what inducements you may,--but must be kept at
+arms length and treated as suspects? Has nature lost all her power in
+this instance and become faithless to herself? Will the Hebrew child
+not love the land of its birth and feel the kinship with the people
+whose language and mode of life become its own? But why heap up
+improbabilities and impossibilities? The designation fastened upon us
+as a stigma was a fraud from the beginning, a conscious fraud and a
+malicious invention. It was "conceived in mischief and brought forth
+in iniquity." What was meant was not anti-Semitism, but
+_anti-Judaism_; but that name had to be avoided because it implies
+hostility to a religion and a creed; and that, again, might be
+construed as springing from an awakened zeal for the instigator's own
+Church; a suspicion they could not permit to rest upon them. No, it is
+not the Jew's religion that makes him obnoxious and a danger to the
+state, but it is his descent from the eldest son of Noah. True, the
+Jews have at no time adopted it as a national name. "Semitic" is of
+comparatively recent date, an abstract word intended merely for
+scientific classification, never meant for discrimination of any
+portion of the Semitic races, or to become a hissing and a byword or a
+mask for robbers of human rights and destroyers of human happiness.
+
+The victims of this crusade are not a nameless horde for whom a
+designation had to be coined; they are known to history for three
+thousand years as Hebrews, Israelites, Jews, and they have no mind to
+exchange these names for any other. But a new "Hep Hep" was wanted,
+and so "Semites" was hauled from the world of books, disfigured, and
+fastened upon the Jewish gabardine in noble emulation of the barbarism
+of the Middle Ages. The more senseless, the more welcome it was as a
+bugbear to frighten the populace and to stir into flames the sparks of
+fanaticism which are always smouldering in the hearts of the vulgar,
+whether of low degree or high degree, worldly or ghostly.
+
+The strangest thing, however, in this learned falsification is that
+it should have succeeded so well with people calling themselves
+Christians and clinging to that name often after they have given up
+all its historic substance. Is Christianity not purely Semitic at the
+core? Is it not based upon the Semitic conception of the relation
+between man and his Creator? The great efforts to liberalize and
+rationalize the Church which the last century witnessed, up to
+Professor Harnack's recent attempt to sum up "Das Wesen des
+Christenthums,"--what are all these but endeavors to free it from
+foreign accretions and envelopments and to bring its Semitic character
+into greater prominence?
+
+It is the only Asiatic conception of religion that has subdued Europe
+and America, and that still holds undisputed sway over all its diverse
+nationalities. The very name which symbolizes to them all that is
+noblest, purest, and most blessed, points to that source as
+unfailingly as the needle of the compass to the poles. Harnack claims
+that Christianity is not one religion amongst others, but _The
+Religion_, the only one fulfilling all the conditions of its highest
+ideal. The Being in whom that fulness of light was revealed,--was he
+not a Semite of the Semites? Did he ever deny his origin? Christianity
+means _Messianity_, and the whole idea of a Mashiach,--the anointed,
+namely, anointed ruler,--is most intensely national and, therefore,
+intensely Semitic,--from which indisputable fact it follows that the
+loftiest conception of religion came to the world from that source.
+Thence came the Bible,--the book of the world which has been
+translated into every living tongue and dialect, and to the
+elucidation of which hosts of scholars still devote their lives.
+Painting, sculpture, music, poetry, have attempted their highest
+flights under its inspiration. From countless pulpits its moral and
+religious truths are expounded, week after week, and on every great
+occasion of national significance,--in whatever part of Christendom it
+may occur,--the Songs of Zion are awakened as the fittest expressions
+of the prevailing sentiment. The Psalter is the most wonderful of
+existing books,--at home alike in the palace of the king and the
+cottage of the peasant, the inexhaustible theme of our masters of
+music. Noeldeke, Protestant professor at the University of Strasburg,
+one of the great lights of Semitic scholarship, declares that "by the
+side of the Psalms all other religious hymns appear as pale imitations
+merely." On that field were gathered the sheaves which a master hand
+has wound together into the One Universal Prayer, in which all
+Churches join with one accord. And the Universal Day of Rest,--that
+one sure blessing of the laboring man,--whence did it come? What other
+legislator had the divine audacity to make its observance one of the
+foundation laws of his constitution, and to give it precedence, even
+over all moral enactments?
+
+Professor R.F. Grau of the conservative school of theology writes:--
+
+"God is a living, holy, loving Being. He is not first and foremost to
+be scientifically comprehended, but worshipped and revered in the
+heart, and because He is such a Being, the Semites had to be chosen as
+His apostles to the whole world. For they had a heart for Him in the
+beginning.... The Semite has the religion of the Infinite, and as this
+is the perfect religion, ... the Church, as the Community of Christ,
+has sprung from the Semitic mustard seed, although at present myriads
+of Indo-germanics dwell under the branches of the tree."
+
+In the face of admissions like these by men who have a right to be
+heard in the matter, and considering that the tree can never change
+the nature of the root from which it sprang, the conclusion is not
+unwarranted that "anti-Semitic" is a synonym for "anti-Christian."
+
+Its success is due to the still persistent prejudice against the Jews
+among so many Christians,--all their professions to the contrary
+notwithstanding. And it continues for several reasons. One is its long
+duration; it has lasted for ages and is ingrained in their feelings
+and ideas. What if it be shown ever so clearly that it is unjust,
+unreasonable, yea, even unchristian!--that will not materially change
+the temper of the great masses of the people. The common man is rarely
+swayed by the force of arguments; the power of a principle, so weighty
+with the thinkers, is of no consequence to him. He belongs to the
+material world, and to make good his place in it is the aim toward
+which all his energies are bent. For things spiritual he has neither
+time nor capacity. He is ruled by the sentiments which were implanted
+in him in his youth and by his immediate surroundings. All thinking
+must be done for him; all new ideas must be presented to him, as it
+were, ready made and in tangible form. He does not push himself
+forward, but must be led onward by hands that understand him and his
+ways. But in this instance, his guides are not particularly anxious to
+bring about a change for the better,--even if we suppose that they
+consider the liberation from prejudice against the Jews a betterment.
+They have their own theological difficulty to contend with. The Jews
+are still unconverted, and the missions established and maintained for
+the purpose of winning them over can show no better results now than
+in the past. The chief controversy between the Church and Israel
+stands to-day where it stood when it was first raised at Jerusalem
+eighteen centuries ago. A judicial sentence of a court at Jerusalem
+has grown into a pivotal point on which, as the Church declares, turns
+the salvation of mankind for time and eternity; and if she is right,
+the Jews must be wrong. Since that fatal occurrence, Christianity, in
+one form or another, has conquered Europe and America, and has planted
+outposts in almost every part of the earth, but has not been able to
+subdue the Jew. Every conceivable means to make him surrender has been
+tried, including that of the jailor and the executioner and all the
+horrors that lie between them,--expulsion, pillage, social
+degradation, impaling in ghettos, and what not--but in vain. The same
+policy is continued to this day as far as the present more civilized
+state of the Christians permits; but still in vain. So far are their
+persecutors from having brought the Jews to their knees, that the
+self-consciousness of the race, as a whole, has deepened; and their
+advance in general culture enables them to measure swords,
+intellectually, with their accusers and to give a reason for the faith
+that is in them.
+
+All the conditions of this interminable conflict are against them. In
+numbers they are a vanishing minority, and still more weakened by
+their dispersion over the face of the earth, unorganized, without any
+ecclesiastical authority in their Church that could direct them or act
+in their name. Every individual Jew must face the world's hostility
+single-handed, and be, religiously, his own priest, his own pope.
+Allies he has none, advocates of his cause are few and far between.
+The favors of his friends are often more humiliating than the attacks
+of his enemies. Still he holds his own, and if for the last century or
+so he has carried on a reformation of his ancient rituals, he has done
+so from his own initiative and in his own way, which is not that into
+which it has been tried so long to force or to lure him. At the same
+time a revival of Jewish literature has taken place which not only has
+brought to light the long-forgotten treasures of the past, but has
+shown the large part the Jews have in the general progress of mankind.
+The ecclesia triumphant has no victory to record in this section of
+her battlefields, and it is not in ordinary human nature frankly to
+admit a defeat in such an unequal struggle. Only one had a right to
+expect that a Church that claims to have regenerated the human race
+and to have lifted the slave of his blind instincts into "the glorious
+liberty of the children of God" would have risen superior to the
+common weakness. Instead of that, almost throughout Christendom, the
+crusade against the Jews is being preached and the policy of
+repression loudly demanded.
+
+On what ground? It is said that they dominate everywhere--in finance,
+in law courts, in politics, in art, in literature, in the press, in
+trade and manufacture. But how do they achieve this astounding feat?
+How do the Jews succeed in so lording it over the immense majority? By
+witchcraft? Is it by magic that a few bankers and brokers keep all
+their competitors in subjugation and handle them at their will and to
+their own profit? Is it by sorcery that they force their way to the
+universities and academies? Are they in possession of secret formulas
+by which they can direct the currents of trade at their will?
+Recently, loud complaints were raised in several of the German state
+parliaments that there were too many Jewish judges and lawyers in
+their lands, and the governments were exhorted to put an end to the
+scandal. No charges of incompetency or exploitation were raised
+against the Hebrews that "handle the law." Only it was declared that
+a Christian shrunk from taking an oath at the hand of a Jewish lawyer.
+If this be so, how is it that the people go to them in numbers that
+excite the envy of their non-Jewish colleagues? All the statements
+about the alleged power of the Jews are ridiculous exaggerations,
+trumped up to scare the imagination of the thoughtless, as has been
+proved over and over again. But even reduced to their true measure,
+they prove, not the possession of magic, but of soundness of mind, of
+unimpaired energy, and of all the other needful conditions for
+success, which the Jews have kept intact despite all the attempts made
+to crush the unbelievers into the dust. The outcry against them is
+their vindication; people do not fear weaklings, do not raise alarms
+against perils which can be pushed aside by an effort of the will. The
+few must own inherent sources of strength if the many resort to the
+coward's weapon of lies and slander. And in this instance the
+admission of the truth is an implied homage to the religion which the
+victors in the unequal struggle profess and defend. For it is
+indisputable that this is the source to which the formation of the
+Jewish mind and heart must be attributed. Let me cite, for one proof,
+the admission of the most persistent and most powerful oppressor of
+the Jews, the procurator of the Russian synod. Half the number of all
+Hebrews are subjects of Russia. They came under her dominion when she
+conquered and incorporated the Polish provinces; they are kept there
+under the most stringent laws, and life is made to them as burdensome
+as possible. "The Pale" is a gigantic ghetto where the oldest form of
+rabbinism prevails to this day. Yet the same fear of the superiority
+of the Jewish mind haunts the government; it is the alleged reason for
+practically closing up all the avenues of the higher education for
+them. Only _three per cent_ of the total number of students are
+admitted to the universities and to the technical schools. But more
+than a hundred thousand common soldiers are drafted from the Jews
+into the armies and sent to all parts of the gigantic empire, kept
+there during the best part of their lives, without any prospect of
+promotion, and often going only to die in the defense of territories
+which, if they were civilians, they would not be permitted to enter.
+The Russian Torquemada, not long ago, openly declared that not a
+single Jew should be permitted to settle amongst the peasantry, even
+within the Pale, because he would be the only sober man amongst a
+population that cannot resist the temptations of strong drink. Strange
+spectacle indeed! Men banished from places where they wish to live
+because they are too good for their surroundings! forced to remain
+where they can hardly eke out a miserable living. The question,
+surely, is justified. How did that poverty-stricken mass of oppressed
+people succeed in preserving its freedom from a national vice in a
+country where its ancestors have dwelt for long generations? Can a
+great virtue be maintained by sorcery? The common experience is that
+of the poet--
+
+    "Misery doth bravest mind abate."
+
+What but their religion made them proof against the arrows of a fate
+which, for duration and cruelty, is without a parallel in history!
+This conclusion is further corroborated by the fact that the same
+virtue of sobriety characterizes them everywhere, and makes them an
+object of envy to their non-Jewish neighbors,--nay, forces the honest
+temperance advocate to hold them up before his Christian audiences as
+examples to shame them into going and doing likewise; rather, let me
+say, into staying at home and doing likewise. For one of the
+witchcraft mysteries of Judaism is that its home is not in the church,
+but that the church is in the home. The Jew's salvation is in nowise
+dependent upon rabbi and synagogue, but upon wife and children. They
+are his congregation to whom he ministers as priest in fulfilment of
+the great charter word of dedication, "Ye shall be unto me a kingdom
+of priests and a holy nation." The deepest roots of the Jewish faith
+rest and are nourished in the domestic soil. The synagogue has nothing
+to offer to the faithful which he cannot find in his own tent. Ten men
+gathered together with a Sepher Tora (scroll of the Mosaic law) in
+their midst, form a Kahal Hakodesh (sacred body). No man becomes a
+drunkard with wife and children and aged parents near him for guardian
+angels. The greatest difficulty the Jewish reformation has to face is
+what to substitute for the old ceremonials where they have become
+impracticable, and thus to preserve the essentially domestic character
+of the ancient faith. Is it thinkable that the Jew would be less
+objectionable to his surroundings were he to lose his sturdy horror of
+intemperance, and thus "assimilate" more freely with his neighbors of
+different faiths? It is not thinkable when we consider the great
+efforts made by Christians everywhere to redeem their people from
+their bondage to strong drink and the misery resulting from it. The
+Jew is the _natural ally of the temperance advocates_; and if he is
+not found in their ranks, it is simply because he never knew from
+experience the need of that reformation.
+
+And never will he know, as long as his passionate fondness for home
+and his longing for family love abide within him. At present, this,
+generally speaking, is still the case; the poorest and least
+cultivated classes are not excepted; nay, just in that class it is one
+of the most noteworthy features. If the uncouth immigrant from Eastern
+Europe stoops to the lowest kinds of peddling, or, for a mere
+pittance, wastes his life in the stifling sweatshop; if he is not very
+scrupulous in his dealings with his transient patrons, and does not
+hold city ordinances as inviolable as those of the "Shulchan Aruch"
+(code of ceremonials), the central motive is his ever present thought
+of his family; even when he has not yet scraped together enough
+pennies to pay for their fare to the new home, they are constantly
+with him in his mind. This is not offered as a defense for
+over-reaching and cannot be allowed by a magistrate as a plea for
+law-breaking; but it is offered to the unprejudiced reader in
+compliance with Spinoza's golden rule: Human errors must not be
+ridiculed and condemned, but _understood_. _Si duo faciunt idem, non
+est idem._ This wise caution is the more to be heeded in the present
+instance, as, from the same source, devotion to home life, springs
+another fine feature of Jewry; go down in the scale as deep as you
+may, they are an industrious, toilsome class of people, often turning
+their narrow homes into workshops where old and young ply a handicraft
+from early morn to the late evening hours. Hundreds of men and women,
+arriving in this country after they have passed the middle life, learn
+trades and work at them till their trembling hands can hold the tools
+no longer or the light fades from their overstrained eyes. Among them
+there are not a few that have seen better days at their native places,
+or are deeply learned in the Law. They are quick in seizing the
+secret of a successful trade of paying manufacture, and not rarely
+better the instruction; a skill for which they are hated and despised
+by their own aristocracy in the markets, and branded as spoilers of
+every good thing as soon as it appears. If this aptitude and eagerness
+for trade be a fault, the Christians have themselves to blame for it.
+Even a superficial glance at the history of Israel proves that as long
+as the people lived on their native soil, and could live out their own
+lives, they showed neither skill nor desire for mercantile pursuits;
+that their legislation, their religion, their poetry and prophesying,
+and their ethical ideas presuppose a nation of shepherds and tillers
+of the soil. For the great change in the ruling disposition of the
+Jews, since their dispersion, those alone are responsible who now
+reproach them for it. The first Christians were Jewish ploughmen and
+herdsmen; the Apostles mostly Judaean peasants and fishermen. The
+finest parables and similes in the speeches of Jesus are taken from
+the peasants' occupation and experience. And even to this day
+thousands of the scattered race are ready to seize again the plough
+and the spade, if they are given a chance, and not a few have done so
+even under the most disheartening conditions. The fact is, the pagan
+Mercury proved a more merciful god to the Jews than the Christian
+Jesus, as he was taught and practised by the mediaeval Church. He
+gloated over the sufferings of those who were of his own flesh and
+blood. No wonder they sought refuge under the wings of the heathen
+deity and became adepts in the art which he symbolized.
+
+But suppose it were true that all the Jews dote on traffic as their
+dearest occupation,--what of it? The British have the nickname of "a
+nation of shopkeepers" fastened on them; yet they were and are the
+greatest benefactors of the human race, carrying the blessings of
+civilization to half the peoples of the globe. Commerce has done more
+for the peace of the world than all the preaching, praying, and
+prophesying taken together. A great railroad, a steamship line, a
+cable or a telephone wire, a commercial treaty, a tariff
+convention,--these are the modern bonds that hold the remotest parts
+of the earth together, and make them equally abhor war and its
+ravages. A falling off in the exports, a shrinking of the value of
+investments, an unforeseen competitor in the markets of the world,
+cause the rulers of the most civilized nations more anxiety than any
+adverse political combination. For the former threaten the peace and
+welfare of the home life of the people, on whose contentment they rely
+for the defense of their claims in all their political intricacies. A
+class of people credited with the mastery of the art of buying and
+selling should, therefore, be welcome to every country and given the
+amplest freedom and encouragement to ply their skill, provided, of
+course, they do not carry their hoarded profits out of the country and
+enrich other nations by them. But where do the Jews think of such a
+thing? Their own country, if Palestine may still be so denominated, is
+one of the poorest in the world, and what little revival there has
+lately been perceptible is due to the colonies established there by
+Jewish peasants who, under most trying conditions, labor to restore
+the soil to its ancient fertility, after the long sleep into which it
+has sunk. Jewish wealth can be enjoyed, and is being enjoyed, in no
+other way than non-Jewish. Its owners are charged by its religious
+teachers with being only too willing to imitate the luxuries and
+extravagances of their neighbors. The same snares are spread for the
+feet of their offspring as for those of Gentile birth; the tempters
+that lie in wait for them are liberal enough to ignore distinctions
+between the various creeds. I will not stoop to any defense of my race
+from the vulgar charge that they are cheaters; that each and all will
+always try, right or wrong, to secure the best of any bargain into
+which a poor Gentile may enter with them. Those whom the commercial
+standing of the Jews, here and elsewhere, has not yet cured of this
+slanderous prejudice will not be converted by my pleading. Envy is an
+incurable disease; jealousy makes blind, and the common saying is
+surely true, that none are so blind as those who will not see. But
+neither have I the least desire to hide or gloss over our real
+failings and shortcomings. Those who cannot rest on their own real
+merits and accept the blame for their undeniable demerits must not
+dare to challenge the judgment of the world. The Jew does dare it, and
+all he asks of his critics is fairness, impartiality, justice. What I
+have said to his praise and for his defense was intended solely to
+assist the fairminded reader in forming a just opinion of an agitation
+which in Europe embitters, cripples, and darkens thousands of lives,
+which, under better treatment, would be spent in contentment and
+general usefulness.
+
+It is for this purpose only that I will briefly add two more traits of
+the Jews, equally valuable and undeniable. One is their charity; they
+care for their poor, their sick, their aged, if destitute, as the
+numerous institutions prove, found in every place where they dwell in
+sufficient number to maintain them. Ungrudgingly they assume the heavy
+burdens which this "exclusiveness" imposes upon them. Blame them for
+it who may; the right-minded will not, especially when assured that
+this feeling of pity is not the privilege of the well-to-do among them
+only. The working classes have always something to spare from their
+scanty earnings for "Z'dakah," the religious term in common use for
+charity, which, significantly enough, in biblical Hebrew means
+"justice." The idea that charity is an essential part of worship has
+been bred into them by long tradition, and continues to be regarded as
+such, wherever rabbinical Judaism survives in full force. From
+childhood every Jew knows the saying of Simon the Just, one of the
+last men of the Great Synagogue:--
+
+    "The whole world rests on these three pillars;
+
+          Law, Worship, and Charity."
+
+The other trait is their zeal in the education of their children.
+
+One of the standard objections to the Hebrews is their "forwardness";
+socially, it is a disagreeable and annoying fault, but otherwise a
+gift of no little value. Forwardness is the soul of all progress and
+advancement. Call it that, call it self-help, call it energy, call it
+self-reliance, call it by the popular name of wide-awakeness, and you
+transfigure the fault into a merit. How the Jew was able to preserve
+it in any one of its forms is one of the many miracles of his history,
+seeing that the world has left nothing untried to cast the Jews
+backward to the last depth of self-despair. An exhibition of his
+forwardness might be seen at the doors of the public schools in the
+lower districts of the city, notably at the time of admission of new
+pupils. The poorest of the Jewish fathers and mothers would be seen
+wrangling for the registration of their little ones, as if it were for
+their daily bread. And may this not also serve for a proof that the
+parents are willing to surrender their offspring to the influence of
+these schools, and see them thoroughly Americanized?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By these signs ye shall know the Jews, wherever ye find them; they
+may, therefore, be called racial. In every other respect they are
+neither better nor worse than other people of the corresponding stages
+of life. Every variety of character is found among them; virtue and
+vice are distributed among them. Let Americans not stigmatize them as
+"undesirable immigrants," and close their hospitable gate upon them.
+They bring with them qualities which are an ample compensation for
+their defects, and their well-to-do brethren are not behindhand in
+seeing to it that they become no public burden. The American people
+have repeatedly shown the door to those who came hither for the
+purpose of preaching anti-Semitism, thereby publicly testifying that
+they would have none of that disgrace to our age. What exists of it
+in social life is not worth arguing against. It will and must
+disappear in a country, the civil order of which is based upon the
+principle of equal rights to all law-abiding citizens, to whatever
+race or religion they may belong. "A fair field and no favor." This
+good old saying comprises all our demands.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Zionism and Anti-Semitism, by
+Max Simon Nordau and Gustav Gottheil
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+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ZIONISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM ***
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