II.
Anti-Semitism has unquestionably swayed large sections of humanity at various times, warping the vision, twisting the characters and staining the hands of its victims, but the most amazing statement that can be made of it is that it has never accomplished anything in behalf of those who used it, and it has never taught anything to the Jews against whom it was used.
The grades of anti-Semitism are fairly numerous, and a few of them may be cited here:
1. There is first that degree of anti-Semitism, if it may be so described, which consists in plain dislike of the Jew as a person, no matter whom he may be. This is often found in people of all grades. It is found mostly, however, in those whose contact with Jews has been very limited. It begins sometimes in childhood with an instinctive dislike for the word "Jew." It is encouraged by the misuse of the word "Jew" as an epithet, or as an adjective generally descriptive of unpopular practices. The feeling is not different from that which exists toward Gentiles, concerning whom the same notions are held, but it differs in that it is extended to the race of unknown individual Jews instead of being restricted to known individuals who may justify such a feeling.
Congeniality is not within our choice, but control of the sentiment of uncongeniality is. Every fair-minded person is compelled at times to reflect that it is not impossible that the person for whom he feels a dislike may be as good and possibly a better person than he. Our dislike merely registers the result of attraction and repulsion as they operate between another person and oneself; it does not indicate that the disliked person is unworthy. Of course, wherever intelligence is joined with this instinctive withdrawal from social contact with members of the Jewish race, prejudice is forestalled, except, of course, in those persons who hold that there are no individuals among the Jews worthy of respect. This is an extreme attitude and is composed of other elements beside natural dislike. It is possible for people to dislike Jews and not be anti-Semitic. Indeed, it is not at all uncommon, it grows more and more common, that intelligent and refined Jews themselves do not relish the society of their own people except in cases of exceptional refinement.
This reality calls for some comment on the manners and characteristics of the ordinary member of the Jewish race, the accidents of behavior which stand out most obnoxiously and of which Jews themselves are often the most unsparing critics, but these comments must fall into place later.
2. A second stage of the spirit of anti-Semitism may be designated as hatred and enmity. It should be noted that the antipathy referred to immediately above was not hatred. Dislike is not hatred, nor is it necessarily enmity. One may dislike sugar in his tea without troubling to hate sugar. But undoubtedly there are people who because they have let their dislikes deepen into prejudice, and perhaps also because of unpleasant experiences with members of the Jewish race (probably a million Americans have been brought to the verge of becoming Jew-haters this winter because of contact with Jewish merchants and landlords) may be classified as, at least, incipient anti-Semites. This is most of all unfortunate for the persons who harbor these emotions. It is unfortunate in that it unfits the mind to consider intelligently the facts which constitute the Jewish Question, and also unfits it to deal with them in a fair and constructive way. For one's own sake, whatever the provocation otherwise, it is better not to let passion deflect the needle of one's mind. Hatred at the wheel means hazard on the course. Enmity lives in the vicinity of the Jews more than of any other race, and the reason for this is one of the puzzles of the ages. The Jewish nature itself, as shown in ancient and modern history, is not without its own share of enmity, and it either evokes or provokes enmity where it comes in contact with those Aryan races which follow their natural impulses unchecked by cultural and ethical influences. This age-long conflict of the Jew has puzzled the minds of students for generations. Some explain it Biblically as the curse of Jehovah upon His Chosen People for their disobedience to the discipline by which He would have made them the Prophet Nation of the world. If this offense must come, if it is part of the Jew's heritage, an old saying—Christian and Scriptural, by the way—would still remain true: "It must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh."
3. In some parts of the world at various times this feeling of hatred has broken into murderous violence, which has roused, as wholesale physical outrage always does, the horror and resentment of humanity. This is the extreme form in which anti-Semitism has exhibited itself, and it is the charge of intending to stimulate it here and elsewhere which every public discussion of the Jewish Question has to bear. There is, of course, no excuse for these outbreaks, but there is sufficient explanation of them. The Jews usually explain them as expressions of religious prejudice, and the Gentiles as rebellion against an economic yoke which the Jews have woven for the people. It is an astonishing fact that, to take one country, the parts of Russia where anti-Semitic violence has been most marked are the most prosperous parts, so prosperous indeed and with a prosperity so unquestionably due to Jewish enterprise that the Jews have openly declared that they have the power to throw those parts of Russia back into commercial lethargy again by simply withdrawing. It is utterly idle to throw denials at this statement. It is confirmed time and time again by men who have gone to Russia full of resentment against the attitude of the Russians toward the Jews, as that attitude is represented in the Anglo-Saxon press, and who have come home with a new light on the cause of these outbreaks, though not excusing their character. Impartial observers have also found that some of the outbreaks have been precipitated by the Jews themselves. A correspondent, known the world over for his trenchant defense of the Jews under Russian persecution, was always bitterly attacked by the Jews themselves whenever he stated the truth about this, notwithstanding his protest to them that if he did not tell the truth when they were in the wrong the world would not be ready to believe him when he said they were blameless. To this day, in every country, the Jews are slow to admit blameworthiness for anything. They must be excused, whoever else may be accused. It is a trait which will have to be disciplined before they can be brought to assist, if ever they can, the removal of those characteristics which arouse the antagonism of other peoples. Elsewhere in the world, it may be said that out-and-out enmity to the Jews has an economic basis. This, of course, leads to the question whether the Jew shall have to become a deliberate failure, or deny his genius, and forego his just meed of prosperity before he can win the approval of the other races—a question which will arise for discussion later.
As to the religious prejudice which the Jews are, as a rule, readiest to affirm, it is safe to say that it does not exist in the United States. Yet it is charged up to Americans by Jewish writers just as freely as it is charged up to Russians. Each non-Jew reader is competent to settle this for himself. He can easily do so by asking himself whether in all his life he has ever felt a moment's resentment against the Jew on account of his religion. In an address recently delivered in a Jewish lodge and reported in the Jewish press, the speaker, a Jew, stated that if 100 non-Jews on the street were approached at random and casually asked what a Jew is, the reply of the majority would be, "He is a Christ-killer." One of the best known and most highly respected rabbis in the United States said recently in a sermon that children in Christian Sunday schools were taught to regard the Jew as a Christ-killer. He repeated it in a conversation several weeks later.
It would probably be the testimony of Christians generally that they never heard this term until they heard it in a Jewish complaint, and certainly themselves never used it. The charge is absurd. Let the 20,000,000 now in the Christian Sunday schools of Canada and the United States testify as to the instruction given. There is no hesitation in stating that there is no prejudice whatever in the Christian churches against the Jew on account of his religion. On the contrary, there is not only a deep sense of indebtedness, but a feeling of sharing with the Jew in his religion. The Sunday schools of the Christian churches of the world are spending six months of this year studying the International Lessons which are appointed for the Books of the Judges, Ruth, First and Second Samuel and the Books of the Kings, and every year is devoted in part to the Old Testament.
Here, however, is something for Jewish religious leaders to consider: there is more downright bitterness of religious prejudice on the part of the Jews against Christianity than could ever be possible in the Christian churches of America. Simply take the church press of America and compare it with the Jewish press in this regard, and there is no answer. No Christian editor would think it either Christian or intelligent to attack the Jewish religion, yet any six months' survey of the Jewish press would yield a mass of attack and prejudice on the other side. Moreover, no religious bitterness in America attains within infinite distances to that bitterness visited upon the Jew who becomes a Christian in his faith. It amounts almost to a holy vendetta. A Christian may become a Jewish proselyte and his motives be respected; it is never so when a Jew becomes a Christian. These statements are true of both the orthodox and liberal wings of Judaism. It is not his religion that gives prominence to the Jew today; it is something else. And yet, with undeviating monotony, it is repeated wherever the Jew takes cognizance of the feeling toward him that it is on account of three things, first and most prominent of which is his religion. It may be comforting to him to think that he is suffering for his faith, but it is not true. Every intelligent Jew must know it.
Every Jew ought to know also that in every Christian church where the ancient prophecies are received and studied, there is a great revival of interest in the future of the Ancient People. It is not forgotten that certain Promises were made to them regarding their position in the world, and it is held that these prophecies will be fulfilled. The future of the Jew, as prophetically outlined, is intimately bound up with the future of this planet, and the Christian church in large part—at least by the evangelical wing, which the Jews most condemn—sees a Restoration of the Chosen People yet to come. If the mass of the Jews knew how understandingly and sympathetically all the prophecies concerning them are being studied in the Church, and the faith that exists that these prophecies will find fulfillment and that they will result in great Jewish service to society at large, they would probably regard the Church with another mind. They would at least know that the Church does not believe that it will be the instrument in the conversion of the Jews—a point on which Jewish leaders are tragically misled and which evokes more bitterness than anything else—but that it depends on quite other instruments and conditions, which it is not the function of this article to point out except to say that it will be the Jews' very own Messiah which will accomplish it and not the "wild olive," or the Gentile.
Curiously enough, there is a phase of anti-Semitism having to do with religion, but not in the way here discussed. There are those, very few in number and of atheistical tendencies, who assert that all religion is a sham, being the invention of Jews for the purpose of enslaving the minds of the people of the world to an enervating superstition. This position, however, has had no effect on the main issue. It is a far extreme.