On the Trail of the Immigrant

by Edward Alfred Steiner

It is said in Moscow of a certain Jew, that after the priest had instructed him in the catechism, he asked: “Now what do you believe?” and he replied: “I believe that now I shall not have to leave Moscow.”

Much more than this, these so-called converted Jews do not and cannot believe.

Most of them prefer to live in dirty little hovels, hungry and wretched, to brood over the ancient lore, the Psalms of David, the prophets’ messages from God, the law of Moses and the sayings of the sages. Day and night, while hunger gnaws and poverty oppresses, they look to Jehovah and fast and mourn and believe.

Minsk, Wilna, Kovno, and Warsaw contain Jewries in which from 80,000 to 200,000 souls are living—no one knows how; two-thirds by manual labour, the commonest and the coarsest, for the lowest wage. To-morrow’s bread is always an unknown quantity, and these people do “Walk by faith and not by sight.” No labour is too heavy or too dirty; and the mournful Jewish face will look out at you from the pit of a mine, from under a burden of wood or water, from the margin of the river as boats are unloaded, or from the seat of a miserable cab, whose horse and driver are alike most pitiable. Because of their weak bodies they are not regarded as good labourers, except at tailoring.

Locked in the city, hampered in their movements by unreasonable laws, groaning under taxes too heavy to be borne, the government, labour, religion—life itself a burden, they are living Egypt over again, waiting and praying for their deliverance. Why are they persecuted? Can any one answer that question? Has any one yet found the reason for blind hate, that blindest of all,—the hate of race? They are hated because they are supposed to be rich; yet seventy-five per cent. of them are poorer than Chinese coolies.

They are hated because they have strange customs, because they hold themselves, in a large measure, aloof from the common life. How can they be anything but strangers to the adherents of a religion who choose a holy day, the day of resurrection, to kill them? Easter time is almost invariably the time of persecution. How can they be other than strangers to a church, the ringing of whose bells marks the carnage of hundreds of thousands—murdered for the glory of Jesus—a Jew.

How can they be anything but strangers to a government whose officials will step among the mobs to encourage them, shouting: “Steady boys, keep it up.”

They are hated by the government because they are supposed to be revolutionists. If only they were! The masses of the Jews are so cowed by fear that they are unmanned. They do not know the use of a weapon. Here and there a Jew, alert and keen, sees his misery and is brave enough to defend himself. Many of them advocate Socialism; it attracts them because it knows no race, because it preaches a certain kind of peace, because it is a brotherhood. The Jew does not find in the orthodox church the meek and lowly Nazarene, because the Messiah whom the church preaches, is masked behind church millinery; because the representative of the lowly Nazarene sits upon the throne of the haughtiest autocrat, and because the cross is an ornament and not an element in the salvation of men.

The Jew in Russia is persecuted because he is supposed to use the blood of Gentile children for his passover. This false accusation has followed him through the years, in spite of the fact that those who promulgated it knew that it was false. The shedding of human blood was never one of Israel’s crimes, and killing is a desire which the Jew lost long ago, having never been a master in this art.