On the Trail of the Immigrant

by Edward Alfred Steiner

Whether we shall enrich this New American by our own ideals, whether we shall implant in him the broad culture of our own spiritual and intellectual heritage, is a real problem whose solving may puzzle even future generations.

I do not believe that any of the people who come to us, speaking of races and nationalities as a whole, are degenerate, or so hardened that they are not capable of assimilation and transformation. Although as I have said, this cannot yet be proved by our own experience, we can reason with some assurance from the experience of countries in which these strangers who come to us are also regarded as aliens and subjects; and where their way upward is retarded rather than helped as it is on this side of the great sea.

Let me take as an example the Slovak, one of the crudest Slavic types, who bears all the marks of the Slav in his features and in all his inner being. In his own home he belonged to a subject race; for the Magyar being more powerful and more warlike, was his ruler. In the villages where this Slovak lives he has been in touch with the Magyar and also with the Germanic element, to a greater or less degree. I have noticed this: That wherever he has had a chance, wherever political and economic difficulties were not too great, he grew into the full stature of the man above him; and in the long struggle for racial supremacy in Hungary, the Slav has not yet said the last word. Physically, morally and spiritually, he equals the Magyar or the German; that is, wherever the opportunity is not taken from him by wrong economic and political adjustment.

I hold no brief for the Slovak or for any Slav; there are many things in his nature which are repellent. He is too much of a realist by nature for my taste, and there is a certain kind of crudeness and cruelty in his make up, from both of which I have had occasion to suffer. Yet in spite of these handicaps I believe that, given the proper environment and the proper example, or if you please the proper masters, he will develop into that kind of American which we, the average, are. He usually takes more than he leaves behind; he inherits more than he bequeaths; he is human material in the rough; very, very rough but human material nevertheless. Made of as good clay as any of us, although perhaps not yet fashioned into the best mould. The moulding will be the problem; for the New American is more Slavic than anything else.

The Jews, a subject race everywhere, have suffered so much from friends and foes alike, that to defend or accuse them would be a work of supererogation. It is, however, undeniably true, that Judaism in America faces a greater crisis than it faced in the captivity of Babylon. There Judaism was made, here it is being unmade; there foes tried to make the Jews forget Jerusalem, here their friends have difficulty in making them remember it; there a hope of the Messiah grew up within them, here the term is so strange to them that it needs reiteration and interpretation. The loss to Judaism in America amounts to a catastrophe, and from the present outlook its complete dissolution is merely a matter of time, only retarded by the constant influx of immigrants from Russia and Poland. The average Jew in America has become so American that he does not remember the hole from which he was dug, or that Abraham was his father and that Sarah bore him.

A certain vague racial fealty holds one Jew to the other; but a strong and mighty passion holds him to America, making him so much an American and so little a Jew. It may be true that the leopard does not change his spots; but even the leopard may lose his spots when he does not need them. Many of the racial marks of Jew and Gentile alike will disappear when the need of them passes away; and they will take on readily other marks which fit them for a better environment.

The problem with the Jew is not how to make him less a Jew; but how to make him a better Jew, and consequently a better American; for Judaism properly interpreted has in it all the elements to make of men good citizens, good neighbours and good friends.

At the conclusion of a lecture recently, a rather stupid but zealous man asked me regarding the Jews. “Can we trust them with the Constitution?” It was a stupid question asked by a stupid man. God trusted them with the oracles, the Commandments and the prophecies; the richest spiritual gifts in the keeping of the Deity. To be sure, they broke nearly all the Commandments and killed their prophets; but we have done the same thing; and the Constitution is as safe in the hands of the Jew, as the Bible is in the hands of the Gentile.