The question of business standards is a very different matter, and that I wish to discuss in another chapter.
I have not set myself the task of playing the apologist for the Jew or for any of the groups of which I treat. I freely acknowledge that there are disagreeable qualities in the Jew which explain in a measure, at least, the prejudice aroused by him.
Foremost, I suppose, is the type which, when it is most pronounced, is apt to be unpleasant and unsympathetic.
The offenses against good taste in dress are marked in many of them; but that lies more in the air with which the clothes are worn than in the clothes themselves. They are usually such as fashion dictates, and not in all cases more extreme than those worn by many Gentiles. The love of display is to some degree common to both Jew and Gentile; but is more noticeable among Jewish women, because they cannot conceal their feelings as well as the Gentile woman can.
The Jewish woman who has “arrived” and knows it, wants the whole world to know it also; while the Gentile woman, especially the Gentile American woman, wears her first imported gown and diamonds as if her swaddling clothes had been made in Paris and her original baby pins encrusted with jewels.
Still more apparent is a certain arrogance, a most annoying characteristic, especially in a people which ought to have the quality of humility in a large degree. The Jew recognizes this in his fellow Jew if not in himself, and no one more deplores it.
He calls it Jewish chuzpa, Jewish “cheek,” and it is, perhaps, one of the greatest causes for the social barriers raised against him. It is found in the Jewish beggar and in the Jewish millionaire.
It is an ancient fault; for long ago, “Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked.” It is a quality which leads many eminent Jews to acts of unwisdom, such as protests against Christmas exercises in the public schools; the resolution passed by a recent conference of Jewish Rabbis, that America is not a Christian country, and other acts equally unadvised.
This, also, has its causes, which are found among many peoples suddenly released from disabilities and given social and political rights.
In order to introduce my main theme, the relation of the Jew to the Christian, I have tried conscientiously to analyze the causes which obstruct the social contact between Jew and Gentile.