Israel in Europe

by G. F. Abbott

“Jesus is the Way”: saith the preacher, “Although the Jews have the law, they cannot come to God, because Jesus is the Way. Although they have the Old Testament, they do not know the truth, because Jesus is the Truth and Life!” and after several sentences rich in emphasis, fervour, and capital letters, comes the old, old conclusion: “adoption and true spiritual life there is none, where Christ has not kindled it. Israel, in its present state, the Christless Israel, shows this to the whole world. Notwithstanding the great activity and energy of the religious life of the Jews, they have—we say it with great sorrow—no life indeed—what they have is all carnal—and this accounts for the phenomenon that they have not been of much spiritual use to the world since Christ’s coming. In Christ alone will Israel live again and be a blessing to the world.”[259]

So speaks the advocate of conversion. His hope in the future is as great as his forgetfulness of the past. “The great God,” he informs us with touching assurance, “is, in His providence, now rapidly preparing the way for the final and only possible solution.” Ah, my good friend, it is very natural in a Christian to believe that “true spiritual life there is none, where Christ has not kindled it,” it is very pleasant to point the finger of scorn at “Christless Israel,” it is very well to prophesy that “in Christ alone will Israel live again and be a blessing to the world.” But how are we to convince Israel that it is so? This ancient nation which, having defied the onslaughts of centuries, has lived so long, seen so much, suffered so much, and survived so much, is it likely to succumb to our timeworn arguments? Or would you advise us to bid the Jew once more choose between baptism and the stake? This argument also has been tried and found inadequate. Convert the Jews! You might as hopefully attempt to convert the Pyramids.

Thus far the apostle. Next comes the patriot—a student of statistics, sad and, so far as religious bias goes, quite sober. In tones of sepulchral solemnity he warns us that, if England is to escape the fate of the Continent, namely, “of the Jews becoming stronger, richer, and vastly more numerous; with the corresponding certainty of the press being captured” by them, “and the national life stifled by the substitution of material aims for those which, however faultily, have formed the unselfish and imperial objects of the Englishmen who have made the Empire”—if these dire calamities are to be averted, England must “abandon her secular practice of complacent acceptance of every human being choosing to settle on these shores.” Should nothing be done to check the evil, there is bound to ensue an outbreak against the race “the members of which are always in exile and strangers in the land of their adoption.”[260]

The appeal to the Empire is quite modern, although, if the author had any intelligent conception of his own case, he might have seen that Imperialism is the very last thing in the world he should have summoned to the support of his narrow Nationalism: the two things differ as widely as the author differs from Julius Caesar. If the British Empire were confined to Englishmen, it would soon cease to be an empire. Equally novel is the interpretation of our expansion as due to an unselfish zeal for somebody else’s good—the author does not state whose. But the specific charge brought against the Jewish race as one “the members of which are always in exile and strangers in the land of their adoption” is hardly worthy of the author’s originality.

The prophet objects to the Jews as not having been “of much spiritual use to the world.” It is hard to dispute the statement, because it is impossible to know the particular meaning which the prophet attaches to the word “spiritual.” His position is unassailable. The patriot, however, denounces the Jews as the promoters of “material aims,” and thereby convicts himself either of gross ignorance or of deliberate distortion of facts. What the world of thought owes to the Jews has already been described with a fulness of detail which will probably appear superfluous to most educated people. As regards the assertion that the Jew still looks upon himself as one in exile and a stranger in a foreign land, we propose to deal with it when we come to consider the attitude of the Jews towards the Zionist movement. Here it is sufficient to point out that the term “Jew” is far too wide to warrant any sweeping generalisation. There are Jews and Jews, just as there are Christians and Christians. History abundantly proves that the Jew in the past retained most of his clannishness where he was most grievously oppressed. As to modern Judaism, since the day of Moses Mendelssohn there has set in a disintegration which renders a comprehensive and confident pronouncement only possible to those who consider prejudice an adequate substitute for knowledge. But there is no necessity for such a universal pronouncement. If we want an answer to the question, “Can the Jew be a patriot?” we need only glance at the history of modern Europe. Did not Jews fight with the Germans against the French in the days of Napoleon, with the Hungarians against the Austrians in 1848, with the Austrians against the Prussians in 1866, with the Germans against the French and the French against the Germans in 1870, with the Roumanians against the Turks in 1877? Or can man express his devotion to his country in a more unambiguous manner than by dying for it? Unless, indeed, the perfidious Jew even in dying is actuated by some ulterior motive.

But why should we look further than home? In 1831 Macaulay wrote: “If the Jews have not felt towards England like children, it is because she has treated them like a step-mother.” England has ceased to treat the Jews like a step-mother. How far has England’s change of attitude towards the Jew affected the Jew’s attitude towards England? On Sunday, December 28, 1902, Lord Roberts attended a special service, at the Central Synagogue in Great Portland Street, held for Jewish members of the regular and auxiliary forces who fell in South Africa fighting for England. The day was well chosen; for on the same day is performed the annual celebration in remembrance of the warlike exploits of the Maccabees—a coincidence which disproves in a practical manner the dogmatic generalisation that “a man’s heart cannot belong to two nations,” and which shows that the English Jew, at all events, can be both a Hebrew and an Englishman: he can cherish the ideals of the past and yet live in the realities of the present. The soldiers in whose memory the ceremony was held formed a portion of a force counting more than 1,200 officers and men, who took a creditable part in the war. This number assumes new significance, when we consider that the total Hebrew population of Great Britain that year did not exceed 180,000,[261] and that with us every soldier is a volunteer. The Jew has done as much for the English mother as any of her Christian sons: he has laid down his life in defence of her cause. Moreover, to join the army, the Jew must necessarily sacrifice something besides life—something that he holds higher than life—some of his religion, and particularly the ceremonial rites, such as the dietary laws and the Sabbath. But foremost English Rabbis, like the late Simeon Singer, maintained that duty to England justified and even consecrated this sacrifice.

Nor was this most unequivocal proof of patriotism a solitary instance. For the last ten years the Feast of Dedication has been associated with a celebration for the men serving in the Regular and Auxiliary Forces. On December 13, 1903, the Rev. Francis L. Cohen, to whose initiative the custom is due, inaugurated the second decade of these celebrations at the New West-end synagogue in the presence of 38 officers and 167 men, and also a number of new Jewish officers, including a Major-General and a General. The preacher dwelt on the promptitude with which Jewish Britons responded to the call during the last war. He referred to the 127 Jews who then “gave their lives for the flag they all honoured and loved,” and announced that, as a testimony “to the pride and joy wherewith the Jews hail their privilege of sharing in the voluntary burden of their common country’s defence,” they sought to endow a trophy “to be competed for from year to year at the great annual meeting of the National Rifle Association, such as might stimulate others of their fellow-citizens to perfect themselves in the military use of that weapon which might at any moment again be required to protect the immunity of their Sovereign’s territories.”[262] The truth is that religion has long ceased to be the principal force in the composition of nations. In the present stage of the world’s development sympathy with one’s co-religionists does not exclude loyalty to one’s country, any more than loyalty to one’s country prevents hatred of one’s co-religionists in other countries.

The continuance of oppression and persecution in Eastern Europe has kept the stream of emigration flowing. As was natural, great numbers of the hunted race turned to England as to the one European country where liberty has not yet been seriously endangered by the revival of intolerance. But the welcome which they met with in this sanctuary of freedom has not been unanimous. The “Alien Invasion,” as it is termed, has roused considerable anxiety and apprehension in certain bosoms. We are told by the melancholic patriot, in a more recent and more popular publication,[263] that it is a menace to the nation, that “British right of asylum hitherto has been as profitable to the Empire as to the immigrants,” but that “it is otherwise to-day.” We are exhorted to reconsider our position, and to ask ourselves whether we are right in “permitting free import of the sweepings of foreign cities to contaminate our English life, to raise rents, and lower the standard of existence.” We are, lastly, advised to shut our doors to “undesirable aliens.” The question thus put admits of but one answer. If these aliens are undesirable, we ought not to desire them. No one would cavil with our advisers were it not that under the mask of a movement for the exclusion of “undesirable” individuals there seems to lurk in some quarters a retrogressive animosity against the Jewish race as a whole, or a wish to stir up such an animosity. The melancholic patriot opportunely reminds us that “the foreigners who settle in England are almost entirely of the Jewish race, and it is therefore impossible to discuss the question of foreign immigration without raising the Jewish question.” Thus, having thrown off the mask, he proceeds to give utterance to candid and undisguised anti-Semitism:

“The peculiarity of this race is that they refuse assimilation by intermarriage, equally with Russians in Russia, with Arabs in Tunis, or with the English in England, just as rigidly as did their ancestors refuse intermarriage with Gentiles in the days of Nehemiah.” The matter presented in this form offers the interesting point of being not new. The aloofness of the Jew has already been shown to have been the fundamental cause of his sufferings. Had the Jews not formed a “peculiar people” they would not have been made the milch-cows and the scapegoats of the nations through the ages. But it can also be shown that at the present day this is only partially true in the countries which have genuinely adopted the Jews. It is estimated that there occur far more marriages in England between Jews and Christians than between Protestants and Catholics. By the Jewish law marriage between a Jew and a proselyte is perfectly lawful. The barrier is thus, after all, one of religion rather than of race. Naturally an inclination towards such intermarriage would not prevail on either side except in comparatively rare cases. Yet the strange fact remains that such mixed marriages are at least as common in the lower as in the upper classes of Jewish society.

Besides, though the clannishness of the race in the past explains its persecution, does it excuse it? Is it an argument that a modern statesman in a free country should accept as justifying exclusion? Moreover, if the Jews really are so black as the author paints them, is it not rather unpatriotic of him to wish to see them intermarrying with us, and thus contriving “to contaminate our English life” far more effectively than they will be able to do if they continue to be a people apart? However, consistency in reasoning is not, as has already been remarked, the anti-Semite’s forte.