Does he seek a field for business talent? The evidence of opportunity in this direction is so overwhelming that it need not here be wearyingly recapitulated. The progress of Adolph S. Ochs from a printer’s devil in Knoxville, Tenn., fifty years ago, to owner of the greatest newspaper in the greatest city in the world, is characteristic of dozens of like successful Jewish careers in this country; and it is emblematic of hundreds of thousands of Jewish careers less spectacular but equally momentous in their own degree.
Does he seek social position? Here, indeed, his path is made more difficult. But the social barriers are not insurmountable. Where they seem so, calm judgment will reveal that the social environment where this irrational prejudice exists is not worthy of the entrance of the Jew. Leave the intolerant to associate with their own kind. The Jew who has raised himself to the highest level will have put himself beyond the reach of prejudice, and he will find himself welcomed in the highest Christian circles.
The enlightened Jews of America have found the true road to Zion. To them Zion is no mere political mechanism existing by the political sufferance of the greater Powers. It is not defined by geographical boundaries, circumscribing an arid plot of ground which their ancestors of two thousand years ago conquered from its aboriginal inhabitants and occupied for a brief, though glorious, period before they, in turn, were driven onward by a new conqueror. To them, Zion is a region of the soul. To them, it is an inner light, set upon the hill of personal consciousness, inspiring them as individuals to fight, each for himself, the battle of life where he meets it; demanding in virtue of his own worth the respect of those about him; winning through to the dignity and position to which his native gifts and his self-developed character entitle him. This is the only true Zion. All other definitions of it are unreal.
The proudest boast of all these men, and my proudest boast, is: “I am an American.” None of us would deny our race or faith. We are Jews by blood. We are Jews, though of various sects, by religion. But as for me (and here I am sure I speak for a vast body of Jews in the United States), if I were pressed to define myself by any single appellation, I would unhesitatingly select the one word American. Neither I nor the humblest worshipper in the most orthodox congregation can hope for anything from Zionism that is not already ours in virtue of our participation in the freedom of America. And neither of us need make the smallest compromise with any conviction that we hold dear. I have found it more convenient (as well as quite within the approval of what I regard as my somewhat more enlightened conscience) to cast off the other symbols of the Hebraic faith, such as the Kosher observances, the untouched beard, and the distinctive dress; but there are thousands of Russian Jews in the United States to-day who retain these excrescences of antiquity, with only a small inconvenience that is certainly very far short of persecution. From observation and experience I know full well that these same orthodox devotees will themselves become enlightened—if not they, then certainly their children—and will perceive, as I and others have perceived, that the Mosaic admonitions were purely temporal devices, expedient truly for the age in which they were promulgated, useful until modern sanitation and modern education did their work, but now become empty of those first values.
Here lies the crux of my affirmative argument against Zionism. We anti-Zionist Jews of America have found that the spiritual life, after whatever formula of faith, in modern times can be most fully enjoyed by those people who accept the beneficent progress which the world at large has made in science, industry, and the art of government. We have learned the folly of persisting in the sanitary regulations taught by Moses, in this age when all civilized peoples have the benefit of the more advanced sanitary knowledge of Lister, Pasteur, Metchnikoff, and Flexner. We have learned the folly of persisting in a distinctive style of clothing, beard, and locks (imposed upon the Jews extraneously as a badge of slavery and oppression), and of ascribing a spiritual significance to such a costume in this age when saints like Montefiore and Baron Edmond de Rathschild, the great patrons of Palestine, have found sanctity not incompatible with the ordinary dress of those about them. We have come to see that the worship of the God of Israel, the acceptable obedience to His will, is not contingent upon the Clothes one wears, upon the meat one eats. His kingdom is the soul of man. In that boundless temple He receives the priceless sacrifices of the true believer. That time and place and mode are most acceptable to Him in which the human spirit brings its richest offerings.
It follows, then, that the Jew everywhere (in Poland and Russia, as well as in France and America) can acceptably serve the God of his fathers and still enter fully into the life about him. We in America refuse to set ourselves apart in a voluntary ghetto for the sake of old traditional Observances.
I have often used a figure of speech—it was brought to my mind by meeting the rug-makers in Turkey—as follows: The Jew has been content, in most lands and down the ages, to be the fringe of the carpet, the loose end over which every foot has stumbled, where every heel has left its injuring impression on the disconnected individual strands. What the Jew should do is, to become a part of the pattern of the carpet itself: weave himself into the very warp and woof of the main fabric of humanity; and gain the strength which comes from a coördinated and orderly relation to the other strands of human society. His peculiar beauties (his peculiar talents), which in the fringe are soiled and hidden, take on new value when they become part of the main carpet; and they find their glory in lending to the pattern a unique splendour and a special lustre.
I, for one, will not forego this vision of the destiny of the Jews. I do not presume to say to my co-religionists of Europe that they shall accept my programme. But neither do I intend to allow them to impose their programme upon me. They may continue, if they will, a practice of our common faith which invites martyrdom, and which makes the continuance of oppression a certainty. I have found a better way (and when I say I, it is to speak collectively as one of a great body of American Jews of like mind). In the foregoing pages I have given my reasons for opposing Zionism. They make plain why I asserted at the beginning of this chapter that Zionism is not a solution; that it is a surrender. It looks backward, and not forward. It would practically place in the hands of a few men, steeped in a foreign tradition, the power to turn back the hands of time upon all which I and my predecessors of the same convictions have won for ourselves here in America. We have fought our way through to liberty, equality, and fraternity. We have found rest for our souls. No one shall rob us of these gains. We enjoy in America exactly the spiritual liberty, the financial success, and the social position which we have earned. Any Jew in America who wishes to be a saint of Zion has only to practice the cultivation of his spiritual gifts—there is none to hinder him. Any Jew in America who seeks material reward has only to cultivate the powers of his mind and character—there are no barriers between him and achievement. Any Jew in America who yearns for social position has only to cultivate his manners—there are no insurmountable discriminations here against true gentlemen. The Jews of France have found France to be their Zion. The Jews of England have found England to be their Zion. We Jews of America have found America to be our Zion. Therefore, I refuse to allow myself to be called a Zionist. I am an American.