The Jews

by Hilaire Belloc

Nor is it true to say that this generosity has ostentation for its root, or, as it is called, "Ransome," either. Though a love of magnificence is certainly a great passion in the Jewish character, it does not account for the most of his generosity. It is a generosity which extends to all manner of private relations, and if you will take the testimony of those who have been in the service of the Jews and are not Jews themselves, that testimony is almost universally in favour of their employers, if those employers be men of large means.

They will tell you that they felt humiliated in serving a Jew; that the relations were never easy; that there was always distance. But not often that they were treated meanly. Just the other way. There has usually been present a spontaneous generosity. The same argument applies to the cry of "Ransome." It is true that some of the more scandalous Jewish fortunes have thrown up defences against public anger by the return of a small proportion in the shape of public endowments: it is an action and a motive not peculiar to them. But that does not explain the mass of private and unheard benefaction to which we can all testify and which is as common with the middle-class Jew as with the wealthy. It is here as in the matter of courage a question of kind. Those of our people who happen to be generous (they are rare) do not calculate. They often forget or confuse the sums they have made away with, as though it were mere extravagance. The Jew knows the exact extent of his sacrifice, its proportion to his total means. Is he then less generous? By no means. He is, in scale more generous—but in a different fashion.

It might be argued that this generosity of the Jew is a consequence of the way in which he regards money. It comes and goes with him because he is a speculator and a wanderer. It has been said that no great Jewish fortune is ever permanent; that none of these millionaires ever founded a family. This is not quite true; but it is true that considering the long list of great Jewish fortunes which have marked the whole progress of our civilization it is astonishing how few have taken root. But though this conception of money may be an element in the generosity of the Jew it does not fully explain it, and at any rate that generosity is there, and contradicts flatly the accusation of avarice. Indeed the general accusation of avarice fails: and that is why it is a sort of standing jest permitted even where the Jews are most powerful. It is a jest they themselves do not resent because they know it to be beside the mark.

The accusation of treason is on the same footing—save that it is even more "to one side" than the others quoted. There is no race which has produced so few traitors. It is not treason in the Jew to be international. It is not treason in the Jew to work now for one interest among those who are not of his people, now for another. He can only be charged with treason when he acts against the interests of Israel, and there is no nation nor ever has been one in which the national solidarity was greater or national weakness in the shape of traitors less. Indeed, that is the very accusation their enemies make against them; that they are too homogeneous; that they hold too much together and are too fierce in self-defence; and you cannot have that accusation coupled with an accusation of treason. What is true is that the Jew lends himself to one non-jewish group in its action against another. He will serve France against the Germans, or the Germans against France, and he will do so indifferently as a resident in the country he benefits or the country he wounds: for he is indifferent to either. The moment war breaks out the intelligence departments of both sides rely upon the Jew: and they rely upon him not only on account of his indifference to nationalism but also on account of his many languages, his travel, the presence of his relations in the enemy country. And this is true not only of war but of armed peace.

But it is clear that in all this there are examples of what in us, would be treason. In him such actions are not treasons, for he does not betray Israel. But they all have an atmosphere repellent to us. They are things which if we did them (or when we do them) degrade us. They do not degrade the Jew.

One might continue the list of such accusations indefinitely, and in every one you would find that the root of the quarrel is not the presence of a particular defect but the presence of a difference in circumstances, temperament, character: a different colour and taste in the quality or defect concerned. It is that which offends. It is that which causes the misunderstandings and which leads to the tragedies.

While this is true of the accusations made against the Jewish people it is unfortunately equally true of the corresponding qualities which they and their defenders advance in the rebuttal. The Jew is essentially patriotic: that is true. But not patriotic to our ends or in our way. He is essentially self-respecting. But not self-respecting to our ends or in our way. A personal obligation which he cannot meet, a personal and intimate contract in which he may default, especially to one of his own people, is abhorrent to the Jew; but not in our way. He has not our shame of bankruptcy for instance, but much more than our shame of personal borrowing. Drunkenness, a vice most offensive to human dignity, is with him the rarest vice: with us the commonest. But our sense of dignity in repose he has not, nor does he feel our sense of injured dignity in mummery. His tenacity, which all know and all in a sense admire and which is far superior to our own, is also a narrower tenacity, or at any rate a tenacity of a different kind. He will follow one end where we will follow many. His wonderful loyalty to all family relations we know: but we do not appreciate it because it is outside our own circle. Even his intellectual gifts, which are less affected by this matter of timbre, have something alien to us in them. They are undeniable but we feel them to be used for other ends than ours: they are coldly used when ours are used enthusiastically: they are used with intensity when we use them with carelessness.

If we leave the controversial field and concern ourselves with an appreciation of Jewish qualities, apart from our like or dislike of them and apart from their difference in intimate texture, as it were, from our own, they may be summarized I think as follows:—

The Jew concentrates upon one matter. He does not disperse his mind. And this concentration carries with it strength and weakness. It has been said in connection with it (all such terms are metaphorical) that his mind is not elastic. But this is a great element in his success. I have noticed that the Jew having once taken up a particular task shows an indifference to other tasks which, from our standpoint, is marvellous. How many instances could not one cite of two Jewish brothers, the one occupied in finance, the other in science, or the one in politics, the other in music, and how clearly do we see in those instances the complete indifference of the Jew to things outside the province he has undertaken! How remarkable in our eyes is his resistance to any temptation which might lead him away from his end. The Jew who is devoted to science, for instance, remains completely indifferent to its opportunities for enrichment. The Jew who is devoted to philosophy (and what great names he can show in this sphere throughout the centuries!) lives in poverty and is perfectly content so to live. The Jew devoted to any particular ideal of social change devotes himself entirely to that, and ends his task often more powerful, hardly ever more wealthy, nearly always much poorer than when he began it. Above all he refuses to be distracted for a moment from his goal.