The Jews

by Hilaire Belloc

This unintelligence is specially apparent in the treatment of the Jew in his international relations. The Jew is a nomad, the non-Jew a man with a fixed habitation. The Englishman, the Frenchman and the rest are perpetually approaching the Jew as though he also had a fixed habitation. We seem never to be able to get over the shock of surprise when we learn that a particular Jew abroad is the cousin, or nephew, or brother of another Jew with a different name in England, or with another Jew with yet another name in Pinsk or San Francisco. Yet, surely, this is of the very essence of the Jewish position. We ought to take it for granted that the Jew is thus nomadic, international, spread all over the world, migratory, as we take the same thing for granted in birds of passage. To adopt the attitude which we almost invariably do and to feel a shock of surprise when we discover what must in the nature of things be the most regular feature in the civic situation of the Jew, is to fall into that most stupid of all stupid errors, the reading of oneself into others.

I remember the horror and scandal with which men whispered their discovery that a man with a German name, who had got into trouble a few years ago, was the first cousin of a Cabinet Minister. Why not? They seemed to be struck all of a heap by the dreadful revelation that the names borne by Jews were not always their original names, that rich and important men often have poor relations, and that poor relations often get embarrassed.

In terms of their own society the thing would have been simple enough. They would have felt no surprise to hear that some man of our own race, who had made a rapid fortune and purchased a political position, suffered from a disreputable relative, also of our own race. But because in the case of the Jew there were the two unusual elements of a foreign name and distant origin, they were bewildered. They even thought it in some way specially scandalous. They had not appreciated the material with which they were dealing, and that is the mark of unintelligence. But the cream of unintelligence, the form in which unintelligent treatment of him most exasperates the Jew, is undoubtedly that typical, that ceaseless case of the man who is perpetually crying out against Israel, and purposing nothing—the man who nourishes a sterile grievance; who has not even the clarity or vigour to attempt suppression; who would be horrified at persecution, almost equally horrified at any breach of convention, and yet continues to cry out against a state of affairs which he does nothing to put right and for which he has not even a theoretic solution.

The last of the main causes of friction between the Jews and ourselves is lack of charity, and that in the simplest form of refusing to go half way to meet the Jew, and of refusing to put ourselves in the shoes of the Jew so as to understand his position in our society and his attitude towards it. It is a universal fault just as common in those who daily associate with, live off, and fawn upon Jews as in those who keep aloof from them. It never seems to occur to anyone on our side who has to deal with the Jewish problem, to make the imaginative effort required. And yet we have the parallel ready to our hands. The Jew feels among us, only with far greater intensity, what we feel when we are resident in a foreign country—a sense of exile, a sense of irritation against alien things, merely because they are alien; a great desire for companionship and for understanding, yet a great indifference to the fate of those among whom he finds himself; an added attachment, not, indeed, to his territorial home, for he has none, but to his nation. If we could perpetually bear in mind that parallel, the friction on our side would be greatly modified.

There are many Jewish societies which ask nothing better than to have occasional addresses from non-Jews. Those addresses are given, those Societies are visited, but not nearly as much as they should be.

There is a great Jewish literature—I mean a great mass of books dealing specially with the Jew's position from the Jew's own point of view. It is not read or known. I may be told that the fault of all this is largely that of the Jews themselves on account of their use of secrecy. I do not think the objection applies. With all his use of secrecy the Jew is there present among us for us to approach, if we will, and to understand as best we can. And I say that the approach is not made.

It is an effort, of course. No one knows it better than I; for on more than one occasion when I have addressed a Jewish audience I have found myself the object of very severe language. But it is an effort which every one ought to make who admits that there is a Jewish problem at all, and it is an effort very rarely made. It is not only an effort because it involves the crossing of a gulf, it is also an effort because we find this alien thing in many ways repugnant to us. Yet people make that effort for the purposes of the State continually where other races are concerned. It is far more important that they should make it where the Jews are concerned. For those other alien races, administrated for the moment by officials of our own race, will not permanently be so administered. The relations between them and us are for a brief time, and they are relations that constantly change. The Jew is with us always; and the type of contact between his race and ours will remain much the same through an indefinitely long future as they have through so very long a past.

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Here, then, is the summary, as I see it, of the causes of friction between the two races.