[3] I borrow the metaphor from Mr. Zangwill, who applied it to New York particularly. I apply it to the whole modern industrial world.
HABIT OR LAW?
CHAPTER XV HABIT OR LAW?
If it be true that the friction between the Jew and the civilization in which he lives is aggravated by his habit of secrecy and by our disingenuousness, by his expression of a sense of superiority which galls us, and on our side by a lack of charity and of intelligence in dealing with him, it would follow that no solution can be more than approximate: that whatever arrangement be come to the contrast will remain, and with it a certain latent friction, which always accompanies contrast.
But there is between a simmering of that kind and the active boiling of the question to-day (with the threat of its boiling over) all the difference in the world. But even though the solution be imperfect, it might be reasonably stable: we might at least have peace, though not friendship. It further follows from the elements of the problem that the solution lies along the lines of either party modifying whatever in its action is an irritant to the other; whatever, that is, can be modified by the will, and is not mixed up with something ineradicable.
The Jew cannot help feeling superior, but he can help the expression of that superiority—at any rate he can modify such expression. He can certainly, though it be at a great expense of tradition and habit, get rid of that pestilent pseudo-defence of secrecy which poisons all the relations between him and ourselves. We on our side can drop what is the converse of that secrecy, the disingenuousness, the lack of candour, into which we are fallen in our relations with the Jew. That cannot but mean a great breach with our tradition and with habit also, but the advantage is worth the sacrifice. We can (it must be the work of each individual, it cannot be a corporate work) approach the Jew with more respect and yet with more frequency. We can, I think, advance by many degrees from the lack of charity we now show, even if we despair of living in real intimacy with a people so different in their deepest qualities from ourselves.