The Jews

by Hilaire Belloc

Personally, I am not sure that such closer intimacy might not be established; I have never found any difficulty in reaching and retaining intimate acquaintance with the Jews of my own circle—but I may have been fortunate. I know that with most of my fellows it is not so, and perhaps the Jew will always remain to the mass of those about him something strange and unapproachable, and I fear, repulsive. But there is no reason, why we should mix with that hesitation in our relations an element of indifference, still less of contempt, still less, again, of cruelty.

I repeat the formula for a solution: it is recognition and respect.

Recognition is here no more than the telling of the truth: there is a Jewish nation. Jews are citizens of that nation; and recognition means not only the telling of this truth on special occasions but the use of it as a regular habit in our relations on both sides.

This statement is, upon any just analysis of the Jewish question, so obvious and so simple, that it needs neither insistence upon it nor development. Its plain statement is sufficient. But there attaches to a solution so determined a much more active and complicated question, upon the uncertainty of which not only this reform but many another has made shipwreck. The question must be answered rightly, because, if we answer it wrongly, the whole scheme fails.

The question is this: Should the social habit, the general method in writing and speaking and in all relations, precede in this case the institutional action, legal changes, constitutional definitions? Or should the legal changes, the new institutions, the constitutional definitions come first?

To decide rightly is of great moment, for this reason, that a wrong decision may destroy all the effect of goodwill.

In my judgment the wrong decision would be that which would give precedence to legal change, to new definitions, to new institutions, and attempt out of them to build a new spirit. I take it that this reversal of the true order would make all stable peace impossible.

It must be admitted, of course, that changes suggested by the Jews themselves, the development of their own institutions, a voluntary segregation of their community in other fields than those in which they have already effected that segregation, stand in another category. These new and definitely Jewish institutions we should always welcome. But the attempt at framing public regulations, which are to defend the community as a whole against an alien minority, when that minority must live with one permanently and as a regular feature of the life of the community, invariably tends to oppression, if such regulations are made the first steps in a settlement instead of being left, as they should be, to the last. Any separatist legislation should arise naturally out of a long practice and full recognition of the Jews as a separate people and of the accompaniment of that recognition with respect. If the advance is made on our side, the Jew may refuse any such bargain. He may dig his heels in and insist, as many another privileged class has insisted before him, that he will continue to enjoy all that he has ever enjoyed, that he will continue his demand for a dual allegiance, that he will insist on the very fullest recognition as a Jew, and at the same time on what is fatal to such recognition, the fullest recognition as a member of our own community.

If he does that (and there are those who tell us he will certainly do so, and will refuse all reform), then the community will be compelled to legislate in spite of him. It will be perilous for him and for us; it may even be the beginning of grievous trouble for both, but it will be inevitable. It will appear in a mass of legislation all over Europe, which will affect this country with the rest.