Anti-Semitism in the United States

by Lee J. Levinger

3.

This direct propaganda may have some influence, but only as propaganda, not as argument to refute arguments from the other side. The fact of difference is the primary fact on which anti-Semitism, like all other intolerance, is based. This can be transcended only by an inclusive loyalty and an inclusive purpose in which both sub-groups lose their own purposes and consequently their opposition. The most direct reaction to anti-Semitism appears in the intensification of Jewish loyalty. Conflict makes the group mind vigorous and self-conscious, especially in the defeated group. The power of the “lost cause” over the minds of men has been beautifully developed by Royce in his “Philosophy of Loyalty”; and the cause of Jewry has been for two thousand years such a “lost cause” among the oppressors of the world.

Thus oppression of anti-Semitism in any part of the world cements Jews everywhere into one body, forces the group mind of the Jew into unity and direction. As Dr. Drachsler points out:

[105]Two sets of factors are of significance here: those making for identification with the general American community and those making for segregation and isolation. The attractive features of the American environment have their roots in and are nourished by the equality of social and economic opportunity that is America’s most precious heritage.

It is anti-Semitic propaganda that constitutes one of the segregative forces of the American environment.... To these inner strains and stresses, making for an increase in group self-consciousness, are added those outer crises arising out of the trials and tribulations of Jewries in other lands. The problem of civil disabilities of Jews in many European countries and the romantic ups and downs of Zionism have kept alive a steady interest among great masses of Jews in the United States.

The group loyalty of world Jewry has shown itself in the United States in the form of certain agencies that have been particularly active during and since the World War. The poverty, persecution and devastation of the great Jewish communities of eastern Europe occasioned the formation of the Joint Distribution Committee in America, in which—for the first time—reform, orthodox, and radical Jews sat together and labored in a common cause; the sixty-five million dollars they collected in America and disbursed abroad are less important to us than the group mind they developed in this common purpose. The Zionist movement, both as an attempt to provide a home in Palestine for the oppressed Jews of eastern Europe, and as a hope for the revival of Jewish nationality and culture in the Holy Land, has furnished a mode of resistance and a source of Jewish pride to many who felt themselves persecuted, either in their own persons or by proxy, in America. Such a distinguished American Jew as Justice Louis D. Brandeis of the United States Supreme Court felt his first call to Jewish allegiance or action in middle age, when he became an active Zionist and the president of the Zionist Organization of America. This influence operated on great numbers of Jews in the United States during the time of anti-Semitism abroad, and on still more during the period of anti-Semitism here. Anti-Semitism is a great incentive to Jewish loyalty, even as it disrupts the mind of the American people into conflicting groups.

4.

The most important reaction to anti-Semitism is the unconscious mode of response which we call the inferiority complex. Certainly the Jew has such a complex. He alternates boldness and timidity, because he is self-conscious in the presence of the non-Jew and therefore uncertain of himself. Jews change their names from land to land, assuming the Russian “witz” or the Polish “sky” for the previous German “sohn” as a patronymic—for all Jewish names were originally in the Hebrew form of Isaac ben (son of) Abraham; but when they come to the United States the “witz” and “sky” are foreign and many of them are dropped in turn. The Hebrew Moses becomes the German Morris, and then the English Montague. This is partly due to the adoption of the standard of taste of the new environment, partly to the desire not to be too aggressively Jewish in externals. As Friedman shows:

[106]The Jew is the underdog of society ... he has acquired a social sympathy and has become spiritually attuned to the harmonies of a juster social order. [107]Anti-Semitism is a challenge to Jewry to revivify its ideals. [108]Danger strengthens family ties. Perhaps the pure and devoted family life for which the Jews have been noted may be due to the fact that they preserved this defensive reaction of a group under persecution. [109]Persecution has left the mark of fear on the psychology of the Jew.... The Jew retired into himself, or to the society of his kind.

In the present state of ignorance, I cannot state how much of the Jewish character is hereditary and how much environmental, or how much of the latter is due to the inferiority complex and hence to anti-Semitism. Certainly there must be many traits of this origin. Thomas Babington Macaulay made this discovery in 1833, when he argued in the House of Commons in favor of removing civil disabilities from the Jews of England.