This is supported by a text from the bible. "Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son," etc. *
* Deuteronomy vii, 3.
A religion which forbids a man to marry the woman he loves because she is of a different faith is a separatist religion.
Another question in this Jewish catechism reads: "Are we commanded still to keep ourselves distinct from other nations?"
To which the child answers, "Assuredly," etc. Observe the word "still," in the question, which shows the old law is as binding as ever. How can the rabbis justify such unfriendly teaching? And how reconcile it with their protests against anti-Semitism? If the Gentile will not take the Jew into his club, the Jew shuts his home to the Gentile. But why should not a Jew marry a Gentile? Moses and Ezra will not allow it? And why should the twentieth century be bound by Moses and Ezra? How can God be a universal father, and all peoples his children, if it is a crime deserving of death, as the bible plainly announces in many places, for one of his children to love another not of the same faith? This is the negation of brotherhood in the holiest sense of the word. The Catholic who denies salvation to all outside his church is not worse than the orthodox Jew. The Hebrew who has the courage to marry the woman he loves, in spite of all the theological fulminations of Moses and Ezra, does more to bring Israel into intimate fellowship with the world of to-day and more to unite all races in the bonds of brotherhood than all the rabbis of Jewry. The way to free Israel is to educate the Jew away from the rabbi, and, entre nous, rabbi is only another name for priest.
The bible evidently does not believe either in equality or in brotherhood. Will it be right to allow the teachers in our public schools, where all races and creeds are wrapped in the folds of one flag, to read from a book that teaches the boys and girls, who will be the men and women of the future, to hate one another? And yet the bible is guilty, we regret to say, of that very crime. Not only does it make it a capital crime for a Jew to love a Gentile, but he must not even be "on the square" with him.
Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother.... Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury. *
Evidently the stranger is not a brother, else why does it say again:
Of the children of the strangers... shall ye buy... they shall be your bondmen forever: but over your brethren the children of Israel ye shall not rule one over another with vigor. **
and again: