(a) “When the Jew gives his thought, his devotion, to the cause of the workers and of the dispossessed, of the disinherited of the world, the radical quality within him there, too, goes to the roots of things, and in Germany he becomes a Marx and a Lassalle, a Haas and an Edward Bernstein; in Austria he becomes a Victor Adler and a Friedrich Adler; in Russia, a Trotzky. Just take for a moment the present situation in Russia and in Germany. The revolution set creative forces free, and see what a large company of Jews was available for immediate service. Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviki, and Bolsheviki, Majority and Minority Socialists—whatever they be called ... Jews are to be found among the trusted leaders and the routine workers of all those revolutionary parties.”
(Rabbi J. L. Magnes in his address delivered at the opening session of the first Jewish Labor Congress, January 16, 1919, New York City. See the Jewish Forum, February, 1919, P. 722.)
(b) “The Jew, therefore, does take an active part in revolutions; and he participates in them in so far as he is a Jew, or more correctly in so far as he remains Jewish.”
(Bernard Lazare, “Anti-Semitism: Its History and Causes,” p. 312. Published by International Library Publishing Co., New York, 1903.)
(c) “We must not, however, leave these problems (social) and this reform (social) outside of our Jewish thought, our Jewish activities. We must not let them be taken by active Christians and stamped as specifically Christian.”
(Rabbi Montefiore, “Outlines of Liberal Judaism,” pp. 266 and 267. London, 1912.)
(d) “Das Volk, a Jewish periodical published in America, writes in 1905:
“‘One cannot blame us that people with different mentalities and views as Social Democrats, Anarchists, and so on, are filled with our socialist territorial ideas, and enter in our ranks in order to struggle for a better future of the Jewish people. On the contrary, it shows that life itself has raised our ideal and drives all under our banner.’”
(The Jewish Life, March, 1906, p. 173. Jewish newspaper published in Russian, found in New York Public Library.)
(e) The following quotation is an estimate by Bernard Lazare, Jewish writer, of the part which was and is played by the Jews in the revolutionary movement throughout the world: