Nothing of all this came to pass; exactly the opposite happened. Not only were the barriers in the way of a prosperous, free development of Jewry not removed, but fresh hindrances without number were multiplied. Some spectre of the middle ages, some power of darkness, put brakes upon the wheel of history. It first appeared in the West, under the name anti-Semitism, among the dregs of European society. But in its earliest abode it was and is still met with an abrupt rebuff on the part of the most intelligent circles, those whom even the present age of decadence has not succeeded in robbing of belief in lofty moral ideals. Anti-Semitism in the West is in anima vili. Its cult is confined to a certain party, which enjoys a rather scandalous reputation. But there are countries in which this power of darkness, in the coarser form of Judophobia[13], has cast its baleful spell upon the most influential members of society and upon the press. There it has ripened noxious fruit. Mocking at the exalted ideals and the ethical traditions of religious and thinking mankind, Judophobia shamelessly professes the dogma of misanthropy. Its propaganda is bringing about the moral ruin of an immature society, not yet confirmed in ethical or truly religious principles. Upon its victims, the Jews, it has the same effect as the misfortunes of the middle ages, which were meted out to our hoary people with overflowing measure, and against which it learnt to assume an armor of steel. The recent severe trials are having the same result as the persecutions of former days: they do not weaken, on the contrary, they invigorate the Jewish spirit, they spur on to thought, they stimulate the pulse of the people.
"The hammer shivers glass,
But iron by its blows is forged."[14]
The historical process Jewry has undergone repeatedly, it must undergo once again. But now, too, in this blasting time of confusion and dispersion, of daily torture and the horrors of international conflict, "the keeper of Israel slumbereth not and sleepeth not." The Jewish spirit is on the alert. It is ever purging and tempering itself in the furnace of suffering. The people which justly bears the name of the veteran of history withdraws and falls into a revery. It is not a narrow-minded fanatic's flight from the world, but the concentrated thought of a mourner. Jewry is absorbed in contemplation of its great, unparalleled past. More than ever it is now in need of the teachings of its past, of the moral support and the prudent counsels of its history, its four thousand years of life crowded with checkered experiences.
XII. THE TEACHINGS OF JEWISH HISTORY
Let us return now to the starting point of our discussion, and endeavor to establish the thoughts and lessons to be deduced from the course of Jewish history.
Above all, Jewish history possesses the student with the conviction that Jewry at all times, even in the period of political independence, was pre-eminently a spiritual nation, and a spiritual nation it continues to be in our own days, too. Furthermore, it inspires him with the belief that Jewry, being a spiritual entity, cannot suffer annihilation: the body, the mold, may be destroyed, the spirit is immortal. Bereft of country and dispersed as it is, the Jewish nation lives, and will go on living, because a creative principle permeates it, a principle that is the root of its being and an indigenous product of its history. This principle consists first in a sum of definite religious, moral, or philosophic ideals, whose exponent at all times was the Jewish people, either in its totality, or in the person of its most prominent representatives. Next, this principle consists in a sum of historical memories, recollections of what in the course of many centuries the Jewish people experienced, thought, and felt, in the depths of its being. Finally, it consists in the consciousness that true Judaism, which has accomplished great things for humanity in the past, has not yet played out its part, and, therefore, may not perish. In short, the Jewish people lives because it contains a living soul which refuses to separate from its integument, and cannot be forced out of it by heavy trials and misfortunes, such as would unfailingly inflict mortal injury upon less sturdy organisms.
This self-consciousness is the source from which the suffering Jewish soul draws comfort. History speaks to it constantly through the mouth of the great apostle who went forth from the midst of Israel eighteen hundred years ago: "Call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were enlightened, ye endured a great conflict of sufferings; partly, being made a gazing-stock both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly, becoming partakers with them that were so used.... Cast not away therefore your boldness, which hath great recompense of reward" (Epistle to the Hebrews, x, 32-34, 35).
Jewish history, moreover, arouses in the Jew the desire to work unceasingly at the task of perfecting himself. To direct his attention to his glorious past, to the resplendent intellectual feats of his ancestors, to their masterly skill in thinking and suffering, does not lull him to sleep, does not awaken a dullard's complacency or hollow self-conceit. On the contrary, it makes exacting demands upon him. Jewish history admonishes the Jews: "Noblesse oblige. The privilege of belonging to a people to whom the honorable title of the 'veteran of history' has been conceded, puts serious responsibilities on your shoulders. You must demonstrate that you are worthy of your heroic past. The descendants of teachers of religion and martyrs of the faith dare not be insignificant, not to say wicked. If the long centuries of wandering and misery have inoculated you with faults, extirpate them in the name of the exalted moral ideals whose bearers you were commissioned to be. If, in the course of time, elements out of harmony with your essential being have fastened upon your mind, cast them out, purify yourselves. In all places and at all times, in joy and and in sorrow, you must aim to live for the higher, the spiritual interests. But never may you deem yourselves perfect. If you become faithless to these sacred principles, you sever the bonds that unite you with the most vital elements of your past, with the first cause of your national existence."