The American Jew as Patriot, Soldier and Citizen

by Simon Wolf

Complaint is also made that they, as far as possible, avoid military service. This is doubtless true, but the reasons for it are evident. For the Jewish soldier there is no chance of promotion, and when he retires after service, he is, as a rule, subject to the same restrictions as others of his race. In spite of this fact the number of them in the conscription of 1886 was over 40,000.

I find everywhere in discussing this subject, a complaint that the Israelites, wherever they are allowed to exist, get the better of the Russian peasant. The difficulty is that the life of the Israelite is marked by sobriety, self-denial and foresight; and, whatever may be the kindly qualities ascribed to the Russian peasant, these qualities are rarely, if ever, mentioned among them.

It is also urged against the Israelites in Russia that they are not patriotic, but in view of the policy pursued regarding them the wonder is that any human being should expect them to be patriotic.

There is also frequent complaint against Jewish fanaticism, and recently collections of extracts from the Talmud have been published here as in western Europe, and even in the United States, to show that Israelites are educated in bitter and undying hate of Christians, and taught not only to despise but to despoil them; and it is insisted that the vast majority of the Israelites in Russia have, by ages of this kind of instruction and by the simple laws of heredity, been made beasts of prey with claws and teeth especially sharp, and that the peasant must be protected from them.

Lately this charge has been strongly reiterated, a book having appeared here in which the original Hebrew of the worst Talmudic passages, with translations of them, are placed in parallel columns. It seems to be forgotten that the Israelites would be more than human if such passages did not occur in their sacred writings. While some of these passages antedate the establishment of Christianity, most of them have been the result of fervor under oppression and of the appeal to the vengeance of Jehovah in times of persecution; and it would be but just to set against them the more kindly passages, especially the broadly and beautifully humane teachings which are so frequent in the same writings.

An eminently practical course would be to consider the development of Judaism in the United States, Great Britain, and other countries where undeniably those darker features of of the Talmud have been more and more blotted out from Jewish teaching, and the unfortunate side of Talmudic influence more and more weakened.

But this charge of Talmudic fanaticism is constantly made, and Russians, to show that there is no hatred of Israelites, as such, point to the fact that the Karaites, who are non-Talmudic, have always been treated with especial kindness.

To this the answer would seem to be that the Karaites are free from fanaticism because they have been so long kindly treated, and that this same freedom and kindness which has made them unobjectionable to Russian patriotism would, in time, probably render the great mass of Israelites equally so.

There is no need of argument, either in the light of history or of common sense, to prove that these millions of Israelites in Russia are not to be rendered less fanatical by the treatment to which they are subjected.

To prove that the more bitter utterances in the Talmud complained of do not necessarily lead Israelites to hate Christians, and indeed to show that the teachings which the Israelites receive in countries where they have more freedom lead to a broad philanthropy of the highest type, I have been accustomed, in discussing the subject with Russians, to point to such examples of the truest love for human kind as those shown by Judah Touro in the United States, Sir Moses Montefiore in England, Nathan de Rothschild in Austria, James de Rothschild and Baron Hirsch in France, and multitudes of other cases, citing especially the fact of the extensive charities carried on by Israelites in all countries, and the significant circumstance that the first considerable contribution from the United States to the Russian famine fund came from a Jewish synagogue in California, with the request that in the use of it no discrimination should be made between Jews and Christians. Cases like these would seem to do away effectually with the idea, that Jewish teachings necessarily inculcate hostility to people of other religious beliefs.