The American Jew as Patriot, Soldier and Citizen

by Simon Wolf

THE RUSSIAN JEWISH REFUGEES IN AMERICA.

CONSIDERED IN CONNECTION WITH THE GENERAL SUBJECT OF IMMIGRATION IN ITS HISTORICAL AND ECONOMIC ASPECTS.

(Note.—In the preparation of the following article the editor has utilized the contents of a paper read by him before the Board of Presidents of the National Societies of Philadelphia, as a member of that body, December 12th, 1891).

A review of the subject of American Jewish citizenship necessarily involves a consideration of the recent accretions to the Jewish population in this country through the immigration of those of the expatriated Russian Jews who have found and are yet finding their way to our shores. The influx and settlement here of this practically new element of the population has attracted a large measure of public attention, notwithstanding the fact that it comprises an average of not over 8 per cent. of the total immigration. This has been due not only to the extraordinary causes of the influx, but also to the fact that the settlement of a large number of the newcomers in the seabord cities has caused some disturbances in the labor market at those points.

The influence of this movement on the future development of American Judaism is beyond our immediate purview, and its present bearing on the Jewish community need be considered but incidentally. In view, however, of the repeated changes in our immigration laws since 1882, when the immigration of the Russian Jews began to reach its present marked proportions by reason of their expulsion from their homes, and of the agitation for such further legislation as will result in a practically complete disbarment of these and other unfortunate victims of European oppression, we may here properly proceed to a brief consideration of the social, political and economic aspects of the question, both as regards the Russian Jewish immigrants and immigration in general.

The earliest immigration movement of which a record has come down to our day is that which carried the Hebrew Abram from "Ur of the Chaldees" westward to the plains of Canaan. It carried with it the latent energy whose force has been the most potent in the world's affairs; which has become the moving spirit of the Caucasian race, and which afforded the vehicle of development for Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The far-reaching consequences of that first of recorded immigrations need not be dwelt upon; it forms the prologue to the history of civilization, a history whose epilogue is yet to be enacted, and whose processes are not only still a living reality in the present, but are proceeding towards an infinitely greater compass in the future.

The migration of Abraham is to be regarded, not only from the historic standpoint, but in the most abstract scientific sense, as a force, resulting as all forces must, from some cause of equal or greater potentiality, and moving, as all forces do, along the lines of least resistance. The movement proceeded, as we know, from the East, away from, if not out of, the cradle of the Caucasian race; from where expansion was hemmed and development was hampered, towards the West and South where the possibilities of both were greater and the requisite conditions more favorable. This was forty centuries ago; from that time to the present the movement has still been westward and southward, and by virtue of the same natural law that operated in the early dawn of history, its course is manifestly destined to trend in the same direction for some time longer.

In the meantime, throughout all the course of the historic past, migration after migration has successively marked the greatest epochs in the annals of mankind. The migration of Abraham was followed by many others, none indeed of more far-reaching significance, but all or nearly all of greater magnitude, and not a few of them of vast importance as factors in the history of man. Some centuries after Abraham's time the migration of the Canaanite Cadmus westward to the Isles of Greece, or perhaps the migration of the Pelasgic tribes westward from Asia Minor, opened the first chapter in the history of Europe. Still later, through the great migrations at the close of the Roman period, and in the early Middle Ages, the barbarians of Europe became imbued with the leaven of Jewish ideals in the form of Christianity, and further still in the course of time the migrations of the hunted Jews from Germany to Poland, and from Spain to Holland and to England, influenced permanently the current of the world's affairs. Subsequently, the migration of the Pilgrim Fathers to North America left an indelible impress in our modern civilization, and finally the migrations of yesterday and to-day, trending still westward to the Pacific, and the offshoots of the current to Australia, to New Zealand and to South America, have opened in the history of mankind a chapter which the Twentieth Century will not complete.

It is remarkable that of all these notable migrations, that of Abraham may be considered as not only first in point of time, but also as altogether normal in its character. In all the later historic movements of this kind, the element of force is more or less definitely manifest, but Abraham's migration was a peaceful one, and when he took up the sword at all, it was only to benefit the people among whom he dwelt. We find him earnestly pleading the cause of his adopted countrymen, notwithstanding their great wickedness; he bought and paid for even his last resting place rather than accept it as a gift, and in general he figures on the historic horizon as in all respects not only a typical but a model immigrant.

Had the great migrations of later times been as peaceful as that of Abraham, the annals of humanity would have been less troubled than we find them. But the subsequent movements of population were migrations of masses of people, forced from their native soil by extraneous pressure or lured away by the incitements of conquest, or by both agencies combined, and such movements must in their very nature, be violent and sanguinary.