Ashkenazi Jews

“ In the eyes of the anti-Semite it is not only a question whether Jews, like other men, are sinners, or are greater sinners than others, but the Jew himself, from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, his very existence is an un- pardonable crime. ”

“ Each community of immigrants, bound together by the ties of language, habit, and particular home associations, will live in a separate quarter. They will instinctively cling to their mother tongue and bring up their children in it. The British Jews will despise their Polish and Roumanian brethren as ignorant, and will, in their turn, be despised by them as spurious Jews. The Spanish-speaking Sephardim will scorn and be scorned by the Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim. All the differences, social and national, which underlie the religious unity of Israel will emerge to the surface. ”

“ There were other elements which had created a milieu peculiarly favourable to the transplantation of the German craze. In the first place the medieval anti-Semitism was still an integral part of the polity of the empire. The Jews were cooped up in one huge ghetto in the western provinces, “marked out to all their fellow-countrymen as aliens, and a pariah caste set apart for special and degrading treatment” (Persecution of the Jews in Russia, 1891, p. 5) . ”

“ Treated as aliens in their native country, they renounce it with as little regret as if they had not been born and bred in it. There are, of course, both in Poland and in Russia proper Jews who would gladly conform in everything except religion. Such Jews deplore the estrangement of the Jew from the Gentile, and believe that the lot of the former can be improved only by the removal of the legal restrictions which perpetuate that estrangement. ”

“ It is the theory that any abnormal qualities in the Jews are due to the abnormal position of the Jews. They are traders rather than producers because they have no land of their own from which to produce, and they are cosmopolitans rather than patriots because they have no country of their own for which to be patriotic. They can no more become farmers while they are vagrant than they could have built the Temple of Solomon while they were building the Pyramids of Egypt. ”

“ Anti-Semitism is then exclusively a question of European politics, and its origin is to be found, not in the long struggle between Europe and Asia, or between the Church and the Synagogue, which filled so much of ancient and medieval history, but in the social conditions resulting from the emancipation of the Jews in the middle of the 19th century. ”

“ To recognise the reality of the Jewish problem is very vital for everybody and especially vital for Jews. To pretend that there is no problem is to precipitate the expression of a rational impatience, which unfortunately can only express itself in the rather irrational form of Anti-Semitism. In the controversies of Palestine and Syria, for instance, it is very common to hear the answer that the Jew is no worse than the Armenian. ”

“ But the bulk of the race still is a people of wanderers; and their hope of restoration little more than a beautiful, melancholy dream. There are at the present hour upwards of ten million Jews, scattered to the four corners of the earth. Nine of these millions live in Europe: two-thirds of them in Russia, Roumania and Poland. In the Middle Ages persecution in the West had driven them Eastwards. Lately persecution in the East has turned the tide Westwards. There is no rest for Israel. ”

“ I have lived to see people who accused me of Anti-Semitism become far more Anti-Semitic than I am or ever was. I have heard people talking with real injustice about the Jews, who once seemed to think it an injustice to talk about them at all. ”

“ What will be the verdict of history as to the effects upon Judaism of the harsh policy of Alexander III? Possibly in years to come, when the tears of her exiles and their present sufferings shall be forgotten, the historians of Israel may affirm that the Russian autocrat contributed, more than any other man, to the expansion and renovation of Judaism.
The Jews who are driven from Slavic soil by the law or by their own poverty, are forced to begin a new life under kindlier skies and in freer lands. ”

“ We therefore perceive in Judaism a general pervading anti-social element, which has been carried to its highest point by the historical development, in which Jews in this bad relation have zealously co-operated, a point at which it must necessarily dissolve itself. ”

“ It is important to distinguish between these two races of Jews in discussing the question of Jewish emancipation at the time of the Revolution. For whilst the Sephardim had shown themselves good citizens and were therefore subject to no persecutions, the Ashkenazim by their extortionate usury and oppressions had made themselves detested by the people, so that rigorous laws were enforced to restrain their rapacity. The discussions that raged in the National Assembly on the subject of the Jewish question related therefore mainly to the Jews of Alsace. ”

“ As regards the assertion that the Jew still looks upon himself as one in exile and a stranger in a foreign land, we propose to deal with it when we come to consider the attitude of the Jews towards the Zionist movement. Here it is sufficient to point out that the term “Jew” is far too wide to warrant any sweeping generalisation. There are Jews and Jews, just as there are Christians and Christians. History abundantly proves that the Jew in the past retained most of his clannishness where he was most grievously oppressed. ”

“ It seems that on account of the hatred which surrounds him on all sides, the German Jew is determined to estrange himself from Judaism as far as possible, and endeavors even to deny his race. No reform of the Jewish religion, however extreme, is radical enough for the educated German Jew. But the endeavors are vain. Even conversion itself does not relieve the Jew from the enormous pressure of German Anti-Semitism. The German hates the Jewish religion less than the race; he objects less to the Jews' peculiar beliefs than to their peculiar noses. ”

“ But both these views are only versions of the same view of a great American: "God never made one people good enough to rule another."
The primary point about Zionism is that, whether it is right or wrong, it does offer a real and reasonable answer both to Anti-Semitism and to the charge of Anti-Semitism. The usual phrases about religious persecution and racial hatred are not reasonable answers, or answers at all. These Jews do not deny that they are Jews; they do not deny that Jews may be unpopular; they do not deny that there may be other than superstitious reasons for their unpopularity. ”

“ That Judaism can only conserve its force if that force is attached to a racial and national basis is seen clearly in the fact that just those Jews in Germany who have been most loudly clamorous against the Zionists propose to have now what they call a German “Judentag,” which can certainly mean nothing unless it become Zionist in its tendency. ”

“ The only modern Jews who even approach this type would seem to be those who actually reside today in Africa, as in the case of our two portrait types from that region. Two possible explanations are open to us: either the great body of the Jews in Europe to-day—certainly all the Ashkenazim, who form upward of ninety per cent of the nation, and quite probably the Sephardim also, except possibly those in Africa—have departed widely from the parental type in Palestine; or else the original Semitic type was broad-headed, and, by inference, distinctly Asiatic in derivation ”

“ They seem to crack the polish of the dignified leaders of the Arab aristocracy and the Zionist school of culture, and reveal a volcanic substance of which only oriental creeds have been made. One day a wild Jewish proclamation is passed from hand to hand, denouncing disloyal Jews who refuse the teaching Hebrew; telling doctors to let them die and hospitals to let them rot, ringing with the old unmistakable and awful accent that bade men dash their children against the stones. ”

“ From the Royalist spies and the diplomatists the news was quickly conveyed to the anti-Semites in the City. Although the dangers of a Jewish immigration en masse and the scandal of a public synagogue had been averted, the enemies of the Jews—especially their competitors in trade—were not inclined to acquiesce without a struggle in the tacit toleration of even a small community of Hebrew merchants. ”

“ The second group, the “Ashkenazim” or German Jews, has most quickly adjusted itself to the life in America and has developed what might be called an American Judaism, in which liberal tendencies have prevailed and have played havoc with the traditions of the past, very often at the expense of the spirit of Judaism. Some of these congregations have made Sunday the Sabbath of their week, and the service is conducted in the English language with the Hebrew almost entirely eliminated. ”

“ Lastly, we have seen that the emancipation of the Jews did not come about until the end of the eighteenth and the middle of the nineteenth century—a period no longer of protest against the Church, but one of rebellion against all the prejudices of all the ages. It was not until the gospel of humanity, in its broadest sense, was accepted that the secular clamour against the Jewish portion of the human race was silenced ”

“ They looked on with scornful indifference while the Israelites plied their busy trade, aware though they might be that the wealth they accumulated was in a great measure drawn from their own coffers. They would spit in contempt as they passed a Jewish synagogue, but they would not raise a finger to cause its demolition or prevent any number of worshippers from crowding into it. All over Turkey, Arabia, and Persia, some Jews were to be found in every town, where they were allowed to live [Pg 309] and thrive, unless they broke some law or offended some faithful Islamite. ”

“ In the early days of the nineteenth century, all Israel were brethren. Even the pioneer colony of wealthy Sephardim—descendants of the Spanish crypto-Jews who had reached England via Holland—had modified its boycott of the poor Ashkenazic immigrants, now they were become an overwhelming majority. There was a superior stratum of Anglo-German Jews who had had time to get on, but all the Ashkenazic tribes lived very much like a happy family, the poor not stand-offish towards the rich, but anxious to afford them opportunities for well-doing. ”

“ And it comes in the more insidiously, because it seems to those under its influence that they are of all men the most distant from the false brethren Paul denounced. To their minds the truest guard against Judaizing is to deny that the Jews will ever be reinstated as a people, or be restored consequently to their own land. All the predictions of future blessedness and glory to Israel they turn over to Christendom now or to the church in glory. ”

“ These who are not even in a position to protect their co-religionists against a miser- able rabble of Arabs, Moors, or Persians, who thirst for their blood ! These Jews, the personification of Mam- mon, of whom by far the greater number own not even a stone whereon to lay their head, or rag to cover their nakedness ! This is the mockery which drops poison into the wound which hatred has struck. True, there are some few Jews superfluously rich whose rumoured millions attract attention far and wide, but what has Israel to do with these? ”

“ Under these circumstances the conservatism of the Jews in matters of religion can no longer astonish us. Rejected by the world, they lived in a world of their own. They had inherited from their ancestors an extended code of ceremonial observances, dietary laws, and minute and manifold directions for the conduct of life. In these they beheld the bulwark of their religion, the common bond that united the scattered members of their race. ”

“ Political Zionism owes its origin to the wave of Anti-Semitism which rose as a counter-movement to the emancipation of the Jew, that alienated many of the household of Israel from their religion. Thus it has the merit of awakening many Jews upon whom the ancestral faith had lost its hold to a sense of love and loyalty to the Jewish past. ”

“ The German Jews affect the quaint long coat and low wide-awake of the land of their origin. None of the Ashkenazim are permitted by their Rabbis to learn Arabic. Their domestic life is that of the Western Judenstadt. But they all cultivate the long ringlets which the Levitic law prescribes. Not less marked is their difference in character, “The Sephardim,” a recent traveller attests, “are tolerant, easy-going, and sociable. They earn their living largely by manual labour, are fishers at Tiberias, porters at Jerusalem and Jaffa. ”

“ Even those Jews who in time of prosperity might feel inclined to quit the Synagogue, are in the day of adversity driven back to it from a sense of chivalry. Persecution strengthens the feeling of fraternity, and the liberal instincts of the individual are sacrificed for the sake of the community, as in the days of old. But, if separatism is fatal to the Jews themselves, it is hardly a blessing to humanity at large. From the other point of view, the Gentile, anti-Semitism is not less an evil. ”

“ An unusually well-informed Briton says that anti-Semitism is always ready to break out in England upon sufficient cause, but it cannot break out against the inaccessible rich Jews who control in politics and international finance. It us probably true that the commonest real cause of anti-Semitism is the action of the international Jew who is often unknown and always secure, but the innocent victim of it is the poor Jew. ”