XVIII The Jew and the Christian
Of all animals, man is the most brutal. Naturalists still disagree as to the reason for his cruelty, but whatever it be, he has not often stopped to ask himself the cause. He hates and smites and slays, simply because he hates.
It is true that man’s historic brutalities are hidden under the gloss of what he calls patriotism or preservation of the race; but if the average man were asked the cause for his own unbridled hate of other races, he could give no intelligent answer.
That race hatred is a primitive passion is no doubt true, that it is seemingly ineffaceable is also true; for neither education nor religion has obliterated it; indeed both, strange to say, seem to have intensified it. Even the religion of Jesus Christ, whose main endeavour was to break down the tribal prejudices and hate of races, has not only failed to accomplish its object, but in its historic manifestation has in many cases aggravated it.
Whatever the cause, be it the old tribal spirit, the ethnic motive or the opposing religious dogmas; whatever has been endured by one or other of the races and for whatever cause, the Jewish race has suffered for all causes, has suffered everywhere, has suffered long, and has not yet seen the end of its sufferings anywhere.
There is no country in which the Jews have been in any large numbers, where they have not endured and are not now enduring persecution. There is no country to-day of which we can say that the causes which led to their persecutions have been removed.
This is as true of Germany as it is of Russia, and as true of the United States as it is of Austro-Hungary.
Every fair minded Jew knows this, and because he knows it he would rather not talk about it or hear it talked about.
Every fair minded Gentile knows it, although perhaps he would not be willing to acknowledge it, even to himself.
Undoubtedly, there must be reasons for an attitude so universal, and before we can apply any remedy, it is necessary to analyze the disease.
First: The Jews have been able to maintain the tribal spirit during periods when it was breaking down all around them. The tenacity necessary for this and the extremely exclusive methods used, blocked every avenue of social approach and aroused the suspicion of their neighbours. Whether these neighbours were Egyptians, Assyrians, Romans, Greeks, Slavs or Teutons, they hated the Jews because they kept themselves separate.
The feeling of superiority which the Jew felt, soon degenerated into contempt for the Gentile and was fostered by the fact that the mass of the people with whom he came in contact was beneath him culturally, using the word in its broadest sense.
The Jew could read and write when his Gentile neighbours did not know the alphabet.
The Gentile bowed down to stocks and stones, to priests and Pope, while the Jew held his head erect and covered, even in the presence of Jehovah.
The people who thus voluntarily excluded themselves from Gentile society were finally kept aloof by law, and when their masters became their equals, and in some respects their superiors, the way of approach was effectually blocked; until now, the aversion of the Gentile for the Jew is fixed, and seems almost ineradicable, much as the Jew may wish to free himself from it.
Second: Religious prejudice is another vital factor leading to this antipathy between Jew and Gentile; although it is not the only one. It manifested itself early in some of the New Testament writings, grew more intense as the church began to overshadow the synagogue, reached its height during the crusades and is still a compelling force among the common people all over the world.
The myth that Jews used the blood of Gentile children for their Passover feast very early gained currency, and this, coupled with the fact that it is the anniversary period of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, has always made Easter time a season of brutal outrages against the Jews.
In reality, the Church has never been quite blameless in these fanatical outbreaks; although it is also true that Church dignitaries at all times have tried to shield the Jewish victims. In most cases, however, they have made no effort to put out the fire until after it was well started, and consequently were too late.
Yet I firmly believe that religious prejudice alone does not account for this feeling, because it exists in irreligious and religious people alike; among those who are quite indifferent to the fact that Jesus lived and who have but a vague and distant interest in His crucifixion.
The late Prof. Nathaniel S. Shaler of Harvard, one of the most broad-minded observers, after an exhaustive study of the subject, comes to these conclusions.1
“The greater number of those who have helped me in this inquiry note that there is, on contact with those who are characteristic Jews, a distinct and peculiar state of mind aroused by the intercourse. They are conscious that the feeling is other than that which they experience when they meet those of their own race; but there is, as might be expected, no clear agreement as to the precise nature of the impression.
“So far as I have been able to gather, the state is emotional and instinctive, being in effect the same as that which is always excited by contact of racially different men. To support and explain this primitive emotion, there is a natural effort to find some peculiarities of aspect or demeanour in the neighbour. As to what these idiosyncrasies are, there is a considerable difference of opinion. The greater number of the observers agree that there is a failure on the part of the Jews to respond in like temper to the greeting which they send them; they agree further that there is generally a sense of avidity, a sense of the presence of the seeking, in the Jew, for immediate profit, a desire to win at once some advantage from the situation, such as is not immediately disclosed, however clear it might be to an interlocutor of his own race. Several have stated that the offense came from a feeling that the Jew neighbour was smarter than themselves, having keener wits and a mind more intent on gainful ends. Others state that the Israelite spirit makes a much swifter response to the greeting the stranger gives them than the Aryan, and that the acquaintance is forced to such a degree as to breed dislike.
“This last noted feature in the contact phenomena of Israelites and Aryans appears to me a matter of much importance, especially as it accords with my own experiences and with observations formed long before I began to devise and criticise theories on this subject. As one of the Deans of Harvard University, I have been for ten years in a position where I have to meet from year to year a number of young Hebrews. It has been evident to me from the first that these youths normally respond more quickly to my greeting than those of my own race, and that they divine and act on my state of mind with far greater celerity. They are in fact so quick that they are often where I am, in my slower way, about to be, before I am really there. This would make them at times seem irritating, indeed, presumptious, were it not interesting to me from a racial point of view. To those who are in nowise concerned with such questions, this alacrity is naturally exasperating, especially when the movement is not only one of wits but one of sympathies.
“We all know how disagreeable it is to have the neighbour call on us for some kind of affectionate response, before we are ready to be moved, and how certain is such a summons to dry the springs which else might have yielded abundantly. In our slow, Aryan way, we demand an introductory process on the part of the fellow man who would successfully appeal to our emotions. Our orators know this, and provide ample exordiums for their moving passages; none ventures in the manner of the Hebrew prophet to assume that his hearers will awaken at a cry.
“In observations made for me by young men, students in Harvard College, and thus under my own eyes, so to speak, I have confirmation of the hypothesis that an important part of the difficulty of social contact between these diverse people is due to the difference in the way their minds work when they come together. It is an unhappy fact that the last wave of anti-Semiticism, that which led to the semblance of persecution in Germany and to the abomination of the Dreyfus incident in France, swept across the Atlantic and affected to a considerable extent the social position of the Jews in the United States. They became unwelcome in clubs, and in hotels; their daughters were not admitted to certain private schools; and in various ways the unhappy people were made to feel the ancient burden as in this country it had not come upon them before.
“Of this resurgence of dislike, the Hebrew students had some, though not a serious share. Thirty years ago, when the Jews began to be an appreciable element among the students of this university, there was no evidence whatever of dislike to them. They took their places among their mates with no reference to their race; that indeed seemed, so far as I could discern, to be quite unnoted. Following on the last European epidemic of hatred to the Israelites, there has developed among this body of students an evident dislike for their fellows of that race. The feeling is by no means universal or intense; it is condemned by the greater part of the leaders of opinion among these young men; yet it is sufficient to be noticeable and to awaken keen regret in all those who love the catholic and human motive which so long has inspired that school. One of my helpers in the effort to find the reason for this state of mind summed up his acute observations in the statement that when one spoke to the Jew kindly, ‘the fellow climbed all over you.’”
I agree with nearly all Professor Shaler says; but I am sure that there are two facts which he does not sufficiently emphasize. First: The anti-Semitic feeling was carried to Harvard on the wave which came from France during the Dreyfus trial. This is important; for it proves my point that race antipathies are contagious, and that it does not matter whether the contagion springs from an ethical or unethical source.
The psychological law for this lies in the now fairly well explored field of the “mob” and is a common phenomenon from which many races have to suffer.
The second point made by Professor Shaler is that which refers to the Jewish mind. That quick response which the Jews give, which is so obnoxious to the Gentile, was certainly not disagreeable to Jehovah; for if we trust Holy Writ, He often held converse with them and made the quick Jewish mind the vehicle of His thought.
This quality of the Jewish mind made an Amos hear the roaring of the Lord’s voice in the lonely wilderness; it made an Isaiah hear the call of Jehovah amid the din of the traffic of Jerusalem, and brought to the ears of a Paul the heavenly voice, on the road to Damascus.
This quality of the Jewish mind also betrays his “seeking for immediate profit” and explains the repulsion felt by Professor Shaler’s friends, and felt by American people in academic circles and out of them.
In my judgment the difference between the Jew and other commercial people lies largely in the fact that the Jew cannot so well conceal his desire to make profit. It is written upon his mobile face and conveys itself in the shrug of his shoulders and the upturned palms of his hands.
For that reason the Jew is not successful in those forms of business which demand that their commercial features be hidden. He does not make a good life insurance agent, for here one must assume the rôle of a benefactor; nor does he make a good book agent; for in that work one must seem disinterestedly interested in the entire family or sell the book as a great favour to a few cultured people in the community.
Although the Jew, especially in America, becomes a fairly clever gambler, he is a poor match for the Gentile in the game of poker, and for a long time to come he will have to keep out of games in which the mask one assumes determines their success; even as he will have to continue to do business in scrap iron and not in railroads, in pawn-shops and not in politics.
In my experience with Jewish tradespeople in America, I am convinced that the sense of immediate profit is no less present in the Gentile mind than it is in that of the Jew, and that the Gentile does not always completely conceal it.
There is at least one sphere out of which the Jew keeps his business more carefully than does his Gentile competitor, and that is the sphere of religion.
I have yet to see Jewish hymnals invaded by advertisements, as are those of some Gentile congregations, and although the Jew is a direct descendant of those traffickers whom Jesus drove out of the temple, he has managed to keep his synagogue much more free from commercialism than his critics have their churches.
In the great and solemn moments of life, he is not nearly so practical as the funny papers would have us believe. At the birth of a child, at the marriage feast and at the death-bed, he shows his natural idealism and gives, forgives and forgets.
All this is not quite so true of other commercial peoples, notably the Americans. The following instance may not be typical nor may it prove the rule, and would no doubt be attributed to a Jew, had it not occurred in the college town in which I live and where all the clothing dealers are Gentiles, if not Christians.
One of them was suddenly taken to a distant city to be operated on for appendicitis, and the next day a local paper contained the following advertisement:
“I have gone to Rochester, Minn., to have my appendix cut out. This will be a great cut, but it will not compare with the cut I am making in clothing at my store on the corner of X and Y Streets.”
After the operation, while the man hovered between the unknown places, a second advertisement appeared.
“I am having a hot time holding down a bed in this hospital; but it does not compare with the hot time my competitors will have in meeting my prices in clothing at my store, on the corner of X and Y Streets.”
My readers will agree with me that this “beats the Jews.”
The question of business standards is a very different matter, and that I wish to discuss in another chapter.
I have not set myself the task of playing the apologist for the Jew or for any of the groups of which I treat. I freely acknowledge that there are disagreeable qualities in the Jew which explain in a measure, at least, the prejudice aroused by him.
Foremost, I suppose, is the type which, when it is most pronounced, is apt to be unpleasant and unsympathetic.
The offenses against good taste in dress are marked in many of them; but that lies more in the air with which the clothes are worn than in the clothes themselves. They are usually such as fashion dictates, and not in all cases more extreme than those worn by many Gentiles. The love of display is to some degree common to both Jew and Gentile; but is more noticeable among Jewish women, because they cannot conceal their feelings as well as the Gentile woman can.
The Jewish woman who has “arrived” and knows it, wants the whole world to know it also; while the Gentile woman, especially the Gentile American woman, wears her first imported gown and diamonds as if her swaddling clothes had been made in Paris and her original baby pins encrusted with jewels.
Still more apparent is a certain arrogance, a most annoying characteristic, especially in a people which ought to have the quality of humility in a large degree. The Jew recognizes this in his fellow Jew if not in himself, and no one more deplores it.
He calls it Jewish chuzpa, Jewish “cheek,” and it is, perhaps, one of the greatest causes for the social barriers raised against him. It is found in the Jewish beggar and in the Jewish millionaire.
It is an ancient fault; for long ago, “Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked.” It is a quality which leads many eminent Jews to acts of unwisdom, such as protests against Christmas exercises in the public schools; the resolution passed by a recent conference of Jewish Rabbis, that America is not a Christian country, and other acts equally unadvised.
This, also, has its causes, which are found among many peoples suddenly released from disabilities and given social and political rights.
In order to introduce my main theme, the relation of the Jew to the Christian, I have tried conscientiously to analyze the causes which obstruct the social contact between Jew and Gentile.
There are real antagonisms arising from the Jewish mind and habits, which are historic inheritances and cannot be easily overcome; but which have made it often a hard task for the Christian to be a real Christian towards his Jewish neighbour.
There are other barriers, however, and they exist first, in the historic development of Judaism and second, in the nature and content of historic Christianity.
The Jew is heterogeneous in cultural development. There are Orthodox Jews, wrapped in cabalistic mysticism, who have never moved an inch along the pathway of progress; to whom not only each word written in the law of Moses has divine origin and divine meaning, but to whom each word has as many meanings, as it has letters and dots and dashes. Upon these Jews, all the fetters of legalism are still rivetted, and to them, tradition and revelation are one and the same.
There are less Orthodox Jews who have progressed as far as the philosopher Mendelssohn led them a century ago.
There are nationalistic Jews to whom Zion is beckoning, and who hear the voice of the prophet bidding them “possess the land” and promising that “the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion, with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads” and that then, “sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”
There are modern Jews, who have forsaken the law and the ordinances, the Sabbath and the full moons, to whom the reformed synagogue is merely a connecting link with the historic past.
There are rationalistic Jews to whom Karl Marx is the Messiah, and the Socialistic commonwealth, Jerusalem; and there are just Jews, who eat Kosher food because they like it, to whom Mammon is the Messiah and their business the Holy of Holies.
To none of these does Christianity in its historic development appeal very strongly: First, because becoming a Christian means separation from the race; for heterogeneous as the Jews are in cultural development, so homogeneous are they in their racial consciousness. This is something which baffles analysis; it is the strongest example of race cohesion which we have. People who have lost national unity, who have diverged widely in religious beliefs and ceremonial observances, who are as far apart in culture as Greek and Barbarian, are still one as a race, and the man is Anathema who breaks the racial tie. It matters not whether he does it to escape persecution, to gain preferment, or from deep conviction; to his fellow Jews it is always apostasy.
That the broad-minded Jew may have a race consciousness which breaks through the ties of blood, they admit; but he must not become a Christian, even if to him Christianity is the only escape from the narrow tribal idea and from his own outgrown race consciousness, into the broader realm where he can say that he is a member of the human race, and as such is under the obligations of brotherhood to all men.
In the second place, Christianity in its ceremonies, its ecclesiastical practices and its theology, is repellent to all these Jews, from the extreme radical to the extremest Orthodox.
Anything which has even a semblance of idolatry, the slightest suspicion of Polytheism, must be obnoxious to the Jew; for he has been smitten by hail, drought and pestilence, and has been led into captivity because his unregenerate nature delighted in the worship of Baalim, and because he forsook Jehovah who dwelt between the Cherubim and the Seraphim.
Then, too, the methods used to win the Jew to Christianity have aroused his opposition. In the Old World, until comparatively recently, he was forced once a year to attend church and listen to a sermon preached with the avowed object of his conversion. Needless to say, it rarely, if ever, converted him.
The modern method as it manifests itself in Jewish Missions is no less repellent to him; although he is not forced to listen to the missionaries’ sermons. Naturally, the converted Jew, who is an official converter, is usually under suspicion, although that suspicion is not always justified.
With this question of race consciousness and habits, the Jew alone can deal, and he, unfortunately, is not always in the frame of mind required to adjust himself to the feelings of the Gentiles. He will therefore have to bear the consequences which lie in the social realm and may soon reach into the economic.
The task of historic Christianity in its relation to the Jew is not an easy one. It cannot unmake itself or readily adjust itself to his likes and dislikes in theology; nor can it recede from its endeavour to make propaganda for the faith which it believes should be universal.
I have the conviction that when Christ comes fully to His own in the church, He will also come to His own in the synagogue; certainly no sooner, and perhaps not much later.
When He emerges from the tangle of Greek philosophy, Roman legalism and Byzantine traditionalism—when “in deed and in truth” He becomes the Gentile’s Messiah, He will also become the Messiah of the Jew.
As a working basis for the right relation between Jew and Gentile, I wish to quote Rabbi Sonnenschein, formerly of Des Moines, Iowa, in words spoken by him to a colleague in the Christian ministry.
“I want to live so, that when you see me, you will say: ‘There goes Rabbi Sonnenschein, who is a Jew; yet he is a better Christian than I am.’ And I want you to live so, that when I see you, I will say: ‘That man is a Christian; but he is a better Jew than I am.’”