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VICTIMS, OR
PERSECUTORS?
From the earliest record of the Jews' contact with other;
nations, no long period of years has ever passed without the
charge arising that the Jews constitute "a people within a
people, a nation within a nation." When this charge is made
today it is vehemently denied by men who pose as the
defenders of their people, and the denial is more or less
countenanced by all the Jews of every class. Yet there is
nothing more clearly stated in Jewish teaching, nor more
clearly indicated in Jewish life, than that the charge is
true. But whether the truth should be used against the
Jews is quite another question.
If the Jews are a nation, their nationality founded upon the
double ground of race and religion, it is certainly outside
the bounds of reason that they should be asked or expected
to de-racialize, de-nationalize and de-religionize
themselves; but neither is it to be expected that they
should bitterly denounce those who state the facts. It is
only on a basis of facts that a solution of any problem can
come. Where the blame attaches is here: that the evident
facts are denied, as if no one but the Jews themselves knew
that there are such facts.
If the Jews are to be continuously a nation, as they teach,
and if the condition of "a nation within a nation' becomes
more and more intolerable, then the solution must come
through one of two things: a separation of the "nation" from
the rest of the nations, or an exaltation of the "nation"
above the rest of the nations. There is a mass of evidence
in Jewish writings that the leaders expect both of
these conditions to come -- a separate nation and a
super-nation; indeed the heart of Jewish teaching
is that Jewry is a separate nation now, and on the
way to becoming a super-nation. It is only those
appointed to address the Gentiles who deny this: the real
rabbinate of Judah does not deny.
JEWS OBJECT TO
"AMERICANISM."
In any investigation of the Jewish Question, the student is
struck over and over again by the fact that what the Jews
most complain of, they themselves began. They complain of
what they call anti-Semitism; but it must be apparent to the
dullest mind that there could never have been such a thing
as anti-Semitism were there not first such a thing as
Semitism. Then take the complaint about the Jews having to
live in ghettos. The ghetto is a Jewish invention. In the
beginning of the invasion of European cities, and centuries
later of American cities, the Jews always lived by
themselves because they wanted to; because they believed the
presence of Gentiles contaminated them. Jewish writers,
writing for Jews, freely admit this; but in writing for
Gentiles, they refer to the ghetto as an illustration of
Gentile cruelty. The idea of contamination originated with
the Jews, it is an old oriental survival; it spread by
suggestion to the Gentiles. So with this fact of the
separate "nation"; it was the Jews who first recognized it,
first insisted upon it and have always sought to realize
that separateness both in thought and action.
More, the true and normal type of Jew believes that the
influence of Americanism, or of any civilized Gentile state,
is harmful to Judaism. That is a serious statement and no
amount of Gentile assertion will be sufficient to confirm
it. Indeed, it is such a statement as the Gentile mind could
not have evolved, because the trend of Gentile feeling is
all in the opposite direction, namely that Americanization
is a good thing for the Jew. It is from authoritative Jewish
sources we learn this fact, that what we call civilizing
influences are looked upon as being at enmity with Judaism.
It is not the Gentile who says that Jewish ideals, as
ideals, are incompatible with the life of our country; it is
the Jew who says so. It is he who inveighs against
Americanism, not the American who inveighs against Judaism.
Americanism is yet unfinished, Judaism has been complete for
centuries. While no American would think of pointing to any
part of the country or to any group as representing the true
and final type of Americanism, the Jews quite unhesitatingly
point to parts of the world and to certain groups as
representing the true type of Judaism.
Where is the type to be found which Jewish writers recognize
as the true one? The Jew of the ghetto is held up in Jewish
treatises as the norm of Judaism. A famous rabbi of the
synagogue of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, on Central
Park, New York, was Dr. D. de Sola Pool. He is the author of
the following words:
"In the ghetto the observance of Judaism was natural and
almost inevitable. The regimen of Jewish life was the
atmosphere that was breathed."
Another famous Jewish rabbi, Dr. M. H. Segal, expresses the
view that Jewry in the more modern portions of Europe and
America was really kept alive by the infusions of immigrants
from Poland and Lithuania. Asserting, in agreement with
other Jewish leaders, that the Jewish center of the world
had been in Russia and Poland until just before the 1914
war, Dr. Segal says:
"The war (1914-1918) has destroyed the last traces of the
declining Jewish society which had dragged out its feeble
existence in the semi-medieval ghettos of Poland and
Lithuania. With all their growing feebleness, these
communities were yet the last refuge of Judaism in the
Dispersion. In them there still survived something of the
old Jewish life, some of the old Jewish institutions,
practices and traditions. These communities also supplied
such vitality as they could afford to the attenuated and
atrophied Judaism in the communities of the more modern
states of Europe and America."
The idea is not at all uncommon -- that large infusions of
"real Jews" from the Old World ghettos are desirable and
necessary in order to keep Judaism alive in countries like
the United States. Israel Friedlaender whose name is held in
honor by the Jews, also recognized the service of the ghetto
stream to Judaism. In his lecture, "The Problem of Judaism
in America," he speaks about the de-Judaizing tendencies of
absolute freedom, such as the Jew has always enjoyed in the
United States. This tendency, he says, is corrected in two
ways -- by anti-Semitic influences and "by the large stream
of Jewish emigration, on the other hand, which, proceeding
from the lands of oppression to the lands of freedom,
carries with it, on or under the surface, the preserving and
reviving influences of the ghetto." This same authority, in
an article entitled "The Americanization of the Jewish
Immigrant," frankly prefers the Jew fresh from the ghetto to
the Jew who has been influenced t by American life.
To "Americanize" means, in our ordinary speech, to bring
into sympathy with the traditions and institutions of the
United States, but the Jews do not mean only the United
States when they say "America." They mean also South and
Central America -- where so many revolutions have occurred.
There are large numbers of Jews in Argentina, and many are
found in other countries. It would probably give a wrong
slant to the fact to say that the Jewish leaders are wholly
anti-America, but it is true to say that they are against
the "Americanization" of the Jewish immigrant stream. That
is, that the trend of "Americanism" is so different from the
trend of "Judaism" that the two are in conflict. This does
not indicate treason toward American nationalisms perhaps,
so much as it indicates loyalty toward Jewish nationalism.
But the reader must himself be the judge, on the facts given
in this book, as to how far the difference really goes and
the effect of the struggle between the two ideas. The fact
of the antagonism which exists between the two is clear and
complete. The Gentiles do not notice that antagonism, but
the Jews are always and everywhere keenly aware of it. This
throws a very strong light on all the revolutionary programs
to break up the present control of society, by sowing
dissensions between so-called capital and labor, by
cheapening the dignity of government through corrupt
politics, by trivializing the mind of the people through
theaters and movies, but it is in the study of Jewish
money-making out of war that the clues are found to most of
the great abuses of which the Jews have been guilty. "Wars
are the Jews' harvests," is an ancient saying. Their
predilection for the quartermaster's department has been
observed anciently and modernly. Their interest being mostly
in profits and not in national issues; their traditional
loyalty being to the Jewish nation, rather than to any other
nation; it is natural that they should be found to be the
merchants of goods and information in times of war -- that
is, the war profiteers and spies. As the unbroken program is
traced through the Revolutionary War, through the Civil War,
and through the Great War*, the only change observable is
the increasing power and profit of the Jews. Although the
number of Jews resident in the American colonies was small,
there were enough to make a mark on the Revolutionary War;
and while there was no wholesale legislation against Jews as
there was in the Civil War, there were the same actions
against individuals for the same causes which in 1861-5
obtained more extensively.
JEWS AND THE "RELIGIOUS
PERSECUTION" CRY
No intelligent Jew in the United States ever was asinine
enough to declare that the Jewish Question is a religious
question and that investigation of that question in these
articles constituted "religious persecution." But it is
apparently all that remains for the "Gentile fronts" to
shout about. From what can be learned of them they
are for the most part men of no religion themselves and they
use the term "religious persecution" as a red rag which they
think will stir people into action. It is curious how the
cry of "religious persecution" is used to evoke the spirit
of persecution against the alleged persecutors.
Neither directly nor by implication is it held in these
articles that the Jewish Question is a religious question.
On the contrary, supported by the highest Jewish
authorities, it is firmly stated that the Jewish Question is
one of race and nationality.
There is no religious persecution of the Jews in the United
States, unless the agitation of the various humane societies
for the abolition of "kosher killing" may be considered as
such -- the method of slaughtering animals for food which is
needlessly cruel. But even this objection can only with
difficulty be stretched into interference with "the religion
of the Jews." The Jewish method of slaughter as now
practiced is not commanded in the Old Testament but in the
Talmud, and is, therefore, not religious in the
authoritative sense, but traditional. Moreover, there is
positive evidence that modern methods achieve the Jewish
purpose (the disposal of the blood of the carcass) much
better than does the Jewish method. This is the only
instance where even remotely the religion of the Jews has
been touched.
The fact is that while there is no "religious persecution".
Of the Jews, there is very much real religious persecution
by the Jews. That is one of the outstanding
characteristics of organized Jewish life in the United
States, its active, unceasing, powerful and virulent attacks
upon any and all forms of Christianity which may chance to
come to public notice. Now and again we hear of outbreaks of
sectarian bigotry between Catholics and Protestants, but
these are not to be compared with the steady, relentless,
alert, anti-Christian activity of the Jewish organizations.
There are doctrinal disputes within the Christian Churches,
but none that challenge the basis of Christianity itself;
organized Judaism, however, is not content with doctrinal
disputation, but enlists its vast commercial and political
power against everything that it regards as, in its own
words, "Christological manifestations."
No President of the United States has yet dared to take his
inaugural oath on the open pages of the New Testament -- the
Jews would denounce him. Various governors of American
states, having used the word "Christian" in their
Thanksgiving proclamations, have been obliged to teach
Americanism in our cities because it held that Christianity
and good citizenship were synonymous!
No public man in America has ever given public evidence of
his Christian faith without rebuke from the Jews. Not only
do the Jews disagree with Christian teaching --
which is their right and no one questions it -- but they
excise it on demand of the Jews. Everything that would
remind the child in school that he is living in the midst of
a Christian civilization, in a nation declared by its
Supreme Court to be founded on the Christian principles, has
been ordered out of the public schools on Jewish demand. In
a nation and at a time when a minority of Jews can print
every year a record of the apologies they have extorted from
public officials for "having inadvertently used the term
'Christian'," it is desirable that this charge of "religious
persecution" should be placed where it belongs.
The Jew glories in religious persecution as the American
glories in patriotism. Religious prejudice is the Jews'
chief expression of their own patriotism. It is the only
well-organized, active and successful form of religious
prejudice in the country because they have succeeded in
pulling off the gigantic trick of making not their own
attitude, but any opposition to it, bear the stigma
of "prejudice" and "persecution." That is why the Jew uses
these terms so frequently. He wants to label the other
fellow first. That is why any investigation of the Jewish
Question is so wickedly advertised as anti-Semitism -- the
Jew knows the advantage of labeling the other man.
This theme "religious persecution," will not be found
anywhere within the whole range of the Jewish Question,
except on the Jewish side. There is, in the United States, a
religious prejudice, but it is strictly Yiddish. If the
Christian population bothered one-hundredth-thousandth part
as much about Jewish religion as the Jews bother about
Christian observances, the whole fabric of Talmudic teaching
would be consumed in the bright light to which general
attention would bring it, the bright light from which it has
always been concealed. Sheer analysis in the interest of
mental health would compel the Jewish people to abandon the
darkness which holds them now. Jewish Talmudism owes its
existence today to the indifference with which it is
regarded. This is the far Opposite extreme of "religious
persecution."
Religious prejudice is just as unpleasant to write about as
it is to experience in any other way. It is totally contrary
to the genius of the American and the Anglo-Saxon. We have
always regarded religion as a matter of conscience. To
believe as he will is part of every man's fundamental
liberty. Holding these hereditary principles, one chooses to
study that active stream of influence in America which is
known as the Jewish stream, and immediately upon doing so,
one finds himself classed with the bigots and torturers of
other times.
It is time to show that the cry of "bigot" is raised mostly
by bigots. There is a religious prejudice in this country,
there is, indeed, a religious persecution, there is
a forcible shoving aside of the religious liberties of a
majority of the people, and this prejudice and persecution
and use of force is Jewish and nothing but Jewish.
A study of history and of contemporary Jewish journalism
shows that Jewish prejudice and persecution is a
continuous phenomenon wherever the Jews have obtained
power, and that in neither action nor word has any
disability placed upon the Jew equalled the disabilities he
has placed and still contemplates placing upon non-Jews.
There is no Christian church that the Jews have not
repeatedly attacked.
If there is in the world any extra-ecclesiastical
undertaking by Catholics which has won the undivided
approval of the entire Christian world it is the Passion
Play of
Oberammergau. Yet in a
volume entitled "A Rabbi's Impressions of the
Oberammergau Passion
Play," Rabbi Joseph
Krauskopf, of Philadelphia, has stigmatized that noble
production as reeking with falsehoods and vicious
anti-Semitism. In the rabbi's eyes, of course, it is, for to
him the entire Christian tradition is a poisonous lie. The
whole fabric of Christian truth, especially as it concerns
the person of Christ is "the hallucinations of emotional men
and hysterical women." "Thus," says the rabbi, "was invented
that cruel story, that has caused more misery, more innocent
suffering, than any other work of fiction in the range of
the whole world's literature." br>
And thus the simple peasants of Oberammergau, presenting the
Catholic faith in reverent pageant, are labeled
anti-Semites.*
These are not isolated instances. When the Methodist Church
put on the great pageant entitled "The Wayfarer,"
Rabbi Stephen S. Wise (American Zionist leader when this
original was published, and one of the most active political
leaders of Zionist Jewry in the United Nations; Ed.) played
critic and made the solemn and silly statement that had he
been a South Sea Islander (instead of the itinerant platform
performer which he is) his first impulse, after seeing
"the Wayfarer," would have been to rush out into the
street and kill at least three Jews. It says a great deal,
perhaps, for the channel in which Rabbi Wise's impulses run,
but the tens of thousands of Methodists who saw "The
Wayfarer" will not be inclined to attribute such a
criticism to the spirit of tolerance which Rabbi Wise so
zealously counsels the Christians to observe.
The Episcopal Church also has felt the attack of the Jews.
Recently (June, 1921: Ed.) the Jewish Press raised a clamor
that the Episcopal Church was not competent to seek to
interfere with it. It is not religious tolerance in the
midst of religious difference, but religious attack that
they preach and practice. The whole record of the Jewish
opposition to Christmas, Easter and other Christian
festivals, and their opposition to certain patriotic songs,
shows the venom and directness of that attack. One parallel
between the Protocols and the real hopes of the Jews is
written in the common Jewish prophecy that Christianity
is doomed to perish. It will perish, to all intents and
purposes, by becoming Judaism.
Jewish intolerance today, yesterday and in every age of
history where Jews were able to exert influence or power, is
indisputable except among people who do not know the record.
Jewish intolerance in the past is a matter of history; for
the future it is a matter of Jewish prophecy. One of the
strongest causes militating against the full Americanization
of several millions of Jews in this country is their belief
-- instilled in them by their religious authorities -- that
they are "chosen," that this land is theirs, that the
inhabitants are idolators, that the day is coming when the
Jews will be supreme.
How can they otherwise act than in agreement with such
declarations? The supercilious attitude adopted by the Jews
toward the stock that made America is merely a foreshadowing
of what would be the complete attitude if power and
influence made it possible. Bolshevism, which began with the
destruction of the class that contained all the promise of a
better Russia, is an exact parallel for the attitude that is
adopted in this courts regarding the original stock.
EDITOR'S NOTE: *It will be remembered that, in 1947, nearly
30 years after the above criticism was published, the
American-controlled Allied War Tribunals, tried and punished
as "war criminals" all the survivibg villagers who were
members of the Oberammergau Festival Players.
Louis D. Brandies,
Justice if the Supreme Court of the United States --
"Let us all recognize that
we Jews are a distinct nationality of which every Jew,
whatever his country, his station, or shade of belief, is
necessarily a member." |
