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Contemporary Thought Series 
 
 Zionism 
 
 and 
 
 Anti-Semitism 
 
Zionism 
 
 AND 
 
 Anti-Semitism 
 
 B. 
 
 MAX NORDAU 
 
 Ojfficier d' A cadkmie, France 
 
 AND 
 
 GUSTAV GOTTHEIL 
 
 Ph. D. 
 
 New York 
 
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 542 Fifth Avenue 
 
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Copyright igos 
 
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 The Heintzemann Press, Boston 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Zionism , By Max Nordau . 
 
 Anti-Semitism in Europe . . . . 
 
 By Gustav Gottheil. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 9 
 
 47 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 B Y 
 
 Max Nordau 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 A MONG the persons of the educated classes 
 1 who follow with any attention all the more 
 important movements of the times, it would now 
 be difficult to find one to whom the word “Zion¬ 
 ism is quite unknown. People are generally 
 aware that it describes an idea and a movement 
 that in the last years has found numerous adher¬ 
 ents among the Jews of all countries, but espe- 
 cially among those of the East. Comparatively 
 few, however, both among the Gentiles and the 
 Jews themselves, have a perfectly clear notion 
 of the aims and ways of Zionism; the Gentiles, 
 because they do not care sufficiently for Jewish 
 affairs to take the trouble to inform themselves 
 at first hand as to the particulars; the Jews, be¬ 
 cause they are intentionally led astray by the 
 
 9 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 eneniics of Ziomsni} by lies and caliimniGo) or 
 because even among the fervent Zionists there 
 are not many who have probed the whole Zionist 
 idea to the bottom, and are willing or able to 
 present it in a clear and comprehensible fashion, 
 without exaggeration and polemical heat. 
 
 I will endeavor to furnish readers of good 
 faith, who are not biased, and have no other in¬ 
 terest than that of gaining authentic informa¬ 
 tion about a phenomenon in contemporary his¬ 
 tory, as concisely and soberly as possible with all 
 the facts, as they really are, not as they are 
 reflected in muddled brains, or distorted and 
 falsifled by calumniators. 
 
 I. 
 
 Zionism is a new word for a very old object, 
 in so far as it merely expresses the yearning of 
 the Jewish people for Zion. Since the destruc¬ 
 tion of the second temple by Titus, since the 
 dispersion of the Jewish nation in all countries, 
 this people has not ceased to long intensely, and 
 
 lO 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 hope fervently, for the return to the lost land of 
 their fathers. This yearning for, and hope in, 
 Zion on the part of the Jews was the concrete, 
 
 I might say, the geographical, aspect of their 
 Messianic faith, which in its turn forms an 
 essential part of their religion. 
 
 Messianism and Zionism were really, for 
 nearly two thousand years, identical conceptions, i/ 
 and without caviling and hair-splitting inter¬ 
 pretation, it would not be easy to make a dis¬ 
 tinction between the prayers for the appearance 
 of the promised Messiah, and those for the not 
 less promised return to the historical home,— 
 both of which stand side by side on every page 
 of the Jewish liturgy. These prayers were, 
 until a few generations ago, meant literally by 
 every Jew, as they still are by the simple believ¬ 
 ing Jews. The Jews had no other idea than 
 that they were a people which as a punishment 
 for its sins had lost the land of its forefathers, 
 which was condemned to live as strangers in 
 strange lands, and whose great sufferings would 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 first cease when it was again assembled on the 
 consecrated soil of the Holy Land. 
 
 V. This gradually changed about the middle of 
 the eighteenth century, when enlightenment first 
 began to find its way into Jewdom, in the per¬ 
 son of its first herald, Mo^es Mendelssohn, the 
 popular philosopher. The faith of the Jews 
 became more lukewarm; the educated classes, 
 where they did not simply convert themselves to 
 
 ^ Christianism, began to regard the doctrines of 
 their religion in a rationalist manner; for them 
 the dispersion of the Jewish people was a final 
 and unalterable fact; they emptied the concep¬ 
 tion of the Messiah and of Zion of every con¬ 
 crete meaning, and arranged for themselves a 
 singular doctrine, according to which the Zion 
 promised to the Jews was to be understood only 
 in a spiritual sense, as the setting up of the 
 Jewish monotheism in the whole world, as the 
 future triumph of Jewish ethics over the less 
 sublime and less noble moral teaching of the 
 other nations. An American rabbi reduced this 
 
 12 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 conception to the striking formula, “Our Zion 
 is in Washington.” The Mendelssohn teaching 
 logically developed in the first half of the nine¬ 
 teenth century into the “Reform,” which delib¬ 
 erately broke with Zionism. For the Reform 
 Jew, the word Zion had just as little meaning as 
 the word dispersion. He does not feel himself 
 in any diaspora. He denies that there is a Jew¬ 
 ish people and that he is a member of it. He 
 desires only to belong to the people in whose 
 midst he lives. For him Judaism is a purely 
 religious conception which has nothing whatever 
 to do with nationality. The land of his birth 
 is his fatherland, and he will know of no other. 
 The idea of a return to Palestine excites him 
 either to indignation or to laughter. He 
 answers it with the well-known, silly, would-be 
 witticism, “If the Jewish state is again set up 
 in Palestine, I will ask to be its ambassador in 
 Paris.” 
 
 The thinking Jew did not fail, however, to 
 perceive, in the course of time, that Reform 
 
 13 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 Judaism is a half measure, a compromise, which 
 like every compromise, contains the germ of de¬ 
 struction, as it cannot for one instant resist 
 logical criticism. Whom shall the Reform Ju¬ 
 daism satisfyThe believing Jew.? He re¬ 
 jects it with the greatest abhorrence. The un¬ 
 believing Jew? He despises it as hypocrisy and 
 phrase-mongering. The Jew who really desires 
 to break with his national past and to be ab¬ 
 sorbed by his Christian surroundings? For 
 that Jew, Reform Judaism does not suffice; he 
 goes a step farther, the step that leads to the 
 baptismal font. Still less does it satisfy the Jew 
 who desires to guard Jewdom against destruc¬ 
 tion and to preserve it as an ethnical individual¬ 
 ity. For to him an openly expressed abandon¬ 
 ment of all national aspirations is synonymous 
 with a self-condemnation of the Jewish people 
 to a perhaps slow, but sure, death. Reform 
 ^ Judaism without Zionism, that is to say, without 
 the wish and the hope for a reassembling of the 
 Jewish people, has no future, At the best, it 
 
 H 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 can only be regarded as a somewhat crooked 
 path that leads to Christianity. He who de¬ 
 sires to reach that goal can find straighter and 
 shorter routes. 
 
 II. 
 
 And so it has come about that the generations 
 which had been under the influence of the Men- 
 delssohnian rhetoric and enlightenment, of reform 
 and assimilation, have, in the last twenty years 
 of the nineteenth century, been followed by a 
 new generation which seeks to take up a stand¬ 
 point other than the traditional towards the 
 question of Zion. These new Jews shrug their 
 shoulders at that twaddle which has been the 
 fashion among rabbis and literati for the last 
 hundred years, and which boasts of a ‘‘Mission 
 of Jewdom,” said to consist in this, that the 
 Jews must live forever in dispersion among the 
 peoples in order to act as their teachers and mod¬ 
 els of morality, and to educate them gradually 
 to pure rationalism, to a general brotherhood of 
 mankind, and to an ideal cosmopolitanism. 
 
 15 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 They declare the mission swagger to be either 
 presumption or foolishness. They, more mod¬ 
 est and more practical, demand only the right 
 for the Jewish people to live and to develop it¬ 
 self, according to its abilities, up to the natural 
 limits of its type. They have become convinced 
 that this is not possible in dispersion, as, under 
 that condition, prejudice, hatred, and contempt 
 continually follow and oppress them, and either 
 stint their development, or force them to an eth¬ 
 nical mimicry which necessarily makes of them, 
 instead of original types wdth a right to exist¬ 
 ence, mediocre or bad copies of foreign models. 
 They therefore work methodically with a view 
 to rendering the Jewish people once more a nor 
 mal one, which lives on its own soil, and accom¬ 
 plishes all economical, intellectual, moral, and 
 political functions of a civilized nation. 
 
 The goal cannot be reached at once. It lies 
 in a future more or less near. It is an ideal, a 
 desire, a hope, as the Messianic Zionism was and 
 ^ is. The new Zionism, which has been called the 
 
 i6 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 political one, differs, however, from the old, the 
 religious, the Messianic one, in this,—that it dis¬ 
 avows all mysticism, no longer identifies itself 
 with Messianism, and does not expect the return 
 to Palestine to be brought about by a miracle, 
 but desires to prepare the way by its own efforts. 
 
 The new Zionism has grown in part only out 
 of the internal impulsions of Judaism itself, out 
 of the enthusiasm jof modern educated Jews for 
 their hist ory and martyrology, out of the 
 awakene^onsciousness of their racial qualities, 
 out of their ambition to save the ancient blood, 
 in view of the farthest possible future, and to 
 add to the achievements of their forefathers the 
 achievements of their posterity. 
 
 On the other hand, Zionism is the effect of two 
 impulses which came from without,—first, the 
 principle of nationality, which for half a cen¬ 
 tury ruled thought and feeling in Europe, and 
 governed the politics of the world; secondly, 
 ■^^l"^~Semitism, from which the Jews of all coun¬ 
 tries have more or less to suffer. 
 
 17 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 The principle of nationality has awakened 
 self-consciousness in all the peoples; it teaches 
 them* to regard their peculiarities as qualities, 
 and gives them a passionate desire for inde¬ 
 pendence. It could not, therefore, pass over 
 the educated Jews without leaving a trace. It 
 induced them to remember who and what they 
 are; to feel themselves, what they had un- 
 ^ learned, a people apart; and to demand for 
 themselves a normal national destiny. This 
 slow and painful work of the recovery of their 
 national individuality was rendered easier by the 
 attitude of the peoples, who eliminated them 
 from among themselves as a foreign element, and 
 put stress, without consideration or courtesy, on 
 the real and imaginary contrasts, or at least dif¬ 
 ferences, between themselves and the Jews. 
 
 The principle of nationality has, in its exag- 
 \ gerations, led to excesses. It has been led 
 astray into Chauvinism, abased to idiotic hatred 
 of the foreigner, degraded to grotesque self- 
 worship. From this caricature of itself the Jew- 
 
 18 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 ish nationalism is safe. The Jewish nationalist 
 does not suffer from self-inflation; he feels, on 
 the contrary, that he must make tireless efforts 
 to render the name of Jew a title of honor. 
 He modestly recognizes the good qualities of 
 other nations, and seeks diligently to acquire 
 them in so far as they harmonize with his natu- 
 ral capacities. Pie knows what terrible harm 
 centuries of slavery or disability have done to 
 his originally proud and upright character, and 
 seeks to cure it by means of intense self-training. 
 If, however, nationalism is on its guard against 
 all illusions as to itself, this is a natural phase 
 in the process of development from barbaric self¬ 
 ish individualism to free humanism and altruism, 
 —a phase the justification and necessity of 
 which can only be denied by him who has no 
 comprehension whatever of the laws of organic 
 evolution, and is totally lacking in the historical 
 sense. 
 
 Anti-Semitism has also taught many educated 
 Jev/s the way back to their people. It has had 
 the effect of a sharp trial which the weak cannot 
 
 19 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 stand, but from which the strong emerge 
 stronger or more confident in themselves. It is 
 not correct to say that Zionism is but a ‘‘gesture 
 of truculence” or an act of desperation against 
 Anti-Semitism. It is true that more than one 
 educated Jew has been moved only by Anti- 
 Semitism to throw in his lot again with Jewdom, 
 and he would again fall away if his Christian 
 fellow-countrymen would receive him anew in a 
 friendly spirit. But, in the case of most Zion¬ 
 ists, Anti-Semitism only forced them to reflect 
 upon their relation to the nations, and their 
 reflection has led em to conclusions which 
 would remain a ’ sting acquirement of their 
 mind and heart, even if Anti-Semitism were to 
 disappear completely from the world. 
 
 Be it well understood; the Zionism analyzed 
 above is that of the educated and free Jews,— 
 the Jewish elite. The uneducated mass, cling¬ 
 ing to the old traditions, is Zionist without much 
 reflection, from feeling, from instinct, from dis¬ 
 tress, and yearning. They suffer too much 
 
 20 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 from the hardships of life, from the hatred of 
 the peoples, from legal disabilities, and social 
 outlawry; they feel that they cannot hope for 
 any lasting amelioration of their situation so 
 long as they must live as a powerless minority 
 among a hostile majority. They desire to be¬ 
 come a nation, to rejuvenate themselves by close 
 contact with mother earth, and to become once 
 more the masters of their destinv. This Zionist 
 mass is still in part not quite free from mystical 
 tendencies. It allows its Zionism to be pervaded, 
 to a certain extent, by Messianic reminiscences, 
 and blends it with religir em'^tions. They 
 have certainly a clear idea of he aim, the reas¬ 
 sembling of the Jewish nation, but not of the 
 means. Still, even they have realized already 
 the necessity of themselves making efforts, and 
 there is a vast difference between their active 
 readiness for organization and their spirit of sac¬ 
 rifice, and the pious, prayer-indulging passive¬ 
 ness of the purely religious Messianist. 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 III. 
 
 The new or political Zionism has had here and. 
 there forerunners, whose first appearance dates 
 back to the early half of the nineteenth century. 
 
 In the beginning of the eighties terrible per¬ 
 secutions broke out in Russia without any ap¬ 
 parent reason, persecutions which cost hundreds 
 of Jews their lives, destroyed the prosperity 
 of thousands more, and induced tens of thou¬ 
 sands to turn their backs on the land of their 
 birth. This calamity brutally aroused the Jews 
 from their hundred-year-old illusions and 
 brought them again to a sense of reality. A 
 Russian Jew, Dr. Pinsker, at that time wrote a 
 small pamphlet entitled, “Auto-Emancipation,” 
 which was already a prelude to the modern politi¬ 
 cal Zionism, and sketched all its motives without 
 however developing them symphonically. He, 
 at any rate, it was who gave its watchword to 
 the whole movement: “The Jews are no mere re¬ 
 ligious community, they are a nation. They 
 desire again to live in their own country as a 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 united people. Their rejuvenation must be at 
 the same time economical, physical, intellectual, 
 and moral.” 
 
 The Jewish youth of the middle schools and 
 universities of Russia were profoundly affected 
 by Pinsker’s arguments. They began to found^— 
 national Jewish societies. A number of students 
 who studied at foreign universities became in 
 their new surroundings apostles of Dr. Pin¬ 
 sker’s idea, and found adherents here and there, 
 for the most part among the young Jews of 
 Vienna. Others preferred action to word, ex¬ 
 ample to sermon, abandoned their studies, and 
 emigrated to Palestine in order to become peas¬ 
 ants there,—Jewish peasants on historically 
 Jewish soil. Deeply moved by this idealism of 
 a peculiarly enthusiastic elite, cooler headed 
 Jews in Russia and Germany began also to form 
 societies in order to support from a distance the 
 Palestine settlements of the Jewish pioneers. 
 This took place without any combined plan and 
 with no clear notion of the aim and the means. 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 The societies were not conscious of the fact that 
 they felt and acted as Zionists. They did not 
 perceive the connection between the Jewish col¬ 
 onization of Palestine and the future of the 
 whole Jewish nation. It was in their case rather 
 an instinctive movement in which all kinds of 
 obscure feelings are dimly discernible,:—piety, 
 archaeological-historical sentimentality, charity, 
 ^ and pride of pedigree. At any rate, the minds 
 of the Jews were prepared, the feeling was in 
 the air, Jewdom was ripe for a change. 
 
 As is always the case in such historical mo¬ 
 ments, the man also appeared whose mission it 
 was to express clearly the ideas obscurely felt 
 by many, and to proclaim loudly the word they 
 were waiting to hear. This man was Dr. The- 
 ^odor Herzl. He published in the autumn of 
 1896 a concisely written booklet, “Der Juden- 
 staat” (The Jewish State), which proclaimed, 
 with a determination that till then had no 
 precedent, the fact that the Jews are a people 
 who demand for themselves all the rights of a 
 
 24 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 people, and who desire to settle in a country 
 where they can lead a free and complete political 
 existence. 
 
 ‘‘Der Judenstaat” has become the real starting 
 point of political Zionism,—the starting point, 
 not the programme. Herzl’s book is still the 
 subjective work of a solitary thinker who speaks 
 in his own name. Many details in it are litera¬ 
 ture. It is not easy to draw a sharp boundary 
 line between the sober earnest of the social poli¬ 
 tician and the imagination of the prophetical 
 poet. The real programme had to be a collect¬ 
 ive work which was certainly based on Herzl’s 
 book, and inspired by Herzl’s visions of the fu¬ 
 ture, but which rid itself of all fantastic details, 
 and was built up solely from the elements of 
 reality. 
 
 Herzl’s book was at once greeted by tens of 
 thousands of Jews, chiefly the young, as an act 
 of redemption. It was not to remain merely 
 printed paper, but should be transformed into 
 a practical creation. New societies were 
 
 25 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 founded everywhere, no longer with a view of 
 the slow, petty settlement of Palestine by means 
 of groups of Jews creeping surreptitiously as 
 it were into the country, but by the preparation 
 for an emigration '‘‘^en masse” into the Holy 
 Land, based on a formal treaty with the Turk¬ 
 ish Government, guaranteed by the Great 
 Powers, by which the former should accord the 
 new settlers the right of self-government. 
 
 ^The premises of political Zionism are that 
 there is a Jewish nation. This is just the point 
 denied by the assimilation Jews, and the spirit¬ 
 less, unctuous, prating rabbis in their pay. Dr. 
 Herzl saw that the first task he had to fulfil was 
 the organizing of a manifestation which should 
 bring before the world, and the Jewish people 
 itself, in modern, comprehensible form the fact 
 of its national existence. He convoked a Zion¬ 
 ist congress, which in spite of the most furious 
 attacks and most unscrupulous acts of violence, 
 —^the Jewish community of Munich where the 
 congress was originally intended to be held pro- 
 
 26 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 tested against its meeting in that town,—as¬ 
 sembled for the first time in Basel, the end of ^ 
 August, 1897, and consisted of two hundred 
 and four selected representatives of the Zionist 
 Jews of both hemispheres. 
 
 The first Zionist congress solemnly proclaimed 
 in the face of the attentive world that the Jews 
 are a nation, and that they do not desire to be 
 absorbed by other nations. It vowed to work 
 for the emancipation of that part of the Jewish 
 race which is deprived of all rights, and which 
 is dragging out its existence in undeserved mis¬ 
 ery, and to prepare for it a brighter future. 
 
 It puts its aims on record in a programme unan¬ 
 imously adopted with the greatest enthusiasm. 
 This ran as follows:— 
 
 “Zionism works to create for the Jewish peo¬ 
 ple a home in Palestine guaranteed by public 
 law. 
 
 “For the reaching of this goal the congress 
 proposes to adopt the following means:— 
 
 “(1.) The well-regulated promotion of the 
 
 27 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 settlement of Palestine by Jewish agriculturists, 
 artisans, and manufacturers. 
 
 “(2.) The organization and knitting to¬ 
 gether of the whole Jewish community by means 
 of proper local and general institutions, in ac¬ 
 cordance with the law of the different countries. 
 
 “(3.) The strengthening of the Jewish self- 
 respect and national consciousness. 
 
 “(4.) Preparatory steps for obtaining the 
 consent of the governments, which is necessary 
 for the achievement of the aims of Zionism.” 
 
 IV. 
 
 The first congress did not separate without 
 having created a lasting organization. It 
 elected a “Great Committee of Action,” in 
 which all countries with a somewhat considerable 
 Jewish population are represented, and which in 
 its turn selected a smaller “permanent commit¬ 
 tee” with its headquarters in Vienna, under the 
 presidency of Dr. Herzl. It was followed in 
 the three ensuing years by three further con- 
 
 28 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 gresses, in 1898 and 1899, again in Basel, and 
 in 1900 in London. The number of the dele¬ 
 gates rose in 1898 to two hundred and eighty, 
 in 1899 to three hundred and seventy, and in 
 1900 to four hundred and twenty. At every 
 succeeding congress the regulations for election 
 were more strictly enforced, the mandates more 
 closely examined, and at the present moment 
 the congress, which has become a permanent in¬ 
 stitution of the Zionist Jewdom, and which met 
 for the fifth time in December, 1901, again in 
 Basel, can with justice claim to be the real 
 representative of one hundred and eighty thou¬ 
 sand electors. 
 
 He who desires to know what the Jews who 
 have been represented at the congress have done 
 up to the present time to realize the programme 
 of Zionism drawn up by the first congress, has 
 only to compare the various points of this pro¬ 
 gramme with the facts we are going to record. 
 
 ‘(1.) The well-regulated promotion of the 
 settlement of Palestine by Jewish agriculturists, 
 artisans, and manufacturers,” 
 
 29 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 ^ Zionism rejects on principle all colonization 
 on a small scale, and the idea of “sneaking” into 
 Palestine. The Zionists have therefore devoted 
 themselves preeminently to a zealous and tireless 
 advocacy of the uniting of the already existing 
 Jewish colonies in Palestine with those who until 
 now have given them their aid and who of late 
 have inclined towards the withdrawal of their sup 
 port from them. The Zionists have also prepared 
 the way for founding factories in the Holy 
 Land, which will give employment to the Jewish 
 workmen there, and have assured, by according 
 a yearly subvention, the future existence of the 
 model Hebraic school in Jaffa, which was about 
 to close its doors for want of funds. They take 
 care that the existing and promising beginnings 
 of a Jewish colonization shall be looked after 
 and maintained till the movement will be possible 
 on a large scale. 
 
 ‘‘(2.) The organization and knitting to¬ 
 gether of the whole Jewish community by the 
 means of proper local and general institutions 
 
 30 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 in accordance with the law of the different coun- 
 tries.” 
 
 The Zionist Jewish community is at present 
 organized in both hemispheres in about nine 
 hundred societies, which display great activity. 
 In the matter of organization covering the 
 whole of Jewdom, Zionism possesses national 
 federations of its societies,—the “great” and the 
 “smaller committee of action,” and the congress 
 which maintains a permanent secretarial office in 
 Vienna. The cost of this apparatus is covered 
 by the voluntary yearly offerings of the Zion¬ 
 ists, to which offerings the name of the old 
 Jewish coinage is applied, and which according¬ 
 ly are known as “shekels,”—their amount being 
 in America forty cents, and in Western lands 
 a unit of the coinage (one mark, one franc, one 
 shilling, etc.). The payment of the shekel 
 gives the right of vote for the congress. Zion¬ 
 ism possesses its official organ, “Die Welt,” pub¬ 
 lished in German in Vienna. Its ideas are fur¬ 
 ther set forth in about forty other periodicals in 
 
 31 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 the Hebrew, German, Russian, Polish, Italian, 
 English, French, and Roumanian languages, 
 and in the Jewish-German and Judeo-Spanish 
 jargons. Its American organ is the periodical, 
 “The Maccabsean.” It has founded numerous 
 schools, Toynbee Halls, and educational insti¬ 
 tutes, and has recently begun to acquire a share 
 in the administration of the Jewish communities, 
 in order to devote their resources, more than has 
 heretofore been the case with the anti-national 
 or unthinking leaders, to the promoting of 
 national Jewish instruction, education, and 
 culture. 
 
 “(3.) Strengthening of the Jewish self-re¬ 
 spect and national consciousness.” 
 
 The Zionist societies use every effort that 
 the members and the Jewish masses in general 
 may know the history of their nation, and 
 become acquainted with the sacred and profane 
 literature in the Flebrew tongue. They teach 
 the Jews to hold their heads high, to be proud 
 of their descent, and to despise the Anti-Semitic 
 
 32 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 lies, calumnies, and insults. They care, in the 
 measure of their strength, for the amelioration 
 of the hygiene of the Jewish proletariat, for its 
 economic improvement by means of association 
 and solidarity, for well-directed education of 
 children, and for the instruction of the women. 
 They give the young students a goal for their 
 efforts and an ideal in life. They preach the 
 duty of leading a faultless, spiritual life, the 
 rejection of a crude materialism, into which the 
 assimilation Jews, on account of the want of a 
 worthy ideal, are only too apt to sink, and strict 
 self-control in word and deed. They found ath¬ 
 letic societies in order to promote the long 
 neglected physical development of the rising 
 generation. They give a new impulse to the cele¬ 
 bration of Jewish historical feasts and memorial 
 days. In many instances they even make them¬ 
 selves outwardly conspicuous by wearing insig¬ 
 nia. The Zionist regards it as contemptible to 
 conceal his nationality. He wishes to be recog¬ 
 nized as a Jew, and as he always behaves himself 
 
 33 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 in a natural, unaffected way, plays no comedy 
 of imitation, wishes to deceive nobody about his 
 extraction and identity, intrudes upon no one 
 under a false flag, his relations to his Christian 
 neighbors and fellow-countrymen are sounder, 
 truer, more frank and dignified than those of 
 the assimilation Jew, who makes painful and 
 useless efforts, which disgust every Christian 
 possessing a modicum of good taste, to hide the 
 fact that he is a Jew. 
 
 “(4.) Preparatory steps to obtain the con¬ 
 sent of the governments necessary to achieve the 
 aims of Zionism.” 
 
 Several of the governments whose opinion will 
 eventually be decisive in the matter have been, 
 by means of memorials, reliably informed of the 
 aims of Zionism; and there has been no want 
 of very important encouragements and promis¬ 
 ing expressions of sympathy with its tendencies. 
 
 For the moment the committee of action is 
 trying to obtain from Turkey a charter for the 
 colonization of such land in Palestine as can 
 
 34 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 be disposed of, and which at present is lying 
 waste, and for the opening of its neglected re¬ 
 sources. The exploiting of such a charter is 
 not possible without considerable sums of money. 
 
 In order to be armed financially for the time that 
 Turkey will accord such a charter, the second 
 Zionist congress (1898) decided to found a na-t^ 
 tional Jewish bank institute, the “Jewish Colo¬ 
 nial Trust,” with its headquarters in London. 
 This resolution was carried out the following 
 year (1899). The bank has been brought into 
 being. Its capital in shares is two million pounds 
 sterling. It can, by the statutes, start business 
 when one eighth of this capital, two hundred and 
 fifty thousand pounds sterling, has been actually 
 paid up. This has already been done. 
 
 Another financial instrument of Zionism is 
 the ^^National Fund,” created by the fifth con-*^ 
 gress (1901), which is raised by voluntary sub¬ 
 scription and which is to amount to two hun¬ 
 dred thousand pounds sterling. The half of 
 this sum is to be devoted to the purchase of land 
 
 35 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 in Palestine, the other half to remain an intansri- 
 ble common property of the Jewish people, 
 which will by means of compound interest and 
 gifts continually increase, so that at important 
 junctures the interest may be used for great 
 national purposes. 
 
 V. 
 
 I have taken pains to show, in as brief and 
 as objective a manner as possible, what Zionism 
 is, what it desires to do, how it came into being, 
 and how it has developed up to the present. I 
 have also repeatedly mentioned that its most vio¬ 
 lent opponents have aiisen from the Jewish com¬ 
 munity. 
 
 Many of them content themselves with libeling 
 and insulting the leaders of the Zionist move¬ 
 ment. This kind of hostility they who are vili¬ 
 fied can afford to despise. Men who, without 
 expecting the slightest advantage to themselves, 
 out of the purest, most unselfish love for the 
 unhappy ones of their race, out of reverence for 
 their forefathers, out of a general spirit of phil- 
 
 36 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 anthropy, have made the greatest sacrifices in 
 money, time, strength, and health, in order to 
 elevate their people and to free millions of inno¬ 
 cent, persecuted men from the bitterest misery, 
 have the right smilingly to shrug their shoulders 
 when irresponsible fanatics or pitiable paid 
 scribes reproach them with self-interest or with 
 vanity. 
 
 Besides these opponents of a lower type, there 
 are others who do not merely lie and slander, 
 but also seek to argue. They delight in com¬ 
 paring the apostles of Zionism with the false 
 Messiahs like the notorious Sabbathai Levi, who 
 have appeared only too often in Jewish history, 
 and who have always done the greatest mischief 
 to the Jewish people they have deceived. To 
 compare Zionism with the vagaries or impostures 
 of false Messiahs of the Sabbathai Levi kind, 
 presupposes great foolishness or great bad 
 faith. Zionism is precisely characterized by the ^ 
 complete absence of any mystical element. It 
 promises its adherents no miracles; on the con- 
 
 37 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 trary, it continually impresses on them that 
 their emancipation from a situation they find in¬ 
 tolerable can only be the result of their own 
 work, the fruit of their long, strenuous, and 
 combined efforts. 
 
 People declare Zionism to be a dream, and 
 deny that its practical realization is possible. 
 To objections of this category the Zionists have 
 a hundred times given a sufficient answer. This 
 simple negative criticism can be passed over. 
 Its only real refutation is in deeds, such as the 
 Zionists have already performed and as they 
 intend further to perform. 
 
 The one point which probably forever ex¬ 
 cludes the possibility of an understanding be¬ 
 tween Zionist and non-Zionist Jews is the ques¬ 
 tion of the Jewish nationality. Whoever main- 
 tains and believes that the Jews are not a nation 
 can indeed be no Zionist; he cannot j oin a move¬ 
 ment which is only justified when it is admitted 
 that it desires to create normal conditions 
 of existence for a people living and suffering 
 
 38 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 under abnormal conditions. He who, on the 
 contrary, is convinced that the Jews are a peo¬ 
 ple must necessarily become Zionist, as only the 
 return to their own country can save the every¬ 
 where hated, persecuted, and oppressed Jewish 
 nation from physical and intellectual destruc¬ 
 tion. 
 
 Many Jews, especially those of the West, 
 have, in their heart of hearts, completely broken 
 with Judaism, and they will probably soon do 
 so openly, and if they do not break away, their 
 children or grandchildren will. These desire 
 to be entirely absorbed by their Christian fellow- 
 countrymen. They resent it as a great annoy¬ 
 ance when other Jews proclaim that they are a 
 people apart, and desire to bring about an un¬ 
 equivocal separation between themselves and the 
 other nations. Their great and constant fear 
 is to be denounced as strangers in the land of 
 their birth, of which they are free citizens. 
 They fear that this will be more than ever the 
 case, if a large section of the Jewish people 
 
 39 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 Openly claim for themselves rights as an auton¬ 
 omous nation, and still worse, if anywhere in 
 the world a political and intellectual center of 
 Judaism should really be created, in which mil¬ 
 lions of Jews would be grouped together, united 
 as a nation. 
 
 All these feelings on the part of the assimila¬ 
 tion Jews are comprehensible. From their 
 standpoint they are justified. These Jews, 
 however, have no right to expect that Zionism 
 should for their sake commit suicide. The Jews 
 who are happy and contented in the land of 
 their birth, and who indignantly reject the sug¬ 
 gestion of abandoning it, are about a sixth of 
 the Jewish nation, say two millions out of 
 twelve. The other five sixths, or ten millions, 
 feel themselves profoundly unhappy in the 
 countries where they reside, and they have every 
 reason for doing so. These ten millions cannot 
 be called upon to submit forever unresistingly to 
 their thraldom, and to renounce every effort for 
 redemption from their misery, merely in order 
 
 40 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 that the comfort of two million happy and con¬ 
 tented Jews may not be disturbed. 
 
 The Zionists are, moreover, firmly convinced 
 that the misgivings of the assimilation Jews are 
 unfounded. The reassembling of the Jewish 
 people in Palestine will not have the conse¬ 
 quences which they fear. When there is again 
 a Jewish country, the Jews will have the choice 
 of emigrating thither, or of remaining in their 
 present home. Many will doubtless remain, and 
 will prove by their choice that they prefer the 
 land of their birth to their kindred and to their 
 national soil. It is barely possible that the 
 Anti-Semites will still throw the scornful and 
 perfidious “stranger!” in their face. But the 
 real Christians among their fellow-countrymen, 
 those who think and feel according to the teach¬ 
 ing and examples of the Holy Writ, will be con¬ 
 vinced that they do not regard themselves as 
 strangers in the land of their birth, and will then 
 rightly comprehend the real meaning of their 
 voluntary renunciation of a return to a land 
 
 41 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 of the Jews, and of their fidelity to their homes 
 and to their Christian neighbors. 
 
 The Zionists know that they have undertaken 
 a work of unexampled difficulty. Never before 
 has the effort been made to transplant, peace¬ 
 fully, in a short space of time, to another soil, 
 several million people from various countries; 
 never has it been attempted to transform mil¬ 
 lions of physically degenerate proletarians, 
 without trade or profession, into agriculturists 
 and cattle breeders, to bring townbred hucksters 
 and trades people, agents, and men of sedentary 
 occupation again into contact with the plough 
 and the mother earth. It will be necessary to ac¬ 
 custom Jews of different origins to one another, 
 to train them practically to national unity, and 
 at the same time to overcome the superhuman 
 obstacles of difference of language, unequal civ¬ 
 ilization, and of the manners of thought, preju¬ 
 dices, likes, and dislikes of foreign nations, 
 brought severally from the lands of their birth. 
 
 What gives the Zionists the courage to begin 
 this labor of Hercules is the conviction that they 
 
 42 
 
ZIONISM 
 
 are doing a necessary and useful work, a work 
 of love and civilization, a work of justice and 
 wisdom. They desire to save eight to ten mil¬ 
 lions of their kindred from intolerable suffering. 
 They desire to free the nations among whom 
 they now vegetate from a presence which is 
 considered disagreeable. They wish to deprive 
 Anti-Semitism—which everywhere lowers public 
 morals and develops the very worst instincts— 
 of its victim. They wish to make unquestionable 
 producers out of the Jews at present reproached 
 with being parasites. They desire to fertilize 
 with their sweat and till with their hands a coun¬ 
 try that is to-day a desert, until it is again the 
 flowering garden it has once been. Thus will 
 Zionism in an equal degree serve the unhappy 
 Jew and the Christian peoples, civilization and 
 the economy of the world; and the services which 
 it can render, and wishes to render, are great 
 enough to justify its hope that the Christian 
 world, too, will appreciate them, and support 
 the movement with its active sympathy. 
 
 43 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 IN EUROPE 
 
THE TRUE NATURE OF ANTI¬ 
 SEMITISM IN EUROPE 
 
 A NTI-SEMITISM would be simply ridicu¬ 
 lous if it were not so terribly in earnest. 
 People who make that word a war cry upon a 
 
 whole race ought to know its meaning, especially 
 if it is to express the chief reason for their hos¬ 
 tility. Before they prefix the ‘‘anti” to a word 
 they should be sure that they understand the 
 “pro,” lest they be found to fight shadows mere¬ 
 ly? specters of their own creation. But how far 
 is this the case.? How many ever tried to learn 
 the sense of the designation under which they 
 have enrolled themselves ? Suppose we ask, 
 “What does Semitism mean?” Only this, must 
 be our answer,—^that it is a summing up of the 
 ruling dispositions, habits, mental endowments. 
 
 47 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 and moral peculiarities of all the races com¬ 
 prised under the name of Semites, so named from 
 their supposed descent from the eldest of the 
 three sons of Noah. So ineradicable are these 
 features supposed to be that, no matter where the 
 races have lived or are now living, no matter 
 what stage of civilization they have passed 
 through or have reached now, no matter what 
 influence non-Semitic races have exercised upon 
 them, they remain essentially the same. What 
 are these features.? Who will formulate the pre¬ 
 cise standard by which a descendant of Shem is 
 unfailingly known and set apart from those 
 of Ham or Japhet.? When we consider that we 
 are pointed back for the meaning of Semite to 
 antediluvian times, that is to say, to one of the 
 oldest myths of the world, we must admit that it 
 would indeed be the wonder of wonders if a large 
 section of mankind have a family likeness so 
 clear that they are marked off from the rest. 
 And this, despite the long ages that have passed 
 since the supposed separation of the sons of 
 
 48 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 Noah and their wide dispersion; despite their 
 triumphs and defeats in wars, in state building, 
 and church formation; despite the wide diver¬ 
 sity between them in their literature, their phil¬ 
 osophy, their art, their trades and industries. 
 Are the Semites still characterized by the same 
 gifts and tendencies of mind and heart, ruled by 
 the same passions, subject to the same limita¬ 
 tions, as were their ancestors in all their genera¬ 
 tions ? 
 
 Among them there is a fraction, and that 
 fraction again scattered over vast areas, in vari¬ 
 ous states of civilization, and under diversified 
 kinds of governments, enjoying liberty and 
 rights of citizenship in the one, and groaning 
 under relentless oppression in the other,—are 
 they still none other than Semites? Are they 
 so permeated with Semitic features that they 
 can never amalgamate with their surroundings 
 and become full-weighted citizens of the state 
 where they pitch their tents,—offer them what 
 inducements you may,—^but must be kept at 
 
 49 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 arms length and treated as suspects ? Has 
 nature lost all her power in this instance and 
 become faithless to herself? Will the Hebrew 
 child not love the land of its birth and feel the 
 kinship with the people whose language and 
 mode of life become its own? But why heap up 
 improbabilities and impossibilities? The desig¬ 
 nation fastened upon us as a stigma was a fraud 
 from the beginning, a conscious fraud and a 
 malicious invention. It was “conceived in mis¬ 
 chief and brought forth in iniquity.” What 
 was meant was not anti-Semitism, but anti-Juda¬ 
 ism; but that name had to be avoided because 
 it implies hostility to a religion and a creed; and 
 that, again, might be construed as springing 
 from an awakened zeal for the instigator’s own 
 Church; a suspicion they could not permit to 
 rest upon them. No, it is not the Jew’s religion 
 that makes him obnoxious and a danger to the 
 state, but it is his descent from the eldest son of 
 Noah. True, the Jews have at no time adopted 
 it as a national name. “Semitic” is of compar- 
 
 50 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 atively recent date, an abstract word intended 
 merely for scientific classification, never meant 
 for discrimination of any portion of the Semitic 
 races, or to become a hissing and a byword or a 
 mask for robbers of human rights and destroyers 
 of human happiness. 
 
 The victims of this crusade are not a nameless 
 horde for whom a designation had to be coined; 
 they are known to history for three thousand 
 years as Hebrews, Israelites, Jews, and they have 
 no mind to exchange these names for any other. 
 But a new “Hep Hep” was wanted, and so 
 “Semites” was hauled from the world of books, 
 disfigured, and fastened upon the Jewish gabar¬ 
 dine in noble emulation of the barbarism of the 
 Middle Ages. The more senseless, the more wel¬ 
 come it was as a bugbear to frighten the popu¬ 
 lace and to stir into flames the sparks of fanati¬ 
 cism which are always smouldering in the hearts 
 of the vulgar, whether of low degree or high de¬ 
 gree, worldly or ghostly. 
 
 The strangest thing, however, in this learned 
 
 51 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 falsification is that it should have succeeded 
 so well with people calling themselves Christians 
 and clinging to that name often after they 
 have given up all its historic substance. Is 
 Christianity not purely Semitic at the core ? Is it 
 not based upon the Semitic conception of the re¬ 
 lation between man and his Creator The great 
 efforts to liberalize and rationalize the Church 
 which the last century witnessed, up to Profes¬ 
 sor Harnack’s recent attempt to sum up “Das 
 Wesen des Christenthums,”—what are all these 
 but endeavors to free it from foreign accretions 
 and envelopments and to bring its Semitic char¬ 
 acter into greater prominence.^ 
 
 It is the only Asiatic conception of religion 
 that has subdued Europe and America, and that 
 still holds undisputed sway over all its diverse 
 nationalities. The very name which symbolizes 
 to them all that is noblest, purest, and most 
 blessed, points to that source as unfailingly as 
 the needle of the compass to the poles. Harnack 
 claims that Christianity is not one religion 
 
 52 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 amongst others, but The Religion, the only one 
 fulfilling all the conditions of its highest ideal. 
 The Being in whom that fulness of light was 
 revealed,—was he not a Semite of the Semites? 
 Did he ever deny his origin ? Christianity means 
 Messianity, and the whole idea of a Mashiach,— 
 the anointed, namely, anointed ruler,—is most 
 intensely national and, therefore, intensely 
 Semitic,—from which indisputable fact it fol¬ 
 lows that the loftiest conception of religion came 
 to the world from that source. Thence came the 
 Bible,—^the book of the world which has been 
 translated into every living tongue and dialect, 
 and to the elucidation of which hosts of scholars 
 still devote their lives. Painting, sculpture, 
 music, poetry, have attempted their highest 
 flights under its inspiration. From countless 
 pulpits its moral and religious truths are ex¬ 
 pounded, week after week, and on every great 
 occasion of national significance,—in whatever 
 part of Christendom it may occur,—the Songs 
 of Zion are awakened as the fittest expressions 
 
 53 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 of the prevailing sentiment. The Psalter is 
 the most wonderful of existing books,—at home 
 alike in the palace of the king and the cottage 
 of the peasant, the inexhaustible theme of our 
 masters of music. Noeldeke, Protestant profes¬ 
 sor at the University of Strasburg, one of the 
 great lights of Semitic scholarship, declares that 
 “by the side of the Psalms all other religious 
 hymns appear as pale imitations merely.” On 
 that field were gathered the sheaves which a mas¬ 
 ter hand has wound together into the One Uni¬ 
 versal Prayer, in which all Churches join with 
 one accord. And the Universal Day of Rest,— 
 that one sure blessing of the laboring man,— 
 whence did it come.?^ What other legislator had 
 the divine audacity to make its observance one 
 of the foundation laws of his constitution, and 
 to give it precedence, even over all moral enact¬ 
 ments ? 
 
 Professor R. F. Grau of the conservative 
 school of theology writes:— 
 
 “God is a living, holy, loving Being. He is 
 
 54 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 not first and foremost to be scientifically com¬ 
 prehended, but worshipped and revered in the 
 heart, and because He is such a Being, the 
 Semites had to be chosen as His apostles to the 
 whole world. For they had a heart for Him in 
 the beginning. . . . The Semite has the re¬ 
 ligion of the Infinite, and as this is the perfect 
 religion, . . . the Church, as the Community 
 of Christ, has sprung from the Semitic mustard 
 seed, although at present myriads of Indo-ger- 
 manics dwell under the branches of the tree.” 
 
 In the face of admissions like these by men 
 who have a right to be heard in the matter, and 
 considering that the tree can never change the 
 nature of the root from which it sprang, the con¬ 
 clusion is not unwarranted that “anti-Semitic” 
 is a synonym for “anti-Christian.” 
 
 Its success is due to the still persistent preju¬ 
 dice against the Jews among so many Chris¬ 
 tians,—all their professions to the contrary not¬ 
 withstanding. And it continues for several 
 reasons. One is its long duration; it has lasted 
 
 55 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 for ages and is ingrained in their feelings and 
 ideas. What if it be shown ever so clearly that 
 it is unjust, unreasonable, yea, even unchristian 1 
 —that will not materially change the temper 
 of the great masses of the people. The com¬ 
 mon man is rarely swayed by the force of argu¬ 
 ments ; the power of a principle, so weighty 
 with the thinkers, is of no consequence to him. 
 He belongs to the material world, and to make 
 good his place in it is the aim toward which all 
 his energies are bent. For things spiritual he 
 has neither time nor capacity. He is ruled by 
 the sentiments which were implanted in him in 
 his youth and by his immediate surroundings. 
 All thinking must be done for him; all new ideas 
 must be presented to him, as it were, ready made 
 and in tangible form. He does not push himself 
 forward, but must be led onward by hands that 
 understand him and his ways. But in this in¬ 
 stance, his guides are not particularly anxious 
 to bring about a change for the better,—even if 
 we suppose that they consider the liberation 
 
 56 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 from prejudice against the Jews a betterment. 
 They have their own theological difficulty to 
 contend with. The Jews are still unconverted, 
 and the missions established and maintained for 
 the purpose of winning them over can show no 
 better results now than in the past. The chief 
 controversy between the Church and Israel 
 stands to-day where it stood when it was first 
 raised at Jerusalem eighteen centuries ago. A 
 judicial sentence of a court at Jerusalem has 
 grown into a pivotal point on which, as the 
 Church declares, turns the salvation of mankind 
 for time and eternity; and if she is right, the 
 Jews must be wrong. Since that fatal occur¬ 
 rence, Christianity, in one form or another, has 
 conquered Europe and America, and has planted 
 outposts in almost every part of the earth, but 
 has not been able to subdue the Jew. Every 
 conceivable means to make him surrender has 
 been tried, including that of the jailor and the 
 executioner and all the horrors that lie between 
 them,—expulsion, pillage, social degradation, 
 
 57 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 impaling in ghettos, and what not—but in 
 vain. The same policy is continued to this day 
 as far as the present more civilized state of the 
 Christians permits; but still in vain. So far 
 are their persecutors from having brought the 
 Jews to their knees, that the self-consciousness 
 of the race, as a whole, has deepened; and their 
 advance in general culture enables them to 
 measure swords, intellectually, with their ac¬ 
 cusers and to give a reason for the faith that is 
 in them. 
 
 All the conditions of this interminable conflict 
 are against them. In numbers they are a van¬ 
 ishing minority, and still more weakened by 
 their dispersion over the face of the earth, un¬ 
 organized, without any ecclesiastical authority 
 in their Church that could direct them or act in 
 their name. Every individual Jew must face 
 the world’s hostility single-handed, and be, re¬ 
 ligiously, his own priest, his own pope. Allies 
 he has none, advocates of his cause are few and 
 far between. The favors of his friends are 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 often more humiliating than the attacks of his 
 enemies. Still he holds his own, and if for the 
 last century or so he has carried on a reforma¬ 
 tion of his ancient rituals, he has done so from 
 his own initiative and in his own way, which is 
 not that into which it has been tried so long to 
 force or to lure him. At the same time a revi¬ 
 val of Jewish literature has taken place which 
 not only has brought to light the long-forgotten 
 treasures of the past, but has shown the large 
 part the Jews have in the general progress of 
 mankind. The ecclesia triumphant has no vic¬ 
 tory to record in this section of her battlefields, 
 and it is not in ordinary human nature frankly 
 to admit a defeat in such an unequal struggle. 
 Only one had a right to expect that a Church 
 that claims to have regenerated the human race 
 and to have lifted the slave of his blind instincts 
 into “the glorious liberty of the children of 
 God” would have risen superior to the common 
 weakness. Instead of that, almost throughout 
 Christendom, the crusade against the Jews is 
 
 59 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 being preached and the policy of repression 
 loudly demanded. 
 
 On what ground.? It is said that they dom¬ 
 inate everywhere,—in finance, in law courts, in 
 politics, in art, in literature, in the press, in 
 trade and manufacture. But how do they 
 achieve this astounding feat.? How do the 
 Jews succeed in so lording it over the immense 
 majority.? By witchcraft.? Is it by magic that a 
 few bankers and brokers keep all their competi¬ 
 tors in subjugation and handle them at their will 
 and to their own profit.? Is it by sorcery that 
 they force their way to the universities and 
 academies.? Are they in possession of secret 
 formulas by which they can direct the currents 
 of trade at their will.? Recently, loud com¬ 
 plaints were raised in several of the German 
 state parliaments that there were too many Jew¬ 
 ish judges and lawyers in their lands, and the 
 governments were exhorted to put an end to the 
 scandal. No charges of incompetency or ex¬ 
 ploitation were raised against the Hebrews that 
 
 6o 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 “handle the law.” Only it was declared that a 
 Christian shrunk from taking an oath at the 
 hand of a Jewish lawyer. If this be so, how is 
 it that the people go to them in numbers that 
 excite the envy of their non-Jewish colleagues.^ 
 All the statements about the alleged power of 
 the Jews are ridiculous exaggerations, trumped 
 up to scare the imagination of the thoughtless, 
 as has been proved over and over again. But 
 even reduced to their true measure, they prove, 
 not the possession of magic, but of sound¬ 
 ness of mind, of unimpaired energy, and of all 
 the other needful conditions for success, which 
 the Jews have kept intact despite all the at¬ 
 tempts made to crush the unbelievers into the 
 dust. The outcry against them is their vindica¬ 
 tion; people do not fear weaklings, do not raise 
 alarms against perils which can be pushed aside 
 by an effort of the will. The few must own in¬ 
 herent sources of strength if the many resort to 
 the coward’s weapon of lies and slander. And 
 in this instance the admission of the truth is an 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 implied homage to the religion which the victors 
 in the unequal struggle profess and defend. 
 For it is indisputable that this is the source to 
 which the formation of the Jewish mind and 
 heart must be attributed. Let me cite, for one 
 proof, the admission of the most persistent and 
 most powerful oppressor of the Jews,—the pro¬ 
 curator of the Russian synod. Half the num¬ 
 ber of all Hebrews are subjects of Russia. They 
 came under her dominion when she conquered 
 and incorporated the Polish provinces; they are 
 kept there under the most stringent laws, and 
 life is made to them as burdensome as possible. 
 “The Pale” is a gigantic ghetto where the old¬ 
 est form of rabbinism prevails to this day. Yet 
 the same fear of the superiority of the Jewish 
 mind haunts the government; it is the alleged 
 reason for practically closing up all the avenues 
 of the higher education for them. Only three 
 per cent of the total number of students are ad¬ 
 mitted to the universities and to the technical 
 schools. But more than a hundred thousand 
 
 62 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 common soldiers are drafted from the Jews into 
 the armies and sent to all parts of the gigantic 
 empire, kept there during the best part of their 
 lives, without any prospect of promotion, and 
 often going only to die in the defense of terri¬ 
 tories which, if they were civilians, they would 
 not be permitted to enter. The Russian Tor- 
 quemada, not long ago, openly declared that not 
 a single Jew should be permitted to settle 
 amongst the peasantry, even within the Pale, 
 because he would be the only sober man amongst 
 a population that cannot resist the temptations 
 of strong drink. Strange spectacle indeed! 
 Men banished from places where they wish to 
 live because they are too good for their sur¬ 
 roundings ! forced to remain where they can 
 hardly eke out a miserable living. The ques¬ 
 tion, surely, is justified. How did that poverty- 
 stricken mass of oppressed people succeed in 
 preserving its freedom from a national vice in a 
 country where its ancestors have dwelt for long 
 generations.? Can a great virtue be maintained 
 
 63 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 by sorcery? The common experience is that of 
 the poet— 
 
 “Misery doth bravest mind abate.” 
 
 What but their religion made them proof 
 against the arrows of a fate which, for duration 
 and cruelty, is without a parallel in history! 
 This conclusion is further corroborated by the 
 fact that the same virtue of sobriety character¬ 
 izes them everywhere, and makes them an object 
 of envy to their non-Jewish neighbors, nay, 
 forces the honest temperance advocate to hold 
 them up before his Christian audiences as exam¬ 
 ples to shame them into going and doing like¬ 
 wise; rather, let me say, into staying at home 
 and doing likewise. For one of the witchcraft 
 mysteries of Judaism is that its home is not in 
 the church, but that the church is in the home. 
 The Jew’s salvation is in nowise dependent upon 
 rabbi and synagogue, but upon wife and chil¬ 
 dren. They are his congregation to whom he 
 ministers as priest in fulfilment of the great 
 charter word of dedication, “Ye shall be unto 
 
 64 
 
ANT IS EM IT IS M 
 
 me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” The 
 deepest roots of the Jewish faith rest and are 
 nourished in the domestic soil. The synagogue 
 has nothing to offer to the faithful which he 
 cannot find in his own tent. Ten men gathered 
 together with a Sepher Tora (scroll of the Mo¬ 
 saic law) in their midst, form a Kahal Hakodesh 
 (sacred body). No man becomes a drunkard 
 with wife and children and aged parents near 
 him for guardian angels. The greatest diffi¬ 
 culty the Jewish reformation has to face is what 
 to substitute for the old ceremonials where they 
 have become impracticable, and thus to preserve 
 the essentially domestic character of the ancient 
 faith. Is it thinkable that the Jew would be 
 less objectionable to his surroundings were he to 
 lose his sturdy horror of intemperance, and thus 
 “assimilate” more freely with his neighbors of 
 different faiths It is not thinkable when we 
 consider the great efforts made by Christians 
 everywhere to redeem their people from their 
 bondage to strong drink and the misery result- 
 
 65 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 ing from it. The Jew is the natural ally of the 
 temperance advocates; and if he is not found 
 in their ranks, it is simply because he never knew 
 from experience the need of that reformation. 
 
 And never will he know, as long as his passion¬ 
 ate fondness for home and his longing for fam¬ 
 ily love abide within him. At present, this, gen¬ 
 erally speaking, is still the case; the poorest and 
 least cultivated classes are not excepted; nay, 
 just in that class it is one of the most noteworthy 
 features. If the uncouth immigrant from East¬ 
 ern Europe stoops to the lowest kinds of ped¬ 
 dling, or, for a mere pittance, wastes his life in 
 the stifling sweatshop; if he is not very scrupu¬ 
 lous in his dealings with his transient patrons, 
 and does not hold city ordinances as inviolable as 
 those of the “Shulchan Aruch” (code of ceremo¬ 
 nials), the central motive is his ever present 
 thought of his family; even when he has not yet 
 scraped together enough pennies to pay for 
 their fare to the new home, they are con¬ 
 stantly with him in his mind. This is not 
 
 66 
 
ANTI-SEMn ISM 
 
 offered as a defense for over-reaching and 
 cannot be allowed by a magistrate as a plea 
 for law-breaking; but it is offered to the 
 unprejudiced reader in compliance with Spi¬ 
 noza’s golden rule: Human errors must not 
 be ridiculed and condemned, but understood. 
 Si duo faciunt idem^ non est idem. This wise 
 caution is the more to be heeded in the present 
 instance, as, from the same source, devotion 
 to home life, springs another fine feature of 
 Jewry; go down in the scale as deep as you may, 
 they are an industrious, toilsome class of people, 
 often turning their narrow homes into work¬ 
 shops where old and young ply a handicraft 
 from early morn to the late evening hours. Hun¬ 
 dreds of men and women, arriving in this country 
 after they have passed the middle life, learn 
 trades and work at them till their trembling 
 hands can hold the tools no longer or the light 
 fades from their overstrained eyes. Among 
 them there are not a few that have seen better 
 days at their native places, or are deeply learned 
 
 67 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 in the Law. They are quick in seizing the 
 secret of a successful trade of paying manufac¬ 
 ture, and not rarely better the instruction; a 
 skill for which they are hated and despised by 
 their own aristocracy in the markets, and 
 branded as spoilers of every good thing as soon 
 as it appears. If this aptitude and eagerness 
 for trade be a fault, the Christians have them¬ 
 selves to blame for it. Even a superficial glance 
 at the history of Israel proves that as long as the 
 people lived on their native soil, and could live 
 out their own lives, they showed neither skill nor 
 desire for mercantile pursuits; that their legis¬ 
 lation, their religion, their poetry and prophesy¬ 
 ing, and their ethical ideas presuppose a nation 
 of shepherds and tillers of the soil. For the 
 great change in the ruling disposition of the 
 Jews, since their dispersion, those alone are re¬ 
 sponsible who now reproach them for it. The 
 first Christians were Jewish ploughmen and 
 herdsmen; the Apostles mostly Judaean peasants 
 and fishermen. The finest parables and similes 
 
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ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 in the speeches of Jesus are taken from the peas¬ 
 ants’ occupation and experience. And even to 
 this day thousands of the scattered race are 
 ready to seize again the plough and the spade, 
 if they are given a chance, and not a few have 
 done so even under the most disheartening con¬ 
 ditions. The fact is, the pagan Mercury 
 proved a more merciful god to the Jews than 
 the Christian Jesus, as he was taught and prac¬ 
 tised by the mediasval Church. He gloated over 
 the sufferings of those who were of his own flesh 
 and blood. No wonder they sought refuge un¬ 
 der the wings of the heathen deity and became 
 adepts in the art which he symbolized. 
 
 But suppose it were true that all the Jews dote 
 on traffic as their dearest occupation,—^what of 
 it? The British have the nickname of “a nation 
 of shopkeepers” fastened on them; yet they 
 were and are the greatest benefactors of the 
 human race, carrying the blessings of civiliza¬ 
 tion to half the peoples of the globe. Com¬ 
 merce has done more for the peace of the world 
 
 69 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 than all the preaching, praying, and prophesy¬ 
 ing taken together. A great railroad, a steam¬ 
 ship line, a cable or a telephone wire, a commer¬ 
 cial treaty, a tariff convention,—these are the 
 modern bonds that hold the remotest parts of the 
 earth together, and make them equally abhor 
 war and its ravages. A falling off in the ex¬ 
 ports, a shrinking of the value of investments, 
 an unforeseen competitor in the markets of the 
 world, cause the rulers of the most civilized na¬ 
 tions more anxiety than any adverse political 
 combination. For the former threaten the peace 
 and welfare of the home life of the people, on 
 whose contentment they rely for the defense of 
 their claims in all their political intricacies. A 
 class of people credited with the mastery of the 
 art of buying and selling should, therefore, be 
 welcome to every country and given the amplest 
 freedom and encouragement to ply their skill, 
 provided, of course, they do not carry their 
 hoarded profits out of the country and enrich 
 other nations by them. But where do the Jews 
 
 70 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 think of such a thing? Xheir own country, if 
 Palestine may still be so denominated, is one of 
 the poorest in the world, and what little revival 
 there has lately been perceptible is due to the 
 colonies established there by Jewish peasants 
 who, under most trying conditions, labor to re¬ 
 store the soil to its ancient fertility, after the 
 long sleep into which it has sunk. Jewish wealth 
 can be enjoyed, and is being enjoyed, in no other 
 way than non-Jewish. Its owners are charged 
 by its religious teachers with being only too 
 willing to imitate the luxuries and extrava¬ 
 gances of their neighbors. The same snares are 
 spread for the feet of their offspring as for 
 those of Gentile birth; the tempters that lie in 
 wait for them are liberal enough to ignore dis¬ 
 tinctions between the various creeds. I will 
 not stoop to any defense of my race from the 
 vulgar charge that they are cheaters; that each 
 and all will always try, right or wrong, to se¬ 
 cure the best of any bargain into which a poor 
 Gentile may enter with them. Those whom the 
 
 71 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 commercial standing of the Jews, here and else¬ 
 where, has not yet cured of this slanderous preju¬ 
 dice will not be converted by my pleading. 
 Envy is an incurable disease; j ealousy makes 
 blind, and the common saying is surely true, that 
 none are so blind as those who will not see. But 
 neither have I the least desire to hide or gloss 
 over our real failings and shortcomings. 
 Those who cannot rest on their own real merits 
 and accept the blame for their undeniable de¬ 
 merits must not dare to challenge the judgment 
 of the world. The Jew does dare it, and all 
 he asks of his critics is fairness, impartiality, 
 justice. What I have said to his praise and for 
 his defense was intended solely to assist the fair- 
 minded reader in forming a just opinion of an 
 agitation which in Europe embitters, cripples, 
 and darkens thousands of lives, which, under 
 better treatment, would be spent in contentment 
 and general usefulness. 
 
 It is for this purpose only that I will briefly 
 add two more traits of the Jews, equally valuable 
 
 72 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 and undeniable. One is their charity; they care 
 for their poor, their sick, their aged, if desti¬ 
 tute, as the numerous institutions prove, found 
 in every place where they dwell in sufficient num¬ 
 ber to maintain them. Ungrudgingly they as¬ 
 sume the heavy burdens which this “exclusive¬ 
 ness” imposes upon them. Blame them for it 
 who may; the right-minded will not, especially 
 when assured that this feeling of pity is not the 
 privilege of the well-to-do among them only. 
 The working classes have always something to 
 spare from their scanty earnings for “Z’dakah,” 
 the religious term in common use for charity, 
 which, significantly enough, in biblical Hebrew 
 means “justice.” The idea that charity is an 
 essential part of worship has been bred into them 
 by long tradition, and continues to be regarded 
 as such, wherever rabbinical Judaism survives 
 in full force. From childhood every Jew knows 
 the saying of Simon the Just, one of the last 
 men of the Great Synagogue:— 
 
 “The whole world rests on these three pillars; 
 
 Law, Worship, and Charity.” 
 
 73 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 The other trait is their zeal in the education 
 of their children. 
 
 One of the standard objections to the He¬ 
 brews is their “forwardness”; socially, it is a 
 disagreeable and annoying fault, but otherwise 
 a gift of no little value. Forwardness is the 
 soul of all progress and advancement. Call it 
 that, call it self-help, call it energy, call it self- 
 reliance, call it by the popular name of wide- 
 awakeness, and you transfigure the fault into a 
 merit. How the Jew was able to preserve it in 
 any one of its forms is one of the many miracles 
 of his history, seeing that the world has left 
 nothing untried to cast the Jews backward to 
 the last depth of self-despair. An exhibition of 
 his forwardness might be seen at the doors of 
 the public schools in the lower districts of the 
 city, notably at the time of admission of new 
 pupils. The poorest of the Jewish fathers and 
 mothers would be seen wrangling for the regis¬ 
 tration of their little ones, as if it were for their 
 daily bread. And may this not also serve for a 
 
 74 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 proof that the parents are willing to surrender 
 their offspring to the influence of these schools, 
 and see them thoroughly Americanized? 
 
 By these signs ye shall know the Jews, 
 wherever ye find them; they may, therefore, be 
 called racial. In every other respect they are 
 neither better nor worse than other people of the 
 corresponding stages of life. Every variety of 
 character is found among them; virtue and 
 vice are distributed among them. Let Ameri¬ 
 cans not stigmatize them as “undesirable immi¬ 
 grants,” and close their hospitable gate upon 
 them. Thej^ bring with them qualities which 
 are an ample compensation for their defects, 
 and their well-to-do brethren are not behindhand 
 in seeing to it that they become no public bur¬ 
 den. The American people have repeatedly 
 shown the door to those who came hither for the 
 purpose of preaching anti-Semitism, thereby 
 publicly testifying that they would have none of 
 that disgrace to our age. What exists of it in 
 
 75 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 social life is not worth arguing against. It will 
 and must disappear in a country, the civil order 
 of which is based upon the principle of equal 
 rights to all law-abiding citizens, to whatever 
 race or religion they may belong. “A fair field 
 and no favor.” This good old saying comprises 
 all our demands. 
 
 76 
 
Date Due 
 
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