Yale University Library 39002009646309
PREJUDICE
|||! AGAINST THE JEW
Its Nature, Its Causes and Remedies
PHILIP COWEN
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Gift of JAMES R. JOY *930PREJUDICE AGAINST THE JEW
Its Nature, Its Causes and Remedies
A Symposium By Foremost Christians Published in "The American Hebrew" April 4, 1890
With a Foreword By PHILIP COWEN

NEW YORK PHILIP COWEN, 520 W. 122d STREET 19 2 8to the
Hon. SAMUEL GREENBAUM, Friend of my Earliest Youth and Ripened Manhood This Volume is Affectionately Dedicated7
CONTENTS
Page
Foreword, by Philip Cowen ........................................................................n
From "Over the Teacups" ....................................................................................15
Poem, "At the Pantomime"............................................................20
By Oliver Wendell Holmes A SYMPOSIUM BY NON-JEWS
Editorial from "The American Hebrew" ..................25
The Letter..............................................................................................................................................................................29
The Questions .................................................................................................31
Introductory..................................................................................................................................................................28
The Answers
An Answer from the Grave: George Eliot............32
Rev. Henry C. Potter, D. D., New York..................33
Rt. Rev. A. Cleveland Coxe, Buffalo..............................36
Rt. Rev. A. N. Littlejohn, Garden City..................39
Bishop John H. Vincent, Buffalo................................................40
Ex-President James McCosh, Princeton..........................40
Cardinal Gibbons, Baltimore........................................................................41
Rev. Morgan Dix, New York........................................42
Rev. Robert Collyer, New York......................................................46
Rev. Charles F. Deems, New York................................53
Rev.Howard Crosby, D. D., Nefw York..................57
Rev. Edward Everett Hale, Roxbury..............................59
Rev. Washington Gladden, D. D..................................................60
Rev. John W. Chadwick, Brooklyn ....................................64
Rev. Robert S. McArthur, D'. D., N. Y. ..............648
Contents
Page
Rev. R. Heber Newton, New York....................................67
Rev. Alvah S. Hobart, D. D., Yonkers........................70
Rev. Wm. M. Taylor, D. D., New York..................73
Rev. Ensign McChesney, D. D., N. Y..........................74
Rev. Robert R. Booth, D. D., N. Y................................79
Rev. Charles H. Eaton, D. D., N. Y................................80
Rev. Wm. H. P. Faunce, D. D., N. Y..........................82
Rev. Dr. Phillips Brooks, Boston................................................84
Rev. W. R. Huntington, New York....................................85
Rev. J. R. Day, New York....................................................................................85
Rev. Henry M. Field, D. D., N. Y......................................89
Rev. A. B. Kendig, D. D., Brooklyn....................................89
Rev. J. M. Buckley, D. D. N. Y..................................................90
Rev. A. H. Lewis, D. D. Plainfidd, N. J..............91
Pres. Chas. W. Eliot, Harvard Univ....................................96
Pres. M. H. Buckham, Vermont Univ..........................97
Pres. S. C. Bartlett, Dartmouth College........................98
Pres. W. H. Thornton. Univ. of Virginia............100
Pres. J. M. Taylor, Vassar College..........................................103
Pres. E. N. Capen, Tufts College................................................104
Pres. Helen A. Shafer, Wellesley College..................105
Prof. C. H. Toy, Harvard Univ........................................................106
Prof. J. K. Hosmer, Washington Univ..........................107
Rev. W. G. T. Shedd, D. D., Union Theo.
Sem., New York ..........................................................................109
Prof. Philip Sdhaff, Union Theo. Sem................................112
George William Curtis, Staten Island..............................112Contents	9 Page
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Boston............................................................114
Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Boston............................................................114
John Burroughs, West Park, N. Y......................................116
Margaret Deland, Boston..........................................................................................117
Thomas W. Higginson, Cambridge..........................................118
Wm. Dean Howells, Boston..............................................................................120
Col. John Hay, Washington..............................................................................120
Anna Laurens Dawes, Washington ..........................................121
John Boyle O'Reilly, Boston........................................................................123
Arthur Gilman, Harvard Univ..............................................................124
Louise Chandler Moulton, Boston................................................125
Dr. Titus Munson Coan, New York..........................................125
Edward Atkinson, Boston..........................................................................................127
H. E. Krehbiel, New York....................................................................................128
Win. J. Henderson, N. Y.............................................................................129
Henry T. Finck, New York..............................................................................131
Robert G. Ingersoll, New York ......................................................133
Hon. Carl Schurz, New York........................................................................138
Hon. Zebulon B. Vance, M. C., No. Car..............140
Hon. Theodore Roosevelt, New York..............................142
Elliott F. Shepard, New York..................................................................143
J. E. Learned, New York..........................................................................................143
Charles Loring Brace, New York......................................................145
SOME PRESS VIEWS
New York Times..........................................................................................................................................149
Christian at Work....................................................................................................................................150
Christian Inquirer ....................................................................................................................................150
Christian Register ....................................................................................................................................151
Christian Intelligencer ..................................................................................................152
The Evangelist......................................................................................................................................................152
Zion's Herald............................................................................................................................................................152
Port Jervis Union..........................................................................................................................................153
Brooklyn Times...............................................................................155
Christian Union ................................................................................................................................................156
FOREWORD
THE recent effort to bring about a close rapprochement between Christian and Jew will surely make this world a better place to live in. Many years before this movement was thought of it appeared to me that if Christian leaders of thought could be brought to look objectively upon the attitude of the Christian world in general towards the Jew, and be led to see its unreasonableness, much good could be wrought. For myself, I have always been satisfied that the prejudice against the Jew was not, in the main, social; that so far as this phase was concerned, it would take care of itself and soon disappear. 1 did not think it largely economic either, for rarely does one have a kindly feeling for the person who crowds him in his business or employment, whatever his religious belief. The fallacy that the Jew has a monopoly of sljarp trading has long since been exploded.12
Foreword
My observation has convinced me that this prejudice is innately religious; unconsciously so as a general thing. This is evidenced in the poem "At the Pantomime", by Dr. Holmes, printed herein as part of the essay from "Over the Teacups".
Forty years ago one seemed to sense the beginning of a broader spirit. As publisher and managing editor of "The American Hebrew" I asked a large number of men of light and leading in the Christian world for a frank expression of their views on this age-old prejudice, and for suggestions that might serve as a remedy so as to bring about the most cordial relations between Jew and Gentile.
Very nearly all who were addressed responded. Only two persons wrote "for the confidential information of the editor", with the request to withhold publication, and what they said was better expressed by others. The replies were printed in full as received. The publication of this Symposium attracted wide attention here and abroad. The questions and letters were reprinted in Germany and Russia, and, it was reported to me, in other countries.
Frequent demand has been made for copies of this special number, but the supply was early exhausted. The present movement for theForeword
13
betterment of relations between the different religious groups in this country has aroused special interest in this Symposium. As a contribution to the great good to come from this earnest movement, on the eve of my seventy-fifth birthday, in a spirit of thankfulness for blessings received, I am making these letters on Prejudice Against the Jew accessible.
I have thought it in place to add here some views upon the subject from the Christian press, evoked at the time by their publication, as well as an essay from "Over the Teacups" by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Therein Dr. Holmes enlarges upon his contribution to the Symposium. Here is a Christian of broadest outlook, who in his youth fought within himself the spirit of the hatred of the Jew.
In the poem "At the Pantomime" written then, he gave vent in manly fashion to the reaction that came to him there, and in his old age he referred thereto with infinite satisfaction.
The article from "Over the Teacups" is reprinted with the kind permission of and by arrangement with the publishers of Dr. Holmes' works, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. In his essay Dr. Holmes quotes only four stanzas of the14
Foreword
poem "At the Pantomime"; but as the whole of it bears so strongly upon the subject, the poem is given in its entirety, brackets inclosing the first six stanzas which he did not include.15
At the Pantomime
By Oliver Wendell Holmes (From "Over the Teacups", pp. 193-199)
Among the questions addressed to me, as to a large number of other persons, are the following. I take them from "The American Hebrew" of April 4, 1890. 1 cannot pretend to answer them all, but I can say something about one or two of them.
As to the first question, I have had very slight acquaintance with the children of Israel. I shared more or less the prevailing prejudices against the persecuted race. I used to read in my hymn-book, — 1 hope I quote correctly,—
"See what a living stone The builders did refuse!
Yet God has built his church thereon, In spite of envious Jews."
I grew up inheriting the traditional idea that they were a race lying under a curse for their obstinacy in refusing the gospel. Like other children of New England birth, I walked in the narrow path of Puritan exclusiveness. The great historical church of Christendom was presented to me as Bunyan depicted it: one of the two giants sitting at the door of their caves, with the bones of pilgrims scattered about them, and grinning at the travelers whom they couldi6
At the Pantomime
no longer devour. In the nurseries of old-fashioned Orthodoxy there was one religion in the world,—one religion, and a multitude of detestable, literally damnable impositions, believed in by uncounted millions, who were doomed to perdition for so believing. The Jews were the believers in one of these false religions. It had been true once, but was now a pernicious and abominable lie. The principal use of the Jews seemed to be to lend money, and to fulfil the predictions of the old prophets of their race.
No doubt the individual sons of Abraham whom we found in our ill-favored and ill-flavored streets were apt to be unpleasing specimens of the race. It was against the most adverse influences of legislation, of religious feeling, of social repugnance, that the great names of Jewish origin made themselves illustrious; that the philosophers, the musicians, the financiers, the statesmen, of the last centuries forced the world to recognize and accept them. Benjamin, the son of Isaac, a son of Israel, as his family name makes obvious, has shown how largely Jewish blood has been represented in the great men and women of modern days.
There are two virtues which Christians have found it very hard to exemplify in practice. These are modesty and civility. The Founder of the Christian religion appeared among a people accustomed to look for a Messiah, — a special ambassador from heaven, with an au-At the Pantomime
i7
thoritative message. They were intimately acquainted with every expression having reference to this divine messenger. They had a religion of their own, about which Christianity agrees with Judaism in asserting that it was of divine origin. It is a serious fact, to which we do not give all the attention it deserves, that this divinely instructed people were not satisfied with the evidence that the young Rabbi who came to overthrow their ancient church and found a new one was a supernatural being. "We think he was a great Doctor," said a Jewish companion with whom I was conversing. He meant a great Teacher, I presume, though healing the sick was one of his special offices. Instead of remembering that they were entitled to form their own judgment of the new Teacher, as they had judged of Hillel and other great instructors, Christians, as they called themselves, have insulted, calumniated, oppressed, abased, outraged, "the chosen race" during the long succession of centuries since the Jewish contemporaries of the Founder of Christianity made up their minds that he did not meet the conditions required by the subject of the predictions of their Scriptures. The course of the argument against them is very briefly and effectively stated by Mr. Emerson:—
"This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you if you say he was a man."
It seems as if there should be certain laws of etiquette regulating the relation of different re-i8
At the Pantomime
ligions to each other. It is not civil for a follower of Mahomet to call his neigbor of another creed a "Christian dog." Still more, there should be something like politeness in the bearing of Christian sects toward each other, and of believers in the new dispensation toward those who still adhere to the old. We are in the habit of allowing a certain arrogant assumption to our Roman Catholic brethren. We have got used to their pretensions. They may call us "heretics", if they like. They may speak of us as "infidels," if they choose, especially if they say it in Latin. So long as there is no inquisition, so long as there is no auto da fe, we do not mind the hard words much; and we have as good phrases to give them back: the Man of Sin and the Scarlet Woman will serve for examples. But it is better to be civil to each other all round. 1 doubt if a convert to the religion of Mahomet was ever made by calling a man a Christian dog. I doubt if a Hebrew ever became a good Christian if the baptismal rite was performed by spitting on his Jewish gabardine. I have often thought of the advance in comity and true charity shown in the title of my late honored friend James Freeman Clark's book ,"The Ten Great Religions". If the creeds of mankind try to understand each other before attempting mutual extermination, they will be sure to find a meaning in beliefs which are different from their own. The old Calvinistic spirit was almost savagely exclusive. While theAt the Pantomime
19
author of the "Ten Great Religions" was growing up in Boston under the benignant, large-minded teachings of the Rev. James Freeman, the famous Dr. John Mason, at New York, was fiercely attacking the noble humanity of "The Universal Prayer". "In preaching", says his biographer, "he once quoted Pope's lines as to God's being adored alike 'by saint, by savage, and by sage,' and pronounced it (in deepest guttural) 'the most damnable lie.' "
What could the Hebrew expect when a Christian preacher could use such language about a petition breathing the very soul of humanity? Happily, the true human spirif is encroaching on that arrogant and narrow-minded form of selfishness which called itself Christianity.
The golden rule should govern us in dealing with those whom we call unbelievers, with heathen, and with all who do not accept our religious views. The Jews are with us as a perpetual lesson to teach us modesty and civility. The religion we profess is not self-evident. It did not convince the people to whom it was sent. We have no claim to take it for granted that we are all right, and they are all wrong. And, therefore, in the midst of all triumphs of Christianity, it is well that the stately synagogue should lift its walls by the side of the aspiring cathedral, a perpetual reminder that there are many mansions in the Father's earthly house as well as in the heavenly one; that civilized hu-20
At the Pantomime
manity, longer in time and broader in space than any historical form of belief, is mightier than any one institution or organization it includes.
Many years ago I argued with myself the proposition which my Hebrew correspondent has suggested. Recognizing the fact that I was born to a birthright of national and social prejudices against "the chosen people," — chosen as the object of contumely and abuse by the rest of the world, — I pictured my own inherited feelings of aversion in all their intensity, and the strain of thought under the influence of which those prejudices gave way to a more human, a more truly Christian feeling of brotherhood. I must ask your indulgence while I quote a few verses from a poem of my own, printed long ago under the title "At the Pantomime."
1 was crowded between two children of Israel, and gave free inward expression to my feelings. All at once I happened to look more closely at one of my neighbors, and saw that the youth was the very ideal of the Son of Mary.
[The house was crammed from roof to floor, Heads piled on heads at every door; Half dead with August's seething heat I crowded on and found my seat, My patience slightly out of joint, My temper short of boiling-point, Not quite at Hate mankind as such, Nor yet at Love them overmuch.']
[Amidst the throng the pageant drew Were gathered Hebrews not a few,At the Pantomime
21
Black-bearded, swarthy, — at their side Dark, jewelled women, orient-eyed: If scarce a Christian hopes for grace Who crowds one in his narrow place, What will the savage victim do Whose ribs are kneaded by a Jew?]
[Next on my left a breathing form Wedged up against me, close and warm; The beak that crowned the bistred face Betrayed the mould of Abraham's race,— That coal-black hair, that smoke-brown hue,— Ah, cursed,, unbelieving, Jewl I started, shuddering, to the right, And squeezed — a second Israelitel]
[Then woke the evil brood of rage That slumber, tongueless, in their cage; I stabbed in turn with silent oaths The hook-nosed kite of carrion clothes, The snaky usurer, him that crawls And cheats beneath the golden balls, Moses and Levi, all the horde, Spawn of the race that slew its Lord.]
[Up came their murderous deeds of old, The grisly story Chaucer told, And many an ugly tale beside Of children caught and crucified; I heard the ducat-sweating thieves Beneath the Ghetto's slouching eaves, And, thrust beyond the tented green, The lepers cry, "Uncleanl Uncleanl"]
[The show went on, but, ill at ease, My sullen eye it could not please, In vain my conscience whispered, "Shame! Who but their Maker is to blame?"22	At the Pantomime
I thought of Judas and his bribe, And steeled my soul against their tribe: My neighbors stirred; I looked again Full on the younger of the twain.]
A fresh young cheek whose olive hue The mantling blood shows faintly through; Locks dark as midnight, that divide And shade the neck on either side; Soft, gentle, loving eyes that gleam Clear as a starlit mountain stream; So looked that other child of Shem, The Maiden's Boy of Bethlehem]
—And thou couldst scorn the peerless blood That flows unmingled from the Flood, — Thy scutcheon spotted with the stains Of Norman thieves and pirate Danesl The New World's foundling, in thy pride Scowl on the Hebrew at thy side, And lo I the very semblance there The Lord of Glory deigned to wear!
I see that radiant image rise, The flowing hair, the pitying eyes, The faintly crimsoned cheek that shows The blush of Sharon's opening rose,— Thy hands would clasp his hallowed feet Whose brethren soil thy Christian seat, Thy lips would press his garment's hem That curl in wrathful scorn for theml
A sudden mist, a watery screen, Dropped like a veil before the scene; The shadow floated from my soul, And to my lips a whisper stole:— "Thy prophets caught the Spirit's flame, From thee the Son of Mary came,At the Pantomime
23
With thee the Father deigned to dwell,— Peace be upon thee, Israel!"
It is not to be expected that intimate relations will be established between Jewish and Christian communities until both become so far rationalized and humanized that their differences are comparatively unimportant. But already there is an evident approximation in the extreme left of what is called liberal Christianity and the representatives of modern Judaism. The life of a man like the late Sir Moses Montefiore reads a lesson from the Old Testament which might well have been inspired by the noblest teachings of the Christian Gospels.25
EDITORIAL
("The American Hebrew", April 4, 1890)
The collection of contributions treating of the subject of anti-Jewish prejudice, which we publish in this number of "The American Hebrew", undoubtedly constitutes the most important discussion of the subject which has ever been put into print. It embraces a calm, candid and dispassionate treatment of the theme from a number of the foremost minds of the country.
The most striking characteristic of the collection is the almost unanimous condemnation of prejudice and its manifestations, although many writers express themselVes with the candor and frankness which we invited. There is apparent an earnest desire to trace the origin of the generally admitted prejudice against the Jews. There is no hesitation to allude to certain traits of some Jews, which must naturally be offensive to refined people, whether Jews or Christians.
As to the fact to which we have often referred in these columns, that this prejudice is, in a great degree, the product of Church and Sunday-school teachings concerning the "killing" of Jesus by the Jews, there are but few of the writers who are prepared to confess even26
Editorial
to themselves that this is true. But the admissions of Bishop Littlejohn, Dr. Morgan Dix, George William Curtis and Margaret Deland are surely sufficient to demonstrate that we have not been altogether wrong in our contention.
With all the divergence of views as to the causes of the prejudice, and although some are inclined to consider that some of the charges against the Jews upon which this prejudice is based have some measure of foundation, there seems to be no one among these representatives of the cultured and intelligent classes of America who justifies the prejudice or fails to stigmatize it as unpatriotic and irreligious.
The fact is recognized that there are offensive and vulgar and ill-behaved Jews. The correlative fact is, however, also recognized that the Jews do not monopolize that phase of humanity. The very natural conclusion is, therefore, drawn that offensive persons should be excluded from good society because they are offensive, and not because they are affiliated with any religion or race.
As for the remedies that are to be applied for the eradication of the prejudice, the complaint may, perhaps, be made that they are too vague. There is one, however, which while valuable in itself, is of a nature to dissipate this idea of the vagueness of the others, ft is that which suggests the constant agitation of this wrong as the best means of wiping it out.Editorial
27
The wisdom of this consists in the faith which it expresses in the intrinsic fair-mindedness of the Americans. They need only be made cognizant of the gross injustice of this anti-Jewish prejudice to overcome it in themselves and to make it repugnant to them in others.
This, in fact, constitutes the essential value of this collection of papers on the subject which we present to our readers, and which will be scattered broadcast throughout the country. No better means of agitation could be devised than this number of "The American Hebrew", which presents in an unbiassed manner the sentiments concerning this matter of the most representative men and women in the various walks of life.
The reading of these articles must necessarily set every reader thinking of the real nature of this unrighteous prejudice. Thinking will inevitably provoke discussion. We, for our part have no fear of the result of earnest thought and intelligent interchange of views. These iconoclasts can surely be trusted to crush under their iron heels the dread Moloch of social hate and the fatal Astarte of blind bigotry which have been such sore enemies of Israel in the Old World, and which have begun their work in this country.28
INTRODUCTORY
The readers of "The American Hebrew" will recollect that we have had frequent occasion to refer to the matter of prejudice against the Jews, which we have characterized as being mainly religious in its character. On this point several of our Christian contemporaries have taken issue with us at various times. That we might know what is the true character of this prejudice, and dispel it if possible, we deemed it advisable to address a letter to a number of prominent non-Jews, enclosing a series of questions; and we present herewith the replies received. It is but proper to emphasize the fact that we desired the fullest candor on the part of those whom we addressed, and this should be borne in mind in reading the communications which follow; for it is doubtful if the writers would have expressed themselves with such freedom if we had not distinctly requested perfect frankness.29
THE LETTER
Following is a copy of the letter sent out, as well as a list of the questions enclosed:
Editorial Rooms, "The American Hebrew", 498-500 Third Avenue.
New York, Feb. 11, 1890.
Dear Sir: In recent years, and particularly during the summer season, there has been manifested in this country an antipathy towards persons of the Jewish faith strangely at variance with that liberality of spirit supposed to be inherent in the American character, and contrary to one of the great teachings of Christianity: "on earth peace, good will toward men". This manifests itself in the refusal to admit Jews to summer resorts, in the exclusion of Jewish children from various private schools—all at the demand of Christian patrons—in the blackballing at clubs of proposed Jewish members, and in various other forms. No discrimination on account of character is ever made. The fact that one is of the Jewish faith seems sufficient to bar association with him.
In order to ascertain the cause of this prejudice, and if possible, eradicate it, we have deemed it advisable to address the subjoined queries to a limited number of influential Chris-3°
The Letter
tians of various callings and denominations, and would ask your careful consideration of them, and a reply by the 15th of March prox.
We admit that Jews, like all human beings, have their ignoble as well as noble types, but this difference is as between members of the human family, and is not due to their faith, a faith to which, it will be admitted, all the dominant sects owe their origin.
We ask your candid reply to these questions. If you have in mind what you consider wholesome truths please do not hesitate to state them, however unpalatable you think they may be to either Jew or Christian. They may help us to understand more thoroughly the causes of a prejudice which, while it exists, is as un-Chris-tian as it is un-American.
We are sure that your inborn sense of justice will induce you to assist in wiping out this unworthy sentiment as a matter of fairness to your fellowman and duty to your faith.
Respectfully yours,
THE AMERICAN HEBREW.3i
THE QUESTIONS
(Where Roman numerals are used in the letters that
follow, reference is had to these Questions.)
I. Can you, of your own personal .experience find any justification whatever for the entertainment of prejudice towards individuals solely because they are Jews ?
II? Is this prejudice not due largely to the religious instruction that is given by the Church and Sunday-school:—for instance, the teachings that the Jews crucified. Jesus; that they rejected him and can only secure salvation by a belief in him, and similar matters that are calculated to excite in the impressionable mind of the child an adversion, if not a loathing, for members of "the despised race?"
III.	Have you observed in the social or business life of the Jew, so far as your personal experience has gone, any different standard of conduct than prevails among Christians of the same social status?
IV.	Can you suggest what should be done to dispel the existing prejudice?32
THE ANSWERS
It will not be amiss to introduce these letters, with an extract from one sent by the late George Eliot to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, under date of Oct. 29th, 1876, with reference to the Jewish element in "Daniel Deronda":
An Answer from the Grave.
As to the Jewish element in "Deronda," I expected from first to last, in writing it, that it would create much stronger resistance, and even repulsion, than it has actually met with. But precisely because 1 felt that the usual attitude of Christians towards Jews is—I hardly know whether to say more impious or more stupid— when viewed in the light of their professed principles, I therefore felt urged to treat Jews with such sympathy and understanding as my nature and knowledge could attain to. Moreover, not only towards the Jews, but towards all Oriental peoples with whom we English come in contact, a spirit of arrogance and contemptuous dictato-rialness is observable, which has become a national disgrace to us. There is nothing I should care more to do, if it were possible, than to rouse the imaginations of men and women to a vision of human claims in those races of their fellowmen who most differ from them in customs and beliefs. But towards the Hebrews we western people, who have been reared in Chris-George Eliot
33
tianity have a peculiar debt, and, whether we acknowledge it or not, a peculiar thoroughness of fellowship in religious and moral sentiment. Can anything be more disgusting than to hear people called "educated," making small jokes about eating ham, and showing themselves empty of any real knowledge as to the relation of their own social and religious life to the history of the people they think themselves witty in insulting? They hardly know that Christ was a Jew; and I find men, educated, supposing that Christ spoke Greek. To my feeling, this deadness to the history which has prepared half our world for us, this inability to find interest in any form of life that is not clad in the same coat-tails and flounces as our own lies very close to the worst kind of irreli-gion. The best that can be said of it is, that it is a sign, of the intellectual narrowness—in plain English, the stupidity—which is still the average mark of our culture.
GEORGE ELIOT.
Rt. Rev. H. C. Potter, D. D., Bishop of New York.
As your questions are cast, there is, with a single exception (the second,) hardly room for any other than one answer to thein. Any race-prejudice on the score of race is inexcusable, since "God' hath made of one blood34
Rev. H. C. Potter
all nations to dwell upon the face of the earth." I cannot say that I have observed a different standard of conduct as prevailing among Jews and Gentiles. There are those who think that the construction of the common standard by Hebrews, is more literal, and that they are not wont to be bound by what most people would regard as an honorable understanding, unless it be "nominated in the bond." I am not, myself, in a position to speak as to this, further than to say that such has not been my own experience.
So far as I have observed particular illustrations of a social prejudice in the case of Hebrews, it has been because of characteristics which were, in no sense, identical with those of their race, but rather those of the uneducated and unrefined of those races among whom they have been reared. In other words, the prejudice has not been against them as Israelites, but as persons of manners and habits comrflon to Germans, Poles, and Americans,—manners and habits which are distasteful to persons of culture and refinement. In our day, there are many people of all races who grow suddenly rich, and whose coarse, aggressive, ostentatious, and selfishly-inconsiderate bearing would be pretty sure to provoke resentment no matter what their lineage.
There is, I think, no warrant for the statement that Christian children are taught in Sunday schools to "hate the Jew". TheirRev. H. C. Potter
35
Savior was a Jew, and though in other ages, the Christian Church has dishonored itself by persecuting Jews, even then more than one Pope lifted a courageous voice as the defender of the Jew; while, to-day, Christians of whatever name would equally resent injustice of any kind to the Hebrew, as a crime against God and our common humanity.
Injustice, I say. But social intercourse, as such, has nothing to do with the question of equity as between races. Such intercourse is a matter of social affinities, or tastes, and nobody has any more right to insist that you shall receive me into your house, than that you shall like boiled cabbage. If the Hebrew community in America thinks itself wronged because of any social proscription, it has the remedy in its own hands. It is the heir of a great race, having great and pre-eminent gifts. Where these have been developed by adequate culture and joined with a resolute will, they have made the Hebrew easily foremost in statesmanship, art, letters, diplomacy, finance, and every other honorable and distinguished calling. There is almost no one not a Jew, who has not, among his friends and acquaintances, some one who is descendant of that race from which has come the mightiest Sovereignty that has ever ruled the heart of man, and for whose rare gifts and graces he has the heartiest respect and admiration. In such cases the question of race prejudice has vanished.36
Rev. A. C. Coxe
And so it would, if a people with so large a capacity for success, would organize for success in those directions where the present situation is most unsatisfactory. If Hebrew capital, and taste, and energy, would set about rearing hotels, clubhouses, and private schools, and making them what they should be, they would find the present condition of things promptly reversed. Take the single matter of hotel service,—prompt, intelligent, civil, service. If such a thing could be made, as it is in Germany, Switzerland, France, and elsewhere, the habitual characteristic of an inn, under Hebrew administration, Hebrews, if they were to build such an hotel for their own people, would soon find it crowded with all the Christians whom they were willing to admit. In a word, excellence is the passport to recognition; and this ought to be no unwelcome watchword for a race whose pre-eminent distinction it has so often been, under most adverse conditions, to excel.
Rt. Rev. A. Cleveland Coxe, D. D., Bishop Western New York.
Because I love the Hebrew people, their incomparable poetry and the Mosaic History, I amRev. A. C. Coxe
37
glad to comply with your request. Let me premise that I think you overestimate the degree of prejudice, if it prevails to any extent in this country. In this city, 1 think I can affirm there is very little of it, and among our most respected citizens we number "Men of Israel" not a few. It was so in Baltimore, where I once resided.
I answer your first inquiry in few words. There is no justice and no common sense in such prejudice, and it is thoroughly un-Amer-ican. I am sure there are innumerable "Gentiles" among us, whom it is much less agreeable to encounter in social intercourse, than the Israelites whom I have met, i. e. in corresponding positions. Of course, we find very vulgar people whom wealth alone lifts from the lowest ranks, and again we find delicacy and honor among the poor. As this is notoriously true of Gentiles, I doubt not it is so of the Jews. And I have often observed that among those to whom our Constitution extends a welcome, it is the Jew who finds much that must be distasteful to him in our laws and institutions; but it is not the Jew who therefore turns upon them with ingratitude, and strives to destroy the most cherished features of our social estate.
As to your second inquiry, Christian teachings prescribe good will to all men, as you suggest, and we are bidden to "honor all men." 1 cannot attribute the spirit of which you complain, to Sunday school and gospel teachings. In our schools are generally displayed maps and38
Rev. A. C. Coxe
pictures of the "Holy Land" and children are reminded that the Jews are still "beloved for the Father's sake." Great advantages are recognized as still pertaining to the Jew; "to him first, and also to the Gentile." They are respectfully referred to by the clergy, as a people of the Providential Hand, for whom a great and incomparably glorious future is in store. I doubt whether those who merit the name of "Christians" are not generally the reverse of discourteous to their Hebrew fellow-citizens. Among socialists and infidels in Germany I have found the Judenhasz most virulent, and something of the sort is" intense among theistic Frenchmen.
As to your third inquiry, 1 have already answered it, indirectly. But, here, frankly, I must confess that there is something to be noted which may account for apparent coldness where no coldness is really felt or intentionally manifested. Among strict Hebrews, keeping their Passover, I fancy the most refined Christian might prove an awkward guest, should he be thrown among them by circumstance. And so, the "different standard," which you recognize as regulating our manners in many respects, may make it, at times, very difficult to avoid conduct, or even expressions, which a sensitive Israelite might not relish, while nothing offensive would be designed.
As to the remedy, I find it in the spirit of our own Scriptures and of those which you haveDr. A. N. Littlejohn
39
imparted to us. Our Lawgiver, though a Jew, rebuked the prevailing hatred of his people toward the Samaritans, and forbade us to imitate it. He taught us to make all men "our neighbors." Surely, in such a precept, we find nothing but that "unity" which the Psalmist likens to "the dew of Hermon." In harmony with it, 1 am your friend and servant,
Buffalo, March 10th, 1890.
Rt. Rev. A. N. Littlejohn, D. D., Bishop of Long Island.
You desire me to answer the four questions forwarded to me. To the 1st, I would say that I have had no "personal experience" in the matter.
To the 2d, I would say that in my opinion the prejudice referred to is "not largely due to the religious instruction that is given by the Church and Sunday-School." It may have some influence, but not to the extent implied by the question.
To the 3d, I would say that my observation has been too limited to justify me in giving any positive answer.
To the 4th, I answer thatlhe prejudice will sooner or later disappear before the enlighten-40
Bishop J. H. Vincent
ing, liberating influences of modern life. May God hasten the day when no trace of it shall be seen.
Very truly yours,
Garden City, March 10th, 1890.
Bishop John H. Vincent, Chancellor of Chautauqua, Buffalo, N. Y.
I.—None	whatever.
II.—I	think not. I think it is a mere relic of ecclesiastical antagonism of other ages kept alive by Jesuitical artifice. Rome cannot buy or browbeat the Jew. She therefore hates and persecutes him.
III.—None	whatever.
IV.—Agitation.	Protest. Conversation, frank and full, between Jewish and Christian gentlemen. The more we mingle in friendly circles, the more this senseless prejudice will wear way.
Respectfully and fraternally,
Ex-Pres. James McCosh, Princeton College
I am not in a position to answer all your questions. I believe that the attitude of mere professing Christians towards the Jews has notDr. J. McCosh
4i
always been so kindly as it should have been. For myself I can say that I never met with any rudeness from Jews. Of this I am sure, that the true followers of Jesus, old and young, ever feel and cherish a warm feeling of affection toward those who are the kinsmen, according to the flesh, of Him whom we regard as our Redeemer and who is foretold in the Old Testament (see Isaiah, Ch. liii.).
Princeton, N. J., Feb. 28, 1890.
Cardinal Gibbons, Baltimore, Md.
A representative of "The American Hebrew" went to Baltimore to see Cardinal Gibbons, the head of the Catholic Church in America, and learn his views on the subject of these outbreaks of prejudice against the Jews which occur from time to time.
The Cardinal declared that personally he had a very high regard for the race which showed so much energy in all their work and possessed so many intellectual characteristics. That so far as Baltimore was concerned there was no prejudice —that he had not met with any. If any prejudice, however, occurred anywhere he was very emphatic in deprecating it in this age of enlightenment. That Christianity was indebted to the42
Cardinal Gibbons
Jews for their Savior and all his Apostles. That nothing should be taught concerning the crucifixion that would tend to awaken prejudice against the Jews of to-day who were certainly in no way responsible for acts committed so many centuries ago—and that he earnestly disapproved of the fostering of any prejudice whatever on any grounds, and that so far as he knew the Jew gave no cause for any prejudice.
Rev. Morgan Dix, D. D., New York.
I have received your communication of the 11th inst. with a series of questions intended to guide me in the expression of my views on the antipathy manifested in this country towards persons of the Jewish faith. It is very seldom that I notice requests of this kind, but your letter appears to merit attention, and I will therefore briefly reply.
I. I am glad to have an opportunity to say that I have no personal prejudice towards individuals solely because they^are Jews. On the contrary, I have known many most estimable persons of that religion. So far as my own experience goes, I find no justification'for the feeling to which you refer. You rightly draw a distinction between noble and ignoble types. These exist everywhere, in all races and in all religions. I have met in Christian circles, persons quite as disagreeable as any people could possibly be.Dr. Morgan Dix
43
II. I may say, in answer to another of your questions, that 1 have not observed - "in the social or business life of the Jew, any different standard of conduct than that which prevails among Christians of the same social status." I find very much among them to admire and imitate. I honor them for their domesticity, their marital fidelity, their devotion to their children, and their care for their poor. They seem to me to be as honest as other men; and their rapid advances in wealth, influence and means of usefulness in the world, appear to imply industrious and frugal habits and wisdom and integrity in the management of their business affairs. So much for your first and third questions.
As to the second, I must speak more fully and with more reserve. You ask if the prejudices against the Jews are not "due largely to the religious instruction given by the Church and Sunday School; for instance, the teachings that the Jews crucified Jesus, that they rejected him, and can only secure salvation by a belief in him; and whether these teachings are not calculated to incite in the impressionable minds of children an aversion, if not a loathing, for members of the despised race." In answer to these inquiries I can only say that so far as I know, our children are not trained to loathe and detest the Jewish people. We teach them the facts of history and the truth of Christian theology.44
Dr. Morgan Dix
The judicial murder of Jesus Christ is rightly held up to them by us as the great crime of mankind, but not in a vindictive spirit towards the unhappy actors in the scene, who, by the way, were Gentiles and Jews together; to mingle human passion with our teaching on that subject would be out of place when we consider the stupendous nature of that transaction, in the light in which we Christians see it. We bow in awe before an incomprehensible truth as we regard it; and, in doing so, personal feeling dies out. I write as a Christian holding the Catholic faith as to the Incarnation and Atonement.
In teaching those doctrines to my children and my people, it is not necessary for me to add galling or irritating words. They would be wholly out of keeping with the tremendous theme, nor does it necessarily excite bitterness and anger in the human heart. I should rather adopt the language of St. Paul in the 9th, 10th and llth Chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, as expressive of the proper condition of the Christian mind on that subject. I do not doubt that pious Israelites to-day revere the character of Christ and abhor the act of their forefathers in killing him, and I should give them the full benefit of that regret for what was done so long ago. We must teach our children the facts of history. We must impress on them what we believe: that Christ is the author of salvation, and that there is no salva-Dr. Morgan Dix
45
tion in any other. But these truths may be, and 1 think ought to be, so presented that love and pity may be the outcome as regards those who have their descent from the original criminals under whom He suffered, and towards those who, whatever their religious opinions, think lightly of Him whom we worship as the Saviour of mankind. So far as my observation extends, I do not think that our children are "trained in aversion and loathing for the despised race."
Whatever value may attach to these words, I request you, if you publish them, to publish them entire, and to consider them as a hurried and imperfect utterance on a theme which deserves much more time than I have to give to it. Let me add that I feel a strong sympathy for those estimable persons who may be the innocent victims of the prejudice to which you refer. The way to dispel that prejudice appears to me to cultivate the true Christ-like spirit in our hearts and to pray for God's ancient Israel, who, as we hope and believe, will some day be "graffed in again" and made one with us in the body of Jesus Christ.
1 am, with respect and regard, Yours truly,
New York, Feb. 26th, 1890.46
Rev. Robert Collyer
Rev. Robert Collyer, New York.
In trying to frame an answer to the questions in your circular touching the prejudice which exists in many minds toward those who are of your race and religion, I want to be counted among those who heartily disclaim such a feeling, and condemn it wherever it may be found, because, as my own thought runs, we are debtors to you, beyond all other men on the earth, for what we hold to be noblest and best in our own faith and life. We sing your psalms, pore over your chronicles, and make pilgrimages to your Holy Land with a devouter heart than your own; while the words of your prophets still stand to us among the grandest things that ever fell from human lips, and the Gospels we esteem as the perfect flower of all ages, came to us through his heart who was bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh. 1 have mingled freely with you also, when I could do this easily, and found friends I esteem among my choicest and best, as high-minded and honorable men and women as we know how to be, who stand within the Christian pale, and of as true a refinement, so that to know them is one of the treasures of my life. So much must be said, because it is most true, and much more might be said of the same tenor, if it was worth the while, in what a fine old lady out West used to call the pre-ramble to a discourse.Rev. Rober Collyer
47
I want also to use a Yorkshireman and Yankee's privilege of answering one question by asking another. Whether you yourselves are free from the prejudice you complain of in our fellow-citizens, so far as it springs from our diverse race and religion? Have you not held yourselves apart from the life of this New World in a nook of your own until now, and, like certain forefathers in the old time, kept on saying: the people of the Lord, the people of the Lord are we, and heathens all beside; looking down from your fancied eminence as the chosen race, with a certain disdain and feeling of keep-your-distance like those barn-door fowls in the House of the Seven Gables, that would have nothing to do with those that were clucking and crowing on the other side of the fence, for fear they would debase the breed? Have you done what lay in your power to break down these barriers of prejudice, and blend your life freely and generously with ours and so tried by all means to come into touch with us ? It is told of Charles Lamb that when he was saying all sorts of hard things about another man, a friend remarked, "Why, Mr. Lamb, you do not know him; you never met him." "N— no," was the stuttering answer. "If I had m— met him, I f—fear I should 1—like him." I do not make the charge, because it is so cheap to say, "You're another." I only ask a question you must answer yourselves. I do not think again that this prejudice is due largely now to48
Rev. Robert Collyer
the religious instruction given in the churches and Sunday-schools. It was so once, no doubt; but 1 think that time has passed away, and especially in the great centres of our nation's life, where my lot has been cast for more than thirty years.
In the sermons I glance over in our papers, and in the books I read for my own sake and the children's, the story of the great tragedy may be told as it stands in our Gospels; but the savage onslaught on your nation which was made aforetime, and wrought you such woe through the centuries, to our disgrace and shame, is made no more, and never should have been made at all. Some one says:
We weave with human shuttle still;
While fate is fate through man's free will.
And in all the world one has to allow there never was a surer instance of the saying than that which gathers about the Cross in the light of, shall I say, our common orthodox teaching, where, I take it, the emphasis of your question lies.
Your fore-elders had no more option in the light of this teaching than the actors in the old Greek tragedies. It was the same great shadow of doom which was on them from "before the beginning of days." You also were victims and I think the ever growing sense of that truth has gone very far indeed in our time to slay all wrath toward you among fair-minded men, and to bring forth a certain pity touched with pathosRev. Robert Collyer
49
in the common Christian heart as he remembers your long enduring woe, and so this is one of the dying issues, not dead, but with feet as cold as lead.
What is amiss with our people then who nourish this prejudice against you because you are Jews; is it based, you ask, on some different standard in your business and social life from that which prevails among Christians of the same social status? and I answer, No, your standards are as fine and true as ours. I hear no complaints among upright and downright business men over their experience among your people, while one merchant who has very large dealings with you, told me once that those he traded with were as honorable and upright as any in our city. And this must be true because you do an enormous business with our people which would melt away like snowflakes in May if your standards were not as true and fine as our best. I suppose there never was a man among us of a more honorable and high minded make than my old friend, Mr. Herrman, who is dead, and he was but one instance of the manhood I know of and hear of among the Jews in New York.
But that same gentleman who gave in his good testimony, said to me one day when a great firm down town had broken, and it was found that all the preferred creditors were Jews, with not a "Gentile" among them. "If they keep on doing that, instead of their beingRev. Robert Collyer
called the peculiar people we shall have to call them the preferred people." So I will ask another question you must answer. Do you find by reflection or observation that the faith which causes you to cling together as one man, and that man a Jew against the world, tends to lead you into this snare when such troubles fall upon you? For if it does, and the nobler sort do not fight it as men fight fire, there will be one reason for the feeling of which you complain.
About the social standards, I have said my say. Touching those I am proud and glad to call my friends, they are all the heart can desire. Still these questions have been mainly prompted, as I understand, by the disposition manifested among our people to put up the bars against Jews in our hotels and summer resorts, and this is a thing of yesterday. Well,^some years ago I stayed with my family at a house where there were a good many Jews and they were not nice people to stay with. They were loud and pushing as we say, with but the scantest sense of the courtesy which has grown to a fine instinct in our people who are well to do, as a rule. They were well to do, but their money had grown ahead of their manners; the fine instinct of quietness and courtesy had not come into line with their wealth, and so the rest of us had rather a trying time. But we found two Jewish families where we stayed last summer, and I want to find no finer courtesyRev. Robert Collyer	51
or fair manners than theirs. They were modest, and nice and clever, and fell in easily with the spirit of the time and place. And so I wonder whether this may not be the truth about this special trouble: Within no long time your people have grown quite rapidly rich, as those we did not get along with had done, and has not the money got ahead of the manners in many of them, and so brought on this trouble we have to deplore; so that all have to suffer for the sins against the standard we try to maintain in such places of resort. I say we did not hear of it until within these few years, and the one period meets and ties very fairly with the other.
What should be done to dispel this prejudice, no matter whence it springs? That is a hard question to answer; but I think the great thing is that you should do all that lies in your power, to knock down the barriers set up by your faith, which keep you apart from the great tides of the nation's life; so that you are always one manhood and we another. Get rid of your prejudice toward us and ours just as soon as you can, where the spring head of your life lies, as some are doing to their praise and that of your race, and then be sure you will reap what you sow. Be Jews and faithful to the great light which has shone for you since Abraham crossed the river, but with a great, generous and liberal heart, and fearless.
We want you and need you just as you are at your best, in the commonwealth of these States.52
Rev. Robert Collyer
When your great lawgiver was with you in the wilderness, this problem was waiting to be solved by the help of your God and ours: how shall 1 weld these tribes and families together into one strong federation ? And when they have made their way through the wilderness and settled down and begin to build homes and cities how shall they make these the abodes of health, and not the breeding places of plague and pestilence; and how shall they find their way to worship, as well as work, so that the home, the town, and the church, shall be not three but one. Cities so noble by reason of the nobility of the citizen, that they shall be the joy of the whole earth. A church which shall answer to the need of every man and woman and child. And a manhood so trained that for the sake of the whole commonwealth, no man shall dare to say, 1 am my own master and can eat what I will, drink what I will, and do what I wiH with my own. The man I want to find, he said, cannot do what he will, except as his will stands true to the laws of our human life. The man must be true, and so make the home true, and the church. It was a chain he would make, like that I saw one day at the jeweler's, of twisted links wrought into a solid strength four square and flexible almost as silk.
It has held you well. The old supple race you left on the Nile, is lost with the broad, burly manhood which built Nineveh and Babylon. The Macedonian who went leaping like fireRev. Robert Collyer
53
through your valleys and over your hills, has vanished with the Roman who came after him, and drew a furrow over Zion with his ploughshare for a sign; but you remain and will remain. And we want this grand staying power and virtue of a right true manhood, which has saved you, blended thoroughly with our life in this new world. And as our people find you out, (I take shame to be saying our people and your people, but for this you also are to blame) find what worth is in you, and grace of fair manhood and womanhood as you strive after the standards, there will be no trouble. You can build hotels then, if I may mention this again; good Americans will be glad to enter as guests. You have the ball at your foot.
Rev. Chas. F. Deems, D. D., New York
In reply to your polite invitation, I shall answer your questions in their order:
I.	Of my own personal experience, I have never been able to find any justification whatever for the entertainment of prejudice toward individuals solely because they are Jews. In my own consciousness, I have never had such prejudices.
II.	I cannot suppose that the prejudice to which you allude is "largely due to the religious54
Rev. Chas F. Deems
instruction that is given by the church and Sunday-school," as I, myself, have been a preacher of Christ and Him crucified for fifty years, and during a longer period been connected with the Christian Sunday-school, without that prejudice.
1 think that whatever prejudice exists is largely due to the literature of different nations since the revival of letters, and that that literature arose out of the condition of the people after the destruction of Jerusalem and their dispersion amongst the nations. They were wanderers. They were always in trade. If they had settled down to agriculture largely among the different nations it might have mitigated the feeling which naturally arose in Gentile minds after the Gentiles had become Christians. Of course, the fact that the Jews had slaughtered their Lord would naturally create some aversion in minds that were near the crucifixion: and that would be transmitted. Moreover, the prejudice of the Jew as toward the Christian has been as strong as that of the Christian toward the Jew.
III. In business life the Jew, so far as my personal experience has gone, is not found to have had any lower or higher standard of conduct than that which prevails among Christians of the same social status. I know of Christian merchants who have quite as much confidence in their Jewish comrades in trade as they have in any Gentiles. There is no reason why the Decalogue promulgated through Moses shouldRev. Chas F. Deems
55
not have as powerful a grasp upon the conscience of the Jew as upon that of the Gentile, but 1 have known quite a number of Jews who were just as mean, low and filthy as a Gentile ever could become.
I object to the word "Jew" being made a verb in English to describe taking advantage in a trade. It is just as unreasonable as to use the word "yankee," for all that meanness which is said to make nutmegs out of wood, and perform similar feats. To despise all New Englanders, amongst whom are some of the largest, most liberal and most hospitable people upon earth on account of such things, is irrational prejudice.
IV. In replying to your last, I come to what is the most delicate part of my letter. I am to suggest what should be done to dispel the existing prejudice. Before doing so, let me say-honestly, but with very great kindness, that it is not all prejudice on the part of the Gentiles. You allude to discriminations made at summer places of resort. It may be in some places no discrimination on account of character is ever made, but I do not think that this is always so. May I venture to tell you what I think is the difficulty, and if you think it will do more harm than good to publish it, will you strike it from my letter ?
There is in America at this day a class of men who are Jews by reason of descent from Abraham, and they must bear all that belongs to that distinction whether of good or evil. They mustRev. Chas F. Deems
be known as Jews. Now these men have abandoned the faith of Moses and the Prophets and have not taken up the faith of Jesus Christ. They have become utter materialists; they live only for this world. The greed of gain is the one absorbing passion, and because there is no other world, they strive, with a selfishness and ill-breeding which makes them unsupportable, to get all the good they can out of this world. Now such men, whether Jew or Gentile, are not agreeable as messmates, and therefor they are avoided. 1 can think of no people on the face of the earth who suffer so much on account of these vulgar Jews as high minded cultivated, refined Hebrew ladies and gentlemen. To them the existence of this pestiferous race must be an incessant agony. How then can Gentiles be expected to endure them? Now I say frankly that there are Gentiles who can be described exactly in the terms which I have used above in regard to one special class of Hebrews, and which, God knows, I never applied to the whole race. But these Gentiles are Gentiles, and with all their vulgarity they do not have the added barrier of racial difference.
I should not have gone into this so much at length, but that I love my Jewish brethren, and I hope that these remarks will lead my Christian brethren to discriminate. The cure for the whole thing is for you and me and all other good men to endeavor to bring these disagree-Rev. Howard Crosby
57
able Jews to the point of becoming either conscientious Hebrews, or devout Christians. Every man who succeeds in doing one or the other, will in that measure succeed in breaking down the difference between the two.
I could give you a list of names amongst your rabbis and Hebrew gentlemen who are just as much welcomed by Christian clergymen and laymen to the enjoyments of social life as could be wished by the largest hearted philanthropist. I see nothing before us but for you to continue to work at "the law," while I work at "the gospel," and so get the great unwashed amongst the Jews and Gentiles cleansed in the fountain which was opened in the House of David.
New York, February 28, 1890.
Rev. Howard Crosby, D. D., New York
In reply to your queries, would say that any prejudice toward others for their religious beliefs, I consider the mark of a weak and narrow mind, and any persecution on religious grounds to be diabolical.
1 believe the prejudice against the Jews, and the frightful persecutions which they endured58
Rev. Howard Crosby
from nominal Christians in the middle ages, (and still endure in some lands,) were the result of the wicked teachings of a false Christianity; but I know of no Protestant Christian church or Sunday-school that teaches any such abomination. There may be in Europe, where church and state are united, (and hence the church is secularized,) some Protestants guilty of the same accursed folly and wickedness, but if there be such, they are exceptional cases.
I have always regarded the Jews as a people of remarkable virtue. In family life they are models, and as citizens they are maintainers of peace and order. 1 believe that the blessing of Abraham has been continued to them through the ages.
Prejudice against the Jews will be found to exist only among worldly Christians. Those who love God's Word and live lives of godliness, will be found always to love God's ancient people, and to expect for them a day of spiritual prosperity and power.
The vast mass of Christians (so-called) are such only in name, and a true godly Christianity must not be measured by them. The New Testament is the only proper criterion of Christianity. When men are converted and become truly Christians, there will be no prejudice against the Jews.
I believe that Judaism and Christianity are one divine religion, and the only divine religion,Rev. Howard Crosby
59
and that the Jews will in the end see this, and we shall become united against paganism and infidelity.
New York, Feb. 16, 1890.
Rev. Edward Everett Hale, D. D., Boston.
I am glad to see that you are making some study of the very curious subject on which you write to me.
I tiave never been so placed, as it happens, that I have observed the ostracism of which you speak, and 1 have never been able to study its causes.
When I have seen it mentioned in the press, it has been a subject of constant amazement to me. I do not think that it existed in my boyhood or youth. On the other hand, so far as 1 can recollect, even in my middle life, a certain distinction attached to Hebrew parentage; and certainly the habit of the people among whom I was brought up, was to look with interest on persons who did not believe in the Middle Age doctrine of the Trinity, any more than we did, who had furnished so many lights of the world
Yours, very truly,6o
Rev. Washington Gladden
7
in science, in music, and in other triumphs of art, and who were supposed to have the key to the whole range of the Semitic languages. I can best describe this sort of sympathy or admiration by referring to the enthusiastic views about the Hebrew race expressed by Mr. Disraeli in his novels, "Coningsby," "Sibyl," and "Tan-cred," which, so far as I can remember, were cordially received by the intelligent readers of New England at that time.
I shall, therefore, read with particular interest the result of your study of what seems to me a comparatively recent change in the drift of opinion here; and I must say that I do not believe that the ostracism of which you speak governs the conduct of the best people among enlightened Christians in their behavior towards the best people among enlightened Jews.
Roxbury, Mass., Feb. IS, 1890.
Rev. Washington Gladden, D. D.
1. No, there is no justification. Prejudice is never justifiable. Unreason is never reasonable. Every man ought to be judged upon his own merits. It is cowardly, stupid, brutal to treat a
Very truly yours,Rev. Washington Gladden	61
man with contempt because of his birth, whether he be Jew or negro or Chinaman. If he is an intelligent, upright, courteous gentleman, let him be recognized as such, no matter from whose loins he sprang, or what is the color of his skin.
II.	Possibly, in part. I have no doubt that prejudice against the Jews has been raised, unwittingly, by the teachings of Church and Sunday-school. Christian teachers of all grades ought to explain more carefully than they sometimes do, that the Jews, with all their prejudice, were the very best people in the world when our Lord came to earth, possessing the purest morality, honoring the family as it was honored by no other nation. We ought to keep it before our children that Jesus himself was a Jew; that all the apostles were Jews; that Christianity was planted in Asia and in Europe by Jews.
III.	My impression is that the Jew, as we find him here in America, is very much like the average American, only a little more so. The great majority of the Jews are engaged in commercial pursuits. The proportion of them who take tp other callings is much smaller, I think, than in any other branch of our composite nationality. Naturally, therefore, the commercial spirit and the commercial habit are greatly developed and intensified among them; of the humanizing and refining influences that spring from other pursuits they do not get their fair proportion. If62	Rev. Washington Gladden
among the Jews there is an over-development of mercantilism, then there must be among them an underdevelopment of the amenities and the humanities by which our social life is brightened and sweetened. Mercantilism, as Dr. Andrew D. White has so impressively shown, is the besetting sin of the average American. I think the average Jew is a little more addicted to it than the average Yankee, partly because he is a rather more strenuous and forceful person, and always does whatever he does with all his might.
The mercantile world generally has accepted Smithian economy, that moral motives have no place or power in the economic realm; that free competition is the only law of trade, and that it is impossible, by our intelligence and goodwill, to modify or mitigate the hardships which arise from the operation of this law. Business has been done in Christendom pretty largely under the guidance of these notions, and so far as these notions have been accepted and followed, trade has become a debasing and demoralizing occupation. Those who have followed it most closely have got the most harm from it. It must make them hard, fierce, persistent, relentless. There have been influences arising from other studies and pursuits which have helped to mitigate these brutalities; but those who devote themselves most strictly to business, whether they are Yankees or Hebrews, have felt the least of these softening influences.Rev. Washington Gladden	63
We cannot blame the Jew for adopting the current economic maxims; but we can easily see what effect they must produce upon his life if he steadily follows them, and if his associations are such that he seldom escapes from their dominion, and such also that he shares less freely than some of his neighbors do in the influences by which this materializing mercantilism is counteracted. I do not by any means forget the great names in art and literature and philanthropy which belong to the Hebrew race; there are no names more glorious in human annals. Still, it is an undoubted fact that a much larger proportion of the Jews than of any other nationality are engaged in commercial pursuits. What the effect of that fact must be upon the Jewish people under the operation of the current economic maxims is evident enough.
IV. Some things must be done by Christians and some things by Jews. The Christians must learn justice and charity. Both Jews and Christians must unlearn the maxims of a materialistic political economy, and must try to understand that "a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." When that lesson is well learned by Jews and Gentiles, "the middle wall of partition" between them will speedily come down.64	Rev. J. W. Chadwick
Rev. John W. Chadwick, Brooklyn, N. Y.
I.—I	can not.
II.—In	answer to second question, I should say that the Church and Sunday-school teaching had not much to do with it; that the attribution to the Jews of vulgar ostentation in the way of dress and ornament has much more. I have imagined this attribution to have some warrant, though I have found nothing of it in the many Jews with whom I have personal acquaintance. And then, you know, that Christian envy of big Jewish diamonds does not help the matter.
III.—I	have not.
IV.—Only	that Christian people should refuse their patronage to proprietors of hotels that distinguish invidiously against Jews, and that licenses should prohibit any religious test. Of course the proprietor must be able to defend himself against ill-mannered guests, Jewish or Christian, and there are many of both kinds.
Yours truly,
Jk&UduejC'
Brooklyn, N. Y., Feb. 13, 1890.
Rev. R. S. MacArthur, D. D., N. Y.
I. I find no justification for any unfair treatment on the basis you name. It is true that my personal experience is quite limited; but so farRev. R. S. MacArthur
6 5
as it goes it enables me to answer your questions with an emphatic negative. Personally I entertain no such prejudice and never did. I hope I never shall. Racial prejudices ought not to be entertained by any intelligent man. The man who bears the Christian name and who entertains racial prejudices is in so far unworthy of that name.
H. No, emphatically no. In all our Sunday schools and from all our pulpits the Jews are not blamed for rejecting and crucifying Christ as men nominally Christian are blamed for refusing to-day to possess His spirit, to imitate His example and to confess His name. Only last Sunday 1 had occasion to say, in substance, that those who crucified Christ were less guilty~ because of their less advantageous opportunities, than those who to-day refuse to obey his commands by living for the glory of God and for the good of men. I think there is but little, if any, of the kind of teaching which this question implies given in any of our churches or Sunday-schools. It is true that we affirm constantly, even as did the Apostles, that salvation is in His name and in none other. There is no doubt but that our pulpits do great honor to the Jewish race in emphasizing the fact that the greatest of prophets, the most seraphic of poets, and the noblest of apostles were Hebrews; and the Christ, the ideal man of the race, was, after the flesh, a Jew.66
Rev. R. S. MacArthur
III.	My experience is too limited to be worth anything at this point.
IV.	Yes, a few things. We ought to lay down the general rule that a man is to be judged by what he is and not by the racial name which he bears; that discrimination between men of a race is appropriate, but that ostracism of a race as such, is un-American, unmanly and ungodly. Jesus Christ was the head of a new race, and all who truly possess His spirit will say that whether a man be black or white, red or yellow, rich or poor, Hebrew or Gentile, "a man's a man for a' that." There are many Gentiles who are unworthy of our friendship or companionship; but we do not pass judgment on all by the most unworthy examples. There are unworthy Jews; but he is an unworthy Gentile who will judge all Jews by the selfish, boisterous, rude and uncultured representatives of the race. We can do much by giving Gentiles better instruction touching these principles of common justice; and Hebrews, in their turn, can do much in teaching the elements of their race which we have just characterized, to have more regard in public places for the rights of others and a truer consideration for all that pertains to manliness and godliness. Our Lord laid down, in His golden rule, the highest law of etiquette which has ever been formulated; and when all men follow that rule injustice and prejudice will disappear from among men.
R. S. MacARTHUR.Rev. R. Heber Newton
67
Rev. R. Heber Newton, New York
In response to your letter of the 1 lth of Feb. I will be as frank as you ask—since nothing else than frankness can be of any service in the matter. My own course in the past must be the assurance of my entire lack of any sympathy with the anti-Jewish animus which shows itself so frequently and so offensively and which, as you say, is contrary at once to the American spirit and to the Christian spirit. I answer your questions in detail, then, as follows:
I.	No.
II.	Doubtless this has been a serious factor in times past, and may be still a serious factor among the ignorant. I do not think it has any weight whatever among cultivated people, the classes who for the most part attend our Protestant churches and Sunday Schools. I do not remember ever to have heard any such teaching in church or school, or to have had any suggestion that any one else ever heard it.
III.	Interpreting "the same social status" as it is meant to be interpreted, I should say, No. But unfortunately, business knows little of social status. The codes of honor of the upper social strata in the business world, are, as far I can see, being seriously affected by the lower codes of honor in the lower social strata, the enterprising members of which are pushing into the higher ranks of business and demoralizing it.68
Rev. R. Heber Newton
So far as I can learn, from my observation and intercourse with business men, I do find that the Jews are considerably responsible for this.
I do not say, more so than Christians, but possibly in a more obtrusive manner. These Jews 1 do not for one moment take to be any fair representatives of the race. None the less, they do discredit the race.
Why it should be so opens a long line of historical retrospect, back through the times wherein the Hebrews had been driven by Christian persecutions of every land away from agriculture and production into exchange, socially ostracized and compelled to hold everything in a sense of utter insecurity, and since he was by natural gift and ability the banker of the Christian world, to be a banker with the heart of a foe to the Christian world, prepared thus to fleece it at every point in a natural retaliation for the unjust and cruel injuries that he had received.
The laws of heredity handed down this spirit as a nemesis against Christianity. The truer representatives of the Hebrew race have long outgrown this inheritance; but, unfortunately, the lower members of the race still find it working in them as the intellectual, moral and spiritual life remains undeveloped, and thus returns to plague us in our Christian civilization. The fact that these lower classes of the Hebrew race are coming in upon our shores from other lands and from lower civilizations, because of the oppor-Rev. R. Heber Newton	69
tunity of money-making here found, brings to the front, in many a line of business, precisely this unfortunate representative of a noble race. The aversion which he excites is natural. No right-minded Hebrew should wish it otherwise, so long as it is against the individual and not against the race. No right-minded Christian should allow it to be other than an aversion against the individual and not against the race. Unfortunately, most of us are so limited, that the just prejudice against individuals passes on into an unjust prejudice against the race.
IV. For one, I lose no opportunity of quietly bearing my testimony against it and of educating a better public spirit. This each of us can do. The aggregation of individuals who have the better spirit in them will slowly mold a better public spirit. In the meantime it seems to me that the Hebrew protest, just now so needful and so rightful, will be strengthened by the frank admission of the grounds for this unjust animus, in so far as I may have suggested them rightly.
May the time soon come when this relic of barbarism will disappear!
Yours cordially,
£MM\imfr
Garden City, Feb. 13th 1890.70
Rev. Alvah S. Hobart
Rev. Alvah S. Hobart, D. D. Yonkers, N. Y.
I am in receipt of your letter and request concerning the persecution of Hebrews at the summer resorts and other places. In reply I may say that my personal experience in the matter is limited; my observation is wider. 1 think that you, sir, misapprehend both the source and nature of the "prejudice" as you call it. First the source of it is not largely Christian. It is certainly unchristian to be unfair to any one. The majority of those who have done the evil are not much more, if any more, Christian, even by profession, than they are Jewish. The summer resorts from which the Jews are excluded are not favorite resorts of those who are the best representatives of Christianity.
Second, the prejudice is not, I think, at all due to the teaching of the church and Sunday-school that the Jews crucified Jesus. Shakespeare's Shylock has done more than Sunday-schools. But Americans do not act on an old affair like that. Whatever cause there is, is to be found in some prevailing, persistent, present conduct on the part of the Jews; or in some deficiency in them which unfits them to be good companions for the unalloyed rest and enjoyment of a summer vacation. I have no personal grievance, but I often hear the remark from careful business men that the Jew does not consider it wrong to cheat a Gentile. It is said that he prefers that class of business which has theRev. A. S. Hobart
7i
largest opportunity to play upon the credulity of the unsuspecting; and that he is generally honest from policy and not from principle. I do not charge this upon him. I have no reason to do so. 1 never traded with one to my own damage that I know of. But you will readily see that if such an idea prevails among men that it will find expression everywhere.
Again, men go to summer resorts to get rid of as many of the inharmonious things of life as is possible. They want everything to be helpful to their enjoyment—selfish enjoyment if you please. Condemn the fact if you wish, but it cannot be ignored in this matter.
But the enjoyment of the Christian portion of the community is made up very largely of things that are vitally connected with the churches. They have a common Sunday, they know the same preachers, they are interested in the same educational and associational questions; they have common experiences of their home life; some of them have common desires that their daughters shall have such a circle of acquaintances as will insure a pleasing termination to the summer vacation. As you think of this, you will see how very large a part of the enjoyments of the hotel life is vitally connected with the church life. If a company of them get to talk, the presence of a Jew makes it impolite to bring the chiefest matters of their thought into notice. If it is Sunday, the Jew has no feeling or respect for the day. If the72
Rev. A. S. Hobart
young people get acquainted a watchful mother would feel it a great misfortune for her daughter to have an attachment for one of whom her best judgment must, say that he, a Jew, was not fitted in his deepest sympathies to harmonize with her daughter, a Christian.
So it comes about that the days which were to be full of unalloyed comfort are made less so by the presence of inharmonious elements. This does not condemn the Jew as worse than others, but it says the old Jewish proverb over again: "How shall two walk together unless they are agreed ?" It is to me as much a wonder that the Jew has a desire for Christian company, as that the Christian has little for the Jew. All this does not justify unfairness. But it is pretty sure that if any locality does not furnish as much pleasure as another, men will leave there for the other. Hotel keepers make the choice between their two kinds of customers. This is not at all confined to Jews and Christians. Quiet, sober men do not go to noisy drunken hotels. Circus men are not wanted in many of the best hotels. Some men will not board where there are children or pianos. This is not reflection on the pianos or the children, but is only the natural selection of one's company. I do not at all think that the wish to separate from Jews in the resorts is any deeper than the dislike which some have to boarding with many children.
Now "how to dispel the prejudice?" I think that if you can see the matter from my stand-Rev. Wm. M. Taylor
73
point, the prejudice does not seem to be so strong. But so far as it is prejudice, it can only be dispelled by making the Jews more in sympathy with Christian ways and the Christian Sabbath; or by making the Christians more Jewish. Perhaps as time goes on something may be gained by both which will give them more common ground, and then more fellowship will result. Certain it is in my mind, Jehovah, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, I claim as my God, and I believe that Jesus taught his disciples the same principles of mercy and righteousness which Jehovah had taught before. If both parties to this question will walk by their own scriptures, there will result common fellowship.
ALVAH S. HOBART.
Yonkers, N. Y., Feb. 26, 1890.
Rev. Wm. M. Taylor, D. D., New York
In answer to the questions which you have sent to me I beg to say:
First:—I cannot find any justification whatever of prejudice toward individuals solely because they are Jews.
Second:—I should be slow to believe that any religious instruction given in church or Sunday-school is responsible for the existence of such prejudice, inasmuch as whatever may be74
Rev. Wm. M. Taylor
said regarding the crucifixion and rejection of Jesus by the Jews, there is still the great and important fact that he whom we bfelieve to be our Saviour was himself a Jew; and the race to which according to the flesh he belonged must ever be deeply interesting to all Christians, both for his sake and for the sake of the fathers who are so greatly honored by us all.
Third:—1 have had no opportunities of observing the social and business life of the Jew, and cannot therefore say whether there be among them any different standard of conduct than prevails among Christians.
Fourth:—The only remedy which 1 can suggest for the present state of things, is a more earnest insistence by Christian ministers on the duty of loving our neighbor as ourselves, and a more emphatic denunciation of the principle of caste wherever and in whatever form it is manifested.
Rev. Ensign McChesney, D. D., New York.
In reply to your questions allow me to say that I am glad that you are agitating this sub-
Yours faithfully,Rev. Ensign McChesney	75
ject, and most earnestly hope that good results will follow.
Taking the questions in order 1 would say:
I.	My personal experience in the direction named has been so limited as to form no basis for intelligent judgment. Upon more general grounds I would say, however, that to hold prejudice against Jews "solely because they are Jews" is unreasonable and unchristian.
II.	The prejudice which exists cannot fairly be attributed "to the religious instruction given by the Church and Sunday-school." It is due rather to the failure of many nominally Christian people to receive and follow such instruction. Christianity has done more than all other religions put together to break down national or race prejudice, and it has done this largely through the religious instruction of the Church. To be perfectly just upon this subject, it should be remembered that this prejudice is not onesided. The Jews are historically an exclusive people. For centuries they were "The Chosen People of God." Do they not, generally speaking, still so regard themselves? It is easy to see how a people having this exalted conception of themselves should be exclusive and look upon others with prejudice. Probably there is as much anti-Christian prejudice among Jews as anti-Jewish prejudice among Christians. This does not justify the prejudice in either case, but it may help to explain it.
The Jews also have been greatly oppressed76	Rev. Ensign McChesney
and persecuted. This has been done by unenlightened, bigoted and un-Christlike "Christians." Take history through, it has been done in the largest number of cases by those adhering to a corrupted form of Christianity. The result of this persecution has been to make the Jews, who are naturally a high-spirited people, somewhat self-assertive, where opportunity arises for self-assertion. Deprived often of their rights, what wonder if, when the pressure i$ removed, they take all their rights with greatest alacrity? In suggesting this I write not from personal observation, but in view of representations that seem to me reliable. I leave this, simply saying that self-assertion is calculated not to conciliate, but to provoke prejudice.
Returning to the teaching of the church; it is true that the church teaches that the Jews many centuries ago instigated the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. This it teaches as a matter of history. It cannot do otherwise. But this cannot excite prejudice against modern Jews except in the minds of exceedingly weak and ignorant persons. If any prejudice arises from this cause it is not the fault of those who teach true history. At all events, there is to be found here no explanation of the existing prejudice.
Neither can the explanation come from the fact that the church teaches that salvation is connected with faith in Jesus Christ. For there are, in the aggregate, many in Christian lands who reject Christ as certainly and emphaticallyRev. Ensign McCkesney
77
as do the Jews, and against these persons the same form and measure of prejudice does not exist.
The church teaches many things which, if received, would remove the prejudice. Human duty is summed up in love to God and man. Love to man is to be held irrespective of nationality or race. And if there is any appeal to sentiment anywhere in these teachings it is most largely calculated to awaken kindly feeling rather than prejudice toward the Jews. Jesus Christ, viewed as to his human nature, was a Jew. The Apostles were Jews. The ancient prophets, whose words we hold sacred, were Jews. Many of the most inspiring lessons from Christian pulpits are based upon facts of heroic Jewish history. The ancient Jewish Psalms are used most freely in our Christian services. All this is against prejudice rather than for it.
It should be borne in mind also in considering this subject that the teachings of the church are not responsible for all the conduct of those who are called "Christians." Probably there are but few words more loosely used at the present day than the word "Christian." In its broadest sense R is made to include all who live in Christian lands and are not Jews, or Mohammedans, or professed adherents of some other than the Christian religion.
This is very loose and misleading. Many who have no faith in Christian teaching what-78	Rev. Ensign McChesney
ever, who hold no Christian theory of any sort, are nevertheless called Christians; and the Church and Christianity are held responsible for their conduct. There are others who have something of Christian theory, but they illustrate, what is also often illustrated by adherents of all faiths, that theory is one thing and practice is another. In reality they are Christians, and they only, who put their faith in Jesus Christ as the Lord and Saviour of mankind, and show the genuineness of their faith by following his precepts and example.
Failure on the part of others, merely nominal Christians, is not to be set down to the discredit of Christianity. Nor should the existing prejudice of many against the Jews simply "because they are Jews" be attributed in any way to the influence of the Christian church.
The Jews may be black-balled in clubs; they may be excluded from hotels; they may find many doors closed against them; but the doors of the church are open. And I seriously doubt whether a single instance could be found where the most pronounced adherent of Judaism would not find the same courteous welcome to the service of the church that is commonly accorded to all who come either as spectators or as worshipers.
In the above answers to the first two questions I have said sufficient to indicate my position with respect to the two remaining ones; and having written at greater length than I atRev. Robert R. Booth
79
first intended, I will bring this communication to a close.
I ought to say that in compliance with the request contained in the note which accompanied the questions, I have withheld nothing because it might be "unpalatable to either Jew or Christian." I have endeavored to write also in the spirit of courtesy, although necessarily I have written from the Christian standpoint.
New York, Feb. 2 7, 1890.
Rev. Robert R. Booth, D. D.
I have read your letter of enquiry with careful attention, and while I do not feel myself authorized or competent to explain the reasons or causes of the fact to which you refer, I most sincerely concur in the regret expressed by you that such a state of feeling should exist and be- manifested among the citizens of our common country.
Respectfully yours,
8o
Rev. Chas. H. Eaton
Rev. Chas. H. Eaton, D. D., New York.
I.	I think the prejudice against the Jews as Jews is utterly without justification. Common as it is among Christians, it is totally opposed to the spirit of the Christian religion and inimical to our theory of government. The survival of the Hebrew race during thousands of years under every possible hardship, much of the time with no central government and in the face of violent and implacable enemies, may be said to be the miracle of the centuries. The Rothschilds in finance, Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer in music, Maimonides and Spinoza in philosophy, Moses ben Ezra, Heine and Auerbach in literature, Abarbanel, Samuel ha Nagid, Disraeli and Herr Lasker in politics, Sir George Jessels in jurisprudence, Lasalle, Marx and Jacoby in political economy, Montefiore in philanthropy, are but a few of the distinguished Hebrews who have been important factors in the world's growth. They indicate the "dangerous superiority" of the wonderful race.
II.	The prejudice is an inheritance from the past. Very little, if any, religious teaching in church and Sunday-school lead the young to look with loathing on the Jew. The direction given is unconsciously given, I think. Analyze the feeling of antagonism, and it is found to consist, not in any intellectual denial of the worth and rights of the Hebrew race, but in social custom and caste distinctions which existRev, Chas. H. Eaton
8r
in relation to other nationalities, and various classes without regard to race.
III.	1 believe the Jews in social and business life reach as high a standard of conduct as any other people. In some particulars, as in the practical exemplification of principles of charity, they far surpass the Christians, and indeed, any religionists with whom 1 am acquainted. Temptations to dishonesty are confined to no people. It has been said of the Yankee "that if he were to sell the Atlantic Ocean by the quart, he would cheat in the measure." This is as true of the "Yankee in general as similar jests in relation to the average Jew. The exception must not be made the rule.
IV.	Teach the young to judge always and everywhere, not by outward circumstances but by character.
(a).	Let the broad-minded show by example that they are ready to associate on equal terms with their brothers of every faith and no faith.
(b).	Let the Christian preachers tell their people that Christendom is under awful guilt for the persecution and destruction it has visited upon an able and peaceful people. If the church of the past could lay down an axiom "the Jews are the slaves of the church," let the church of thp present seek to readjust the balance. If in ancient times "the breath of the clergy was never wanting to fan the embers of persecution" let it now be expended in the fanning of the flame of brotherly love. The shame of the82
Rev. W. H. P. Faunce
Christian church has been the unjustifiable1 attack upon the noble race which gave birth to its founder. It is time that in the name of the greatest Hebrew, Jesus of Nazareth, the shame be removed and all his disciples "do unto others as they would have others do unto them."
Rev. W. H. P. Faunce, D. D.
In reply to your questions of Feb. 11, I will say:
I.	I can find no justification whatever for the entertainment of prejudice towards individuals, "solely because they are Jews." Such prejudice is un-American, un-Christian, inhuman. The hatred of the Jew because he is a Jew, like the hatred of the negro or the Chinese for a similar reason, is utterly opposed to every patriotic and Christian sentiment. No man can believe in the fatherhood of God, who does not cordially accept the brotherhood of man. The antipathy existing between Christians and Jews, is something which all true men must deplore, and for whose extirpation all true men should labor.
II.	The existing prejudice is not due in the slightest degree to any instruction given in church or Sunday school. I have been forRev. W. H. P. Faunce
83
twenty years in the Christian church and Sunday-school, and have been actively engaged in many different schools; but I never heard in any Christian church, the slighest disparagement cast on the Jews, on the ground that they crucified Christ. Such teaching is, I believe, not to be found in American Sunday-schools. On the contrary, the teaching everywhere is that it was the world which crucified its Lord, and all Christian scholars are taught that they, by their sins have "crucified Christ afresh." For twenty years I have had wide acquaintance with the religious literature of the Baptist church, and I never saw a hint that the Jews were worse than the rest of humanity. On the contrary, the teaching everywhere is that "there is no difference; for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." This is the declaration of the New Testament and the Christian church.
III. The existing prejudice is due to two causes, heredity and clannishness. It is partly inherited from former centuries, when Jews were universally persecuted and bitterly wronged by Christian nations. In those days the church did not teach as it does to-day, the brotherhood of man. It cruelly wronged the Jew, who in turn retaliated and defended himself by craft and cunning. Hereditary feuds do not soon die out.
This prejudice is also the result of the clannishness (I hope I speak without offence,) of the Jews to-day. There is an indifference to popu-84
Dr. Phillips Brooks
lar opinion, often amounting to open defiance, a want of public spirit, a lack of genuine patriotism, a want of human sympathy and breadth of view, a class spirit in place of real love of humanity, which, the Jews themselves can do much to overcome. I rejoice in some notable exceptions to this statement. Class spirit leads to peculiarities in business and social life, which intensify the feeling already existent. The only remedy is to be found on the part of the Christians, in a resolute determination to carry out New Testament principles and frown on all racial prejudices; on the part of Jews, in achieving a broader conception of their relation to the rest of mankind, cultivating a public spirit, maintaining a courteous, unobtrusive, fraternal defense to social usages in modern life and teaching the new generation to overcome evil with good. The Jew now has a fair chance in modern life, and he can do far more than the Christian to remove present antagonism and prejudice.
New York, Feb. 27, 1890.
Rev. Dr. Phillips Brooks, Boston.
A representative of "The American Hebrew" called on the Rev. Dr. Phillips Brooks, of Boston, during his recent visit to New York,Rev. W. R. Huntington
85
and submitted to him the same questions as appear at the head of this symposium.
He said that, personally, he had but very few opportunities of observing or knowing anything of the business or social life of the Jews. That certainly no prejudice was induced by any of the religious teaching in Church or Sunday-school. He wished most emphatically to go on record as being opposed to any prejudice being entertained towards a race to whom Christianity owed as much as she did to the Jews; and he strongly condemned any evidence or show of race prejudice.
Rev. W. R. Huntington, New York.
I.	No.
II.	No.
III.	No.
IV.	No.
The above answers indicate, what is the fact, that my "personal experience" does not supply data adequate for the solution of the problem. For inferences based on hearsay evidence you have not asked.
W. R. HUNTINGTON.
Rev. J. R. Day, New York.
Question No. 1. I can recall no personal experience which has prejudiced me against the86
Rev. J. R. Day
Jews. Indeed I have had some very pleasant acquaintances among them.
Question No. 2. The Christian Church does of course teach the historic fact that Christ was crucified by the Jews (the Romans were the agents), that they rejected Him and that their only salvation is by Him. But I have never known in the Church or Sunday-school any attempt to direct the thought against modern Jews or to hold them responsible for the deeds of their fathers.
It seems to me that our Sunday-school children do not associate the modern Jew with the crucifixion. 1 think that they have no religious prejudice against the Jew.
Question No. 3. While my personal acquaintances among the Jews have been quiet in their tastes and broadly American, my observation has been that the Jews as a class are somewhat "loud" in talk, "flashy" in dress and offensive in display of jewelry, etc.
In business the name has become an odious synonym because of the practice of the small shop-keeper who seeks the dollar without regard to quality of goods. The proverbial sliding scale of prices casts suspicion upon the integrity of the trader. To "Jew" is to cheat in a petty and shrewd way.
The Jew is generous to his own. His gifts are clannish as a rule.
The above mentioned traits are traceable, not to a different human nature in the Jew, but toRev. J. R. Day
87
that terrible ostracism which they suffered in darker ages which emphasized the necessity of sharp personal contest for existence; suggested the assumed lawfulness of reprisal upon their Gentile foes and shut them up to themselves for sympathy, social pleasure, etc., etc.
Question No. 4. Let them take the name and character of American Hebrews, the happy title of your paper. Let them emphasize the American idea. Be more American in business methods and dealings, be more quiet in their tastes, less clannish, be conspicuous, for a while at least, for plainness of dress and unostentation;. mingle more on the American basis with Gentiles; go to Gentile churches more frequently. If they have the truth in the Jewish faith, they will not be harmed; if in error, they should seek, the truth; if in doubt, investigate.
Cultivate the American idea; move forward! into 19th century thought; the cumulative thought of all the ages. You have great examples—Disraeli in literature, Beaconsfield in statesmanship, Montefiore in philanthropy. He who withdraws from cultivated forms of social life must not wonder if those forms repudiate him. The withdrawal by manner and taste is the most effectual kind of withdrawal. The Jew is himself religiously and traditionally exclusive. He practically taboos himself. He sets himself, by his institutions and social tastes, apart from our citizens, refuses intermarriage, it being a part of his religion, and will not meet his Gen-88
Rev. J. R. Day
tile neighbors upon a common plane of life. He goes to summer resorts as a Jew; is found in parties of his own people, and therefore becomes a foreign body, an irritant in the . social structure of American life.
The remedy is, to discourage everything exclusively Jewish, except your worship and sacred days—all Jewish quarters—distinctively Jewish localities in all cities—all gregarious habits at American places of resorts, etc.
The German Protestant would be as quickly rejected by the best forms of American social life as is the Jew, were he to attempt to bring in his distinctively German manners and customs. There must be a merging of national peculiarities and an abandonment of marked personal difference of habit and taste all around in this heterogeneous land that a common plane may be reached by the diverse tribes of the earth meeting here.
Allow me to add that the Jew is conspicuous as a law-abiding citizen, is equally noticeable for temperance and sobriety, and while I have spoken of his benevolence as clannish, he is nevertheless benevolent.
New York, Feb. 24, 1890.Dr. Henry M. Field
89
Dr. Henry M. Field.
In answer to your inquiries, I would say that my acquaintance with Jews is not sufficiently to warrant my giving an opinion which could be of any value. Certainly 1 have no prejudice or unkind feeling towards one of the great races of the world.
I am, very truly yours,
New York, Feb, 14th, 189Q.
Rev. A. B. Kendig, D. D., Brooklyn.
I.—No.
II.—It	grows out of a want of instruction, or grossly perverted instruction.
III.—No.
IV.—A	patient continuance in well-doing, on the part of our Hebrew brethren, and a new baptism of the "Love that works no ill to his neighbor," and practical recognition of the old law and the new gospel, "whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." Among some of the best friends and kindest neighbors I ever had, were members of the Jewish faith, and Jews.
Respectfully yours,
A. B. KENDIG, D.D.go
Rev. J. M. Buckley
Rev. J. M. Buckley, D. D. New York.
I.	No.
II.	I do not think that this prejudice, among Protestants at least, is due in any part to the cause implied in your second question, never having heard a single utterance either in childhood or youth, or in a long experience in connection with Christian churches, that could be in any way traced to the teachings that the Jews crucified Christ; and have never been conscious of any.
III.	In answer to the third question 1 have to say that Jews of the same social status as far as I have met them, have the same general standard of conduct as prevails among those of the population who are not Jews; but the number of such Jews is smaller in proportion to the number of Jews than among the gentile population.
I will not attempt to explain, though I have a clear idea of the causes of the prejudice against the Jews; nor can I at this time make any suggestion as to what can be done to remove it. 1 treat it as I do all race prejudices, with contempt.
New York, Feb. 7, 1890.Rev. A. H. Lewis
9i
Rev. A. H. Lewis, D. D., Plainfield, N. J.
Your letter of February 24, is before me. I appreciate its aim and spirit. It is a hopeful sign when candid men of different faiths seek to learn what their real differences are, and from whence they arise. The form of some of your questions, makes it difficult to answer them without writing at length; they also imply a somewhat extended "personal experience", which I have never had.
I.	1 cannot.
II.	1 do not think that the teachings in the representative Sunday-schools and pulpits of Protestants, now foster prejudice against Jews by such agencies as you suggest. I know that such is not the case among the Seventh-day Baptists, whom I have the honor to represent. On the contrary, they have always had a normal sympathy with that feature of Judaism which has remained loyal to the law of Jehovah, and His Sabbath. Prejudice was fostered and made prominent, in the early centuries, by such teachings as your question suggests.; but that tendency was induced through the Pagan influences which began to dominate in Western Christianity, as early as the second century. It was not the product of I^ew Testament Christianity. The relations between Roman Catholic Christianity and Judaism have always fostered this prejudice, so far as one can see by what92
Rev. A. H. Lewis
appears ih history. What the present attitude of Roman Catholic teaching is, I cannot say.
III. Never having "been in business," I cannot answer this question from "personal experience;" neither do. 1 see how any definite standard can be made by the phrase in your question "of the same social status." I have consulted with several candid business men of my acquaintance, and in the light of their experience, must say: "The average Jew deems it not sinful to prevaricate or to make statements with such mental reservations as are essentially false, if his personal interests can be thus advanced." Some attribute this to a national characteristic which leads Hebrews, consciously or unconsciously, to deceive when personal interests are involved L.eaving that idea out of consideration, I can see how the treatment which the Jews have received, especially in Europe, for centuries past, may have fostered an existing tendency, or developed a new one, which would deem it right to "spoil the Egyptians," as the only means of obtaining just dues. Seeing the Jews thus, through the eyes of business men, I am inclined to think that the sense of personal wrong, suffered by them or their ancestors has begotten such a theory of ethics in the mind of the "average Jewish tradesman." It must, however, be granted that the tendency to deceive, when personal interest is at stake, is not confined to the Hebrews.Rev. A. H. Lewis
93
IV. Your fourth question involves a wide field. The most violent prejudice exists on the part of those who are not, practically, Christians, but wlio are simply non-Jews. They are irreligious, wanting the true spirit of Christ, which every real Christian has. These have inherited the prejudices of the past, without its Christian charity or intelligence. But I think the main source of these prejudices is racial and not religious. The Jews, nationally considered, have been strongly clannish from the first; they could not have been otherwise. Since the destruction of the Nation, under the Roman Empire, they present the greatest anomaly in history. They are a nation, and yet not a nation; scattered among all the nations, maltreated by not a few, they have grown more clannish unavoidably, and self-defensive. They have lived without affiliation, often alienated through wrong done to them, and alienating others by refusing to affiliate. All these things have begotten a certain selfishness, and aggressiveness, especially in public places, and at hotels, which becomes offensive. It should be said, however, that the most thoughtful, refined and cultured representatives of Jews and Christians do not constitute the crowds at these places, and hence the scenes there enacted do not fairly represent the relation between Jews and Christians. I think, too, that the standard of ethics in regard to gaming, lotteries, and some forms of amusement, is lower among the94
Rev. A. H. Lewis
Jews than it is among genuine Christians; though not lower than with the great mass of those who, though not Jews, cannot be classed with Christians in a religious sense. These are often unjust, and ill-bred, in the matter of epithets which they apply to Jews, such as "sheeney," and the like.
Among the things which will help to remove these evils, the following may be mentioned:
(a)	Great intelligence, among both Christians and Jews, concerning each other. Mutual ignorance and prejudice now prevail to such an extent that neither party is able to justly estimate the other. To this end, the better informed and more religious among Jews and Christians, must seek to silence the extremist on either side; the Jews, who call Christ the "Naz-arene Bastard," and the Christians, who call the Jews "Christ Killers;" such are a shame to both parties.
(b)	A more accurate knowledge, on the part of all concerned, of New Testament history, New Testament Christianity, and their relation to Judaism.
(c)	A better knowledge, on the part of both, concerning the pagan influences, which were the prominent cause in making the original rupture between Judaism and Christianity.
(d)	In business life, higher standard of honesty; both Jews and Christians need to learn anew the meaning of "Thou shalt not steal,"Rev. A. H. Lewis
95
and "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them."
(e) In social life, more genuine culture, and less snobbery; more recognition of real worth, and less display of money and "paste jewelry." Beyond all, much allowance must be made for ethnic differences, and for the unfortunate history of the past. 1 believe that the prejudices are due more to these influences than to religious differences; except that this generation feels the effect of the hatred of other centuries. In a word, both parties need to be in spirit, more like Jesus Christ. More intelligent and more honorable methods should prevail among the Christians in their "Missionary efforts to bring the Jews to Christianity," and less unjust and bitter denunciations should be fulminated by Jews against the "Conversionists and their mercenary dupes."
However imperfect my answers may be, and whatever result may come from your efforts to obtain opinions from Christians on these points, permit me again to commend your effort, and to express the hope that with increasing knowledge concerning each other, there may be in the hearts of both Jews and Christians more of the spirit of Him whom the devout Simeon declared to be, "A light to lighten the gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel."
Yours, in the brotherhood of truth,
96
President C. W. Eliot
Pres. Chas. W. Eliot, Harvard University
I.—No.
II.—I	think not. Unitarian Christians believe very much what the Reformed Jews believe; but are not victims of any such prejudice.
III.—No;	but I have heard honorable business men speak as if Jews were less trustworthy than Christians.
IV.—I	cannot; for it seems to me to be at bottom a race prejudice. Education with Christians at such schools and colleges as receive both; association with Christians in good works for society at large; association with Christians in all clubs or associations of business men; the careful education of women, so that Jewish ladies may be inevitably recognized as attractive and cultivated women in any society; the taking part by young Jewish men in manly sports, and in the militia organizations; these may all be suggested as palliatives, and even as slowwork-ing remedies; but they hardly touch the evil for the present generation.
Qjluct/b.
Harvard University.
Cambridge, Mass.Pres. M. H. Buckkam
97
Pres. M. H. Buckham, University of Vermont.
I.—"Prejudice	against Jews solely because they are Jews," is indefensible and unchristian.
II.—I	know of no facts which would warrant the charge that "religious instruction given in the Church and Sunday school" tends to create an aversion for Jews. That was true of the Romish Church in the Middle Ages, and may be true now in the less enlightened portions of Christendom; but so far as my experience and observation go, has no foundation in the religious instruction given in the churches and Sunday-school of Great Britain and America.
III.—Wherever,	as in this city, for example,, Jews have, in a genial and American spirit, fallen in with the social customs of the community, they have, so far as my knowledge goes, been received and treated like other American^ citizens, with the respect and courtesy to which-their personal character may entitle them. Where—as in certain summer resorts within mjr observation—they have kept themselves together, and apart from others, and have massed themselves on the piazza, and in the drawing rooms, and at the tables, they have been objected to, not because they were Jews, but for the same reason and in the same way that obtrusive and objectionable parties of Christians are often objected to in such places.
IV.—It may be replied to the above that Jews feel themselves to be under a suspicion and cling98
Pres. S. C. Bartlett
together in the way described for self-defense. In so far as this may be true, the obvious remedy for the existing unpleasantness is—so far as the Jews themselves are concerned—for them to go into the society of their fellow-men and women, not at all as Jews, but as gentlemen and ladies, conforming to the social customs to which all are alike amenable.
Pres. S. C. Bartlett, Dartmouth College.
I have received your inquiries about the Jews, dated Feb. 14th. To those inquiries, in the order of them, I answer:
I.—None	whatever.
II.—In	my opinion, not at all. So far as I have observed, this prejudice and supercilious treatment is not found among the religious, but among the non-religious portion of the so-called Christian community, the thoroughly worldly, the fashionable and exclusive. From my childhood I have been accustomed to hear Christian preachers and intelligent members of Christian churches pray earnestly and not seldom for the Jews, as "God's ancient covenant people."
III.—I	have not had much opportunity to witness personally the injurious treatment of thePres. S. C. Bartlett
99
Jews in the places to which reference is made in the letter accompanying your inquiries. On one occasion, however, not long ago, I met at a somewhat popular summer hotel two highly educated and cultivated Jewish ladies, whose acquaintance I highly enjoyed, and towards whom 1 did not detect a particle of prejudice or repulsion in the intelligent company there gathered. We have also had Jewish young men in Dartmouth College, who, so far as I can ascertain, never had the slightest reason to complain of their reception and habitual treatment.
From these facts, and from what I have heard rather than what I have seen, I have had the impression that while some of this prejudice may be the inherited bitterness that came down from the past, a portion of the dislike may also arise from methods and habits in the Jews themselves, either individually or collectively, under the circumstances to which you allude in your letter, and of which I do not feel qualified to speak in detail.
IV.-—For the reason indicated in the last sentence, 1 am unable to suggest the remedy.
Yours very truly,
Hanover, N. H., Feb. 19, 1890.IOO
Pres. W. M. Thornton
Pres. W. M. Thornton, University of Virginia.
The prejudice of which you speak indisputably exists. It is equally true that, like all other prejudices, they have no basis in reason and are least felt by rational and cultured people. To discuss their grounds would require a long essay. But 1 may say briefly that these appear to me to be the most weighty.
1.	Racial differences. These have always been productive of prejudice with illiberal and ignorant people; and the race characteristics of the Jew have been extraordinarily persistent. Where they have largely disappeared by infusion of alien blood, prejudice has also in large measure vanished.
2.	Religious differences. The same thing may be said of these. It is not necessary that the one church should have been arrayed in hostility to the other; the mere fact of difference is a persistent cause. Historical animosities are soon forgotten; witness the fading out of enmities between Protestant and Romanist, between sects of Protestants. But permanent differences of creed and mode of worship produce and perpetuate permanent want of sympathy.
3.	Social traditions. This last ground I should refrain from mentioning, but for your exhortation to entire candor. As far as I know Jews—and that is not very far—they certainly care less for what is embraced in the term culture than Christians who are equally well off.Pres. W. If. Thornton
101
They are immersed in business and money-getting. They look at all questions from the commercial side. They are sharp traders (I do not mean dishonest), and the whole trend of their life is toward the commercial side. I often talk with Jews, and I have never had one of them mention a book to me or speak of a magazine article or indicate in any way that their activities were engaged in aught but business. We have Jewish students at this University every year, and they are almost always in Professional Schools. We have never had in my day a really scholarly man among them. I am aware that there have been noble and illustrious exceptions to this indictment, but in the great mass there must be few. For myself, I have not met them.
Your last question concerns the methods for removing this prejudice. My statements would probably indicate clearly enough my own views. Of course, I do not mean to urge them. But I am willing to state them if you care to read further.
Under I, the prevalent custom of intermarriage among Jews might be relaxed. If marriage between Christians and Jews became common, such solidarity of interest and affection between the Jews and Christians in any community would arise as would dissipate much of the irrational part of the present.antipathies.
Under 2, I do not feel that I can say more than this—that all intelligent Christians deplore102
Pres. W. M. Thornton
the fact that the historical evidences for Chris-anity have so little weight with your people. If they had more, another avenue would be opened by which this grave difficulty you are discussing could be approached and attacked. But if it be granted that Christianity cannot win you, and that Judaism will never draw Christians back into itself, then all that is left is to assimilate the churches as far as may be in externals—days and hours of worship and religious instruction, etc.,—and to have Jews and Christians join hands and purses in all of those enterprises of benevolence and charity that are the flowers of religion. If the two plants cannot grow in the same beds of the garden, at least let their fragrance be mingled in the air above it.
Under 3, there is an open door for you where great things may be done. This University, for example—and I doubt not there are many like it—admits all white male students, Jews and Christians, on like terms. Let your people become known for culture as well as for business sagacity, for refinements of speech and manners, for those gracious qualities that have been in all ages the outcome of intimacy with literature and art, and they will not lack sympathy and regard from all members of society who care for the best that is in man.
Yours, very respectfully,
W. N. THORNTON. University of Virginia,	Feb. 25th, 1890.Pres. J. M. Taylor
103
Pres. J. M. Taylor, Vassar College.
I.	No.
II.	I do not think this a cause of the hatred referred to. I remember no such influences in my boyhood, and should say confidently that the very opposite is the effect of teaching in both Church and Sunday-school. Certainly my own experience should bear out this view.
III.	My business observation has been too little to enable me to form an independent opinion, but I find a very common prejudice among business acquaintances against the commercial methods of the Jews. Still that may be due to a particular social class. I have been fortunate enough to know many socially, who have been free from the objections so commonly made.
IV.	Where a feeling of race antipathy has existed for centuries and been intensified on both sides, by the exercise of the lowest and worst passions of men, 1 should say that the hope is in education—in the breadth of spirit that follows the broadening of the intellectual life, and the deepening of the religious life.
104
Pres. E. N. Capen
Pres. E. N. Capen, Tufts College.
I have no sympathy with the feeling that would exclude Jews from summer resorts, private schools, etc. I believe it to be repugnant to the spirit of our civil and political institutions as well as contrary to the explicit teachings of the Christian religion. But I think the prejudice out of which the practice springs is not difficult to account for.
1.	The social characteristics of the Jews are peculiar. The subtle thing which we call manners, among them differs from the manners of Americans generally.
2.	While the Jews differ in religion, they maintain their race peculiarities. They do not assimilate like other aliens; they are always Hebrews. It is as if to-day they were obedient to the call of their founder: "gather yourselves together, ye sons of Jacob, and hearken unto Israel your father." This is their glory. But it renders them separate. They never can be Americans, pure and simple. In the very nature of the case, they seem to keep their nationality distinct here as they have in every other civilization of which they have formed a part.
3.	There may be some remnant of an ancient prejudice growing out of the fact of their connection in the mind of Christians with the crucifixion. But except among Roman Catholics, I do not think there is much potency in their prejudice. The teaching of Churches andPres. Helen A. Shafer	105
Sunday schools does not refer to the Jews of America. It merely relates to an historical fact for which the modern Israelite is no more responsible than the ministry of Queen Victoria is responsible for the ministry of George III.
4.	In all my dealings with Jews I have found them upright and honorable. I have known many for whom I had the highest respect.
5.	The only thing in my judgment which can do away entirely with the social ostracism to which in many places the Jew is now subjected, is a course of conduct that would take away his characteristics as a Jew. He must violate one of the fundamental regulations of his race and take his wives from the daughters of the land. He must not seek to preserve the Hebrew stock undefiled. Christians of every sect and nationality mingle freely with each other; consequently national types soon disappear or are absorbed in what we call the American type. It is not so with the Hebrew. It is for him to say whether his national peculiarities are of more important to him than social privileges. But I do not see how he can remain an Hebrew in thought and conviction and be other than he is.
Pres. Helen A. Shafer, Wellesley College.
In response to your communication of Feb. llth, I have answered below, in the order of the questions asked as far as I am able.io6
Prof. C. H. Toy
I.	My personal experience in the matter is so slight, that 1 should not be justified in advancing an opinion.
II.	Probably; but the facts of history remain unchanged.
III.	I can suggest no solution, though I would gladly see the evil removed.
I am, with all respect,
Yours very truly,
Wellesley, Mass.
Feb. 17, 1890.
Prof. C. H. Toy, Harvard University.
There is a certain prejudice against Jews, but it is less than it formerly was, and is constantly diminishing.
It rests, and, not to any great extent, on Sunday-school teaching or the church-creed, but chiefly on the social relations. Many Jews have personal and social qualities and habits, that are unpleasant. These come in large measure from the social isolation to which they have been subjected for centuries, by the prejudice and ignorance of Christian communities. Most Jews are socially untrained, and their bodily habits are not good.
There are many exceptions—men and women—who would find their proper place in theProf. J. K. Hosmer
107
best society. But these are rarely seen by the masses, who form their opinion too often from the lower type.
The remedy is open-mindedness on both sides, and free social intercourse.
The Jewish persistence often assumes an unpleasant character, but this also would be softened by friendly relations between the two races.
Cambridge, Mass. Feb. 26, 1890.
Prof. J. K. Hosmer, Washington University, St. Louis.
I no doubt owe your note of February 24th to me, to the fact that you know something of my "Story of the Jews," in the series of "Story of the Nations." If you have so far honored me as to glance at that book, you win be in no doubt as to the respect, indeed reverence, in which I hold the Jewish stock. I am myself a thorough Anglo-Saxon, with not a trace of any blood other than Teutonic, so far as I know. The wonderful history of your people, however, —as wonderful I think, in modern times as in antiquity, induced me to study them carefully, —that too, although in religion I am a thorough rationalist, rejecting entirely the notion that the Hebrews were ever, in any supernatural way, a "chosen people of the Lord."io8
Prof. J. K. Hostner
Taking the questions you inclose in order, I answer as follows, numbering my answers to correspond:
I.	No. Some of my most highly prized friends are Jews.
II.	To some extent no doubt, though I think this influence is at present less powerful than once. The extract which I inclose from Felix Adler (I quote it in my book) I think puts the case well.
III.	Never.
IV.	Only that the Jews should so bear themselves as to win esteem. In the end, the prejudice would surely vanish.
Washington University, St. Louis, March, l, 1890.
The extract referred to by Prof. Hosmer is the following:
"Do we like our Hebrew neighbors and rivals?" Says Felix Adler, the scholar and teacher of ancient Jewish blood, but who has cast off all narrow Judaism to stand upon a platform of the broadest: "The Jews have certain peculiarities of disposition, they have Asiatic blood in their veins. Among the highbred members of the race the traces of their Oriental origin are revealed in noble qualities,
Very respectfully yours,Rev. W. G. T. Shedd
in versatility of thought, brilliancy of imagination, flashing humor, in what the French call esprit; these, too, in powerful lyrical outpourings, in impassioned eloquence, in the power of experiencing and uttering profound emotions. The same tendencies among the uneducated and illiterate give rise to unlovely and unpleas-ing idiosyncrasies, a certain restlessness, loudness of manner, fondness of display, a lack of dignity, reserve, repose. And since one loud person attracts greater attention than twenty who are modest and refined, it has come about that the whole race is often condemned because of the follies of some of the coarsest and least representative of its members."
Rev. W. G. T. Shedd, D. D., Union Theological Seminary, N. Y.
Your first question ("Can you find any justification for the entertainment of prejudice towards individuals, solely because they are Jews?") I answer in the negative.
Your second question ("Is not this prejudice due largely to the religious instruction given by the Church and Sunday school: for instance, the teaching that the Jews crucified Jesus; that they rejected him and can receive salvation only by a belief in him?") I answer in the negative. Because these "teachings" are applicable to "Christians" as well as to Jews, and are actually applied to them continually. It is a com-no
Rev. W. G. T. Shedd
mon declaration in Christian pulpits, that if a "Christian" does not confess sin and trust in Christ's blood of atonement, he is guilty of the blood of the Redeemer, and has the same spirit in kind with those who crucified him. The Epistle to the Hebrews (6:6) speaks of some "Christians" who "crucify the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame." It is also the universal evangelical teaching that no "Christian" can obtain salvation, any more than a Jew can, but by an humble, penitent faith in Christ. Jew and Christian stand on the same level in respect to both of these "teachings." And this is St. Paul's doctrine in Rom. 1:16;3:9,10:4:29,30. 1 do not think, therefore, that the prejudice of which you speak can be attributed to the "Church and Sunday school."
Your third question ("Have you observed in the social or business life of the Jews, any different standard of conduct than prevails among Christians of the same social status?") I answer in the negative. The moral law contained in the Ten Commandments is the recognized "standard" of morality for both Jew and Christian alike. I know that many "Christians" do not live up to this standard, and I presume that some Jews do not.
Your fourth question ("Can you suggest what should be done to dispel the existing prejudice?") would require more wisdom than I have, to answer it fully. In a word, I think thatRev. W. G. T. Shedd
hi
truthful representation of the views of both Jew and Christian is the best thing. That there is an irreconciliable difference between the two creeds, in regard to the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth, there is no doubt—but the misrepresentation of either tends to waken prejudice.
I have no sympathy with the prejudice of which you speak in your first question; and neither have real and sincere Christians generally. Those who have the spirit of Christ, can have no ill will, or uncharitable feeling towards that race out of whom, as they believe, their Divine Redeemer sprang, according to the flesh. And certainly the Jew has acted an important part in Modern History, and an honorable one. In philosophy, Spinoza was a Jew, and while the Christian philosopher must utterly reject and combat his pantheism, he is ready to concede the grasp and force of his remarkable intellect. Neander, the greatest historian of the Christian Religion was a Jew; and many of the professorships of Germany have been filled by distinguished teachers of this race. In music, Rossini, Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn were of Hebrew blood. In war, two of Napoleon's ablest marshals, Soult and Massena, were of Jewish descent. In diplomacy, the Jewish names are numerous; among them is the brilliant Disraeli, who united eloquence with astuteness. In philanthropy, there is the name of Montefiore, and in finance, the ruling house in Christendom112
Prof. Philip Shafj
for two centuries, has been the Hebrew Rothschilds.
14 8 East 3 8th St.
New York, Feb. 13, 1890.
Prof. Philip Schaff, Union Theological Seminary, New York
I.—None.
III.—No.
IV.—To	live up to the teaching and example of Jesus of Nazareth, who taught and practiced love to God and to all men as the fulfilment of the law and the sum of virtue and piety.
I find your questions very easy to answer, and I answer them with great pleasure and in order.
My acquaintance is not large among Jews, but my personal experience gives me no reason whatever for prejudice against them because they are Jews. On the contrary, they are among the most courteous, intelligent and pleasant persons that I know.
Yours truly,
Jt-f-FSlUA.
George William CurtisGeorge W. Curtis
"3
I suppose that the feeling against them is founded, first, upon the Christian tradition and teaching that Christ was crucified by Jews, and second, upon their position as social outcasts in the middle ages, which was also due to the Christian tradition and forced them into hostility and revenge.
My personal experience shows me no difference in social or business aims or spirit or conduct between Jews and Christians, although I suppose the proportion of Jews engaged in strictly industrial and productive pursuits to be smaller than that of Christians.
Such prejudices as that against the Jews yield only to the influence of greater spiritual enlightenment and a finer sense of justice. They are very slow to disappear because they are held to be "natural" and "instinctive," and in the case of the Jews the encouragement of them is felt by many persons to be a kind of religious duty. It is regarded as the penalty properly paid by the whole race for the treatment of Christ, and the prejudice is confirmed, as in all such cases, by the personal conduct of individuals, for which the whole race is held responsible. But Jewish patience and Christian principle will work the miracle of destroying the prejudice.	Truly yours,
West New Brighton, Staten Island, N. Y.
Feb. 20th, 1890.ii4	Oliver Wendell Holmes
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Boston, Mass.
I have received your circular letter and with it your questions.
In reply to the first I answer distinctly No.
To the second question I reply that I, the son of an orthodox Congregational minister did not receive any anti-Jewish prejudices in my religious education so far as I recollect, unless from certain hymns which were in the books used in the Sunday services. I have heard my father speak of one or more Rabbis of whom he seemed to have a high opinion.
III.	I have not had experience enough in dealing with Hebrews to authorize me to draw any general conclusions.
IV.	When the Christian world has learned modesty and humility in its own self-estimate, the Hebrew will partake of the general benefit which will accrue to humanity. Until that time comes he must expect to share the epithets and the general condemnation which most of the Christian Churches bestow on the vast majority of mankind. Yours truly,
Thos. Bailey Aldrich, Editor "Atlantic Monthly."
My experience and observation are not sufficient to justify me in replying to all your interrogations, but to the first one I can emphatical-Thos. Bailey Aldrich
ii5
ly answer No. Race prejudices are perhaps inevitable. Persons of different ways of thought and different religion cannot be on quite the same footing; but in an intelligent community there is no excuse for intolerance. My acquaintance with Jews has been limited and incidental, but the few I have known have been as honorable and courteous as Americans or Englishmen or Frenchmen of similar social standing. *Of Jewish courtesy a very strong illustration remains in my memory. Several years ago, at Prague, I one day stepped into the synagogue during some notable fete. The building was packed to the vestibule. A person seemingly in high authority, seeing that I was a stranger, probably seeing that I was an American, caused the crowd to open right and left, and conducted me to a place near the tabernacle, where I had full view of the very interesting ceremonies. It struck me then, and it strikes me now, as a fine act of courtesy. You will not always meet such politeness in a Christian church—perhaps not always in a synagogue!
I think you are wholly wrong in supposing— as you seem by your question to suppose—that the religious instruction given in our Sunday-schools tends either directly or indirectly to inculcate hostility to the Jew. That would be a poor kind of Christian teaching!
Yours, very truly,
n6	John Burroughs
John Burroughs, West Park, N. Y.
I cannot go at much length into the question raised by your letter of the 11th inst.
I think in the main our antipathy towards the Jews is a matter of race and is irradicable. There seems to be a natural antipathy between the races. Is it not just as marked on the part of the Jew as of the Gentile ? The Jew will be a Jew; he will not fuse or amalgamate with the other race. He is among us, but not of us. His characteristics and his pursuits remain unchanged from age to age. He is too tough to be digested and assimilated by the modern races, hence the dislike of him. The Jews all seem alike to us, as much so as the Chinese, or the Japs, or the negroes. They band together and there always seems something foreign and alien about them. The difference of religion no doubt enters into the problem; but this is probably more an effect than a cause.
In my early life I used to think a Jew was not to be trusted, that he always meant to cheat you, but later, I have been dealt with as fairly by them, as by the Christians. I see no way to remedy the hostility you deplore, but by the Jew becoming more Americanized and modernized, and getting more out of the channels of trade and entering into the actual productive industries of the country. Very respectfully,Margaret Deland
117
Margaret Deland, author of "John Ward, Preacher."
I regret that my answer to your interesting letter has been so long delayed, and I thank you for the copies of "The American Hebrew'.', which have reached me in the meantime, and which 1 have read with pleasure.
In answer to the questions which you propose, and which I think are very timely, I should say that, of my own personal experience, 1 cannot find any justification for the entertainment of a prejudice towards individuals simply because they are Jews.
II.	I am inclined to think that the teaching of the Church and Sunday-school is largely responsible, but only among the uneducated classes.
III.	1 have not observed, in the business life of the Jew, any different standard of conduct than that which prevails among Christians of the same social status. There does seem to be a different standard in the social life which arises, perhaps, from the fact that in the past the wealth of the Jew has been largely expressed in gold or jewels, and as a result its display is more or less ostentatious.
Those Jews to whom this does not apply, and whose cultivation and intelligence fit them for any society, prefer, with a certain fine democracy, which belongs, it seems to me, to their nation, to remain among their own people, and so one generalizes about them as one does not about the Christians.n8	T. W. Higginson
IV. I know of nothing, save the better education of the Christian in humanity and the principles of the Founder of his religion. Such an education will surely go far towards blotting out a most absurd and unreasonable prejudice.
Very sincerely,
MARGARET DELAND.
Boston, March 27, 1890.
Dr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cambridge.
In answer to your questions:
I.	1 have never been conscious of any personal prejudice against Jews; and can find no justification for it in my personal experience, except in the indirect way presently to be indicated.
II.	It is undoubtedly due in part to Christian traditions and teachings; still I do not think that it is stronger, hereabouts, than among Christian sects toward one another. The prejudice against Jews is not nearly as strong, in this region, as the prejudice among Protestants as regards Roman Catholics; and not nearly as strong as that existing in the early Puritan colonies toward Baptists and Quakers.
III.	1 have not personally noticed any difference in the standard of conduct between Jews and Christians, of the same social status. It is often said that Jews are far more clannish inT. W. Higginson
119
business matters, but of this I cannot judge. The only foundation that I have been able to discover for the prejudice, in the social world, is that I have noticed at summer watering places the occasional presence of Jewish families, whose wealth was out of all proportion to their education and refinement, and who made themselves unwelcome guests at hotels or boarding houses, by selfish or boorish manners. It is only by recalling such instances, that I can at all comprehend why any hotel or school should adopt the exclusiveness of which you speak. But it has never occurred to me that the un-pleasing peculiarities of which I speak, had anything to do with the religion of such persons or much to do with their race, except in this: that, being Jews, they were thrifty and successful, and hence were able to secure a "social status"' to which they were not really entitled. It must be owned, too, that such instances are not confined to Jews, and that even Christian nouveaux riches, can sometimes make themselves extremely offensive.
IV. I can suggest no means for removing this prejudice, except through advancing civilization and the evolution of the human race-Knowing that some of my own most valued friendships are in Jewish families, I cannot believe that a varied social intercourse will not gradually break down all needless barriers. The human race owes to the Jews a large part of its highest attainments in religion, literature and120
Wm. Dean Howells
art, and it is impossible that it should permanently repudiate its benefactors.
Very truly yours,
'Cambridge, Mass, Feb. 12, 1890.
Wm. Dean Howells, Boston, Mass.
I.—No,	indeed!
II.—Certainly	not!
III.—No.	The Jews vary according to their breeding and temperament, as Christians do.
IV.—Christianize	the Christians.
Col. John Hay, Washington, D. C.
I take pleasure in answering the questions in your letter of the 11 th instant.
I.—None	whatever.
II.—I	think not. The prejudice, I imagine, is a survival of the savage and bitter persecution of earlier times and not the result of any contemporaneous teaching. The proof is that it is strongest among those who have received little or no instruction, religious or secular.
III.—I	have perceived no difference. I have had many dealings with Hebrews and have found them as honorable in business as any other people.
Col. John Hay
121
IV.—I am unable to suggest any remedy except general education and enlightenment. It is my impression that the evil is not nearly so great as it used to be and it is to be hoped that it will soon pass away entirely.
Lafayette Square, Washington, D. C. Feb. 13th, 1890.
Anna Laurens Dawes, Washington.
The questions of your circular as to the prejudice against the Jew touch a very important matter. So far as this prejudice is directed against a whole people, it is not only absolutely unreasonable in the Christian, but disgraceful as well; it might even be called criminal in its unkindness. The Christian must learn discrimination in some way.
Whatever may be true in other countries, I am convinced that in the United States it is a prejudice against theVace and not against the faith, and that its grounds are racial and social and not religious. The irreligious Jew has no advantage in this respect above his stricter neighbor, and the converted Jew gains no social privilege. I am glad to be able to answer your122
Anna L. Dawes
second question most decidedly in the negative. In the course of some years of experience in Sunday school teaching, and in associations and churches of different denominations and localities, I have never heard of any such teaching as you suggest from any individual, or "lesson help," or commentary, any religious newspaper, or any pulpit. Since receiving your circular I have asked various clergymen and laymen of various denominations as to their experience and all emphatically denied any knowledge of any such teaching anywhere. Lack of space— already too much trespassed upon—prevents my giving reasons why quite the contrary teaching prevails.
A considerable study of the Jewish question in its various forms has convinced me that the real difficulty lies in the undue and self-exaggerated prominence of a vulgar class of Jews. This class possesses more wealth than that of a corresponding lack of breeding among other races, and is therefore able to travel as they are not. These Jews cause their whole race to suffer, because they will not be separated either theoretically or practically, from their more cultivated brethren. The remedy lies first and foremost with the Jew himself. It is only by crowding out and putting down the vulgar American abroad that we can convince Europe that he is not a type. It is only by similar means that the Jewish race can redeem its reputation.John Boyle O'Reilly
123
It is for each Jew to do his part to make his people the best, where they are so often easily the first.
Washington, D. C. March 17th, 1890.
John Boyle O'Reilly, Editor "The Pilot," Boston, Mass.
In answer to your questions:
I.—I	cannot find of my own experience, the reason of prejudice against the Jews as a race.
II.—I	do not believe that the cause of this prejudice is the religious instruction in Christian schools, because the most prejudiced are least religious or Christian. Part of the prejudice is inherited from less intelligent times; part comes from the exclusiveness of the Jews as a race, and the largest part from the marvellous success of the Jewish race in business. In this country I think the anti-Jewish prejudice is not at all religious. From personal experience, I should say it was wholly racial and commercial.
III.—It	has been my fortune to know, long and intimately, several Jewish families in Boston and New York, and many individual Jews during my lifetime. Their standard of conduct is the same as the Christians, but their standard of home-life and all its relations is the highest in the world. I know three men who are my idealsArthur GUman
of mercantile honor, integrity and business character: one is a Christian and two are Jews.
IV.—I do not know how to dispel the anti-Jewish prejudice except by expressing my own respect, honor and affection for the greatest race—taking its vicissitudes and its achievements, its numbers and its glories—that ever existed.
Boston, Feb. 21, 1890.
Arthur Gilman, Harvard University.
In answer to your four queries I reply:
I.	In my personal experience, I have had no reason to entertain the feelings to which you refer.
II.	I think that the matter is one of race rather than of religion, though, doubtless in former ages, when there was less enlightenment and when the modern sense of personal rights was not at all general, prejudice against Jews as Jews was doubtless based upon difference of religion as well as of race.
III.	In my personal experience I have been happily associated with Jews entertaining views regarding conduct with which I sympathize as a Christian.
I am, respectfully yours,Louise C. Moult on
"5
IV. I think that all prejudices are founded upon ignorance, and that increasing intelligence will doubtless scatter them. I am aware that my experience has been too limited to be of any service, but such as it is 1 give it to you.
Cambridge, Mass., March 3, 1890.
Louise Chandler Moulton, Boston, Mas6.
I feel no prejudice against the Jew, and was not aware of the existence of any such senseless and absurd feeling.
Dr. Titus Munson Coan, New York.
Your questions of the 24th February respecting the Hebrews are at hand.
To the first and second inquiries I would say that I certainly have no prejudice toward individuals because they profess or practise the Jewish religion, nor do I find the least justification' for such a prejudice.
But you ask whether there is such a prejudice against Jews solely because they are Jews. This
Yours truly,
126
Titus Munson Coan
is another and a different question. There is no justification for the prejudice against the Jewish religion, although that undoubtedly exists, and is undoubtedly due in large part to the religious mis-instruction that is given by Christians.
Your third question comes to the point of the matter. Both in the social and the business life of the Jew I have observed the highest standards alike of refinement and honesty, and I have observed the contrary also. Among the Christians as well as among the Jews there are the high-minded and the reverse. What, then, is the distinction ? What charge may be brought in answering your third question ? In the same social status, is there a large proportion of Jews whose standards, both of good taste and of commercial fair dealing, are not so high as that of a like number of Christians ? Is it this fault on the social side which excludes the Jews from so many of our summer hotels, or which upon the commercial side, makes them less desirable tenants or customers or patrons, in so many cases, than Christians, who are otherwise their equals ? Many will say that this is the case. If this be so, the fault seems to me to be a survival of the ages when the Jews, as a result of religious persecution, were driven to the wall in business competition and were outlawed socially, and it is no wonder that these ages of cruel oppression should have left their mark upon the Jews of the present day. I will not dilate upon this theme; but I have repliedEdward Atkinson
frankly to a frank question, and you will believe me when I say that I write in absolute good will and amity toward the people whom I venture to criticise.
Your concluding question, "What shall be done to dispel the existing prejudice?" may be answered by saying, let every cultivated Hebrew remember the ancient pride, the ancient poetry of his race, and let time and prosperity do their work among those to whom such high standards would not so readily appeal. The ideals which mediaeval persecutions trampled under foot are not destroyed, and in due time they should reappear in Hebrew character, and make it again what it has been in times past, one of the most interesting in history.
New York, March S, 1890.
Edward Atkinson, Boston Mass.
I.—No.
II.—Yes.
III.—No.
IV.—Yes—the	abatement of the prejudice of Jews against Christians and a breaking down of the Jewish barriers by which even cultivated Jews separate themselves.
Very sincerely yours,
128
H. E. Krehbiel
H. E. Krehbiel, New York.
The first of your questions is the only one to which I feel qualified to give an answer without indulging in vague speculation. I can easily justify a prejudice towards the Jews on the part of the persons of whom 1 am, by reason of professional duties, compelled to be a close observer. It is a very strong prejudice, too, but, unhappily for the contention which seems to lie at the bottom of your letter, it is a prejudice in javor of the Jews. Musicians, actors and managers have no loathing for "the despised race," but a great admiration. The fact that this feeling springs from self-interest is not at all to the discredit of those who awaken it. It would sound like hyperbole if I were to attempt to estimate the extent to which music and the drama benefit by the artistic interest and love of the Hebrew people. It is a startling proof of the larger proportion of sincerity in their attitude toward these arts and also of their freedom from prejudice that the operatic institution domiciled at the Metropolitan Opera House owes so large a share of its prosperity to Jewish patronage. This patronage has been most generously bestowed on the Wagnej-ian list; yet, you remember, it was Wagner who wrote the pamphlet on "Judaism in Music," which stirred up a polemical tempest in Germany forty years ago.	"With sincere respect,W. J. Henderson
129
W. J. Henderson, New York.
The four questions propounded by you are too important and too courageous to receive anything but the frankest of answers. To the first, then, I reply in the negative. I know a number of Jews in whom I have, in the course of a long acquaintance, failed to find a single objectionable trait. They are gentlemen, and whole-souled, liberal, thoroughly good fellows. I, therefore, hold that there is no ground for objection to a Jew solely on account of his race.
I do not believe that religious instruction has anything whatever to do with the prejudice,, Among those of my acquaintance, who never see any good in a Jew, the question of religious difference is never mentioned. As you invite plain speaking, I do not shrink from saying that I believe the prejudice against Hebrews is entirely 'due to the public conduct of a class-of Jews who are loud in manners, dress and conversation, whose notions of common courtesy are extremely hazy, and who are, I think, quite as objectionable to the cultured members of their race as they are to Gentiles. Christians who are ill-mannered and vulgar are just as objectionable as Jews of that kind; but without being able to explain why it is so, I am certain that most Christians, when they meet with vulgar Jews, are convinced that the vulgarity is an inseparable trait of the Hebrew race.130
W. J. Henderson
That this is foolish and unjust, is amply proved by the existence of those Israelites whose names are synonymous with all that is excellent in humanity. There are far too many of them to admit of their being classed as exceptions.
To your third question, I can make only this answer: It can without difficulty be demonstrated that in the United States social status depends chiefly, if not wholly, on the possession of wealth. Riches and lack of refinement are to be found walking hand in hand in the highest Christian society. It seems to me, therefore, that Gentiles cannot pride themselves on the possession of a specially superior standard of conduct in social matters. I have never had any business dealing with Jews, and therefore cannot answer the question on that point.
To the fourth question, I must again answer "No." If a man is agreeable, refined, and intelligent, I see no reason why any one should care a sixpence whether he is a Jew, a Turk, or a Greek. If he is vulgar, ignorant and unkind in spirit, I do not know why any one should desire his friendship even if he had more millions than I have fingers, and occupies the best pew in a Christian church. If a man is a true man, he is worthy of fellowship, no matter what his race or creed. It seems to me that the Jews must wear out prejudice by proving that no ground exists for it.
J. W. HENDERSON.Henry T. Finck
Henry T. Finck, New York.
My favorite poet, Heine, was a Jew; one of my favorite composers, Rubinstein, is a Jew; one of my favorite philosophers, Spinoza, was a Jew. Two of my most intimate friends are Jews. Were all Jews like them, I believe there would be no prejudice against them in any quarter. Unfortunately, the most refined Jews, as a rule, do not betray themselves by a marked Hebrew physiognomy, whence it comes that the vices and vulgar manners of the common Jews are accepted as typical. Wealth seems to make the average Jew more overbearing, selfish, and ill-mannered than even the average Christian; and it is the loudness, greed, and utter indifference of the common Jews to other people's comforts, that has created the prejudice against them at summer resort hotels and elsewhere. They often have a host of children who are noisy and impertinent, even in this land of forward children, but whose manners, at table and in the parlor, are little more disagreeable than those of their elders.
1 do not think that much of the prejudice against Jews is based on religious grounds, or on considerations of business rivalry, at least in this country. My own observation has led me to believe that it is due almost entirely to arrogance born of wealth, and the vulgar manners of the low-class Jews. If this view is correct, then the most effective remedy will be mission-132
Henry T. Fmck
arv work among this class of Jews by the better class; and the most direct method of reaching them would be to make quite clear to them the losses and inconveniences they suffer by thus bringing odium on their whole race.
There is another circumstance which no doubt unconsciously prejudices many people against Jews, and that is their clannishness. In my humble opinion, there ought not to be any Jews at all in America—that is, hundred years hence. German, Italians, English, Scandinavians, come to America, but in a few generations cease to be such and become Americans pure and simple. Why should not the Jews also intermarry with other nationalities and cease to exist as such ? A few years ago, I advocated such a solution of the Jewish question in the chapter on the hygienic and cosmetic advantages of national crossing in my work on "Romantic Love and Personal Beauty," (p. 320). As this view has been endorsed by several of the most intelligent Jews in this city, I may be pardoned for quoting it: "A negative instance, showing the disadvantages of abstaining from crossing, is given by the Jews. There are handsome Jews, and up to a certain age, very beautiful Jewesses. But the typical Jew is certainly not a thing of beauty. The disadvantages of Jewish separatism are shown not only in the long, thick, crooked nose, the bloated lips, almost suggesting a negro, and the heavy lower eyelid, but in the fact (proved by statistics)Robert G. Ingersoll
133
that the Jews have proportionately more insane, deaf mutes, blind and color-blind than other Europeans. From an intellectual and industrial point of view, the Jews are one of the finest races in the world, and their absorption by the natives of the countries in which they have settled, could not but benefit both parties concerned." Religious complications would stand in the way of such a fusion, it is true, but for them, being an agnostic, 1 would find the solution in agnosticism.
Robert G. Ingersoll, New York.
I take great pleasure in answering your four questions:
I.—When I was a child, I was taught that the Jews were an exceedingly hard-hearted and cruel people, and that they were so destitute of the finer feelings that they had a little while before that time crucified the only perfect man who had appeared upon the earth; that this perfect man was also perfect God, and that the Jews had really stained their hands with the blood of the Infinite.
When I got somewhat older, I found that nearly all people had been guilty of substantially the same crime—that is, that they had de-134
Robert G. IngersoU
stroyed the progressive and the thoughtful; that religionists had in all ages been cruel; that the chief priests of all people had incited the mob to the end that heretics—that is to say, philosophers—that is to say, men who knew that the chief priests were hypocrites—might be destroyed.
I also found that Christians had committed more of these crimes than all other religionists put together.
1 also became acquainted with a large number of Jewish people, and 1 found them like other people, except that, as a rule, they were more industrious, more temperate, had fewer vagrants among them, no beggars, very few criminals; and in addition, to all this, I found that they were intelligent, kind to their wives and children, and that, as a rule, they kept their contracts and paid their debts.
II.—The prejudice was created almost entirely by religious, or rather irreligious, instruction. All children in Christian countries are taught that all the Jews are to be eternally damned who die in the faith of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; that it is not enough to believe in the inspiration of the Old Testament—not enough to obey the Ten Commandments—not enough to believe the miracles performed in the days of the prophets, but that every Jew must accept the New Testament and must be a believer in Christianity—that is to say, he must be regener-Robert G. Ingersoll
135
ated—or he will simply be eternal kindling wood.
The church has taught, and still teaches, that every Jew is an outcast; that he is to-day busily fulfilling prophecy; that he is a wandering witness in favor of "the glad tidings of great joy;" that Jehovah is seeing to it that the Jews shall not exist as a nation—that they shall have no abiding place, but that they shall remain scattered, to the end that the inspiration of the Bible may be substantiated.
Dr. John Hall of this city, a few years ago, when the Jewish people were being persecuted in Russia, took the ground that it was all fulfilment of prophecy, and that whenever a Jewish maiden was stabbed to death, God put a tongue in every wound for the purpose of declaring the truth of the Old Testament.
Just as long as Christians take these positions, of course they will do what they can to assist in the fulfilment of what they call prophecy, and they will do their utmost to keep the Jewish people in a state of exile, and then point to that fact as one of the cornerstones of Christianity.
My opinion is that in the early days of Christianity all sensible Jews were witnesses against the faith, and in this way excited the eternal hostility of the orthodox. Every sensible Jew knew that no miracles had been performed in Jerusalem. They all knew that the sun had not been darkened, thai the graves had not given up136	Robert G. Ingersott
their dead, that the veil of the temple had not been rent in twain—and they told what they knew. They were then denounced as the most infamous of human beings, and this hatred has pursued them from that day to this.
There is no chapter in history as infamous, as bloody, as cruel, as relentless, as the chapter in which is told the manner in which Christians —those who love their enemies—have treated the Jewish people. This story is enough to bring the blush of shame to the cheek, and the words of indignation to the lips of every honest man.
III. Nothing can be more unjust than to generalize about nationalities, and to speak of a race as worthless, or vicious, simply because you have met an individual who treated you unjustly. There are good people and bad people in all races, and the individual is not responsible for the crimes of the nation, nor the nation responsible for the actions of the few. Good men and honest men are found in every faith, and they are not honest or dishonest because they are Jews or Gentiles, but for entirely different reasons.
Some of the best people I have ever known are Jews, and some of the worst people I have known are Christians. The Christians were not bad simply because they were Christians, neither were the Jews good because they were Jews. A man is far above these badges of faith and race. Good Jews are precisely the same as goodRobert G. IngersoU
137
Christians, and bad Christians are wonderfully like bad Jews.
Personally, I have either no prejudices about religion, or I have equal prejudices against all religions. The consequence is that 1 judge of people not by their creeds, not by their rites, not by their mummeries, but by their actions.
IV. In the first place, at the bottom of this prejudice lies the coiled serpent of superstition. In other words, it is a religious question. It seems impossible for the people of one religion to like the people believing in another religion. They have different Gods, different heavens, and a great variety of hells. For the follower of one God to treat the follower of another God decently is a kind of treason. In order to be really true to his God, each follower must not only hate all other gods, but the followers of all other gods.
The Jewish people should outgrow their own superstitions. It is time for them to throw away the idea of inspiration. The intelligent Jew of to-day knows that the Old Testament was written by barbarians, and he knows that the rites and ceremonies are simply absurd. He knows that no intelligent man should care anything about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, three dead barbarians. In other words, the Jewish people should leave their superstition and rely on science and philosophy.
The Christian should do the same. He by this time should know that his religion is a mis-138
Carl Schurz
take, that his creed has no foundation in the eternal verities. The Christians certainly should give up the hopeless task of converting the Jewish people, and the Jews should give up the useless task of converting the Christians. There is no propriety in swapping superstitions— neither party can afford to give any boot.
When the Christian throws away his cruel and heartless superstitions, and when the Jew throws away his, then they can meet as man and man.
In the meantime, the world will go on in its blundering wav, and I shall know and feel that everybody does as he must, and that the Christian, to the extent that he is prejudiced is prejudiced by reason of his ignorance, and that consequently the great lever with which to raise all mankind into the sunshine of philosophy, is intelligence.	Yours very truly,
Hon. Carl Schurz, New York.
I have received your list of questions and herewith send you my answers:
I. I can find just as little "justification for the entertainment of prejudice towards individuals, solely because they are Jews," as I can find justification for such prejudice towards individuals because they are Calvinists, or Catholics, orCarl Schurz	139
Unitarians, or New England Yankees, or New Yorkers, or Germans, or Frenchmen, or Hungarians, and so on. I know of no other just rule than that men should be judged according to their characters, and not according to their religion or race. A long experience and an extensive acquaintance among people of various classes, creeds, and conditions have taught me that in many cases those who most loudly insist upon judging men by their religion or national origin rather than by their character, have themselves not much character to be proud of, and prefer, therefore, some other standard.
II.	Religious teaching has undoubtedly done much to bring forth and foster the prejudice. But it is not its only source. There is also the bad conscience of dominant society which insists upon blaming the Jews, and them alone, for all the natural effects which centuries of cruel oppression and persecution have produced among them. Moreover, there are persons so devoid of true self-respect that they think they will elevate themselves by putting a stigma of inferiority upon some other class of people,—persons so mean spirited as to feel grand when they have somebody to kick.
III.	I have found good men and bad men, honest men and rogues, noble and ignoble types, socially agreeable and socially disagreeable people among the Jews and among the Christians in about equal proportions. To the unprejudiced eye there is very little difference, if any.140
Zebulon B. Vance
But the Jews labor under the disadvantage that the shortcomings of individuals among them are by the voice of dominant society usually charged to their race. When a Jew makes himself unfavorably conspicuous, the cry is at once: "Look at the Jew." When a Christian does the same thing or worse, we never hear the cry: "Look at the Christian."
IV. The agencies which will gradually "dispel the existing prejudice," are time, education, and the mutual cultivation of justice and good will. The effects produced upon the Jews by centuries of oppression and persecution, some of which are pointed out as blemishes, will be gradually effaced by a free intercourse between Jew and Christian upon a footing of recognized equality. And this process will be all the more facilitated and quickened the more regardful each one studies to be mindful of the feelings and the great self-respect of the other.
I.—None	whatever. I have delivered a lecture on the "Scattered Nation" in some fifty towns and cities of the United States within the past 16 years, the burden of which was a plea that the Jew should be treated as other people and stand or fall on his own personal merits.
II.—This	prejudice is hardly due to the
Respectfully yours,
Hon. Zebulon B. Vance,Zebidon B. Vance
141
pulpit or Sunday School teaching of Christian sects within my knowledge. In the region of country with which I am most familiar, the references of the ministers and teachers to the Jews of Scripture are both kindly and reverent as being our spiritual progenitors and exemplars. It is quite true, however that, sufficient care is not taken to point out, with reference to the crucifixion, the injustice of holding responsible a whole people, generation after generation, for the acts of a few. No doubt this unconsciously lays a foundation of prejudice, which is largely added to by the jealousy of Gentile rivals in business. Nothing is so satisfactory to a man as to be able to excuse an unworthy motive by referring it to a love of God and his religion. This prejudice is also increased by the unreasonable propensity to consider the Jew under all circumstances as a foreigner, in which case we veneer our motive with a love of country. This naturally results from his setting himself apart from the Gentiles in so many ways, refusal to intermarry with them, so 1 do not think therefore this prejudice against the Jews is fairly chargeable to Christian teachers in Church and Sunday School.
III. Not at all, except to the credit of tlie Jews. In many things their moral conduct is superior to that of the Gentiles. They are more charitable to their poor; there is less of prostitution and far less of crime among them, and vastly more reverence for the aged.142
Theodore Roosevelt
IV. Talk about it, analyze and expose it; show its unreasonableness, its injustice; cease to set yourselves apart from the Gentiles as much as you can, without a sacrifice of religious principle—for no sincere man would do that— and think less of preserving the Jewish race as the only means of preserving the Jews religion.
I.	Certainly not; some of my most valued friends are Hebrews.
II.	No; Sunday-School instruction no more produces a prejudice against Jews than against the countrymen of Pontius Pilate; it is the inherited prejudice of centuries.
III.	No; but ages of mutual aversion and of persecution have tended to develop in both the persecuting and the persecuted races, faults by which each has now become predisposed by inheritance.
IV.	Nothing, except that we should act on the cardinal doctrine of American citizenship, and treat a man simply as such, holding him in high or low esteem, according as his character demands it, whether he be Jew or Gentile, Protestant or Catholic.
Hon. Theodore Roosevelt.Elliott F. Shepard
143
Elliott F. Shepard, New York.
You propose four interrogatories to which you ask me to respond. I have both pleasure and difficulty in the task which you thus impose.
To your first interrogatory, I answer no. To the second interrogatory, I answer that Christianity is not "calculated to excite in the impressionable mind of the child an aversion, if not a loathing" for the members of any race. Christianity is the charity of God developing among mankind, making them all, as His Holy Spirit has Himself expressed it "Sons of God, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Jesus Christ." To the third interrogatory, I answer no. To the fourth interrogatory, I answer that we may all be brought into "fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ."
Ever yours, most truly,
New York, March 7, 1890.
J. E. Learned, New York.
I reply to your inquiries of Feb. 24, on the understanding that I write personally, and not as committing the Evening Post to my fancies or convictions. That journal expresses itself in its columns.144
J. E. Learned
To your first inquiry 1 answer No.
To the second, 1 should say that these teachings are not, in general, "calculated" to that end, but such effect probably they have. I am not clear about "largely." I think not largely in most cases.
To the third question I answer, No.
As to the fourth, I have long believed that it was race prejudice, far more than religion, that separated Jews and Gentiles. To dispel race prejudice requires long processes, and I can suggest nothing to be done aU at once.
Chas. Loring Brace, New York.
Your letter of inquiries has been received here in Mr. Brace's absence.
Mr. Brace will not return to the North for some time and may not be on time to answer your inquiries.
In the meantime will you permit me, on my own responsibility, to answer your general inquiry by pointing out to you Mr. Brace's opinion of the Jewish people (of whom we in this Society count many warm and personal friends) by quoting a passage of Mr. Brace's last work
1 remain,
Yours faithfully,Chas. L. Brace
145
"The Unknown God," published about a month ago (Armstrong and Co.,) p. 73.
"No equal services had ever been rendered before to human progress. The Jews of modern days ought to be forever honored for such progenitors; and a race which could produce such men deserves the lasting respect of mankind."
Such unqualified acknowledgment of their worth as a race, coming from the scholar and humanitarian, C. Loring Brace, must give you great satisfaction.—Yours, with respect,
L. W. HOLSTE.(Some Press Views)
(A few expressions of Christian journals that appeared at the time are here given.)149
SOME PRESS VIEWS
The majority of the answers are very interesting, and besides unanimously condemning the alleged prejudice, they exhibit some remarkable coincidences of thought on the subject. Few persons, for example, would expect to find Mr. William Dean Howells, the venerable Oliver Wendell Holmes and Col. Robert G. Ingersoll taking practically the same ground as to the best method of eradicating the prejudice. While all agree that prejudice against the Jews because they are Jews is unreasonable and unchristian, there is a good deal of diversity as to the origin of the prejudice. Many, it is true, hold that it is .the survival of the religious persecution inflicted by the Christians on the Jews for centuries; but there are one or two remarkable exceptions. The Rev. Robert Collyer attributes it to the exclusiveness of the Jews themselves, and the Rev. R. Heber Newton appears to find it in the less cultivated individuals of the race. —New York Times.
In the Passover number of "The American Hebrew" appeared a consensus of opinion, participated in by leading Christian minds of this country, on the causes of the prejudice against the Jews, and suggestions for wiping it out.Some Press Views
Letters are given from Bishops Potter and Vincent, Drs. Morgan Dix, R. S. MacArthur, Wm. M. Taylor, Philip Schaff, J. M. Buckley, ex-President James McCosh, and a score of other eminent divines, with letters also from as many eminent men in the walks of literature. It makes remarkable reading, and that, too, of an intensely interesting character.—Christian at Work.
"The American Hebrew" has shown remarkable enterprise by securing from some sixty representative men their opinion on "Prejudice against the Jews: its Nature, Causes and Remedies." Among these are bishops and other clergymen, presidents of colleges and leading literary men. From Baptist ranks we find President Taylor, of Vassar College, and Drs. MacArthur and Hobart with the Rev. W. H. P. Faunce, Cardinal Gibbons, Bishops Potter, Coxe and Vincent, with Drs. Phillips Brooks, McCosh, Schaff and others representing the various churches give their views on the matter. All seem to say that the prejudice is unreasonable, and not as general as is sometimes supposed.—Christian Inquirer.
"The American Hebrew" has celebrated Passover in a unique way. It devotes its issue to the subject of "Prejudice against the Jews," and presents a consensus of opinion by non-Jews on its nature, causes and remedies. Never be-Some Press Views
fore, we venture to say, has a Jewish journal contained the names of so many Gentiles, most of them, too, names of prominence and influence. It is shown from this cloud of witnesses that the prejudice against the Jews is not cherished by Gentiles of the higher order. It seems to be simply one form of the race prejudice which has always existed between different tribes and different nationalities. It has as its basis the same prejudice which separates the white from the negro, and the Indian from the white. The difference of race has further been marked by difference in religion. Where religious prejudice is added to that of race prejudice, and when, further, there are industrial separations—such as Mr. Charles Booth has pointed out in his studies of labor and life in London—it requires a higher form of Judaism on one side and of Christianity on the other to overcome them. The best means for the abrogation of all clannish and narrow prejudices, whether social, religious, industrial or racial is found in broader education and development toward the ideal of human brotherhood.—Christian Register.
The special Passover number of "The American Hebrew" is notable in giving a consensus of opinion on Prejudice against the Jews; its Nature, its Causes and Remedies. Leading representatives of the Catholic and Protestant Churches, of Literature and Social Science, give152
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their views with more or less fulness, and furnish a valuable symposium on an interesting subject. —The Christian Intelligencer.
The special Passover number of "The American Hebrew", published last Friday, contains a remarkably interesting feature, which is none other than A Consensus of Opinion on Prejudice Against the Jews, its Nature, its Causes and Remedies. * * * * To these persons questions had been submitted, asking what justification, in their opinion, existed for the prevailing prejudice against Jews, and requesting suggestions as to what should be done to dispel it. The answers were almost unanimous that the prejudice was unfounded, and that the changes needed to remove it were more frequent intercourse between the better class of Jews and Christians, especially in colleges and universities, and the development of a more truly Christian spirit among Christians.—The Evangelist.
As religious journals published by Christians issue a special Easter number, so Jewish papers issue a Passover number. This number of "The American Hebrew," published in New York, contains the replies of several clergymen of different Christian denominations to the inquiry whether the prejudice against the Jews was well founded.
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a superstition, as both are likely to be inherited. But people often experience an entire change of feeling in relation to them. They find an explanation or a belief classed as superstitious, and henceforth regard it as an established fact. So, too, their prejudices against a thing may turn in favor of it. Evidently such a change is now going on in relation to the Jews. The Hebrews take so high a rank in our public schools that many pupils and not a few teachers regard them as naturally superior. They give their studies the same earnestness that their fathers do their business. They are ambitious, and never idle.
So great success has been attained in art, music and the drama by the Jews that many have come to believe that genius is associated with Hebrew blood. Men of affairs, like boys in schools, acknowledge that they cannot keep up with members of the race that produced Disraeli, Montefiore, Spinoza and Mendelssohn.—Zion's Herald.
These utterances are significant as reflecting the change in public sentiment respecting this question which has been going on during the present century. Until a comparatively recent period Jews were burdened with numerous civil disabilities in most of civilized nations of the globe and were the victims of cruel race prejudice. The most shameful chapter in the world's history, is that which records the relentless persecution of Jews. With the progress of civiliza-i54
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tion and enlightenment has come a change, and to-day Jews enjoy all the privileges and immunities of citizenship in the United States, England, France and most European countries although the spirit of race prejudice still survives in despotic Germany and half-civilized Russia.— Port Jervis Union.
It is worthy of note that every one of the persons represented in the symposium disclaims any personal sympathy with anti-Jewish prejudice, while all acknowledge that such prejudice exists, and the reasons given for its existence are as varied, almost, as the personality of the writers. A few of the respondents, like Dr. Holmes, Mr. Curtis and Col. Ingersoll, find the origin and sustenance of the prejudice in the traditional teachings of the Christian church, but the clergymen and others interested in religious work disclaim this utterly and insist that those who are the truest Christians and most in accord with the teachings of the church, are most free from such a prejudice. Commercial rivalry and the envy of those who are left behind in the race for wealth are also cited as causes of prejudice, while there are others who attribute it mainly to the ostentatious vulgarity of some of the "new rich" among Jewish families.
The origin of the prejudice is easily understood. The dispersion of the Jews scattered through an ignorant, brutalized and bigoted continent a keen-witted, aggressive race, with culti-Some Press Views
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vated brain and an inherited instinct for commerce and financiering. They were not fighters, and in a time when war was the only trade regarded as worthy of a man, they excited the contempt of those who already hated them for their faith and envied their wealth. Everybody's hand was against them. Sordid ecclesiastics aroused religious rancor against them, greedy barons stimulated the prejudice among their ignorant vassals, and in an age when education was the brand of a magician and commerce was scorned as an occupation unworthy of a man it was easy to hound the populace on the Jews. That the prejudice has survived among the ignorant simply shows the influence of heredity; it has only survived as one of many superstitions which are still the heritage and the mark of ignorance. It is rapidly disappearing. No man with any pretence to intelligence is ready now to avow that he cherishes one vestige of a prejudice against the oldest and the brainiest of civilized races; the prejudice only exists among the ignorant of all nations.
And the excuses that are given to bolster it up are really signs of its decadence. "Look how these upstart Jews behave in the summer hotels!" says the Jew-hater, who never passed a week in a summer hotel in his life. There are, of course among Jews, as well as among Americans and Irish and Germans and English, those who have gained wealth without gaining refinement and who disgrace their race by con-156	Some Press Views
spicuous boorishness. But that is not a race trait, and the fact that it is one of the chief faults now alleged against the Jew is a proof that a prejudice which needs must seek such an excuse to bolster it up is fast dying out.— Brooklyn Times.
"The American Hebrew" contains an interesting "Consensus of Opinion" on the current prejudice against the Jews. This consensus is contributed to by a great variety of eminent men, including men as widely apart as Cardinal Gibbons at one end of the line and Robert G. Inger§oll at the other. There is, we believe, absolute unanimity in the disavowal of any personal experience which justifies prejudice towards individuals "solely because they are Jews," substantial unanimity in repudiating the idea that the prejudice against the Jews is due to religious instruction in the church and Sunday-school; some difference of opinion, but still a general negative to the question, "Have you observed in the social or business life of the Jews any different standard of conduct than prevails among Christians of the same social status?" with, however, in some instances an emphasis on the word "standard," and in others an implication that there is a popular impression that the average Jew is more sordid in business and more "loud" in society than the average Gentile. That a prejudice does exist against the Jews cannot be doubted; that it is due inSome Press Views
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any respect to any present religious teaching in either church, Sunday-school, or the family we do not believe; on the contrary, we believe that this teaching has done and is doing much to mitigate and overthrow this prejudice. The prejudice is partly hereditary. The old religious rancor, which was so marked in the Middle Ages, and which excited to such baleful persecutions, is not yet quite extinct; it lives on in spite of rebuke and remonstrance from preacher and Sunday-school teacher. The chief relic of that religious antipathy which is at the root of all religious persecution is seen in the unchristian dislike of Jews and Christians for each other. We somewhat doubt whether it is stronger on one side of the invisible boundary line than on the other; but as the Jews are in the minority, they are the sufferers. The race prejudice under which they have for long time suffered, by excluding them from much of social life, and from most avenues of political preferment, has shut them up to money-making avocations, and to that success which is measured by money. The result has been the development, common but by no means universal, of a sordid temper in business—not a spirit of dishonesty, but a too exclusive spirit of bargaining—and, parallel therewith, of a spirit of social ostentation, produced by the fact that all other methods of social recognition have been shut against them except that of wealth display. As to remedy, there is but one; it is that those of Jewish faithSome Press Views
who recognize that a sordid spirit and a wealth-display are' in some sense characteristic vices of their race, should create such a public sentiment among their own people against both vices as will aid those who are not Jews in insisting, as we are glad to see the contributors to this consensus do, that prejudice against Jews is wholly unchristian and immoral. For ourselves, we are glad of the occasion to say it is so, and to say this with emphasis.-—Christian Union.