Chapter III: Part 3

At the time when the style of these two books was created the greatest representative of European literature of that period, St. Augustine, appeared and gave to Christian humanity the best book of its time, the _Confessiones_. The _Confessiones_ is a striking book powerfully written. Its style is both soft and forceful; because of that it became one of the best books of the Church. Wherein, however, lies the secret of that book? What made it a success? It is the attempt to imitate the Bible, just as Nietzsche's _Zarathustra_ took up the style of the Bible and became the best-known book of the nineteenth century. But how does St. Augustine's _Confessiones_ compare with the Bible? In certain places it is an artificial imitation of the Bible, pure and simple, or, to be more accurate, a poor imitation of the Psalms; only very rarely does Augustine reach the height of the true Biblical style. Because St. Augustine succeeded in imitating the style of the book which we created he became the literary master-mind of Europe of his time. The entire literature of confessions from Augustine to Rousseau and from Rousseau to Tolstoy has its inspiration in the Bible; as long as humanity will produce poets who think in terms of eternity and who feel at one with the cosmos they will have to fall back on the Bible, as did Dante and Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe and Nietzsche.

Just as our national book, the Bible, became the inexhaustible source of inspiration to the great representatives of world literature, just so have many books written by Jews within the last five hundred years influenced and affected the European mind. The books of Spinoza in the seventeenth, of Mendelssohn in the eighteenth, of Heinrich Heine and Karl Marx in the nineteenth and those of Bergson in the twentieth century were all cornerstones in the realm of the literature of modern times. Only recently has attention been called by the admirers of Spinoza to the exquisite and truly artistic style of the lonely Jew of Amsterdam. Mendelssohn was certainly not a first-rate philosopher, but he is considered by his admirers and opponents alike a first-rate writer and literary master-mind; next to Lessing he was the greatest German stylist of his time.

The deep impression that Karl Marx made on his contemporaries we understand less by reading his minor writings. As an economist of genius he could appeal to a small community of scholars, but as a literary man of rare qualities, as a powerful writer who wrote with blood and venom, he succeeded in greatly infuriating his opponents and enthusing his adherents.

Heine has been called by Nietzsche the wonder of world literature. The conservative Germans, the Prussians especially, hate him thoroughly, but they cannot help singing his "Lorelei" and "Die zwei Grenadiere" when they feel truly German or truly patriotic. This Düsseldorf Jew, who received a convent education and who, according to his own testimony, did not master the German language before he was sixteen, became _the_ lyrical poet of the German nation and discovered the tune of the German soul.

Five decades after Heine's death there appears a Polish Jew in the firmament of French literature who acquires for himself the name of the _maître écrivain_. The French, with their great literary and artistic traditions and with their own exquisite literary taste, are not so hasty in bestowing upon one of their writers the honor of the title of _maître écrivain_. But they lost no time in giving that honor to the Polish Jew, Bergson. Educated Frenchmen agree that even if all the philosophic teachings of Bergson should prove to be false or should be refuted he would nevertheless remain a great figure in the gallery of French literature. He may die as a philosopher, but he will remain immortal as a litterateur.

We have mentioned only the principal great books written within the last three hundred years, which have caused true revolutions in the literary world and for which most other peoples have no match. If an historian of literature were to study the subject of the influence of the Jews on world literature, especially of modern times, he would have to write not one, but five volumes, and even then he would not exhaust the subject, not because of the multitude of the books the Jews have written, but because of the creative values of these books and of the influence exercised on their contemporaries. It is a remarkable fact that the best piece of German literary eloquence was written by a Jew, Ludwig Boerne, and every German schoolboy has to know his piece of eloquence, "Denkrede ueber Jean Paul," by heart. Of Israel Zangwill the English say that he comes nearest to Dickens. Hugo von Hoffmannsthal, the offspring of a Galician Jew and a relative of the late Graf von Aehrenthal, today holds such a unique position in German literature that even the wildest anti-Semites do not dare to attack him. The French Academy has recognized another German Jew, Ludwig Fulda, as the best German metrician of his time. And there are such powerful publicists as Maximilian Harden and Max Nordau, such men as Wasserman and Schnitzler, who have contributed to the literary glory of the Jewish people in recent times.

The Aryan peoples will seldom concede that the Jews are one of the most capable literary peoples that have ever lived, but there are many signs that would go to indicate that they are fully conscious of it. The French never forget to mention the fact that the mothers of Rabelais and Montaigne were Jewesses and there is a German folksong that begins with the verse:

"Er hat wie Börne geschrieben
Er hat wie Heine gedichtet."

The humorous papers in Italy, when taking Luigi Luzzatti to task, are always cartooning him as a little Jew buried in books, and it is a current expression in Italy today that "he eats books like Luzzatti."

A Jew and a book are nearly synonymous. We were and we are to the present day a bookish people. The book has been until now our greatest glory. For thousands of years we have been dreamers and writers. The book was our shield and our weapon and the only outlet for our energies. Now it seems that a great and radical change is going to take place in our lives. We may and will probably never abandon the book altogether, but we are on the verge of becoming an active people, instead of being solely a bookish people.

THE FUTURE OF THE JEWISH RELIGION IN THE DIASPORA

Preceding and during the religious crisis in France, which resulted in the Separation Law, a great number of books on the future of religion appeared in Paris. The largest number of writers denied that there was a future for religion, maintaining that modern economic conditions are undermining the spiritual and religious basis of the life of the masses. A minority, upholding Clericalism, foresaw a promising future for religion.

A similar discussion on the future of the Jewish religion arose with the advent of Zionism. In the first decade of our century scores of books appeared in Europe, dealing with the nature and future of the Jewish religion. As in France, during the crisis, so in European Jewry, during the inception of Zionism, two distinct views were held as to the future of the Jewish religion. One view saw that Judaism could hope for no future in the Diaspora and that, if only to avert the destruction of the Jewish religion, a homeland in Palestine was needed. The other view was that Judaism, being non-political in nature, would continue to exist indefinitely and that, as a matter of fact, it was created for a Diaspora existence.

Today, when the Jewish people is once more at the parting of the ways, the same question comes up again. Those who oppose Zionism hastily affirm that the Jewish religion not only does not need a homeland in Palestine, as a source of new inspiration, but that the very idea of this homeland is incompatible with the Jewish religion. The spokesmen of Zionism who, as a rule, do not worry much over questions of theology and religion, have so far failed to take a definite attitude towards the rabbis who oppose Zionism on religious grounds.

We think it high time to approach this question and to try to answer it from a purely objective point of view.

Before we ask whether the Jewish religion has any future in the Diaspora, let us see whether it has had any development in the past.

It is known to every intelligent Jew that since the appearance of Maimonides, with the exception of the pathological phenomenon of "Sabbathai Zevi" and of Hassidism, the Jewish religion has not developed in the least. The rabbinic literature of the last 800 years consists mainly of legal responses to which nobody will attribute religious significance, because religion and legalism are two different things. The rabinnic Jew has the same views on God, on the relations between God and man, and on immortality, as prevailed among Jews 800 years ago. Even the synagogue and the Jewish ritual have undergone few changes in this period. Many attribute this fact of religious stagnation to the predominant legal element in the Jewish religion, while others maintain that, even without this element, the Jewish religion would not have undergone changes because of its existence in the Diaspora. Religion, like any other phase of spiritual life, must draw from life itself and if the source is polluted stagnation must set in.

Many people seek to prove that the Jewish religion is capable of development in the Diaspora, and as proof they point to Hassidism. But even they must agree that Hassidism itself failed to develop and that it resulted finally in a form of Judaism which is objectionable even on æsthetic grounds. Hassidism, which claims to have a greater freedom of movement than Mithnagdism, is today even more stagnant than Mithnagdism. In addition, it is questionable whether the pantheistic element in Hassidism is altogether compatible with the traditional Jewish conception of God. All in all, Hassidism affords no proof that the Jewish religion has developed in the last 800 years. It would be no exaggeration to say that ever since Jewish religious philosophy chose the path of Aristotelianism, it has been favored only with the slightest development.

One must bear in mind that in the past the Jewish religion, though more persecuted than at present, had better chances of development than in our own day. The Gentiles surrounding the Jews lived a more intense spiritual life than is the case today and in addition they thought in terms of religion as the mediaeval philosophers thought _more theologico_. Judaism and Christianity were absolutely separated and regarded each other with hostility. The intense religious feeling of the Middle Ages, the thinking in terms of religion on the part of the Gentile masses, the hostility of the Church to the Synagogue, the isolation of Jewish life and the persecution which must have intensified the religious feeling, were all factors conducive to religious development. However, the fact remains that since Maimonides, the Jewish religion has not undergone notable development.

Is it capable of development in the future?

Today humanity does not think in terms of religion; modern philosophers do not think _more theologico_ but _more biologico_; the synagogue in the country where Jews are free is not isolated as was the case in the past, nor is Jewish life isolated. Unlike the Jews of the past, the modern Jew in these countries is actuated not by religious but by economic and social motives and he has little time to give thought to Judaism. To the average Jew in the liberal countries, Judaism is either an unwelcome heritage or at best a synagogal duty. In eastern Europe there are two sorts of Jews, as far as religion is concerned. There are either rabbinic Jews, who are pious and naive, or there are Jews whose views practically amount to a superficial atheism. Under these conditions, it is hard to tell how the Jewish religion is to develop in the Diaspora, or what its future may be.

The Reformers, of course, would point to the work of Geiger and Holdheim. But is the work of these men really proof of organic development in Jewish religion? Does the destruction of the bases of a religion indicate development? Reform Judaism not only did away with rabbinism, but it would also deprive the Bible of its religious character, denying the divinity of its source and in addition arbitrarily abolishing fundamental biblical laws for the convenience of its practioners. Is there any intelligent Jew, with a fair knowledge of Judaism, perhaps with the exception of a few Reform rabbis, who will maintain that in these changes there is a trace of development? If Reform Judaism can do no more than destroy what others have built, it is not progress in Jewish religion, as its leaders assert, but merely a ruthless iconoclasm.

We do not say that Reform Judaism is created by malice or by the wanton desire to destroy, but only that it serves as proof that from present conditions the Jewish religion seems to have no future in the Diaspora, once it has come into contact with modern life.

The Jewish religion, a product of national genius, can live and thrive only on its own soil. It can live and thrive only if it is part and parcel of the whole life of the nation, because the Jewish religion, in contradistinction to the universal religions, is distinctly national in character and wherever the Jewish nation is hampered in its movements (as it is, everywhere, in the Diaspora), the Jewish religion is also hampered and condemned to stagnation.

The stronger and more intense the life surrounding the Jews, the weaker becomes their own religious impulse.

This is well known to the Reform rabbis. We do not know how they conceive the future of Judaism in the Diaspora, but we do know that the only possibility for a Jewish religious revival lies in a national life for the Jewish people.

THE MIGRATIONS OF JEWISH LITERATURE

Among all the literatures of the world the Jewish literature is the only one that did not develop in any one land and the destinies of which are not connected with any one country. It has neither a certain local odor nor a certain local color, and it has seldom been the product of local conditions. There are a good many scholars who go so far as to say that the Jews had litterateurs only and not a literature, because the conception of a national literature involves national territory, a national political organization, and national traditions. A people, these scholars say, may produce a great numbers of writers and poets and may still be said not to possess a national literature. Formerly scholars who argued to that effect may have been right. If we take into consideration the psychological continuity of Jewish literature ever since the Jews began their career as a wandering people, we are justified in doubting the wisdom of this conception.

Although Jewish literature has undergone many radical changes (the change in language being only one prime fact) and although it has been as restless as the Jewish people, compelled to wander from one country to another, it has still succeeded in preserving certain prime qualities and characteristics which entitle it to bear the proud name of national literature. It is easy to recognize the age of a Jewish literary document, but it is not so easy to ascertain the place and locality where it was produced. The Hebrew-Italian school of the eighteenth century resembles in many respects the Hebrew-Spanish school of the Middle Ages, and the Russian-Hebrew school of the present time has much similarity not only to the various Hebrew schools of the twelfth and the eighteenth centuries but even to the Biblical period. It suffices only to mention the name of Bialik to show how near we are today to the spirit of the Biblical period.

This is true of Hebrew poetry but not of Hebrew prose. Here the results of migration are very noticeable. The Jewish literature of the Alexandrian period has hardly anything in common with Babylonian Jewish literature, and the literature created in the Provence is quite different in character from that created in Central Asia or in Africa. In other words, while the contemplative Jewish mind succeeds in preserving its chief original qualities, the meditative Jewish mind was subject to certain degrees of assimilation. As long as the Hebrew language was the means of expression for the Jewish literary spirit the effect of migration from one country to another was to make Jewish literature more picturesque and more interesting. But it did not fill the literary mind with new contents. Sometimes the effect of the new surroundings was not felt at all. This is due to the fact that, with the Hebrew language as cultivated by the Jews, there goes a certain philosophy of life and of things. The fate of the Jews throughout the ages, more or less similar in every land, contributed also to the psychological continuity of the Hebrew literary mind. This expresses itself best in the Hebrew elegy. When one reads Bialik's "Poems of Wrath," one thinks at once of Hebrew poems of a similar kind written hundreds of years ago. Hebrew prose on the other hand underwent slight changes during the Jewish migrations.

Since the Jews have entered modern civilization and have adopted the language of the Gentiles as a medium of literary expression, the effects of migration on the Jewish literary mind have begun to make themselves felt in a rather unpleasant way. This unpleasantness consists not in the variety of languages in which modern Jewish literature is so rich, but in the variety of ideas and conceptions which the Hebrew language imposed on the individual. The works of Jewish writers who write in European languages, even if they deal only with Jewish subjects, do not belong to Jewish literature alone; we cannot proclaim these works as our national possessions because of the very non-Jewish elements which characterize them.

On another occasion we have already shown how Jewish historiography and our history of Jewish literature have been influenced by non-Jewish elements. It goes without saying that all the other branches of our prose literature, as far as they have not been written in Hebrew, are strongly influenced by non-Jewish elements to a very great extent. Very often it is difficult to recognize what is Jewish and what is non-Jewish in these works. Everyone acquainted with the theological developments of Judaism within the last hundred years knows how Jewish theology in the west has gradually become alienated from its Jewish origin and come nearer to a Christian point of view. No less an important theologian than Schleiermacher characterized so-called modern Judaism as being very similar to modern Christianism. It will readily be understood that it was not Christianity that came nearer to Judaism but, on the contrary, Judaism that came nearer Christianity. It would, of course, be wrong and historically untrue to say that only in modern times has a non-Jewish element begun to creep into Jewish literature. It is moreover a fact that ever since the Jews have used foreign tongues for literary expression, they have been compelled to admit non-Jewish elements into their works. This is true of Philo and to a certain extent even of Maimonides' "Moreh." Is it not peculiar that all the great mediators between Judaism and the Gentile world have written their philosophical works either in Greek or in Arabic or in some modern language, and that those Jewish philosophers who have written their philosophical works in Hebrew have never tried to play the rôle of mediators? Philo, who wrote in Greek, tried to mediate between Platonism and Judaism. Maimonides, who wrote the "Moreh" in Arabic, tried to mediate between Aristotelism and Judaism, and Herman Cohen tries to mediate between Kantianism and Judaism. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. Nachman Krochmal was a thorough Hegelian and wrote his "Moreh" in Hebrew. But this is just the exception which proves the rule. Most of our philosophers who wrote in Hebrew developed a more or less purely Hebrew philosophy and contributed to the development of the Hebrew mind which found its purest expression in the Bible, the Talmud and the Haggaddah.

All this would go to show that the psychological continuity of the Hebrew literary mind and the true development of the Jewish mind can best be safeguarded through the medium of Hebrew. Hebrew is to the Jews and to the literature of the Jewish people more than a language. It replaces the many elements required for the sound development of a national literature which we have not, such as a country, local traditions, a national political organization, and so on. As long as Hebrew is the medium of literary expression among the Jews, Jewish literature deserves the name of a national literature and is a national literature. If, however, the Jewish mind does not express itself any more through the medium of Hebrew, the productions of this mind do not solely belong to us and are not part and parcel of our national property. They belong to the others as well as to us and probably more to them. Herein lies the importance of Hebrew for the development of Judaism and the Jewish mind.

ARE THE JEWS A COMMERCIAL PEOPLE?

The reputation of the Jews for being a business people has done them more harm than good, and has, in fact, retarded their emancipation in many countries. But nowhere has this reputation done them so much harm as in Russia. Even the Russian liberals, who are not anti-Semitic, seem to believe that the Jews, if emancipated, would ruin the Russian peasantry and completely monopolize Russian commerce. They are therefore not eager to take up the cause of the Jews, though they may be liberal in every other respect.

The Russian and Roumanian anti-Semites, however, base their theories of the need for oppressing the Jews on the belief that the Jews are too shrewd in business and that they will exploit the Russians and Roumanians if they are given freedom to move about and to utilize all their commercial energy and intelligence. This view is not restricted to those countries alone. We find traces of it even in America.

Has this belief any foundation in fact or is it only a myth? The question is interesting enough to be discussed. There are two methods of considering this question, the _historic_ and the _pragmatic_. Have the Jews always been a business people? Are they today a business people? Instead of answering these questions in the affirmative or in the negative, we think it wiser to lay the facts before the public and to let it answer the two questions.

In ancient times--as confirmed by the Bible--the Jews were not much of a business people. The bulk of the people were devoted to agriculture. There are thirteen terms for rain in Hebrew while there is only one for commerce. The number of agricultural laws in the Scriptures exceeds by far the number of laws and regulations relating to commerce. The attitude of ancient Jews to commerce was similar to the attitude of the ancient Greeks to labor. Indeed the ancient Jews, in contradistinction to the Greeks, respected labor and despised business and commerce. Josephus Flavius in his book against Apion, says clearly: "We Jews do not find much pleasure in commerce." The Talmudic sages warned the people against commerce again and again, and represented the business man as an ignoramus and a sinner. Rabbi Meir ruled: Trade less and study more. Rabbi Johanan exclaimed: There is no Torah among tradesmen and business people.

Taking all these facts into consideration, we fail to see how any intelligent person can say of the Jews that they were always a business people. Indeed, it is interesting to observe that the word used in Hebrew for commerce is not of Hebrew but of Greek origin.

But what about Diaspora Jewry? The Diaspora Jew was not allowed to become an agriculturist. He was forced to live in the city and as he was excluded from all artisan guilds he was obliged to become a tradesman or a money lender. How did the sturdy agricultural Jew become a business man, when business was never his ideal? To answer this question we must learn the attitude of the early mediaeval Christian Church to commercialism. The slogan of the Church was "Nullus Christianus debet esse mercator" (No Christian dare be a merchant), for commerce turned the Christian from the Church. This hostile attitude of the Church toward commerce had its origin in the influence of Greek culture on Christianity. The Greeks, as is well known, despised the merchant and considered him a necessary evil. The social status of the merchant in ancient Greece was very low and the representatives of Greek thought, Plato and Aristotle, contributed largely to lowering it still further. According to Plato the merchant class is to the intellectual class what the stomach is to the brain and the raison d'être of the merchant class is only to be found in its feeding the warrior class. Plato describes the merchant as belonging to the third and lowest class of society. The early Church had taken over these views of commerce and made them its own. Even Thomas Aquinas, who lived in the 13th century, when commercial life still flourished, adhered still to the early Christian ideas about commerce. But as commerce is necessary to the existence of organized society, the Church made the Jews the bearers of commerce by forbidding Christians to trade and inducing the Jews to do so.

The Church had another reason for making the Jew the business man. The representatives of the Church--fine psychologists that they were and still are--knew that as long as the Jew confined himself to agriculture he would continue to be "stubborn and stiff-necked," and no Christian propaganda would induce him to give up his religion. The peasant is the conservative element of society. The tradesman, however, whose business it is to make bargains and compromises in his business life, is always inclined to make compromises in morality and religion. If the Jews were made tradesmen, so the leaders of the Church thought, two aims could be achieved at one stroke. First they would be made to do the "dirty work" for the Christians, and secondly, their conservative Jewish spirit would be broken. These were the reasons why the Christian world consciously forced the Jews into commercialism. On the other hand, political conditions in the Middle Ages actually compelled the Jews to take to commerce.

Thus a people, originally agricultural, became commercial. It is clear that the Jews are not a business people by nature but out of necessity and by reason of historical developments.

But now another question arises: Are the Jews clever as a business people and do they really show an inherent business genius? The anti-Semites and many of our friends believe that every Jew is potentially a business genius. Is this true? This question is also best answered by facts.

In Eastern Europe, where industry and commerce are not developed, and where Jews live in masses, the ordinary Jew is not a business man. On the contrary, the ordinary Jew in the East is a skilled or unskilled laborer. Out of the million Eastern Jews, who emigrated to this country from 1899-1908, about 60 per cent were laborers. The great masses or Eastern Jews in America are, in the main, laborers. As Eastern Jewry forms the bulk of the Jewish people, there is no reason to think that the modern Jew is _eo ipso_ a business man, or a tradesman. The great Jewish Socialist movement likewise testifies to the fact that the Jews are not a business people in the sense used by our enemies and by many of our friends, because a Socialist movement cannot rise and flourish among business people.

The Jews, in individual cases, may be sharper in business than their non-Jewish fellow business men of the same station in life. Belonging to an Oriental, passionate race, they have a more vivid imagination and can see things in brighter colors than the non-Jews. This is, however, true only of individual cases. The ordinary Jewish business man is as clever or as stupid as the Gentile business man. A mediocrity, whether a Jew or a Gentile, is a mediocrity, and the Jewish mediocrity is no more productive or creative than the non-Jewish mediocrity. It is interesting that in the Levant, where Greeks, Armenians and other Oriental people are active in business, the Jew cuts a relatively poor figure as a business man. There are in Salonica great Jewish merchants but the vast majority of Salonica Jews are artisans and laborers. The Jews of the East when settled in the West, be it in Western Europe or America, have seldom achieved a great success as merchants or business men.

The fact is that the Jew is no more shrewd as a business man than the Englishman, Frenchman, or American. It is true, however, that in exceptional cases the Jews produce commercial geniuses as they also produce literary and artistic and scientific geniuses. We are an old and relatively pure race and our experience is far-reaching. We have more productive powers than many other peoples, and we produce proportionately more great men than other peoples. Some of these great men are great in business, but that does not mean that the Jews are a business people and a clever business people.

OUR NATIONAL BUDGET AND BRIBERY

All peoples who live under normal conditions live economically, that is, on a systematized budget in which expenditure is adjusted to income. The Jewish people, not living under such conditions, do not live economically. Their budget is not systematized nor are its expenditures proportionate to the income. The lack of a systematized budget, however, does not mean that we have no fixed annual expenditures, although it is true that we have no fixed annual income. The truth is that we, as a people, spend as much as any other people of equal numbers who live a normal life. The only difference is seen in this: while other peoples spend money for national organization and on national institutions, we have to spend our money either in bribery or to help pogrom victims.

On the eve of the Jewish New Year it is proper that we draw up and take account of our annual budget. The biggest sum in this budget is the item marked "bribery." Few realize how many millions are spent annually by Russian and Roumanian Jews who seek to mollify their oppressors with bribe or gift offerings. Few realize that the many millions spent by wealthy Assimilationists in non-Jewish philanthropies are also bribe offerings. The Jew has learned that if he means to be a Jew he must pay bribery and that if he does not want to be a Jew, he must also pay bribery.

When a few years ago a Jewish lord in England bequeathed his fortune of $10,000,000 to non-Jewish institutions, he made it clear that this gift should be taken as proof of his sincere Anglicism, which meant the repudiation of Judaism. When the French Jew, Meurts de la Deutsch spends 2,000,000 francs annually to encourage aviation in France, it is for no nobler purpose than to deny that he is a Jew, and that he has embraced all French interests. The same is true of innumerable wealthy Jews who give millions for non-Jewish and often for anti-Jewish purposes. It might prove interesting to an economist to discover how many millions are spent annually in such bribery.

It is not difficult to estimate in round figures the sums spent annually by those who want to remain Jews.

There are six million Jews in Russia. For every move he makes, the Russian Jew must bribe the authorities. If he wants his son admitted to the schools, he must bribe the education officials. If he wants to open a store and obtain a license, he must bribe the village or town officials. If he builds a house he must bribe the building inspectors. If he seeks a passport, he must bribe the police. The whole run of human activities is accompanied by an endless flow of bribes, gifts, presents, etc. It is no exaggeration to say that every Jew in Russia must spend an average of ten rubles annually in bribing officials. This is 60,000,000 rubles, or $30,000,000 a year. The total budget of the Swiss Confederacy falls within this amount. In return the Russian Jews are paid in exceptional laws and pogroms. These laws and pogroms lead to emigration which costs us, on an average, $10,000,000 a year.

In the last decade Jewish emigration from Russia has been at least 100,000 persons a year. The cost to every immigrant is at least 120 rubles. This totals $7,200,000 a year. Economists have calculated and discovered that the incidental expenses of each immigrant amount to about 100 rubles. These expenses are caused by the loss entailed in breaking up business, selling out below cost, etc. This in turn totals up to 12,000,000 rubles, or $6,000,000 a year. In addition to these sums there are extraordinary losses resulting from pogroms, fire and boycott.

We are not taking into consideration the hundreds of millions lost by Jews in the war owing to the malice of the Russian Government. These losses are not recurrent. But we must consider the losses of the Jews in Russia as a result of pogroms. In the pogroms of 1905 and 1906 the Russian Jews lost 20,000,000 rubles. Pogroms on a minor scale are yearly events in Russia. All in all, the sum which the Russian Jews spend annually in bribes or in expenses in connection with emigration, or which they lose in pogroms or other upheavals, reaches the gigantic sum of $50,000,000, a sum which exceeds the annual budget of Bulgaria or of Switzerland. For less than this sum these two peoples enjoy national independence and sovereignty while we enjoy--pogroms.

What is true of Russia is true of Roumania, partly true of Galicia and of the Jews in northern Africa, Persia and Afghanistan. That these million and a half of oppressed Jews living outside of Russia also spend millions annually in bribery and emigration goes without saying.

As the emigration from the countries of oppression does not diminish the number of Jews, because of the high birth-rate there, and as conditions of life grow worse daily, the emigrants have to support their families and friends who stay behind. The Russian Ministry of Post and Telegraph published statistical tables a few years ago, which show that the Russian immigrants in the United States, mostly Jews, send annually to their relatives and friends from $15,000,000 to $18,000,000 a year. A good part of this sum goes to the Russian post office officials. This fact became known four years ago when a group of Jews in Petrograd and Moscow started a movement with the purpose of founding a Jewish immigrants' bank.

When speaking of necessary and incidental expenses of immigration one must not overlook the losses accruing from re-immigration and from a decrease of productive energy of many immigrants because of their inability to adapt themselves to new surroundings.

These are expenses caused by the decision of Jews to remain Jews. We maintain that the sums of money paid by Jews who are determined to have the world think them non-Jews, or to have the world forgive them for being Jews, are at least as large.

When, a few years ago, the Jewish millionaire Efrussi died in Paris, the French press without exception paid high tribute to his French patriotism and omitted all mention of his Jewish origin. Efrussi used to spend 2,000,000 francs on French national sports, races, etc. This was also the case with the French Jew, Osiris, who left his fortune of 60,000,000 francs to the French people and French institutions, and 60,000 francs to the Jewish people in the form of a copy of Michael Angelo's Moses erected in the court of the Jewish Teachers' Seminary of the Alliance Israelite in Paris. An Austrian Jew, Taussig, gave 1,000,000 kronen to the Catholic Eucharist Congress in Vienna, while a relative of the same name left 500,000 kronen to the Catholic church with the request that on his Jahr-Zeit two Franciscan monks visit the synagogue to pray for his soul. The new university in Frankfort-on-Main, which cost many million marks, is a Jewish university in so far as large parts of this sum were contributed by Jews. Most of the contributors were Jews who in no way support Jewish institutions. A Prussian statistician discovered a few years ago that not only do Jews contribute to funds for the building of monuments to national heroes, but also to funds for Catholic cathedrals and other institutions that are anti-Semitic in character.

In England there are hundreds of wealthy Jews who make annual contributions to the Church of England, refusing at the same time to support any Jewish institutions. Lord Rothschild, who is by no means the richest man in England, spends more in New Year's gifts to various non-Jewish classes in London than ten other rich lords combined. Another English Jew, Sir Ernest Cassel, the son of a Hebrew teacher in Germany, has spent in the last decade £1,500,000 in the support of non-Jewish institutions. Their contributions to Jewish institutions have been insignificant in comparison.

The gift of these large sums is always made public, but the sum total of smaller gifts, which are not made public, exceed by far the amounts given by very rich Jews to non-Jewish institutions. If we compare the sums given by so-called Jewish philanthropists to Jewish and non-Jewish institutions we discover that they give at least five times as generously to the non-Jewish as to the Jewish. Mr. Jacob H. Schiff's gift of $500,000 to Barnard College is a striking instance. At a time when his own people experienced the greatest calamity in its history, when millions of Jews were starving, and when Jewish blood was being shed freely, Schiff gave $100,000 for Jewish relief purposes and five times as much to a single institution for the erection of one building in New York. This is the usual proportion that marks the giving of Jews to Jewish and non-Jewish institutions.

We think that the form of bribery which the oppressed Jews practice to mollify their oppressors is sad enough as a commentary on Jewish life. But the more ostentatious form of bribery--a form of gift bestowal which seeks to hide the giver's identity as a Jew or at least to purchase pardon for his Jewishness--is the greater tragedy. These Jews spend millions to make the world forget they are Jews, but the world remembers and laughs up its sleeve.

THE TRUE MEANING OF JEWISH UNIVERSALISM

In the course of the long controversy between Jewish nationalists and opponents of Jewish nationalism many have come to believe that those who oppose nationalism stand for universal Judaism, especially since the anti-nationalists call themselves Jewish universalists. After the publication of the declaration of the British Government with regard to Palestine the main anti-nationalistic spokesman in America, Dr. Philipson of Cincinnati, summed up his negative attitude to Zionism with the short sentence, "I stand by my Jewish universalism." One even hears people from the radical camp of the left proclaiming their Jewish universalism. The impression has thus been created that while the nationalists stand for a petty, provincial conception of Judaism, they, the anti-nationalists, advocate a broad-minded universalism.

We deem it opportune to examine this Jewish universalism, which is played up today against the nationalistic efforts of our people to re-establish a Homeland in Palestine and to see how far it is sincere in its motives and compatible with Jewish tradition, and how far it is intellectual camouflage. We think it rather curious that those who claim to be Jewish universalists--the radical Reform rabbis and assimilationists from other camps--always lay stress on American, German, French or English Judaism, and often speak of the American Jewish Church or the English Jewish Church, and so forth. It is also remarkable that these Jewish universalists have always worked for a "readjustment" of Judaism to local conditions and have tried to Americanize Judaism in America, to Germanize it in Germany, to Anglicize it in England, to Magyarize it in Hungary, and so forth.

On the other hand, those who were considered as standing for a petty, provincial conception of Judaism, the nationalists, have not only never tried to do anything of the sort but have always defended the interritoriality and catholicity of Judaism. One never hears a Jewish nationalist here or abroad speaking of an American Jewish Church or an English Jewish Church, and so forth. It seems to us that in view of these facts the sort of universal Judaism as proclaimed by the assimilationists is of rather doubtful origin and character and that it is everything but universal, for it is territorial and provincial to the core. As a matter of fact, Reform Judaism as established by the Reform rabbis in the middle of the nineteenth century, and developed by American rabbis at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, is the first gigantic attempt to break the catholicism of Judaism and to territorialize it, that is to say, to annihilate its organic unity. Reform Judaism is in fact nothing else but territorialism in religious terms, just as Yiddishism is a territorialism in linguistic terms. Those who divide Judaism geographically and claim that each part has little or nothing to do with the other, and that each part is organically connected only with its surroundings, that there is such a thing as American Judaism, English Judaism, German Judaism, French Judaism, and so on, stand for the same policy as do the Yiddishists, who divide the Jewish people into ten or fifteen separate groups, claiming that every group is a unit by itself and has nothing to do with the others. According to Yiddishists the Ladino-speaking Jew has scarcely anything in common with the Judeo-German-speaking Jew, just as the Arabic or Greek-speaking Jews have little or nothing in common with the Ladino or Yiddish-speaking Jews. Some express their Jewish territorialism and provincialism in terms of religion, the others in terms of language. Both are opponents of Jewish unity and Jewish catholicism, both are opposed to traditional Judaism, both are opposed to Jewish nationalism that is organically connected with Hebrew, and both are, of course, opposed to a Hebrew Palestine.

Why these people, who, as we have seen, stand for territorialistic Judaism instead of universal, should call themselves Jewish universalists, we are at a loss to understand. The fact that their notion of God is as colorless and pale as that of the Unitarians, and the fact that their conception of ethics, especially of Jewish ethics, is as bloodless and vague as that of the rationalists of the eighteenth century, gives them scarcely any right to call themselves Jewish universalists and to assert that they stand for universal Judaism. Our only consolation is that this sort of territorialistic Judaism that goes under the false mark of universal Judaism is not the invention of the Reform rabbis, nor that of the Yiddishists, but is as old as Judaism itself. All who have carefully paged the history of our people know that there always was a Jewish minority from time immemorial that stood for a territorialistic Judaism, and if there is any difference in principle between the Judeans and Israelites this difference consists in that the Judeans always stood for universal Judaism, while the Israelites stood for a territorialistic Judaism. The Judeans were what the nationalists are today--traditional, conservative and nationalistic, while the Israelites were reformers, assimilationists and territorialists. The Judeans advocated a Palestinian and Hebrew Judaism, while the Israelites always opposed it and were satisfied even with the Temple outside of Palestine.

The first radical reformer, assimilationist and territorialist was not Abraham Geiger, but Jeroboam Ben Nebat. The Judeans, advocating a Palestinian and Hebrew Judaism, produced the true, great prophets, the prophets of truth and justice, while the Israelites produced the false prophets, who misled the people and displayed religious and moral camouflage. The notion of a universal God, of a universal morality and of the brotherhood of man, the fundamental teachings of Jewish universalism, have not been created by the prophets of the Israelites, the false universalists, but by the prophets of Judea, the nationalistic prophets. These great nationalistic prophets, who alone made Judaism that tremendous force in history and who, by their genius, secured immortality for our religion and ethics, must turn in their grave when they hear the false prophets of today claiming them as their witnesses. The teachings of our great prophets have been distorted and falsified by many of our enemies and opponents, but none has falsified and distorted them more than the representatives of the so-called universal Judaism of today, because our great prophets, who were at the same time great Jewish statesmen, taught the doctrine of the indestructible Jewish nation and the immortality of our people as a people, and they were so extreme in their nationalism and nationalistic conception of Judaism that they dreamt of the Jewish nation to be the glory of all the peoples of the earth and the center of all that is good and great and beautiful in humanity.

We doubt whether there are many Jewish nationalists today whose nationalistic feelings run as high as did those of our great prophets whom Jewish universalists claim as their chief witnesses for their falsified Judaism. It was the great Hebrew prophets of old who first fought against territorializing Judaism and who fought against the attempt to Yiddishize it in one form or another. They all stood for the pure, traditional, Palestinian and Hebrew Judaism. They were bitter against Ephraim, because Ephraim stood for what the Israelites stand for today: "Ubi bene, ibi patria"--Where I do well there is my fatherland.

That the Judeans and not the Israelites were right in their conception of Judaism can be seen from the fate of both. Israel disappeared, swept away by the storm of history, while Judea remained. It is only a pity that all of the Israelites did not disappear also for, if they did, we would have no Israelites today in our midst, and God knows that the Israelites of today are unnecessary Jews and that those who claim a mission for Israel have no mission at all. The Jewish universalism advocated today by all those who stand for the disintegration and deterioration of Judaism is not universalism, and if its advocates are anything, they are Jewish nihilists, because Judaism is nihil to them--no people, no race, no nation, no religion, no tradition, but----

THE BURDEN OF TRADITION

The phenomenal tempo made by the United States in preparation for the war is a very interesting phenomenon of our time. What England did in many years of struggle America has achieved within a few weeks. It took England more than a year and a half before she saw her way clear to resort to compulsory service, and it required many weary months to organize the administrative branch of the war service and to place the country on a solid war footing. Even countries with long military traditions, such as France, Italy, Austria, and even Germany, had to struggle long before they were in the war with both feet. America, though unmilitaristic, did all that within a very short time. Over night there was a national army in America. The economic life of the country adapted itself to war conditions, and everything to conduct a war on an unheard-of scale was created within a few months. That a non-militaristic country like America could adapt itself to war conditions within such a short time must puzzle every observer, and it will be a puzzle to the historian of the future, also, unless he recognizes the touchstone of American genius as displayed at present. This touchstone is the absence of long historical traditions.

We Jews, who are preparing ourselves to start a new life as a nation, ought to learn in this respect. We have old traditions of our own and we are burdened with a great many non-Jewish traditions in addition, for we have lived in the last two thousand years in the Diaspora and among those people whose life has been shaped by thoughts and the spirit of ancient Rome. The European state that is today undergoing a crisis as never before is the inheritance of old Rome. The entire system of European politics is Roman in origin. International political relations can be traced to ancient Roman origin. A comparison between the history of the international relations of ancient Rome and that of any European state during the last five hundred years will clearly show that the international political movements in Europe for the last centuries have their parallel in international political movements of ancient Rome. All the severe criticisms leveled by Montesquieu against ancient Rome are still timely today. All branches of the activities of the European state, civil administrations, jurisdiction, matters military, foreign affairs, and so on, are more or less remnants of ancient Roman civilization.

In short, we have to be conscious of the fact that the life of the Jewish people in Europe was lived amid a system of Roman civilization. The old Jewish preachers, who characterized our present Diaspora life as Goluth-Rome, knew what they were talking about, though they could not exactly explain why they characterized our present Goluth as Roman in nature. Since we have lived for two thousand years in this system of civilization, it goes without saying that we have been greatly influenced by it and that we ourselves are definitely subject to Roman traditions in addition to our own. Traditions sometimes strengthen a nation, but they also may weaken it. The most traditional people in the world, the Chinese, are practically the weakest, while the most non-traditional people, the Americans, are today the best fitted for modern life.

National traditions, of course, cannot be cast away over night. In the Diaspora old and genuine Jewish traditions were the life-giver of our people. They were the main force that preserved us from annihilation, as long as we were facing the problem, "How can we best preserve our national existence?" Today, however, we are not only facing the problem of preserving our national existence, but also that of rebuilding our nation and reorganizing our people so as to make its future safe. Since the entire Jewish problem has changed so radically, our attitude to the complex Jewish traditions must change. We cannot possibly use the same methods in rebuilding our national existence as in preserving our nation. The two different problems need two different positions. Just as China is a terrifying example of what slavery to tradition can do to a nation, so is America an edifying example of what traditions can do in strengthening a nation. A nation does not live to uphold traditions only; and where, instead of helping a nation, traditions handicap it, they will be superceded by new traditions to be created by national deeds.

We do not want to describe our future life in Palestine, for we are today unable to do so. We are only anxious to lay stress upon the fact that what we have called our traditions in Diaspora life will probably have to be revised in a Jewish Palestine. Life is much stronger than the Book and the principle derived from the Book. In the Diaspora it was the principle of the Book that shaped our life, because it helped to preserve it. In Palestine, where there will be an active Jewish life, Jewish life itself must work out its own principles. This is what we should bear in mind, whether we are orthodox or free-thinkers. We must go to Palestine with the consciousness of freedom and not with the feeling that we are the creatures of traditions. We will have to free ourselves not only from many Roman traditions that was most worthy in the Diaspora, but will be superfluous in Palestine.

The future Jewish State in Palestine will draw its strength from Jewish life and not from principles of the Book; it will be free from all inorganic traditions which we have acquired during our long life in the Diaspora, and from those traditions which were un-Jewish in nature.

WHAT IS THE JEWISH MISSION?

In view of the rise of Jewish nationalism during the last decade, especially during the war, it is understandable why the fancy of the Jewish masses should be directed to the future of the Jewish State in Palestine and that quite premature questions as to the form and character of the Jewish State should be asked.

There are no prophets nowadays. No serious-minded man would even dare to anticipate the development of many generations and attempt to foresee the character of the time which is deeply enshrouded in the bosom of the future. Sociology has not yet discovered laws with the help of which one can predict future material happenings. Nevertheless, serious-minded Jews, especially nationalists, should give a thought to the question of possible future developments and should ask themselves in which direction they have decided to go.