America has often been described as the land of opportunity and of
unlimited possibilities. This is one reason why since our entry into
the War, the eyes of the whole world have been fixed upon us. It is
certainly true that to no group of people has America proved more
truly a land of opportunity than to the Jews. A mere survey of the
American period of Jewish history is sufficient to convince us of
this, and such a survey is especially appropriate at present when the
history of the world is being recast and remade, and the future
destiny of both America and the Jew is a subject of frequent
discussion.
In no other country do we find the strands of Jewish history so
intimately and continually interwoven with the general fabric as here
in America. This is due partly to the newness of the country and the
early arrival of Jewish settlers. Even in the study of Palestine, we
find that there was a time when it contained no Jewish inhabitants,
and various strata of civilization already had disappeared when the
Jews took possession. As for America, however, the Jew's activity is
co-extensive with the history of her civilization.
I shall not dwell here on the well-known fact that Jews were
associated with Columbus in his voyage of discovery, that Jews
supported his enterprise financially and scientifically, and that a
Marrano Jew is said to have been the first member of Columbus's crew
to step on the soil of the New World. But it is certain that from the
very days of the discovery, Jews became frequent on the American
continent, first in South and Central America, and later on in North
America.
The finding of the New World offered timely compensation for the
expulsion from Spain, and Israel lost no time in transferring his
genius for enterprise and continuity, both material and spiritual, to
the new field so providentially opened.
By the middle of the seventeenth century, we see the beginnings of
Jewish migration to North America, owing primarily to vicissitudes of
war in South America, and as that was the time when English
civilization began to establish itself here, the form of civilization
destined to remain permanent, we can see with what right we may speak
of the continuity of Jewish history in our Republic.
It is true that the number of Jews at first was small, but before long
their influence and service transcended their proportions. During the
Revolution, there were only about two thousand Jews in the Colonies;
yet, some of them had become so prominent, that their help was not
inconsiderable, and in several instances of conspicuous and
unforgettable merit. We know, for example, that Washington had an aide
who was a Jew, Isaac Franks, that one of the earliest officers of our
Navy was a Jew, Uriah Levy, and that a Jew, Haym Salomon, an immigrant
from Poland, helped the Revolution financially, aside from what
similar help he extended to some of the heroes of the Revolution
individually, thus rendering it easier for them to do their share of
the common task. Aside from what these instances may mean in
themselves, they are important for the light they throw on the
rapidity with which Jewish settlers made their way in this country, on
the completeness of their civil and political assimilation, and on
their public prominence in the early days of American history.
What progress the Jew has made in America since those days, he who
runs may read. On the material side, she certainly has become a land
of promise to millions of Jews. Gradually the Jewish population has
grown to its present dimensions. During the nineteenth century the
original immigration from mainly Sephardic sources, with an admixture
from Poland, was supplemented by a wave of migration from German
provinces. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, finally, the
intense persecutions in Eastern Europe poured enormous waves of
migration onto these shores. As a result of these successive movements
of people, unprecedented in some respects in human history, millions
of Jews have settled in our Republic, and, on the material side at
least, it has become to them a veritable land of promise.
In all departments of life the Jew has prospered. It may be questioned
whether ever in the past he has been blessed with such success. While
it is erroneous to assume, as some people do, that all Jews are rich,
or that the richest men are Jews (assumptions which are contradicted
by facts), it is true that nowhere else have the Jewish people been
given such an unhampered opportunity for advancement and such an
unrestricted field of work and usefulness.
As a result, Jews are found in every sphere of work, in every
honorable and useful occupation. In commerce, in the liberal and
practical professions, in all the various forms of industry, the
American Jew is found, and many have achieved eminent success. No
longer can it be said, as they were wont to say of old, that the Jew
is nothing but a usurer or a trader. In America hundreds of thousands
of Jews work with their hands, there are numerous trade unions
entirely composed of Jews, and nothing is more significant in this
regard than that the President of the American Federation of Labor for
years has been a Jew (at least, a man born a Jew).
It used to be said that the Jew will not be a farmer. Even if
elsewhere the Jew had not disproved this assertion, he has done so on
American soil, where numerous Jewish families have settled on farms
and demonstrated their fitness to succeed even under adverse
conditions.
What America has done for the material progress of millions of Jews is
one of the marvels of history--a marvel augmented by the moral
transformation which has accompanied the process. Men, who for
generations had been hounded and haunted by persecution, who had been
engrafted with all the moral evils of persecution, who had been
humiliated and all but crushed--millions of such men by the liberty
and humanity of America have been freed from the old chains, purged of
the old stains, turned into free, strong, courageous, self-reliant,
and self-respecting human beings. For this transformation we can never
be sufficiently thankful, as it must ever continue to excite the
admiration and the wonder of the world.
But the spiritual achievements of the Jew in America have been no less
significant.
Now and then on this score we hear laments. Material progress, we are
told, has occurred in American Israel at the expense of his spiritual
life, and lurid pictures are drawn of our spiritual estate. It is even
maintained that there is no hope for us spiritually in America, and
that for this purpose we must turn our eyes to other parts.
Let us not forget, however, that spiritual pessimism is nothing new,
whether among Jews or non-Jews. There have always been men who have
thought their own time and place to be the worst-off spiritually in
history. The student of history and literature finds many such
resemblances through the centuries, and there is nothing said about
our present-day spiritual and moral degeneration that might not be
paralleled in the literature of previous generations, to which we
sometimes look back as the very embodiment of virtue and spirituality.
But pessimism apart--nor is self-criticism altogether undesirable--we
may say that spiritually also the Jew in America has achieved no mean
things. The very fact that we have succeeded in transplanting Judaism
to this country, so different from the Old World, is an achievement of
importance. And the transplanting has been rapid. There have been
losses, quite naturally, but there have been gains, too, and, whatever
is said to the contrary, there is an intense and manifold Jewish
activity in this country today unsurpassed anywhere else, though
perhaps only the historian of the future will acknowledge it, just as
our historians today laud the glories of the past.
When we think of our educational institutions, of our Rabbinical
colleges, of our historical associations, of our synagogues, of such
an achievement as the Jewish Encyclopedia and its counterpart in the
Hebrew language, and many other enterprises, we cannot help but wonder
that in so short a time the Jews of America should have done as much
as they have in the spiritual sphere, particularly when we recall that
the last half-century was a period of sceptism and materialism, which
put all Religion on the defensive, and which made the course of
Judaism in this country, and the process of re-adjustment, so much
more difficult than it might have been.
It is this spiritual and material advance of the American Jew that has
made it possible for him time and again to come to the rescue of his
fellow-Jews in other countries. It would take us too far afield to go
into detail. But no survey of the connection of America with the Jew
is adequate without at least a reminder of how America championed the
rights of her Jewish citizens in Switzerland and Russia, and of how
she intervened in behalf of persecuted Jews in Damascus and in
Morocco, in Rumania and in Russia.
When the history of the emancipation of the Jews is written, a place
of honor surely will be accorded to the help rendered by America,
through some of her foremost and most humane statesmen, from Theodore
Fay to John Hay, and through the energy and self-sacrifice of her
Jewish citizens.
Nor would our survey be sufficient without a reference to the
patriotism of the American Jew. If the patriotism of the Jew has been
proved in every country, nowhere has it been more ardent and ready
than here. We know the early story of Asser Levy who insisted on his
right to stand guard like every other citizen of New Amsterdam, rather
than be exempted and taxed. He is the patriotic prototype of the
American Jew in every age and crisis, in peace and in war. Whoever
doubts the patriotism of the American Jew, does not know him. And
never was the Jew of America more ready than today to do his patriotic
duty, to make all the sacrifices demanded by the hour, to stand guard
for the Republic and for Democracy. This he has shown already, and is
going to continue to show, as the War goes on.
A word about the future. Now and then questions are asked about the
future of the Jew in America. Will he live on? Will he continue in his
present fortunate condition? We hear murmurs about a nascent
anti-Semitism, and what not. To all these questions there is but one
answer: It depends upon ourselves! Let us think of the noble words of
George Washington in his reply to the address presented to him by the
Jewish community of Newport in the year 1790. "It is no more," he
said, "that toleration is spoken of, as if it were by the indulgence
of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their
inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United
States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no
assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection
should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all
occasions their effectual support."
The Jew has nothing to fear from anti-Semitism in America. It amounts
to nothing, except in so far as we help create it. What counts is our
own life and what we do for the maintenance of democracy in America
and elsewhere. As long as we do our duty, as long as we remain true to
the best moral and spiritual traditions of the Jew, as long as we
stand for the noblest ideals of citizenship, and as long as America
remains what her founders designed and dreamed her to be--the home and
the hope of democracy--so long the Jew will be safe for America and
America will be safe for the Jew!