tenet of the Jewish church, might practice every form and ceremony
imposed by the Jewish laws and the Jewish ritual, and as far as the
religion is concerned, be a Jew, but yet, no one who will reflect for a
moment would class them with the Jews as a people. If the truth were
known, a very large percentage of so-called Christians would be found to
be believers in the essentials of the Jewish religion, and yet, they are
not Jews.
“It requires not only that men should believe in Judaism, but that they
should be the descendants in a direct line of that people who enjoyed a
temporal government and who owned a country up to the time of the
destruction of the second commonwealth.
“That great event took away from the Jews their country and their
temporal government; it scattered them over the face of the earth, _but
it did not destroy the national and race idea_ which was a part of their
nature and of their religion.”
“Who shall say, then, that the Jews are no longer a race?... Blood is
the basis and sub-stratum of the race idea, and no people on the face of
the globe can lay claim with so much right to purity of blood, and unity
of blood, as the Jews.”
“If I have reasoned to any purpose, the inquiry of rights in the
premises is not to be limited to Jews as exponents of a particular
creed, but _to the Jews as a race_.” (Pages 190–191)
“The religion alone does not constitute the people. As I have already
maintained, a believer in the Jewish faith does not by reason of that
fact become a Jew. On the other hand, however, _a Jew by birth remains a
Jew, even though he abjures his religion_.” (Page 200)
This is the view of such men as Justice Brandeis, the Jew who sits on
the Supreme Court of the United States. Justice Brandeis says, “Let us
all recognize that we Jews are a distinct nationality _of which every
Jew, whatever his country, his station, his shade of belief, is
necessarily a member_.”
Believing all this, Mr. Levi subscribes to the Jewish law and practice
of exclusiveness.
Describing the state of the Jews, Mr. Levi says (page 92): “The Jews
have not materially increased or diminished in numbers for 2,000 years.
They have made no proselytes to their religion.... They have imbibed the
arts, the literature and the civilization of successive generations, but
have abstained very generally from intermixture of blood.... They have
infused their blood into that of other peoples but have taken little of
other peoples into their own.”
As to intermarriage between the Jew and non-Jew, Mr. Levi calls it
miscegenation. “In remote countries, sparsely populated, the choice may
lie between such marriages and a worse relation.” Those are his words on
page 249. He does not advise the worse relation, but he has said quite
enough to indicate the Jewish view of the case. He continues:
“It seems clear to me that Jews should avoid marriages with Gentiles and
Gentiles with Jews, _upon the same principle that we avoid marrying the
insane, the consumptive, the scrofulitic or the Negro_.” (Page 249)
This exclusiveness goes down through all human relations. The Jew has
one counsel for non-Jews and another for himself in these matters. Of
the non-Jew he demands as a right what he looks down upon as shady
privilege. He uses the Ghetto as a club with which to bludgeon the
non-Jew for his “bigotry,” when as a fact he chooses the Ghetto for
well-defined racial reasons. He condemns the non-Jew for the exclusion
of the Jew from certain sections of society, when as a Jew his whole
care is to keep himself unspotted from that very society to which he
seeks entrance. The Jew insists on breaking down non-Jewish
exclusiveness while keeping his own. The non-Jewish world is to be
public and common, the Jewish world is to be kept sacrosanct. Read the
teachings of this enlightened leader of Jewry as published by the B’nai
B’rith.
He favors the public school for non-Jewish children, not for Jewish
children; they are to be kept separate; they are the choice stock of the
earth:
“Because the government tenders free education, it does not follow that
it must be accepted; if education be made compulsory, it does not follow
that government schools must be attended.... As a citizen I favor free
schools, because the education they afford, imperfect as it is, is
better than none, and society is benefited thereby; but as an individual
I prefer to pay to support free schools and send my children to more
select places.” (Page 253) He speaks of the fact that “all classes of
children frequent the public schools” as an argument against Jewish
children going there.
“In my judgment, Jewish children should be educated in Jewish schools.”
(page 254) “Not only is it a positive and direct advantage to educate
our children as Jews, but it is absolutely necessary to our
preservation. Experience has shown that our young people will be weaned
from our people if allowed indiscriminately to associate with the
Gentiles.” (Page 255)
Discussing the possibility of Jews losing their crudeness, Mr. Levi
asks, “How shall we best accomplish that end?” Then he quotes the
frequent answer: “Since the exemplars of gentility most abound among the
Gentiles, we should associate with them as much as possible, in order to
wear our own rudeness away.” He meets the suggestion this way:
“If gentlemen were willing to meet all Jews on a parity because they are
Jews, we should doubtless derive much benefit from such association.
But, while it is true that no gentleman refuses association with another
because that other is a Jew, he will not, as a rule, associate with a
Jew unless he be a gentleman. As we are far from being all gentlemen, we
cannot reasonably expect to be admitted as a class into good society.
So, better keep by ourselves,” concludes Mr. Levi. (Page 260)
That is, Mr. Levi admits the willingness of society to meet Jews on
equal terms, as with all others, but not on unequal terms. And this
being so, Mr. Levi holds they had better meet as little as possible,
they had better keep apart; in the formative years, certainly, Jewish
young people should be kept rigidly apart from non-Jews. The
exclusiveness of which the Jews complain is their own. The Ghetto is not
a corner into which the non-Jews have herded the Semites; the Ghetto is
a spot carved out of the community and consecrated to the Chosen People
and is therefore the best section of the city in Jewish eyes, the rest
being “the Christian quarter,” the area of the heathen. Mr. Levi himself
admits on page 220 that there is no prejudice against the Jew in this
country.
Certain wild-eyed objectors to the series of studies on the Jewish
Question have made the assertion that THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT has
declared cowardice to be a Jewish trait. That the statement is false as
regards this paper does not change the fact that the subject has been
generally discussed in and out of army circles. If it ever becomes
necessary to discuss it in these studies, the facts will be set forth as
far as they are obtainable. But the point just now is that Mr. Levi has
had somewhat to say which may repay reading:
“Physical courage has always been an incident, not an element, of Jewish
character. It has no independent existence in their make-up, and always
depended on something else. With some exceptions this may be said of all
Oriental people. The sense and fear of danger is highly developed in
them, and there is no cultivation of that indifference to it which has
distinguished the great nations of Western Europe.” (Page 205)
Were a non-Jew to call attention to this difference between the Jews and
others, he would be met with the cry of “anti-Semitism” and he would be
twitted with the fact that all his relatives may not have served in the
war. Loudest to twit him would be those who served in what our soldiers
called “the Jewish infantry,” the quartermaster’s corps in the late
National Army.
It is to this aversion to danger, however, that Mr. Levi attributes the
Jews’ greatness among the nations. Other nations can fight, the Jews can
endure, and that, he says, is greater. Note his words (the italics are
his own):
“Other nations may boast conquests and triumphs born of aggression, but
though the fruits of victory have been manifold, they have not been
enduring; and it may be truly said that the nation whose greatness grows
out of valor passes through the stages of discord and degeneracy to
decay.... In the virtue of endurance I believe the Jews have a safeguard
against the decay that has marked the history of all other peoples.”
It appears, therefore, that the draft-dodger, if he can _endure_ long
enough, may yet come to own the country.
Jewish leaders have lately tried to minimize as “wild words” the
disclosures made by Disraeli with reference to the Jews’ participation
in European revolutions. What Disraeli said can be found in his
“Coningsby,” or in the quotations made therefrom in THE DEARBORN
INDEPENDENT of December 18, 1920. With reference to the German
Revolution of 1848, Disraeli wrote—before it had taken place:
“You never observe a great intellectual movement in Europe in which
the Jews do not greatly participate.... That mysterious Russian
Diplomacy which so alarms Western Europe is organized and
principally carried on by Jews. That mighty revolution, which is at
this moment preparing in Germany, and which will be, in fact, a
second and greater Reformation, and of which so little is yet known
in England, is entirely developing under the auspices of Jews.”
It is interesting, therefore, to hear Mr. Levi confirming from the
American side those significant statements made by Disraeli.
“The revolution of 1848 in Germany, however, influenced a great many
highly educated Jews to come to America.” (Page 181) “It is unnecessary
to review the events of 1848; suffice it to say, that not a few among
the revolutionists were Jews, and that a considerable number of those
who were proscribed by the government at home, fled to the United States
for safety.” (Page 182) These German Jews are now the arch-financiers of
the United States. They found here complete liberty to exploit peoples
and nations to the full extent of their powers. They still maintain
their connections with Frankfort-on-the-Main, the world capital of
International financial Jewry.
With these quotations from the speeches and writings of Leo N. Levi, a
famous president of the B’nai B’rith, it would seem to be a fair
question as to the reason for the denial and denunciation which have
followed the making of these statements in the course of this series of
studies. Leo N. Levi studied the Jewish Question because he knew a
Jewish Question to exist. He knew that the Jewish Question was not a
non-Jewish creation but appeared wherever Jews began to appear in
numbers. They brought it with them. He knew the justice of many of the
charges laid against the Jews. He knew the impossibility of disproving
them, the futility of shrieking “anti-Semitism” at them. He knew,
moreover, that for the Jews to solve the Jewish Question by departing
from the peculiar racial traditions of superiority, would be to cease to
be Jews. Therefore, he threw his whole influence on the side of the Jews
remaining separate, maintaining their tradition of The Chosen Race,
looking upon themselves as the coming rulers of the nations, and there
he left the Question just about where he found it.
But in the course of his studies he gave other investigators the benefit
of his frank statements. He did not put lies into the mouths of his
people. He was not endeavoring to maintain himself in position by
prejudiced racial appeals. He looked certain facts in the face, made his
report, and chose his side. Several times in the course of his argument,
his very logic led him up to the point where, logically, he would have
to cast aside his Jewish idea of separateness. But with great calmness
he discarded the logic and clung to the Jewish tradition. For example:
“The better to facilitate such happiness in every country and in every
age, various kinds of organizations have existed as they exist today.
The Jews have theirs.
“For many reasons they are exclusive. In theory they should not be so.
In our social organizations we should, in deference to the argument
which I have already named, admit any congenial and worthy Gentile who
honors us with his application. But what may be theoretically correct
may be found practically wrong. It certainly is a wrong to exclude a
worthy person because he does not happen to be a Jew; but on the other
hand, where are you to draw the line?”
This is frankness to a fault. Of course, it is wrong, but the right is
impractical! Logic goes by the boards in the face of something stronger.
Mr. Levi is not to be blamed for having gone to his tribe. Every man’s
place is with his tribe. The criticism belongs to the lick-spittle
Gentile Fronts who have no tribe and become hangers-on around the
outskirts of Judah, racial mongrels who would be better off if they had
one-thousandth of the racial sense which the Jew possesses.
This brief survey of the philosophy which Mr. Levi both lived and
taught, and which is shared by the leaders of American Jewry, is in
strict agreement with Jewish principles all down the centuries. In his
published addresses Mr. Levi does not touch upon all the implications of
the separateness which he enjoins upon his nation. Why do they keep by
themselves? What is it that keeps them distinct? Is it their religion?
Very well; let us regard them as a sect of religious recluses and wish
them well in their endeavors to keep themselves unspotted of the world.
Is it their race? So their leaders teach. Race and nationality are
strictly claimed. If this is so, there must be a political outlook. What
is it? Palestine? Not that any one can notice. A great deal may be read
about it in the newspapers, the newspapers in turn being supplied
through the Associated Press with the Jewish Telegraph Agency’s
propaganda dispatches; but no one in Palestine notices the Land becoming
more Jewish. Jewry’s political outlook is world rule in the material
sense. Jewry is an international nation. It is this, and nothing else,
which gives significance to its financial, educational, propagandist,
revolutionary and immigration programs.
——
Issue of May 14, 1921.
LVI.
Dr. Levy, a Jew, Admits His People’s Error
A Jew of standing, Dr. Oscar Levy, well known in English literary
circles and lover of his people, has had the honesty and the wisdom to
meet the Jewish Question with truth and candor. His remarks are printed
in this article as an example of the methods by which Jewry can be saved
in the estimation of Twentieth Century Civilization.
The circumstances were these: George Pitt-Rivers, of Worcester College,
Oxford, wrote a most illuminating brochure entitled, “The World
Significance of the Russian Revolution,” which is published and sold for
two shillings by Basil Blackwell, Oxford. The book is the result of
unprejudiced observation and study and agrees with the statements made
in THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT about the personnel of Bolshevism. The
manuscript was sent to Dr. Oscar Levy, as a representative Jew, and Dr.
Levy’s letter was subsequently published as a preface to the book.
That the reader may understand the tenor of Mr. Pitt-Rivers’s book,
section XVI, pp. 39–41, is herewith given in full, and is followed by
Dr. Levy’s comments. The italics throughout are intended to remind the
reader of remarks on similar lines made in this series:
It is not unnaturally claimed by Western Jews that Russian Jewry, as a
whole, is most bitterly opposed to Bolshevism. Now although there is a
great measure of truth in this claim, since the prominent Bolsheviks,
who are preponderantly Jewish, do not belong to the orthodox Jewish
Church, it is yet possible, without laying oneself open to the charge of
anti-Semitism, to point to the obvious fact that Jewry, _as a whole_,
has, consciously or _unconsciously_, worked for and promoted an
international economic, material despotism which, with Puritanism as an
ally, has tended in an ever-increasing degree to crush national and
spiritual values out of existence and substitute the ugly and deadening
machinery of finance and factory. It is also a fact that Jewry, as a
whole, strove every nerve to secure and heartily approved of the
overthrow of the Russian monarchy, which they regarded as their most
formidable obstacle in the path of their ambitions and business
pursuits. All this may be admitted, as well as the plea that,
individually or collectively, most Jews may heartily detest the
Bolshevik régime, yet it is still true that the whole weight of Jewry
was in the revolutionary scales against the czar’s government. It is
true their apostate brethren, who are now riding in the seat of power,
may have exceeded their orders; that is disconcerting, but it does not
alter the fact. It may be that the Jews, often the victims of their own
idealism, have always been instrumental in bringing about the events
they most heartily disapprove of; that perhaps is the curse of the
Wandering Jew.
Certainly it is from the Jews themselves that we learn most about the
Jews. It is possible that only a Jew can understand a Jew. Nay, more, it
may be that only a Jew can save us from the Jews, a Jew who is great
enough, strong enough—for greater racial purity is a source of strength
in the rare and the great—and inspired enough to overcome in himself the
life-destructive vices of his own race. It was a Jew who said, “Wars are
the Jews’ harvest”; but no harvest so rich as civil wars. A Jew reminds
us that the French Revolution brought civil emancipation for the Jews in
Western Europe. Was it a _Jew_ who inspired Rousseau with the eighteenth
century idea of the sameness of man according to nature? Dr. Kallen, a
Zionist author, writes: “Suffering for 1,000 years from the assertion of
their difference from the rest of mankind, they accepted eagerly the
escape from suffering which the eighteenth century assertion of the
sameness of all men opened to them.... They threw themselves with
passion into the republican emancipating movements of their fellow
subjects of other stocks.” It was a Jew, Ricardo, who gave us the
nineteenth century ideal of the sameness of man according to machinery.
And without the Ricardian gospel of international capitalism, we could
not have had the international gospel of Karl Marx. Moses Hess and
Disraeli remind us of the particularly conspicuous part played by Jews
in the Polish and Hungarian rebellions, and in the republican uprising
in Germany of ’48. Even more conspicuous were they in the new
internationalism logically deducible from the philosophy of Socialism.
This we were taught by the Jew Marx, and the Jew Ferdinand Lasalle, and
they but developed the doctrine of the Jew David Ricardo.
It was Weininger, a Jew—and also a Jew hater—who explained why so many
Jews are naturally Communists. Communism is not only an international
creed, but it implies the abnegation of real property, especially
property in land, and Jews, being international, have never acquired a
taste for real property; they prefer money. Money is an instrument of
power, though eventually, of course, Communists claim that they will do
away with money—when their power is sufficiently established to enable
them to command goods, and exercise despotic sway without it. Thus the
same motives prompt the Jew Communist and his apparent enemy, the
financial Jew. When owners of real property in times of economic
depression feel the pinch of straightened circumstances, it is the
Jewish usurers who become most affluent and who, out of goodness of
their hearts, come to their assistance—at a price.
To these and other statements, Dr. Levy, as a Jew, made this reply:
Dear Mr. Pitt-Rivers:
When you first handed me your MS. on _The World Significance of the
Russian Revolution_, you expressed a doubt about the propriety of its
title. After a perusal of your work, I can assure you, with the best of
consciences, that your misgivings were entirely without foundation.
No better title than _The World Significance of the Russian Revolution_
could have been chosen, for no event in any age will finally have more
significance for our world than this one. We are still too near to see
clearly this Revolution, this portentous event, _which was certainly one
of the most intimate and therefore least obvious, aims of the
world-conflagration, hidden as it was at first by the fire and smoke of
national enthusiasms and patriotic antagonisms_.
It was certainly very plucky of you to try and throw some light upon an
event which necessarily must still be enveloped in mist and mystery, and
I was even somewhat anxious, lest your audacity in treating such a
dangerous subject would end in failure, or what is nearly the same, in
ephemeral success. No age is so voracious of its printed offspring as
ours. There was thus some reason to fear lest you had offered to this
modern Kronos only another mouthful of his accustomed nourishment for
his immediate consumption.
I was, I am glad to report, agreeably surprised—surprised, though not by
the many new facts which you give, and which must surprise all those who
take an interest in current events—facts, I believe, which you have
carefully and personally collected and selected, not only from books,
but from the lips and letters of Russian eye-witnesses and sufferers,
from foes as well as from friends of the great Revolution.
What I appreciate more than this new light thrown on a dark subject,
more than the conclusion drawn by you from this wealth of facts, is the
psychological insight which you display in _detecting the reasons why a
movement so extraordinarily bestial and so violently crazy as the
Revolution was able to succeed and finally to overcome its adversaries_.
For we are confronted with two questions which need answering and which,
in my opinion, you have answered in your pamphlet. These questions are:
(1) How has the Soviet Government, _admittedly the government of an
insignificant minority_, succeeded not only in maintaining but in
strengthening its position in Russia after two and a half years of
power? and (2) Why has the Soviet Government, in spite of its outward
bestiality and brutal tyranny, succeeded in gaining the sympathies of an
increasing number of people in this country?...
You rightly recognize that there is an ideology behind it and you
clearly diagnose it as an ancient ideology. There is nothing new under
the Sun, _it is even nothing new that this Sun rises in the East_....
For Bolshevism is a religion and a faith. How could these half-converted
believers ever dream to vanquish the “Truthful” and the “Faithful” of
their own creed, these holy crusaders, who had gathered round the Red
Standard of the Prophet Karl Marx, and who fought under the daring
guidance of _these experienced officers of all latter-day
revolutions—the Jews_?
I am touching here on a subject which, to judge from your own pamphlet,
is perhaps more interesting to you than any other. In this you are
right. _There is no race in the world more enigmatic, more fatal, and
therefore more interesting than the Jews._
_Every writer, who, like yourself, is oppressed by the aspect of the
present and embarrassed by his anxiety for the future, MUST try to
elucidate the Jewish Question and its bearing upon our Age._
_For the question of the Jews and their influence on the world past and
present, cuts to the root of all things, and should be discussed by
every honest thinker, however bristling with difficulties it is, however
complex the subject as well as the individuals of this Race may be._
For the Jews, as you are aware, are a sensitive Community, and thus very
suspicious of any Gentile who tries to approach them with a critical
mind. They are always inclined—and that on account of their terrible
experiences—to denounce anyone who is not with them as against them, as
tainted with “medieval” prejudice, as an intolerant Antagonist of their
Faith and of their Race.