[Illustration: _Louis D. Brandeis (born in Louisville, Ky., in 1856),
lawyer and publicist, is a distinguished leader in the voluntary
profession of "public servant." His extraordinary record of unselfish,
genuine achievement in behalf of the public interest--for shorter
hours of labor, savings bank insurance, protection against monopoly,
against increase in railroad rates, etc.,--gives peculiar aptness to
the appeal for community service made in this article, which Mr.
Brandeis has prepared from a recent Menorah address. From the
beginning Mr. Brandeis has taken a keen interest in the Menorah
movement as a promotive force for the ideals he has at heart._]
WHILE I was in Cleveland a few weeks ago, a young man who has won
distinction on the bench told me this incident from his early life. He
was born in a little village of Western Russia where the opportunities
for schooling were meagre. When he was thirteen his parents sent him
to the nearest city in search of an education. There--in
Bialystok--were good secondary schools and good high schools; but the
Russian law, which limits the percentage of Jewish pupils in any
school, barred his admission. The boy's parents lacked the means to
pay for private tuition. He had neither relative nor friend in the
city. But soon three men were found who volunteered to give him
instruction. None of them was a teacher by profession. One was a
newspaper man; another was a chemist; the third, I believe, was a
tradesman; all were educated men. And throughout five long years these
three men took from their leisure the time necessary to give a
stranger an education.
The three men of Bialystok realized that education was not a thing of
one's own to do with as one pleases--not a personal privilege to be
merely enjoyed by the possessor--but a precious treasure transmitted
upon a sacred trust to be held, used and enjoyed, and if possible
strengthened--then passed on to others upon the same trust. Yet the
treasure which these three men held and the boy received in trust was
much more than an education. It included that combination of qualities
which enabled and impelled these three men to give and the boy to seek
and to acquire an education. These qualities embrace: first,
_intellectual capacity_; second, _an appreciation of the value of
education_; third, _indomitable will_; fourth, _capacity for hard
work_. It was these qualities which enabled the lad not only to
acquire but to so utilize an education that, coming to America,
ignorant of our language and of our institutions, he attained in
comparatively few years the important office he has so honorably
filled.
Now whence comes this combination of qualities of mind, body and
character? These are qualities with which every one is familiar,
singly and in combination; which you find in friends and relatives,
and which others doubtless discover in you. They are qualities
possessed by most Jews who have attained distinction or other success;
and in combination they may properly be called Jewish qualities. For
they have not come to us by accident; they were developed by three
thousand years of civilization, and nearly two thousand years of
persecution; developed through our religion and spiritual life;
through our traditions; and through the social and political
conditions under which our ancestors lived. They are, in short, the
product of Jewish life.
_The Fruit of Three Thousand Years of Civilization_
OUR intellectual capacity was developed by the almost continuous
training of the mind throughout twenty-five centuries. The Torah led
the "People of the Book" to intellectual pursuits at times when most
of the Aryan peoples were illiterate. And religion imposed the use of
the mind upon the Jews, indirectly as well as directly, and demanded
of the Jew not merely the love, but the understanding of God. This
necessarily involved a study of the Laws. And the conditions under
which the Jews were compelled to live during the last two thousand
years also promoted study in a people among whom there was already
considerable intellectual attainment. Throughout the centuries of
persecution practically the only life open to the Jew which could give
satisfaction was the intellectual and spiritual life. Other fields of
activity and of distinction which divert men from intellectual
pursuits were closed to the Jews. Thus they were protected by their
privations from the temptations of material things and worldly
ambitions. Driven by circumstances to intellectual pursuits, their
mental capacity gradually developed. And as men delight in that which
they do well, there was an ever widening appreciation of things
intellectual.
Is not the Jews' indomitable will--the power which enables them to
resist temptation and, fully utilizing their mental capacity, to
overcome obstacles--is not that quality also the result of the
conditions under which they lived so long? To live a Jew during the
centuries of persecution was to lead a constant struggle for
existence. That struggle was so severe that only the fittest could
survive. Survival was not possible except where there was strong
will--a will both to live and to live a Jew. The weaker ones passed
either out of Judaism or out of existence.
And finally, the Jewish capacity for hard work is also the product of
Jewish life--a life characterized by temperate, moral living continued
throughout the ages, and protected by those marvellous sanitary
regulations which were enforced through the religious sanctions.
Remember, too, that amidst the hardship to which our ancestors were
exposed it was only those with endurance who survived.
So let us not imagine that what we call our achievements are wholly or
even largely our own. The phrase "self-made man" is most misleading.
We have power to mar; but we alone cannot make. The relatively large
success achieved by Jews wherever the door of opportunity is opened to
them is due, in the main, to this product of Jewish life--to this
treasure which we have acquired by inheritance--and which we are in
duty bound to transmit unimpaired, if not augmented, to coming
generations.
But our inheritance comprises far more than this combination of
qualities making for effectiveness. These are but means by which man
may earn a living or achieve other success. Our Jewish trust comprises
also that which makes the living worthy and success of value. It
brings us that body of moral and intellectual perceptions, the point
of view and the ideals, which are expressed in the term Jewish spirit;
and therein lies our richest inheritance.
_The Kinship of Jewish and American Ideals_
IS it not a striking fact that a people coming from Russia, the most
autocratic of countries, to America, the most democratic of countries,
comes here, not as to a strange land, but as to a home? The ability of
the Russian Jew to adjust himself to America's essentially democratic
conditions is not to be explained by Jewish adaptability. The
explanation lies mainly in the fact that the twentieth century ideals
of America have been the ideals of the Jew for more than twenty
centuries. We have inherited these ideals of democracy and of social
justice as we have the qualities of mind, body and character to which
I referred. We have inherited also that fundamental longing for truth
on which all science--and so largely the civilization of the twentieth
century--rests; although the servility incident to persistent
oppression has in some countries obscured its manifestation.
Among the Jews democracy was not an ideal merely. It was a practice--a
practice made possible by the existence among them of certain
conditions essential to successful democracy, namely:
First: _An all-pervading sense of the duty in the citizen._ Democratic
ideals cannot be attained through emphasis merely upon the rights of
man. Even a recognition that every right has a correlative duty will
not meet the needs of democracy. Duty must be accepted as the dominant
conception in life. Such were the conditions in the early days of the
colonies and states of New England, when American democracy reached
there its fullest expression; for the Puritans were trained in
implicit obedience to stern duty by constant study of the Prophets.
Second: _Relatively high intellectual attainments._ Democratic ideals
cannot be attained by the mentally undeveloped. In a government where
everyone is part sovereign, everyone should be competent, if not to
govern, at least to understand the problems of government; and to this
end education is an essential. The early New Englanders appreciated
fully that education is an essential of potential equality. The
founding of their common school system was coincident with the
founding of the colonies; and even the establishment of institutions
for higher education did not lag far behind. Harvard College was
founded but six years after the first settlement of Boston.
Third: _Submission to leadership as distinguished from authority._
Democratic ideals can be attained only where those who govern exercise
their power not by alleged divine right or inheritance, but by force
of character and intelligence. Such a condition implies the attainment
by citizens generally of relatively high moral and intellectual
standards; and such a condition actually existed among the Jews. These
men who were habitually denied rights, and whose province it has been
for centuries "to suffer and to think," learned not only to sympathize
with their fellows (which is the essence of democracy and social
justice), but also to accept voluntarily the leadership of those
highly endowed morally and intellectually.
Fourth: _A developed community sense._ The sense of duty to which I
have referred was particularly effective in promoting democratic
ideals among the Jews, because of their deep-seated community feeling.
To describe the Jew as an individualist is to state a most misleading
half-truth. He has to a rare degree merged his individuality and his
interests in the community of which he forms a part. This is evidenced
among other things by his attitude toward immortality. Nearly every
other people has reconciled this world of suffering with the idea of a
beneficent providence by conceiving of immortality for the individual.
The individual sufferer bore present ills by regarding this world as
merely the preparation for another, in which those living righteously
here would find individual reward hereafter. Of all the nations,
Israel "takes precedence in suffering"; but, despite our national
tragedy, the doctrine of individual immortality found relatively
slight lodgment among us. As Ahad Ha-'Am so beautifully said: "Judaism
did not turn heavenward and create in Heaven an eternal habitation of
souls. It found 'eternal life' on earth, by strengthening the social
feeling in the individual; by making him regard himself not as an
isolated being with an existence bounded by birth and death, but as
part of a larger whole, as a limb of the social body. This conception
shifts the center of gravity not from the flesh to the spirit, but
from the individual to the community; and concurrently with this
shifting, the problem of life becomes a problem not of individual, but
of social life. I live for the sake of the perpetuation and happiness
of the community of which I am a member; I die to make room for new
individuals, who will mould the community afresh and not allow it to
stagnate and remain forever in one position. When the individual thus
values the community as his own life, and strives after its happiness
as though it were his individual well-being, he finds satisfaction,
and no longer feels so keenly the bitterness of his individual
existence, because he sees the end for which he lives and suffers." Is
not that the very essence of the truly triumphant twentieth-century
democracy?
_The Two-fold Command of Noblesse Oblige_
SUCH is our inheritance; such the estate which we hold in trust. And
what are the terms of that trust; what the obligations imposed? The
short answer is _noblesse oblige_; and its command is two-fold. It
imposes duties upon us in respect to our own conduct as individuals;
it imposes no less important duties upon us as part of the Jewish
community or race. Self-respect demands that each of us lead
individually a life worthy of our great inheritance and of the
glorious traditions of the race. But this is demanded also by respect
for the rights of others. The Jews have not only been ever known as a
"peculiar people"; they were and remain a distinctive and minority
people. Now it is one of the necessary incidents of a distinctive and
minority people that the act of any one is in some degree attributed
to the whole group. A single though inconspicuous instance of
dishonorable conduct on the part of a Jew in any trade or profession
has far-reaching evil effects extending to the many innocent members
of the race. Large as this country is, no Jew can behave badly without
injuring each of us in the end. Thus the Rosenthal and the white-slave
traffic cases, though local to New York, did incalculable harm to the
standing of the Jews throughout the country. The prejudice created may
be most unjust, but we may not disregard the fact that such is the
result. Since the act of each becomes thus the concern of all, we are
perforce our brothers' keepers. Each, as co-trustee for all, must
exact even from the lowliest the avoidance of things dishonorable; and
we may properly brand the guilty as traitor to the race.
But from the educated Jew far more should be exacted. In view of our
inheritance and our present opportunities, self-respect demands that
we live not only honorably but worthily; and worthily implies nobly.
The educated descendants of a people which in its infancy cast aside
the Golden Calf and put its faith in the invisible God cannot worthily
in its maturity worship worldly distinction and things material. "Two
men he honors and no third," says Carlyle--"the toil-worn craftsman
who conquers the earth and him who is seen toiling for the spiritually
indispensable."
And yet, though the Jew make his individual life the loftiest, that
alone will not fulfill the obligations of his trust. We are bound not
only to use worthily our great inheritance, but to preserve and, if
possible, augment it; and then transmit it to coming generations. The
fruit of three thousand years of civilization and a hundred
generations of suffering may not be sacrificed by us. It will be
sacrificed if dissipated. Assimilation is national suicide. And
assimilation can be prevented only by preserving national
characteristics and life as other peoples, large and small, are
preserving and developing their national life. Shall we with our
inheritance do less than the Irish, the Servians, or the Bulgars? And
must we not, like them, have a land where the Jewish life may be
naturally led, the Jewish language spoken, and the Jewish spirit
prevail? Surely we must, and that land is our fathers' land: it is
Palestine.
_A Land Where the Jewish Spirit May Prevail_
THE undying longing for Zion is a fact of deepest significance--a
manifestation in the struggle for existence. Zionism is, of course,
not a movement to remove all the Jews of the world compulsorily to
Palestine. In the first place, there are in the world about 14,000,000
Jews, and Palestine would not accommodate more than one-fifth of that
number. In the second place, this is not a movement to compel anyone
to go to Palestine. It is essentially a movement to give to the Jew
more, not less, freedom--a movement to enable the Jews to exercise the
same right now exercised by practically every other people in the
world--to live at their option either in the land of their fathers or
in some other country; a right which members of small nations as well
as of large--which Irish, Greek, Bulgarian, Servian or Belgian, as
well as German or English--may now exercise.
Furthermore, Zionism is not a movement to wrest from the Turk the
sovereignty of Palestine. Zionism seeks merely to establish in
Palestine for such Jews as choose to go and remain there, and for
their descendants, a legally secured home, where they may live
together and lead a Jewish life; where they may expect ultimately to
constitute a majority of the population, and may look forward to what
we should call home rule.
The establishment of the legally secured Jewish home is no longer a
dream. For more than a generation brave pioneers have been building
the foundations of our new old home. It remains for us to build the
superstructure. The Ghetto walls are now falling, Jewish life cannot
be preserved and developed, assimilation cannot be averted, unless
there be reëstablished in the fatherland a center from which the
Jewish spirit may radiate and give to the Jews scattered throughout
the world that inspiration which springs from the memories of a great
past and the hope of a great future. To accomplish this it is not
necessary that the Jewish population of Palestine be large as compared
with the whole number of Jews in the world. Throughout centuries when
the Jewish influence was great, and it was working out its own, and in
large part the world's, destiny during the Persian, the Greek, and
the Roman Empires, only a relatively small part of the Jews lived in
Palestine; and only a small part of the Jews returned from Babylon
when the Temple was rebuilt.
The glorious past can really live only if it becomes the mirror of a
glorious future; and to this end the Jewish home in Palestine is
essential. We Jews of prosperous America above all need its
inspiration. And the Menorah men should be its builders.
[Illustration: Signature: Louis D. Brandeis]
_THERE are two things necessary in the Jewish life of
this country. The one is an heroic attempt to organize
the Jews of the country for Jewish things. That can be
done, I believe, primarily through the organization of
self-conscious Jewish communities throughout the
country. The other thing necessary is, that we have
vigorous Jewish thinking. We need a theory, a
substantial theory, for our Jewish life, just as much
as we need Jewish organization. We need to have our
college men think their problems through without fear,
courageously, by whatever name their theories may be
known, be these theories called Zionism or
anti-Zionism, Reform Judaism or Orthodox Judaism. We
need some vigorous Jewish thinking._--_From a Menorah
Address by Dr. J. L. Magnes._