(_Concluded_)
_Judaism and Jewish Students in France_
The decadence of native Judaism in France has become proverbial. The
original French Jews never amounted to much; and the Alsatian
immigrants, while still supplying rabbis for the pulpits, have of late
begun to disappear from the pews. You may state it is an axiom that
the synagogue will have to go a-begging for a quorum wherever
church-going is unpopular. But French Judaism has recently been
gaining reinforcement by the influx of newcomers from Eastern Europe.
Paris might be considered next to London the greatest centre of Jewish
immigration in Europe. In fact, Paris as well as some large cities in
the Low Countries, and to some extent even London, have since the
beginning of the Jewish movement towards the United States, become the
refuge of a considerable number who straggled behind the migratory
columns and were unable to reach their final destination. Free from
any official molestations and rather welcomed by the native Jews, the
foreign Jewish community in Paris has flourished in its own way. It
numbers by this time about twenty-five thousand souls, a large
proportion of whom were born and brought up in the French capital.
It is these young French Jews of immigrant parentage, students and
professional men, who organized themselves, about two years ago, in an
"Association des Jeunes Juifs," known by its initials as A. J. J. The
aim of that organization, which is non-partisan in Jewish affairs, is
both cultural and practical. It publishes a monthly by the name of
"Les Pionniers," and occasionally holds debates and lectures on
various Jewish topics. It also carries on a program of social work
among the immigrant Jews. I might perhaps give a clearer idea of the
object of the A. J. J. by reproducing their following declaration:
"Notre But.--Nous voulons nous affirmer 'Juifs' sans forfanterie, mais
avec fermeté; cultiver, développer parmis nous, faire connaître au
dehors, l'âme juive; nous éduquer mutuellement; demander, par les
voies légales, le respect, la justice pour tous,--fussent-ils juifs;
aider nos frères émigrés à l'aquérir la qualité de citoyen; inculquer
à nos membres les principes de solidarité et de mutualité." In the
summer of 1913, Dr. Nahum Slouszch of the Sorbonne submitted to the
society a scheme for more extensive activities, both Jewish and
patriotic in their scope, namely, the participation in educational and
social work among the indigenous Jews of the French possessions in
Africa.
_The Jew of the Roman Ghetto_
It is a pity that so little is known to us about the life of the
Jewish masses in Italy. The fame of the Nathans and Luzzattis has led
us to believe that in Italy Jews form the class of society from which
mayors and statesmen are recruited. But in Italy the majority of Jews
still live in social and economic conditions not far advanced above
those of their ancestors in centuries past. Italy is the only country
in Europe outside those in the Eastern part where the so-called
ghettoes are populated by native Jews. Their political emancipation
has not raised them from the bottom of the social structure over the
heads of their Gentile neighbors. Nowhere is the average Jew so much
like the non-Jew in appearance, language, manners, and vocation than
the inhabitant of the Roman Ghetto on the bank of the Tiber. He is
engaged there in the petty trades of selling his olives, peaches, and
figs, and hires out as a journeyman in and outside his country. He
hawks with "cartiloni" and "ricordi di Roma" in front of the café
terraces, and his street waifs accost the foreigners for a "soldi."
Even at the door of his old-clothes shop you can hardly recognize in
him the Jew. It is this, more than the paucity of the number of Jews
in Italy, that explains the absence of anti-Jewish feeling there. For
the name Sacerdote by which Italian Cohens call themselves does not
suggest affluence, and the cognomen Levi does not necessarily
designate one's business.
In his religious life the Jew of the Roman Ghetto resembles the
Lithuanian rather than the Western European. His religious activity,
to be sure, is restricted to the prayer services of the Temple, but
his Temple is more like a Beth Midrash than a symphony hall and
lyceum. Living within a Catholic environment, his religion has
been preserved as something positive, tangible, and powerful; and
if it is no longer an inspiring influence within him, it exists at
least as a reality outside of him. The religious institutions and
instrumentalities are looked upon by him as something hallowed and
consecrate. The synagogue is spoken of as the "sacro tempio" and the
rabbi, referred to by the Hebrew words "Morenu Harav," is looked up to
in matters religious as if he were the incumbent of the throne of
Moses. The place of worship is opened three times a day for the
traditional number of the daily public prayers, and young men as well
as old, unwashed and in their working garments, repair there directly
from their work to hear the "sacra messa," as the services are
sometimes termed by them. Most of the younger Jews are unable to read
the Hebrew prayers, some read without understanding them; but they all
know a few selected prayers by heart which they recite aloud with many
interesting gesticulations and genuflections, while in the pulpit the
Chasan reads the services from a prayer-book printed in Livorno,
chanting them in a monotonous sing-song not unlike what one often
hears in the chapels of St. Peter.
_Societies of Jewish Youth in Italy_
Racial consciousness is strong among these Jews of the Roman Ghetto.
They are to themselves, in common parlance, "Ibrim" or "Yahudim,"
which they utter not without pride, and the Gentile is looked down
upon as a mere "goi," while the passing priest is pointed out as a
"komer." If you ever happen to be in Rome, I should advise you take
one afternoon off, and ordering a "cafe noro" at some café house on
the Piazza Venezia, sit down quietly at a table on the terrace and try
to look Jewish. You will soon be assailed by a number of postal-card
venders coming one after another, until one importunate youth,
discovering your identity, will of a sudden change his attitude, and,
his obsequiousness gone, will enter with you into an intimate
conversation. He will tell you his name, his pedigree, and of the
"tempio," and of the street where many Jews live. He will no longer
entreat you to buy his goods; and if you do so, he will mumble out his
"grazie" rather perfunctorily. For are not all Israel of the same
descent?--and if they are not all princes, at least none of them is
better than a postal-card vender in Rome.
It is therefore not surprising that among the native Italian Jews
there should arise on the part of the young educated elements a desire
to convert that latent Jewish sentiment into some form of practical
and useful activity. A society of Jewish youth in Italy has already
existed for about three years during which time two conventions were
held. A number of commendable resolutions were passed about the
improvement of Jewish education among the Italian Jews and especially
the advancement of the study of the Hebrew language among them.
Zionism was warmly endorsed, though the society as a whole did not
commit itself officially to the cause. Like the A. J. J. of Paris, the
Italian organization also purports to act as intermediaries between
the Italian government and the native Jewish population of Tripoli. In
Rome there is a local organization of Jewish students, devoted to the
study of Hebrew literature, and is rather of cosmopolitan complexion,
being composed of Italian, Greek, German, and Russian Jews. The moving
spirit of that circle was a brilliant Russian Jew, who had graduated
in law from the University of Rome.
_Conclusion: The Growing National Spirit Among Jewish Students_
A close observation of European Jewish students, both as individuals
and as groups, leads one to the realization of a growing consciousness
among them of national unity, and of an increasing belief on their
part of the imperishability of the Jews as a race. That morbid
feeling of national decay and the imminent disappearance of the race,
which had preyed upon the minds of Jewish men in the past generation,
and which is reflected in the literature of that time, has been
everywhere displaced by one of confidence and hope. Desertion from
Judaism, to be sure, may sporadically make its appearance here and
there as a convenient escape from material disadvantages; indifference
towards it may likewise in some quarters still survive as a relic of
the past,--but these are rather unusual and isolated phenomena,
emphasizing all the more the universal fidelity and attachment to all
things Jewish.
The enthusiasm for Judaism, everywhere in a process of growth,
manifests itself in its early stages in study and self-cultivation; it
assumes a more concrete form, in its later stages, of some communal or
social activity; and if that development keeps on uninterruptedly it
finally consummates in Zionism. This development, it must be admitted,
is not a spontaneous and self-directive movement. In no small measure,
it is everywhere stimulated by the growing tendency on the part of
non-Jews in almost every country to appraise the Jew according to his
racial origin, an appraisal which results in a feeling not necessarily
hostile, but in most cases neutral and sometimes even favoring the
racial and cultural peculiarity, indestructible and impermiscible, of
the Jewish element. It is this external stimulus, rather than any
internal impulse, that is responsible for the unfolding of the
national spirit among Jewish students and the assertion of their
selfhood.
None the less, their self-assertion has nowhere reached the extreme of
spiritual alienation from their environment. There is nothing more
remarkable in the character of Jewish youth of the present day, even
among those who were born and raised in East European ghettos, than
the spiritual and intellectual snugness in which they find themselves,
in what should have been expected to remain to them a foreign
environment. The residual estrangement of the Jewish soul from
everything that is non-Jewish, which our forefathers in the past had
figuratively designated with what Jewish mysticism called the
"Captivity of the Shekinah," has totally disappeared. The individual
Jew of to-day, while sharing in the sublimated consciousness of the
race as a whole, does not in any conscious or subliminal way feel
himself to be personally identified with it; whence the hesitation on
the part of the majority of Jewish students to participate actively in
Zionism even though they would all admit it to be the logical sequel
of Jewish history.
For Zionism to them can never become a personal ideal, something
requisite for the salvation of their souls. It can at its best appeal
to them, in so far as they are consciously Jewish, as the cause of the
nation as a whole; and consequently the mere suspicion that their
affiliation with the movement might be held up against them as an
impugnment of their loyalty to the land of their birth and abode is
sufficient to keep them aloof from it. It was very interesting for me
to notice how everywhere, after a long manoeuvre of Zionist
discussions with good Jewish young men, they would finally halt at
their unshakable position that Zionists might arouse the suspicion of
their Gentile neighbors as to the loyalty and patriotism of the Jews.
Where people are obsessed by the fear of being misunderstood in doing
what they otherwise think to be good and impeccable, no arguments, of
course, can avail. They are in this respect characteristically Jewish.
In their Brand-like racial frame of mind, the Jews could never stop
midway between the two antipodes of roving world-citizenry and
hidebound mono-patriotism. It is probable that their attitude will
change as soon as it is generally realized that personal devotion and
loyalty to two causes are not psychologically a self-deception, and
that the serving of two masters is not a moral anomaly unless, as in
the original adage, one of the masters be Satanic.
[Illustration: Signature: Harry Wolfson]
Extract from a letter received from William Chadwick,
President of the Hebrew Congregation and the Adler
Society, Oxford University, England, commenting on the
section devoted to England in Mr. Wolfson's article in
our January number: "The remarks of Mr. Wolfson, whom
we remember very well, concerning Oxford, were very
apt for the time; but in Oxford, one particular type
of Judaism never remains for long; Judaism here is in
a state of perpetual flux, and to seize upon any one
moment and represent that view as a type of Oxford's
Judaism is very erroneous. I am sure that if Mr.
Wolfson were here now, he would not recognize the
services or the attitude now prevalent. I doubt if he
would now hear Liberal Judaism apostrophised 'as the
safeguard of modern Jews from the attractiveness of
the superior teachings of Christ.'"