ANTI-SEMITISM
In “Loyalties” by John Galsworthy, there occur two statements of
anti-Semitism so powerful and so keen that they may serve as a key to
the whole situation. The young Jew has accused a Christian aristocrat
of stealing his purse. The gentile girl, naturally a liberal, has to
choose her loyalty. She says: “Oh! I know lots of splendid Jews, and
I rather like little Ferdie; but when it comes to the point—they all
stick together; why shouldn’t we! It’s in the blood.... Prejudices—or
are they loyalties—I don’t know—criss-cross—we all cut each other’s
throats from the best of motives.” And later on an English grocer of
the lower middle class confesses: “To tell you the truth, I don’t
like—well, not to put too fine a point on it—‘ebrews. They work harder;
they’re more sober; they’re honest; and they’re everywhere. I’ve
nothing against them, but the fact is—they get on so.”
1.
Anti-Semitism is, then, a typical because a violent group attitude.
In America in its newest manifestation it is a part of the complex of
group revolts after the World War; it is intimately associated with the
Ku Klux Klan, anti-immigration movement, and repression generally, at
the same time that it has distinctive phases of its own. As Lewis S.
Gannett wrote:
[88] Because anti-Semitism is world-wide it is easy to assume that it
has the same causes everywhere; but conditions in America are very
different from conditions in countries where religion is taught in the
schools, where the Jews are virtually all middlemen, where the Ghetto
is an abiding place for generations of the same family.... American
anti-Semitism can largely be explained without reference to the
religious beliefs of Christians or Jews.
This last statement applies only to the immediate situation, not the
background.
The two elements in American anti-Semitism, then, are the imported
prejudice from Europe and the American soil which received it. The
form of the prejudice was the importation; its material backing and
impulse was the native American reaction against the apparently new
or apparently different group. The intensity of the movement at this
particular moment in history is a part of the post-war mental state of
the American people. In addition to the movements described in the last
chapter there are other manifestations mentioned in the introduction:
such as the attempt to limit the proportion of Jews in the colleges;
the anti-Semitic books and periodicals; and the activity of the Russian
emigrés constituting the immediate connecting link with anti-Semitism
in Europe and the world over. The agencies which hunted down the
radicals, whether as Russian sympathizers or from economic motives or
merely as a different group, tried assiduously to find Jews among their
leaders and were bitterly disappointed when economic radicalism turned
out to be an American movement in which Jews had merely a minority
share.
As we have seen, in 1919 the soil of the United States was abundantly
prepared for the imported seeds of anti-Semitism. Group was arrayed
against group, native and alien, Nordic and South European, Catholic
and Protestant, Christian and Jew. In addition to the local and timely
fact, we must also presuppose an old inheritance of specific prejudice
against the Jew of a strictly religious nature. This is by no means
the immediate occasion of the present movement, as it may have been
of pogroms in Russia; but it is certainly an element in the national
subconsciousness and in the conscious thinking of certain more orthodox
Christian churches. Granted that Horace M. Kallen exaggerates the
importance of this factor, still he has done well in pointing it out.
He says:
[89]In the Christian system the Jews are assigned a central and
dramatic status. They are the villains of the Drama of Salvation....
Nowhere in Europe could there be a village to whose inhabitants the
word “Jew” did not denote the people who had denied the Savior and
crucified Him, who were thus the enemies of God and of mankind....
The word “Jew” became a stimulus which touched off this emotion. It
was a word to curse with.... The root of the special Jewish difficulty
is the position of the Jews in the Christian religion. If you can end
this teaching that the Jews are enemies of God and of mankind you will
strike anti-Semitism at its foundations.
Certainly the teachings of infancy and childhood have left this,
residue of anti-Judaism in the minds of millions of persons, who would
be the first to deny the possession of religious bigotry; certainly the
Christian church, as a group mind, contains a tradition of anti-Judaism
as one of its ideas. But this means merely that religion to the Jew
takes the place of skin color to the Negro or language to the Czech. We
have ancient warrant that so trivial a matter as the mispronunciation
of the word Shibboleth was sufficient identification for one sub-group
of Hebrews to kill members of another group of their own people.
All that intolerance needs is some mark of identification, however
irrelevant or petty, to set off the rival group.
2.
The European importation at this period was the race theory. Originated
in France by Gobineau, taken up in Germany by scientific thinkers and
made the rallying cry of political parties, the theory was adapted to
American conditions. In Germany and France the “great race” was the
Teuton, below whom were ranged in order the Alpine, the Mediterranean,
and the Semite. The safety of the Teuton and therefore of civilization
as a whole depend on the purity of blood of the Teuton and his guarding
from contamination by alien blood. The Semite, in particular, is a
menace by reason of his lower moral and social standards and his
inability ever to be assimilated by the higher races; he must be driven
out of power and if possible out of the “sacred German land” itself.
In the United States this theory was taken over bodily by such writers
as Lothrop Stoddard and Grant Madison, with the trifling change that
the word “Teuton” was altered to “Nordic.” This was done in order to
include the many sub-varieties of the older immigration, most of whom
came at some time from northern and western Europe. The Klan and
the writers in the Dearborn Independent echoed them. The Russians in
the United States attacking the Soviet government, many sub-groups
of new Americans who imported their anti-Semitism with them, and the
constant flood of letters, periodicals and books regarding the growth
of mob violence, political discrimination and social obloquy in Europe,
furnished the connecting link. The race theory became acclimatized.
Peculiarly enough, one of the most radical statements of the race
theory was by a Jew, Maurice Samuel in “You Gentiles,” where he showed
quite unintentionally how the theory is reversible to form opposite
conclusions on the same premises. To Samuel, Jew and gentile are two
radically different sorts of people, as the anti-Semite agrees; the
difference he finds, however, is one of temperament, of viewpoint.
[90]To you (gentiles) life is a game and a gallant adventure, and
all life’s enterprises partake of the spirit of the adventurous. To
us (Jews) life is a serious and sober duty pointed to a definite and
inescapable task. [91]We know nothing of science for science’s sake,
as we know nothing of art for art’s sake. We know only of art for
God’s sake.... Art and science, this is your gentile world, a lovely
and ingenious world.... But not our world, not for us Jews.
To this we may contrast the remark of Irwin Edman:
[92]The Jews have been accused so often of impossible racial defects
that they have in self defense, ascribed to themselves wholly
imaginary racial virtues.... They have added to the unfavorable myths
invented by outsiders a whole folklore of favorable myths about
themselves.
The reprints from the Dearborn Independent can match this sort of hasty
generalization a hundred times over in the language of anti-Semitism.
[93]The Jew is against the Gentile scheme of things. What are the
causes of this disruptive tendency? First, his essential lack of
democracy. Jewish nature is autocratic. [94]In a sense the United
States is private property. It is the property of those who share the
ideals of the founders of the government. And those ideals were ideals
held by a white race of Christians. And with most of these the
Jews not only disagree, but hold them in contempt. [95]The fathers
were the men of the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic race ... who have given form
to every government and a livelihood to every people and an ideal to
every century. They got neither their God nor their religion from
Judah, nor yet their speech nor their creative genius—they are the
Ruling People, Chosen throughout the centuries to Master the world....
Into the camp of this race comes a people that has no civilization
to point to, no aspiring religion, no universal speech, no great
achievement in any realm but the realm of “get,” cast out of every
land that gave them hospitality, and these people endeavor to tell the
sons of the Saxons what is needed to make the world what it ought to
be.
3.
I shall devote very few words to showing that this race theory,
whether from the Nordic or any other angle, is composed of hasty and
unscientific generalizations, merely the rationalization of the group
prejudice whose actual background we are tracing. In the first place,
anthropologists are not at all agreed either on the definition or the
history of races. There seems, however, to be fairly general agreement
that there is no such thing as a pure race—certainly not the English
and probably not the Jews either. All sub-varieties of the white race
are greatly mixed in blood. For the Jewish side of this problem, an
interesting study is that of M. Fishberg, “The Jews, a Study of Race
and Environment,” where the author has demonstrated the many physical
types which appear in the Jewish people the world over, whether these
are due to local and climatic influences, or as Dr. Fishberg holds,
to interbreeding with other racial stocks. In the second place, even
such racial groupings as can be roughly established vary indefinitely
and overlap indefinitely in every physical and mental characteristic.
There is no considerable body of people who conform to the Nordic
type—blond, tall, long-headed, and so on. No test has ever been devised
which can adequately compare the intelligence of different races, for
every intelligence test yet invented presupposes a certain cultural and
language background, and is therefore favorable to the group which has
this background, and certain to give a low intelligence quotient
to any different cultural group, whatever be its race or its potential
intellectual power.
As Jean Finot sums up the entire theory in his book, “Race Prejudice”:
[96]The differences among individuals belonging to the same human
variety are always greater than those perceived between races regarded
as distinct units.
[97]No one has ever been able to show a single authentic Aryan. The
descriptions of him, both moral and physical, his measurements and
also the description of his inner life, are all purely fantastical....
Today out of a thousand educated Europeans, nine hundred ninety-nine
are persuaded of the authenticity of their Aryan origin. In the
history of human errors this doctrine will some day without doubt
assume a place of honor.
[98]When we go through the list of external differences which
appear to divide men, we find literally nothing which can authorize
their division into superior and inferior beings, into masters and
pariahs.... The science of inequality is emphatically a science of
White people. In pursuing this course the elementary commandments of
experimental science are transgressed.
[99]In a word, the term, race, is only a product of our mental
activities, and outside all reality.... They (races) exist in us but
not outside us.
The eminence of certain European nations today is historical and
cultural, not racial. Otherwise, how explain the past eminence of
Egypt, Babylon, Greece and Rome? True, some try to detect an admixture
of Nordic, or at least of Aryan blood in these nations as a cause of
their once high civilization. But to claim this is so to dilute the
meaning of the word that almost any blood may be considered “Aryan.”
The fact is that the Jew now in the United States did not kill Jesus
but is still accused of it; and is not a Semite but is still accused
of that. The one accusation like the other is merely a rationalization
of the social trait of intolerance, now sprung to growth in the United
States.
4.
Minor accusations against the Jews need only summary consideration.
Needless to say, many of them are true but probably none of them
are actual causes for hatred of the Jews. The theory of Burton
J. Hendrick that the Russian Jews are inferior racially to the west
European ones is merely another variety of the race theory and is
worth no more than any variety. The Jews are called materialists and
money-grabbers, which many of them are, as well as many non-Jews; they
are accused of having wealth and of being subverters of wealth, and
some Jews are in each of these categories. Some Jews are bootleggers,
as they are called. Possibly some Jews have been traitors, though
the writer in the Dearborn Independent seems to have taken a great
deal of trouble to prove that Benedict Arnold may or may not have
had some Jewish accomplices. Certainly the complaint of the colleges
that many of their Jewish students are not socially acceptable is
entirely correct. The Jew is the only immigrant group whose poor boys
attend institutions of higher learning in any large numbers. Other
groups usually wait at least a generation until they have acquired
both prosperity and some American culture before their children attend
college. Besides, there are a number of Catholic universities which
are attended by many Irish and Italian youths, while there is no such
school to divert the Jewish youth. Hence there is no doubt that many
young Jews attend college who are externally uncouth, who speak English
with an accent, who wear shabby clothes, and who have no interest in
athletics, dancing or undergraduate activities. It is certain, however,
that these young people learn to conform very rapidly indeed; and that,
before they learn, they may be able to contribute a little variety and
interest to the ♦monotony of American youth.
♦ “montony” replaced with “monotony”
A charge of great importance during the height of prejudice against the
Russian Soviet government was that the Jews were responsible for that
government, its success and its excesses. The inevitable conclusion
was, then, that the Jews were trying to introduce the ideals of the
Soviets into the United States. Even when this conclusion was not
drawn, the connection was so emphasized as to minister to anti-Semitic
sentiment. John Spargo [100]made a special effort to minimize this
rather indirect, but at the time very dangerous piece of propaganda.
He showed that the number of Jews in high position in Russia was
very small, while the larger number of government clerks and similar
functionaries was due to the larger percentage of educated men among
Jews than among the mass of Russians; that the great commercial
class of Jews were financially ruined by the socialistic policy
of the government; that the Jews of Russia were divided among the
several political parties for and against the Communists; and finally
that the Bolsheviki had suppressed Jewish religious schools, like
Christian ones, and estranged the orthodox of both religions. But the
anti-Semitic writers used the Russian Revolution to show the growing
menace of Jewish power the world over.
Finally, the charge of the Dearborn Independent that there is a Jewish
world conspiracy to overthrow the governments of the world in favor
of an all-Judaic power. To the person who knows Jewish life, broken
into so many conflicting theories and different cultural and economic
groups, the whole viewpoint is too ridiculous to require disproof.
It is merely another sign that the modern conception of social and
economic process is very new indeed and has made little headway into
the group mind. Every world process from the World War to the fall of
the German mark, from immodest clothing to vapid popular songs, must
be blamed on a person or race. In this case the person disliked is the
Jew, and everything is blamed on him. But a different group prejudice
could just as well ascribe these same factors to the German (as during
the war), to the Russian, to the international bankers, or to the
Republican party. Again, we are confronted by the rationalization of
a group prejudice, and in this case the rationalization is merely
unusually fantastic.
As Ludwig Lewisohn sums up anti-Jewish prejudice:
[101]Jew-baiting has nothing to do with the quality of Jewish
characteristics. We are hated for our wealth and for our poverty, for
our plutocrats and for our Reds, for display and for hard-headedness
and warm-heartedness, for arrogance and servility, for pushingness
and reserve, for speech and silence, for political participation and
nonparticipation. If we desire assimilation you drive us out of
your universities by chicanery and insult; if we do not strive after
assimilation you say we ought to go where we came from.
To this we may compare the interesting if somewhat hasty generalization
of Friedman:
[102]Any unabsorbed social group generates the ill will of the
majority.... It is characteristic for the superior culture to
absorb the inferior.... The seeming slowness of this movement is an
irritant to the non-Jewish world and the persistence of the Jews as a
distinctive cultural group is resented by the dominant group. It is an
implied challenge to the supremacy of the culture of the lands where
Jews dwell.
And Shailer speaks of [103]“This most striking and universal of ethnic
judgments,” that the Jews are an unpleasant people. The Semite to him
is “the ablest type of man the world has known, but a type that is
somewhat archaic” because religious rather than scientific in mental
trend. He feels that Jew and Aryan are different in their mode of
meeting the stranger, the Jew is more impulsive due to swifter mental
processes, which invariably causes bad first impressions to be later
overcome. And so on. These reasons seem hardly better than those of the
anti-Semites themselves—for the Jew today is not a Semite; Dr. Shailer
compared him with the rather repressed New Englander at Harvard, not
with the Aryan of Germany or Italy or Russia; since he wrote seven
Jews have received the Nobel prize for scientific distinction; and
finally, the challenge to the superior race (of Dr. Friedman) is simply
the fact of difference. No characterization of the Jew accounts for
anti-Semitism, whether it be formulated by friend or foe; the only
genuine causes are those that can be found in the group mind itself.
5.
In addition to the background of American group mind, already studied,
and the imported theory of anti-Semitism, there are certain facts which
affect the situation in its special manifestations. The most important
of these is the great increase of Jewish population in the United
States. At the time of the Know-Nothings there were not over 50,000
Jews in this country, and many of them had lived here since before
the Revolution, possessing fine patriotic records; there was thus no
motive to single them out for the anti-alien agitation of that period.
At the time of the A. P. A., there were about 500,000 Jews, but these
were still not a large enough group to attract special attention; they
were widely scattered through the south and west; and the agitation
against the larger numbers of Catholic immigrants passed them by. In
1925, however, the number of Jews in the United States is estimated
at 3,600,000, of whom 1,735,000 have immigrated into America in the
last 25 years, and 900,000 of these in the last 15. Here, then, is a
tremendous body of Jews who are also foreigners, who speak the Yiddish
language, adhere to traditional Jewish religious practices, and who are
massed in great bodies in certain cities and in certain industries. The
foreign Jew is thus more conspicuous today than any other immigrant
group, even than those much larger in number. New York City alone has
1,500,000 Jews, such a huge number of whom are of obviously foreign
origin that they are a conspicuous attraction for the intolerance of
other groups in America. As Mecklin says:
[104]The Jew, who has recently been coming to this country mainly from
Russia and Southeastern Europe by hundreds and thousands, and who,
true to his urban traits, has crowded into New York and other large
cities where his native characteristics are thrust into the face of
the native American on the street, in the hotel or department store,
has also come in for his share of the prevalent fear psychology. Henry
Ford ... has voiced the fears of the native American brought into
close contact with the unassimilated and disagreeably alien Jewish
population of our large centers.
A special feature of this present Jewish immigration is that much of
it comes from a belated civilization. The Jew of Poland or Ukrainia or
Rumania steps from an agricultural society into an industrial one; from
an aristocratic class society into a democratic one; from an isolated
Jewish Ghetto life into a maelstrom of races and cultural groups,
among whom he must grope his way. No wonder that his adjustment is not
always a correct one, still less often the same adjustment as that
of the ♦standardized, typical American. Many of them become radicals in
economics, religion and politics as a reaction against their former
experience of oppression; some of them were pro-German during the World
War to oppose their former Russian tyrants; for all of them the problem
is doubly difficult because it involves not only a personal adjustment
to new economic and social conditions, but also the group adjustment
into the life of the United States. Many of them in their new-found
freedom become super-patriots, take America to their hearts, and are
thus doubly disappointed when America also repulses them.
♦ “standarized” replaced with “standardized”
But Jewish immigration also has been largely stopped and the foreign
aspect of American Jewry is rapidly disappearing. In 1914, the
Jewish admissions to the United States numbered 138,000 or 11.3%;
when departures are taken into account, the Jews became 14.3% of the
total. During the war the Jewish immigration was negligible; but in
1921 it again amounted to 119,000 or 14.7% of the total, or deducting
departures, 21.2%. The passage of the quota law of 1921 resulted in
reducing the total Jewish admissions to 53,000 and 49,000 in the next
two years; or 17.3% and 9.5% of the total admissions. As 1922 was
a year of many departures among Greeks, Italians and several other
groups, the net Jewish immigration of that year actually amounted to
47.5% of the total net immigration. The effect of the 1924 immigration
act has already been noted by social workers and others in touch with
immigration, but it is still too early to show by statistics what
has occurred, namely the practical cessation of this great Jewish
immigration into the United States. It is obvious that this fact
will alter the animus and the nature of anti-Semitism, just as all
anti-alien sentiments, even though it will not eradicate the other
causes and therefore will not stop anti-Semitism completely.