THE RETORT TO ANTI-SEMITISM
There are two kinds of answers possible to a movement like
anti-Semitism, the explicit refutation of its doctrines and teachings,
whether by Jews or non-Jews; and the response by adjustment and by
psychological traits. It is a commonplace that Jewish loyalty is always
strengthened by anti-Semitism; it is equally true that the Jewish
inferiority complex is conditioned, if not caused, by anti-Semitism.
In fact, we may well conclude that Jewish characteristics are greatly
influenced and molded by the adverse forces of the environment. Both
these types of response, the explicit and the implied, exist in this
particular case, whether as counterpart or as results of anti-Semitism
itself, and both can be traced in the United States in connection with
the present movement.
1.
Defense of Jews by non-Jews is a notable phenomenon of modern times,
associated with the general growth of tolerance. Beginning with the
Renaissance there have been a few hardy spirits in every generation
who were willing to espouse the cause of these pariahs of Christendom,
chiefly the liberals who were challenging group standards in many
directions. Such advocates as Mirabeau, Lessing, Jefferson and Macaulay
endeavored to remove Jewish disabilities and to defend the Jews against
the attacks of the intolerant groups. Here in America we have seen
the same result; the use of the individual intelligence has drawn
many non-Jews out of the unified group mind of the persecutors; many
entire groups, in fact, of Catholics, liberals, and others had never
entered into it. Even before the World War the Reverend Madison Peters
of Brooklyn was widely known for his book, “Justice to the Jew,” and
several similar volumes. More recently, as a definite reply to the
anti-Semitic writers there have appeared “The Jew and American Ideals,”
by John Spargo; “The Jew and Civilization” by Ada Sterling; “The
Truth about the Jews, by a Gentile,” by Walter Hurt; and “Patriotism
of the American Jew” by Samuel W. McCall. These works and others like
them, of varying merit, were definitely apologetic in nature. A number
of periodicals published articles either avowedly in defense of the
Jew, or purporting to examine the Jewish problem fairly and without
intolerance. Such were the brilliant series by able thinkers, which I
have quoted so frequently, in the Nation; by Norman Hapgood in Hearst’s
International; by William Hard in the Metropolitan Magazine; by Arthur
Brisbane in his syndicated newspaper column, and many others. Former
President William Howard Taft, now Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,
during the interval between these high offices, wrote a speech on
“Anti-Semitism in the United States,” which he delivered in many parts
of the country and which was printed by the Anti-Defamation League.
Several actions of larger bodies of non-Jews lent even more dignity to
this counter-movement. On December 5, 1920, the Federal Council of the
Churches of Christ in America, the great Protestant federation, passed
the following resolution in its national convention in Boston:
Whereas, for some time past there have been in circulation in this
country publications tending to create race prejudice and arouse
animosity against our Jewish fellow-citizens and containing charges
so preposterous as to be unworthy of credence, be it resolved that
the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, impressed
by the need at this period of our national existence for unity and
brotherhood, deplores all such cruel and unwarranted attacks upon
our Jewish brethren and in a spirit of good-will extends to them
an expression of confidence in their patriotism and their good
citizenship and earnestly admonishes our people to express disapproval
of all actions which are conducive to intolerance or tend to the
destruction of our national unity through arousing racial division in
our body politic.
It is a peculiar commentary upon the nature of groups and group
leadership that the very churches thus addressed by their great
national leaders should have furnished so much material for the
recruiting officers of the Ku Klux Klan.
On January 16, 1921, a protest against anti-Semitism was issued under
the initiative of John Spargo, signed by one hundred nineteen
distinguished American Christians from every walk of life, headed by
the names of President Woodrow Wilson, former President William Howard
Taft, and William Cardinal O’Connell. I quote a few sentences from this
interesting document:
The loyalty and patriotism of our fellow citizens of the Jewish faith
is equal to that of any part of our people, and requires no defense
at our hands.... Anti-Semitism is almost invariably associated with
lawlessness and with brutality and injustice. It is also invariably
found closely intertwined with other sinister forces, particularly
those which are corrupt, reactionary and oppressive. We believe that
it should not be left to men and women of Jewish faith to fight this
evil, but that it is in a very special sense the duty of citizens who
are not Jews by ancestry or faith.
The most practical work of this kind was undertaken in December,
1924, when a joint committee of the Federal Council of the Churches
of Christ in America and of the Central Conference of American Rabbis
met in Washington, D. C., to consider the problem of good will between
Christians and Jews. Their statement follows in full:
We, of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, and
the Central Conference of American Rabbis, as represented in a joint
session of their respective committees on good will between Jews and
Christians, realizing the necessity for a truer interpretation of
Americanism and religion, and in order to advance both on the highest
plane of good will and fellowship, herewith declare:
1. The purpose of our committees is to promote mutual understanding
and good will in the place of suspicion and ill will in the entire
range of our inter-religious and social relations.
2. Because of our mutual respect for the integrity of each other’s
religion and our desire that each faith shall enjoy the fullest
opportunity for its development and enrichment, these committees have
no proselytizing purpose.
3. We endorse the statement of the Federal Council of the Churches
of Christ in America, made by its Administrative Committee in the
resolution of September 22, 1922, declaring that the “rise of
organizations whose members are masked, oath-bound and unknown, and
whose activities have the effect of arousing religious prejudices and
racial antipathies, is fraught with grave consequences to the church
and to society at large.” To this statement we add our conviction that
such organizations violate the fundamental principles and ideals of
our country and of religion, and merit our condemnation.
4. We realize, further, that we best reveal our fellowship by
practical co-operation in common tasks, and it is our endeavor to
formulate a program by which to realize the high purposes and noble
endeavors of mutual good will and helpfulness.
2.
While some non-Jews were trying to break up the group ideas which were
expressed in anti-Semitism, whether through drawing away individuals by
argument, or through diverting groups by the prestige of great names,
the Jews themselves were far from idle. There was a flood of books,
articles, speeches, designed to show that the Jews have had a proud
share in American history in the past, are now patriotic citizens, are
being wronged by calumny, and so on. Most of these were quite worthless
for their purpose, for anti-Semitism was not caused by the arguments
against the Jews at all; moreover, they were plainly apologetic and
would not have impressed a prejudiced person in the least. But the work
of several great Jewish organizations was of a different order.
Among a number of these organizations I select three which have, from
their inception, made this one of their prime purposes of existence.
The oldest of these is the American Jewish Committee, of which Mr.
Louis Marshall of New York City is president. This organization was
founded in 1906 with the purpose of defending Jewish rights at home and
abroad; its immediate occasion was the Kishineff massacre in Russia,
with the consequent strengthening of Jewish group loyalty in the United
States as well. The annual reports of this body, published in the
various volumes of the American Jewish Yearbook, reveal, besides other
activities, a variety of defense methods—a personal protest to the
head of a publishing firm which was producing the “Protocols”; efforts
on behalf of newly arrived immigrants; the completion and publication
in summary form of the record of American Jews in the army, navy and
marine corps during the World War; attempts to befriend persecuted
Jews in foreign lands. On December 1, 1920, this committee published
an “Address to their Fellow Citizens on the Protocols, Bolshevism and
the Jews,” which was signed also by representatives of nine other
Jewish organizations—rabbinical conferences, unions of congregations
and the like. This statement rehearsed the proofs against the current
charges of anti-Semitism and appealed to the American public, with the
evident hope of breaking up the group mind that was then filled with
the image of anti-Semitism. It ends in this fashion:
We have an abiding confidence in the spirit of justice and fairness
that permeates the true American, and we are satisfied that our
fellow-citizens will not permit the campaign of slander and libel
that has been launched against us to go unreproved.... Let not
hatred and misunderstanding arise where peace and harmony, unity and
brotherliness, are required to perpetuate all that America represents,
and to enable all men to know that within her wide boundaries there is
no room for injustice and intolerance.
The Anti-Defamation League, with its headquarters at Chicago, was
founded in 1913 under the auspices of the Independent Order B’nai
B’rith to carry on a somewhat different work. Its executive secretary
for almost this entire period was Mr. Leon L. Lewis, now Grand
Secretary of the Order. Its first activity, which it has continued
throughout, was to issue individual protests to such magazines,
newspapers, motion picture producers, vaudeville managers, etc., as
allowed anti-Semitic tendencies to creep into their productions. In
many cases a friendly protest was enough to stop the propaganda; in
some extreme instances, no result whatever could be achieved, as
the work in question was a direct expression of intolerance. Since
the actual anti-Semitic movement began in the United States, the
Anti-Defamation League has broadened its activities, has published some
material refuting charges against the Jew, has circulated this through
the country, has investigated various anti-Jewish organizations and so
on. It has rendered great service in diverting from the anti-Semitic
sub-group such individuals as drifted into it more or less by accident
but who were not definitely aligned with it.
Finally, the American Jewish Congress, organized in Philadelphia on
December 15, 1919, has passed certain resolutions of interest to
the general public. Its chief work, however, was the appointment of
delegates to represent the American Jews at Paris during the Peace
Conference. Largely through the efforts of this delegation and
similar ones from the Jews of other countries, the rights of Jewish
and other minorities in the newly constituted countries of eastern
Europe were protected by treaty, and Palestine was made a British
mandatory, with special rights of settlement for the Jews. This work,
which has proved so important with regard to anti-Semitism abroad, has
comparatively little direct influence on its American phase.
♦ “Jws” replaced with “Jews”
3.
This direct propaganda may have some influence, but only as propaganda,
not as argument to refute arguments from the other side. The fact of
difference is the primary fact on which anti-Semitism, like all other
intolerance, is based. This can be transcended only by an inclusive
loyalty and an inclusive purpose in which both sub-groups lose their
own purposes and consequently their opposition. The most direct
reaction to anti-Semitism appears in the intensification of Jewish
loyalty. Conflict makes the group mind vigorous and self-conscious,
especially in the defeated group. The power of the “lost cause” over
the minds of men has been beautifully developed by Royce in his
“Philosophy of Loyalty”; and the cause of Jewry has been for two
thousand years such a “lost cause” among the oppressors of the world.
Thus oppression of anti-Semitism in any part of the world cements Jews
everywhere into one body, forces the group mind of the Jew into unity
and direction. As Dr. Drachsler points out:
[105]Two sets of factors are of significance here: those making for
identification with the general American community and those making
for segregation and isolation. The attractive features of the American
environment have their roots in and are nourished by the equality
of social and economic opportunity that is America’s most precious
heritage.
It is anti-Semitic propaganda that constitutes one of the segregative
forces of the American environment.... To these inner strains and
stresses, making for an increase in group self-consciousness, are
added those outer crises arising out of the trials and tribulations of
Jewries in other lands. The problem of civil disabilities of Jews in
many European countries and the romantic ups and downs of Zionism
have kept alive a steady interest among great masses of Jews in the
United States.
The group loyalty of world Jewry has shown itself in the United
States in the form of certain agencies that have been particularly
active during and since the World War. The poverty, persecution
and devastation of the great Jewish communities of eastern Europe
occasioned the formation of the Joint Distribution Committee in
America, in which—for the first time—reform, orthodox, and radical
Jews sat together and labored in a common cause; the sixty-five
million dollars they collected in America and disbursed abroad are
less important to us than the group mind they developed in this common
purpose. The Zionist movement, both as an attempt to provide a home
in Palestine for the oppressed Jews of eastern Europe, and as a hope
for the revival of Jewish nationality and culture in the Holy Land,
has furnished a mode of resistance and a source of Jewish pride to
many who felt themselves persecuted, either in their own persons or by
proxy, in America. Such a distinguished American Jew as Justice Louis
D. Brandeis of the United States Supreme Court felt his first call to
Jewish allegiance or action in middle age, when he became an active
Zionist and the president of the Zionist Organization of America. This
influence operated on great numbers of Jews in the United States during
the time of anti-Semitism abroad, and on still more during the period
of anti-Semitism here. Anti-Semitism is a great incentive to Jewish
loyalty, even as it disrupts the mind of the American people into
conflicting groups.
4.
The most important reaction to anti-Semitism is the unconscious mode
of response which we call the inferiority complex. Certainly the Jew
has such a complex. He alternates boldness and timidity, because he is
self-conscious in the presence of the non-Jew and therefore uncertain
of himself. Jews change their names from land to land, assuming the
Russian “witz” or the Polish “sky” for the previous German “sohn” as
a patronymic—for all Jewish names were originally in the Hebrew form
of Isaac ben (son of) Abraham; but when they come to the United
States the “witz” and “sky” are foreign and many of them are dropped in
turn. The Hebrew Moses becomes the German Morris, and then the English
Montague. This is partly due to the adoption of the standard of taste
of the new environment, partly to the desire not to be too aggressively
Jewish in externals. As Friedman shows:
[106]The Jew is the underdog of society ... he has acquired a social
sympathy and has become spiritually attuned to the harmonies of a
juster social order. [107]Anti-Semitism is a challenge to Jewry to
revivify its ideals. [108]Danger strengthens family ties. Perhaps the
pure and devoted family life for which the Jews have been noted may
be due to the fact that they preserved this defensive reaction of a
group under persecution. [109]Persecution has left the mark of fear on
the psychology of the Jew.... The Jew retired into himself, or to the
society of his kind.
In the present state of ignorance, I cannot state how much of the
Jewish character is hereditary and how much environmental, or how
much of the latter is due to the inferiority complex and hence to
anti-Semitism. Certainly there must be many traits of this origin.
Thomas Babington Macaulay made this discovery in 1833, when he argued
in the House of Commons in favor of removing civil disabilities from
the Jews of England.
... If all the red-haired people in Europe had, during centuries, been
outraged and oppressed, banished from this place, driven from that
... if, when manners became milder, they had still been subject to
debasing restrictions and exposed to vulgar insults ... what would be
the patriotism of gentlemen with red hair?
Ludwig Lewisohn finds exactly such an artificial case in the
German-Americans during the World War:
[110]I (the German) know exactly now why you (the Jew) and your people
are accused of bad manners. How can one’s manners be good when all
agreement and social certainties are lacking? Whatever one does will
be considered an excess.... So I am beginning to understand the
voluntary and yet involuntary segregation of Jewry.
To which the Jew retorts:
The worst of it is that we are all super-sensitive because we are
neurasthenic.... There is scarcely a Jewish family in which there
isn’t either madness or genius. Commonly both.
Professor Miller generalizes this into a theory of “oppression
psychosis,” mentioned above:
[111]A technique is developed by the group and the individuals in it
to meet the situation and retain the self-esteem necessary to life
... the Jewish capacity to trade was developed under a necessity
for survival in which trade offered the only possibility. [112]The
patriotism of an oppressed people is full of pathological elements.
The symptoms vary slightly, but there is always hypersensitiveness
and self-consciousness. The classic example is the Jew, and the
Jewish problem wherever it exists can never be solved until most of
the Jewish characteristics are diagnosed as the pathological result
of the experience to which they have been subjected.... A very large
portion of the peoples of the world are suffering from present or past
experiences of oppression and therefore cannot be expected to act as
normal groups. [113]The conspicuousness of the Jew is in large part
due to his psychopathic adjustment to his environment. It is further
due to the necessary technique for survival. [114]The peculiarity
of the Jew is that because he has been made self-conscious by his
experience, he has acquired a solidarity which has been kept vivid
through adherence to the Law.
Besides the pathology of the case, Miller here indicates two modes of
adjustment, the success motive and the religious motive. The former can
be seen clearly in the Jewish students, who are largely excluded from
social and athletic leadership in the colleges, and whose response is
to excel wherever possible in scholarship. It appears in the medieval
Jew who was placed outside the feudal system and consequently had no
feudal loyalties, but established the first international financial
connections; or in the Jew of some of the modern hyper-nationalistic
countries of Europe, who is excluded from public life and finds his
outlet in Zionism. Finally, and most important of all historically,
the Jew has found his compensation in his religion. He was the Chosen
People, he had the sacred Torah, he kept the festivals, obeyed the
commandments of God; in the home and the synagog he was priest and
king, whatever might be his beatings or his cringings without.
Conversely, the growing indifference to Judaism today is both an
adaptation to the new modes of thought the world over, and a relaxing
of intensity of Jewish loyalty in the countries where the penalties for
that loyalty are themselves relaxed.
The religious interpretation of this status is very ancient. The Bible
speaks of the Jews as a “peculiar people”; “a kingdom of priests and a
holy nation.” And the Talmud says:
God selected as His sacrifices not the pursuer but the pursued; not
the lion but the bullock, not the wolf but the lamb, not the eagle but
the dove. In the same way Israel, the pursued of all the heathen, the
weakest of the nations of the world, is the Chosen People, the fitting
sacrifice of the Lord.
The famous fifty-second chapter of Isaiah with its marvelous conception
of the Suffering Servant of the Lord, is again a picture of the Jewish
people, persecuted and oppressed, but finding its purpose and its
compensation in its religious message, which in the Messianic age was
to convince and to overawe the world.
Perhaps I can best summarize this view in the words of Anatole
Leroy-Beaulieu, whose “Israel among the Nations” some thirty years ago
marked a new treatment of the Jewish question by a Christian writer.
This book contains a chapter on the Psychology of the Jew, in which
he develops the idea of the influence of the milieu on the Jewish
character:
[115]The Jew has kept his energy, but he has kept it within him,
out of sight. His tenacity is now concealed by artfulness and
masked beneath humility.... Deprived of the weapons of the strong,
he resorted to the devices of the weak, to cunning, trickery and
deceit.... Unable to command respect for his frail personality, the
Jew took refuge in a collective pride; he was proud of his people, his
religion, and his God. Never has he lost faith in the superiority of
Israel.... This explains why for centuries they were able to bear such
a burden of contempt without breaking down beneath its weight. The
mainspring of Israel’s inner life was not broken; it remained intact,
ready to be set in motion again on the day of deliverance. Bowed as he
was, the Jew was always ready for the time of upraising.
5.
The various theories and groupings of Jewry today may be regarded
from the viewpoint of responses to the total environment, of which
anti-Semitism is one of the important factors. On this basis neither
Zionism nor reform Judaism can be regarded directly as a reply
to anti-Semitism, but both are this among other things, for both
are modes of response to the environment, with its Jewish and its
non-Jewish factors. Two such responses are religious—the orthodox and
the reform; two are racial and national—the assimilationist and the
Zionist. From another standpoint, two are modes of adjustment to the
environment—assimilation and reform; two are modes of resistance to the
environment—Zionism and orthodoxy. Or, more precisely, assimilation is
a racial adjustment to the non-Jewish environment; reform Judaism a
religious adjustment; Zionism is a racial and national resistance to
the environment; and orthodoxy a religious resistance. Obviously, the
four are not unrelated, but many individuals adopt more than one of
them as guides in various fields of thought and behavior.
Assimilation of the Jew to his environment, which involves abandonment
of the group life, is an individual, not a group response. It
attracts individuals in considerable numbers from the extreme right
and left wings of American Jewry, from the very wealthy who may
adopt Christianity for social distinction, and from the proletarians
who adopt an international economic and political theory. It cannot
be a group response because if great masses of Jews were to join
any other church, or any other national or social grouping, they
would do it as Jews still—we would then have churches of Hebrew
Christians, or a Jewish wing for the Socialist party (as in Russia),
but not the absorption in the environment which the assimilationist
considers the solution of the Jewish problem. One point is true in the
assimilationist theory—if there were no Jewish group, there would be
no anti-Semitism. It is equally true that if there were no groups of
human beings, there would be no intolerance. But such a condition is
impossible. Man is a social being, and the tradition, the ideals,
and the life of his own group hold him too firmly to be escaped except
by the smallest minority.
[116]Assimilation may be social or biological in character, and the
radical adoption of it would involve both phases. Intermarriage, the
biological side of assimilation, is actually going on now, but to a
much smaller extent among the Jews than among any other immigrant group
in America. Drachsler worked out the proportion of intermarriages
among 100,000 marriages in New York City of all races, and found that
approximately 14 per cent. of these were intermarriages. Among all
white groups, however, the Jews presented the smallest proportion of
intermarriages, 1.17 per cent., ranging from less than half of 1 per
cent. among Rumanian Jews, to 5 per cent. among German Jews, and 6.5
per cent. among French Jews. The age-old tradition against marriage
outside of the group, together with the anti-Semitic spirit without,
have conspired to prevent this type of assimilation even now. And while
the second generation of Jews in America shows far more intermarriages
than the first, the proportion is still extremely low—.64 per cent. for
the first generation, and 4.5 per cent. for the second. And for a more
assimilated section of Jewry, such as the German Jews, the difference
between first and second generations is much less marked.
The directly opposite theory to assimilation is Zionism, the attempt
to revive Jewish group life in the ancient homeland of the Jew, to
restore the Hebrew tongue, erect a Jewish educational system, Jewish
culture, and Jewish agriculture and industry as well. The connection
of this movement with anti-Semitism is evident from its origin in the
mind of Theodore Herzl, a Viennese correspondent in Paris, directly
after he had observed the Dreyfus case, and his whole {Weltanshauung}
was thereby transformed. Zionism is the same answer to the problems
of internationalism and civilization that we see in all the new
nationalities of Europe, in Ireland, Czecho-Slovakia and Poland. It has
achieved a measure of success that is really astonishing in view of the
slight resources and organization behind it. At the same time,
it makes no pretension toward furnishing an eventual home for all the
Jewish people, especially not for those of the United States and other
lands of freedom. Zionism aims to save the persecuted Jews by finding
for many of them a shelter; it aims, moreover, to solve the double
problem of anti-Semitism and the inferiority complex by giving the
Jewry of the world a source of pride in the form of a national home. To
many thinkers this seems the only answer under present conditions.
Friedman’s whole thesis is that Zionism is the logical and final
solution.
[117]The conflict between the Jew and his environment must be
eliminated. By what means may this aim be reached? Either the
incongruous elements must be removed or else they must be made
compatible. [118]Only in their historic land where the Jews will be
in the majority, where they can without fear of peculiarity assert
their culture, is a Jewish mode of life possible. [119]Zionism at
bottom is an attempt to preserve the remnant of Israel, that will
make of Palestine its home. It alone promises to save the Jewish
people, when the processes of assimilation, now at work in Western
Europe and in the United States, shall extend to a liberalized Eastern
Europe. [120]The Jew today is a bundle of conflicts. Not only does he
in the present dispersed state suffer from the external, objective
and social anti-Semitism, but also from an internal, subjective and
psychological slavery. The Zionist insists on the maintenance of
Jewish distinctiveness, of Jewish personality.
♦ “peronality” replaced with “personality”
Orthodoxy in Judaism is the attempt to maintain the Jewish group by
means of the religious and customary behavior which has operated
successfully for that end since the destruction of the Jewish
commonwealth in 70 A. D. It is conservative; it finds its chief values,
not in the national, but in the religious life; and it endeavors
to hold its group intact by a traditional ritual which possesses a
profound emotional appeal and establishes certain habits of life. It
is the appeal to loyalty and to group stability, and parallels similar
conservative movements in many Christian denominations, though with the
stronger urge of a longer and more bitter history of persecution.
Finally, there is a theory of group adaptation, best developed
institutionally by the reform and conservative synagogs, but also in
many non-religious organizations—social clubs, Young Men’s Hebrew
Associations (the very name an imitation), labor unions, and the like.
Not that these various parties are identical; as a matter of fact,
they have practically nothing in common except the incorporation in
their philosophies of the two elements—Jewish tradition and modern
adaptation; but the conservative and reform statements—of adaptation,
of tradition, and of the relation between the two—present profound
differences both in theory and in practical details of application.
This adjustment is not as yet entirely successful, but has developed
a number of useful responses, by which Jews are managing to preserve
their group identity and at the same time to enter as constituent
members into the American group mind. It is still in a transition
period, but the synthesis is being worked out clearly enough for
our purposes. In the synagog it involves the reading of part of the
prayers in English, as well as Hebrew, the beautification of the
service by modern music, both vocal and instrumental, the incorporation
of a sermon in English, a modern system of religious education,
and a development of the social life of the young people by clubs,
classes and recreational means. Without the synagog, it involves a
type of “Modernism,” intellectual and moral. Even in the group which
endeavors to be most orthodox, it is finding its way in the form of
social surveys, modern methods in Hebrew education, and some sort of
working compromise with the community custom of Sunday observance,
the English language and the eating of non-kosher food. The nature
of this adjustment is clear from the fact that every separate item
has a different solution. The great majority of Jews work on the
traditional Sabbath, due to the combined social and economic pressure;
they universally are adopting English as their daily speech, but the
majority of them have not yet admitted English into the ritual of
the synagog; all those who really care to do so maintain the Jewish
dietary laws in their own homes, though very few (comparatively) go
so far as to refuse to enter a restaurant where the dishes are washed
with soap, or to refuse to drink wine made by gentiles of which a
libation might have been made to idols. At the same time, the Hebrew
education, so long an integral part of Jewish life, has been completely
revolutionized from the unsystematic private or charity instruction
of Russia to the large, well organized schools for daily Hebrew
instruction at the close of the public school day, whose method is
largely copied from that of the American public school.[121]
We are witnessing before our eyes a group adjustment on a large scale
to modern thought, to American customs, to the non-Jewish group. Some
of this adjustment is systematic, based on a theory of Jewish life
as a distinct religion among Americans of other religions. Some of
it is economic and social, either without theory or directly against
the orthodox theory of the adjusters themselves. At the same time,
we are witnessing orthodoxy fighting for group solidarity; Zionism
establishing a Jewish group in a distant land; the assimilationists who
escape as individuals from the burden and the odium of being Jews. Each
theory is today being tried out in practice, and the results of each
will in time be demonstrated. At the same time, each theory of Jewish
life implies a corresponding conception of America and of human groups
as a whole.