Before attempting to answer this question, a word must be said in
regard to the anti-Semitic movement, the recrudescence of which has
so profoundly affected the Jewish people during the last twenty years
of the nineteenth century. A word only, because the facts are of too
recent date to need a detailed statement here. The great master-mind,
Zunz, writing in Germany in 1832, believed that persecution for
religious belief could not withstand the onslaughts of the new era.
Theodore Reinach, some fifty years later, asserted that anti-Semitism
was impossible in France. How sadly has a _démenti_ been given to the
hopes thus expressed, especially in these two countries!
I pass over the outbreaks against the Jews during the early years of
the nineteenth century, even the Damascus blood-accusation in 1840,
and the forcible baptism of little Edgar Mortara in 1858; they were
believed to belong to the old order of things, with which the new,
at least in that direction, had nothing in common. I confine myself
simply to the modern form of anti-Judaism, which has been dignified
with the name of anti-Semitism. It is hard for a Jew to speak of these
things with composure or with the judicial mind of a mere chronicler
of events. Neither emancipation from without nor Reform from within
has been able to stay the hand of the destroyer of Israel’s peace.
It has been contended that in most countries the Jews were not ready
to be emancipated; that in some the non-Jewish population was not
sufficiently advanced to make emancipation effective. The first may
be true in regard to the Algerian Jews; the second, in regard to
those in Roumania; but it is not true of the other nations on the
European continent. Starting in Germany, perhaps as a political move
on the part of Bismarck, it spread into Russia, Galicia, Austria,
Roumania, and France. In most of these countries it not only found
expression in the exclusion of the Jews from all social intercourse
with their fellows, but in Russia produced the riots of 1881 and 1882;
in Austria and Bohemia the turbulent scene in the Reichstag, and even
the pillaging of Jewish houses and Jewish synagogues; in Roumania
it received the active support of the government and reduced the
Jews there to practical penury; while in France it showed itself in
accusations against the Jews which for barbarity could match any that
were brought against them in the Middle Ages. The charges against the
Jews are varied in their character. In Germany they have been blamed
for exploiting the agricultural class and for serving the interests
of the Liberal party, forgetting that Leo and Stahl, the founders of
the Orthodox party in Prussia, were themselves Jews, and that Disraeli
in England was born of the same race. The most foolish accusations
on almost every conceivable subject have been lodged against them by
such men as Ahlwart, Stöcker, Lueger, and Drumont; and in late years
the old and foolish charge that the Jews use the blood of Christian
children in the making of Passover bread has been revived, in order to
infuriate the populace; despite the fact that popes, ecclesiastics,
and hosts of Christian professors have declared the accusation to be
purely imaginary and malignant. The false charge that a Jewish officer
in France had betrayed secrets of his government was sufficient to
unloosen the most savage attacks upon the Jews which the modern world
has seen.
The fact which stands out in the whole agitation is not that the
charges have been made, in most cases by men who sought in some way
or other to fish in troubled waters, but that these charges find
a ready echo and a ready response among the people at large. It
emphasizes so clearly that the Jews are a defenceless people, with
no means of effectually warding off attacks; and though in Germany
and Austria societies of Christians have been formed for the purpose
of combating anti-Semitism, there is no power which can effectually
enter the lists in their behalf. This was notably seen in the great
London demonstration of 1882, when the petition signed by the foremost
members of Church and state never even reached the Czar, to whom it was
addressed.
Among the few bright spots on the world’s chart are those countries
inhabited by the Anglo-Saxon race. Anti-Semitism is unknown in England
(though the attempt has been made to fix the blame for the Boer war on
the Jews); and the institutions of the United States have up till now
prevented the entrance here of the disease, though in the mild form of
social anti-Semitism which debars Jewish children from private schools
and Jewish people from clubs and summer hotels, it has insinuated
itself into some of the Eastern cities, notably into New York.