Robert wondered what sort of home Levin would live in. Outside of Levin
himself, in fact, his dealings with Jews had been extremely limited. He
had met a few in his classes at Harvard, where they appeared perhaps a
little more studious, more eager to acquire education, than the average
students, but he had developed no friendships among them.
They took a west-side elevated and passed a district thick with stores
and traffic. The rabbi’s home, however, was on the second floor of
a three-story apartment building, facing a park, a rather peaceful
retreat from the shopping district a few blocks away.
The home was like any of a dozen apartments Robert had seen in New
York and Chicago--harmonious mahogany furniture, oriental rugs, good
pictures, a baby grand piano, floor lamps. Except for a polished brass
candelabra, with seven candle sticks, that stood on the table near the
window, a hammered brass Russian samovar and a prominence of other
hammered brass objects, there was nothing to set it off as distinctly
Jewish. Oh yes, in the tall book shelves that rose from either side of
the fireplace there were many old books with Hebrew letters stamped on
them.
A rather plump schoolgirl, the doctor’s sister, had opened the door and
ushered them through the reception hall into the living room.
“Oh, Mr. McCall, Jack’s expecting you,” she said. “Won’t you come in?
Papa is just advising someone.”
She excused herself to summon her brother. Dr. Levin’s first name was
Jacob, but his sister, Estelle, had given him the more American name of
Jack.
Robert saw an elderly gentleman, with a black skull cap and long white
beard, evidently the rabbi himself, talking animatedly with a little
black-bearded fellow, who kept nodding his head. The taller man looked
something like Jack, like Jack in a patriarchal beard and with little
foreign mannerisms. They were talking in some foreign jargon.
“_Nu_, you send him to me and I will advise him as though he was my own
son.”
The other man stopped nodding his head and began to shake it slowly
from side to side.
“It will be for you a great blessing.” A few more words and he left.
Jack came in--it was surprising how dressing carefully and going
clean-shaven modernized one’s appearance. Their features were very
similar, yet the elder Levin had a patriarchal, almost oriental,
appearance. Jack introduced Robert.
“Ah, yes, that is the Hamilton my son has been telling me about.” He
spoke with a foreign, sing-song, balanced intonation and a slight lisp.
He divided each word into its syllables, as though he were reading
slowly out loud.
“_Nu_, sit down, Mr. Hamilton. You are just in time for supper. It’s
too bad you couldn’t come Friday.”
Hamilton murmured something about not knowing it was so late.
“It is a great blessing,” remarked the rabbi, “to have a guest, so you
must stay on my account.”
Mrs. Levin, short, plump and brown-eyed, with a brown wig, entered the
room.
“Ah, we hear from you by Jackie a whole lot,” she said.
The doctor grinned good-naturedly, evident amused at the quaint
old-world accent and manners of his parents.
“Now, you want I should tell you about the Jew,” said the rabbi,
stroking his beard. “But take a seat first. The trouble is you come
here for an hour or two hours and expect to learn everything about the
Jews, like you learn a recipe for a sponge cake. You must study and
read.”
Robert glanced at McCall. The latter had evidently prepared Rabbi Levin
and Father Callahan, had probably phoned them before coming to his
room. It was a conspiracy, he could see, for his own good.
“_Nu_, what do you want to know? There is no mysticism in Judaism. It
is an open book. There it is, everything.” He pointed to a Bible.
“But he wants to know something about the Jews that will offset this
Trick Track Tribe propaganda.”
“What, Trick Track Tribe?” The old man shrugged his shoulders.
“Craziness. Foolishness. It can’t last. Mr. Hamilton, can a bad thing,
an untrue thing, last? No? Well, then, how can the Tribe live? What do
they say? Ask me any questions and I will try to answer them for you as
best I can.”
“Mr. Levin,” said McCall, “the Tribe accuses the Jews of planning to
overthrow all the Gentile governments of the world through the Third
Internationale. Isn’t that the argument, Hamilton?” Robert nodded.
“_Nu_, they do us credit. They flatter us,” said the rabbi. “How can it
be that the Jews, who are only about three per cent of the population,
should control the whole world? Is it sense?” He shrugged his shoulders
and cocked his head to one side. “Jews? What Jews? You talk as if Jews
was a little society, like a lodge. There are American Jews and Russian
Jews, German Jews and French Jews, Republican Jews and Democratic Jews,
radical Jews and conservative Jews. It’s not like they have a pope to
tell them what they shall do.”
“But how do the orthodox Jews feel about internationalism?”
“Ah, the orthodox Jews. They are the Zionists. They are always
dreaming that they shall get back to Palestine. So how can they be
internationalists? They are nationalists, they want that even the Jews
should have their own nation, so how can they be both nationalists and
internationalists at the same time?”
“But isn’t Trotsky a Jew and most of the Bolshevik leaders?”
“Trotsky is no longer a Jew. He has been, what you call it in the
Catholic Church, excommunicated from the Jewish Synagogue. His parents
are Jews, good Jews, and they mourn him like he was a dead one. There
can be no religious Jews among the Bolsheviks, but there are some
Jews, by birth we admit it--who are leaders. _Nu_, Lenine is a Gentile.
So what does that show? But most of the leaders are not Jews. It is
true that there are more leaders among them in proportion to their
population. But that is because most of the Jews in Russia live in
the big cities where the Bolshevik movement started. And the Jews are
better educated than the average Russian. So they are naturally more
highly represented in the offices. Trotsky is the only great Jewish
leader--the head of the army. But Lenine comes from the nobility and
many of the Russian radicals are from the old nobility. But you can’t
say that the Russian nobility is radical, can you? But there are no
Jews in the _tchaika_, which is responsible for the reign of terror.
They are all Letts. The Jews are mostly translaters, because they are
educated to speak several tongues, teachers, minor officials. But they
are simply officials, appointed by the government, and they would hold
the same jobs should it be a Kerensky again at the head. It’s just like
the communists have placed the old Czarist generals at the head of the
different army corps. What should they do? They have to fight for the
government or they get killed. But the generals under Czar Nicholas
who are now leading the Red armies, are they also Bolsheviks? No, a
religious Jew or a Zionist, whether he observes all the religion or
not, he cannot be an internationalist.”
“How about the protocols of the Elders of Zion?” asked McCall.
“What’s that?” asked Robert.
“That’s the book that’s supposed to be the basis of the accusation that
the Jews have a world-wide plot against all governments.”
“Have you read it?” asked Rabbi Levin.
“No.”
“Then it is hard to speak about it. If you read it you would see right
away that it was a forgery. In the first place, Elders of Zion. You
see, the people who wrote it, forgot that there is no such a thing
as a Jewish central organization, like, say, the Holy See for the
Catholics. There is no such thing as the Elders of Zion. It couldn’t
be, because there is no such thing as Zion, that is a united Jewish
people politically. The Elders of Zion are supposed to be some official
body meeting in connection with the first Zionist convention. But the
Zionist convention was open, so that all reporters could come there, so
how is it no one should know of such a plot? Of course, if the Zionists
would have wanted no governments they would not spend their time and
money and risk their lives now in settling Palestine for a government
of the Jews. But why should I tell you it is a forgery? You know what
it is, historical method?”
Robert had not studied it, but he knew what it was from college.
Students majoring in history and graduate students took it.
“Well, you know, you can tell by examining documents whether they are
true or fakes. It’s wrong here. It’s wrong there. A contradiction.
You know how it is. Well, a much better man than I, and a Gentile,
has called it a forgery. Who is that? You should know, the head from
the greatest detective force in the world, Scotland Yard, Sir Basil
Thompson.”
Robert laughed. “Well, that’s proof enough for me.”
At the table there were queer dishes. There was herring for an
appetiser, a cold soup, which they called _borsht_, which was red,
tasted of beets and was eaten with cream. Appetizing envelopes of
dough filled with cheese and eaten with sour cream, called _blinches_.
_Strudel_, a sort of crisp tart filled with prunes.
“It’s the most delicious food I’ve eaten since I left Paris,” laughed
Robert. Mrs. Levin beamed her pleasure.
Every one was talking at once. Explaining this and that. The
significance of the candelabra. Why the rabbi wore a skull cap. Why
little _mazzuzas_, painted wooden things, hung at the doors. Explaining
the food. The rabbi, like his son, had a habit of skipping from one
subject to another--literature, art, music, sociology, anthropology.
Robert had always had an idea that Jewish learning was confined to the
Talmud, mysterious books of ancient and medieval lore. But he found
the rabbi’s knowledge was quite as modern as the most enlightened
cosmopolite might wish.
“Most of these customs are simply customs,” said the Rabbi. “Why do you
take off your cap to a lady? Custom. For the same reason I wear a hat.
The simpler people make up explanations. See that _mazzuza_ hanging at
the door? It contains a little bit of holy scrip. Superstitious people
think it drives away the devils. Other people hang it up because they
think it makes a pretty curio. Like you might have a Buddhist idol,
without believing in it, or a horseshoe. Some customs are nice customs.
There is sentiment in back of them. So I stick to ’em. My children,
_nu_, they are Americans. They grow away from it.”
McCall tried to turn the conversation back to the Tribe, while Robert
protested that he had been convinced. To appease McCall, the rabbi had
showed them the constitution of the Sons of Israel and assured them
that the oaths were as innocent as that of the real fourth degree of
the Knights of Columbus. The Tribe had accused the Sons of Israel of
attempting to carry out the “international revolution.”
“Even if everything the Tribe says about everybody--Jews, Catholics,
Negroes, foreigners--was absolutely true, still it would be wrong,”
said the rabbi. “Why? Because either your Tribe is an invisible
government, or it isn’t. If it isn’t, you are getting money under
false pretenses, because you claim it is. And if it is an invisible
government, they are transferring the government from its proper
offices and should be arrested for the same reason that the communists
were arrested when they also tried to set up an invisible government.
Invisible government, no matter for what purposes, has no place here.”
At the end of the meal, they returned to the living room, where
Estelle, upon the insistence of her parents, played surprisingly well,
some selections from _Rimsky-Korsakov_. The rabbi kept time with his
head, shaking it rhythmically from side to side.
“When she plays I can just hear the shepherds blowing on their pipes,”
he said.
But McCall insisted on thrashing out the Jewish question still further.
“Well,” said Hamilton at length. “Of course those charges are all
false. I don’t think any sane person is afraid that a handful of Jews,
especially disorganized as they are, could ever gain control of the
world. That’s preposterous. The real objection to him is that he is
different, a foreigner, an inferior element. Not that I believe it,
but--”
Dr. Levin, who had allowed his father to carry out the bulk of the
argument, could keep back no longer, and he took up the challenge.
“I am not going to point out the qualities of the Hebrew race,
Hamilton, because, it is not for qualities or lack of qualities that
a mob hates. And that’s what your Tribe is. It is the same sort of a
mob that forms the secret society of the savage tribes of dark Africa.
There they kill a man not because he is better or worse than they
are, but because he is alien. Among the savages of the Amazon, it is
enough that a man has wandered from his tribe six months for him to be
murdered for his alienism.
“You know that your very religion is Jewish, and that the first
Christian martyrs, whom you reverence, were all Jews or converts to
Judaism. You know that Jews have always contributed more than their
proportion of the distinguished men of every nation in which they have
lived. But distinction in talent or in wealth only fans the mob’s hate.
It was so in Spain during the Inquisition, where the Jews had married
into the proudest Spanish families and occupied the highest positions,
and it is so here today. The mob which sneers at the poor man because
he is poor, howls for the blood of the rich man because he is rich. And
it is among those same bigots that the conflicting cries arise against
the Jewish banker and the Jewish peddler.
“It is possible that you yourself carry the taint of Jewish blood in
your veins, for wherever the Jews have lived, they have intermarried.
They have both converted and been converted. In the greater cities of
Europe from 10 to 50 per cent of all Jews intermarry. The one thing
that distinguishes the Jew from the other modern races is his retention
of the old faith. It is his faith alone that makes him unwelcome.
“You call the Jew an alien, but if he is an alien then every inhabitant
of America excepting the red Indian is an alien. The first Jews came
to America with Christopher Columbus, and there is even evidence that
Columbus himself was a Jew by birth, although a Catholic by religion.
Jews fought with the Dutch against the Swedes in New Amsterdam, with
Washington in the French and Indian war, and once more with Washington
in the war that won freedom for the colonies. A Jew helped Robert
Morris finance the Revolution and it was another Jew who financed the
Union at the most critical point of the Civil War. A Jew prevented the
delivery of two armored ships to the Confederate states which would
probably have broken the blockade and won the Civil War for the South.
But, of course, you’re a Southerner. In your own state, Georgia, the
oldest settlers are descendants of Jews.
“But there is no use reasoning with a Tribesman. He is one of a crowd,
and a crowd lacks reason. Get your crowd swayed by the spirit and
it matters not what reason you give it for its hatred--difference
of race, of belief, of appearance. Tell the crowd that being black
is wrong, or being a Catholic, or being a Jew. It is but enough to
point out that the objects of its wrath are different from it. Show
it an ideal like Anglo-Saxonism. It will not stop to reflect that
the greatest Anglo-Saxon nation in the world, Great Britain, is a
mixture of primitive Briton, Celt, Teuton, Norman, Jew, of Catholic
and Protestant. In the name of Anglo-Saxonism it will strike blindly
against the elements of its own population, whose very diversity made
the greatest Anglo-Saxon nation what it is.
“During the World War it was necessary to organize this nation into
a huge crowd, instilled with the single idea of patriotism. Then it
was a matter of self-defense, and in the same way you can organize
other crowds and inspire them to the highest deeds. The old Ku Klux
Klan was undoubtedly actuated by the highest of ideals. But it broke
away from its leaders and became a mob. It became an evil graver to
the law and order of the nation which it started to protect than the
forces which it combatted. That is exactly what will happen to the
Trick Track Tribe. That is exactly what is happening to it today. Men
and women are being boycotted, banished from their homes, tarred and
feathered, flogged and murdered. Officially it may not be the work of
the Trick Track Tribe. Officials may disclaim responsibility. But they
cannot disclaim responsibility for forming the mob and then directly or
indirectly inciting it. Griffith may be the wisest of men, Lister the
noblest and most sincere, but they can no more control the mob of their
formation, than could the wise and sincere men who formed the Ku Klux
Klan stop its reign of terrorism. That took a greater crowd, actuated
by a greater ideal.
“The Trick Track Tribe has already shown a record of atrocities
wherever it has formed a considerable element of the population. If its
leaders have directed them, the Tribe already stands convicted. If its
leaders have not directed them, the Tribe already confesses that the
mob has broken out of its control. But just as the federal government,
backed by aroused public opinion, was able to overthrow the old Klan,
so will the government, once more representing aroused public opinion,
overthrow the present Tribe.”
“You’re right,” cried Robert. “You are absolutely right. Perhaps you
didn’t know it. I’m a member of the Tribe myself--but I won’t be
anymore.”
No one showed surprise.
“We knew it all the time,” said Rabbi Levin. “Only we don’t believe in
using the same tactics as the Tribe. We wanted to convince you.”
“You, you--” Robert was bewildered. It seemed incomprehensible.
“Sure,” said the rabbi. “See, isn’t it better we should sit down at
the table and eat _borsht_ and _blinches_ and talk it over like men
with sense, instead of we should kidnap you with white masks like
hoodlums and try to convince you with a bath of tar and feathers, which
never convinces anyway? Wouldn’t it be better, if the Tribe really
had something against the Catholics or the Jews, they should bring
it out--nice, quiet, like gentlemen--in the open? If they told the
Catholic priests and the Jewish rabbis anything they know bad about
them, wouldn’t the Catholics and the Jews themselves be the first
ones to stop it? Or couldn’t they bring it up in a court if they were
traitors to their country, and get the services from the department of
justice and maybe deport them like it was the anarchists?”
“Yes, Mr. Levin, that’s the American way to settle things, in the open!”
“And it’s also the Jewish way,” said Levin.
“And the Catholic.”
“And it’s the Protestant,” said Hamilton. “If it wasn’t for my oath I’d
bring the whole thing out in the open!”
“What oath?” asked Dr. Levin.
“My oath to the Tribe.”
“Don’t you remember that other oath we all took--McCall, a Catholic;
you, a Protestant, and I, a Jew?”
“What oath?”
“The oath to protect our country--the oath we all took when we got our
commissions in the army. Are you, in letting this un-American Tribe
hatred spread, living up to that?”
“God, no!”
Robert rose.
“I’m going to hand in my resignation now!”
“It’s eight o’clock now. Wait until morning,” urged Levin.
“No, I won’t wait another minute.”
But the office of the Dearborn Statistical Bureau, where Freeman
sometimes worked at night, was locked and Robert, after sending a
telegram to Griffith, went to his room.