CHAPTER VII.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.”

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:

88Because 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:

89In 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, whowere 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.

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 whomcame 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.

90To 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.91We 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:

92The 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.

93The 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.94In 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.95The 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.

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 certainto 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”:

96The differences among individuals belonging to the same human variety are always greater than those perceived between races regarded as distinct units.97No 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.98When 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.99In 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.

96The differences among individuals belonging to the same human variety are always greater than those perceived between races regarded as distinct units.

97No 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.

98When 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.

99In 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.

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 themonotonyof American youth.

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 Spargo100made a special effort to minimize this rather indirect, but at the time very dangerous piece of propaganda. He showedthat 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:

101Jew-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 desireassimilation 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:

102Any 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 of103“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.

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 ofJewish 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:

104The 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 correctone, still less often the same adjustment as that of thestandardized, 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.

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.

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