XXXV
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 andChicago—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 camein—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 mysticismin 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 religiousJews among the Bolsheviks, but there are some Jews, by birth we admitit—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 Jewishleader—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 thetchaika, 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 calledborsht, which was red, tasted of beets and was eaten with cream. Appetizing envelopes of dough filled with cheese and eaten with sour cream, calledblinches.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 littlemazzuzas, painted wooden things, hung at the doors. Explaining the food. The rabbi, like his son, had a habit of skipping from one subject toanother—literature, art, music, sociology, anthropology. Robert had always had an idea that Jewish learning was confined tothe 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 thatmazzuzahanging 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 abouteverybody—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 fromRimsky-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 beenconverted. 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 itshatred—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, andin 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 Tribemyself—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 eatborshtandblinchesand talkit 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 itout—nice, quiet, likegentlemen—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 alltook—McCall, a Catholic; you, a Protestant, and I, a Jew?”
“What oath?”
“The oath to protect ourcountry—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.