on lines jealously ceded to the Jew as originating with his forbears, we have yet presented to our view a condition of religious colorlessness, of carelessness for these higher ideals, of a materialism that successfully vies with and seeks to outdo the materialism of our neighbors, of a striving and greed that gives the direct lie to that heritage of ethical purpose conceded to be ours, but which we hold so lightly that our neighbors marvel, and wonder and begin to doubt whether to the Jew has in reality been consigned for safekeeping the word of God. For, notwithstanding its claim to a new revelation that makes it the heritage of the Gentiles, the Christian world, in its subconscious attitude, looks up to the Jew as embodying within himself certain elements of ethical culture, of inbred intellectual force, of spiritual striving, that marks him superior to the rank and file of his fellow men. It is the Jew himself who generaly gives the lie to this subconscious attitude on the part of the thinking Gentile, and the rending of the veil from the eyes of the world is always attended with consequences harmful to the Jews as a race. In the eyes of a Christian civilization—itself adrift, itself gripped in the iron grasp of a materialism that gives the lie to its great doctrines of love for neighbor and disregard of temporal power—the Jews do not live the word, therefore rancor and hatred of the Jew, justified in the Christian mind, and thus justified, howbeit for its own comfortable absolving, a rancor to be pandered to and cherished. We have nothing here to say of that inborn and inbred Christian culture that makes for discouragement of the brotherly relation between Jew and Gentile. Some unpointed, self-aimed missionary effort is undoubtedly needed among our Christian
brethren for our own mental and ethical uplift. What concerns us most is, in how far we Jews are responsible for such moral and spiritual shortcomings within our own body, as makes it impossible for us as one man to give the lie to our enemies? How does our own remissness and swerving from the higher ideals of Judaism affect ourselves as a community and eventually that world beyond us, of which we form no insignificant part? It might profit us to consider whether in our present apparently happy and fitting environment there do not lurk those elements of undoing that will one day make for a condition in which disillusion, discomfort, and discouragement shall be ours. Entering into the larger material life of America, the Jews are undoubtedly playing their part creditably to the American nation; and from this standpoint America, true to its watchword of a fair chance to all men without regard to race or creed, is certainly reflecting the well meaning, the integrity, the patriotic devotion of her Jewish sons. But in the upbuilding of a nation there are forces necessary for its stability and permanency, forces not discernible on the surface that yet work their slow and imperceptible way up from the depths out of the very heart of the nation, to make themselves eventually perceived and felt and known. These forces, when for good, make for its continued health and sanity; when for evil, for national illness and distemper. The Jew, realizing that he belongs to a race whose ideals make for human brotherhood, may not feel himself handicapped in the world of large and cosmopolitan endeavor. But large ideals depend for their sustenance upon the thought and actions of the every-day, commonplace life.
To preach great ideals to the world