them to a limited space. A small minority finding itself settled in the midst of a people possessed of a different religion, customs and ideals, will soon find itself irretrievably lost and swallowed up in the vast bulk of the dominant majority!
Such is the ignorance of our so-called and miscalled leaders with regard to the psychology of the modern Jew, that Judiasm has resolved itself to them into nothing but charity, and in the person of every Russian Jew they behold nothing but the ever-hungry, ever-avaricious "applicant." But the diagnosis of those of our friends who would so gladly give
us a painless death demonstrates most clearly and forcibly that even they, and perhaps they more than we, are the victims of the cruel and bitter "goluth" which has dwarfed and crippled their mental stature and dimmed their vision and has implanted in them that badge of servitude, that cringing and fawning attitude, that "Abdus B'soch cherus" so aptly termed by the great "Achad Haam," which only a Goluth-bred person can be afflicted with; and need we a better argument of the need of a healthy, free, normal and independent national existence?
The Poverty of the American Press
The Cause of Its Anemia.—It has Kept Jewish Progress Out of Its Pages.
An arrival from Russia—that hot-bed of controversy—after a few months’ stay, asked the question: “Why is the Jewish press so flat, stale and unprofitable? I mean the ‘English’ Jewish papers. You have a population of about one million of English-speaking Jews. You have all sorts of problems that arise out of the enforced Jewish migration, where contact with American life creates new problems every day, and still I have yet to see a Jewish paper—influential or not— where these problems are recorded or discussed. No one seems to know anything of Jewish life as it is; at least the journalists do not. What is wrong with them?”
It is indeed remarkable. Jews everywhere, but not one wave of Jewish life agitating the Jewish journals. In the West, reform Judaism has, in spite of its fatal tendency toward assimilation, created forms of Jewish life, perennial difficulties, that have their ideal as well as their materialistice coloring. In the East, under stress of a heavy immigration, standards are constantiy changing, Jewish life pulsates behind foreign language and customs, and Jewish minds are busy with thoughts of the future of this mass of our people, what they are to become, what they are to do; will they survive Americanism or will they Judaize America, etc.
And yet, in spite of this life—for even decay and assimilation have their activities—the Jewish press does not adequately or even intelligently reflect its faintest shadows. As to what is now going on in foreign Jewry, there are now probably two or, at most, three, Jewish journals who even attempt to understand the issues that confront the Jews in Russia, Roumania, Austria and Germany. "
When they speak of religion, they deal with the antiquities of the reality, for it is safe to speak of past performances, which do not imply present conformity. The rabbinical authority—which is not understood by half of them—suffocates them with the heaviness of its thought. They do not speak in the name of their religion, but in that of their fatherst No one is convinced by their assumed piety or liberality. They lack the frankness of true believers. What are the Jewish people thinking of religion? It ıs not what the Jewish press teaches, you may be assured. The faith of the Jewish people—who have no ax te grind, no pose to maintain, no income to cold-storage—is no esoteric mystery, but it may be learned from the life of the people, from their own life, if the Jewish press really intended to reflect Jewish thought.
And what are the Jewish people doing? As-surely not what one reads about them in