Why Should Jews Unite?*
By Bernard G. Richards,Author of "The Discourses of Keidansky"
V.
"If only the Jews would unite!" said Zalmen Zweifel.
“What for?” asked Keidansky impatiently. Zalmen was taken aback, for it was his friend’s argumentative powers, which, at one of the midnight sessions of the Lend-a-Word Club, had brought him to that halfway-house to Jewish Nationalism—the agreement that the Tews must organize.
“What for?” repeated Keidansky and before anyone attempted to answer he continued, speaking vehemently. “Why and wherefore should we unite? What is the purpose of organizing? We are too much united already. We are so well organized that there are forty thousand different groups of us. We are forever uniting. We never do anything else. When we are not uniting we are talking about achdos, unity; and when we have united we fight. We get together to find out our differences. We are so much alike that we all nave differences. And when we find that we have differences and that our fists are in close proximity, we try to take advantage of the blessings of union. Divided we fail to hit each other, but united we strike it right. Then we come to court to show what a great freemasonry there is among Jews. Nishchosshe, es bleibt bei eigene Menschen. It all remains between ourselves, the blows, the insults, the curses, the cries—and we have been chosen for some great end.
"Oho, we are a united people, a very much united people. We are not a house divided against itself—not we. We haven't a house. We are always uniting, for one purpose or another. We unite for business and we unite for pleasure, for sociability and for social ambition. We climb together. In union there is strength, we have heard it said, and if a large
* From the American Hebrew.
enough number of us will get together and try hard not to be or appear like Jews, and will pinch our cheeks and press our noses down, we probably will succeed. In large enough numbers we could overcome the rabbis and other agitators who are trying to bring us back to our mere selves and to the misfortune of Judaism. And.if the big phil- anthrophic financiers insisted that we be Jews, we could exact our price for it. One way of making Jews is to make their Judaism worth while. You ask what kind of Jews are made that way? But the people who make Jews that way do not care what kind they turn out. Such people are too practical to see anything. Anyway, everything can be done through union; it's a great thing. And we are forever banding together—either for bandaging each other, or for something else. We are always uniting; if it is not for going away it is for staying with our own.
"Those of us who are resigned to the terrible fate of remaining ourselves unite for mutual protection, for human aid and for benevolence. We unite to help the poor, the sick, the orphaned and the deserted. We unite to care for the diseased and the crippled, the consumptive and the insane. We know that these people are Jews when we see them maimed and broken in health, and feeling somehow that we are cripples ourselves we help them. No, we do not unite to aid the able and the sane. What sense would there be in doing anything for those who still have their health and their strength? We must help those who are beyond help. We must unite to minister to our most immediate needs. Why, our hospitals and our insane asylums and our orphanages and our homes for the poor are the whole of our Jewish life. What would our Jewishness be without our charities, and our dear little