Jews and Their Capacity for Self-Government
NOTHING is so revolting in modern Jewish life as the eagerness with which the Jews of to-day are ready to adopt the opinions and, what is frequently identical, the prejudices of non-Jews regarding Jews and Judaism, as that hideous Jewish Antisemitism which must logically end in open or veiled apostasy. The last year book of the Central Conference of American Rabbis contains a paper by Rabbi Julian Morgenstern, Cincinnati, headed: “The Significance of the Bible for Reform Judaism in the Light of Modern Scientific Research.” In this paper, in which some of the most offensive and most disputed vagaries of non-Jewish and anti-Jewish critics are boldly set forth as incontrovertible truths, the following sentences, because of their immediate bearing on a great Jewish movement of to-day, are apt to arrest the attention of the reader. “The history of Israel and Judah,” says Rabbi Morgenstern on page 222, “is in the main one of tribute and vassalage to, with occasional revolt against, now Tyre, now Syria, now Assyria, now Babylon. It is on the whole a gloomy record of bad government, tyranny and oppression, such as has been characteristic of every little Oriental state from the beginning of history. It is the most incontrovertible proof that Israel’s genius does not lie in the field of self-government, that from first to last as a nation Israel was a most dismal failure.”
The notion that the Jews (or, the Semites in general) were, and still are, incapable of self-government has so persistently been maintained by Aryan scholars and has with such nauseating self-contempt been repeated by Jews that it is high time to approach it more closely and to examine it "in the light of scientific research," which is perhaps not modern, if modern be identi-
cal with sensational, but is nevertheless in accordance with the facts.
First, let it be stated that the first sentence in the above quotation is a gross, if I were to adopt the tone of the paper I would say, a malicious exaggeration. Tyre has nothing to do in this connection. Syria occasionally defeated Israel, but Israel also occasionally defeated Syria. If Syria humbled Israel under Joahas, it was again humbled by Israel under his successors Joash and Jeroboam, and it formed an alliance with Israel under Pekah. As for Assyria and Babylon, the kingdom of Judah was founded in 1020 (I follow, for the sake of convenience, the chronology adopted in Kautzsch's Bible work), that of Israel in 933. But the decisive influence of Assyria over the destinies of our people did not begin until 735, and that of Babylon over Judah not until 605. In any event the sway of Assyria and Babylon over Israel or Judah, during the period of their existence, never went beyond a monetary exaction,—to which even mighty Egypt and the other countries of Western Asia were occasionally forced to submit,—and did not in the slightest interfere with their autonomous independence and self-government. The question, therefore, whether our ancestors were capable of the latter can and should be detached from their foreign relations to the great military powers of the East. Now, when speaking of "our ancestors, a people with no aptitude for government" (page 227), Rabbi Morgenstern certainly does not refer to the kingdom of the Ten Tribes. There are Englishmen who proudly imagine that they are the descendants of the ancient Israelites. There are scholars who confer this distinction upon the Red Indians. But I have yet to meet the Jew who claims de-