losses, the obliteration of Judaism two hundred years hence? See the rise of Christian Science within the last generation; note the vitality of Episcopalianism! Do these facts point to the annihiliation of religious differences? The world is growing more liberal, it is true. Religious thought is advancing, becoming_ clearer, better adapted to life, more in accord with our finest moral intuitions. But this is not an advance towards uniformity. Every step of progress creates a greater heter- nveneitv.
We no not, in short, desire uniformity in customs, traditions, religions or political ideals. We do desire progress, and difference promotes progress. The Jew and the Italian can render America a great-
er service than that of speedy disappearance. America has a greater lesson for the world than the exhibition of “the coming superman,” the result of the fusion of all the races that have flocked to her shores. America can show the world a nation lıving at peace with nation upon the same domain, each contributing to the common welfare and zealous for the establishment of the common house. Not community of blood, but community of purpose binds these millions together. Here mutual respect and tolerance reign between men of the most diverse origins. And this is not an aceident. It is a moral creation. These men have so willed it, and all the world may profit by their examople.
THE ETHNIC CHARACTER OF THE JEWS
The following essay was awarded the Henrietta Szold prize for 1912, in the Prize Essay competition instituted by the Federation of American Zionists in honor of Henrietta Szold.
Thus all historical evidences have been proven to be in favor of the purity of the race, and the evidences advanced by the negatives are unreliable, Equally unfounded and scientifically ungrounded are the arguments that emphasize the mixture of blood through the proselytizing of slaves and intermarriage in modern times. Slaves, even if their proselytizing was frequent, always remained slaves, and could never attain jus connubü with Jews, so that they always remained in the status of gerim. As to intermarriage in modern times, Judaism has lost more than gained by it. “Even if we agree,” says Jacobs (26) “that at any time ten per cent. of the Jews intermarried with other nations, then in the course of several generations only two per cent. of those mixed woub!l have remained within the Jewish nation, for it is an established fact that mixed marriages are highly infertile; and thus the amount of alien blood instilled in the veins of the Jews would constantly dimin-
(26) Ibid.
(Continued)
ish. That the purity of the Jewish race throughout its history was not contaminated by mixture and that the various physical changes are not the result of crossing is substantiated by the fact that the Cohanim, the family which is by law forbidden to intermarry proselytes and who are supposed to retain their purity of bloo(l more zealousiy do not present any difference in measurements or complexion from the other Jews. The changes, therefore, must have other causes for their existence than blood mixture.