The Maccabaean

rean) journalist who will not, when copy is scarce, fill a paragraph with a tearful appeal to these lone glories of a great religious past! To such a plight have we fallen among ourselves, when we are concerned to show that religion still flourishes in the midst of the Jews! Of religion, as the spiritual expression of the emotions of a free and self-conscious people, we know nothing. Yet we accept the conventional appellation of religious as if it revealed us at our truest.

THE JEWS ARE AN ETHICAL PEOPLE

We fall back on this apologetic statement when, in an attack of conscience, we have not the hardihood to elevate ourself on the basis of race or religion. Hard put to it would we be to demonstrate that the superiority of Jewish ethics over that of the rest of mankind is sufficient to give us a “mission” and to regard ourselves as the ethical teachers of the world. We have singularly failed to impress other folk with the elevation of our ethics; on the contrary, we rather have a reputation, undeserved it is true, but a widespread reputation for lax and shifting standards. In literature, in current conversation, in modern folklore (the “good story” of the parlor car or the smoking-room), the Jew usually figures as the bright fellow who is not averse to sharp practice. We speak of our ethics, they speak of our sharp practice. Clearly if we are to be the ethical paragons, the distinction will not be accorded us without a powerful and determined opposition. Of course, we do not drink,—as much as others; but we sell drink, and plenty of it. In order to save this article from being a general indictment, we will not stop to determine with whom the ethics of the transaction lie,—with the dispenser or with the consumer of strong drink. Nor do we beat our wives as a rule,—yet there is a very active Jewish National Desertion Bureau for the purpose of seeking out delinquent husbands, and dragging them back to their families. In short, in spite of Lazarus’ laudable effort, the ethics of the Jews are simply the ethics of a civilized people, modified by time and circumstance, and particular points that can be emphasized, as temperance in drink and domestic faithfulness, are mere remnants of a national life that had characteristic strength, as well as, no doubt, national weaknesses, too. The Jews have no superior or exclusive theory of ethics; they may only say, that in their own land they will live a worthy life, as they did before, free from the suspicion with which their acts are now regarded, and free also from the blight of cleverness, the last refuge of an oppressed people.

THE JEWS ARE IDEALISTS

Again we have failed to convince our neighbors of the high level on which our motives customarily move. The sordid Jew, the grasping Jew, the Jew of the summer hotel,

of the quickly-successful business venture with the attendant display of his (and her) decorated person, of the screaming automobile and elaborate flat, has filled the eye of the beholder to the exclusion of the idealists, which we industriously search out whenever we are caught with an over- plus of this world’s goods. And again we go down to the old man with a beard, and to the old lady with a wig, and trot them out to save the face of the automobilists. It is not necessary to be bankrupt in order to qualify as an idealist, but a growing bank account is very engrossing, and men whose mission in life is to nourish it, cannot have the appellation simply out of grace. Whatever idealism the Jews have as a people, apart from that of scattered individuals here and there who by the very law of probabilities will have to be idealists, center in the hope of a renewed national life, and manifests itself in the yearning for Zion. The very men who offend the nostrils of the judicious by their open devotion to money-grubbing and display, are shown to have an aspiring side to their nature, which, thwarted by the position in which they find themselves, seeks refuge in extravagance. Given the appeal of Zionism, they manifest a spirit of sacrifice, an attachment to an ideal, to which the thinking man can only make obeisance. , \

There are other conventional lies of modern Jewish life that would yield on analysis results similar to those we have obtained; but it is not necessary to dwell upon them in order to show that our apologetics are based upon a very insecure foundation. It is unfair to a people to be compelled continually to justify its existence. The fact of existence ought to be sufficient, for what other excuse could half the nations give than that they are here and have the right to share the earth with the rest of the peoples? It is because the Jews are, at the same time, a nation and not a nation, because they desire national life and shrink from it, that the other nations are continually asking, why is this nation different from all other nations? And in giving their answer the Jews have searched among themselves for scraps of the old national life, have taken refuge in the Bible, a national production in which they are no longer greatly interested, have boasted of a religion to which their attachment is in large measure nominal, have referred grandiloquently to their ethics, the precise point concerning which they have been most sharply criticised, failing to see that whatever cogency these.explanations have, comes not from the Jews of the dispersion, who are now and have been for many generations spiritually sterile, but from the remains and the reminiscences of a former rich and valuable national life, which can alone give support to their contentions and restore them to life. Without nationalism, we are driven back upon our conventional lies, on which the revived Israel of the future will not be content to live.