Aspects of Jewish power in the United States $b : volume IV of the International Jew, the world's foremost problem : being a reprint of a fourth selection from articles appearing in the Dearborn Independent — John Shaqi
Aspects of Jewish power in the United States $b : volume IV of the International Jew, the world's foremost problem : being a reprint of a fourth selection from articles appearing in the Dearborn IndependentFord, Henry
General
Aspects of Jewish power in the United States $b : volume IV of the International Jew, the world's foremost problem : being a reprint of a fourth selection from articles appearing in the Dearborn Independent
Ford, Henry
Antisemitic literature; Jews -- United States; United States -- Ethnic relations
That is a serious statement and no amount of Gentile assertion will be
sufficient to confirm it. Indeed, it is such a statement as the Gentile
mind could not have evolved, because the trend of Gentile feeling is all
in the opposite direction, namely, that Americanization is a good thing
for the Jew. It is from authoritative Jewish sources that we learn this
fact, that what we call civilizing influences are looked upon as being
at enmity with Judaism.
It is not the Gentile who says that Jewish ideals, as ideals, are
incompatible with life in our country; it is the Jew who says so. It is
he who inveighs against Americanism, not the American who inveighs
against Judaism.
As this article is one with the last, the same method of impassive
presentation of the testimony will be followed. Readers of this study of
the Jewish Question should know that neither rhetoric nor emotion will
contribute a single element to the solution of the Question. We prefer
to leave rhetoric and emotion to the anti-Semites who call names and to
the pro-Semites who are apparently reduced to the same necessitous
level.
Now, the first thing to know is this: that though Americanism is yet
unfinished, Judaism has been complete for centuries; and while no
American would think of pointing to any part of the country or to any
group as representing the true and final type of Americanism, the Jews
quite unhesitatingly point to parts of the world and to certain groups
as representing the true type of Judaism.
Where is the type to be found which Jewish writers recognize as the true
one?
The Jew of the ghetto is held up in Jewish treatises as the norm of
Judaism.
The visitor in New York has perhaps seen on Central Park west the
massive synagogue of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews. Its famous rabbi
was the Rev. Dr. D. de Sola Pool. He is the author of the following
words:
“In the ghetto the observance of Judaism was natural and almost
inevitable. The regimen of Jewish life was the atmosphere that was
breathed * * * Not only did public opinion make it possible for men to
go bearded, to keep the head covered at all times, to carry the palm
branch in the public street, or to walk the street in stockinged feet on
fast days, but public opinion made it almost impossible for a Jew to
profane the Sabbath or the Passover regulations, or openly to transgress
any of the main observances”—and, as we shall later see, the learned
rabbi considers these conditions more preservative of Judaism than are
American conditions.
Rev. Dr. M. H. Segal expresses the view that Jewry in the more modern
portions of Europe and America was really kept alive by the infusions of
immigrants from Poland and Lithuania. Asserting, in agreement with other
Jewish leaders, that the Jewish center of the world has been, until now,
in Russia and Poland, Dr. Segal says:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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