It is generally asserted that, though the Jews as such have not produced a civilization during their life in diaspora, they have produced a culture. This is sincerely believed by all Jews, by believers and disbelievers, orthodox and reform, nationalists and assimilationists. Though one lays more stress on the spiritual and the other more on the secular aspect of the so-called Jewish culture, the outstanding fact is, however, that the belief in the Jewish culture produced in the diaspora is general. But if it is true that culture is a superstructure of civilization and has civilization as its basis, it is hard to see how it is possible to assume for one moment that the Jews have produced anything like a culture during their diaspora life. It is true that Jews have written books among which some are famous in world-literature. It is true that the Jews have painted good pictures. It is also true that the Jews have composed good music. But the question is often more than justified whether or not the Jewish genius has drawn the material from Jewish sources and Jewish life. Are all the good books Jews have written Jewish books? Are all the good pictures Jews have painted Jewish art? And is the good music Jews have composed Jewish music? In some cases they are partly Jewish. In the overwhelming majority of cases they are not Jewish at all. Neither Spinoza nor Bergson, neither Heine nor Hoffmannsthal, are Jews in the sense that they have been inspired exclusively by Jewish motives and that they have drawn their inspiration from Jewish sources alone. But we can go even further and maintain that even those great Jews from Philo of Alexandria to Maimonides and from Maimonides to Herman Cohen, who were always conscious of their Judaism and who thought that they were working as Jews and that their creations were Jewish, stood much more under the spell of alien than Jewish influence, and in their work were less Jews than is generally supposed. In spite of their racial enthusiasm, their intellect was hyphenated. Philo was at least as much Greek as he was Jew, Maimonides at least as much Greek and Arab, and Cohen is at least as much German as he is Jew, if not more. We are quick in our condemnation of those who wrote on the tombstone of Maimonides, "Heretic and Disbeliever." We are angry at the "fanatics" of Amsterdam who excommunicated Spinoza, and we are often angry at those who utter severe criticism of Herman Cohen as a Jew. But these fanatics, wrong as they may be in their methods, are not entirely wrong in their motives and ideas. They are Jews in whom strong Jewish instincts are alive and these Jews, gifted with more original instincts than the average Jew, see more quickly what is Jewish and what is not in the work of a great Jew; it is the un-Jewish motive in these works by which they are repulsed.