The Immigrant Tide, Its Ebb and FlowSteiner, Edward Alfred
History
The Immigrant Tide, Its Ebb and Flow
Steiner, Edward Alfred
United States -- Emigration and immigration
The testimony of Rev. Max Wertheim of Ada, Ohio, ought to have some
weight--it concerns the Americanized Jew. He was a rabbi at Dayton,
Ohio, and after passing through various religious crises, became a
Baptist, and is now doing devoted work on a small salary. Naturally, he
has not received the most generous treatment from his former
co-religionists, and would hardly flatter them. In answer to my question
whether he found any difference in business standards between his Jewish
and his Christian flocks, he unhesitatingly said that there was no
difference.
More weighty is the testimony which Prof. Graham Taylor gave recently
before a Christian Brotherhood. "I know as good Christians among the
Jews as among the churches."
I am quite sure that basically there is no difference; although I should
characterize some Jewish methods as mean, and those of some Gentiles as
dangerous. In making this distinction, however, I realize that "wooden
nutmegs," high-bottomed fruit boxes, sun-kissed apples at the top of the
barrel and gnarled ones at the bottom, as well as other tricks of the
native trade, are mean enough; while the methods of the theatrical
trust, the adulteration of foods and drugs, the white slave trade and
other questionable forms of business engaged in by both Jew and
Gentile, may be called both mean and dangerous.
It is also interesting to note that in the great industrial struggle the
Jew is represented largely on the capitalistic side; but on the other
hand, some of the strongest leaders in the labour unions and many of the
Socialists of the rank and file are Jews; consequently the _vox populi_
may condemn them for being both.
The third question is: Does the group possess ethnic qualities that will
prevent normal assimilation, and therefore will increase race friction
already dangerously strong?
Disagreeable as is the Jewish type when very pronounced, it is
undergoing such rapid changes where the environment is favourable, that
it does not present a serious barrier to assimilation. The issues of
intermarriage are exceptionally good and the resultant types normal. Yet
in spite of the vanishing type, the Jews are a peculiar people and will
long remain so. Their historic inheritance and their religious
traditions, no less than their attitude towards the Gentiles and the
attitude of the Gentiles towards them, will naturally keep them a group
apart. The hostile attitude on both sides ought not to be strengthened,
and I believe that for a period at least, Jewish emigration from the
east of Europe should cease. Not because I believe the Russian Jew
inferior, but merely because he is numerous and the ethnic and cultural
difference between him and the native is so marked as to aggravate an
antipathy already intense; this the Jews themselves feel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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