One might continue the list of such accusations indefinitely, and in
every one you would find that the root of the quarrel is not the
presence of a particular defect but the presence of a difference in
circumstances, temperament, character: a different colour and taste in
the quality or defect concerned. It is _that_ which offends. It is
_that_ which causes the misunderstandings and which leads to the
tragedies.
While this is true of the accusations made against the Jewish people it
is unfortunately equally true of the corresponding qualities which they
and their defenders advance in the rebuttal. The Jew is essentially
patriotic: that is true. But not patriotic to our ends or in our way. He
is essentially self-respecting. But not self-respecting to our ends or
in our way. A personal obligation which he cannot meet, a personal and
intimate contract in which he may default, especially to one of his own
people, is abhorrent to the Jew; but not in our way. He has not our
shame of bankruptcy for instance, but much more than our shame of
personal borrowing. Drunkenness, a vice most offensive to human dignity,
is with him the rarest vice: with us the commonest. But our sense of
dignity in repose he has not, nor does he feel our sense of injured
dignity in mummery. His tenacity, which all know and all in a sense
admire and which is far superior to our own, is also a narrower
tenacity, or at any rate a tenacity of a different kind. He will follow
one end where we will follow many. His wonderful loyalty to all family
relations we know: but we do not appreciate it because it is outside our
own circle. Even his intellectual gifts, which are less affected by this
matter of _timbre_, have something alien to us in them. They are
undeniable but we feel them to be used for other ends than ours: they
are coldly used when ours are used enthusiastically: they are used with
intensity when we use them with carelessness.
If we leave the controversial field and concern ourselves with an
appreciation of Jewish qualities, apart from our like or dislike of them
and apart from their difference in intimate texture, as it were, from
our own, they may be summarized I think as follows:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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