How unintelligent are the various defences of the Jew by the non-Jew,
even with the best intentions! You will hear people tell you solemnly,
as a sort of revelation, that there are kindly, witty Jews, Jews who are
good prize-fighters or good fencers. I well remember one old gentleman
who tried hard to convince me (as though I needed convincing) that there
were Jews who had taste. He said to me, "I do not myself go into Jewish
houses, but my son does, and he assures me that much of the decoration
is in good taste." How unintelligent is the idea that because a man's
motives are not open and because he has not the same reasons for serving
the State that you have, _therefore_ he is to be perpetually under
suspicion! How still more unintelligent is the conception that, although
he is alien, yet you cannot use him in certain special services for the
State.
This unintelligence is specially apparent in the treatment of the Jew in
his international relations. The Jew is a nomad, the non-Jew a man with
a fixed habitation. The Englishman, the Frenchman and the rest are
perpetually approaching the Jew as though he also had a fixed
habitation. We seem never to be able to get over the shock of surprise
when we learn that a particular Jew abroad is the cousin, or nephew, or
brother of another Jew with a different name in England, or with
another Jew with yet another name in Pinsk or San Francisco. Yet,
surely, this is of the very essence of the Jewish position. We ought to
take it for granted that the Jew is thus nomadic, international, spread
all over the world, migratory, as we take the same thing for granted in
birds of passage. To adopt the attitude which we almost invariably do
and to feel a shock of surprise when we discover what must in the nature
of things be the most regular feature in the civic situation of the Jew,
is to fall into that most stupid of all stupid errors, the reading of
oneself into others.
I remember the horror and scandal with which men whispered their
discovery that a man with a German name, who had got into trouble a few
years ago, was the first cousin of a Cabinet Minister. Why not? They
seemed to be struck all of a heap by the dreadful revelation that the
names borne by Jews were not always their original names, that rich and
important men often have poor relations, and that poor relations often
get embarrassed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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