Jews -- Periodicals; Jews -- United States -- Periodicals
ONE is at first reluctant to single out the Jew from his fellows at
college. He seems in no manner different from them. He studies with
them, eats with them, plays ball with them. He writes editorials for
the college paper; he competes in the oratorical contests. One, for
example, is a member of the school orchestra; another, perhaps the son
or the grandson of an immigrant from Germany, leads the cheers at the
track meet; another, himself an immigrant from Russia, plays on the
chess team and is one of the brilliant scholars in his class. This
last does, at present, have something of the stranger about him, but
before long, no doubt, his speech will have become more smooth, his
trousers will have begun to show a crease; he will have become quite
an interesting and regular figure at the various reform and ethical
club meetings at the university, and he will begin to be seen quite
frequently in the company of his gentile classmates--even in the
company of his German-Jewish cousin. Wonderful, indeed, the country
that can so readily attire its adopted children, and, as the saying
goes, make them feel at home; wonderful, perhaps, the race that,
through centuries of degradation, has kept alive, though often latent
indeed, the potentialities of equal partnership with the most
enlightened peoples of a twentieth century civilization.
What though it has no long past, America is the great land of the
future. Here let the Jew lay aside his burden of the time that has
gone and build anew into the time to come. Shall we regret, then, that
the Jewish student has taken on the polite address, the proud
carriage, the heartiness and the chuckle of his Yankee comrade? Should
he now keep the gabardine of his forefathers, yes, and the credulities
and ceremonies of a circumscribed and persecuted people? Why not
absorb that wholesome ruddiness, denied him so long, that breathes of
open American prairies, fair play, and the Declaration of
Independence?
_"The Goal of Twenty Centuries of Wandering"_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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