Jews -- Periodicals; Jews -- United States -- Periodicals
_The Eugenics of the Jewish Race_
We Puritans were brought up on the Old Testament, the spirit of which,
far more than that of the New, pervaded the life of old New England.
Every day after breakfast, no matter how busy the season or how late
the breakfast, my grandfather read to the assembled family a chapter
from the Old Testament, and perhaps remarked upon certain passages.
After graduating from college and when I became a tutor in a prominent
Hebrew family in New York, and especially when I had to teach the
children their Sunday school lessons and freshen up the small
knowledge of the Hebrew language that I had, I realized very keenly
how closely related were the Jews to the Yankees,--with this
tremendous difference, that you are increasing in numbers while we are
decreasing.
As I read the Old Testament, the substance of the covenant with
Abraham was that if he kept Jehovah's law, his seed would be
multiplied like the stars of Heaven. This placed society and life in
that early day squarely on a eugenic basis, for it makes the number
and success of good children the supreme test of every human
institution, activity, and every kind of culture. This I take it is
one of the chief characteristics of your race, and I hope it may long
be so.
I am going to avail myself of this opportunity to say a few words
about a topic that has for centuries been a point of the very greatest
difference and tension between your people and mine, namely, the
character and work of Jesus. Please do not be shocked till you hear
what I have to say. Such of us psychologists as have recently been
interested in the psychological aspect of Jesus' life and work
understand, as had never been understood before, how purely Jewish he
was. Scholars have lately given to his figure a radically new
interpretation.
"_An Extremely Representative Man of Your Race_"
According to many conceptions the chief trait of Jesus was a strong
and deep enthusiasm for the loftiest things of life. He was a little
ecstatic all the time, illustrating the higher powers of man. His soul
was unconquerable by misfortune and disaster, like that of the Jewish
race itself. He was also organizing victory out of defeat, and his
greatest triumph was over death itself. Some think that his youthful
dreams and ideals were to be an agrarian lord of a manor, or a grand
country gentleman of the Jewish order, making contracts with servants,
leasing out farms and vineyards, giving feasts, and the like, for more
than half the parables pertain directly or indirectly to such a
vocation. But this youthful dream he was unable on account of poverty
and his station in life to realize; so two very natural changes took
place in his soul. He came to hate the rich because they were wasting
their opportunities and never doing anything; but far more important,
he developed from these juvenile reveries his world-transforming ideas
of the kingdom, which created the church, visible and invisible, and
re-made society.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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