Part 6
Today humanity does not think in terms of religion; modern philosophers do not think _more theologico_ but _more biologico_; the synagogue in the country where Jews are free is not isolated as was the case in the past, nor is Jewish life isolated. Unlike the Jews of the past, the modern Jew in these countries is actuated not by religious but by economic and social motives and he has little time to give thought to Judaism. To the average Jew in the liberal countries, Judaism is either an unwelcome heritage or at best a synagogal duty. In eastern Europe there are two sorts of Jews, as far as religion is concerned. There are either rabbinic Jews, who are pious and naive, or there are Jews whose views practically amount to a superficial atheism. Under these conditions, it is hard to tell how the Jewish religion is to develop in the Diaspora, or what its future may be.
The Reformers, of course, would point to the work of Geiger and Holdheim. But is the work of these men really proof of organic development in Jewish religion? Does the destruction of the bases of a religion indicate development? Reform Judaism not only did away with rabbinism, but it would also deprive the Bible of its religious character, denying the divinity of its source and in addition arbitrarily abolishing fundamental biblical laws for the convenience of its practioners. Is there any intelligent Jew, with a fair knowledge of Judaism, perhaps with the exception of a few Reform rabbis, who will maintain that in these changes there is a trace of development? If Reform Judaism can do no more than destroy what others have built, it is not progress in Jewish religion, as its leaders assert, but merely a ruthless iconoclasm.
We do not say that Reform Judaism is created by malice or by the wanton desire to destroy, but only that it serves as proof that from present conditions the Jewish religion seems to have no future in the Diaspora, once it has come into contact with modern life.
The Jewish religion, a product of national genius, can live and thrive only on its own soil. It can live and thrive only if it is part and parcel of the whole life of the nation, because the Jewish religion, in contradistinction to the universal religions, is distinctly national in character and wherever the Jewish nation is hampered in its movements (as it is, everywhere, in the Diaspora), the Jewish religion is also hampered and condemned to stagnation.
The stronger and more intense the life surrounding the Jews, the weaker becomes their own religious impulse.
This is well known to the Reform rabbis. We do not know how they conceive the future of Judaism in the Diaspora, but we do know that the only possibility for a Jewish religious revival lies in a national life for the Jewish people.
THE MIGRATIONS OF JEWISH LITERATURE
Among all the literatures of the world the Jewish literature is the only one that did not develop in any one land and the destinies of which are not connected with any one country. It has neither a certain local odor nor a certain local color, and it has seldom been the product of local conditions. There are a good many scholars who go so far as to say that the Jews had litterateurs only and not a literature, because the conception of a national literature involves national territory, a national political organization, and national traditions. A people, these scholars say, may produce a great numbers of writers and poets and may still be said not to possess a national literature. Formerly scholars who argued to that effect may have been right. If we take into consideration the psychological continuity of Jewish literature ever since the Jews began their career as a wandering people, we are justified in doubting the wisdom of this conception.
Although Jewish literature has undergone many radical changes (the change in language being only one prime fact) and although it has been as restless as the Jewish people, compelled to wander from one country to another, it has still succeeded in preserving certain prime qualities and characteristics which entitle it to bear the proud name of national literature. It is easy to recognize the age of a Jewish literary document, but it is not so easy to ascertain the place and locality where it was produced. The Hebrew-Italian school of the eighteenth century resembles in many respects the Hebrew-Spanish school of the Middle Ages, and the Russian-Hebrew school of the present time has much similarity not only to the various Hebrew schools of the twelfth and the eighteenth centuries but even to the Biblical period. It suffices only to mention the name of Bialik to show how near we are today to the spirit of the Biblical period.
This is true of Hebrew poetry but not of Hebrew prose. Here the results of migration are very noticeable. The Jewish literature of the Alexandrian period has hardly anything in common with Babylonian Jewish literature, and the literature created in the Provence is quite different in character from that created in Central Asia or in Africa. In other words, while the contemplative Jewish mind succeeds in preserving its chief original qualities, the meditative Jewish mind was subject to certain degrees of assimilation. As long as the Hebrew language was the means of expression for the Jewish literary spirit the effect of migration from one country to another was to make Jewish literature more picturesque and more interesting. But it did not fill the literary mind with new contents. Sometimes the effect of the new surroundings was not felt at all. This is due to the fact that, with the Hebrew language as cultivated by the Jews, there goes a certain philosophy of life and of things. The fate of the Jews throughout the ages, more or less similar in every land, contributed also to the psychological continuity of the Hebrew literary mind. This expresses itself best in the Hebrew elegy. When one reads Bialik's "Poems of Wrath," one thinks at once of Hebrew poems of a similar kind written hundreds of years ago. Hebrew prose on the other hand underwent slight changes during the Jewish migrations.
Since the Jews have entered modern civilization and have adopted the language of the Gentiles as a medium of literary expression, the effects of migration on the Jewish literary mind have begun to make themselves felt in a rather unpleasant way. This unpleasantness consists not in the variety of languages in which modern Jewish literature is so rich, but in the variety of ideas and conceptions which the Hebrew language imposed on the individual. The works of Jewish writers who write in European languages, even if they deal only with Jewish subjects, do not belong to Jewish literature alone; we cannot proclaim these works as our national possessions because of the very non-Jewish elements which characterize them.
On another occasion we have already shown how Jewish historiography and our history of Jewish literature have been influenced by non-Jewish elements. It goes without saying that all the other branches of our prose literature, as far as they have not been written in Hebrew, are strongly influenced by non-Jewish elements to a very great extent. Very often it is difficult to recognize what is Jewish and what is non-Jewish in these works. Everyone acquainted with the theological developments of Judaism within the last hundred years knows how Jewish theology in the west has gradually become alienated from its Jewish origin and come nearer to a Christian point of view. No less an important theologian than Schleiermacher characterized so-called modern Judaism as being very similar to modern Christianism. It will readily be understood that it was not Christianity that came nearer to Judaism but, on the contrary, Judaism that came nearer Christianity. It would, of course, be wrong and historically untrue to say that only in modern times has a non-Jewish element begun to creep into Jewish literature. It is moreover a fact that ever since the Jews have used foreign tongues for literary expression, they have been compelled to admit non-Jewish elements into their works. This is true of Philo and to a certain extent even of Maimonides' "Moreh." Is it not peculiar that all the great mediators between Judaism and the Gentile world have written their philosophical works either in Greek or in Arabic or in some modern language, and that those Jewish philosophers who have written their philosophical works in Hebrew have never tried to play the rôle of mediators? Philo, who wrote in Greek, tried to mediate between Platonism and Judaism. Maimonides, who wrote the "Moreh" in Arabic, tried to mediate between Aristotelism and Judaism, and Herman Cohen tries to mediate between Kantianism and Judaism. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. Nachman Krochmal was a thorough Hegelian and wrote his "Moreh" in Hebrew. But this is just the exception which proves the rule. Most of our philosophers who wrote in Hebrew developed a more or less purely Hebrew philosophy and contributed to the development of the Hebrew mind which found its purest expression in the Bible, the Talmud and the Haggaddah.
All this would go to show that the psychological continuity of the Hebrew literary mind and the true development of the Jewish mind can best be safeguarded through the medium of Hebrew. Hebrew is to the Jews and to the literature of the Jewish people more than a language. It replaces the many elements required for the sound development of a national literature which we have not, such as a country, local traditions, a national political organization, and so on. As long as Hebrew is the medium of literary expression among the Jews, Jewish literature deserves the name of a national literature and is a national literature. If, however, the Jewish mind does not express itself any more through the medium of Hebrew, the productions of this mind do not solely belong to us and are not part and parcel of our national property. They belong to the others as well as to us and probably more to them. Herein lies the importance of Hebrew for the development of Judaism and the Jewish mind.
ARE THE JEWS A COMMERCIAL PEOPLE?
The reputation of the Jews for being a business people has done them more harm than good, and has, in fact, retarded their emancipation in many countries. But nowhere has this reputation done them so much harm as in Russia. Even the Russian liberals, who are not anti-Semitic, seem to believe that the Jews, if emancipated, would ruin the Russian peasantry and completely monopolize Russian commerce. They are therefore not eager to take up the cause of the Jews, though they may be liberal in every other respect.
The Russian and Roumanian anti-Semites, however, base their theories of the need for oppressing the Jews on the belief that the Jews are too shrewd in business and that they will exploit the Russians and Roumanians if they are given freedom to move about and to utilize all their commercial energy and intelligence. This view is not restricted to those countries alone. We find traces of it even in America.
Has this belief any foundation in fact or is it only a myth? The question is interesting enough to be discussed. There are two methods of considering this question, the _historic_ and the _pragmatic_. Have the Jews always been a business people? Are they today a business people? Instead of answering these questions in the affirmative or in the negative, we think it wiser to lay the facts before the public and to let it answer the two questions.
In ancient times--as confirmed by the Bible--the Jews were not much of a business people. The bulk of the people were devoted to agriculture. There are thirteen terms for rain in Hebrew while there is only one for commerce. The number of agricultural laws in the Scriptures exceeds by far the number of laws and regulations relating to commerce. The attitude of ancient Jews to commerce was similar to the attitude of the ancient Greeks to labor. Indeed the ancient Jews, in contradistinction to the Greeks, respected labor and despised business and commerce. Josephus Flavius in his book against Apion, says clearly: "We Jews do not find much pleasure in commerce." The Talmudic sages warned the people against commerce again and again, and represented the business man as an ignoramus and a sinner. Rabbi Meir ruled: Trade less and study more. Rabbi Johanan exclaimed: There is no Torah among tradesmen and business people.
Taking all these facts into consideration, we fail to see how any intelligent person can say of the Jews that they were always a business people. Indeed, it is interesting to observe that the word used in Hebrew for commerce is not of Hebrew but of Greek origin.
But what about Diaspora Jewry? The Diaspora Jew was not allowed to become an agriculturist. He was forced to live in the city and as he was excluded from all artisan guilds he was obliged to become a tradesman or a money lender. How did the sturdy agricultural Jew become a business man, when business was never his ideal? To answer this question we must learn the attitude of the early mediaeval Christian Church to commercialism. The slogan of the Church was "Nullus Christianus debet esse mercator" (No Christian dare be a merchant), for commerce turned the Christian from the Church. This hostile attitude of the Church toward commerce had its origin in the influence of Greek culture on Christianity. The Greeks, as is well known, despised the merchant and considered him a necessary evil. The social status of the merchant in ancient Greece was very low and the representatives of Greek thought, Plato and Aristotle, contributed largely to lowering it still further. According to Plato the merchant class is to the intellectual class what the stomach is to the brain and the raison d'être of the merchant class is only to be found in its feeding the warrior class. Plato describes the merchant as belonging to the third and lowest class of society. The early Church had taken over these views of commerce and made them its own. Even Thomas Aquinas, who lived in the 13th century, when commercial life still flourished, adhered still to the early Christian ideas about commerce. But as commerce is necessary to the existence of organized society, the Church made the Jews the bearers of commerce by forbidding Christians to trade and inducing the Jews to do so.
The Church had another reason for making the Jew the business man. The representatives of the Church--fine psychologists that they were and still are--knew that as long as the Jew confined himself to agriculture he would continue to be "stubborn and stiff-necked," and no Christian propaganda would induce him to give up his religion. The peasant is the conservative element of society. The tradesman, however, whose business it is to make bargains and compromises in his business life, is always inclined to make compromises in morality and religion. If the Jews were made tradesmen, so the leaders of the Church thought, two aims could be achieved at one stroke. First they would be made to do the "dirty work" for the Christians, and secondly, their conservative Jewish spirit would be broken. These were the reasons why the Christian world consciously forced the Jews into commercialism. On the other hand, political conditions in the Middle Ages actually compelled the Jews to take to commerce.
Thus a people, originally agricultural, became commercial. It is clear that the Jews are not a business people by nature but out of necessity and by reason of historical developments.
But now another question arises: Are the Jews clever as a business people and do they really show an inherent business genius? The anti-Semites and many of our friends believe that every Jew is potentially a business genius. Is this true? This question is also best answered by facts.
In Eastern Europe, where industry and commerce are not developed, and where Jews live in masses, the ordinary Jew is not a business man. On the contrary, the ordinary Jew in the East is a skilled or unskilled laborer. Out of the million Eastern Jews, who emigrated to this country from 1899-1908, about 60 per cent were laborers. The great masses or Eastern Jews in America are, in the main, laborers. As Eastern Jewry forms the bulk of the Jewish people, there is no reason to think that the modern Jew is _eo ipso_ a business man, or a tradesman. The great Jewish Socialist movement likewise testifies to the fact that the Jews are not a business people in the sense used by our enemies and by many of our friends, because a Socialist movement cannot rise and flourish among business people.
The Jews, in individual cases, may be sharper in business than their non-Jewish fellow business men of the same station in life. Belonging to an Oriental, passionate race, they have a more vivid imagination and can see things in brighter colors than the non-Jews. This is, however, true only of individual cases. The ordinary Jewish business man is as clever or as stupid as the Gentile business man. A mediocrity, whether a Jew or a Gentile, is a mediocrity, and the Jewish mediocrity is no more productive or creative than the non-Jewish mediocrity. It is interesting that in the Levant, where Greeks, Armenians and other Oriental people are active in business, the Jew cuts a relatively poor figure as a business man. There are in Salonica great Jewish merchants but the vast majority of Salonica Jews are artisans and laborers. The Jews of the East when settled in the West, be it in Western Europe or America, have seldom achieved a great success as merchants or business men.
The fact is that the Jew is no more shrewd as a business man than the Englishman, Frenchman, or American. It is true, however, that in exceptional cases the Jews produce commercial geniuses as they also produce literary and artistic and scientific geniuses. We are an old and relatively pure race and our experience is far-reaching. We have more productive powers than many other peoples, and we produce proportionately more great men than other peoples. Some of these great men are great in business, but that does not mean that the Jews are a business people and a clever business people.
OUR NATIONAL BUDGET AND BRIBERY
All peoples who live under normal conditions live economically, that is, on a systematized budget in which expenditure is adjusted to income. The Jewish people, not living under such conditions, do not live economically. Their budget is not systematized nor are its expenditures proportionate to the income. The lack of a systematized budget, however, does not mean that we have no fixed annual expenditures, although it is true that we have no fixed annual income. The truth is that we, as a people, spend as much as any other people of equal numbers who live a normal life. The only difference is seen in this: while other peoples spend money for national organization and on national institutions, we have to spend our money either in bribery or to help pogrom victims.
On the eve of the Jewish New Year it is proper that we draw up and take account of our annual budget. The biggest sum in this budget is the item marked "bribery." Few realize how many millions are spent annually by Russian and Roumanian Jews who seek to mollify their oppressors with bribe or gift offerings. Few realize that the many millions spent by wealthy Assimilationists in non-Jewish philanthropies are also bribe offerings. The Jew has learned that if he means to be a Jew he must pay bribery and that if he does not want to be a Jew, he must also pay bribery.
When a few years ago a Jewish lord in England bequeathed his fortune of $10,000,000 to non-Jewish institutions, he made it clear that this gift should be taken as proof of his sincere Anglicism, which meant the repudiation of Judaism. When the French Jew, Meurts de la Deutsch spends 2,000,000 francs annually to encourage aviation in France, it is for no nobler purpose than to deny that he is a Jew, and that he has embraced all French interests. The same is true of innumerable wealthy Jews who give millions for non-Jewish and often for anti-Jewish purposes. It might prove interesting to an economist to discover how many millions are spent annually in such bribery.
It is not difficult to estimate in round figures the sums spent annually by those who want to remain Jews.
There are six million Jews in Russia. For every move he makes, the Russian Jew must bribe the authorities. If he wants his son admitted to the schools, he must bribe the education officials. If he wants to open a store and obtain a license, he must bribe the village or town officials. If he builds a house he must bribe the building inspectors. If he seeks a passport, he must bribe the police. The whole run of human activities is accompanied by an endless flow of bribes, gifts, presents, etc. It is no exaggeration to say that every Jew in Russia must spend an average of ten rubles annually in bribing officials. This is 60,000,000 rubles, or $30,000,000 a year. The total budget of the Swiss Confederacy falls within this amount. In return the Russian Jews are paid in exceptional laws and pogroms. These laws and pogroms lead to emigration which costs us, on an average, $10,000,000 a year.
In the last decade Jewish emigration from Russia has been at least 100,000 persons a year. The cost to every immigrant is at least 120 rubles. This totals $7,200,000 a year. Economists have calculated and discovered that the incidental expenses of each immigrant amount to about 100 rubles. These expenses are caused by the loss entailed in breaking up business, selling out below cost, etc. This in turn totals up to 12,000,000 rubles, or $6,000,000 a year. In addition to these sums there are extraordinary losses resulting from pogroms, fire and boycott.
We are not taking into consideration the hundreds of millions lost by Jews in the war owing to the malice of the Russian Government. These losses are not recurrent. But we must consider the losses of the Jews in Russia as a result of pogroms. In the pogroms of 1905 and 1906 the Russian Jews lost 20,000,000 rubles. Pogroms on a minor scale are yearly events in Russia. All in all, the sum which the Russian Jews spend annually in bribes or in expenses in connection with emigration, or which they lose in pogroms or other upheavals, reaches the gigantic sum of $50,000,000, a sum which exceeds the annual budget of Bulgaria or of Switzerland. For less than this sum these two peoples enjoy national independence and sovereignty while we enjoy--pogroms.
What is true of Russia is true of Roumania, partly true of Galicia and of the Jews in northern Africa, Persia and Afghanistan. That these million and a half of oppressed Jews living outside of Russia also spend millions annually in bribery and emigration goes without saying.
As the emigration from the countries of oppression does not diminish the number of Jews, because of the high birth-rate there, and as conditions of life grow worse daily, the emigrants have to support their families and friends who stay behind. The Russian Ministry of Post and Telegraph published statistical tables a few years ago, which show that the Russian immigrants in the United States, mostly Jews, send annually to their relatives and friends from $15,000,000 to $18,000,000 a year. A good part of this sum goes to the Russian post office officials. This fact became known four years ago when a group of Jews in Petrograd and Moscow started a movement with the purpose of founding a Jewish immigrants' bank.
When speaking of necessary and incidental expenses of immigration one must not overlook the losses accruing from re-immigration and from a decrease of productive energy of many immigrants because of their inability to adapt themselves to new surroundings.