WHY ARE JEWS PERSECUTED?
HOW are we to explain thos3 outbreaks of hatred against the Jews which occur periodically in different parts of the world, and which at this moment are only kept in check in Hungary by military force ? We have discussed this question on a previous occasion, and, after discarding the usual explanations, have suggested the separatism of the Jews as the real cause of the dislike in which they are, as a
class, generally held. Wherever they are they constitute a foreign element, which refuses to intermingle with and class, generally held. Wherever they are they constitute a foreign element, which refuses to intermingle with and be absorbed into the life of the nation. They remain a separate nation, and accentuate their separateness by difference of food, of the weekly day of rest, sometimes of dress, but chiefly by refusing to intermarry outside their own race. These peculiarities naturally expose the Jews to sus- picion and dislike, especially among an ignorant population, like the peasantry of Russia, Galicia, and Hungary. But antipathy to the Jews is not confined to ignorant popula- tions. The recent crusade against them in Germany in- cluded all classes and all professions, and the agitation in Hungary, although it began among the peasantry, spread rapidly through the whole population. It seems, therefore, that the fact that the Jews are a foreign element in the midst of every population where they dwell will not alone account for the bitter hatred which now and then breaks out into open violence. The true explanation, we take it, is that which is suggested in a despatch from a British Consul in Southern Russia, and which has been elaborated in some articles in "Modern Thought" by Mr. Laister. In Russia, says Consul Wagstaff, the Jews "are compared to parasites that have settled on a plant not vigorous enough to. throw them off, and which is being gradually sapped of its
vitality." It is not simply that in imperfectly organised com- munities the Jews are the bankers, money-lenders, innkeepers, and middlemen ; but they are all this not as separate in- dividuals, but as a highly organised guild of foreigners, spread- ing its tentacles over the whole country till all its material resources are at last in its grasp. It is impossible to realise the ruin and misery wrought by this system in countries where the Jews are numerous and the civilisation rudimen- tary. "There exists among them," says Consul Wagstaff," a system of boycotting," which works as follows. The pro- duce of a farm or vineyard is put up to auction. The Jews draw lots for it, and the man on whom the lot falls is thus secured against all competition, and can fix his own price. In parts of Russia, Roumania, and Aus- trian-Hungary, this Jewish trade-unionism pervades all the transactions of life. You cannot sell a horse or a pig except on the terms which the Jews choose to offer ; and in Galicia, Bessarabia, and many parts of Russia, the very labour of the peasantry is mortgaged to Jewish money-lenders ; so that if you wish to hire a labourer or tradesman, you must resort to the Jew in whose debt the peasant happens to be. " If the peasant," says Consul Wagstaff, "gets into the hands of this class, he is irretrievably lost. The proprietor, in his turn, from a small loan, gradually mortgages and eventually loses his estate." In this way a great deal of landed property has passed into the hands of the Jews. In the last Fortnightly Review Captain Conder, of Palestine Exploration celebrity, supplies incidentally an illustration of this Jewish system ill Palestine. The Jews who have gone thither from Russia and Austria have established a cordon round Jerusalem, by means of which they intercept all the vegetables brought in by the country people and re-sell them at an exorbitant price. Doubtless they will gradually extend their ramifica- tions till they have got the peasantry in their grasp, and then we shall probably hear of an outbreak against the Jews in Syria.
This tribal exclusiveness and solidarity of the Jews, and not religion, has been the main cause of the persecutions to which they have been at various times exposed. "In the twelfth century," says the friendly and liberal Milman, "the Jews had a hold upon almost all the estates in the country ; they had mortgages on half Paris, and scarcely any one but had some article in pawn." "Husbandry was mined by the usurious exactions of the Jews." The result was popular outbreaks, ending in the expulsion of the Jews. The same thing happened in England and other European countries. We recall these facts for the purpose of showing that the per- secution of the Jews has always been due in the main to other than religious motives. When religion has been alleged, it has been the pretext rather than the true cause. An excited populace will readily believe any calumny against the object of its hate. The hatred against the Jews is not due to a belief in their murdering children ; the ready belief in their murdering children is begotten of the hatred caused by their system of accumulating wealth. And this hatred is older than Christianity. It existed in Pagan Rome and Alexandria, and in the cities of Asia Minor. It has always existed, in fact, wherever the Jews have congregated in considerable numbers. This shows that it is not the Jew as a man, or as a religionist, who is hated, but the Jew as a member of a commercial "ring," cosmopolitan in its character, and refusing to amalgamate with the national life of any land. Thus it happens that the Jews as a race remain unpopular, even when the Jews as individuals may be extremely and most deservedly popular. It is also a fact that Jews have at various times and in various countries entered with passionate patriotism into the struggles of national life. Nevertheless it remains true that the Jews in the mass are everywhere a foreign people, maintaining a separate life, existing apart from the nations among whom they sojourn, and making common cause now, as of old, against the Gentiles.
Certainly this fact does not justify the hatred and persecu- tion to which the Jews have been at various times exposed. It presents, however, a curious and perplexing problem. Pro- bably the majority of educated Jews have given up all expectation of any literal fulfilment of Messianic prophecies, and have no thought of a restoration to Palestine. But the mass of the Jews are still the Jews of the Mosaic Dispensa- tion and the Talmud. That, and not the history of the countries in which they dwell, is the lore on which their minds are fed. To them the Jews are still "a peculiar people," a nation dispersed among the Gentiles, lying under a mysterious destiny for the present, but dowered with the promise of a glorious national life in the future. It is impossible that a people nurtured on such traditions, and who believe themselves predestined to a great career, can mingle on equal terms with other races, or suffer themselves to be assimilated into any other national life. It is commonly supposed that the special characteristics of the Jews, especially in the choice of occupations, have been forced upon them by Christian persecution. Mr. Laister combats this theory, and offers a formidable mass of Old Testament and Talmudic evidence to show that what is supposed to be due to persecution is in reality derived from purely Jewish sources. "The Christian," he says, "could not love the Jew as a neighbour, for he would not be neighbourly ; and the Jew, on. his part, could not be neighbourly, because his creed, while it permitted him to make all he could out of the Christians, forbad him to have anything in common with them." That is a strong way of putting it, but it is certainly not stronger than can be justified out of the Old Testament and Talmud.
So evangelical a prophet as Isaiah promises the Gentiles for a prey to the Jews : "Ye shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their glory shall ye boast yourselves." "And strangers [i.e., Gentiles] shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of the alien shall be your plowmen and your vine-dressers." The Jew was forbidden by the Mosaic Law to lend on usury to one of his own nation ; but he was permitted to take usury ad libitum of the Gentile. Dr. Adler offers the following very ingenuous explanation of this, in an article contributed to the Nineteenth Century in April, 1878 :—" Had the Israelites been allowed to lend to one another at interest, their lands would have been encumbered, and their energies as agriculturists would have been crippled But this danger would not arise from lending to the foreigner. No Mosaic principle was infringed by charging him interest." It is odd that Dr. Adler should not have seen that the " danger " from which the Mosaic Law protected the Jew was inflicted by the Jew in all its bitterness on "the foreigner," who occasionally took the law into his own hands, and turned savagely on the strange community whom he saw prospering at his expense. And the case was all the harder from the fact that the Christian Church, till comparatively recent times, prohibited the practice of usury to all her members. So that the Jewish money-lender had the field all to himself. It is on the Talmud, however, rather than on the Old Testament, that the character of the ordinary Jew is moulded ; and Mr. Laister quotes passages from the Talmud to show that it sanctions the robbery of Christians by Israelites. Cultivated Jews would, of course, repudiate all such teaching. Consul Wagstaff says emphatically that the educated Jews in Russia loudly condemn the occupations and practices of their lower brethren. The mass of educated Jews in this country probably know as little of the Talmud as the mass of other educated persons. But it is from the Talmud that the ordinary Jew gets his ideas of the duty which he owes to others ; and the Talmud draws a sharp line between the duty which the Israelite owes to the Israelite and the duty which he owes to the Gentile. Paradoxical as it may seem to say so, this explanation ought to raise our opinion of the Jew who oppresses and robs the Christian, even while we condemn his conduct. If he believes himself justi- fied by his religion, he is by no means so debased and immoral as the man whose sin is far less gross, but who sins against conscience. But what is to be the outcome of it all? We can see no solution of the problem so long as the Jews gener- ally believe themselves to be bound by the Mosaic polity, as expounded in the Talmud. While they hold to this belief they must continue to exist as a separate people among the nations. On one point, at least, we heartily agree with Mr. Laister, namely, in thinking that much mischief is done by the large number of Christians who encourage the Jews in the belief that they are still the peculiar people of God, kept providentially apart from other nations, and reserved for a triumphant future. So long as the Jews cling to that belief, no effective reply can be made to writers who argue that they cannot, in the true sense of the word, be patriots. Nor is there anything disgraceful in the accusation. Patriotism can render no divided allegiance, and a Jew who really believes in Judaism can no more be an English or French patriot than a Frenchman or an Englishman can be a Russian patriot. The Jew must be a Jew first of all, and an Englishman or French- man afterwards. And this is very much to his credit, so long as he believes himself to belong to a higher and holier polity than any existing State. The error is in his so believing, not in his conscientiously acting up to his belief.
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