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The
Roots
THE POORON
A powerful symbolic figure by Numa Pantlegean
A pungent provoking article by t>
eminent professor of philosophy and
psychology at the New School for S
cial Research taken from his fort/icon
ing book “Judaism at Hay” with the
gracious permission of Charles Blot
the publisher. A masterful essay by a
Jew and a thinker in a style '' A
combines grace with sharpness.
“Judaism at Bay” will be one of the
big books of the summer season-
THE EDITOR.
of
W hat
T HERE is today not a Chris
tian country in the world
without its modicum of anti-
Semitism. This communal pas
sion obtains, indeed, wherever
Christianity has reached. Chris
tian sectaries in China or Japan,
in India or Arabia participate in
it no less than Christian sectaries in Germany
or Hungary, in Russia or in the United States,
and suffuse the convert with its nazarene conta
gion. It is present regardless of contrary atti
tudes, contradictory interests, opposed ideals. It
appears in the most unexpected quarters and in
the most varied and complicating forms. It jus
tifies itself by the most antagonistic reasons, and
it passes from one to another, from any to all,
from all to any with the somnambulistic heedless
ness of a sleep-walker. Its basis is an emotion.
Its origin is a gospel. Its biography is a sequence
of rationalizations in which the emotion seeks a
publicly acceptable symbol. Its origin, nature,
and present behavior present one of the most
ironic and revealing chapters in the picaresque tale
which makes up the history of the European mind.
'The nearer background of present-day anti-
Semitism is, of course, the Great War. The soil
and matrix of its current forms are the passions
which were the life of the war and which did not
die when the war ended.
War and battle are acute crises in the life of
man. 'The body in regimented, the spirit is
crowded and cornered. Action loses its civilized
delicacies, feeling its finenesses. Against surround
ing, imminent, ever-nearing death a great anger
develops, and a greater fear. The nice balances
of peace-time habits break down. Inhibitions break
down. Action and feeling become the simple
elemental drives and sensibilities of the beast; be
havior falls into primary and primitive patterns of
defense and offense; thought becomes simplified
and infantile.
A condition ensues which has its varieties but
the living urge of which is always a dynamic fear,
the same in all cases of it. As manifested in in
dividuals this condition has gone by the generic
name shell-shock. But social groups are also ca
pable of undergoing fundamental disturbances
whose animating source is fear and whose com
pensating emotion is anger. The collective fear
projects itself upon the enemy. The enemy be
comes really a symbol of the fear he evokes, l he
deeper the fear, the more “evil” the enemy. This
view of the enemy becomes altogether independent
of the facts in the case; the emotion generates
[6]
Anti-Semitism
Is the Real Reason for Present Day Jewish Hatred?
By Horace M. Kallen
its “facts” for itself. Hence the removal or dis
appearance of the outward cause or occasion for
the emotion does not mean the immediate or even
quick subsidence of the emotion itself. It grows
by what it feeds on, even when it feeds on itself.
So the removal, by the peace, of Germany as the
evoking occasion of the emotion did not destroy
the emotion. It survived and incarnated itself in
a new symbol. I his new symbol was bolshevism.
I he Bolshevists, the world over, replaced the Ger
mans as the incarnation of ultimacies in evil, and a
Walpurgisnacht of the cruelties of fear ensued from
\ iborg to Naples, from Moscow to Washington.
In the course of time Bolshevism lost its power
as a channel for expression of the war emotion.
But new sources of nourishment discovered them
selves. Europe had begun to disintegrate. The
institutional life of states, their industry, their
commerce, their agriculture, their education, and
very obviously their governments, were cracked at
t-nvii mUMUUIMMn
v . til LilV.ll
structures. If the war emotion was a basic fe
focalized by the enemy, the emotion of the pea
was the same fear nourished by the disintegrate
of the customary institutional supports of priva
life. . 1 he peace was a more radical case of coi
munity shell-shock.’ I he community began
fight illusions. One such battle with illusion
anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism is a chronic aspect of Christi
history. It becomes acute during social crises ai
subsides in prosperity. The course it runs begi
usually at some point of social disturbance whe
the cause is remote and not known and the d
tressful emotion is strong. The Jews are th
declared to be the hidden cause, and the emoti
a ^channeled by and projected upon this svmb
Although there have been times when the comm
people, led usually by a Christian priest or mor
nave been the initiators of anti-Semitic manif
tations, the more customary source has been soi
disturbed or dislocated beneficiary of social pri
lege. Anti-Semitism has served very largely as
instrument of the upper classes. Its history
Central Europe during the last four years—fn
roland to Roumania—its history in the Unil
States, from Henry Ford to Lawrence Lowell a
the Ku Klux Klan, are not exceptions. The ob
scene tale of the making, the dissemination, the
emotional elaboration of the burlesqucries called
the Protocols of the Elders of Zion reveal the
frightened snarl and melodramatic strut of pro
fessional anti-Semites, scattered by political up
heaval from all the scrapheaps of privilege of Eu
rope. The matter of interest is not, however, that
this nonsense was invented, but that being non
sense it should so readily, so almost inevitably,
serve to integrate social fear and malaise. Why
are the Jews the perennial devil of the piece?
The answer lies in the Christian religion itself,
in the status which Christianity assigns to the
Jews and the burden it sets and binds upon them.
The answer lies in the role which Christian teach
ing plays in the make-up of the Western mind.
In broad outline, this teaching has for all sects
an identical content, which may be called the
Drama or Epic of Salvation. It tells of a first
man created perfect and sinless, to dwell forever
in the bucolic bliss of Eden. This first man was
endowed with free will, and through the solicita
tion of the first woman exercised it. bringing
“death into the world and all our woe. For
God is just and man’s first disobedience merite
no less than eternal death. But God is also merci
ful, and his mercy tempered his justice. I he lat
ter should be satisfied and yet man be saved. 0
this end it was preordained that a certain group
of the human family should be chosen, undt-; cove^
nant, for especial communion with God, a
among the descendants of this family God shou
send his only-begotten son to be born, to live P°° r
ly, and to die ignominiouslv upon the cross, a
carious atonement for Adam’s original sin. to
buried and on the third day to rise again a u
his place in heaven upon the right hand < *
Then all those who believe this tale an ^
this atonement will be saved from the con _
of Adam’s sin. All those who do n ' g v
and refuse the atonement will be damn y ^
the incarnation, crucifixion, and resuiro •• , ^
world became divided into a congrega ^
saved and a congregation of the damne. r
tunate vessel of God’s mercy which wa
his justice were the Jews. (Please turn
£ THE SOUTHERN vElJTE