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About the Jews Who Are Anxious to Be
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proved
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Bf LI IIWIG LEWISOHX
In article by Ludwig Lewi so hn, outstanding
Jewish figure in world literature. The author
nf "Island H ithin,” "Mid channel,” etc., deals
with the same subject as Maurice Samuel’s
"Jews on Approval.*’ A contribution to the
Jewish problem of permanent and funda
mental significance.
\ the early days of the nineteenth century more
or levs benevolent people in Prussia, in Russia,
as well as in other countries wondered how
he Jews could he “improved” into fitness for
ri/enship. One had, temporarily at least, half-
ropped the notion of the Christian state, the
peory, namely that a subject or a citizen of a
fate could be such only by virtue of his belonging
rst to the spiritual communion of Christendom,
n the dropping of this theory there was a good
ral of both conscious and unconscious insincerity
nd the statement—commonly not made without
eat- that “this is a Christian country” is not un-
nown even in twentieth century America. But
finally one dropped the religious test and began
radually to substitute that of nationalism. One
"termed a man fit to be a citizen or subject if he
as like the majority in speech, habit, habit of
bought, in memory, if possible, as well as in hope
nd aspiration. Now it was obvious to people at
pat time that the Jews were not like the majority,
ut the doctrine of human rights and human
huality having stolen even into official places, it
as evident to more or less decent people that
•mething would have to be done to the Jews to
■ake them fit to enjoy the rights that seemed by
‘fure to be theirs. They had to be “improved.”
pd by that the “improvers” meant that the
should put away their memories and cus-
ms ar| d physical peculiarities and become good
'■ "retyped voters, soldiers and flag-wavers of the
"fonalistic state. For this preposterous demand
handsome rationalization was invented. The
hualities by which the Jews differed from the
’entiles, especially the disagreeable ones, were
Hd to be wholly the result of the centuries of
'pression and exclusion. It was, especially among
evolent Germans, a favorite thesis that if only
11 treated the Jews like good Germans they
Jd soon become so. And this theory was eagerly
r Pted by the Jew’s of the enlightenment because
'as both extremely useful and extremely flatter-
lt opened the doors of Western life; it threw’
responsibility for any Jew’ish qualities that
' didn t look squarely upon their Gentile op-
"ors. There was the additional inner glow
the theory that the Jew’s consented gener-
iV . to f° r £tve and forget. They plunged head-
A mto patriotism and war and continued to
improve themselves into citizenship long after
1 jf-ntile proponents of the scheme of improve-
nad given it up as a bad job.
It is not to be supposed that the Jews were
the only people whom the nationalistic state
attempted at earlier or later periods to “im
prove” into the uniformity that citizenship
has been supposed to demand. The Germans
“improved” Poles; the Italians are “improv
ing” the (ierman Tyrolese; the Poles are
“improving” Ruthenians; everyone knows the
belligerent American who insists that Kikes,
Wops, Hunkies, Dagoes, Greasers are to get
out or to be “improved” into the image of
himself. But the Jews are, for obvious rea
sons, the only people who accepted the theory
of “improvement” and cooperated with it and
w’ho are doing so, especially in America, to
this very day. They are afraid that if they
let the theory of improvement go, they will
be in danger of being denied the rights and
privileges that were once, long ago, made con
tingent upon that improvement. I his is the
fear that I seem to have aroused recently by plead
ing for a minimum of cultural rights for our
selves.
The time has come to examine critically the doc
trine of the nationalistic master-state and its pre
tensions by which the majority of Americans still
live—to examine that theory whereby the rights
which the citizen delegates to the state can be
abrogated and ought to be abrogated unless the
citizen shares the tastes, opinions, memories, even
superstitions of a majority that constitutes itself
a norm. The state has often been likened to an
organism and it is a story as old at least as Herbert
Spencer that the upw’ard curve of organic develop
ment is from homogeneity to heterogeneity, from
the dead monotony of the primitive uni-cellular
organism to the infinite complexity of man. Now
it is perfectly clear that, whether we allow the
analogy of the state to an organism or not, civiliza
tion tends, like life, to exchange simple and rigid
forms of expression for complex and richly dif
ferentiated forms. And it would almost seem upon
reflection that the theory of the nationalistic state,
by which varieties of human character, tradition,
opinion, reaction, speech, folkway, are constantly
endangered and obliterated, is a continuous brake
upon the wheels of development, an uninterrupted
repression of the expansive and humanizing forces
within society.
This suspicion grows into a certainty so soon
as we examine the motives which impel the ma
jority to demand “improvement,” assimilation,
I ike-minded ness. For the chief of these motives is
a primitive animal fear. There is no reason for
demanding uniformity of taste, instinct and ac
tion of the citizen of the state except one—the sur
vival of the uniform. The herdman fears and wel
comes the thought of w'ar with an obscure and im
memorial ambivalence. And w’hat, his primitive
psyche says to him, w hat if I w’ant or need, out of
fear or arrogance, to fight and Moses Levy shares
neither my terrors nor my rancors and is not uni
form wdth me and will not be stuck into a uniform
LUDWIG LEWISOHN
. . . IT ill he ask nothing, be nothing, teem nothing
on his ownf . . .
and herded in a camp and consent to rot in
trenches? What then?
It is a sufficiently tragic fact that many Jews,
especially in America, are themselves more or less
infected by these primitive emotions. But for them
it is a distinct retrogression or, at best, a merely
protective gesture. What I would ask them to do
is to reflect closely upon this matter. Is it not
clear, as John Stuart Mill pointed out long ago,
that the test of the true civilization of a state is
the extent to which it can harbor, without friction,
the greatest and richest variety of character, experi
ence, cultural multiformity? When, then, the re
currence of the theory of hundred percentism of
dead uniformity in terms so insistent and acrid that
Jews themselves are afraid not to bring in the
tribute of at least a lip-worship? Because the aver
age pagan, be he Latin or Nordic, subconsciously
conceives of the citizen as a potential soldier, a
recruit, a gullible machine, a robot. “Theirs not
to reason why,” wrote the great tribal bard of
Victorian Fngland, “theirs but to do and die!”
The inculcation of this loathsome ethical mental
degradation as a patriotic and civil duty is the last,
subtlest, most horrible trick of the capitalistic,
nationalistic master-state.
During the World War both Jewish Americans
and German Americans came to me with the
feeble murmur: “We earn our living here; we
must conform.” Why? They could not tell me.
It is no privilege to earn one’s living or build one’s
house or beget one’s children anywhere upon the
green earth for any man. It is his right. He co
operates with his fellowmen in his time and place,
for convenience and security he delegates, as
Thoreau pointed out, certain of his rights. But cer
tain rights only. And in a civilized society he would
be at liberty to withdraw those rights when he
found that his delegations of them was being mis
used. This withdrawal of it was what Thoreau
called the right and duty of civil disobedience.
Now the habit of civil disobedience is not only
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iE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE
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