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L About the Jews Who Are Anxious to Be m proved // 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 (Please turn to page 17) iE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE [5]