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The fiery message of hate swept through the
peoples at a time when the Church was the most
powerful institution in Western civilization, and
owned about one-third of the land of Europe.
Then it was considered righteous to slaughter
Jews, to burn their communities wholesale in their
synagogues.
And when the persecutors were tired of slaying
with steel, great armed masses drove their tiny,
unarmed minorities into swamps and marshes,
and watched them drown while the Hebrew
voices cried out, “Hear, O Israel, there is but one
CiOD.
So it had gone on. The Ghettos were created
as a privilege—as a refuge for a tormented people.
They became their prisons. The populations grew,
but the area of the (ihettos did not. The slum
became the only legal dwelling-place of Jewry
for generations, until it became their habit. Po
groms followed right up to the present day.
flow did Jewry survive? Why did they not
abandon their race, their religion, life itself, rather
than suffer such everlasting torment? The an
swer is the Spark in them. That Spark of vital
| inspiration, of profound understanding, of passion
ate faith, fostered and developed by their cen
turies of suffering and their lack of mundane
glory, produced the great religions of the world,
and that same Spark kept life in them—kept them
together.
Their history is not a history of conquest; it
is the history of their religion. Their national
heroes are not conquerors but martyrs. However
battered, however twisted, however distorted their
minds, their souls, their bodies, their very faith
might become, the Spark has remained.
They know that great things are not easy, but
difficult. Great inspirations, great understanding,
great insight, which is theirs, are not easily to be
realized or appreciated by the world. The Spirit
in them is obscure and secret and reaches to the
Absolute. Their messages are traditionally in
parables are hard to understand. That is why
they go on and will go on.
It is hard to belong to the despised people
whose name is associated with shame—to look
back up the long line of ancestors and forward
down the long line of posterity, to accept from
the fathers and pass on to the children the badge
of suffering which is the badge of Israel, to un
derstand the averted eye, the dropped voice, the
limp hand.
But we should not complain. We are strangers
in every land, but we can also be proud of our
lesser, our more readily accepted, contributions.
There is no branch of human activity in art, in
science, in literature, in philosophy, even in ath
letics, in which Jews in every country have not
played a leading part.
Even in war, a people who have not fought as
a nation for 2,000 years are distinguished. They
were the classic warriors of the past, but they
have lost the aptitude for hitting back from always
being an utterly hopeless minority, a mere handful
against a nation. Joshua, Samson and David, and
Judas Maccabeus, the heroes of our early history,
are household words. (Please turn to page 16)
I HAVE been asked to
w rite about the contribu
tion that Jew T ry has made
to humanity. The answer is
simple. It is monosyllabic.
In the true comprehension
of it lies the solution of the
eternal Jewish question and
it the great human question.
What have the Jews given
to the world? The answer
is—GOD.
There is nothing either
hla>phemous or irreverent in
this statement. If it bring
a sh(K'k to some people it
only show’s how far they
have departed from the
straight and narrow path of
truth and reality into the by-
wav > of pleasant fiction.
The most devout, the most
faithful, the most orthodox,
must agree that either God
chose to manifest himself
through the Jewish people or
that it is the tragic fate of
Israel to have had the power
<>t interpreting God to the
world.
I he sceptic and the atheist
cannot fail to observe that
the openings of two of the
(jospels are occupied by a
careful record of the Jewish
descent of the Saviour; and
that He spoke principally as a Jew to Jews.
I hey w’ill also observe the extent to w'hich
Mohammed w r as indebted to Israel. He accepts
not only the Old Testament and the Prophets,
hut much of the New. The scribes who set down
the Koran for him were Jewish rabbis.
So one observes the great spiritual developments
°f mankind: the Hebraic root the great branch
°i ‘he West, Christianity; the great branch of
the Last, Mohammedanism. Through these the
f er part of the human race and almost all of
c'ivi ized humanity approach God.
l or twenty centuries the Jews have been per-
s ev ted for denying Christ. But it can be fairly
d whether the Christians have ever accepted
teachings.
Hs Church divided into warring fragments
ac the face of the earth, the pages of its his-
blotted with the accounts of the most ap-
Pa ng w’ars and persecutions—can they truly
0 n to have accepted His teachings?
an one today turn to a single Christian country
•n say here the teachings of Christ predominate?
t true to say that His pure and simple w T ords
Opinion Magazine.
LORD MELCHETT
"Then it was considered righteous to slaughter Jews.’
have been clarified in the past two thousand years,
or have they been obscured ?
But what of Israel? What of this tiny people
whose task it has been to be the vehicle of such
great spiritual experiences—whose moral laws
have been adopted by the world, and whose litera
ture was Holy before the civilized peoples of to
day could read or write?
How came it that they should be cast for this
tragic role in the human story—that they, giving
so much, should suffer most of all the peoples?
The persecution of the Jewish people is age
long. It is one of the most terrible stories in the
world. There are some who imagine that it com
menced after the Crucifixion. It is far older. It
begins under Pharaoh before the days of Moses.
Moses was forced to fly from Egypt because he
killed an Egyptian overseer who was lashing a
slave, for the Jews were slaves in Israel. It con
tinues with the Exile in Babylon: “By the waters
of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we re
membered Thee, O Zion.” Then the great ex
pulsion by the Romans, followed by comparative
peace in Exile, until the Crusades.
T>E SOUTHERN ISRAELITE *
By Lord Melchett
Itrd Melchett, son of the late Alfred Mond, England's
hg industrialist, is looming as the most significant
igurc world Jewish leadership. This article published
here through the courtesy of the Manchester Sunday
Chronide, presents young Lord Melchett’s outlook on
Judaism-
Victorious ?
What Has the Jew Given to the World ?