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American Jewry, Its Reaction To the Nazi Menace By Dorothy Thompson and Benjamin Stolberg A NTI-SEMITISM, like all ignorance, is easy. To the anti-Semite, no matter how high- falutin his theories, a Jew is a Jew and that settles it. But to the rest of the world, and especially to the Jews themselves, the Jewish prob lem is difficult, ever paradoxical and enigmatic. Unlike the Irish and Poles, the Jews cannot achieve na tional self-determination. They are not a nation. Nationalism must have a homeland, not a nostalgia, such as Zionism, for an alien theocracy now dead for twenty centuries. Palestine is not the fatherland of Messrs. Jus tices Brandeis and Cardozo in the sense in which Poland was always the home of Paderewski or Bohemia the home of Professor Mazaryk. On the whole, the Jewish masses are anti- Zionist, especially in America, partly because Palestine obviously belongs to its native Arabs, partly because they distrust British imperialism, but mainly because they love their own countries. The fact is that the Jew defies definition. To modern anthropology the Jews are no more a race than they are a nation. No “race" is less pure today than are the Jews, who have interbred all over the world for two thousand years. 1'hcy have completely lost their original Arabic identity, un less they he Arab Jews. '1'here are colored and Chinese Jews, who are not converts to Judaism. Nor are the Jews a religious sect. It is obviously unnecessary to believe in any of the several Jewish faiths to be a Jew. 'The most satisfactory explanation of the Jewish problem is still Karl Kaut- sky’s famous theory, now borne out by modern psychoanalysis, that the Jews are a state of mind, the result of a long and agonized history of social malad justments in the non-Jewish world, and that the only cure for Jews is a socialized society which will permit them to assimilate into the national racial groups to which they actually belong. It is essential to understand this will-o’-the-wisp nature of the Jewish question if one wishes to gauge significantly the reaction of the American Jew to Hitlerism. This reaction is deeply hurt, movingly pathetic, clear in indignation, hut con fused in strategy by the different class interests and group attitudes within American Jewry. There are, of course, any number of Jewish or ganizations— fraternal, philanthropic, business, labor, religious, Zionist—which deal with specific Like Moses at Mt. Nrbo, the scene which the artist Mitchell Loeb has depicted on the front cover, was given to the late Louis Marshall after a lifetime devoted to Israel to glimpse the Promised Land only from afar. Hut in that glimpse, which Marshall ivas privileged to ob tain at Zurich, where the Jewish Agency came into being through his efforts, he was enabled to know that at last, through his instrumentality, the entire force of toorld Jewry had been mobilized for Israel’s great dream of the ages. [H] This analysis of how the leaders and masses of Jews in the United States have reacted during the crisis brought on by the Nazi anti-Semitic terror in Germany, is presented through the courtesy of Scribner’s Maga zine. RABBI STEPHEN S. WISE “W hat is bad for the American Jewish Committee is good for the American Jewish Congress, which is en tirely the sounding board of Rabbi Stephen S. ITise." LOUIS stfABSJJALL ‘While he lived he did his best to sabotage the dramatic qualities of Dr. Wise.” purposes. But the Jewish people as a whole are not agreed on the nature of the Jewish problem or on its solution. 'I'herefore no organization rxists.' or can exist, which represents them on the Jewish question as such. It is precisely toward anti- Semitism, which raises this question in all its aspects, that the Jews can leas* achieve a united front. The Jewish banker reacts to anti-Semitism very differently from the Jewish store keeper. And the rabbis, who necev sarily have a vested interest in the Jewish problem, react very differently from the Jewish wage-earners, whose interest is to liquidate it. The American upper Jewish classes reacted to the Nazi pogroms cau tiously, conservatively, diplomatically. 'The professional Jews, those who] make a career of Jewishness, reacted with intense race-consciousness. Mr. Ludwig Lewisohn, who has a consid erable following among the younger Jewish chauvinists, accepts completeh Hitler’s own impassioned apotheosT of “race." To the Lewisohns the Jews are still the Chosen People. I be Jewish masses, on the other hand, re acted to Hitler on socialist or on democratic grounds, at any rate on broad humanitarian grounds, careful not to indict the German people for the misdeeds of the fascist dictator ship. * The American Jewish Committee, which has done extremely valuable work in the postwar rehabilitation of Jewish communities the world over, is controlled by a small group ot wealthy German-American Jews, here for generations. One of its founder^ was the late Louis Marshall, a man of enormous character, simplicity, and honesty, who ran the committee du- For all his extreme conservatism " c had a real feeling for the Jewish masses. I h u > he was extremely sympathetic with the Soviet ex periment of settling Jews on the land. 1 n his leadership the Jewish masses came to look upon the committee as a sort of Red Cross to mee- ravages of anti-Semitism. When the Hitler anti-Semitic outbreak f-' began, the American Jews expected the comnu to meet these outbreaks more effectively than an\ other group. The committee is supported by t f Schififs, the Warburgs, the Lehmans; in short ^ the leaders of Jewish influence and wealth. But 1 is precisely the international bankers and hi- 1 -' ness leaders who proved to be temperamentally t least able to cope with the Hitler fanaticism, very wealthy Jews are race-sensitive from 1 ing of social inferiority with Gentiles of t! r economic station. But they lack the pugnacity the race-conscious chauvinist. Besides, their *>c^ conservatism keeps them from fully realizing true horror of a fascist terror. Their attitu c pretty much that of Jewish wealth in G< They have large investments in Germany. ^ hope to come to terms (Please turn to p<> » THE SOUTHERN ISRA UTE tatorially.