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■WHY ARE JEWS PERSECUTED’
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A Christian Leader Tries to Answer This Age-Old Question
JOHN HAYNES HOLMES
He has a simple problem.
As 1 look at Germany in this dread
hour 1 seem to see a curtain lifting on
the panorama of the dark ages of the
past. I see the Russia of the Czars, and
the Black Hundreds killing the Jews as
they would kill so many rats in a cel
lar. 1 see the Spain of the Inquisition,
and the expulsion of the Jews, which led
to the downfall of that country. I see
the destruction of Jerusalem and the
scattering of a helpless and homeless
people to the four corners of the earth.
I see the long years of ghettos and syn
agogues, of pogroms and massacres,
which constitute the darkest chapter in
the history of Christianity. I see a
small and feeble group of men and
women, a few millions among the hun
dreds of millions of the world, harried
and hunted, tortured and spat upon,
writhing in agony and dying in blood,
treading through every century and in
every nation that perpetual I’ia Dolo
rosa which Christ trod on that fateful
day when he made his way to crucifix
ion—that crucifixion, as we now know,
not of one man but of an entire race!
We had thought, in this modern age,
that these horrors were no more. I at
least had never dreamed, in the wildest
stretches of my imagination, that I
should ever seen another wholesale per
secution of Israel. I knew of course
that Jews were everywhere still the ob
ject of discrimination and abuse—the
victims of that prejudice which may be
not inaccurately described as persecu
tion reduced to its lowest terms, or per
secution in the last stages of degenera
tion. I had never supposed, however,
that the violence and terror of earlier
days would return. But now we see the
imminent collapse of our civilization.
Suddenly, without any warning of any
kind, we are being carried back into the
Hark Ages with all their bigotry and
hate, their superstition, ignorance and
savagery. And central today in this
renaissance of barbarism is the persecu
tion of the Jew. Which raises once
again the old familiar question: Why
are the Jews forever persecuted among
men? Why should the Jews be selected,
as it were, out of all the tribes of earth,
to meet “the slings and arrows of outra
geous fortune?” What have the Jews
By JOHN HAYNES HOLMES
Dr. John Haynes Holmes, outstanding
religious teacher of this country, whose
leadership of the Community Church in
New York, has stamped him as one of
the noblest spokesmen of liberal Amer
ica, analyzes anti-Semitic prejudice.
done, or neglected to do, that in every
country and in every age they should be
obliged to bear the rod of oppression
and face the sword of massacre? Is
there anything peculiar about these peo-
people—any quality that challenges hate,
or any danger that dictates destruc
tion? What is the meaning of this per
petual mystery of a tortured tribe and
an outraged people? This is the ques
tion which I shall attempt so far as pos
sible to answer.
The first thing that I would empha
size is the simple fact, not often recog
nized or remembered, that the Jews are
not alone in their experience of perse
cution. The agony which they endure
is an agony which they have shared
with other racial and religious groups.
The Jews, for example, were not the
first to see their country ruined, their
capital leveled to the ground and their
people scattered to distant countries and
among alien races. This was the fate
which Rome visited upon Carthage
three hundred years before Titus visited
it upon Jerusalem. The Jews are not
the only people who have been tortured
and slain for heresy. What they suffered
at the hands of Antiochus Epiphanes the
Christian martyrs suffered at the hands
of Nero and Diocletian. The Jews were
not the only victims of the Spanish In
quisition. The pains they endured were
the same pains which were ruthlessly in
dicted upon thousands and thousands of
perfectly good Christians. The Jews
were not the only people to be expelled
in a body from the only country they
ever knew. The expulsion of the Hugue
nots from France in the reign of Louis
XIV was not less terrible than the ex
pulsion of the Israelites from Spain in
the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. More
than a thousand years ago the Christian
Albigenses in southern France were utter
ly exterminated by the bloody sword of
Simon de Montfort. Less than one hun
dred years ago the Bahaists of Moslem,
Persia, were ravaged in a massacre
which, among other things, took the lives
of thirty thousand men and women in a
single day. The same period which wit
nessed the Russian pogroms witnessed as
well the Bulgarian atrocities and the Ar
menian massacres. In Germany today
the Jews are meeting no more ghastly a
fate than the Socialist Republicans on the
one hand and the Red Communists on the
other. The Jews, in other words, have
no monopoly of suffering. They are not
the only people who have been persecuted
by their fellows. Which means that there
must be certain general causes of persecu
tion which apply to all peoples under the
same given conditions!
Yet the Jews are unique in this hideous
field of oppression and death—unique in
the sense that their sufferings are uni
versal and eternal. They have been
despised and rejected not in one place
but in every place; they have been tor
tured and butchered not in one age but
in every age. Which would seem to im
ply that there are some special factor*
work in their case which for some reason
do not appear anywhere else! Th< pro!
lem before us is therefore a simple one
It is to discover, on the one hand, what
are the causes which lead to persecution
in general; and, on the other hand, what
are the specific causes which operate in
the life of Israel.
Before coming to grips with thi-s prob
lem, I want to answer a question, ot
rather meet an indictment, which alwav*
appears whenever we encounter the rid
die of discrimination or prejudice agaimt
the Jews. Why are Jews persecuted-
Because, we are invariably told, the Jew»
are an objectionable, even an obnoaiou*
people. In their natural condition thn
are dirty and unclean. In their higher
condition they still remain coarse, vulgar
and unrefined. Always, we are informed,
they are loud-mouthed, arrogant and in
trusive. Jews have no standards of cul
ture and no good tnanners, and are thu*
a constant offense to decency. In their
personal habits they are unendurable. In
their business methods they are shrewd
and cunning, and almost invariably un
scrupulous. Exploiters not only of other
but of their own people, they are utterh
materialistic and have no higher passion
in life than that of money-making. No
body can live, or at least wants to live,
with Jews. Wherever they move in even-
body else moves out. They are objection
able even to themselves, for Portuguev
and German Jews arc frequently the first
to Hee from the company of Russian and
Polish Jews. These people are obnoxious
that is all. If persecuted it is for the
same reason that stones are removed from
a road, or weeds torn up from a garden
I think you will agree with me that thi*
is the most frequent charge which i'
brought against the Jews, and the com
monest explanation of the disadvantage'
and ills which they are made to suffer.
What now are we to say to this indict
ment? I would say, with great empha'i'
two things:
In the first place, the accusation i* un
true. In this famous speech in the Briti'h
House of Commons on “The Conciliation
of America” the great liberal orator, Ed
mund Burke, made the immortal state
ment that he did not “know the method
of drawing up an indictment against *
whole people.” What Burke thus said of
Americans is true as well of Jew'
Neither against this people, nor again**
any people, can a charge of universal ap
plication be brought. I am willing to
concede that there are objectionable Jf w --
many objectionable Jews, just as there
are many objectionable persons in ever}
social group. I am willing to concede
that I have seen individual Jews wh' 1
were as obnoxious as any Gentiles I e yfr
met in my life. I am willing to concede
that there are whole sections of the Jewi'»
people, those who are only a generatu ,r
or two removed from the Europea p
ghettos, who are objectionable to a!' p« r
sons of culture and refinement. A
American Jew has himself drawn in '> v
colors the ugly picture of these fellow
tribesmen of his in the pages of that un-
forgettable novel, which most of c* rea
some years ago, “The Rise of Ha'
Levinsky.” I am even willing to cone* f
that the offenses of offensive Jews are _
a peculiarly distinctive and en ph» n '-
character, due, I may hasten to point
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THE SOUTHERN I SR AI LIT*