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No 15. Vienna, 15 April 1898. Second Year.

Letter to the Jews of Italy*).

By Dr. Max Nordau.

No Jew in the world is so astonishing an example of the marvellous adaptability of the Jewish race as the Italian Jew.

Subdued by the Romans after struggles that will be our everlasting glory, the Jews pressed boldly into the land of their conquerors, and even before the destruction of the second Temple the Roman community had been able to become one of the first, if not the first, of the Diaspora. The Jew forthwith forgot the evil which the Roman sword had done him, in order to enjoy the "pax Romana" everywhere. The dread Roman eagle, which he had seen menacing him amid the wild tumult of battle upon the holy soil of Palestine, became his guide, whom he followed trustfully whithersoever it went; and we find the Jew in every province, in the north of Africa, in Spain, in Gaul, in Germania under the shelter of the castles, as the ward of the vexillum, as the inseparable companion of the legions.

At first a Roman by compulsion, the Jew of the Empire became without hesitation a Roman in his speech, his feeling and his conviction, and so he has remained through all the changes of the times. Italy was the land of those who had driven him finally out of his homeland; upon its soil rose the triumphal arch of Titus. The reliefs of that arch preserved the likeness of the sacred vessels which had been wrested from the sanctuary by the temple-desecrating hand of its destroyers. Italy invented the Ghetto, the word and the thing; it laid upon the Jews the cruel compulsory sermon and the monstrous ignominy of the Carnival race along the Corso. And in spite of all the ignominy and the pain, the Jews of Italy loved this land of sunshine and of beauty most tenderly and regarded themselves as its children — ill-treated children, like Cinderella, but its children none the less.

The emancipation of the Jews was in Italy not, as in certain other countries, an act of adoption, but an act of legitimation. I have surely no need to enter more closely into this distinction. The law which conferred political rights upon the Jews altered indeed their situation in the State, but not their feelings. They

*) In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the emancipation of the Jews in Sardinia.

had for nearly two thousand years regarded themselves as the sons of the Italian soil; they now saw themselves acknowledged as such as well. That was all. And quite naturally, without pose and without gesture, they took their place in the family and fulfilled their duties, all their duties, as sons of the house. Upon every page of the history of the Risorgimento*) Jewish names shine forth, among the martyrs as well as among the heroes. In a nation where everyone, or almost everyone, has talent, they have known how to win an honourable place among their fellow-citizens and not to be the last in literature and the arts, in science and in political life.

Until the year 1848, you Jews of Italy, you were the Jews of Italy; from that time on you are Italian Jews. What will you be to-morrow? Simply "Italians," even without the epithet "Jew," which still calls your past to mind? There are people who assure me of it. I am told that the majority of Italian Jews — pardon! of Jewish Italians — have forgotten even their descent, cherish no Jewish interest any longer, no longer know the history of their people, do not wish to know it, remain untouched by the sufferings and the hopes of their brethren in other lands, and will no longer let this brotherhood hold good at all, nor let any bond subsist between themselves and those of their blood who live beneath a less blue sky and beneath a less radiant sun. Is that true? I will not believe it. Since you are free, you must be proud. You cannot have forgotten a descent which in its way is as full of glory as even that of the Quirites! And if you remember your forefathers, you must have preserved a little love, a little reverence for their traditions, a little family tenderness for the great Jewish family.

Italians you are to the innermost marrow — who would venture to dispute it? And yet I have the conviction that in the depths of your heart you have preserved for yourselves Jewish feelings which will know how to vibrate in unison with the Jewry of other lands. And when one day your scattered brethren shall make a great effort to win once more a place of honour upon this earth, where they have so long been despised men without a fatherland, then, I hope,

*) The resurrection of Italy. (Editors' note.)