Die Welt

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No. 25. | Vienna, 20 June 1902. | 6th Year

The Jewish Paradox.

By Leo Rafaels.

Our kinsmen in England, and above all the involuntary ones among them, are at present tormented by a nightmare of the worst kind — in spite of South Africa and the Coronation, they unceasingly occupy the imagination of the Christian world. We know this feeling of dread from our own experience, and we offer the poor Jews of the West End of London our deepest sympathy. It is among the perversities of the Jewish ghetto-soul that it feels most at ease when it may lead its separate existence quietly and unnoticed in some dark corner; what is the highest happiness to other individuals and to other peoples, namely esteem and renown, causes us discomfort, evil forebodings, and all those feelings of disquiet which an insecure present and a dark future engender. The public opinion of England has too much to do with us Jews. That a Royal Commission is taking pains to acquaint itself on every side with the burning Jewish question of Whitechapel, in order at least to make an attempt at a solution, is assuredly no pleasure for the Jews of Park Lane; for — let the gentlemen deny it as loudly and as often as they please — the rich Jew is marked with weals when his poor kinsman is flogged. Indeed, it is just as in Raimund's fairy-play: the Jewish pedlar may be a hundred miles away from the Jewish millionaire, and yet they are inseparably bound up with one another; when the pedlar falls into the water, the millionaire is drowned.

Thus the mere inquiry into alien immigration in London robs the involuntary Jews of England of their sleep; but what signify the incidents of the inquiry, what signify the statements of nameless witnesses, beside the utterances of celebrated English writers who have for some time been occupying themselves with Judaism and the Jews! A few weeks ago I reported the naive astonishment of Rider Haggard ("Die Welt," No. 16, of 18 April of this year), who cannot comprehend why the Jewish millionaires of Europe maintain thousands of Jewish beggars and encourage them to continue to all eternity the sorry farce of aimless weeping before the Wailing Wall, instead of acquiring the soil of their fathers with a trifle of capital and turning the restless schnorrers into settled landowners; to-day there lies before me the reflection of a second English Christian, which is causing many of our kinsmen in England bitter hours. G. S. Street, it would seem, has as little notion of Zionism as Rider Haggard; he can scarcely have learned, either, that a great rebirth of the Jewish spirit is taking place in our day; and it is precisely for this reason that his observations carry such striking force. G. S. Street is merely an observer and a "feeler" (if one may be permitted to coin this word in place of the nebulous "impressionist"); he contents himself with depicting the evil and depicting the feelings which it arouses in his mind. Whence comes the malady? How is it to be cured? To ask that is not his calling. For to-day I shall content myself with reproducing Street's observations in the "National Review" without marginal comment; perhaps some Jew will feel moved to write the needful commentary upon the Christian's philippic.

"The poor Jew fasted or ate dry bread when he could not get kosher meat; the rich Jew eats trefa meat because no other is to be had at the Hotel Savoy. The poor Jew put on his phylacteries even in the presence of the Gentile; the rich Jew is ashamed of the Day of Atonement. The poor Jew would rather endure any persecution, even death at the stake, than profess a religion which he despised; the rich Jew goes to church because it makes a good impression on indifferent neighbours. The poor Jew was proud of his people when it was despised and reviled; the rich Jew, now that in England no one but a fool despises the Jews, changes his name and hopes to be taken for a Scotsman. The poor Jew clung to his heritage, though the world should crush him for it; the rich Jew lets it go to win a disdainful smile. The poor Jew was a man of worth, in spite of his faults worthy of a glorious past; the rich Jew is a hypocrite who scarcely deserves his unworthy present. That is the Jewish paradox. I speak of rich Jews now living in England, and I add at once that I do not mean all of them; I know very well that many of them — and among them are the most respected names — of their descent just as