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No. 50. Vienna, 9 December 1904. — I. Tebeth 5665. 8th Year.

In the Beginning was the Deed.

The largest patch on the map of Europe, together with its neighbouring territories, signifies for Jewish wisdom a Gordian knot, tied fast beyond all loosening out of official caprice, bestial hatred, and the impotence of the persecuted. From every side our politicians tug and pluck at it, sweat gold, and toil, wearying themselves and others to the point of vexation. But like the Baal of old, Jewish misery stands there as a colossus, swallowing our children and our treasures into its glowing belly, pitiless, insatiable.

Yet why should we first bring in our arguments by way of Oderberg, Koenigsberg or Podwoloczyska? Let us remain quietly at home, where the parliaments stand guard over the law-books — over the books in which the moths devour our rights; let us, far removed from all the high-flown tragedy of a political agitator, consider our own fate and that of our children. Ask yourselves, Jews! Not you, the ventriloquists of Jewish politics, whose wisdom jingles from the pocket — but you who languish for a little peace and contentment and cannot attain it, for all your laboriously yet fully discharged duty! The basest people offend you mortally in your honour; in the State you sit in the lowest ranks, and the place of a Jew at the bread-table of an Aryan is a tale out of a fairy-book.

Verily, we Jews stand behind the Kaffirs. These Hereros, who have risen against mighty Germany, have in material value little better to defend than a desert; Germany has marched in to create culture; yet the mere thought of dependence drives these naked bodies with their courageous hearts into the unequal struggle. We Jews prefer to parley and to bargain, with deep bows to every side, and the more often we bend the neck, the more firmly the foot of our oppressors treads upon it.

Thus Herr Rechtsanwalt Mayer and his associates also have occasion to be concerned for the future, One surely still remembers this singular advocate of a peculiar law, who declared that, as a German Jew, he need have neither kinship nor fellow-feeling with his brethren in the East. Surely, then, disclaimers, rebukes and protests rained down upon the "Allg. Ztg. des Judentums," in which this article appeared? Alas and alack — not a single pen stirred to combat the baseness at its place of origin! Neither a society nor an individual was found, in the proper quarter, to repel this kind of antisemitism, and so countless assimilationist Jews gave their assent by silence. But what does this flight into the interior avail? Where is the stronghold of Teutonic Jews, within which they need fear God alone and nothing else in this world? It is not amiss to set before these over-clever people a very cheap piece of wisdom: namely, that they are praising their day before the evening of their children. Just now, on the occasion of an election in Germany, the Liberals have concluded a compromise with the antisemites. That may be something new among the parties. Among the principles it is already an old usage. Liberal tenets have long since made their shabby peace with antisemitic ones, if indeed a capitulation has not taken place. From this alliance spring express laws and tacit traditions, and the gates of learning, of commerce and of trade are ever more densely beset by the hosts of the Jewish proletariat without positions.

In the poor-relief offices and the labour exchanges stands the thermometer of the grace of our host nations. It is falling with alarming rapidity.

This inexact, because feeble, copy of the actual state of Jewish affairs today is still the political idol of those now in power. But the sensitive and the thinkers are alike strongly repelled by it, and it is a hopeful sign for Judaism that everywhere in Western Europe discontented, if not militant, elements are separating themselves from the ruling regime and, on their own account, fulfilling the true tasks of the communities.