JEALOUSY and hatred have always prevailed upon earth, and more
than his fair share has fallen upon the shoulders of the Jew. Yet, in spite of
persecutions and threats, he clings stoically to his convictions, and looks
upon the tribulations of the world philosophically, proud to be a Jew.
I am proud of my Jewish origin and my Jewish ancestors. I am proud ot
that great man, the first of our race, who, finding a world absorbed in
idolatry, beset with prejudices and baseless fears, laid the corner-stone of
our civilisation by a revelation of the Unseen God.
Even this first Jew soon found that he was surrounded by hatred and
suspicion. He had ventured on the purileus of the “leaders of industry”, who
were economically interested in the man-made gods, carved of wood or stone,
or cast in metal.
THE Jew and his Invisible God were a menace to their wealth, and Father Abraham was beset from the first with hatred and intrigue. The elements of darkness were mobilised against him. A deluded populace, goaded by
imperilled interests, thirsted for his blood; but Father Abraham stood by his convictions. Ivri Anochi - I am proud to be a Jew.
An enslaved race, bent double with work, is toiling among the pyramids
and sphinxes of ancient Egypt. A race avid for spiritual values is forced to
labour among loam and straw, creating memorials for man.
They pay heavily for their inalienable adherence to the highest spiritual
values. Their children are immured alive in the walls of the city, or drowned
in the rivers, and their elders are tortured to death, but still they suffer and do
not flinch. They follow the light that never grows dim intothe desert, preferring the desolation of the wilderness to the fleshpots of Egypt.
For forty years they dwell in the waste, casting off the shackles of their
bondage and preparing for the the initiation of a world civilisation. They are
proud to be chosen as the suffering race. They are proud to be Jews.
THE foundation of our present ethical values was laid on Mount Sinai. A new conception of life and living was received from a people purified by hardship
and dedicated to a great ideal, segregated for forty years from the outside world,who from the outside world, taught to listen only for the voice of God, Whose words they had preserved in granite in the Ten Commandments.
But even in the desert the Jew was not permitted to go in peace. Perse cuted and attacked on all sides, he bore it uncomplainingly, considering it an inevitable, if not essential, concomitant to a true understanding of God’s Word. So a sanctified generation emerged from the desert, detached from all material values, with
a mentality strange to the world, and God’s Word on their lips, proclaiming a
new doctrine to mankind.
They were the first Jews and our forefathers, of whom I am so justly proud.
FALSE prophets delude a purblind people into obstructing the Jew in the
delivery of his message. His image is distorted into a figure of imminent
danger to the comfortable ways of life.
He is a revolutionary out to break up and transform the world, not with the
sword but with a Book. A king whose ambition is to build a palace for his
God, rather than to acquire more territories and conquer more nations, is he
not necessarily suspect, and must not some sinister and dark intent lurk
beneath this semingiy pacific appearance.
For a thousand years, before any of the nations of the earth had acquired knowledge or understanding, the Jew had to carry his burden, invisible and
all-embracing, the creative power of the world, single-handed and
unbefriended, but determined and obdurate; by the very force of his con-
victions multiplying and fortifying the hatred and suspicion which the outer
world had been nourishing against him.
The Jewish kings had to wage war after war for the protection of their people
and the safeguarding of their Temple until the race was dispersed and scattered by their enemies, in the belief that, hopelessly divided, they and their dangerous heresy would be heard no more. But the Temple which was built to the Invisible God has been carried to all the corners of the-earth by ~a people determined and
obstinate, proud to be Jews.
DISPERSED among the nations, heretics unwilling to bow to the adoration
of the physical ideals of the Hellenes, refusing to follow the gods of theRomans;
a people strange in their customs, isolating themselves from all others, leading their own spiritual life, they are mistrusted and fought; even when exhausted they are not left alone for fear lest in their weakness should lie their strength.
Ascetics among peoples who have sanctified the joy of life, they erect in
the place of their Temple spiritual centres, schools of learning and wisdom.
While the multitude throngs to the Greek circus or the Roman Colosseum to
seek pleasures and "live while they live,” the Jew is engaged in the creation of
the Talmud, setting up laws of hygiene for his people, arguing the right and
wrong of man’s relation to God and to mankind.
In bewailing the Temple no spirit of revolt is displayed, or of fatalism
either; for can a people who have continued to exist for thousands of years
and more be accused of such folly? A pious hope that the world might soon
recognise that there is no God but God maintained and strengthened the race in its dispersion, and fortified its faith to withstand all persecutions.
SUCH were the people of Israel thousands of years ago, proud to be Jews.
And when one of them broke from the appointed path and wished to carry
to the world the teaching of His people, He was persecuted and hated no less
than His other brethren. A revolutionary He was, and a martyr He became for
the doctrines He preached.
Surrounded almost exclusively by Jewish followers, who continued with
perseverence and determination to spread His teaching among the nations,
His revolutionary idea of carrying the Word of God beyond the people of
Israel endangering the precarious existence of His co-religionists, necessarily resulted in anxiety and measures of self-protection, with the inevitable
result.
THIS alone, however, was subsequently remembered. Forgotten, deliberately ignored, was the origin, the source from which Jesus Christ carried the Word of God into the world. Only what was convenient for the moment was remembered and that which the Jew feared came true.
A new wave of persecution from the most unexpected quarter assailed him,
but this obstinate, or, rather determined people continued to exist, continued its belief in God as it had been taught—a great race, dis-persed among nations, maintaining its identity, its own customs and living its own life, a proud race, proud to be Jews.
Another disciple of Moses and Christ gave to the East a new meaning in life,
but again, in the name of Allah, it was the Jew who was made to suffer.
A continuous chain of suffering is the Jewish history. No bright spots of victories, conquests or captures; the martyrs are the Jewish heroes, the only conquests are spiritual. The sole variety in a history full of massacres and bloodshed are great Jewish figures, great minds, mockingly looking down upon the raving fanatics below.
MASSACRED and expelled from England, tortured by the Inquision in Spain, ordered out from the country which they helped to form, burnt in France, murdered in Italy, abused and convicted in Germany, accused of the most vile deeds, of drinking Christian blood, of torturing Christian children, the Jew yet survives.
Is it necessary to apologise if the present Jew is not virtue incarnate? Is it, indeed, of use to offer excuses if the Jew suffers from the same weaknesses as his fellow-men? Looking back on the history of the people, is there any wonder that the Jew has not left a monopoly for wrongdoing only to the other nations?
The Jew has gone through the waves of persecution over and over again.
His back may be bent, scars may have remained, but he is still the same, he is
still the Jew, proud in his traditions, clinging to his race, devoted to the teachings of his people. Could I be otherwise than proud to be a Jew?