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The Writer of the Following Letter Is a Jew:
“Gentlemen:
“‘Because you believe in a good cause,’ said Dr. Johnson, ‘is no reason why you should feel called upon to defend it, for by your manner of defense you may do your cause much harm.’
“The above applying to me I will only say that I have received the books you sent me and read both with much interest.
“You are rendering the Jews a very great service, that of saving them from themselves.
“It takes courage, and nerve, and intelligence to do and pursue such a work, and I admire you for it.”
We cheerfully give the Jews of the United States credit for knowing when they are getting their money’s worth. In the defense that has been set up for them they know that they have not had their money’s worth, neither from Jewish money collectors nor from the “Gentile fronts” to whom the money has been paid. The Louis Marshall line of defense has broken down. The boycott has dribbled into nothingness. Speeches in Congress and editorials in newspapers have sounded too hollow to carry conviction. The Question has proved itself far too big for those who have entered the defense for gain, to satisfy personal grudges, or to win what they feel to be the favor of the stronger side. The Jews long ago quit the course which some of the “Gentile fronts” still continue; the Jews recognized the futility of it.
No intelligent Jew in the United States ever was asinine enough to declare that the Jewish Question is a religious question and that THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT’s investigation of that question constituted “religious persecution.” No Jew known beyond the next street has ever ventured such a silly charge. But it is apparently all that remains for the “Gentile fronts” to shout about. From what can be learned from them they are for the most part men of no religion themselves and they use the term “religious persecution” as a red flag which they think will stir people into action. It is rather curious how the cry of “religious persecution” is used to evoke the spirit of persecution against alleged persecutors.
THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT this week goes out of its course to squelch once and for all this cry of religious persecutions.
Three statements are sufficient to outline the situation:
First, neither directly nor by implication has THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT held that the Jewish Question is a religious question. On the contrary, supported by the highest Jewish authority, this paper has held that the Jewish Question is one of race and nationality. (See Issues of October 9 and 16, 1920; reprinted in the new book, volume two of “The International Jew.”)
Second, there is no religious persecution of the Jew in the United States, unless the agitation of various humane societies for the abolition of “kosher killing” may be considered such. The Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has published a valuable study of the Jewish method of slaughtering animals for food, in which is adduced much scientific evidence to support the conclusion that the Jewish method is “needlessly cruel.” But even this can only with difficulty be stretched into an interference with “the religion of the Jews.” The Jewish method of slaughter as now practiced is not commanded in the Old Testament but in the Talmud, and is, therefore, not religious in the authoritative sense, but traditional. Moreover, there is positive evidence that modern methods achieve the Jewish purpose (the disposal of the blood of the carcass) much better than does the Jewish method. This is the only instance where even remotely the religion of the Jews has been touched.
Third, the fact is that while there is no “religious persecution” of the Jews, there is very much real religious persecution by the Jews. That is one of the outstanding characteristics of organized Jewish life in the United States, its active, unceasing, powerful and virulent attacks upon any and all forms of Christianity which may chance to come to public notice. Now and again we hear of outbreaks of sectarian bigotry between Catholics and Protestants, but these are not to be compared with the steady, relentless, alert, anti-Christian activity of the Jewish organizations. There are doctrinal disputes within the Christian churches, but none that challenge the basis of Christianity itself; organized Judaism, however, is not content with doctrinal disputation, but enlists its vast commercial and political power against everything that it regards as, in its own words, “Christological manifestations.”
Now, these are facts, and being facts, they are important, and they ought to be publicly known.
No President of the United States has yet dared to take his inaugural oath on the open pages of the New Testament—the Jews would denounce him. When General Pershing announced that he considered the morale of the American soldier due to the interest of the Christian men and women at home, the Jews had him cut out the word “Christian.” Various governors of American states, having used the word “Christian” in their Thanksgiving proclamations, have been obliged to excise it on demand of the Jews. The word “Christian” was compelled to be cut out of the officers’ training manual at the Plattsburg training camp. Everything that would remind the child in school that he is living in the midst of a Christian civilization, in a nation declared by the Supreme Court to be founded on Christian principles, has been ordered out of the public schools on Jewish demand.
People sometimes ask why 3,000,000 Jews can control the affairs of 100,000,000 Americans. In the same way that ten Jewish students can abolish the mention of Christmas and Easter out of schools containing 3,000 Christian pupils.
In a nation and at a time when a minority of Jews can print every year a record of apologies they have extorted from public officials for “having inadvertently used the term ‘Christian,’” it is desirable that this charge of “religious persecution” should be placed where it belongs. In the Daily American Tribune, a Catholic daily published at Dubuque, Iowa, appeared a recent headline which said a great deal—Not Persecution of The Jews, But Protection of The Christians.
It is now proposed to let the Jews speak for themselves on this question. The Jewish press has been searched for an authoritative expression charging that the study of the Jewish Question constitutes “religious persecution,” and none has been found. That cry has been reserved for “Gentile fronts” for use among Christians. All the attacks from the Jewish camp are against the doctrines and institutions of the Christians. They have carried on an insistent and successful persecution, and the details of it have filled the Jewish press for years past.
Upon reading the following selections, the remark of Dean Swift will probably come to mind: “We are fully convinced that we shall always tolerate them, but not that they will tolerate us.”
The Red Cross is objectionable to the Jew. H. Lissauer, in The Jewish Times, proposed that the Magen David be substituted for “the red cross” on the Red Cross Society badges worn by Jews.
“We should not let our sensitiveness to charges of intolerance overcome out conscientious religious objections to the cross,” says Mr. Lissauer. The editor of The Jewish Independent thinks the suggestion “is worthy of serious consideration.”
The Gideons are objectionable to the Jew. The Gideons is the name given to the Christian Commercial Travelers’ Association of America, whose efforts are responsible for the Bibles which are to be found in most hotel rooms. This is from the Cleveland Jewish Independent:
“It is quite evident that the Gideons do not know a typically Jewish name when they see or hear one. The Gideons’ object, according to their letterheads, is ‘winning commercial traveling men for Christ’ and the way this is done is by placing a Christian Bible in each guest room of every hotel.
“The Gideons have been at it a long time, long enough to know better, but the other day they sent a letter to Max Cohen of this city, who is a traveling man but the kind the Gideons have no right to ask for funds, and the person who selected him for an ‘easy mark’ certainly should have had better sense.
“Mr. Cohen utterly failed to ‘fall’ for the invitation and instead of sending his little donation he wrote a letter to the secretary, C. A. Johnson, in which he bluntly said: ‘Don’t you think you ought to use better judgement than to ask me to contribute to a strictly religious work opposite to my own belief?’
“If the Gideons insist upon filling up hotels with Bibles that have no business there they should go to the right persons for contributions.”
The Jews do not like the Salvation Army nor the Y.M.C.A. Many thousands of printed lines expressed the fury with which they regarded attempts to “Christianize the Army and Navy” during the war, and the wild arguments with which they sought to make “Y” work and Salvation Army work to appear to be a violation of the principle of no union of Church and State. The same objection was made to religious welfare work during the building of the Panama Canal. If there is any challenge of this on the part of uninformed “Gentile fronts” (the Jews themselves will not challenge it) the evidence can be produced. It is only a matter of space.
The Jews did not like Theodore Roosevelt’s choice of a hymn for the Progressive party:
“With Hon. Oscar S. Strauss as the nominee for the governorship of New York on the Progressive ticket, this question rises: Will the voters on the East Side of New York march to the Progressive battle hymn, ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers,’ or will the song have to be changed to fit the candidate?”—American Israelite.
The Jews hate with a malice beyond expression what they call “mission holes,” that is, a place of instruction maintained by Christian churches where inquiring Jews may learn what Christianity is and, in many instances, where destitute and neglected Jews may receive assistance and counsel. The boast of how “the Jew cares for his own” is given a jolt by the dire need which has called Christian welfare work into Jewish settlements.
This hatred overrode good judgement so completely that in 1911 Assemblymen Heyman introduced into the New York State legislature a bill making it an offense punishable by fine or imprisonment to entice or tempt a minor under sixteen years of age into a religious mission, Sunday school or church without the written consent of the parents or guardian of the minor! The language indicates a part of the contempt in which the welfare work undertaken by Christian institutions for the neediest class of children in America is held by the leaders among the Jews; not by the masses of the Jews themselves, however, except when they are terrified by their leaders.
In St. Louis, application for a charter of the Jewish Christian Association was opposed. The converted Jews wanted an association of their own. They represented that they had been ostracized by the Jews and were desirous of organizing and owning their own meeting place. A referee advised against the charter on the ground that “it would be contrary to the broad spirit of religious freedom guaranteed under the constitution of Missouri.” The referee was, of course, coached by Jews. In the name of religious freedom these Jews opposed giving an association freedom enough to preach the gospel.
In Toronto the Jewish leaders issued a proclamation throughout all Toronto Jewry forbidding the use of reading rooms, baths, dispensaries, motion picture shows or anything else which they described as “the petty bribery of conversionist tricksters who seek for their wealthy donators to open the gates of heaven and find salvation for their sins by converting a weak-minded Jew.”
By the way, all converted Jews are weak-minded or criminal, if we are to believe the hundreds of statements to that effect in the Jewish papers. The Jews are, without exception, superior people until they become Christians; then learn what they are from the Jewish leaders!
Among the nice names for this welfare work are “Jesus holes,” “mission traps,” “Jew-snatchers,” “child stealers.”
It happened that one of the helpers in the Chicago Gospel Mission was principal of a Chicago public school. The Jews raised a great outcry against him, denounced him as unfit to teach children, and guilty of “the moral turpitude of eating food provided by taxes of which a large share is received from Jews, whose children they seek to entice from their parental religion and whose men and women they are seeking to degrade into liars and hypocrites.” All because a competent man was willing to meet Jewish inquirers, or perhaps bring a few of the benefits of civilization into the neglected ghetto. If this school teacher were Christian enough to have a conscience, he would resign, said the Jewish thunderers, and with that never-failing tinge of dark-mindedness they added: “What is done in secret in these haunts can, of course, only be guessed at.”
Talk about bigotry! This from a people who encourage the cry that THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT is engaged in “religious persecution,” though THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT has not yet carried even one of the scores of sensational and important stories which show the Federal Government discovering synagogues and rabbis as agents of the illicit liquor traffic. “These haunts” and hints of the things that may go on there, is the only way the American Israelite can find to refer to welfare works in which some of the best people, from no motive but the goodness of their hearts, engage.
A book of about 500 pages could be filled with the unreasonable and in many cases positively vicious statements of leading Jews on any of the subjects touched here.
The Jews do not like the Christian Sabbath. The literature of attack against this institution is voluminous and the arguments extreme. Sunday is Christian, therefore to the Jew it is taboo. Court records in every state bear testimony to the fight of the Jews against Sunday. Few legislatures have escaped being pestered with bills on the subject. The latest fight has been the strongest yet waged, to destroy Sunday by throwing it wide open to Jewish exploitation. Yet the Jews are most chary of their own Sabbath. When recent college examinations fell on Jewish holy days, the Jews had the examinations changed. When primary elections last year fell on Jewish days, every power was moved to change them . There are Jewish records of a western governor being remonstrated with because a condemned criminal was sentenced to be hanged on Saturday—did the governor mean to “offend 3,000,000 Jews”? The St. Louis Charity Fair in 1908 planned to remain open on Friday evening; a great outcry; did the managers of that fair mean to insult the Jews; didn’t they know that the Jewish Sabbath began on Friday night?
But when it is a question of maintaining the integrity of Sunday—pooh! pooh! “Don’t the Christians know that Sunday perpetuates the silliest superstition, that their god Jesus rose from the dead?” When certain people aid the post office employes in an attempt to close the post offices on Sunday, the Jews regard it as a step back toward the dark ages.
Here is a Jewish editorial relating to Governor Cox. It appears that Governor Cox in 1914 stood for a decent Sunday and liquor law enforcement, and this is the threat held out to him:
“At the 59th Jackson Day banquet of the Wayne County (Ohio) Democracy, which was held at Wooster, Governor Cox made the principal address in which he defended laws passed at his instigation. The governor laid particular stress on the fact that for the first time in her history, Ohio now enjoys a ‘Christian Sabbath.’
“‘I stand or fall by the Christian Sabbath in the next campaign,’ the governor is reported to have said . . . .
“There are many who construe the declaration to mean that Governor Cox has bid defiance to the liberal element of the state and will rely upon the religious and class prejudices which he is arousing and keeping alive in the rural districts, to re-elect him to his present office, or, what is clearly plain from his entire attitude, boost him into the nomination for United States Senatorship. The Israelite will take great pleasure about the time the leaves begin to turn in reminding Governor Cox of his statement that he ‘will stand or fall by a Christian Sabbath’ in the coming campaign.”—American Israelite.
The literature of Jewish thought toward Sunday presents complete evidence of the leaders’ antagonism to this distinctly Christian and Anglo-Saxon institution. Sunday has never been regarded as set apart, in those countries where the Jewish idea has most infiltrated. The decline of Sunday in the United States is directly along the line of those invasions of the Sunday spirit which are mostly aligned with Jewish commercial interests. In Great Britain and her colonies where the Jew is not permitted to usurp a superior place as chief censor of morals and religion and education, Sunday is decently observed. The situation in this country is that, instead of enjoying its liberty, the Jewish leaders have taken liberties. The student who wishes to know how deep and hard-set is the anti-Sunday program will find all the material he wants in Jewish sources.
The theme of this article is “religious prejudice.” You will not find it anywhere within the whole range of the Jewish Question, except on the Jewish side. There is, in the United States, a religious prejudice, but it is strictly Yiddish. If the Christian population bothered one one-hundred-thousandth part as much about Jewish religion as the Jews bother about Christian observances, the whole fabric of Talmudical teaching would be consumed in the bright light to which general attention would bring it, the bright light from which it has always been concealed. Sheer analysis in the interest of mental health, if undertaken by fifty men, would compel the Jewish people by their own decision to abandon the darkness which holds them now. Jewish Talmudism owes its existence today to the indifference with which it is regarded. This is the far opposite extreme of “religious persecution.”
The list of headlines describing the various angles of Jewish anti-Christian religious prejudice is not, however, exhausted.
The Jew is prejudiced against the Bible. When he uses that term, he does not mean what the ordinary person means. Therefore, he does what he can to destroy public honor of the Book, unless it be an occasion where a President has been inaugurated, when it will run through the Jewish press like a strong breeze that once more has a Christian statesman ignored the Christian Bible and turned to the Jewish Bible. It is rather a trifling matter to mention; its significance comes solely from the light it throws on the Jewish attitude. It is not a trifling thing in Jewry, as the country will probably be made aware if any future President should be sworn in with, say, the Sermon on the Mount open before him.
And yet, even here, we observe a strange paradox. A Jewish authority says: “The Jew is a paradox. He is at once an idealist and a materialist. He is parsimonious and extravagant. He is courageous and cowardly. He is modest and vulgar. He is persistent and yielding. He is peaceful and warlike”—and so on. And though the Jew opposes the Bible in the schools, he never misses a chance to put it there, with the Jewish trade-mark. He quotes the Psalms—“We wrote them.” He quotes Isaiah—“We Jews did that.”
Most people sit open-mouthed at these glorious authors of Scripture and do not know how to answer. It is time the Churches began to learn what to say to the Jewish taunts—“We gave you your god;” “We gave you your bible;” “We gave you your savior.” Perhaps it is also time that the Jews themselves considered how long the boast will stand the usage they are giving it.
In any case the literature which the Jews wrongfully claim as their own production, is rather far distant in time to justify its being used as a mantle of glory for the political rabbis, the discredited theatrical and movie magnates, and the violent penmen of the Jewish Press. Rather too distant in time! We, the race that confronts the Jews, have done somewhat more recent work; for example, the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation, not to mention the psalms and pronouncements of great American prophets that have lifted up the world.
So, the Jew is very willing that the Bible should be in the schools, provided it is not what he calls “the Christian Bible.” Listen to this:
“Hebrew is to be taught in the Chicago high schools. Students who include this language in their course are to receive the credit now allowed for the study of other classical languages. Of infinite value in the training of the mind are the wonderful narratives of Genesis, and boys and girls will find the history of Israel under the Judges much more appealing than Caesar’s bridge over the Rhine.”
The people of New Jersey thought so, too; they believed that a reading from this ancient book every day would mean much to the general culture of the pupils. But what did the paper just quoted say about it? It called the cultivated Bible appreciators of New Jersey “soul-snatching enthusiasts” and raised a mighty yell about “the forcible conversion of Jewish children,” although it was provided that Jewish or any other children should be excused from the reading if desired. Another mighty yell about excusing the children all on account of the tyranny of reading the Christian Bible in the schools—regardless of the fact, which every school teacher knows, that no class of children is oftener out of school for religious reasons than are the Jews.
Truly, these people are a paradox. They are not fair. They are constituted so that they cannot see the other side of anything. For a time they actually do convince the secularists that everything public should be secularized down to the last notch of atheistic demand. Non-Jews are fair. They are willing to see the other people’s point of view. When it was said to us that the “Merchant of Venice” was a cruelty upon Jewish school pupils, we said, without investigation, “Out goes the Merchant, then!” We discovered later that the Jewish children liked and appreciated the play better than any other group. Brander Matthews helped us discover that.
And so when they said, “Reading the Bible is sheer proselytizing; it isn’t fair,” the non-Jew, who wanted to prove that he is fair and unprejudiced above all things else (a weakness the Jews know how to manipulate), said, “Well, then, out goes the Bible!” And it went out. Very well! What next? “You must abolish Christmas, too.” “You must not keep Easter—the Jews don’t like it.” “It is anti-Semitic to observe Good Friday.” In other words, to please the sensitive Jewish natures we must eradicate from Christian civilization all that is Christian in it.
In the meantime what transpires? Having induced “fair-minded” non-Jews to do all these things—and every one above enumerated has been done over and over again at Jewish demand—the Jews then proceeded to sow Judaism on the fields thus denuded of Christianity. “No religion in the institutions of the State”—yet in every state university last year there were, and in every state university this year there probably will be, courses of lectures delivered by Jewish rabbis—the lectures delivered in the colleges themselves—propagandizing the youth of the non-Jews with Judaistic religion, ethics, and economics. That is what the so-called Jewish “Chautauqua” exists for. It is not a Jewish “Chautauqua”; it is Jewish propaganda in public educational institutions.
That is the repayment the Jews have made for our “fair-mindedness.” Their demand for complete secularization is merely their preparation of the soil for their carefully organized sowing of the seed of Judaism. And non-Jews permit it to continue, for there is nothing they fear so much as that their opposition will be regarded as “religious prejudice.”
The Jew glories in religious prejudice, as the American glories in patriotism. Religious prejudice is the Jews’ chief expression of their own true patriotism. It is the only well-organized, active and successful form of religious prejudice in the country because they have succeeded in pulling off the gigantic trick of making not their own attitude, but any opposition to it, bear the stigma of “prejudice” and “persecution.” That is why the Jew uses these terms so frequently. He wants to label the other fellow first. That is why any investigation of the Jewish Question is so quickly advertised as anti-Semitism—the Jew knows the advantage of labeling the other man; wrong labels are most useful.
This does not by any means exhaust the list of headlines describing the various avenues in which the expression of virulent Jewish religious prejudice and persecution is found. But it exhausts the space allotted to these articles each week. Therefore, the subject will be concluded next week.
It is not a pleasant subject. Religious prejudice is just as unpleasant to write about as it is to experience in any other way. It is totally contrary to the genius of the American and the Anglo-Saxon. We have always regarded religion as a matter of conscience. To believe as he will is part of every man’s fundamental liberty. To interfere with force to change anyone’s belief is exceedingly stupid.
Holding these hereditary principles, one chooses to study that active stream of influence in American life which is known as the Jewish stream, and immediately upon doing so, one finds himself classed with the bigots and torturers of other times.
It is now time to show that the cry of “bigot!” is raised mostly by bigots. There is a religious prejudice in this country, there is, indeed, a religious persecution, there is a forcible shoving aside of the religious liberties of a majority of the people, and this prejudice and persecution and use of force is Jewish and nothing but Jewish.
This is the answer to the cry of “religious persecution,” and we shall make it so complete and definite that a repetition of the cry against students of the Jewish Question will automatically mark the criers as either too ignorant or too vicious for consideration.
[THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT, issue of 4 June 1921]