Part 17

Worst of all is the element of uncertainty as to the interpretation and operation of the laws, which are now lax, now severe, but always means of extortion and a recognized avenue of income for numerous officials.

The greatest hardship suffered comes from the fact that in the villages, only those residents who were there prior to a certain date, are permitted to remain; while the vast majority is herded together in the city Ghettos, which offer but a scant living to the normal population.

The Jewish part of the city, the Ghetto, is invariably sunk in mud or dust, according as there is rain or sunshine, and is the picture of melancholia. Cadaverous men in long, black, greasy cloaks, countless children and women, who alone carry sunshine; for in the Jewish woman’s heart the hope of giving birth to the Messiah is not yet dead.

All of these people are narrow chested, with the melancholy eyes deep set; they have long bodies and short limbs with which they make ambling strides like the camel in the desert.

It is a haggling, bargaining, pushing, crowding, seething mass; ugly in its environment, hard for the stranger to love, cowed by fear, unmanned by persecution; a thing to jeer at, to ridicule, to plunder and to kill.

This is no apology for the Jew. He carries the faults and the sins of ages; not only his own, but those of his persecutors also. He is himself the keenest critic of racial faults, and once awakened to them hates them and his race most unmercifully. His people are greedy, greasy, and pushing, or doggedly humble; as might be expected of hunted human beings, who for 2,000 years have known no peace, wherever the cross overshadowed them. They could escape torment in a moment by having a few drops of holy water sprinkled over them, for baptism opens to all, the door of opportunity. Whatever else may have died, the ancient fire is not dead in them, and they prefer to suffer, to die, if need be, rather than to enter a so-called Christian church through the door of expediency. Sometimes that door has to be entered, but the Jews who enter it are still Jews, and often they suffer agonies of mind and of spirit, to which persecution might be preferable.

A friend of mine in Moscow, a manufacturer of tobacco, who had lived in that city for thirty years, received sudden notice to dispose of his business and leave the city. He was prosperous, his children were going to school, they knew no home but Moscow, and the town to which they were to go was in the crowded Jewish pale which he had left as a child.

He and his family were baptized, he became a full-fledged Russian, with all the rights of citizenship, and his business went on as usual.

Soon afterwards, however, he became depressed, the depression increasing each time that he had to take part in religious ceremonies which were hateful to him, and it was not long before he grew violently insane.

I have no doubt that as soon as the Jewish disabilities are removed, most of those who have entered the Greek Church will return to the faith of their fathers which they have never really left.

It is said in Moscow of a certain Jew, that after the priest had instructed him in the catechism, he asked: “Now what do you believe?” and he replied: “I believe that now I shall not have to leave Moscow.”

Much more than this, these so-called converted Jews do not and cannot believe.

Most of them prefer to live in dirty little hovels, hungry and wretched, to brood over the ancient lore, the Psalms of David, the prophets’ messages from God, the law of Moses and the sayings of the sages. Day and night, while hunger gnaws and poverty oppresses, they look to Jehovah and fast and mourn and believe.

Minsk, Wilna, Kovno, and Warsaw contain Jewries in which from 80,000 to 200,000 souls are living--no one knows how; two-thirds by manual labour, the commonest and the coarsest, for the lowest wage. To-morrow’s bread is always an unknown quantity, and these people do “Walk by faith and not by sight.” No labour is too heavy or too dirty; and the mournful Jewish face will look out at you from the pit of a mine, from under a burden of wood or water, from the margin of the river as boats are unloaded, or from the seat of a miserable cab, whose horse and driver are alike most pitiable. Because of their weak bodies they are not regarded as good labourers, except at tailoring.

Locked in the city, hampered in their movements by unreasonable laws, groaning under taxes too heavy to be borne, the government, labour, religion--life itself a burden, they are living Egypt over again, waiting and praying for their deliverance. Why are they persecuted? Can any one answer that question? Has any one yet found the reason for blind hate, that blindest of all,--the hate of race? They are hated because they are supposed to be rich; yet seventy-five per cent. of them are poorer than Chinese coolies.

They are hated because they have strange customs, because they hold themselves, in a large measure, aloof from the common life. How can they be anything but strangers to the adherents of a religion who choose a holy day, the day of resurrection, to kill them? Easter time is almost invariably the time of persecution. How can they be other than strangers to a church, the ringing of whose bells marks the carnage of hundreds of thousands--murdered for the glory of Jesus--a Jew.

How can they be anything but strangers to a government whose officials will step among the mobs to encourage them, shouting: “Steady boys, keep it up.”

They are hated by the government because they are supposed to be revolutionists. If only they were! The masses of the Jews are so cowed by fear that they are unmanned. They do not know the use of a weapon. Here and there a Jew, alert and keen, sees his misery and is brave enough to defend himself. Many of them advocate Socialism; it attracts them because it knows no race, because it preaches a certain kind of peace, because it is a brotherhood. The Jew does not find in the orthodox church the meek and lowly Nazarene, because the Messiah whom the church preaches, is masked behind church millinery; because the representative of the lowly Nazarene sits upon the throne of the haughtiest autocrat, and because the cross is an ornament and not an element in the salvation of men.

The Jew in Russia is persecuted because he is supposed to use the blood of Gentile children for his passover. This false accusation has followed him through the years, in spite of the fact that those who promulgated it knew that it was false. The shedding of human blood was never one of Israel’s crimes, and killing is a desire which the Jew lost long ago, having never been a master in this art.

The root of the persecution of the Russian Jew is found in his superior ability to cope with the difficulties of existence, in his thrift and shrewdness which know no bounds.]

Frankly, the root of this persecution of the Jews is found in their superior ability to cope with the difficulties of existence in Russia, in their thrift and shrewdness which know no bounds and which have almost crushed in them their spiritual longings, making them a byword among the nations.

But a new inspiration has come to the Jews of Eastern Europe through the Zionistic movement; a revival of Jewish nationalism, a desire to win back the lost Palestine,--the Fatherland of their spiritual sires.

The way back to Palestine is a difficult one and neither their Maccabean spirit nor the wealth they accumulate may avail them as a nation, to reach their goal. But the way there is beautiful, the dream is glorious and the spiritual and physical miracles wrought among the wealthiest and the poorest of them are remarkable. A new literature and a new psalmody are being born, a new Maccabean spirit is filling the emaciated bodies of these sons of Israel, and one of them sings and he but one of thousands:

“Arise, and shine, Jerusalem, In costly jewelled diadem; Put off thy ash strewn garb of gray, In glorious dress, thyself array.

“Jehovah made thy people free; Now that they long for liberty. At end is all thy suffering night, Jerusalem, send forth thy light.

“A note of ancient psalmody Fills heaven and earth with melody; A sacrifice of grateful praise From altars old, we now upraise,

“And God looks pleased from glory down, His smile oh! Israel is thy crown. Put off thy ashen garb of gray, Jerusalem, see thy glorious day.”

But for a long time to come, this Jerusalem will have to be New York, and their Palestine, America.