“I have looked this year and last for something in your paper about the prayer which the Jews say at their New Year. But you say nothing. Can it be you have not heard of the Kol Nidre?”
“Lately in three cities I have heard a Jewish religious hymn sung in the public theaters. This was in New York, Detroit and Chicago. Each time the program said ‘by request.’ Who makes the request? What is the meaning of this kind of propaganda? The name of the hymn is ‘Eli.’”
The Jewish year just passed has been described by a Jewish writer in the Jewish Daily News as the Year of Chaos. The writer is apparently intelligent enough to ascribe this condition to something besides “anti-Semitism.” He says, “the thought that there is something wrong in Jewish life will not down,” and when he describes the situation in the Near East, he says, “The Jew himself is stirring the mess.” He indicts the Jewish year 5681 on 12 counts, among them being, “mismanagement in Palestine,” “engaging in internal warfare,” “treason to the Jewish people,” “selfishness,” “self-delusion.” “The Jewish people is a sick people,” cries the writer, and when he utters a comfortable prophecy for the year 5682, it is not in the terms of Judah but in the terms of “Kol Yisroel”—All Israel—the terms of a larger and more inclusive unity which gives Judah its own place, and its own place only, in the world. The Jewish people are sick, to be sure, and the disease is the fallacy of superiority, with its consequent “foreign policy” against the world.
When Jewish writers describe the year 5681 as the Year of Chaos, it is an unconscious admission that the Jewish people are ripening for a change of attitude. The “chaos” is among the leaders; it involves the plans which are based on the old false assumptions. The Jewish people are waiting for leaders who can emancipate them from the thralldom of their self-seeking masters in the religious and political fields. The enemies of the emancipation of Judah are those who profit by Judah’s bondage, and these are the groups that follow the American Jewish Committee and the political rabbis. When a true Jewish prophet arises—and he should arise in the United States—there will be a great sweeping away of the selfish, scheming, heartless Jewish leaders, a general desertion of the Jewish idea of “getting” instead of “making,” and an emergence of the true idea submerged so long.
There will also be a separation among the Jews themselves. They are not all Jews who call themselves so today. There is a Tartar strain in so-called Jewry that is absolutely incompatible with true Israelitish raciality; there are other alien strains which utterly differ from the true Jewish; but until now these strains have been held because the Jewish leaders needed vast hordes of low-type people to carry out their world designs. But the Jew himself is recognizing the presence of an alien element; and that is the first step in a movement which will place the Jewish Question on quite another basis.
What the Jews of the United States are coming to think is indicated by this letter—one among many (the writer 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.”
The letter was accompanied by a check which ordered THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT sent to the address of another who bears a distinctively Jewish name.
It is very clear that unity is not to be won by the truth-teller soft-pedaling or suppressing his truth, nor by the truth-hearer strenuously denying that the truth is true, but by both together honoring the truth in telling and in acknowledging it. When the Jews see this, they can take over the work of truth-telling and carry it on themselves. These articles have as their only purpose: First, that the Jews may see the truth for themselves about themselves; second, that non-Jews may see the fallacy of the present Jewish idea and use enough common sense to cease falling victims to it. With both Jews and non-Jews seeing their error, the way is opened for cooperation instead of the kind of competition (not commercial, but moral) which has resulted so disastrously to Jewish false ambitions these long centuries.