The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1911-01-19
JUDAISM WAS
FORERUNNER Of
AkER|CAN|SM
Oscar Straus Delivers Match.
less Address Before Con.
vention of Hebrews
AMERICAN REPUBLICAM|SM IS
FOUNDED ON JEWISH DEMOCRACY

ton For Their Devotion to Liberty
From Teachings Of Prophets in the
Jewish Nation.
New York, Jan. 19.-"The Repub-
licanism of the United States is the
nearest approach to the ideals of the
prophets of Israel that has ever been
incorporated in the form, of state,
declared Oscar s. Straus, ambassador
to Turkey, in an address delivered
last night at the second annual coun-
Gil of the Union of American Hebrew
congregations, held at the Hotel As
tor. America is peculiarly a prom
ised land wherein the spirit Of the
teachings of the ancient prophets in
spired the work of the fathers of our
country"
Mr.. Straus spoke upon America
and the Spirit of American Judaism. /"
His address follows:
"The spirit of American Judaism
first asserted itself when Stuyvesant,
the governor of Amsterdam, would
not permit the few Jews who had em-
igrated from Portugal, to unite with
the other burghers in standing guard
for the protection Of their homes.
When the tax collector came to Asser
Levy to COLLECT tax on this account
he asked If that tax was imposed
on all the residents of New Amster-
dam. NO, was the reply 1T is only
imposed on the Jews because they
10 not stand guard 4 have not ask
ed to be exempted replied Asser
Levy. am not only willing, but de-
mand the right to stand guard
"That right the Jews have asserted
and exercised as officers and in the
ranks Of the continental army and in
every crisis of our national history
from, that time until the present day.
The American spirit and the spirit
Of American Judaism were both
nutured In the same cradle of liberty,
and united together in origin, in
ideals. and In historical development.
The closing chapter Of the chronicles
OF the Jews on the Iberian peninsula
forms the opening chapter of their
history on this continent. It was
Luis santangel, the Beaconsfield of
his time, assisted by his kinsm,an.
Gabriel Sanches, the royal treasurer
Of Aragon, who advanced out of his
which made the voyages of Columbus
possible. Luis de Torres, the inter-
prefer as we'll as the surgeon and
the physician of the little fleet, be-
sides several of the sailors who were
with Columbus on his first voyage,
were Jews.
Tribute to Rome.
Looking back through this vista
NJ n1nra than fn1,r oonfurios
leans and as Jews, we have reason
to remember with justified gratitude
the foresight and signal services Of
those Spanish Jews who had the wis
dom to divine the far-reaching pos
sibilities of the plans of the great
navigator. whom king end queen,
dukes and grandees regarded as a
visionary babbler' and a scheming
adventurer.' The royal patrons were
finally won over by the hope that Co.
lumbus might discover new treasures
Of gold and prescious stones to en-
rich the Spanish crown. But not SO
with the Jewish patrons. who caused
Columbus, or, as he then was called,
Christopher Colon, to be recalled, and
who advanced the money to fit out
his caravels without security and
without interest, as they saw, as by
divine inspiration, the promise and
possibility of the discovery of another
world, which in the words of the late
Emile CASTELAR,, the historian, states
man, and at one time president of
Spain, would afford to the quickened
principles Of human liberty a temple
reared to the God of enfranchised
and redeemed conscience, land that
would offer an unstained abode to
the ideals of progress.
"The recorde of these transactions
are fortunately still preserved in the
archieves of Sinancas in Seville.
ut is idle to speculate upon hypoth-
etical theories in the face of the facts
Of history. OF course. America
would have been discovered and COL
onized had Columbus nevLr lived. but
had the streams of the beginnings of
American history flown from other
sources into other directions 1t would
be futile even to make an Imaginative
forecast of the effect they would have
produced upon the history and de-
velopment of this continent. The
merciless intolerance of an eccles-
iastical system and the horror Of it's
prosecutions stimulated the earliest
immigration and subsequently brought
about the reformation in Saxon and
Anglo-Saxon lands, and the same
spirit drove to our shores the Pilgrim
and the Puritan fathers; which chain
of circumstances destined this coun-
try from the very beginning to be
the land Of the Immigrant and the
home of the fugitive and the perse-
cuted.
Two Governments.
'"The difference between govern
ment by kings and mobiles and gov
ernment under democracy. is that
the former rests upon the power to
compel obedience while the latter
rests essentially upon the sacrifice by
the individual for the community bas-