The American Jewish world. [volume] (Minneapolis ;) 1915-current, 1920-03-26
THE AMERICAN JEWISH WORLD

does not know that IN eacn ana every
group you find certain percentage
of all kinds of criminals, from petty
thieves to gunner and murderers.
Should an investigation, carried on
at a certain time, even if carried on
with most scrupulous care and &C.
curacy, and without any bias, show
that certain species of criminality
or vice predominates within a GER
tain group, might it not be purely
fortuitous, due to peculiar set OF
circumstances, peculiar conditions or
a temporary character, so that it
could be truly said that it just so
happened. All reports and statistics
of commissions, committees, and in
vestigators, often produced in evil
dence, are absolutely worthless, like
so much waste-paper, in their bearing
on this question.
To take a concrete case. At one
time, not so long ago, it was found
that group of rascally Jews were
engaged in certain large cities in the
damnable white-slave traffic. We don't
know the exact number involved. But
all Jewry was scandalized, and took
immediate and vigorous steps to purge
the evil from it's midst. Would it be
a fair conclusion for fair-minded,
reasonable person to draw that the
Jew, as Jew, is particularly given to
this species of criminality? Is his
moral code different? Has he not the
same motives and reasons, be it love,
or sympathy, or fear, for obeying the
moral law that other mOrtals have?
Is not the brutal traffic carried on in
all lands, among all human groups,
even where Jews do not exist at all?
We deny that the Jew has any Pc
culiar, evil qualities, or diSpleaslng
traits, or malevolent tendencies. quail
tiles or traits or tendencies that you
do not find in other groups in the
same proportion and the same de-
gree. We equally deny that the Jew
has any fine qualities, excellent moral
or intellectual traits that you do not
find in the same measure and the
same degree in other human groups,
provided the conditions under which
they live are the same. The Jew
under the Czarist regime in Russia
may have developed certain peculiar
tiles, certain tendencies and traits
due to the conditions under which
he lived. Give few years in this
country, or in France, or England,
and he throws them off, loses them UNI
consciously, and he is completely as
simulated His vices and virtues are
the vices and virtues of the new coun-
try of his adoption. So eager is he to
throw off the old, and to assume the
new, that it may be said that he is
one of the most quickly assimilated,
or to use the present parlance of this
country, the most quickly American
lied.
We deny that the Jews manner and
behavior, even where no moral prin-
ciples are involved, are in any way
different from those Of his neighbors
This we say for the special benefit of
our self-critical fellow-Jews. For it
is a curious fact that the Jew him
self, having had his own disparage-
ment constantly dinned into his ears,
has actually come to believe it, SO
that it is not an uncommon thing to
hear some Jew declare that the Jew
deserves social ostracism because of
his bad manners. The Jew is loud,
we are told; he is snowy, f1ashy,
intrusive and obtrusive, impertinent.
The staggering, clustering Jewish
Il OF hotel tho loud