Year: 1877




PREJUDICE AGAINST THE JEws.-Re.
Gently in New York an estimable and
accomplished gentleman was rejected as
member of the Bar Association /" for
no reason that can be conceived" in
dignantly said one of the leading mem.
bers, "except that he was a jew.
Doubtless few votes would procure
the rejection. But the association is
not social club, and presumptively a
man who is an honorable member of
the bar is fit member of the associa.
tion. The few hostile votes, however,
represent the prejudice 1t is very old
and very universal. To the audience
of to-day there is nothing in Shake.
speare more vital and ineligible than
the fervent appeal of Shylook to the
common humanity of the world around
him. The Jew is still separate, and
the prejudice which has pursued him
for generations is but slightly relaxed.
The lines of demarkation are fine. They
are often almost invisible. But they
are deep, and apparently absolute. It
is one of the most common and most
tenacious of the objections to Daniel
Deronda that it deals with Jews and
Jewish life and character. The fact
is sometimes almost resented as an
offense to the mass of readers. Even
in Ivanhoe, although torrents of Chris.
tian tears have flowed over the closing
pages, where the noble and beautiful
Rebecca asks to see the face of the fair
Rowena, yet such is the fell and weird
outlawry of the Jew from general sym.
pathy, that the catastrophe seems to be
an inevitable fate. There is no doubt
that this prejudice is as cruel in its
effects as it is unreasonable in its origin.
Distrust, alienation, a nameless scorn.
or by whatever term the feeling be de.
scribed, fatally ohills and discourapes
the man or the people upon whom it
falls. One of the most intelligent and
accomplished colored men in this coun.
try was so tortured by the prejudice
against his race that he said he would
gladly be fayed alive if only he could
be made white. A slave holder, trying
to prove to Gerrit Smith the natural
inferiority" of the colored man, said to
him that although the white and color.
ed children played pleasantly together
in perfect equality, yet when they grew
older the difference of inferior and
superior became evident. Mr.. Smith
replied that the change was due not to
conscious inferiority, but to the con.
sciousness of the negro of the awful
stigma of slavery upon his race. A
people is oppressed, and the arts by
which it aveDges or defenos itself are
urged as reasons for oppression, or
dropping despair of successful resistance
is claimed as the justification of tyranny.


The legend of the Wandering Jew
has a pathos beyond the usual interpre.
tation. The story is that the Jew, who
refused to comfort Christ as He toilcd
under the weight of the cross, was con-
demned to tarry until He came, and so
wanders around the world until the
second coming. But it is the symbol
also of the restlessness of the race,
roaming through Christendom homeless
and rejected 1t is the curse, says many
jealous Christian heart, of the people
that crucifed the Redeemer. This is
the common theory of the origin of the
traditional antipathy to the Jews, and
undoubtedly this is with many persons
vague justification of the feeling with
which Jew is regarded. But should
it be nothing to such persons that when,
as they believe, the Creator would in.
carnate Himself, He became a Jew ?
Or, again, do they reflect that if it was
in the eternal decrces that the sins of
men were to be atoned and condoned
by the innocent sacrifice, those who ac-
complished the sacrifice were but the
agents of the Divine will j? Are all
such ingenious speculations other than
devices to explain and justify a mere
prejudice of race, such as some African
tribes cherish against people of white
skins ? Those who find in such pre-
judice profound significance will con.
tinue to plead the feeling as its own
sufficient reason. But honorable men
will be careful how they heedlessly use
the name of a race to which the religion,
the literature, the art. the civilized pro.
gress of humanity, are SO greatly in.
debted, as term of utter derision and
scorn.-Geo. w. Curtis in Harper's
Magazine for July.