CHAPTER L.

T

The Twentieth Century and the Jews.

HE indebtedness of human society to the Hebrew race is by no means restricted to the creedal doctrines of the revealed religion. If the sheer truth must be told in Gath this inventory alone is sufficient to exhaust the assets and to mortgage the affections of the whole civilized world for all time to come. For it makes the Gentile debtor to the Israelite for larger supplies of 1icher manna than the Israelite himself ever gathered in the wilderness.

But the history of ancient Palestine contains only the first installment of the obligation. Besides autographing, transcribing and preserving the sacred Scriptures, under divine inspiration, furnishing the theater for the Biblical events and supplying the ancestral homesteads from which Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism have emerged, the Jews have galvanized the secular activities of all the four continents, set the pace for human progress in all the diversified arts and industries and multiplied the achievements of Joseph the Hebrew upon an hundred Egyptian thrones.

Whenever an extravagant statement is made or an ignorant opinion is entertained it is only necessary to address the custodian of the records in the primal command

of the old Pentateuch: "Let there be light." To establish the truth of the proposition laid down, there files into the courtroom a host of dignified witnesses, each of which represents a sphere of activity whose belt is an equator. The world of politics presents Benjamin Disraeli, the Earl of Beaconfield. The world of finance names Baron de Rothschild. The world of literature cites Israel Zangwill. The world of music chants Mendelssohn. The world of philanthropy proclaims Montefiore and Hirsch.

But some one may demur that the names above presented are exceptional, and do not lay the world under any tribute to the race at large. The fact is admitted, but not the inference. Shakespeare and Milton and Napoleon and Galileo and Kepler and Newton and Raphael were also exceptions, but exceptions which portrayed the genius of nations and embodied the spirit of epochs.

However, if the canvass is too large it is only necessary to localize the area of discussion. The lowgrounds furnish quite as good a field for the study of Hebrew character as the tops of the mountains; but the change of venue may be prefaced with the statement that Jews are seldom found in dead communities. Like the arteries of the human body they move toward the vital centers. They are in no wise to be identified with the insects, which multiply in putrefaction and fatten upon decay; and, if they are to be classed among the insects at all, they must be assigned to the coral builders which labor neither in stagnant pools nor in noisome eddies, but which down in the ocean solitudes lay secure beams and lift substantial fabrics amid the very fountains of the troubled deep.

It is the surest sign of wholesome life in any community that it can boast of at least one typical descendant of the thrifty Jacob. He registers the existence of the quickening pulse. But he comes to make the money which his presence advertises; and, without invoking any particular favor, he opens his workshop on the corner and soon begins to flourish like the hillside cedars of his own forest of Lebanon. In the hardest of times he has money to lend if not to burn and before he is ready to execute his will he owns the grocery-store, the meat-market, the grog-shop, the planing-mill, the newspaper, the hotel and

the bank..

But the larger towns and cities serve better the purposes of illustration. In all the thorough-going centers the Jews are found in great multitudes. They are moneymakers to such an extent that the roll-call of the whole Hebrew population can be made from the tax-books. They may be shrewd in driving bargains but they are open-handed in sustaining public charities, in encouraging liberal arts, in cultivating pure morals and in patronizing wholesome entertainments. The reason why others do not compete with them in matters of trade is perhaps due less to instincts than to ideas.

It is quite the fashion to caricature the Jew as exacting his interest down to the last drachma. But the Jew is not the only money-lender on the modern Rialto who has demanded his pound of flesh; nor can it be said that the Shylocks of the present day have all sprung from the thrifty race which produced the Merchant of Venice. Some of the brethren whose names are not enrolled in the synagogues but whose pews are found in other places of worship have been known to exhibit qualities which the

virtuous vampire would scorn to adopt and which would almost drive the honest leech to suicide.

Besides bearing considerably more than an average share of the burdens of government, it is an unvarnished statement of fact that no race of people on the globe are voluntarily more liberal than the Jews in supporting institutions of which they are not themselves the immediate beneficiaries. It is by no means unusual for them to contribute either to Christian hospitals or to Christian churches. Neither their orphans nor their indigents are wards upon the public except in the rarest instances. They furnish few inmates for the jails and penitentiaries and asylums, little business for the courts and little scandal for the newspapers. The women of Israel are proverbially chaste. They keep their households in order, their children in obedience and their husbands in respect. The observance of the Mosaic law has given the Jews remarkable immunity from bodily ailments and afflictions. They usually enjoy good health, cheerful spirits, hearty appetites and long lives.

Rascals are sometimes found among the Jews. But "the lost sheep of the House of Israel" are not more numerous than the errant waifs which have wandered from other folds. The Jew is not perfect; but neither was Adam who lived before Abraham and who has bequeathed the inheritance of original sin to the whole output of his loins, without any clause of reversion or entailment in favor of the Twelve Tribes. And while the Jews make no pretense of following the Nazarene they at least respect Him as a prophet and a teacher; and many of them are practically better Christians than some of blatant prayers and broad phylacteries, whose false dis

cipleship is worse than nominal and whose deceitful lips even while framing the accents which profess the faith are printing the kisses which betray the Master.

Whether tested by the carpenter's tape line or the chemist's retort the claims of the Hebrew race to aristocratic distinction must be universally allowed. The tables of descent upon which the Jews rely for proof of remote antiquity reach back to the tables of stone which bore the Decalogue. Beside such an ancient scroll the most patrician documents which the Gentiles can boast become almost plebian. The New Englander is satisfied if he can trace his forefathers back to the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock; but the Jew in looking for ancestors on shipboard respects neither the Western Hemisphere nor the Christian centuries, but quietly follows his genealogical chart until it lands him at the door of the ark upon Ararat.

However, it is not antiquity alone which makes the household of the Jew illustrious. The heroes of Biblical story have all sprung from the seed of Abraham; and heading the long list which includes Moses and Elijah and David and Solomon and Daniel and Ezekiel and Isaiah and Paul and Stephen is the Man of Galilee whom christendom ranks above all the rest: the immaculate Hebrew, the Prince of the House of David, and the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.

The battle-field of Hastings laid the foundations and traced the patents of the British nobility in rubrics which were commonplace and paltry compared with the blood of the hierarchy of Israel. Nor have the life currents which ancestry has done so much to ennoble been contaminated