“Anti-Semitism in this country? No chance! I hope my Jewish friends have no apprehensions over violence against the Jews in America. We’ll not stand for imported race hatred in this country!”
The Rev. Dr. Samuel A. Eliot, nationally prominent Unitarian minister and for twenty-seven years president of the American Unitarian Association—son of one of America’s most distinguished educators, the late Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard expressed his views on the Christian-Jewish problem in an interview with the Jewish Daily Bulletin. He was in Seattle to deliver the baccalaureate address at the University of Washington.
“Hitlerism? It’s revolting,” he said. “But I am not convinced how much good we are actually doing when we, here in America, express our indignation and horror at the Middle Age barbarities of the Hitler regime. I wonder if it helps Jews any in Germany.
“I say to all Jews: Exalt your race and value your racial heritage. Fight for your own, in the glorious Jewish tradition!
“What do I think about the tacit understanding which exists at most Eastern colleges, including Harvard, that only a certain percentage of Jewish students be allowed entrance? I rather agree with it. You understand, this arrangement is not advertised or official; it is just understood. It is not a matter of religious prejudice. It is based on race, not religion. I think such an arrangement is good because if you did not have a tacit understanding of this sort, the universities like Harvard would be all-Jewish, as in the case at the College of the City of New York.
“And I am in favor of Gentiles and Jews mixing. If there were too many Jews at Harvard, for instance, non-Jews would cease to go. It would become a Jewish institution.
“I admire and respect the many Jewish |virtues. What are the Jewish faults, you ask me? Well, I think they are two. But first, understand that I do not blame the Jew for these traits I do not find so desirable. I know full well they are traceable to the Jews’ experience in ghetto days—an experience forced upon him by the non-Jew.
“The faults are, first, acquisitiveness—that is, too eager a desire for material success — and second, perhaps, a tendency to be too blatant, because the Jew feels the necessity of self-assertion. With the free social intercourse of Jew and non-Jew today, these Ghetto-born characteristics are fast disappearing.
“One thing I do think: The similarities of all religions, rather than their differences, should be stressed. What we need today is not so much to talk about the rituals and ideals of our own particular brand of religion, but to practise true religion!”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
