Campaign Against Anti-semitism, for Unity and Social Justice Outlined by Dr. Kaplan

President of the Rabbinical Assembly of the Jewish Theological Seminary

To Fight anti-Semitism we need something more than courage. We need wisdom and unity of action and of purpose. We need to keep our heads, or we are lost. Our brethren in Germany have been set upon by a whole nation transformed into a lynching mob out for blood. It is Hell turned loose. This is not the time to find fault with one another for protesting, or failing to protest. If need be, we should forego even the luxury of wrath and tears. We are not dealing with a government amenable to pity or reason. There is no telling beforehand what is going to cure it of its blood-thirsty mania. We should bear with one another if we make mistakes, and try new methods if the old have not proved successful, without imagining that our reputation for diplomacy or consistency is at stake.

We must not allow ourselves to be swayed by specious appeals to democracy to break the common and united front which we must present to the outside world if we want our protests to be taken seriously. However much we may wrangle among ourselves, in the face of our enemies we must not recklessly throw away the strategic advantage afforded by those Jews who happen to exercise an influence in the non-Jewish world simply because we begrudge them that influence.

There may be an honest difference of opinion as to the method to be employed in combating Jew hatred. But once a decision has been arrived at after due deliberation, it is nothing less than treason to the welfare of our people for any individual or group that has taken part in such deliberation to depart from the course of action decided upon.

INWARD DEMORALIZATION

The dire evil of divided counsel and lack of unity which has become acutely distressing in our attempt to meet the ruthless and savage anti-Semitism of the German nation has always afflicted us. As a consequence, we are not only hopelessly weakened in our struggle against our enemies, but we become inwardly demoralized in our effort to maintain our Jewish stamina. It therefore is no longer merely a question to be fought over by the lay leaders themselves. It becomes the duty of those who are entrusted with the task of seeing and interpreting Jewish life as a whole, and keeping it whole, to call a halt to factionalism, and to find out what is wrong and what is right with each of the groups that undertakes to speak in the name of all the Jews.

The very fact that each group represents only a limited section of the community must lead one to infer that it has not achieved such conception of Jewish life, or such method of furthering it, as is adequate to the complexities of the situation in which Jews find themselves at the present time. That does not preclude it, however, from possessing elements of strength and a degree of wisdom which the other groups might well recognize and learn from.

In our capacity as rabbis, we are expected to be in a position to offer authoritative advice and guidance as to what should be done to meet the menace of anti-Semitism both here and abroad. It is for that reason that the Executive Council [of the Rabbinical Assembly] appointed a committee, under the chairmanship of Rabbi Eugene Kohn, to make a thorough study of the outstanding organizations and agencies in this country which are endeavoring to cope with the problem of anti-Semitism and are engaged in the defense of Jewish political and civic rights. It is only thus that we can hope to silence the numerous self-appointed spokesmen, whether well intentioned or impelled by ulterior aims, who neutralize the efforts of those who are entitled to speak with authority.

OPPOSES NON-NATIONHOOD

Without wishing to prejudge the conclusion which the Rabbinical Assembly will ultimately arrive at with regard to the most desirable method of carrying on the campaign against anti-Semitism, I believe that I am voicing the sentiment of our membership when I say that we would strongly deprecate any method of combating anti-Semitism which involves the nullification of Jewish nationhood. It is undoubtedly a tragic fact that nationhood is being put to the most vicious uses in the interest of economic greed and political agrandizement. For that matter, even the idea of godhood was employed by the generality of mankind to lend aid and comfort to some of its most savage passions and most bloody purposes.

Yet it has been the Jew’s prerogative to emphasize the ennobling and spiritualizing influences which in-here in the idea of godhood. Like-wise has it been Israel’s calling to demonstrate the humanizing, stimulating and comforting influences which reside in the eneluctable fact of nationhood….. If in upholding our Jewish nationhood we encounter misunderstanding and afford excuses for slander, the right thing to do is not to repudiate our nationhood, but to use every available opportunity to explain and demonstrate to what extent it differs from the political and economic nationhood of our neighbors. We must do nothing to hide or minimize its unifying influence.

The recent disasters that have befallen our people should have taught us that nothing that we can do in the way of making ourselves inconspicuous will conciliate our enemies. As for our friends, if we have any left, they will understand and honor us for seeking to retain the status of nationhood whereby we have been enabled to play our unique role in the history of mankind.

NATIONHOOD WITH A DIFFERENCE

But while most of us who belong to the Rabbinical Assembly feel strongly about the high ethical and spiritual implications of Jewish nationhood, the Jewish laity exhibit but little appreciation of the distinctive meaning which our history has sought to give to that concept. To most of them, Jewish nationhood is essentially the same as that of any other people. Thus conceived it appears to some of them as a goal to be striven for, while to others as a danger to be avoided at all costs. The truth is that both groups misapprehend its true nature. As rabbis, we should synthesize the fundamental yearnings of Israel in the past with what we know concerning the workings of human nature as conditioned by the forces of history. We should therefore undertake the task of so formulating the Jewish conception of nationhood as to indicate wherein it might serve as a corrective of the unbridled collective selfishness which goes by the name of nationalism.

Our life as Jews can no longer be lived merely vis à vis the rest of the world. We have become so integrated economically with the fortunes and misfortunes of the non-Jewish environment that the truth of Judah Hallevi’s designation of Israel as the heart of mankind has been all too tragically demonstrated during these years of world depression. As the heart responds to the least disturbance of the equilibrium of the body, so is Israel sensitive to the least that goes wrong in the life of the nations. Both collectively and individually, we Jews have been the worst sufferers in the calamities that have befallen humanity since the Great War, and at present the most afflicted victims of the economic disaster which mankind has brought upon itself through its sins of avarice, exploitation and cruelty.

THE NEW INTERPRETATION

In former days, men interpreted earthquakes and tidal waves as inflictions sent by God for the sins they had committed. The knowledge since acquired of the working of natural law has negated any connection between human sin and the tremors of the earth. But unfortunately this tendency to deny any relationship between human misery and human sin has been carried over to the domain of men’s dealings with one another where the relationship is inextricable. Economists wishing to pose as masters of an exact science have sought to treat the process of exchange of goods and services as though it were fatalistically determined by eternal laws of nature, as are the forces of gravitation, heat and light. This conception of the economic activities which constitute the major part of human conduct has been humbly accepted as gospel truth by the teachers of morality and religion, and as therefore outside of their sphere of judgment or guidance. Thus the producing, distributing and consuming of things have come to be regarded as inevitably subject to the law of the jungle.

Accordingly, if there is to be such a thing as a law of the spirit, it has to be realized either in those interstices of our life in this world which are not preempted by the economic struggle, or in some form of spiritual existence not bound up with the needs of the body. It is no wonder, therefore, that modern capitalism is aptly described by Keynes as being absolutely irreligious. But what is surprising is that the teachers of religion should have complacently accepted this state of affairs as irremediable.

Most of the remedies which are being proposed at the present time by the various economic doctors are based upon this fallacious dualism between the problems of capital, labor, profit, interest and rent, on the one hand, and those of human welfare, justice, and peace on the other. They keep on evading the necessity of facing the absolute interdependence of the two factors in that dualism. They are impervious to the moral implications of the present upheaval.