French Observer Sees Anti-semitic Movement in United States

The contention that in spite of the great value of Jewish cooperation, the Protestant American has adopted a hostile attitude which has developed into an anti-Semitic movement in the United States is made by Andre Siegfried, author and professor at the Free School of Social Sciences in Paris, in a book entitled: "America Comes of Age," the English translation of which is published by Harcourt, Brace & Company.

Professor Siegfried’s book represents a criticism of the American industrial regime which, in the author’s opinion, is driving the world to ask itself: "Whom shall we follow, Ford or Gandhi?"

The author dwells at length on American Jewish conditions, describing what he terms the "melting pot problem," He says:

"In the American Melting Pot, the temperature at which fusion takes place varies with the different races. In certain cases it occurs at a very low degree, being practically automatic. In others, however, a high temperature is needed, and then even after prolonged heating, an insoluble residue is liable to remain. This is particularly true of the Jewish race, for although their transformation at first seems to take place easily and quickly, the operation later proves to be incomplete. The difference in these reactions to the Melting Pot is of utmost importance: in fact, since the War the Americans have made it the key-note of their immigration policy.

"A century of experience has proved that Protestants of Nordic origin are readily assimilated, and Calvinists particularly so. There is almost no question of Americanizing an Englishman or a Scotchman, for they are hardly foreigners and feel quite at home for many reasons that go far deeper than the mere similarity of the language. The Dutch, the Germans, the Scandinavians, and the German Swiss all have low melting-points, though if they are Lutherans or Catholics they are less easily assimilated.

"The really obstinate elements are the Latins, the French, the Finns, and the Mexicans, who all resist for the same reason, because they are anti-social at heart. Americanization tends to destroy the family and to reduce the originality of the individual. The instinctive resistance to it may arise from a longing for social conditions that possibly are incompatible with modern developments and mass production. The new immigration policy in its turn may simply express the antagonism of the dominant group to this individualistic revolt.

"Our argument applies with particular force to the Jews. They appear to assimilate at the lowest melting-point, but even after three generations one finds them still with their national traits unaffected. As there are three millions of them in the country, a million and a half in New York alone, the problem is important, more especially as they include Jews of every class of society, from the aristocratic banker of London or Frankfort to verminous refugees from the ghettos of the Ukraine and Poland.

"The Jews give the impression at first of being very quickly Americanized, for no other foreigner has his easy adaptability. In any case, the American atmosphere offers him every attraction. He respects money, success, and worldliness; he is restless and ambitious, and his eagerness to succeed is not without a certain vengefulness for centuries of hatred and oppression. In moral origin, he is closely allied to the Puritan–the same biblical tradition, the same belief that his is the chosen race, the same easy step from religious mysticism to the conquest of power and riches.

"The Jews passes through the first phase of his Americanization with disconcerting rapidity–there is something suspicious about this excessive zeal. If the Stars and Stripes is waved at a jingo demonstration in New York, you may be sure that it is a Jew who holds the standard, while the 100 per cent American whose great – great grandfather was a friend of Washington stands aside disgusted. Caught suddenly into the rhythm of the New World, he is soon more American than the Americans themselves. He seems at first to throw off his traditions gaily. He changes his name, and Schonberg becomes Belmont, Jonas becomes Jones. He ‘passes’ as the negroes say: that is, he moves among the Christians without being remarked. Thus, in the shortest possible period, like the law student who crams a three-year curriculum into three months, the bearded Jew from a far-off European ghetto is Americanized until no trace of the alien remains. He even makes light of his religious tradition, for although in the first generation the immigrant remains faithful to his Sabbath, in the second he is content with half-way measures. He joins societies for the promotion of ethical culture, where he mixes with broad – minded Protestants anxious about their duty to society. The number of Jews who disappear in this way in the ocean of America must be considerable.

"Of course there are orthodox Jews who remain faithful to their synagogue, and who are always on the alert to reclaim their lost brethren. Also, not only in the foreign quarters of the large cities but even in the well-to-do districts, it must be admitted that the Jews keep more or less apart in spite of themselves, bound to each other less by their religion than by racial ties. Socially they are only too anxious to attach themselves to the Christians. Surreptitiously they have invaded their hotels until they have crowded the Gentiles out. They have wormed their way into the clubs in spite of the ostracism and insults designed to exclude them. With their brilliant intellects, they have firmly established themselves in the universities, where the mediocre element tries instinctively to oust them. So this pseudo-American ferments at the bottom of the Melting Pot, unassimilated to the end.

"The fact remains that notwithstanding its material adaptation, the original traits of the race persist and leave their indelible mark on every thought and action. Though they may be willing to sacrifice everything, even their mysticism, and be ready to adopt that dreary social pragmatism which is the real religion of modern America, yet these children of Abraham cannot escape the spirit of their ancestors, for they are infinitely more religious than the Americans. Their outlook may have comcided for a moment with Protestantism, but the soul of their religion has survived untouched. During the last twenty years of the nineteenth century, when the great influx of Russian Jews was commencing, there were already in America many distinguished Israelites who had adapted themselves to American culture; but many of them who had thrown off their religion were now brought back into the fold. Today the mystical traditions of orthodoxy have been reimposed in modern form on those Jews whose religion had become bitter and dry through the taint of their contact with the Christians. Even in the lowest grades of society we come across these irreconcilable, who attempted to become a part of western civilization only to repudiate it in the end.

"The knowledge that the Americans have encountered something which they cannot assimilate has long stirred up an anti-Semitic feeling which accounts for the aloofness of the Jew in his American environment. First, the Gentile fears, and with reason, the competition of the Jew in business, and despises him as a matter of course, although regularly at the end of every month the balance-sheet shows that the Jew has outstripped him again. This is doubtless the result of his commercial astuteness, but it is due also to his insatiable ambition and to his business activity, which at times amounts to frenzy. The Americans, especially in New York-that new Jerusalem-have a grudge against him, because he forces them to keep up with his feverish pace.

"If the pace set by the Wandering Jew is killing in business, in intellectual circles it is worse, for there the American is decidedly not at his best. Left to himself, the 100 per center is not given to brain-work. In the universities he prefers to go in for sport and flirtations, and in the libraries all he wants is light reading. Now the Jew, on the contrary, in the same universities and the same libraries, is deep in some serious book on science, sociology, or philosophy-it isn’t a fair fight, they protest.

"Just what use does he made of his alert intellect, this descendant of the prophets, who according to Peguy has never stopped reading for two thousand years? He has a mind that can neither be tamed nor disciplined, for he questions everything for his own particular ends. This is just what the Americans do not want. They require a type of mind that can be dealt with collectively and fitted into an organization in which the individual is asked to make his own personality subservient to the common good. The Jew on the contrary is an intellectual revolutionary to the point of suspicion, and therefore in spite of their apparent similarity when they first come in contact, the Protestant and the Jew soon diverge. In spite of the great value of Jewish collaboration, the Protestant American has adopted a hostile attitude which has developed into an anti-Semitic movement," Prof. Siegfried writes.