The demand that a “modus vivendi” be established between Jews and non-Jews in America is advanced by Albert Jay Nock in his second article on “The Jewish Problem in America,” published in July issue of Atlantic Monthly. Nock bases his demand on a theory he develops that American Jews, no matter how long they have been living in the United States, are still Orientals “settled in an Occidental civilization.”
The article, speaks of a “reciprocal disability” allegedly existing between Jews and the non-Jews in America and says that this disability “is the fundamental thing that any effort to arrange a durable modus vivendi between the two peoples must take into account.”
Emphasizing that the Jew became Occidental “only by residence” but not by nature, Nock quotes a prominent American rabbi as having said lately: “I have been an American forty years, but I have been a Jew five thousand years,” The author of the article supports the rabbi’s utterance, which he says was criticized as injudicious. “The man was right, “Nock writes. “He had been a Jew five thousand years, and could no more help it than he could fly. He spoke of something which runs infinitely deeper than any merely political allegiance–his sense of membership in the world’s greatest and most powerful tradition. Men does not improvise himself; certainly not by the accident of having been born in an alien political domain, and least of all by taking out naturalization papers.”
Referring constantly to the “Occidental mass-man’s view on the Jews,” Nock asserts that “uneasiness and dissatisfaction is displayed at the part which Jews are playing in our public life.” He states that the non-Jews in America estimate that there are 63 per cent Jews among the 959,146 civil employees in Federal executive departments. He alleges that the “Occidental mass-man” in America believes that “despite the letter of our immigration laws, our government is distinctly and specially and reprehensibly squeezable” in the direction of admitting Jewish refugees. He insists that because of the fact that majority Jews live in the largest American cities, “the Occidental mass-man meditates savagely on the chances that a merciful Providence may come day send him a couple of sotnias of Cossaks to help straighten things out.” He also claims that the “Occidental mass-man” in America dislikes “the Jew’s economic successes and economic practices.”
Nock concludes by saying that he “finds it most disquieting” that there is “a thick fog of silence” over the Jewish problem in America. “It bodes no good,” he says. “There is every evidence that the lamentable antipathies which are simmering and festering beneath it are increasing in volume at a rate which I find as terrifying as it is distressing.”
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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.
