Nowenitorial Notes

A CHURCH for converted.

Jews has just been established near the Central Jewish Synagogue in Berlin, according to information from Germany. The “Christians” of Jewish origin, barred from the “Aryan” church, are now permitted to worship in what is styled a “Ghetto Church.”

The German Jews who had believed that baptism would remove them completely from their people with its sorrows and its problems, and that this would make them and their children part and parcel of Germany, have now discovered their blunder. They have been humiliated even more than the Jews. They, too, have been forced out of their positions which they believed to be absolutely secure. The Nazi “Christians” treat them as Jews, and the Jews regard them with the contempt they deserve as renegades who sought escape through baptism from the faith of their fathers. Their plight is at once tragic and ludicrous. But it serves as an important warning to Jews in other lands.

Neither conversion nor assimilation can solve the Jewish problem, even for the individuals who resort to this camouflage. Many of the German Jews and the German “Christians” of Jewish origin have convinced themselves of this to their sorrow and humiliation, under the un-Christian Hitler regime.

Only the Jews who live an honorable Jewish life and whose Jewishness is not concealed, serve themselves, their people and their neighbors best, and at the same time they also gain the genuine respect of their non-Jewish neighbors. This does not mean that Jews should boast of their Jewishness, of the past glory of the Israel, of the great Jews who distinguished themselves in various #ds of human achievement, but they should rather, by their life and deeds in the present, pave the way for a brighter future for themselves and the future generations of the Jewish people.

As all Jewry is often made to suffer for the crimes and blunders of a few Jews who cast discredit on the Jewish name, and as the Jewish people feels the same sense of contempt for such undesirables as the non-Jews do, a campaign of education is essential to make it clear to the world how wrong it is that the Jews are judged by and #eld responsible for the acts of the #ew Jews who behave disgracefully as Jews and as citizens of the countries in which they reside. The Jews are as good and as bad as other nations.

I recall a remarkable answer given me some time ago by the late Dr. Henry Van Dyke, the emi- nent American poet, diplomat and leading Presbyterian clergyman, in discussing the Jewish question. Dr. Van Dyke said:

“Jews are like Presbyterians. Some of them I like and some of them I don’t like.”

The only difference is that if one Presbyterian goes wrong, all Presbyterians are not denounced because of the one black sheep.

The lesson of the new little Ghetto Church in Berlin is sure to be far-reaching. Instead of camouflaging their Jewishness, the Jews are coming to the realization that their salvation lies not in the servile imitation of the ways and traits of their neighbors, but in genuine cooperation with their neighbors as conscious and selfrespecting Jews. One of the most important tasks of the Jews today is to devote ever greater attention to the proper Jewish education of the Jewish youth. the Jews of Germany understand it now, and they have already begun to do it. It is rather late, but better late than never. The Hitler Germany cannot last forever.