Prescribing for Israel

###tc. That will let you out beautifully and will put all the others on ###he spot.

(5) Simplify and idealize the past #ut give the present the realistic ###ow-down. Tell the world how the Medieval Jewish peddler, money-###ender and slave dealer was “within ###he rhythm of advancing social justice and hence harmonious with Jew-###shness”, while his lineal descendant ###oday, the Jewish merchant, banker ### and manufacturer, “scrambles for ### the dollar, lives for his belly and ### shares in the stampede for cheap delights.” That will suggest scholarship of an unusual and startling quality.

(6) Center your attack particularly and venomously upon the prosperous and “progressive” Jew. How ###are he be a Jew at all! What right ###as he to belong to a synagogue, to support > charities, to send his children to a religious school, to maintain Jewish organizations, centers, schools, libraries and seminaries?

Why, he is not one of the precious ###lect, the “new remnant.” He is not ###en a Spinozist or a Marxist…. ###ut with him!

(7) Reserve your best scorn for ###he idea of the “Mission of Israel.” Show how utterly absurd, even ### insolent, such a notion is. And then ### when you are yourself pressed for a ###raison d’etre for Jewish survival, ### smuggle in a little “Mission of Israel” all of your own. The Jew must still “be persecuted and die for a good cause.” Only this time the good cause must not be the social justice of Reform rabbis but the communism of Karl Marx (which ### Mr. Frank seems to have discovered ### rather tardily, as late as 1932) and ###he Jew’s mission is to teach all the ###theistic communists of the world ###ot the God of Jewish tradition but ###e special brand of divinity approved by Spinoza and Waldo ### rank.

We suspect that such a technique will not yield any new light on the problem > of Jewish survival in the book which Mr. Frank has promised to write.

May we humbly suggest a simpler technique. Let Mr. Frank start out with the self-evident and incontestable fact that the Jews are a people, not a religious sect or a philosophic school or a political party or an economic movement but a people, fifteen million strong, which has had numberless opportunities to assimilate in the past and in the present but has refused. Its survival has been voluntary. There were no insurmountable racial barriers to Jewish assimilation anywhere in the world until the advent of Hitler. The Jew willed to live. He still wills to live. That is its own complete justification. There are millions of Jews throughout the world who like to be Jews, who wish their children to remain Jews, who love their heritage, who revere their religion, who are sufficiently proud of the historic achievements of their people to want to continue it as a living force in the world. There are even those who are so enamored of Jewish life that they wish to build a thoroughgoing Jewish civilization in a Jewish homeland in Palestine. There are still others who are sufficiently outraged by unjust discriminations to wish to retort to them by an even stronger affirmation of their Jewish allegiance and loyalty. Let Mr. Frank start with these Jews, those who are not spending their wakeful hours in considering the pros and cons of national suicide, and outline for them how bet they can enrich their Jewish lives, intensify their Jewish culture, improve their systems of communal organization and education and make their religion more vital in their everyday lives. Let him not reject any of them simply because they cannot accept his Spinozism or Marxism. Let him not demand of them a new “Ani Maamin.” There are many good men and good Jews who are neither Spinozists nor Marxists. On the other hand there are many Jews who have utilized Spinozism and Marxism as a respectable and dignified way out of Jewish life.

As for the others, the sickly Jews who are still hovering on the sad periphery of Jewish life and still debating whether they should be Jews or not, let him tell them that Hitler has already answered this question for them…. It is no longer up to them….

Assimilation is no longer possible for the Jew in capitalistic society even if he should ardently desire it. It is under communism which Mr. Frank now offers to the Jew as survival insurance where the real threat to his group continuity lies. Whether the Jew of Russia will be able to save himself from submergence in the mass by appointing himself Spinoza’s apostle to the proletariat remains highly problematic. Even Mr. Frank’s mystic optimism does not reach beyond the pale hope: “He may be detached from them at least at present.”