Professor Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard University, Advocates Preservance of Jewish Racial Ch

In view of the widespread interest which has been aroused by the address of Professor Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard University, delivered before the Harvard Zionist Society, the Jewish Daily Bulletin has secured the full text of the address given below.

-Editor.

Interest in Zionism and in the welfare of the Jewish race and in its great progress in freedom and in wealth has been a ritual with me for a good many years. Before, I have not always succeeded in sympathizing with Jewish meetings. I remember standing on the sidewalk on Boylston Street, Boston, one day-I cannot fix the date-when a long Jewish procession containing thousands of people was passing by and going I think to the Symphony Hall for a great meeting, or perhaps to the Mechanics Hall. Now, a considerable proportion of that procession, which contained both men and women, were undersized much below the average of the American population here, much below the average of the German population in Germany and worse than that, they had no courage or bearing, so to speak. They didn’t stand up straight and hold their heads up. They sort of crouched along with bent knees and head bowed. That was a very discouraging spectacle to me. I was not prepared for it, I didn’t understand the physical condition to which thousands of American Jews had been reduced by the sufferings of their ancestors.

And then there was another thing which troubled me very, very much. Hundreds of them were going through the process of tearing hair, shaking the head and wailing or lamenting. I cannot quite express to you the horror which that awakened. It brought home to me the tense sufferings of the Jewish people in centuries past. It seemed incredible that it should be reproduced in the midst of a great American population, a Boston population of all the American population. It showed me the intense sufferings, repressions under which the Jewish race for centuries, for thousands of years, in fact, have suffered. It told me how deep the impression of the living Jews was drawn from that suffering for thousands of years in their ancestors.

So I reviewed that day with strong interest the promotion of Zionism, of giving to the Jewish people a place, as Judge Brandeis said, where they can put their backs against a wall, not beat their heads against it but put their backs against it, in defence of a strong purpose toward a new future.

Going back a little in time, again I cannot give you the date, I was invited to a meeting at the Rev. Edward Everett Hale’s Church in Boston, where two differing sorts of Jews, Synagogue and Temple, were to unite in the service of prayer and listen to speakers. The purpose seemed to be one of unity, so to speak, of drawing together, but I was very much struck by the different manners of the two bodies within the Church. One party wore their hats and had rather peculiar coats on, and the others sat apart from the brethren of the Synagogue and had among them women. their brothers and sisters and I suppose daughters. The synagogue Jews had put their women off quite apart in a gallery. Then discussion arose and it soon appeared that the purpose of the meeting was not what I had supposed it to be; they then asked me to speak to the assemblage and the most proper thing it seemed to me to tell them and what I thought they needed most was, to send all their young men into the militia of Massachusetts where they could learn to bear arms, to fight in the defence of their rights and their people’s rights.

So you see I came to this meeting with a rather peculiar preparation and just now I picked up this book “A Late Harvest” edited by De Wolfe Howe and found in it a chapter on Zionism and read that this was published in the Maccabean of August, 1919. In that paper reprinted in the book you will find pretty near all the thoughts I ever had about Zionism and the rescue of the Jewish people from their oppressed, sort of divided condition. Divided, I say-within a few weeks I have had many evidences given me as to the deep division which now prevails among the American Jews. They seem to be very sorrowful and unnecessary and I want to say just a word about those existing conditions.

I see just lately some signs that this division is about to cease, in many Jewish minds it has ceased. The division was very, very deep. I have had Jews sit in my study, Jewish friends, men that I have long known, sit in my study and tell me that there was no hope for unity among the Jews themselves, that the divisions were too deep to permit of a real united body of Jews living in America. I don’t believe that, and in fact I have much evidence to the contrary lately. But it is a very serious condition of things for the Jewish people here in America and you must all do whatever you can to bring about closer and closer contacts between the different parties among the Jews toward a closer understanding.

I see with great regret also, perhaps I should not feel regret being myself a Unitarian Christian, that there are great changes coming in many American Jews with regard to the adherence of the children to the faith and the practice of their fathers. You doubtless have heard a great deal of talk in this country during the last five or six years about the assimilation of races in the United States The fact is, and it is perfectly plain that there has been no assimilation in the United States and more than that, it isn’t deserving that there should be any assimilation or amalgamation of races in the United States. That isn’t what we need, that isn’t for our best advantage in this country. What we want is numerous races with various history, with various gifts, with various abilities living side by side in concord, not in discord, and each contributing its own peculiar quality to the mixed population.

I don’t know how I can say more than I have done in other places, in printed articles about this matter of assimilation or amalgamation. It is simply non-existent in the United States and nobody sees, or very few people see that it is non-existent. You may see a very strong instance of it in the immigration of the Irish to this country which began back in 1830 and went on for many generations. Have they ever been assimilated anywhere? Never, and it has never been desirable and it isn’t desirable that they should be assimilated in the United States, taken in and absorbed within the British American population.

Another instance of the failure to be amalgamated or assimilated we find in the history of the French Canadians in the United States. They have always been apart, they used to go home every year and some of them now stay there. But they have never been assimilated, they don’t inter-marry, they remain by themselves and they are now beginning for the first time to contribute their peculiar qualities urgently, readily. They are excellent operators in our factories, we cannot spare them, in fact, but they remain apart; may they always do so.

We have to consider therefore the problem of Zionism with this idea in mind, that we Americans don’t expect to assimilate any of the people, including the Jews, but we still believe that the Jewish people ought to have one place in the world where they can put their backs against a wall and be on the defence against all comers if comers there be. But more than that, they ought to have a place where they can recover from their exclusion thousands of years from healthy occupations.

I have never yet seen or heard of an American Jew who proposed himself to go and live in Palestine. Many of them make visits to Palestine but don’t propose to stay there. That is very natural and very probable because the American Jew is well off and will make no changes in his customs.

But in Palestine there is today, thanks to the organization of the new company for the promotion of agriculture, learning, education and engineering, an open road leading to the development of the country; this new company I say, thanks to them, there is prospect of thousands of Jews who have been allowed, or want to go out of Russia, having an opportunity in Palestine to practice what we call the muscular trades like farming. All sorts of trades mechanics, too, like carpentry, masonry and the trade of the wheelwright. The Jewish people of Europe have been for centuries excluded from all sorts of trades, they have had no access to the fundamental trades, they were excluded from all such trades. Now here in the Zionist movement we have well developed already today the purpose and the opportunity of American and foreign Jews to put their money into the work, have already put in considerable sums to give to a Jewish population access to these fundamental muscular, strong, active, outdoor trades. That is reason enough for all Jews in all parts of the world to put their money into this rebuilding of Palestine as a new home for the Jewish people who wish to go there, many of whom I believe, not allowed to go there, are begging for a chance to get there, to this new development of the lost powers of the Jewish population. I sup.

pose this to be the fundamental reason why all of you wish to support the Zionist movement. I have stated in this article in the American Journal these fundamental movements for the improvement, the uplifting, the exalting of the Jewish race out of their oppression, out of the congested conditions through which they have passed for hundreds of years, into healthy, strong, labor stabilizing occupations in the modern world.

There is another aspect of this subject on which I feel disposed to say a few words. I have had occasion many times within the last twenty years to visit New York for the purpose of attending the meetings of the various societies of some of which I have been a member, such as the General Education Board of the old Rockefeller and the newer Rockefeller foundation which has been actively supported by John Rockefeller, Jr., also the Carnegie foundation in favor of the elevation of teaching, also the Carnegie foundation of international peace. Now having had the opportunities of observation I have seen frequently young Jews falling away from the religious ceremonial of their fathers and mothers. I was taking luncheon with a friend of Columbia University one day and just as we were having a quiet and enjoyable luncheon, suddenly, hurriedly, six young Jews and Jewesses, three of each sort, very noisily came up to the table adjoining the one at which my friend and I were sitting and then they proceeded to give their orders for their luncheon, each giving his own. Also very loudly so that I could not help hearing every word that they said to the waiter and their lunches seemed to be selected rather on purpose to show that they were no longer conforming to Jewish methods and ceremonials. One of the dishes ordered I remember was pork, for instance. I could hardly describe to you how painful that process was, they continued to make a great noise and their conversation partook of the spirit of the orders they gave. I suppose I must be called an old fashioned man, but then, ten or twelve years ago I was younger. I was very much shocked at this public display of the fact that they do not even adhere to traditions of their church and their religion. I don’t know how any of you feel on that subject. I rather apprehend that some of you have fallen away from the traditional practices and customs of your Jewish religion but to my thinking that tendency is unfortunate not only for the Jewish people but for all the other peoples in this country. It is a bad example for all of us, all the other peoples, that Jewish young people are falling away from the practices of their forefathers. Is it necessary, is it so natural that it cannot be prevented?

There is another practice which is becoming more frequent which is to me lamentable, namely, the increasing tendency of Jews to marry Christians. I don’t know whether the tendency originates with the Jews or with the Christians, particularly with the women but is it not a state of things to be dreaded? How many of the intermarriages between unlike peoples have you known to turnout well? Of course, if two nations are kindred, have similar origins, the members of those nations can inter-marry in safety. If they are not kindred, historically kindred, inter-marriages between such races are not safe. I have had a long observation of such inter-marriages between a person of the Teutonic stock with a person of the Latin stock, one of which has come very near to me. I have never seen one that has turned out right, not one. I hope you will as Jews, consider my advice and at any rate proceed very cautiously in inter-marrying with a race not kindred.

Of course the Jewish race is almost without kindred races but it has one quality which is very remarkable and perhaps points the way of protection against the danger about which I am talking. You know that it is well determined by the biologists that the Jewish race is to an extraordinary degree pre-potent, that is, if a Jew marries a woman of another race in two or at any rate in three generations all the children will look like Jews, all of them. Of course, that is a great potency, a very real potency. Of course this consideration is a great parallel to what I have already said about the preference for whatever race living side by side in this country, each with his own culture and peculiar gifts living together in concord and not in discord. I think it is the substance of what I had in mind to say to you.

The Hebrew school in Lynn, Mass., operated with a profit of $1,727 last year, according to the report submitted at the annual meeting of the Board of Directors. $9,178 was collected in tuition fees. Three hundred and seventy children attended the school. Those who cannot afford to pay the fees are permitted to attend free of charge.