The Reader’s Forum

(The editors reserve the right to excerpt all letters exceeding 250 words in length. All letters must bear the name and address of the writer although not necessarily for publication.)

To the Editor, Jewish Daily Bulletin:

May I ask Mr. Ludwig Lewisohn through the columns of the Jewish Daily Bulletin, where he has found a single reference to Communism in the whole of my article in the January issue of Harper’s Magazine, “Jews at the Crossroads” which he assailed with so much vehemence in The Bulletin of December 23?

Mr. Lewisohn states that I “would tear up by the roots that historical civilization with all its values which still exist among us and for which thousands of pacifists and liberals and friends of mankind are dying in Italy, Germany, Poland and Russia.” Without stopping to inquire into the real value of this historic civilization for which liberals and pacifists are dying. I merely wish to ask what all this has to do with my article? And why in the name of decency do our Liberals always drag in the red herring of Communism whenever they want to arouse mob-passion against an opponent?

My article, as any unbiased reader can easily see, is primarily an attempt at self-criticism on the part of a Jew shaken by the events of the last critical years since the rise of Hitlerism. It is, above all, an effort to analyze the Jewish position from within and to inquire whether there is not something in our own house, too, that needs putting in order.

SELF-ANALYSIS FRUITFUL

Such inquiries are natural psychological concomitants of misfortune among all peoples the world over. It is always after a particularly bad defeat or failure that groups like individuals turn inwards and begin to ask them-selves whether the enemy was entirely to blame for their misfortune and whether there was not something in their own lives which in some way helped to bring the defeat which had befallen them. Such inquiries are usually the most potent signs of the spiritual health and vigor of a people and these periods of self-analysis are, as a rule, the most fruitful in the life of a people.

Jews, too, have hitherto never been exempt from these periods of self-criticism. In fact, until recent years, before the rise of Mr. Lewisohn’s own type of Jewish super – nationalism, self – criticism was the order of the day. If Mr. Lewisohn had been near to real Jewish life, i.e. to the life of the great mass of the Jewish working people, he would know that even now, there is a profound searching of heart going on among Jews, especially among those who do not see the solution of the entire Jewish problem in a Palestine certificate.

If Mr. Lewisohn could read the language of his people, he would know that the questions raised in my article were not at all new. They have been raised and analyzed at great length in the Yiddish press of Europe. Even the Anglo-Jewish press in America has not escaped an echo of this painful movement which is going on within the depths of Jewry following the Nazi tragedy. To stamp these painful efforts of Jews in search of their souls, as material for anti-Semitism, is to reveal a woeful lack of that sense of spirituality about which Mr. Lewisohn speaks at such great length in his latest books.

NOT ALL WELL IN JEWRY

Mr. Lewisohn classes himself a Jewish Liberal and Pacifist (presumably one of those who are ready to die for our historic civilization). Is it a part of Jewish Liberalism to raise a super-patriotic hue and cry of anti-Semitism against other Jews who happen to have a different notion of loyalty to their group than Mr. Lewisohn has? Is it a special Jewish kind of pacifism which inflames crude wartime passions against “communist saboteurs” only because they happen to think differently about Jewish problems than Mr. Lewisohn does?

Since when, may I ask, does the author of “Up-Stream” consider it an essential of loyalty to one’s group to speak only of its absolute innocence, purity, greatness and virtue? Since when has it become “communist sabotage” for a Jew to say that we are ###t altogether a people of Einsteins, Freuds, Karl Marxes and Spinozas? Since when has it become “anti-Semitic” to say that we, like other people, have our Aseffs, Barmats, Sklareks and other human vermin?

If to say things of this kind about Jews is to be a “communist saboteur,” Mr. Lewisohn will have to add to the roll of Communist membership a great many very illustrious Jewish names. And, if it is Mr. Lewisohn’s new conception of Jewish patriotism that we are a people without faults that our economy is entirely healthy and that our social life and psychology cannot be improved, I am afraid that there will be many people who will find this conception much nearer to German Nazism than to anything Jewish.

Finally, may I ask, why is Jewish Liberalism so strong, lusty and vociferous in all problems pertaining to the non-Jewish world and so weak, puny and pitiful in its dealing with its own Jewish affairs? Why are Jewish Liberals always so quick in their advocacy of freedom of opinion, liberty of expression, rights of minorities, tolerance, humanitarianism, pacifism, and all other liberal principles to be practiced by the “goyim,” and yet so slow in applying the same great “values of our historic civilization” to Jewish life and problems?

Why are Jewish Liberals always so loud in their denunciation of American, English, German, French and every other Babbitism in the world, and yet when one attempts to point out that our own Jewish Babbitism too has its ugly features, they raise a cry of anti-Semitism?

Is it not because our Liberalism like so many other of our conceptions, is a dualistic product of the Ghetto, a tragic double-faced creature with a double standard for Jews and non-Jews? Is it not because we, as I have tried to prove, still live within the psychological walls of the Ghetto? Or is there another reason? I wonder whether Mr. Lewisohn can explain.

William Zuckerman.

January 15,

London.