There are today certain groups or organizations working to unify the Jewish race. Such organizations and such groups, no matter how sincere their convictions and no matter how noble their motives, must be brought to a realization that by their work they are actually making more powerful the enemy they set out to destroy. Unity has little value when it breeds prejudice to combat every constructive feature it can undertake.
One such organization, for instance, has been formed ostensibly to further the political ambitions of the neglected Jew. Actually it is putting the Jewish politician in a separate class. The good such an organization can accomplish is negligible, but the harm it can do is very great indeed. The hatred engendered by work of this sort is a consideration that no one who has the good of his race at heart should overlook.
Women, fortunately, have had little to do with projects of this type. Probably their wisest course is to disregard them. The publicity involved in attacking them makes them entirely too conspicuous. Such movements, if they do not savor definitely of a snobbish attitude, at least seem to put us on the defensive.
PREJUDICE DIRECTED AGAINST RACE
It is a known fact that there is much less prejudice against the Jew as an individual than against the race as a whole. A good many Jewish women have become prominent and are well liked in the world at large. In communities where the numbers are small the prejudice is often much less. It is when they become linked together in large groups that Jews meet the greatest prejudice, and instead of trying to remedy conditions by persuading the world that they are not a strange group of aliens, they set up organizations to bring their best ambassadors back into their own tight little bands.
We are not only Jews, but citizens of the country we live in, and as such we owe a double loyalty. Our problem is therefore not one of forgetting that we are Jews but of remembering that we are Americans. What we must look for is neither segregation nor emergence, but understanding.
None of us can truly wish for segregation in place of brotherhood and good-will. Yet in a variety of ways, and with the most consummate skill, that is just what we are accomplishing. Our greatest mistake is that we see only strength in unity, and we completely overlook the fact that when that unity serves only to unify more powerful opposing forces, it becomes not strength, but the greatest of our weaknesses.
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.
