THE YEAR

5660

BY HENRIETTA SZOLD

In the annals of Jewish history, the closing year of the nineteenth century will occupy a prominent though not an honorable place. Marked in Austria by anti-Semitic excesses and "ritual murder" charges, in Galicia by continued distress, in Bessarabia by famine, in Roumania by an accumulation of indignities and hardships, it may almost be said to epitomize the Jew's martyrdom during the Christian centuries. The generation whose years are full goes to the grave with the disappointing knowledge that the visions of '48 were, many of them, will-o'-the-wisps. Yet the prevailing gloom is shot through with gleams of light. Things are not at absolutely their worst when a reputable body of scholars, the Semitic Section of the International Congress of Orientalists, creates the opportunity to declare, in the shadow of the Eternal City, that the "ritual murder" charge is false; when Professor H. L. Strack, a savant whose Christian orthodoxy is distinguished, devotes his leisure to issuing an enlarged edition (the 7th) of his book on the blood accusation, in the hope of enlightening Christians; when Professor Emil Schürer, the authority upon New Testament times, and Professor Bernhard Stade, author of a history of Israel, add their protests voluntarily; and in darkest Bohemia, Professor Th. G. Masaryk, of the Czech University, not a philo-Semite, draws upon himself scorn, ostracism, legal prosecution, and at least temporary suspension from his position, because he

cannot resist the impulse to denounce the mediavalism of Polna. As in the case of Dreyfus, the enlightened testify to truth. The action of enlightened men, it will be said, is no test of progress. Such as these safeguarded justice in the most ignorant age. But if wide circles of the people had not been raised to heights undreamed of in the days before Gabriel Riesser and Adolphe Crémieux, Heer T. M. C. Asser, of the Hague, fresh though he was from his labors and honors at the Peace Congress, and eminent though his abilities are, could not have been made sole arbitrator in a dispute between Russia and the United States. Whatever the outrages put upon the Jew here and there, after all Jew-hatred has come permanently to be regarded as an abnormity requiring explanation, and wherever it has the upper hand, it is acknowledged that the mob rules, not the law.

Whether it be the reflex of the unquestioned, secure position held by Jews in many of their abiding-places; or whether it be the one acceptable result of renewed suffering; or whether it issue from the contrast between the two sets of circumstances; it is a fact that the Jew will carry into the new century self-respect that bids fair to span the gulf of degradation between the latter days and the early ones of his history replete with heroic action and noble thought-selfrespect that manifests itself not only in national self-consciousness, not only in united defense of the wronged of the race, but also in noble, growing discontent with the discrepancy between the religious theory and its practice. It is the very core and substance of the movement that arouses such antagonism among Jews as fairly to divide them into two camps; even those who condemn the Zionist theory as a counsel of despair concede so much. It is illustrated by the

tendency, growing stronger day by day, to form national organizations, to centralize Jewish forces in each country, to create representative bodies. The converse, of course, is equally true; international and national movements inspire self-regarding action. In 1840, when the Damascus affair aroused sympathy in the strong degree in which Jews are capable of the feeling, it required the almost superhuman efforts of Sir Moses Montefiore and Adolphe Crémieux to make Western Jews understand that their human dignity had been. outraged. German lethargy yielded not even to the strenuousness of the two self-appointed advocates. Contrast this with what happened the other day. When the Roumanian situation grew acute, at a moment's notice, English, French, German, Austrian, and Roumanian representative Jews met at Paris to deliberate, and with equal promptitude publicspirited individual Jews in the United States organized themselves into a Central Committee with the powers and duties of a representative body during the emergency that looms before Jews. The Alliance Israélite Universelle, the AngloJewish Association, the Israelitische Allianz of Vienna, the Deutsch-israelitischer Gemeindebund, and, in default of an active American central organization for defense, the New York Committee of the Baron de Hirsch Fund, brought close to one another, as they have been, by the ubiquitous activity of the Jewish Colonization Association, stand ready to guard the rights of the outcast or succor the unfortunate. By virtue of their origin and purpose, they may demand as a right the moral and pecuniary support of the Jews whom they represent. Perhaps in the coming century self-respecting organization among Jews will be perfected to the degree that a crisis like the present Roumanian trouble, which long

ago proclaimed itself in warning tones, will be met by preventive instead of remedial action.

France is a striking illustration of the sporadic character of anti-Jewish demonstrations. Last year the very hearth of anti-Semitism, it has by no means been an unhappy home to Jews this year. The Republican ministry has opposed an admirably firm front to anti-Semitic excesses in France and Algeria, with the result that the senatorial elections in both countries were most favorable to Jewish security; the Republican candidates obtained 92 seats out of 99. As if to remind the onlooker that anti-Semitism is not yet a dead issue in France, the Nationalists, who include many anti-Semites, carried Paris and Algeria in the municipal elections, though the provinces went strongly Republican. In Algeria the amelioration of conditions is undeniable. Max Regis' farcical attempt to imitate Guérin's Fort Chabrol in his "Villa AntiJuive" was completely frustrated. True enough, the mockheroic demagogue seems to be going scot free, but on the whole it is satisfactory that he does not wear the martyr's crown. On the other hand, there is cause for congratulation that wise counsel prevailed in the matter of boycotting the Exposition. Petty shopkeeper's revenge cannot counterbalance the unparalleled miscarriage of justice in the Dreyfus case. The Jew can afford to be magnanimous for the sake of the Frenchmen who share his ardor for justice, nor can he be willing to disregard the claims of France herself upon his gratitude. And if the vigorous revival of religious feeling in France during the past year is attributable to the Dreyfus trouble, the Jew may forget as well as forgive. Fate herself seems to have determined to demonstrate to anti-Dreyfusards the loyalty of French Jews: an unusually large number of