The Assimilation of the Jew: A Reply to Rabbi Joseph Silverman

Julius T. Loeb, “The Assimilation of the Jew: A Reply to Rabbi Joseph Silverman,” Washington Times (Washington, DC), Dec. 27, 1902. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1902-12-27/ed-1/seq-6/

THE ASSIMILATION OF THE JEW

A Reply to RABBI JOSEPH SILVERMAN.

By the Rev. [JULIUS] T. LOEB, Congregation Ada[t]h Israel.

    It takes a Jew to incite public sentiment against the Jew! The Rev. Dr. Joseph Silverman, a reformed rabbi, has made himself conspicuous by his “kind” advice directed toward orthodox Jewry, which savors of anything but the “faithful woundings of the friend.”

    He starts with a chewing of the old cud, an arguing of the question whether or not Jews are justified in persisting to call themselves a nation. The question of name is indeed of little or no consequence. Yet to argue the point we must not lose sight of the etymological signification of the term “nation,” which, according to authoritative lexicography, “originally denotes a family or race of men descended from a common progenitor.” Even in modern expression it implies a body of men linked together by language, or certain common interest, which feature is especially manifest in the case of the Jew, who is cognizable as such in every land and region. 

    Considering all this it will be readily admitted that Jews are still a nation. Their nationalism is part and parcel of their ancient faith. Their religious hopes are also their national aspirations, and so long as the Jewish religion is preserved and properly maintained, they will continue to be the peculiar people of yore. 

    “We are no longer a peculiar people,” says Rabbi Silverman, “save in our religion.” But what is our religion? Is it not coupled with this very term “peculiar people?” Who imposed it on us if the not the Bible itself, and what is its purport if not that we be steadfast in the profession of the unity of God and the observance of his law—though we be “the fewest of nations,” though all the rest of mankind should differ with us in our views?

    The moment we cease to be a “peculiar people” we cease to be Jews, and the Jewish religion advocated by Rabbi Silverman remains a hollow and conceited ceremonial, anything but Jewish. Change the Sabbath day, quit the act of circumcision, cease to sanctify your conduct to “be holy as the Lord is holy,” contaminate your body by unclean food, leave off the phylacteries, and do away with such other peculiarities and “signs between God and the children of Israel,” and the Jewish religion is no longer in existence; the life of the Jewish race is extinct, and the assimilation theory is accomplished without any special effort on the part of Jews. 

    There is no compromise in the Jewish religion. To be or not to be is the only solution; either believe in the absolute unity of God and fulfill his commands, as ordained in the Bible, which itself is of divine origin, or take no stock in it—believe in nothing, pretend nothing, before the eyes of the world. 

    Let a Jew being to be wandering in his faith, to esteem lightly the written or traditional law, and he is neither Jew nor man; neither honorable nor trustworthy. It will be particularly noticeable that the truly religious Jew is steadfast in his loyalty to state and has the highest respect for existing authority. His very religion demands of him a praying and striving for the welfare of the land wherein his lot is cast. Anarchy and demoralization are the products of “free thought,” and deviation from the dictates of religion, whether they occur in the slums of a ghetto or amidst the fashionable quarters of the upper West Side of New York city.

    The accusations made against Jews on the ground of orthodoxy and the peculiar practices of religion are as unjust as they are unfounded. The orthodox Jew, as a rule is a loyal, a law-abiding citizen; he feels for his country, rejoices at its progress, sympathizes in its grief, is solicitous for its welfare and will readily give his life in its defense. A Mordecai Noah, a Judah Touro, and other Jewish-American patriots were pious and consistent Israelites, not reformers. Moses Montefiore, Isaac Cremioux, and other benefactors of humanity descended from our race were and are genuine Jews. Even a Disraeli and a Heine, whom circumstances impelled to embrace another creed, even they had after all pronounced themselves more of sympathizers with Judaism than are the reformed of the present age, the advocates of assimilation. 

    If the priests of reform presume to settle the Jewish question by an overthrow of Judaism they are grossly mistaken. The eight or nine million orthodox Jews all the world over will never assimilate, and never give ear to such theories. Centuries of trial have made Israel’s faith proof against any onslaught from within or without. It matters not whether it be accounted natural or abnormal, the fact remains that the Jew will never relinquish his hold on life, never succumb to a suicidal extinction of his race by assimilation. 

    And, in truth, so long as the world at large has not yet assimilated the Jew, he must remain at his post, for this is his mission, to teach the world of one God for one brotherhood of mankind, and this by the silent testimony of his own existence as a peculiar people. As the master of the situation would have everybody aboard and then enter himself, so the Jew must be the last of all to yield; as he was the first one to promulgate divine truth. He has but one God and has nothing to give up. Either a Jew or an atheist.

    The Jew can only propagate to the world a universal assimilation, and when this end is accomplished join the happy fraternity, who are all children of one Universal Father. But to assimilate himself, to let himself be engulfed by the current of surrounding environments without having accomplished that purpose—this will never occur.