Page Eight

THE JEWISH NEWS

UPPOSE you are Mr. Jacob Goldstein,
or Mr. Lester Goldstone, according to
your taste in nomenclature. You are
an average American Jew with the
virtues and limit E ions of average
human beings evert where when they
have been neither debased nor exalted
by special incitements. You are just
run-of-the-mill ; that is to say, you do
not belong to that ardent minority among
Jews whose intellectual prowess and ideal-
istic fervor is a constant irritant to the

Friday, January 29, 1943

wag remark that too many Jews are Nobel
prize winners. When your younger boy—not
the one in an Army camp on the West Coast
—came home with an excellent report card,
your pleasure was faintly tinged with con-
cern, for you had recently read an .article
which indicated too many Jewish children
strove for high marks.

But this is something different, or at least
it seems different to you. You can fathom
some motive in the other "too many's"—

stein, everybody would have figured out that
anti-Semitism was the first and cheapest
device of the pro-fascist demagogue. Since
this was now obvious to even the meanest
intelligence, nobody would let the war effort
be jeopardized by such a vicious and pale
pable trick. And Mr. Goldstein was corn,-
forted — till the air-raid warden incident.
Apparently the poison was still at work s
despite the war.

Today Jacob Goldstein is wondering.

THE CASE OF JACOB GOLDSTEIN

A Brilliant Analysis of One Jew's Psychological Problems

By MARIE SYRKIN

professional anti-Semite. Till the advent of
Hitler, you evinced no active interest in
Jewish causes of any kind, except, of course,
Jewish charities, because you were so essen-
tially confident and at peace in the America
of which you were an industrious, law-abid-
ing and ambitious part.

Now, naturally, being a normally sensitive
and decent person, you are deeply troubled
by the catastrophe that has overtaken other
Jews in the Hitler-dominated countries. You
cannot read. of the massacres of the helpless
and the innocent without a speCial horror and
anguished astonishment. But, after all, the
terror of which the newspapers bring you
inescapable reports is taking place in Europe
—the nightmare Europe where a new bar-
barism holds sway. And you, Jacob Gold-
stein, are a, grateful citizen of a powerful
democracy whose vision of a free world in
which human instead of animal values pre-
vail has never seemed so precious and so
good as at this turning point in history.

Ingenuity and Enthusiasm
of the Air Raid Warden

It is after Pearl Harbor, and you are
anxious to do your bit. You have grown a
trifle portly—you were more limber "over
there" in the last shindy, as your membership
in the American Legion testifies. But you
still have plenty of grit. So you get yourself
enrolled as an air-raid warden. Your wife,
in the meantime, is ringing all the - doorbells
in the apartment house and trying to sell war
stamps. She also explains graphically how
ladies should jump up and down on tin cans
to flatten them for Uncle Sam.

,

You are so full of patriotic zeal you even
get the superintendent to call a tenants'
meeting in the basement, and, since no one
seems anxious to talk, you make a speech to
start the ball rolling. You don't happen to
live in a Jewish neighborhood, but that does
not dampen your spirit. Aren't we all out to
lick Hitler and the Japs? For the first time,
you can voice your sentiments about the
menace of the Nazi plot for world domina,-
tion without feeling you must add apologetic-
ally, "Don't think it's because I'm a Jew."
In terse, original phrases you urge your fel-
low tenants to keep them rolling and flying,
to enroll as air-raid wardens, to sign up as
nurses' aids. In short, there are no limits to
your ingenuity and enthusiasm.

The Hurt That Comes
From Anti-Semitism

HEN, one evening you trudge dutifully
up and down your block, you hear
some passer-by mutter: "Another one
of those damned Jewish air-raid war-
dens." It hurts you in a special way.
Of late, even in the United States, you
have become accustomed to hearing :
"Too many Jews are doctors," or
lawyers, or bankers, or store-keepers,
or politicians. You have even heard some

.

motives of economic rivalry, or envy, or un-
reasonable libelous prejudice — but "Too
many Jewish air-raid wardens" is beyond
you. Everybody knows you receive neither
money nor honor for your promenade. And
there is all the room in the world for more
wardens. Your particular district is clamor-
ing for volunteers and not getting the
required number. Nevertheless, someone has
raised the evil whisper: "Too many Jewish
air-raid wardens."

Practical American Jew
in a Tough Spot

OU wonder if you should resign. Should
you hand in that white arm band and
take it easy in the evenings? Should
you tell your wife to make less noise
about the tin? But then "they" will
say you are not co-operating. You can
already hear the swelling mutter: "Too
few Jews are air-raid wardens; too few
tin cans . ."

Yes, .Mr. Goldstein is in a tough spot. And
when he looks for counsel, he is increasingly
confused. He reads neither the Anglo-Jewish
nor the Yiddish press, where the "Jewish
problem" is debated back and forth with
illuminating, if unrelenting, thoroughness.
He does not understand Yiddish, and his
subscription to the Voice of Israel is listed
among his charities. He hardly ever gets
around actually to reading an issue, though
he is always planning to find the time. How-
ever, though he lacks theoretical equipment,
he has a practical knowledge of certain
aspects of anti-Semitism. He has long been
familiar with some forms of social discrim-
inations, but these do . not agitate him too
much. He has no morbid longings for clubs
or resorts which do not welcome him. Eco-
nomic discrimination is more serious, and
though he personally has not been affected
by it, he is ready to fight with all he has for
equality of opportunity.

Pathological Anti-Semitism
in Our "Enlightened" Era

But the virulent, pathological anti-Semit-
ism of Nazi propaganda is something Mr.
Goldstein had not expected to witness in
these "enlightened" times. Still, once he
perceived the character of this systematic
onslaught on all civilized values, it became
a phenomenon that, after a fashion, he could
understand, just as he could understand the
venom in a serpent's poison- sac. It was the
nature of the beast. Even when Mr. Goldstein
would, shudderingly, come across a copy of
Social Justice or the mouthings of a William
Dudley Pelley, he understood. This was the
enemy, trying to get a foothold in America,
in the time-honored way, by exploiting lusts
and prejudices. It was not America. And
America had scented the danger. Social
Justice was no longer being hawked on street
corners ; the lads of the Pelley stripe were
finding their way behind bars as traitors and
Nazi agents. By this time, thought Mr. Gold-

The "Melting Pot" Idea
Makes Him Uneasy

R. GOLDSTEIN is intellectually con-
fused for still other reasons. He is
familiar with the sting of his ene-
mies—that is an old affliction whose
total cure he expects when the
ideals of a civilized world prevail—
but he is increasingly baffled by the
exhortations to which he is subject-
ed by his friends. He is startled to
find himself, in ever-growing measure, the
subject of discussion and analysis. He had
assumed he was taken for granted as one of
the country's constituent religious and na-
tional strains ; yet now hardly a month passes
in which some solid magazine does not .de-
vote space to his unspectacular existence.

He has been a pretty faithful reader of
the Saturday Evening Post for years, for
instance—likes their wholesome "American'!
fiction `(none of your Faulkner or Heming-
way for Mr. Goldstein) and he was
uneasily astonished to discover a series of
three articles on the "Jewish problem" in
that safe, familiar territory. All were written
by Jews, and all volunteered different
analyses and offered different panaceas.

Judge Jerome Frank, in "Red, White and
Blue Herring" (December 6, 1941), advo-
cated the thesis that if Jews were given half
a chance, they would vanish in the "melting
pot," leaving no trace behind. In fact, ac-
cording to Judge Frank, Jews in their zeal
to merge swiftly and anonymously with the
American scene were posthaste throwing
overboard all the spiritual and cultural bag-
gage acquired through the centuries, includ-
ing their great ethical and religious heritage.
"Most Jews born in America regard as their
significant heroes Jefferson and Lincoln, not
Moses and David." Mr. Goldstein was un-
easy. He hesitated to take issue with a
Justice, but he did not consider allegiance
to Lincoln and Moses mutually incompatible,
and he rather resented being deprived of
figures whom he had always viewed as
among the chief glories of his people. He
couldn't figure out the Judge's mathematics
—according to which his value would in-
crease if he reduced himself to a colorless
zero.

"The Democratic Traditions
of the Prophets"

Then a few weeks later (March 21, 1942);
Mr. Goldstein came upon "The Jews Are Dif-
ferent," by Waldo Frank, which went off,
on quite a different tack. The second Mr.
Frank pictured the. Jews as bearers of the
"democratic tradition of the Prophets"; far
from growing remote from the moral passion
of the Bible, as the Judge adduced, they
were all "difforent" because, consciously or
unconsciously, Jews carried the fire of the
democratic ideal,

,

Though the mantles,: of prophecy sat un-
easily upon him, Mr. Goldstein found the