PURELY COMMENTARY

Do We Atone For Mankind?

Continued from Page 2

Moslem world that they were silent
when even the cruelties of the Middle
Ages were overshadowed by the Nazism
of Germany and the pogromists in Tur-
key?
Indeed, the crimes against our
people briefly enumerated here were
committed by minorities. Yet they claim
to be representatives of all the peoples
they belong to. Perhaps they know that
there never will be forgetting. Now we
assume to assert, on the eve of a great
day of forgiving, that here can be no for-
giving!
Once again, therefore, in making
these assertions, and in offering what
may be termed the Jewish defense, the
question may be asked, again and again,
if it is possible, in view of so much per-
secution of Jews and so much defiance of
the persecutors, that the whole world
can be wrong and the Jews alone are
right?
For an answer we turn to a great
Jewish philosopher, Ahad HaAm (Asher
Ginzberg) and his treatment of the Blood
Libel, one other inhumanity toward
Jewry to be listed in the incriminations
toward us.
In one of his most challenging es-
says, written nearly a century ago, in
1892, Ahad HaAm expressed the shock
reverberating over the repetitions of the
ritual murder libel suffered by the
Jewish people. In that essay he stated:

In all this fresh outbreak of
calamities that has come upon us
of late, there is nothing so dis-
tressing to every Jew as the re-
crudescence of the "blood-
accusation." This : ominable
charge, old though it is, strikes
us, and will always strike us, as
something new; and since the

Middle Ages it has always pro-
foundly agitated the spirit of the
Jewish people, not only in the ac-
tual place where the cry has been
raised, but even in distant coun-
tries where the incident has been
merely reported.
If I say that this blood-
accusation has profoundly agi-
tated the spirit of the Jewish
people, it is because the roots of
this phenomenon lie, to my mind,
not in any external cause, but in
the innermost spirit of the Jew. If
in medieval instances of the
blood-accusation we find that the
whole people used to regard it-
self as standing at the judgment
bar together with the wretches
whom fortune made the im-
mediate victims of the scourge,
we may explain this fact as a re-
sult of the physical danger to the
whole people, which was in-
volved in every local incident of
this kind.
Again, if, fifty years ago, the
Damascus blood-accusation so
cruelly disturbed the halcyon
calm of European Jewry, one
might attribute this to just the
opposite cause, to the extreme
jealousy of the emancipated Jews
for their newly-won dignity and
privileges. But at the present day
neither explanation is open. On
the one hand, the physical
danger is no longer serious,
especially in the case of distant
communities; on the other hand,
we have grown used to listening
with equanimity to those who re-
vile us, and we are no longer
consumed with a jealous regard
for our dignity.

Yet even today the blood-
accusation comes as a rude and
violent shock, which rouses the
whole of Jewry to a passionate
repudiation of this outrageous
charge.

Nearly a century later, the outrage-
ous keeps reappearing again and again.
Ahad HaAm would have been addi-
tionally shocked to know that his warn-
ing protest against such a faked accusa-
tion has not been obliterated in an
enlightened age like the present.

Therefore the truth and the realism
of the eminent Jewish philosopher's in-
dictment of an indifferent world. There-
fore the justification of the claim that
the entire world can be wrong and the
Jew right. As Ahad HaAm asserted, con-
cluding his essay:
This accusation is the solitary
case in which the general ac-
ceptance of an idea about our-
selves does not make us doubt
whether all the world can be
wrong, and we right, because it is
based on an absolute lie, and is
not even supported by any false
inference from particular to uni-
versal. Every Jew who has been
brought up among Jews knows
as an indisputable fact that
throughout the length and
breadth of Jewry there is not a
single individual who drinks
human blood for religious pur-
poses.

wrong; because this will make it
easier for us to get rid of the ten-
dency to bow to the authority of
"everybody" in other matters. Let
the world say what it will about
our moral inferiority: we know
that its ideas rest on popular
logic, and have no real scientific
basis. Who has ever penetrated
into the very heart of the Jew,
and discovered his essential na-
ture? Who has ever weighed the
Jew against the non-Jew of the
same class — Jewish tradesman
against non-Jewish tradesman,
persecuted Jew against perse-
cuted non-Jew, starved Jew
against starved non-Jew, and so
on — who has carried out this
test, scientifically and impar-
tially, and found the balance in-
cline to this side or that?
"But" — you ask — "is it
possible that everybody can be
wrong, and the Jews right?"
Yes, it is possible: the blood-
accusation proves it possible.
Here, you see, the Jews are right
and perfectly innocent. A Jew
and blood — could there be a
more complete contradiction?
And yet ...

We ought, therefore, always
to remember that in this instance
the general belief, which is
brought to our notice ever and
anon by the revival of the
blood-accusation, is absolutely

The experience, applicable to the
Yom Kippur questions posed, is clear.
Do we atone for mankind? The
entire world has much to apologize for
and to do the atoning. We do not forget.
Do we forgive?
On the contrary, we accuse.
The repetition of the shocking libels
leveled at us should outrage mankind
against itself.
Let the world's conscience provide
the answer: do we owe it forgiveness?

the general press — and I have
never ceased to admire the man-
liness and the fine sense of dig-
nity of the Jews of America in
adopting that policy, and I have
never failed to applaud the noble
attitude . of the American press,
which never paid the slightest at-
tention to Ford's falsehoods. You
will remember that we united in
a public statement regarding the
"Protocols," which in a single
paragraph without even naming
Ford, as I now recollect, dis-
missed as unworthy of comment
the concoctions of the Dearborn
Independent.
There is, therefore, not the
slightest basis for charging any
Jew with preventing the flow of
the milk of human kindness into
the veins of Henry Ford. If you
believed that you could have
succeeded in that task, it must
have been because of your
greater familiarity with "the
fliver" and its maker. Nobody
else was visited by such a dream.
It may be interesting in this
connection for you to know that
shortly after Mr. Harding became
President, I took advantage of a
favorable opportunity to suggest
to him the desirability of employ-
ing his influence to dissuade
Ford from continuing his cam-
paign of defamation. He acted at
once and I have in my possession
a full account written by his
representative of the instructions
given to him by the President, of

the interview at Detroit with
Ford, and of the letter's promise
conveyed to the President that he
would stop. Some day that letter
and the incidental history will be
published. I should have added
that the President told me per-
sonally what he had done. It is
significant that so long as Mr.
Harding lived that promise was
kept, and it was not until later
that there occurred new out-
breaks, notably those relating to
Sapiro and the Rosenbluth case.
Do you believe that the influ-
ence of any man could have been
more potent than that of the
President of the United States?
Or do you believe that it would
have been appropriate for us to
have grovelled or crawled on our
bellies before him, or to have
prayed that he should be illumi-
nated by the light of truth, or to
have humored him, or to have
acted as toadies, or to have sent
him religious tracts?
You may not be aware of the
fact that the Statement of Ford
was written by me and was
signed by him without the
change of a word. His pitiable
excuse of ignorance, which was
made to me as his sole explana-
tion, was deliberately inserted by
me to enable the world, and
especially those of other lands
who have no appreciation of his
mentality, to know the kind of a
man who succumbed to the blan-
dishments of the anti-Semites. I

`Hush-Hush' And Sha-Sha' Era

Continued from Page 2

mentioned you were quite vocal
in making the assertion that you
would have brought about the
termination of Ford's attacks had
it not been for the fact that while
you were engaged in conferring
with him on the subject a tele-
gram was delivered to him which
changed the spirit of the dream
and that it was a telegram sent
by me.
At the Conference of the
leading Jewish organizations
called by the American Jewish
Committee, held in New York in
1920, the Protocols and the Ford
publications were the subject of
discussion. You had been fur-
nished with the telegrams which
passed between Ford, the Dear-
born Independent and myself,
and you publicly retracted what
you had previously said on the
subject and conceded that there
was nothing in the telegram
which could in any way be
criticized. Am I to understand
that you have undergone a
change of heart? If so, kindly let
me know so that I may subject
your article to a critical analysis
in the light of all of the facts.
The idea that you or anybody
else could at that time have per-
suaded Ford to change his tactics
is preposterous. He was at the
time under malign influences
which nothing that any Jew
could have said or done could
have overcome. Brazol and his
gang of emigres working with

30

Friday, October 10, 1986

Liebold and Cameron were in the
saddle and Ford was mere play
in the hands of the potter. My at-
tention was called to the Dear-
born Independent of whose
existence I was ignorant, by
Julius Rosenwald after the pub-
lication of the second anti-Jewish
article, which appeared on May
29, 1920. I could not believe that
Ford (had) anything to do with it.
So I telegraphed him personally
on June 1, 1920, calling his atten-
tion to the two articles that had
appeared, their injustice and the
harm which they would inflict on
three million of his fellow-
citizens, and urged a discon-
tinuance of the unwarranted at-
tacks. The answer, dated June 3,
1920, signed "Dearborn Publish-
ing Company," was insulting. I
was characterized as a Bolshevik
and was advised to hold in re-
serve my best card "anti-
Zamitism." My sole reply was
that I could verify all that I had
said.
If you are still under the de-
lusion that you could have stop-
ped the flood-gates of vilification,
all that I can say is that the wish
is father to the thought. From the
beginning it was the policy of the
American Jewish Committee, in
which the Conference alluded to
concurred, to ignore Ford, to ref-
rain from entering into a con-
troversy with him, to avoid ac-
tion which would enable him to
get publicity for his vile libels in

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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

