To the Editor of the American Hebrew
For its 1890 Passover issue, The American Hebrew, a New York journal, solicited opinions from prominent Christian clergymen and intellectuals on the reasons and remedies for anti-Semitism. They were asked to consider the following four questions:
I. Can you, of your own personal experience find any justification whatever for the entertainment of prejudice towards individuals solely because they are Jews?
II. Is this prejudice not due largely to the religious instruction that is given by the Church and Sunday-school:—for instance, the teachings that the Jews crucified Jesus; that they rejected him and can only secure salvation by a belief in him, and similar matters that are calculated to excite in the impressionable mind of the child an adversion, if not a loathing, for members of “the despised race?”
III. Have you observed in the social or business life of the Jew, so far as your personal experience has gone, any different standard of conduct than prevails among Christians of the same social status?
IV. Can you suggest what should be done to dispel the existing prejudice?1
Mark Twain's reply was not published in the symposium. No record remains which would indicate why it did not appear, or whether or not it was, in fact, submitted to the editor.
To the Editor of the American Hebrew
Private. Please suppress my nom de plume. I use it only when joking.
SLC
To the Editor of the American Hebrew:
I read your questions hurriedly, a week or two ago, and then lost them; but I have the impression that they were ground-plots upon which you were inviting a number of people to build such explanations as they were able, of the Christian world's antipathy to the Israelite.
My guess may not be valuable, but it is offered in good faith, and with the conviction that it is near the mark. If you have a list of illustrious Jews—of any century or of all centuries—will you please append it to this article? My other instanced facts are well enough known to need no confirmation by statistics.
If Christ's fellow-Jews numbered a million persons, and a hundred out of this mass procured his death, the guilt of the hundred would outweigh the innocence of the rest of the million for all time—among bigoted and unthinking people. That would be but human and natural. But one might expect to find ten considerate and fair-minded persons among every hundred thousand men and women in our age—and in previous ages—who would not allow the act of that handful of the guilty to bring and keep the innocent vast body of that nation under condemnation and obloquy. Has this ten in the hundred thousand ever existed? It is questionable; any one will say this who reads history either for study or for amusement, or who is in friendly and familiar intercourse with the best and most cultivated minds in his community.
But do I seriously believe that the almost universal antipathy to the Jew issues from the daily and deliberately pondered fact that the Jews crucified Christ? No. It is impossible to believe such a thing. It is irrational, it is opposed to common sense. Manifestly the fact of the crucifying was reason enough in former ages, cruder ages, but certainly the world has outlived that. Outlived all of it but the dry husk—a prejudice, which our minds in- [begin page 447] herit as our male breasts inherit and accept the rudimentary nipple without much troubling ourselves about the why or the wherefore of it.
Do I wish to intimate that this inherited prejudice is a factor of small dimensions in this baffling and stubborn problem of the Christian's antipathy to the Jew? No—quite the contrary. I think it must constitute, all by itself, nine-tenths of the why and the wherefore. I think that if it were absent, the Christian antipathy to the Jew would not be more pronounced than the slight antipathy which individuals of any nation feel toward all foreigners, or which the people of one part of a country often feel to the people of another part of it: the comically superior and compassionate attitude of the far-western miner or cow-boy toward the “tender-foot” from the east, for instance.
When one, in our day, tries to array light-giving facts, figures and reasons in explanation, support and justification of the world's contempt and hatred of the Jew, a sort of light-giving facts, figures and reasons do certainly respond to his call—but as a rule they are defective, disappointing, not usable. He finds himself considering, weighing and analyzing propositions like the following:
If an International Intellectual Fair should be held three times per century, its prizes to go to the race furnishing the largest number of persons illustrious for intellectual achievement according to population, what race would carry away those prizes, regularly, persistently, monotonously? The Israelites. Was there ever a race that would consent to work with its hands if it could get its living with its brains? We know of none. Was there ever a race that did not have to get its living with its hands? Only one—the Israelites. Was there ever a race that contributed no beggars to the world? Only one—the Israelites. Is there a race which takes care of all its poor, and suffers none to perish for want of food and shelter? Only one—the Israelites. The love of the members of an Israelitish family for each other is so strong that it amounts to devotion. Social intercourse among the Israelites is notably warm and affectionate, and but little obstructed by chilling conventions and formalities.
These striking facts show the presence in those people of the sort of qualities which civilized folk customarily admire and approve. Then if our inherited prejudice were removed, how would the Israelite stand with us? As a fellow American? No, as a foreigner, I think, temporarily. He would still be kept off a little. As long as an Englishman is an Englishman, we feel a slight reserve toward him. We retain this until he has by and by changed into an American.
[begin page 448]I think that if our inherited prejudice against the Israelite were removed, he would presently be seen to be as American as anybody, and that would end the ciphering over this puzzle by abolishing the puzzle.
Do I think that that day will ever come? I do not know the trick of prophecy. But I do know, or think I know, that an antipathy with a reason back of it has no advantage in lasting qualities over an inherited antipathy whose origin has been forgotten. I hope, and think, and even believe, that the useless and ridiculous mammals will disappear from the male human being's breast by and by, and I try to believe that the rudimental Christian antipathy to the Jew will disappear during the same week; but my confidence is pretty rocky.
Hartford, March.
S. L. Clemens