“Certain it is that thus far the race and the religion have been so fused, as it were, that none can say just where the one begins and the other leaves off.” (Page 116)
Attacking the contention of the “liberals” or “reformed Jews” to the effect that “Jew” is the name of a member of religious denomination, and not of a member of a certain race, Mr. Levi says:
“Nothing to my mind is more pregnant with error than this postulate of unreason. (Page 185) It is not true that the Jews are only Jews because of their religion.” (Page 189)
“The Jews are not simply an indiscriminate lot of people who hold to a common belief.” (Page 190)
“A native Eskimo, an American Indian might conscientiously adopt every tenet of the Jewish church, might practice every form and ceremony imposed by the Jewish laws and the Jewish ritual, and as far as the religion is concerned, be a Jew, but yet, no one who will reflect for a moment would class them with the Jews as a people. If the truth were known, a very large percentage of so-called Christians would be found to be believers in the essentials of the Jewish religion, and yet, they are not Jews.
“It requires not only that men should believe in Judaism, but that they should be the descendants in a direct line of that people who enjoyed a temporal government and who owned a country up to the time of the destruction of the second commonwealth.
“That great event took away from the Jews their country and their temporal government; it scattered them over the face of the earth, but it did not destroy the national and race idea which was a part of their nature and of their religion.”