“In my judgment, Jewish children should be educated in Jewish schools.” (page 254) “Not only is it a positive and direct advantage to educate our children as Jews, but it is absolutely necessary to our preservation. Experience has shown that our young people will be weaned from our people if allowed indiscriminately to associate with the Gentiles.” (Page 255)
Discussing the possibility of Jews losing their crudeness, Mr. Levi asks, “How shall we best accomplish that end?” Then he quotes the frequent answer: “Since the exemplars of gentility most abound among the Gentiles, we should associate with them as much as possible, in order to wear our own rudeness away.” He meets the suggestion this way:
“If gentlemen were willing to meet all Jews on a parity because they are Jews, we should doubtless derive much benefit from such association. But, while it is true that no gentleman refuses association with another because that other is a Jew, he will not, as a rule, associate with a Jew unless he be a gentleman. As we are far from being all gentlemen, we cannot reasonably expect to be admitted as a class into good society. So, better keep by ourselves,” concludes Mr. Levi. (Page 260)
That is, Mr. Levi admits the willingness of society to meet Jews on equal terms, as with all others, but not on unequal terms. And this being so, Mr. Levi holds they had better meet as little as possible, they had better keep apart; in the formative years, certainly, Jewish young people should be kept rigidly apart from non-Jews. The exclusiveness of which the Jews complain is their own. The Ghetto is not a corner into which the non-Jews have herded the Semites; the Ghetto is a spot carved out of the community and consecrated to the Chosen People and is therefore the best section of the city in Jewish eyes, the rest being “the Christian quarter,” the area of the heathen. Mr. Levi himself admits on page 220 that there is no prejudice against the Jew in this country.