Here was a poor fool with his head like the ostrich’s—in the sand. I explained to him that being a Jew was not a question of religion but a question of blood. I told him that if a Jewish leopard ceased visiting the synagogue to go to a Christian Cultist chapel it did not necessarily get rid of its spots. I left him scratching his head, and I also lost the chance of a job in his store.
In and out of offices presided over by men with Jewish faces I trudged all day. Most of these men, I subsequently learned, belonged to New Thought, Christian Cultist and other up-to-date churches and societies—it was good for their business. They called themselves Christians, but nature’s marks cannot be changed like one’s clothes.
In the great theatrical districts I found thousands of my fellow Jews who had grown rich over night by coining perhaps a popular song that had pleased the cabaret-mad crowd or by ridiculous impersonations of their race upon the music hall stages. A good many of these were young men, sons of fathers and mothers who had been driven from their own country with fire and sword.
The mothers and fathers stay at home blessing God every hour of the day and night for guiding them to such a country as this, while the sons and daughters are out at the theaters, in the halls and cabarets singing songs of Dixie. Passing by in this great throng are prominent actors, critics and playwrights, many under assumed names, simply because their own names are Jewish.
Flashing across the horizon as I write is a notorious Jewish doctor with a consumption cure. He could have been famous and honored had he but suppressed himself, instead of which he, with his commercial instinct and his press agent methods, made more enemies for the race. Many Gentiles, I will admit, have had consumption cures, but it remained for one of our people to float companies and open institutions before the “cure” was even reported upon by the government.