It is not the Gentile who says that Jewish ideals, as ideals, are incompatible with life in our country; it is the Jew who says so. It is he who inveighs against Americanism, not the American who inveighs against Judaism.
As this article is one with the last, the same method of impassive presentation of the testimony will be followed. Readers of this study of the Jewish Question should know that neither rhetoric nor emotion will contribute a single element to the solution of the Question. We prefer to leave rhetoric and emotion to the anti-Semites who call names and to the pro-Semites who are apparently reduced to the same necessitous level.
Now, the first thing to know is this: that though Americanism is yet unfinished, Judaism has been complete for centuries; and while no American would think of pointing to any part of the country or to any group as representing the true and final type of Americanism, the Jews quite unhesitatingly point to parts of the world and to certain groups as representing the true type of Judaism.
Where is the type to be found which Jewish writers recognize as the true one?
The Jew of the ghetto is held up in Jewish treatises as the norm of Judaism.
The visitor in New York has perhaps seen on Central Park west the massive synagogue of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews. Its famous rabbi was the Rev. Dr. D. de Sola Pool. He is the author of the following words:
“In the ghetto the observance of Judaism was natural and almost inevitable. The regimen of Jewish life was the atmosphere that was breathed * * * Not only did public opinion make it possible for men to go bearded, to keep the head covered at all times, to carry