CodalSearch this book — or all of Codal…⌘K
nydus/The JewsPublic

This book examines the relationship between the Jewish people and the nations in which they reside. The author argues for the necessity of open discussion and the abandonment of concealment to address the political tensions surrounding this issue.

Page 80 of 263
Table of Contents

CHAPTER IV THE GENERAL CAUSE OF FRICTION

producing the great upheaval in Russia, and the attempted upheavals elsewhere. But though the new Jewish revolutionary movement has shaken the old insistence on Jewish wealth it is hard to eradicate it. It has been present throughout the ages, and will remain at the back of people's minds perhaps for ever, because the few Jews who do concentrate on piling up great fortunes concentrate on that task so entirely. Yet the impression is false and is the fruitful cause of the worst misunderstandings.

For the Jews are not a rich nation, and the very fact that they stand in the popular mind—and especially in the mind of rich people in times of corruption—for wealth, is an example of the way in which they are misunderstood and of the way in which injustice to the Jew arises.

The Jews are a poor nation. An enemy would say that they were poor because they did not work, but this again would be an injustice, because the Jew works exceedingly hard and has often in the past and does still in many places work hard, not only in negotiation and commerce but with his hands.

80