The Southern Jewish weekly. [volume], December 12, 1941, Page Page Two, Image 2

About The Southern Jewish weekly. [volume] (Jacksonville, Fla.) 1939-1992

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Page Two
An Exclusive Article on the Antiochus of our J' me
One of the Most Famous Jewish Authors of America
JEWS AS SYMBOL OF THE MODERN SPIRIT
BY LEWIS BROWNE
Author of “This Believing World,” “Stranger Than Fiction,” etc.
Lewis Browne, one of America’s foremost authors,
whose popular interpretations of history have consistently
been best sellers, here analyzes the basic reasons for the
ruthlessness with which Hitler pursues the Jews. Mr.
Browne, who is at >vork on a book which Macmillan’s will
publish earlv in 1942 and from which the present material
will form the basis for a chapter, sees the Jews as the fer
ment of the world’s progress.
. . . The Editor
The Germans succumbed to Hit- |
ler for the same reason that the
Americans elected Roosevelt, and
the Russians accepted Stalin: they
believed he could save them. Hit
ler, too, had a program, and it
seemed to appeal to the Germans
precisely because it was the oppo
site of both Roosevelt’s and Stal
in’s. The latter two, though pro
foundly dissimilar, had at least
one thing in common: they were
headed in the same direction.
Both aimed to make the machine
fulfill its promise; both sought to
make life more abundant and ur
bane; both were obviously pro
gressive. But Hitler’s program?—
that was just as obviously regres- !
;!
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sive. In most respects it was
comparable to the program which
Mussolini had already initiated in
Italy, the chief difference being
that Hitler seemed bent on re
gressing with greater thorough
ness and speed. He came of a
people who were peculiarly gifted
for thoroughness, and his own fre
netic nature made him a demon
for speed. Besides —and this may
well have been the most telling
factor, he was sincere. Hitler,
unlike Mussolini, was no mere
careerist. Regression to him was
more than an expedient. It was
a matter of principle.
Hitler believed that mankind
had gone astray. Ever since the
dawn of modern times the race
had been painfully struggling to
develop its intellectual faculties
and curb its passions. It had been
laboring with all its might to be
“rational.” The prevailing philos
ophy had scorned fanaticism and
bigotry, and had insisted that
people must think things through,
see both sides of the question—in
short, be “scientific.” And most
people who were at all educated
had actually tried to follow that
prescription, or had at east known
that they ought to try. But not
Hitler. To him the whole idea of
rationalism seemed perverse. He
was a mystic, and insisted that
intuition was a far surer guide to
truth than cogitation. The fact
that this made him appear an
eccentric merely proved to him
greviously mankind had been mis
'ed. It revealed how much dam
age had been done because the
schools had set out to “enlighten”
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THE SOUTHERN JEWISH WEEKLY
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LEWIS BROWNE
the young rather than indoctrinate
them. “Education,” declared Hit
ler, “ought to be confined to broad
and general convictions . . .
drummed into the minds and
hearts of the people by incessant
repetition.”
THE MODERN SPIRIT
Whatever else the Jews may
have been, first and foremost they
were a symbol. They more than
[any other group on earth bespoke
the modern spirit, for to that spir
it they owed their very life. Not
their existence, of course—that
dated from ancient days—but their
life as free humans. Such life
virtually ceased for them in the
medieval era, and it was not re
newed again until the dawn of
modern times. And that u T as why
they were such devotees of the
modern spirit. In a certain sense
they were the spirit incarnate —
with all its faults as well as vir
tues.
To benighted folk the Jews had
always appeared to be a sinister
element, and in one small sense
this impression was correct. The
Latin sinister means “left”, and
there is no denying that the Jews
were inordinately prone to be
leftish. There was a reason. At
the time of the French Revolution
it was solely the radicals seated on
the left benches of the Estates-
General who urged the emancipa
tion of the Jews. And this re
mained true in France and every
where else from then on. Always
and everywhere it was the forces
on the left that spoke up for the
Jew. Naturally so, for those
forces believed in progress, and
they recognized that the Jew was
peculiarly adapted to help that
cause. Nor was this solely be
cause Jews knew that reaction
brought them persecution. The
gypsies knew too, yet they never
became agents of progress. The
American Negroes knew it, so did
the Hindu untouchables, yet those
elements and countless others that
stood to gain under the auspices of
progress nevertheless remained
stubbornly conservative. The de
cisive factor in the case of the
Jew seems to have been that he
was conditioned for progress by
his natural habitat. Progress was
primarily a product of the city,
and the Jew was primarily a city
creature.
That explains his spectacular
advance in the Machine Age. In
dustrialism, it must be remember
ed, arose in the cities, so the Jew
was able to rise with it. He was
already at home in the cities, and
had been at home in them for at
least a thousand years. Ever
since the Dark Ages, when the
law had forbidden him to own
land, he had had no other way to
live save as a trafficker in goods
or gold. Consequently, when the
Machine arrived he was all pre
pared to climb aboard. Industrial
ism required capital, and he was
the man to advance it; industrial
ism produced wares, and he was
the man to sell them; industrial
ism agglomerated workers, and he
was the man to help them organ
ize, He could read and write, and
he could count; he had the cun
ning born of persecution and the
daring born of desperation. There
he was at an advantage now. All
the talents bred in him by forty
generations of urban life were able
to flourish with the triumph of
urban enterprise.
The Jew became the arch-capi
talist, the arch-socialist, and also
the arch-intellectual. For the city
did more than bring forth factor
ies and slums. It spawned uni
versities, academies, conservator
ies, libraries. Consequently the
Jew was able to move in on these,
too. It was no accident that he
became a leader in the arts and
the learned professions. Now that
the Machine had come into the
world, there was more time and
money to devote to cultural pur
suits; and ninety-nine out of every
hundred Jews —at least in the
W es t_iived right around the
places where that devotion was
most hotly pursued. It was as
natural for the Jews to become
prize scholars as it was for the
sea-girt Swedes to become prime
scholars.
And that helps to account for
the queer violence of Hitler’s hos
tility to the Jews. He preached
anti-Semitism for more than mere
demagogic reasons. He genuinely
believed that in fighting Israel he
was, as he put it, "working in the
spirit of the Almighty Creator.”
For to him the Almighty Creator
was in a quite literal sense a pa
gan god—that is a deity of the
pagus, the “countryside.” And
Israel had become the living sym
bol of the city. Therefore Hitler
had no choice. The restoration of
the primeval way of life necessar
ily entailed the destruction of the
culture bred in cities, and that in
turn absolutely required the oblit
eration of any influence wielded
by Jews. The man who had once
been denied a scholarship in Vi
enna may have been deranged;
but he was consistent.
Copyright 1941 by Independent
Jewish Press Service, Inc.
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