Assimilation Overtaking U.S. Jewry Fast Enough Without MacIver’s Aid

(Jacob Landua, who as founder and executive head of J.T.A. enjoyed for almost four decades unusual opportunities to observe Jewish defense efforts in many parts of the world, analyses Prof. MacIver's report on Jewish defense agencies.)

By Jacob Landau

Prof. Maclver, in his analysis of the work of the Jewish defense agencies, advocates as his main thesis that Jews should "seek effective participation in the common life of the American community."

Assimilation represents a natural and Irresistible force in the Jewish community. All segments of the community even those who, such as the Zionists and Orthodox, are ideologically opposed to it - are subject to It. The Jew does not choose "exclusiveness". Even in Czarist Russia, despite all the persecution, assimilationist tendencies developed. Jews rarely exercise great influence within their community unless they have made their grade in the Gentile world. They are frequently more "goy-minded" than God-minded, more Gentile-minded than Jew-minded. Gentiles are often more effective than Jews at Jewish fund raising gatherings. Jews are flattered by Gentiles to join their clubs or work with them.

The truth of the matter is that Professor MacIver's advice, if followed, would boomerang. Jews would be told they should not push where they are not wanted.

No matter how beneficial the career or the activity of a Jew may be to the community-at-large, and even when completely divorced from Jewish interests and motives, it is invariably dubbed "Jewish".

PUBLISHERS LEAN BACKWARDS
The New York Times is a good example. Ochs' and now Sulzberger's only aim is to produce a newspaper of which the American community can be proud. Just as the Jewish publishers of great newspapers in Europe, they are inclined to lean backwards in Jewish matters. All such publishers have been and are anti-Zionists - perhaps party out of a half-conscious fear that otherwise the American, German, French, etc. character of their papers may be questioned.

On one of my visits to Washington during the war I saw one and the same day Lord Lothian, the British Ambassador and Oumanksy, the Soviet Ambassador. Lord Lothian was in an agitated mood. Pointing to the New York Times, which was lying on his desk, he said: "Why does this Jewish paper feature a statement of Lindbergh on the front page while burying a statement by William Allen White on the seventeenth page?" (White was then head of a committee to help the Allied Powers in the fight against Hitler.) "Does the Times assume," he asked, "that a man who is a great flier is necessarily an expert on international affairs whose opinion is more important than that of one of your famous editors? I should have thought that, in the war against Hitler, we would have staunch allies in the Jewish press."

Later I found Oumansky no less agitated than his Lordship. He spoke [wih] bitterness about the Jewish press, singling out the Times, The New York Post, The Washington Post - and the Yiddish press. "Why," he asked, "is the Jewish press heaping so much abuse on me and the Soviet Union? We have outlawed anti-Semitism, the Yiddish language is officially recognized, we have set aside Birobidjan for the Jews to settle there. No government has shown such genuine friendship to the Jewish people," he claimed.

Oumansky himself would have unequivocably rejected the idea that his being Jewish had the slightest influence on his activities. He had no compunctions about having contacts with the Nazi Embassy during the Hitler-Stalin pact. Nevertheless, as he told me himself, his passport carried the inscription "Jewish nationality".

On the other hand, anti-Semites are not the only ones to identify the Bolshevik government with the Jews. A few days following the issuance of the Balfour Declaration, the British Ambassador in Petrograd declared to a Zionist delegation: "Now that Britain is giving Palestine to the Jews I take it that Trotsky will change his anti-British orientation."

MYTH OF JEWISH SOLIDARITY
He made this fantastically unrealistic statement quite seriously. We know that Jewish communists are utterly devoid of any Jewish sentiment - whether religious or nationalistic. Non-Jews, however, take it for granted that no matter to which ideological camp a Jew belongs, he retains a sense of Jewish solidarity. In 1936 George Backer, then president of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and I, were, together with a dozen other people, Winston Churchill's guests for lunch at his country home near London. At the table, Churchill asked Backer: "Are you a Zionist?" And when Backer replied in the negative, Churchill exclaimed: "How can one be a Jew and not be a Zionist?"

The Jew is indeed an enigma to many even enlightened Gentiles. It is understandably difficult for a Gentile to find his way in the maze of contradictions. The British Ambassador in Petrograd who assumed that a Trotsky (or Oumansky) is Jewish-minded and a Oumansky who resents this very much, but nevertheless expects the publisher of the New York Times to be Jewish-minded, such factors are confusing indeed. To give another example: Peron, for a period, was unfriendly to the Zionists because he resented the criticisms of the "Jewish" New York Times. It took some effort to explain this to Peron.

Years ago I talked about the Jewish problem to two Jewish bankers, Jacob Goldschmidt, the former president of one of Germany's greatest banks, and the late George Blumenthal.

Blumenthal was at one time president of the New York Federation of Jewish Charities, and a generous philanthropist. "I feel irked every time I see the J.T.A. by-line in the American press," Bumenthal said. "I won't give you a red nickel for the J.T.A. But you can have $100,000 to propagandize the Jews not to have children. Judaism is a curse. What happened in Germany will happen in England and here. It is merely a question of time. We should make up our minds to disappear."

Blumenthal had the courage to voice a view other assimilationist Jews hold, but would not dare to express.

WHAT DOES HE WANT
Goldschmidt went off on an entirely different tangent. "The trouble with the Jewish people is, he stated, "that it has not created a central representative body which can answer Geobel's vile charges authoritatively. The Jewish people have no voice recognized by Jew and non-Jew alike. The establishment of such a central body is the indispensable premise for [eectivffe] Jewish defense." He spoke as eloquently as a rabbi and waxed passionate in extolling the wisdom of his suggestion. It almost sounded like the nationalist concept of the World Jewish Congress.

I realized my mistake when I saw Goldschmidt again after the emergence of the State of Israel. He was very unhappy. A great tragedy had befallen the Jewish people. From now on the Jews would be considered an alien element. He refused to contribute to the U.J.A. because Israel would benefit by such a contribution.

Jewish life moves within these contradictions. The centrifugal forces within our community are overstrong. Because of the emergence of the State of Israel, assimilationist tendencies will gain still more strength. In the course of time - unless checked by growing anti-Semitism - the process of disintegration will grow apace. The core of resistance will be formed by Orthodox Jews and Zionists.

If the Jewish community follows Professor MacIver's advice it will enhance the centrifugal forces and this is the road to self-destruction. The imperative need is to strengthen the centripetal forces.

I agree with Professor MacIver in his belief that a reassessment of Jewish defense work is overdue. But I say that the policies he suggests have been practiced here as well as abroad. Their futility has been proven.

A new policy is certainly necessary: In the future Jewish defense work must serve - and not hamper - Jewish survival.