He is justified, however, in his derision of our incorporated professional wisdom, which proceeds crablike, with logical considerations of the following kind:
“ In olden times agriculture was carried on in Palestine; at that time the Jews inhabited Palestine; consequently the Jews have been agriculturists.”
Really, one might just as well argue: at the present day the Jews hold a dominating position in Germany, and since the German Nation, which maintains itself for the greater part by agriculture, has reached a high stage of culture, these Jews must be agriculturists, and the creators of the German culture!
[Page 233]
3. Dispersion of the Jews over the earth.
Sombart has only irony for the Diaspora, which provides a most acceptable motive for evoking howls of lamentation from the children of Judah, and a whine of sympathy from many other sentimental people.* He is of opinion that if we wish to be honest with ourselves, we are quite unable to form any correct impression of the exile, whether of the departure or of the return. The Jewish account states:
“ And Nebucadnezzar led away all the captains and all the soldiers; ten thousand were led away, and all smiths and metalworkers; no one was left except the common people of the country.”
And when it proceeds to state:
“He led away all the nobility of the land from Jerusalem into captivity at Babel”, the thought occurs to us, that perhaps only the parasitic upper classes were transported, whilst the honest, agricultural population was allowed to remain undisturbed (2 Kings 24, 14—15; 25, 11 — 12). There is obviously a mistake in Luther’s translation of the latter passage. This reads:
“ But the rest of the people, who remained in the town, and who sided with the King of Babel, and that other poverty-stricken section of the populace, were led away by Nebusur Adan, the Governor.”
This must manifestly mean: — “not away”; — for, later on it reads:
“and the Governor called for peasants and vine-dressers from amongst the lowest in the land;”
and again, later on, in verse 22, that the king had placed “the remainder of the people” under the order of Gedalja. To the Governor, Nebusur Adan, Sombart gives the title “ Chief of the executioners”. — What is then the object of this objectionable translation? Does it not disclose the ancient Jewish hatred for the enemies of Judah? — But Sombart himself, referring to the exiles, speaks in confirmation of the above:
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* Amongst other things it is interesting to know that Alexander Dumas, in his play: “The wife of Claudius”, which glorifies the Jews, makes his hero, Daniel say:
“ the Diaspora has not scattered us; on the contrary, it has extended us in all directions. In consequence, we enmesh the whole world in a net so to speak”.
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[Page 234] “ The real country-people were not to be found amongst them. Thus the wisdom of the Assyrian kings obviously recognised the kind of plague, which was afflicting the fruitful land of Canaan, and endeavoured to purify the new province by deporting the parasitic class — the plutocracy — and leaving the honest peasant and working-class undisturbed in the country.”
Excellent! This is exactly the reading which the Anti-Semites adopted 30 years ago. And we are in agreement with Sombart, that these honest people were the remainder of the original native tribes. Thus our author, (Sombart) has adopted the perception of the despised AntiSemites, in its entirety, when he characterises the dominion of the Jewish nation in Palestine, and the conditions, which they took along with them to Babylon, in the following words:
“ Town-bred masters, who are, at the same time, money-lenders, have their land cultivated by non-Jews, who act as tenantpeasants; that, at any rate, is the typical picture, which we obtain from the Babylonian Talmud.”
Sombart allows it to appear, that the exile of the Hebrews in Babylon, was by no means enforced by compulsion, and that the Hebrews, on the contrary, had gone there voluntarily so that they would be able to practise their usury to greater advantage in the centres of culture.
“ For”, he says, “we never learn that those self-banished Jews ever returned to their native soil, after they had acquired a small fortune, like emigrant Swiss, Hungarians or Italians do, at the present day. They remained, on the contrary, in the foreign cities, and maintained merely spiritual-religious relations with their native land. At the most — like genuine nomads — they undertook their annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem at the Feast of the Passover.”
The diffusion of Hebrewdom over all lands, open to commercial intercourse, must already at that time have been considerable, for, referring to Strabo (B. C. 63 to A. D. 24)
Josephus writes, that it was not easy to find a single place on the inhabited earth, which was not occupied and dominated by this race. Philo (about 20 B. C to 40 A. D) also reports that the Jews resided in numerous maritime and inland cities of Europe, Asia and Libya. We do not hear, however, of any brutal act of violence, which caused them to be dragged thither against their will; for this reason, the dispersion of the Jews throughout all lands of culture has been manifestly voluntary.
[Page 235]
How closely packed they were, for example, in Rome, during the early period of the Empire, is testified to by various authorities. An embassy from the Jewish King Herod to Augustus, were accompanied by about 8,000 members of their faith, who were domiciled in Rome, and in the year 19 A. D. 4,000 men of military age, who had been released, and were “infected with Egyptian and Jewish superstition,” were sentenced to be deported to Sardinia (Page 430; according to Tacitus, Suetonius and Josephus; the last-named is said to have been a favourite of Vespasian).
Sombart goes on to speak about the very considerable immigration into the German Empire, and shows, by means of figures, how the Hebrews are streaming from the East of the Empire to the West, and especially to Berlin. It certainly sounds more than strange when he speaks of “a people hunted from place to place.” We, for our part, are of the opinion, that if the Jews move from Birnbaum and Meseritz to Berlin, they do so because they can do better business and procure more pleasure in the metropolis, and not because someone has hunted them thither. At the present moment, actually more than half of the Jews in Germany reside in the large cities, feeling more in their element there, because the brisker business-life, as well as the pleasures and noise of a large city, are more in accordance with their taste. It is also apposite, when Sombart, in another passage, compares the great modern cities to the desert, indicating thereby, that the spirit of the nomad and of the desert has a close affinity to that of the modern cities, and that the great modern city acts devastatingly on the national life.
“ Desert and Forest,” says he, “are the great contrasts, around which the distinctive natures of countries and of mankind group themselves.”
The forest is actually the real birth-place and home of the German, and it was on this account that Germania or ancient Germany appeared so gloomy and abhorrent to the Romans, who disliked forests.
[Page 236] At the present day, the real German can prosper only in the field, and in the forest; and, as forest and desert are contrasts, so also are the two extreme contrasts of mankind to be found in all that pertains to the German, on one hand, and to the Hebrew, on the other. It is a firmly established fact, that agriculture has, at all times, been the most important institution of the Germanic races, and was never entirely unknown at any epoch of early Indo-Germanic history. By living and working continually in the presence of Nature, as peasantry must of necessity do, the essential and true nature of the German is formed, as indeed is that of all really-constructive, cultural peoples. The estranged attitude towards Nature is the hall-mark of the Semitic race, concerning whose tribal father, Cain, the murderer of the gentle and peaceful husbandman, Abel, it stands written:
“A fugitive and vagabond shalt thou be upon earth! Let thy hand be against everyone, and everyone’s hand against thee!” Sombart betrays his prepossessi
on for Jewdom, by commending what a 16th century Jewish physician in Spain has excogitated, to account for the “high-spiritual” nature of the Jew. He — the physician — is of opinion that the dry, pure air of the desert, the “clear water”, and the “delicate food of Manna” have produced a marvellous spiritual refinement in the Jew. The ridiculousness of this perception is obvious.
Must not correspondingly all Bedouins also have refined spiritual natures? And how will Sombart explain away the fact, that the Arab, strangely enough, who must certainly be regarded as a true son of the desert, feels himself separated by a yawning chasm from the Jew? There is scarcely any other nation, which fosters such abhorrence for the Jews, as the Arab. Arabian authors have expressed their contempt for the Hebrew in the most biting terms. Already in the year 545 A. D. Abd al Oâdir a-Ilani wrote as follows:
“ The Jews, who live scattered throughout the entire world and, in spite of this, hold firmly together, are cunning, misanthropic and dangerous beings, and must be treated just as one treats a poisonous snake, namely, by stamping on its head immediately it approaches; for, if one allows it to raise the head for one moment, it will infallibly bite, and the bite is fatal.”
[Page 237] And when Sombart makes a further attempt to account for the peculiar disposition of the Hebrew, by ascribing it to his former life in the desert, one is entitled to meet him with the question: why then have not the Arabs become Jews? — why have they preserved a disposition, which can be regarded as aristocratic and heroic in comparison with that of the Jew?
Sombart attempts to explain away the malevolent attitude, assumed by the Jews towards the Northern nations, by attributing it to the “wetcold” manner of the natives of the North.* But this attempt at defence is also doomed to failure, for we see how the Hebrew, in southern countries such as Egypt and Morocco, behaves in exactly the same way and becomes usurer, just as he does in the North. And when it is finally brought forward in excuse of the Jew, that his bad character must be attributed wholly to the circumstance that, for thousands of years, he has been the appointed custodian of the monies of the various nations, we then ask: who appointed him? Did he not choose this rôle himself? — With regard to this particular aspect of the Jewish question, there is a favourite perversion or distortion of facts, which is repeated to satiety, and which is in conflict with all history, especially with the spirit of the Old Testament. It must be included amongst the clumsiest subterfuges, employed by Jewry, but unfortunately belongs also to those, which impose most easily on the idealists amongst our fellow-countrymen. The Jew is always represented as having had his particular rôle forced upon him, against his will, while, in reality, he has chosen this rôle of his own free will, in order to create conditions around him, which are congenial to his nature. When Sombart says:
“They became the lords of money, and by means of money, which they made subject to themselves, lords of the world”,
these words amount to a confession that the Hebrews made themselves masters of money in order to dominate. ---------------------
* In former times, the attitude of the Germans towards the Jews, as such, was by no means hostile (compare page 25). But the Jews have abused the great patience of the Germans, beyond endurance, and have thereby incurred the lasting hatred of their hosts.
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[Page 238] To anyone, who looks more deeply into the matter, the question certainly occurs as to whether the actual existence of money does not introduce such a dangerously deceptive and unnatural factor of power into human life, that the deceitful spirit of the Hebrew is thereby accorded the utmost license to develop its sinister activity. It is quite possible that the nations will not be freed from the Jewish plague, until they can get rid of the ban of money — that kind of money, the value of which rests on a fiction, and which introduces a demoniacal element into culture, or, until — according to Lagarde’s plan — the State takes the entire money-business into its own hands. The Hebrews did not invent money, nor have they dug the glittering gold out of the bowels of the earth; but they may well have devised that misuse of money, which, in the shape of loan-capital, loads the honest, productive nations with fetters of interest to all eternity. For, the strange mystery connected with money, lies not so much in the money itself as in the notion or conception of capital, which is derived from money, and in the further notion or conception, which is inseparably connected with the former, of unnatural, “everlasting interest.” It is unnatural to demand for a loan of money, so long as it is not repaid, a continuous, unchanging rate of interest for hundreds and thousands of years. It is here where the source of the distress of the honest, productive nations lies; here we find the cause of the unlimited growth of Jewish capital and Jewish dominion.* Sombart is therefore right when he says:
“money places in the hands of the Jew the means to exercise power without being strong.” In very truth, the feeblest and most cowardly nation in the world, by a misuse of the glittering gold, have arrogated to themselves, the demeanour and position of lords and rulers.
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* Theodor Fritsch has already proposed in 1892, that it should be made obligatory and legal, to include, in every loan-contract, provision for the reduction of the debt (so-called sinking-fund) so that the debt could be paid off within a conceivable time. — Compare “Land-usury and Stock Exchange”, Leipzig 1892.
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[Page 239] It is amusing to read Sombart’s account of how hateful the GermanPolish Jews, the so-called Aschkenasim, are to the Sephardim, their western brethren-in-faith from Spain and Portugal (compare page 221). At Bordeaux, in the year 1761, the Portuguese Jews brought about a drastic order, that all foreign Jews should leave Bordeaux within 14 days. They called the eastern Jews “vagabonds”, and took the utmost pains to get rid of them as soon as possible. Now if the more “aristocratic” Jews themselves harboured a detestation for the lower-class Hebrews, the Aschkenasim, how can anyone take it amiss when we feel this aversion in an enhanced degree?
For the Sephardim and Aschkenasim are, to say the least of it, closely united by the ties of religion, morals, and their conjoint view of life; how then, shall these abhorrent beings not be doubly repulsive and hateful to us, to whom their feelings, mode of thinking, and entire nature are completely alien?
The spiritual and spiritual-moral difference between these two sections of Jews cannot well be great; for they are both steeped in the atmosphere of the Talmud. And even Sombart admits, that the habits of those of Jewish blood, however low in the social scale they may be, acquire a remarkable fixity: for instance, inclination for petty deception, obtrusiveness, lack of self-respect, lack of tact etc.
* * * These selections from Sombart’s writings should suffice to convince anyone who is visibly anxious to regard the Hebrew in as favourable a light as possible, but who is, at the same time, unable to close his eyes to a number of serious faults and failings in the Jewish disposition, in themselves of sufficient warranty for regarding the Jews, in the midst of the cultured nations, as a highly undesirable, and entirely alien element, that the aversion and dislike, felt by the moral nations for the Jews, has been thoroughly deserved by the latter.
It is most valuable, when a man, who repudiates the slightest tendency to anti-Semitism, and who collects carefully every word said in praise of the Jews, makes such important admissions.
It is for this reason, that so many passages from Sombart have been quoted and criticised, although the same contain little that is new for anyone, versed in the Jewish question. It is evident that Sombart has learnt much from the Anti-Semites, but he employs the tactic, which, though it may be ingenious, is certainly not noble, of repudiating the source of his instruction. It is to be hoped that our German countrymen will be ready to believe certain facts when stated by a person, who refuses to be regarded as an Anti-Semite, although they would flatly decline to accept these same statements when made by a declared Anti-Semite.
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XVI.
The influence of the Jew upon Womankind.
Women exert an important influence upon the development of retail trade. It is they, who superintend, for the most part, the purchase of necessaries for the household; it is through their hands that the greater portion of the income, earned by the man, is returned into business life, and it is for this reason surely, not a matter of indifference to whom women entrust their custom.
It is now a generally recognised fact, that most women and girls give Jewish shops the preference. The apparent cheapness of Jewish goods might be brought forward as an explanation of this. Women — and even those women, who are by no means entitled to include thrift, in its true sense, amongst their other virtues — seem to find a peculiar pleasure in the mere idea that they have been successful in purchasing some article at a cheaper price than it is usually sold for — even when this supposed cheapness exists only in the imagination of the purchaser. Such women regard this result as being directly due to their own cleverness — in some cases, perhaps, even as a triumph of their own personal charm. For this reason, the shopkeeper, who, by exposing his wares in calculated disorder to be pulled about and hunted through, advances half-way to meet this fancied feminine capacity for ferreting-out and overreaching, will stand a far better chance of doing business than a rival tradesman, who prefers a conventional and orderly method. Women often require “chance goods”, and, for that reason, visit by choice those shops or stores, where everything lies jumbled up together, and where they imagine that they will be able to pick up something cheaply: they pass by the well-ordered shops, so, at least, is the admission of a domesticated woman, who knows her own sex.
By the cunning utilisation of this feminine weakness, the salesman is enabled to kill two birds with one stone; he confers a special favour upon his female customers, and saves himself the trouble of sorting out and arranging his rubbish, of which task his customers obligingly relieve him.
The Riddle of the Jew's Success Page 27