THE JEWS IN EtfROPE. 309 



ites have given up many of their traditional prejudices and customs, 

 and come nearer the Christians in manners and ways of thinking. 



At the present time, Germany is the bearer and foster-father of the 

 spiritual life of Judaism, as in earlier times (and in the order stated) 

 were Spain, Southern and Northern France, and then Holland. The 

 German Israelites lead those of the rest of the world, because of the 

 language they use ; they alone, too, have a religious and theological 

 literature of their own, to which their brethren in other countries 

 resort for instruction in spiritual things. And hence it may be justly 

 asserted that the influence of German ways of thinking is stronger 

 than any other one thing among the Jews to-day, and it extends even 

 to North America. 



Among civilized peoples with a distinctive moral and intellectual 

 life, the Jew residing in their midst thinks with the bulk of the nation. 

 The German Jew thinks about all questions of spiritual and social life 

 in an essentially German manner, which was far from being the case in 

 the preceding century ; and since our culture and civilization have 

 come out of Christianity and have a Christian coloring, the Jew, how- 

 ever disinclined he may be to Christian views, can not help thinking 

 and acting about many things, whether consciously or unconsciously, 

 in a Christian way. So, for example, in regard to marriage, which is 

 regarded by the Jews no longer from the Old Testament point of 

 view, but from the Christian. And the same may be said of the Brit- 

 ish and French Israelites ; they think and feel as the great nation 

 thinks and feels in whose midst they live. 



Altogether too long has the false and detestable view ruled in the 

 world that we are called upon to avenge, generation after generation, 

 the sins and mistakes of the fathers upon their guiltless descendants. 

 It is a view which has covered Europe with a multitude of cruel and 

 shameful deeds, the thought of which causes us to shudder and avert 

 our faces. Woe to us and our posterity if such a law of revenge is 

 ever applied to the descendants of the Germans, Frenchmen, Spaniards, 

 and Englishmen of the middle ages ! But there is one thing which 

 the self-styled anti-Semitic agitation of to-day should not forget, viz., 

 that hate and contempt are feelings bitter and of no comfort to him who 

 cherishes them, and painful and exasperating to those against whom 

 they are directed. A sad thing it is when (to use a Scriptural expression), 



" Deep calleth unto deep." 



Rather let the saying of Sophocles's " Antigone " be and remain 

 our motto : 



" My nature leads to sharing love, not hate " 



