634 
Hope Farm Notes 
“THE PROMISED LAND.” 
I have been reading “The Promised 
Land/’ by Mary Antin, and I would like 
to have a little talk with you about it. 
This is not an agricultural book. There 
is nothing about corn growing or bacteria 
or cover crops or spraying, or many other 
things which we as farmers feel it to be 
a duty and necessity to discuss. It is 
doubtful if any large proportion of us 
would read the book through. Thinking 
is a tiresome process to most of us. Too 
many people read only for amusement. 
They want the author’s meaning- 
painted and labelled in large letters, so 
that they may be spared the mental labor 
of thinking it out. When they are forced 
to read between the lines and puzzle out 
the true meaning they cannot realize 
that this very thing is what lifts them 
out of the mud of stagnant thought, 
where a man must remain a slave. 
“The Promised Land’’ is a story of a 
Russian Jew—an analysis of the mental 
and moral change in the life of an im¬ 
migrant as he grows out of the hard 
conditions of old world life and tries to 
assume the true responsibilities and 
privileges that belong to an “American.” 
Of course you will say “1 am not a Rus¬ 
sian Jew, and I do not want to be one. 
What do I care how they view this 
country? It may have been or perhaps it 
is a ‘promised land’ to them—it was to 
my parents or my ancestors, but to me it 
is the land of fulfillment.” 
1 shall be glad to have you talk that 
way. If you really believe it you are 
the man who should get the real spirit of 
this book. The man who has no “prom¬ 
ised land” in mind or heart—who can¬ 
not arouse the glory and ambition of a 
nobler country and a truer manhood to 
come, in the future, as the result of # his 
labors, may well sit down and compare 
himself with the hopeful Jew who sees 
in the future America the land of his 
hopes and dreams. For the man who 
has no “promised land” must have lost 
hope and dream by the wayside. 
It is doubtful if one can find any¬ 
where a clearer pen picture of the hu¬ 
man side of life among the Jews of a 
little Russian village than is given in 
this book. Evidently the object of this 
clear picture is to make the sharpest 
contrast with the freedom and opportun¬ 
ity which the Jew finds in this country. 
In this little village of Polotzk the Jew 
was crushed and forced into narrow 
conditions of thought and action. Let 
us think what would happen to us sud¬ 
denly transferred to a new country 
where brain and hand were set free, and 
yet tied to a long inheritance of habit 
and obedience. 
In less than half a page, the author 
tells the story of “David the substitute.” 
It is against the religion or the piety of 
these Jews to serve in the Russian army 
—yet they are drafted and compelled to 
do service. Some of them even maim 
or cripple themselves to avoid the draft. 
Some of them escape by paying a sum of 
money. I know young men in this 
country who, each year, send money 
back to Russia to pay this military tax. 
If they did not do so this money would 
be forced out of their parents. You can¬ 
not think of a man who had no 
“Promised Land” in his heart taxing him¬ 
self in that way. “David the substitute” 
accepted a sum of money and went as a 
soldier in the place of another. His 
family needed the money, but in the be¬ 
lief of the Jews David did a sinful 
thing when he went as a soldier of his 
own free will. He came back old and 
broken to make some penance for his 
sin. The human nature of it is that this 
poor Jew knew just as you would know 
that no material motive could wipe out 
sin. So David set himself the task of 
going through the streets early on Sab¬ 
bath morning calling the people to 
'THE RURAL. -NEW-YORKER 
May 3, 
prayer. The man worked hard and was 
tired and lame and sore, yet he forced 
himself to perform his task. The Chris- « 
tians of the town laughed at him and 
persecuted him no doubt—but it was 
because they could not understand. This 
book makes it very clear that one great 
trouble with the world is the failure of 
one class of people to understand the 
true motives and desires of another. 
Of necessity any story of the rise of 
an immigrant out of the meanness of 
such old world conditions must be a rec¬ 
ord of striking contrasts. We have these 
in the religion and education of the 
Jews. In Polotzk the Jews held to their 
forms and ceremonies in spite of all 
hatred and oppression. 
“There were men in Polotzk whose faces 
made you old in a minute. They had 
served Nicholas I. and come hack unbap¬ 
tized. The white church in the square— 
how did it look to them? I knew. I 
cursed the church in my heart every time 
I had to pass it; aud I was afraid— 
afraid.” 
Even the Christian children threw 
stones at the Jewish children, spat on 
them or drove them from the street. 
Through long years this oppression bred 
a natural hatred for the Christian 
church and its symbol, the cross. While 
the Russian Jews dared not express 
themselves openly they carried the bit¬ 
terest sense of injustice in their hearts. 
Yet in the “promised land” of Amer¬ 
ica there came the time when the little 
Jewish baby posed as a model for the 
Christ Child in a painting for a Chris¬ 
tian church! In less than 10 years of 
American influence that Jewish mother 
had overcome the old hateful superstitu- 
tion to such an extent that she per¬ 
mitted her child to pose for a Christian 
picture! And while this woman was 
willing to drop the meaningless forms 
and superstitions of her faith she still 
retained the beauty of its essentials. 
You may ask me what all this has 
to do with an American whose ances¬ 
tors occupied the land long before these 
Jews thought of crossing the ocean! 
Have you no prejudices or obstinate 
habits? The chances are that you, like 
all the rest of us, have helped keep ras¬ 
cals in office and prevented real reforms 
because you have been tied up to some 
old shell of a party organization. Can 
you not see that no man breaks away 
from these old superstitions unless lie 
can have some “promised land” in view 
—some ideal of government and society 
which he will make sacrifice for? Can 
you not go farther and see that unless 
we, who call ourselves the older- Ameri¬ 
cans, can have a “promised land,” the 
future of this country will belong to 
those who still have an ideal—be it good 
or bad'? I presume you realize that al¬ 
ready no State ticket is nominated in 
New York without at least one Jewish 
name upon it! 
The two great treasures which the 
Jew expects to find in this country are 
opportunity and education. I judge that 
of all the people who have swarmed 
across the ocean to us the Russian Jews 
havc*had the poorest chance to obtain an 
education. That is because free education 
is denied them in Russia, and the poor 
sample they do have access to is nar¬ 
rowed by prejudice and race feeling. Mr. 
Antin, father of the author of this book, 
showed as a child a good brain and apti¬ 
tude for study. All the rest of the fam¬ 
ily denied themselves in order that he 
might have “learning.” And such learn¬ 
ing! We sometimes pity the youth who 
comes out of the university with a 
“classical” education which has absolute¬ 
ly unfitted him for any service to the 
world except to teach the machinery of 
his failure to others. Yet this man has 
a liberal education compared with the 
“learning” which Mr. Antin absorbed 
with such toil and sacrifice. Small won¬ 
der that when he came to America this 
man tried to forget what he had studied, 
as one would throw aside a heavy worth¬ 
less tool—not worth carrying around. 
For this worthless “learning” did not 
even train the man’s mind to think. It 
is no wonder that, when in free Amer¬ 
ica, the man began to think in his un¬ 
trained way, he thought away from the 
faith of his fathers, and in the 
mental anger of the discovery of his in¬ 
ability to reason, he became a “free¬ 
thinker.” You see no man thinks logic¬ 
ally and well unless he is fastened to 
some strong theory or belief. 
When this family came to America— 
into the land of free schools and free 
libraries—we can imagine that it was in 
truth the “promised land" to those who 
were young enough to have ideals and 
ambitions. The author paints a strong 
word picture of her first entrance to the 
school room. Her father took the two 
children by the hand and led them to the 
teacher as if he was bringing a holy 
sacrifiee. When we read of his “impos¬ 
sible English” and his “eloquent ges¬ 
tures” we may smile at our notion of 
the typical Jew. Yet with all his wav¬ 
ing hands and mangled English this man 
had in his heart the true philosophy of 
education. Let me tell you here that if 
we, who call ourselves old line Ameri¬ 
cans, could regard the public school as 
this poor Jew did, and feel as he did 
about the need of their education, our 
school problems would be quickly set¬ 
tled. 
I shall carry this book in my mind 
for years. I wish I could tell you more 
about the sacrifice these poor people 
make in order that at least one of the 
family may be educated. I wish I could 
tell you how ideals and dreams form 
themselves in the minds of these people. 
For you see “the promised land” is still 
before them, and they still lead on. A 
man stops growing and thus becomes 
dead timber—when the promise really 
becomes fulfillment. That I take it is 
the matter with most of us—either that 
or the hopeless feeling that somehow 
we are off the road so that this prom¬ 
ised land is out of our reach. For it is 
after all an ideal. Once get our clumsy 
hands on it and we are as likely as not 
to crush it in our grasp. That is what 
becomes of homes and families or to 
nations when parents and statesmen 
have no “promised land” wherein they 
hope to see the world grow better. Years 
ago at a great camp' meeting I heard 
a chorus of thousands roaring:— 
“Oh could I stand where Moses 
stood!” 
I ft.'ar that very few of us who sang 
so strenuously realized that in a smaller, 
individual way we were standing where 
Moses stood, on the border of a land 
of ideals and hope. It is probably better 
for us not to go over the border, but to 
send a child who, from the next moun¬ 
tain, may see another “promised land" 
ahead of him. H. w. c. 
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