“There Is No Jewish Race!” Maccabaean 18, no. 1 (1910): 16–29.
The United States Immigration Commission, informally known as the Dillingham Commission, met between 1907 and 1911 to investigate the purported negative effects of immigration, principally that from Southern and Eastern Europe, on the United States. It was headed by Senator William Paul Dillingham of Vermont and included Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts; Senator Asbury Latimer, South Carolina; Representative Benjamin Howell, New Jersey; Representative William Bennet, New York; Charles Neill, US Commissioner of Labor; Jeremiah Jenks, a professor at Cornell University; and William Wheeler, Commissioner of Immigration for California. In 1911 the commission published its findings in forty-one volumes, concluding that immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe posed a significant threat to American society, and calling for restrictions on immigration. These restrictions were instituted in the 1920s.
Simon Wolf (1836–1923) was a US lawyer and Jewish communal leader. Julian Mack (1866–1943) was a judge, Jewish leader, and one of the founders of the American Jewish Committee. Eventually, under the influence of Louis Brandeis, Mack became an ardent supporter of Zionism.
The Maccabaean, which started in 1901, was the first English-language Zionist newspaper in the United States.
We give at length the testimony offered by the Hon. Simon Wolf, representing the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, and by Judge Mack, representing the American Jewish Committee, before the United States Congressional Commission now investigating alien immigration.
These two gentlemen have translated into legal testimony the ideal of Jewish assimilationists, and have attempted to have their interpretation of the facts of Jewish history fastened upon the entire Jewish citizenship of this country not for personal reasons, but in order to retard the growing anti-Jewish feeling which, they declare, will result in immigration restriction should the American people become aware of the numbers of Jews who come to this country.
Though their motives are prompted by interest in the welfare of the Jewish people, we cannot permit them to utilize arguments, and to misinterpret facts, in a manner to bring the Jewish people of this country into contempt with the legislators who are now considering the immigration situation.
Without entering into the merits of [the] argument, which was advanced by them not as matters of conviction, but primarily as matters of policy, we desire to dissociate ourselves from their point of view, from their logic, and from their policy.
As Zionists, as Jews, and as American citizens, we, who are charged with being unpatriotic, declare that we have more faith in the fairness of the American people than they, who constantly reiterate and affirm their American patriotism. We think that the American people will not be prodded into anti-Semitism by the mere disclosure of the number of Jews who come to this country; and we believe that if anything could stimulate prejudice against the Jews it would be the shifting, unmanly, and undignified pretense of representatives of a people who, against fact and history, and against their own private convictions, disown their racial and national birthright.
When men speak in the name of a people, the duty is imposed upon them to be more careful of their utterances than if they spoke in their own interests. It is incumbent upon every one who comes forward to serve the Jewish people to be certain that what he speaks in their name will have their approval. The honor of an entire people ought not to be sullied for the sake of any alleged temporary advantage which may accrue to some of the individuals composing that people. By asserting boldly a theory that there is no Jewish race, but only a conglomeration of people professing the Jewish religion, Judge Mack and Mr. Wolf, and the organizations they represented, uttered a statement, which, if true, would exclude from among our ranks many who are devoted to the welfare of the Jewish people but who are not religionists in the accepted meaning of the term.
We believe we speak in the name of the entire Jewish people when we say that the Jewish people, native-born and naturalized in this country, are not ashamed to have themselves or their brethren classified as racial Jews; that if it serves the purposes of the United States government to know the quality of the alien immigration coming into these ports, we welcome a classification which will enable the Jewish people to prove that they [are] physically, morally, and spiritually good material for the United States.
As American citizens, we believe it is our duty to assist our government in arriving at correct conclusions as to desirable immigration. If our people are undesirable, we are aiding in the perpetration of fraud upon this government if we oppose a fair investigation of the facts, and the classification of Jews as such is merely a necessary step in the direction of ascertaining the facts.
The Jewish immigrant, we assert, is not an undesirable. The United States needs immigration of all sorts, and more especially it needs the immigration of a people who bring with them religious, industrial, and moral values, who are industrious, ambitious, and eager for democratic liberty. A scientific classification of alien immigration will prove that assertion. An evasion of the test will foment distrust and create an impression of unknown dangers which is just the meat the anti-restrictionist feeds upon.
The Jewish people cannot afford to adopt a policy that smacks of Jesuitism; it is bound therefore, to repudiate any policy that is in essence based upon the theory that the end justifies the means; that is the ground upon which Judge Mack and Mr. Wolf stand, and the American Jewish Committee and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations are responsible for the utterances of their agents.
For the length of the testimony, The Maccabaean must offer an apology to its readers. As a matter of record, however, it deserves to be published in full in this magazine [sic]. It becomes all the more urgent to publish it in full, owing to the disinclination of the American Jewish Committee, for reasons best known to itself, to publish it on its own account.
Washington, D.C., December 4, 1909. The Commission met at 10:00 o’clock a.m. Present: Senators Dillingham (chairman), and Lodge; Representatives Howell and Bennet; Messrs. Jenks, Neill, and Wheeler.
Statement of Simon Wolf
The Chairman. Mr. Simon Wolf, who is present, has asked for an opportunity to present certain views, and I have asked him to be present this morning. Mr. Wolf, we are now ready to hear you.
Mr. Wolf. Chairman and gentlemen, I do not know on exactly what lines you wish me to speak, but it may be you desire to ask me certain questions, and, if so, I shall be very glad to answer them as best I can.
The Chairman. You wrote me a letter saying you desired to be heard on certain questions.
Mr. Wolf. Yes.
The Chairman. It is for the reasons stated in your letter that we have appointed the meeting for this morning.
Mr. Wolf. One of the questions I wish to bring to the attention of the Commission is the classification of immigrants by faith. That is what it amounts to, as far as the Jewish immigration is concerned. Some years ago that question arose in the Immigration Bureau, when Mr. Powderly was Commissioner General, and I was invited to New York. We argued the matter there at length, and the Bureau finally came to the conclusion to eliminate the word “Jew” from the immigration list, and I supposed that the subject had ended then and there. But it has been revived, and the word is now being used, I believe, not only by the authorities, but its use is also contemplated in the report of your honorable Commission, as I have been informed. The point we make is this: A Jew coming from Russia is a Russian; from Rumania, a Rumanian; from France, a Frenchman; from England, an Englishman; and from Germany, a German; that Hebrew or Jewish is simply a religion.
Senator Lodge. What is he if he comes from Poland?
Mr. Wolf. I suppose he is a Pole, if he belongs to—
Senator Lodge. “Poland” is a geographical expression.
Mr. Wolf. That is all. It is not for me to inform intelligent gentlemen like yourselves that Poland has been divided among different states of Europe.
Senator Lodge. Do you think that Poles ought to be classified as Prussians, Austrians, Russians, depending upon which part of Poland they come from?
Mr. Wolf. I do.
Senator Lodge. And the Irish as British?
Mr. Wolf. Yes, sir. I wish to state right here, for the purpose of avoiding any conflict or misunderstanding, that a certain portion of the Jewish people claim that the Jews are a race, especially the Zionists, who cling to the idea of returning to Palestine and founding a Jewish state; and I am not speaking for that portion of the Jewish people.
Senator Lodge. No; I understand that there is a difference.
Mr. Wolf. The Reform element in the United States and throughout the world, that class which has not been living in Russia and Rumania under medieval conditions, is decidedly on the lines I have indicated; that is, that we are citizens of the country in which we reside, and we have been fighting in every possible way against the idea of founding a Jewish state. It is under all circumstances the only course for the government of the United States to pursue, to ignore the action taken by Russia and Rumania, who recognize the Jew racially, and who confer no rights or privileges upon him as a citizen; in short, they do not recognize him. Therefore, the tabulating of the Jew as such, especially coming from these countries, is simply strengthening the hands of the people who have oppressed him in other countries, and the same unfortunate condition is [has] caused the incoming immigrant who has never been a citizen to claim that the Jewish people are a race, never having been recognized as citizens of their respective countries, although in their condition of noncitizenship, as well as that of full-fledged citizenship, they are equal to the best and worthy of the highest recommendation. In this connection, it might be stated that great stress has been laid upon the fact that the Jew refuses to intermarry, claiming superiority or racial objections. That has been fully discussed time and again, and even recently at the Rabbinical Conference in the City of New York. The question is not of race, or of differences in blood, but purely religious; that the natural conditions arising between different faiths create domestic disturbances and lead to acrimonious results, injurious to the peace and harmony of the home, and to the permanent injury of the children, who are made shuttlecocks between the separate faiths of husband and wife. The Russian government recognizes the religion and not the race, from the very fact that when a Russian of Jewish faith becomes a convert to the Greek Catholic religion he is recognized as a citizen, thus confirming all our contention that it is not racial, but religious.
Senator Lodge. Do I understand you to deny that the Jews are a race?
Mr. Wolf. How?
Senator Lodge. Do you deny that the word “Jew” is used to express a race?
Mr. Wolf. As the representative of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations—which I have been for nearly thirty years—when the question whether the Jews were a race arose some years ago, I took up the matter and propounded a series of interrogatories to some of the leading Jews of the United States, among others the Hon. Mayer Sulzberger, who is president of the American Jewish Committee; Dr. Cyrus Adler, who was librarian of the Smithsonian Institute and is now president of Dropsie College in Philadelphia; Dr. Emil G. Hirsch, a noted rabbi in Chicago; Dr. K. Kohler, president of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati; and Doctor M. Jastrow, who was one of our most noted Jewish scholars; and each and every one of them (and their views are to be found in this little pamphlet which I will leave with you) states that the Jews are not a race.
Senator Lodge. That, I think, is an important point. I have always supposed they were. I find in the preface of the Jewish Encyclopedia, which is signed by Cyrus Adler, among others, this statement:
An even more delicate problem that presented itself at the very outset was the attitude to be observed by the encyclopedia in regard to those Jews who, while born within the Jewish community, have, for one reason or another, abandoned it. As the present work deals with Jews as a race, it was found impossible to exclude those who were of that race, whatever their religious affiliations may have been.
In the same encyclopedia is a statement by Joseph Jacobs, ba, formerly president of the Jewish Historical Society of England: “Anthropologically considered, the Jews are a race of markedly uniform type, due either to unity of race or to similarity of environment.”
Do you mean to deny—I want to understand your position—that the word “Jew” is a racial term?
Mr. Wolf. I have made my statement, and my opinion is in this pamphlet.
Senator Lodge. Let me get at it. How would you classify Benjamin D’Israeli?35 Was he a Jew?
Mr. Wolf. He was born a Jew.
Senator Lodge. No, he was not born a Jew, for he was baptized in a Christian church.
Mr. Wolf. He was born of Jewish parents, and subsequently, at a certain age, was baptized.
Senator Lodge. He was baptized as a Christian. He then ceased to be a Jew.
Mr. Wolf. Yes; religiously he ceased to be a Jew.
Senator Lodge. Ah! Religiously. He was very proud of the fact that he was a Jew and always spoke of himself in that way. Did the fact that he changed his religion alter his race?
Mr. Wolf. It did not change the fact that he was born a Jew; not at all; and I know the Jewish people throughout the world have claimed him, [Heinrich] Heine, [Ludwig] Börne, and others, who were born of their blood as being Jews, when they speak of persons who have accomplished something wonderful in the world. But they ceased to be Jews from the standpoint of religion.
Senator Lodge. Undoubtedly. What I want to get at is whether the word “Jew” or “Hebrew” is not a correct racial term.
Mr. Wolf. You will pardon me, you will find a letter from Dr. Cyrus Adler right at the close of the pamphlet, which, perhaps, you might read for the benefit of the committee.
Senator Lodge. (After reading letter referred to.) I do not think that answers anything.
Mr. Wolf. You can keep this pamphlet if you desire, and look it over. There are a number of other opinions there.
Mr. Wheeler. It treats of the entire subject?
Mr. Wolf. Yes, and kindred subjects. It is the report of the Board for the year ended January 1904.
The Chairman. You may proceed, Mr. Wolf.
Senator Lodge. Excuse me for interrupting you. I merely wanted to find out what your position is.
Mr. Wolf. The position we have broadly taken is that in the classification of immigrants the word “Jew” is entirely uncalled for; that those persons come from the respective countries of their birth and arrive here as other immigrants [do], and therefore ought not to be classified as Jews unless you classify every immigrant by faith—a Russian of Jewish faith, a Russian of Greek faith, and so on and so forth. If you make no discrimination, we have no objection at all, but if you are going to discriminate and mark the Jew distinctively, we do object.
The Chairman. Do you make any distinction between the terms “Jew” and “Hebrew”? The word “Hebrew” is the one used by the Department and the government generally in its classification.
Mr. Wolf. I am not prepared to answer that question intelligently, as I am not a scholar to the extent of defining those words.
The Chairman. I was merely asking because of the fact that the government invariably uses the word “Hebrew.”
Mr. Wolf. I know.
Senator Lodge. Not in any religious sense, but in a racial sense.
Mr. Wolf. Personally I have always used the word “Jew,” and I have never shirked responsibility therefore, nor do I regard it, as it seems to have been taken by some, as a term of reproach, and who use the word “Hebrew” simply to soften the aspersion. I have never considered it in that way and I do not think the best of our people do.
The Chairman. With you the words would be synonymous?
Mr. Wolf. Yes.
Representative Bennet. The words “Hebrew” and “Jew” describe the same people?
Mr. Wolf. Oh, yes.
Rep. Bennet. The only difference being that they would apply at different times in the history of the same people. Is that not correct?
Mr. Wolf. Yes, sir, that is correct.
Mr. Wheeler. “Hebrew” is equally objectionable, from your standpoint, in regard to the matter in question here.
Mr. Wolf. Equally so. These people simply come as citizens of the respective countries in which they were born, and from which they have emigrated, and we here in this country claim that we are citizens of our common country and that what our faith is concerns no one but ourselves. Here is a pamphlet from the Jewish Historical Society, taken from the book I published—The American Jew as a Soldier, Patriot and Citizen—which gives a résumé of what citizens of Jewish faith in the United States have accomplished since the days of the [American] Revolution up to the present. We were not enlisted as Jews, but as citizens.
Senator Lodge. Are there not a great many Jews who are not of the Jewish faith or the Israelitish [sic] religion? I have been told that there are many Jews in this country at the present moment who are not of the Jewish faith.
Mr. Wolf. A man is either a Jew in faith or he is not. He may be of the Orthodox or the ultra-Orthodox or the Reform. There are agnostics among the Jews, of course, as there are in Christian churches.
Senator Lodge. Certainly. But I was told by the police commissioners in New York some years ago that there are a considerable number of Jews, people who were classified as such on entering as immigrants, who are not adherents of the ancestral faith.
Mr. Wolf. Very likely. I have no doubt [that] there are 500,000 Jews in the City of New York [who], if you asked them whether I was a Jew, would say “No,” because I do not cling to the old traditions and liturgy to which they religiously and faithfully adhere.
Senator Lodge. But those people—certainly some, I do not know how many—who are Jews, but who for one reason or another, have abandoned their faith, as people in all religions frequently do, would be classified as Jews.
Mr. Wolf. Classified by whom?
Senator Lodge. In the returns of the immigration officers.
Mr. Wolf. That may be.
Senator Lodge. I have never supposed for one moment, and I do not now suppose, that the Jews who are put down in the immigration returns as such are classified according to religion.
Mr. Wolf. You classify them, under the supposition, as I understand—
Senator Lodge. On the supposition that it is a race.
Mr. Wolf. That the Jewish people constitute a race as the English are a race, as the Germans are a race, and so forth.
Senator Lodge. Yes; as the Poles are a race, though they have no country and no nationality; as the Irish are a race, [although] they have no nationality and no country.
Mr. Wolf. I understand, but how much there is in that information I do not know, that the opposition to classifying these people as immigrants from Russia is owing to the protest made by the Russian authorities, we do not wish it understood that so many Russian subjects are emigrating to the United States.
Senator Lodge. I never heard of that.
The Chairman. Nor have I.
Mr. Wolf. That has been stated.
Senator Lodge. I do not imagine that has anything to do with it. It never occurred to me until I heard you were coming here that the classification as made by the immigration authorities had anything to do with religion. I supposed it was a race classification. It is important, very important, to get the race classification as nearly [correct] as we can.
Mr. Wolf. Yes.
Senator Lodge. As you all know there are what are called scientific races; that is, the races which are defined by physical peculiarities; the great divisions, like the Mongol, the Negro, the North American Indian, the Aryan, the Semitic. Those are what are called the scientific races, where the difference in the skulls and so on has all been retained. Of course, in Europe there has been a great mixture of races and the scientific divisions have largely disappeared. But there are peoples which have been formed gradually, as the English, the German [have], in which there is a great mixture of blood, but which are historically racial, just as the Poles are historically a race. They may not be scientifically a race, because there is a considerable admixture of blood. But the classification made by the Immigration Bureau is on the basis of historic races in contradistinction to the broad scientific divisions which would be of no value whatever in making returns. I have always supposed that this classification was made exactly as they classify the Irish and the Pole, as the Syrian and the Armenian. It would be an absurdity to classify the Syrians and the Armenians as Turks. They are subjects of the sultan of Turkey, of course; they are Turks politically.
Mr. Wolf. You are aware that the Census Bureau some time ago attempted to classify in the same manner, and it was prohibited from doing so.
Senator Lodge. The word “race” was stricken out of the census report. I think it was a great mistake. It makes the returns almost valueless.
Mr. Wolf. I can simply repeat what I have said, that I am voicing the opinions of those whom I represent—the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the Order B’nai B’rith. They are opposed to the classification as made in the last few years and as contemplated, so far as I am informed, in the report of the Commission. Of course, no one can foreshadow what the report will be. There are other questions that I desire to bring to the attention of the Commission, if you desire to hear me.
[. . .]
Senator Lodge. Is no man a Jew unless he is of the Jewish faith?
Mr. Wolf. As a matter of glorification and an illustration of the genius inherent in the Jew as such, when born as such, as I stated at the inception, a great many claim D’Israeli, Heine, Börne, [Felix] Mendelssohn, Barthold, and other great celebrities in all the walks of literature, arts, and sciences as Jews, but they became Christians.
Mr. Julian W. Mack. Permit me to say a word. If D’Israeli had come to this country, after he had attained his fame, he certainly would have said, in answer to the question asked him at the port, that he was an Englishman.
Senator Lodge. He would have been classed racially as a Jew.
Mr. Mack. Would some officer of the port have that power?
Senator Lodge. It is not a question as to where a man happens to live or what his allegiance is. If we were to classify men according to their allegiance, we would classify them in a manner which would be useless.
Mr. Wolf. You claim if a man is once a Jew, he is always a Jew.
Mr. Lodge. Yes; if he is of the Jewish race.
Mr. Mack. If one parent is a Jew and the other is not—
Senator Lodge. There you mix the blood.
Mr. Mack. Where would you put D’Israeli’s children, if he had any? Where would you put Felix Mendelssohn’s children, if he had any? Mendelssohn became a Christian. I do not know where you would put his children. He considered himself a German, and the Germans, in large part, except the anti-Semitic element, consider him a German.
Senator Lodge. Your proposition is that the classification is according to religion. That is certainly not the fact.
Mr. Mack. Then of what value is your classification?
Senator Lodge. The Jews are classified according to their race and not their religion.
Mr. Mack. What is its value?
Senator Lodge. All classifications must be more or less inexact.
Mr. Mack. Take the Jews who come from Germany, whose ancestors have lived in Germany three or four hundred years, ever since Spain drove them out of that country, who have become thoroughly identified in every way with their German neighbors, and are deemed by all to be Germans, except by the anti-Semitic element; of what possible value is it to anybody to classify them as Jews simply because they adhere to the Jewish religion?
Senator Lodge. Because there is a general belief that the Jews are a strongly defined race.
Mr. Mack. I think they are strongly defined.
Senator Lodge. I mean they have maintained their racial status in a very extraordinary way.
Mr. Mack. I am not ethnologist enough to say. I think they have kept their blood purer, perhaps, than many other nations. But intermarriage has been common.
Senator Lodge. There is a general belief, I think widely accepted, that they are a race. There are, I know, bodies of Jews who are not racially Jewish at all. Doctor Adler refers to one tribe in Abyssinia. If we had here an immigration of Abyssinians they would never be classified as Jews, no matter what their faith might be. There are Christian Abyssinians, and it is a curious form of Christianity. There is also there a tribe of Jews called Falashas. But if there was any immigration to this country from that country, they would be classified as Abyssinians—all of them, whether Christians or Jews. They would not be classified as Jews on account of their religion.
Mr. Mack. Take a Jewish immigrant from this country into England. Of what possible value would it be to England for England to classify him, not as an American, but as a Jew? Of what possible value would it be for England to classify you as an American and me as a Jew? I do not know you could claim to be any more of an American than I am because your ancestors have been here probably ten generations and mine only three generations, although I know of plenty of Jews who have been here for eight generations.
Mr. Wheeler. You would not be classified other than as an American.
Mr. Mack. I would not?
Mr. Wheeler. Under the present system.
Mr. Mack. Now Senator Lodge just said that he would classify Beaconsfield [Disraeli] as a Jew and not as an Englishman.
Senator Lodge. Racially.
Mr. Wolf. That is the same case.
Senator Lodge. I am not now speaking of political classifications. I am speaking of racial classification, and this is used by the immigration authorities solely as a race classification. For the allegation that it is used as a religious classification, I have seen no warrant [evidence] whatever.
Mr. Mack. I can understand a racial classification from a country which does not classify its people racially, in which the race is recognized as a unit. Take it under the old Turkish rule; not as today.
Senator Lodge. Would you classify any Jew coming from Palestine as a Jew?
Mr. Mack. That would depend. There is a Jew from Palestine sitting next to me here who would be glad to be classified as a Jew, who would insist upon it. (He pointed to Mr. A. Aronson, the agricultural expert and Zionist, who was present.) But a great many would not, and there are a great many Jews in America who, if they go to Palestine, would insist upon being classified as Americans.
Senator Lodge. There is no discrimination whatever, as I understand. I should be the last man to favor any discrimination whatever.
Mr. Mack. I cannot understand that when it comes to classifying Jews from Germany or England or many other countries as Jews. I can understand the proposition that there is no discrimination meant and no desire to get at religious differences, when you classify people of Austria as Croatians, Galicians, and so on, and possibly even as Jews, although Austria does not recognize the Jews as a nation in the sense that it does the Bohemians, or the Croatians or the Galicians. I can understand it in Russia, where they recognize different races; and so in Turkey under the old regime, where the Jews had certain national rights as Jews; jurisdiction over their own bodies, among themselves, legally. But I cannot understand it from the standpoint of Germany, of France or England or any of those countries in which there is no difference, in which, just as in America, they are all deemed for every purpose, to be English or German or French.
Rep. Bennet. As 76 percent of those classified as Hebrews come from Rumania and Russia, as to which you admit a justification for the classification—
Mr. Mack. I do not admit the value. I am not prepared to discuss that. But I can understand reasons for a classification along the lines that the country itself classifies its people—not with respect to religion.
Mr. Wolf. I can easily understand that, from the standpoint of ethnology, you would be trying, from a scientific standpoint, to get at this subject.
Senator Lodge. That is the precise point. This is purely an attempt to get at the ethnology of it. It must be approximate. All ethnology is approximate.
Mr. Mack. I am afraid ethnology is not in a position at the present date to form the best basis. Ethnology has not advanced that far.
Senator Lodge. You can go approximately that far.
Mr. Mack. You can divide the world into five races.
35. [Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81) was a noted British politician and novelist. He served as prime minister of England twice in the second half of the nineteenth century.]