“Zur jüdischen Rassenfrage,” unsigned editorial, Die Welt 16, no. 5 (1912): 141–42.
Like the previous selection, this item expresses the views of the Zionist newspaper Die Welt.
The number of distinguished scholars who are engaged with the Jewish racial problem and who have on account of this been won over to the Zionist cause is increasing.
The Amsterdam chapter of the Netherlands Organization of Zionist Students held a well-attended meeting on Wednesday evening, at which Herr Professor Dr. S. R. Steinmetz, professor of ethnology at Amsterdam University, appeared as a speaker.
The chairman, Mr. B. P. Gompertz, welcomed those present and pointed out that, given his academic subject, Professor Steinmetz is in a position to speak about the Jewish problem, too. His chosen topic is surely one that must demand the interest of all intellectual circles, (particularly) as so many new works on the topic [the Jewish Question] have appeared in recent times.
Herr Professor Steinmetz said that before he accepted the invitation of the executive board to speak about the cultural worth and the future of the Jews, he asked himself whether there still was good reason to address this question in the twentieth century, a century after all of cosmopolitanism and general brotherhood. He said that he had to conclude, however, that the Jewish Question unfortunately remains an issue of current interest, and that there could hardly be a place better suited to addressing it objectively than Holland. For, on the one hand, it can certainly not be claimed that this should be a burning issue here, while the fact that there are nonetheless many thousands of Jews to be found in the country allows for an accurate assessment.
After a number of statements of a general sort, the speaker turned to the actual theme of the lecture. What, then, is the Jewish race? We must confess that our science, in dealing with the problem, has not yet arrived at any definitive conclusions. There is as yet not even any unified notion about the criteria for racial classifications. It has been proposed to view the Jews as a mixture of Hittites, Semites, and, to a lesser degree, Amorites; there are also those who would claim that the Jews are actually not Semites at all. Furthermore it has been claimed that, due to the Diaspora, the Jews have been so intermingled with others that one should actually no longer speak of a Jewish race at all. And finally, there are those who wish to demonstrate that the two main groups of European Jews have nothing in common racially.
The Jewish race, whose relative purity and persistence the speaker believes it is necessary to maintain, constitutes a particular group within the Near Eastern race; they are closely related to the Völker of Arabia and North Africa and, somewhat less closely, to the Völker of Southern and Southeastern Europe. Together with the Jews, the ancient Babylonians, Phoenicians, Arabs, and perhaps also the Egyptians must be reckoned as belonging to the Near Eastern races.
This sort of classification of the Jewish race is necessary in order to understand in which environment and under what types of influence, of nature, and of neighboring peoples the Jewish Volk developed during those periods that history sheds no light upon; and to know as well, with which peoples with similar innate traits to compare the Jews.
[Ignaz] Zollschan, then, correctly enters into elaborate detail about the truly imposing culture of the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians; Weber45 testifies to the fact that ancient Arabic culture, before Islam, had already inseminated the noblest of minds. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians did indeed perish, but what power emanated from them despite their small numbers! Eduard Meyer,46 who judged the Jews severely, asserted nonetheless that they constituted an extraordinarily gifted racial Volk, with enormous achievements for the history of mankind. And truthfully, Islam, which brought countless primitive peoples to a higher level, must be seen as a powerful cultural achievement. And how much has the Arabic golden age done for the preservation and development of Greco-Roman culture! A race that brought forth ancient Babylon, Egypt, Phoenicia, Carthage, and the great Arabic era certainly cannot be said to be incapable of high culture.
As for the overall central features of the Jewish psyche—if we may be allowed to judge it by drawing an analogy with those of the peoples to whom the Jews are related—there is certainly no justification for judging it inferior. The Arabs no more lacked courage and bravery than did the Maccabees or the defenders of Jerusalem against Titus. The overall inherited ability of the race must without doubt be judged to be very high. In order to evaluate Jewish intellectual achievements correctly, we must always bear in mind that this Volk was never numerous, and that more than half of it lives under conditions that excludes them from access to higher education. And still, for how many of the highest achievements of mankind do we have to thank this numerically tiny people!
The general ability of the Jews, therefore, must, on the one hand, be assessed in terms of hereditary racial traits; on the other, it must be evaluated in light of what this [numerically] small Jewish Volk has achieved. If only half of all that Sombart credits to the Jews is true, then their economic power must be positively miraculous! And this implies the possession of very important psychological qualities that, if directed elsewhere, could achieve other things.
Psychologists have always argued for the hereditary nature of certain psychological traits; recently this has been substantiated to a certain degree. If we assume tentatively this hereditability of psychological traits, this in no way means that the influence of specific environmental factors can be denied. On the contrary!
This [environmental] factor is indeed of outstanding significance for the Jews. Many of those traits that are held against the Jews as genetic, national, or racial traits are most likely only transitional, wholly the consequence of particular living conditions.
Werner Sombart seeks to demonstrate that the Jews possess an inherited predisposition to capitalism. However, how can he label this a deeply rooted racial trait? The religion and ethics of the Jews sanction the traits that, according to Sombart, constitute the particularity of the Jewish national or racial character, namely: greater intelligence, diminished emotionality, the tendency always to focus in on a sharply defined goal, and a great flexibility of intellect or spirit. From these basic traits, Sombart infers their [the Jews’] agility and their great ability to assimilate. All of these attributes should make Jews born entrepreneurs and capitalists, and even more traders, stockbrokers, and financiers. The renowned historian Eduard Meyer for the most part takes the same position when he talks about the traits of the Jews.
The speaker [Steinmetz] now wishes that we consider as the most characteristic psychological traits of the Jews the following: a sharp, clear intelligence; an agile spirit; a sense of the practical; a probably lower level of emotionality than that evinced by other European peoples; but on the other hand a greater energy. Some other traits—the sense for trade, lack of idealism, sobriety—could better be considered the result of particular external conditions that acted upon the above-mentioned fundamental traits. The Jews, indeed, were locked out of the highest professions for centuries; they existed outside of the national life and did not take part in the ideals of their hosts! No wonder, then, that they become sober realists, and that, having been injured too often, their sensitivity caused them to withdraw. With their enormous abilities, they were forced to devote themselves to trade, and so they became—more out of necessity than out of some inner disposition—the most salient representatives of a type of trade and finance.
We find an analogue for the Jews of Western Europe in the Parsees of India, especially in Bombay.
We should not, as Sombart seeks to do, trace the chief characteristics of the Jews back to the desert and to a nomad existence, since other nomadic peoples do not possess these same traits. Rather, such traits are to be explained by the centuries-long difficult struggle for existence, together with the intimate cohesion of their original or primary living space. The Diaspora, in contrast, stimulated their mental agility and the other acknowledged Jewish traits. The great artists and scholars produced by the Jewish Volk over the past centuries demonstrate, however, that the Jews are not exclusively predisposed to trade and finance.
The negative traits for which the Jews are so often reproached must without doubt be accounted for by reference to the impoverished conditions in which they found themselves for so long. Even today, the Jews in Western Europe are not fully recognized as equal. No wonder that this still exerts a negative influence on them.
Even as we gladly acknowledge the high cultural worth of the Jewish Volk, we must also unfortunately allow that the prognosis for their future is not favorable. The emancipation of the Jews, as the facts provided by Dr. Ruppin prove, inevitably brings with it their assimilation.
It is, therefore, highly desirable and in the interest of culture that the Jews be able to construct an independent community in accordance with the ideals of Zionism. Whether or not this oft-tested Volk are up to the mighty task that is required, concluded the speaker, only the future will tell.
45. [Max Weber (1864–1920) was the preeminent German sociologist of the early twentieth century.]
46. [Eduard Meyer (1855–1930) was a German historian of the ancient world.]