Anti-Semitism

Abstract

HE New York International Library Publishing Co. has brought out an English translation, from the French original, of Bernard Lazare’s work, Anti-Semitism, Its History and Causes.1 What with the recent Kishineff butcheries and the literature—pro-Semitic, anti-Semitic and otherwise—that these butcheries have given rise to, the Semitic question has received fresh impetus. Bernard Lazare’s work fits in with such setting. That there is a Semitic Question none will deny. Wherein, however, the Question consists is in itself a question that will receive different answers. Bernard Lazare’s work is not valuable for the answer it gives: in fact, the answer it gives follows in the main the beaten and false path of philo-Semitism in general. The value of Bernard Lazare’s work lies in the mass of facts that it brings together, some of which is new, and which, indirectly at any rate, point the way to the correct answer to what may be said is becoming a “Vexed Question.” Let loose upon the world a “Traveller from Mars,” or any of the “Innocents” that Voltaire used to choose in his criticisms of men and things, and what would be his experience? He would find that every time anyone with fact and argument, shows that a certain Jew is conceited and superficial, forthwith up jumps the philo-Semite and denounces the utterer as an anti-Semite; every time anyone, with fact and argument, shows that a certain Jew is a characterless worm, up jumps the philoSemite and denounces the utterer as an anti-Semite; every time anyone, with fact and argument, shows a certain Jew to be double-faced and a swindler, up jumps the philo-Semite and denounces the utterer as an anti-Semite; every time anyone with facts and argument shows a certain Jew to be physically or morally unclean, or a