Sermon on the Melting Pot

There is no denying that under the influence of this enthusiasm for America, the disintegrating process of the Melting Pot is taking place in large measure. That it is not, fortunately, taking place altogether is the point that vitiates the author’s argument. Yet how familiar the cry of Americanization is to us Jews, and how frequent. Americanization means just what Mr. Zangwill has the courage to say it means: dejudaization. This dejudaizing process is conducted also under the shield and inspiration of other lofty ideas. The Jew is asked to give up his identity in the name of brotherhood and progress. Now it is a fact that in this country, as throughout the world, men are ready to understand one another and to give up many of the hatreds and jealousies of the past. Men are willing to recognize the things that unite them as well as those that separate them. In this country it is not strange to hear the call to unity among the differing Christian denominations. The historical dogmas that divided them are losing their meaning. Now, in this disintegrating movement of the times, many Jews, too, have found their place. Give up the past, they say to their people, in the name of the future. Give up your distinctions, your peculiarities, your race, your individual outlook upon life, and become like neighbors—Americans in the complete sense of the word. Many Jews have been among the first, for example, to set the seal of their approval upon the new religion of the twentieth-century American, as expounded lately by President Eliot of Harvard.¹ Reformed Judaism, many say, may accept this new religion without much protest, for its basic principle is service to man, and it rejects as worthless the distinctions that have historically and authoritatively held men apart. As to the little difference of a name, call it Judaism, Unitarianism, New Religion, Americanism—that can make no essential difference. In the course of time, such little historical vanities will go the way of all flesh, and this country in particular will be the birthplace of the new man.

It is this very process that Mr. Zangwill is describing. He is not concerned with religions, to be sure, so much as he is with races and nationalities. It is evident, however, that for the Jew, this is but a superficial distinction. For once a Jew gives up his people, he gives up his religion.

He may give up his religion and not give up his people, but the reverse process never takes place. There may be Jews without Judaism, but there can be no Judaism without Jews.

I do not regard it as my function today to enter into polemics with Mr. Zangwill. I have, on the contrary, tried to see what of beauty and grandeur his view of America may contain. Nor can I deny that the process he describes is very largely going on. I see children who are less Jewish than their parents, synagogues intended for the gentile and not for the Jew, an ignorance and contempt of such spiritual possessions as our people have always held sacred. And in view of it all, I wonder how our leaders can be blind, how they can believe that a few lip-phrases about a Jewish mission, about Jewish religion (however correct these phrases be as abstract propositions) can suffice to stem the tide that is carrying a goodly number of our children away from the old anchors.

What I wish now to emphasize is, that Mr. Zangwill’s description of the melting process by no means covers the whole situation, and that his view of Americanism is the old Know-Nothing² view and is, in large part, outworn even in America.

For, side by side with this process of Jewish decay, there is the process of Jewish awakening. Many a radical and intellectual Jew who for years has had no contact with his people, is now claiming his Jewish heritage. Some have become Jewish nationalists, advocates of the continued existence of Jewish nationality. Some of the nationalists, furthermore, are reaching out for the strength and consolations the Jewish religion offers. Many a religious Jew, on the other hand, who formerly would hear nothing of nationality, now begins to understand the riches of Jewish national culture, and the need of a national Jewish life for the expression of the Jewish religion. I think I can point to a considerable part of the membership of this synagogue to show that Reformed synagogues without previous attachment to Jewish ceremonials are beginning to feel the warmth and the beauty with which many of our traditions and customs can fill their hollowness of spirit. The need of organization is constantly creating new elements of Jewish strength. Earnest Jews and Jewesses are devoting thought and wealth to the problem of Jewish education. Our national language and literature are winning new devotees. And above all, there are the thousands who are striving to create for the Jewish people and the Jewish spirit their natural center in the ancestral land of the Jews.

Lo alman yisrael—“Israel is not yet widowed.” It is not a fact that the melting process is the only one that can be remarked in Jewish life. Alongside of it is another movement working in the opposite direction. The melting process is centrifugal, the Jewish process is centripetal. The melting process glorifies disloyalty to one’s inheritance. The Jewish process is expressed in the words of Joseph: et ahai anokhi m’vakkesh: “I seek my brethren.”

But just as the melting process describes only a part of the actual state of affairs, so is the theory of America as the Melting Pot, as the Moloch through whose fires the children of all nationalities must pass, but one of the ideal pictures of the America of the future, and by no means the finest picture.

It seems to be generally admitted at present that a man may be a good American no matter to what religious body he belongs. It was not always thus. It has taken a long struggle with the Know-Nothing and the A.P.A.³ spirit to bring Americans to an understanding of the fundamental truth that loyalty to an historical religion portends no disloyalty to the state. But this exalted conception of freedom in America is being extended by the influx of large masses of those very nationalities whose presence here has given rise to the whole problem. They are making Americans realize that the America of the future is to be not a republic of individuals and religions alone, but a republic of nationalities as well. The Melting Pot is not the highest ideal of America. America is rather the refining pot. Here, indeed, men have the opportunity of losing their old-world hatreds, their petty spites and jealousies. Here, indeed, the faiths and practices of the ages are being tested and measured in accordance with new and wholesome and young standards. Everything that cannot endure the breath of fresh life upon it must perish. In the refining process the dross will be lost. But surely there is here a mine for silver and a place for gold where it may be refined (Job 28:1). Each man as he strikes root here is no more obliged to yield his individuality, his race, his speech, his culture, his ideals, than he is obliged to yield his religion. To become a citizen he must forswear allegiance to every foreign state. To prosper and have peaceful intercourse with his neighbors he must learn the language of the land and adapt himself to its general customs. But here too under the starry banner of freedom he may develop himself and save his own soul as he will. What a great ideal for America this is, and what a lofty mission America has in the economy of nations. Here at last the world is to be shown how men of varied religions and nationalities can learn to understand one another, and to work together in peace and in concord. In this refining process the Jew is to lose all cringing and servility. His bent back is being straightened in his new-found freedom. He looks into the world’s face without fear or favor. But that does not mean that he is to give himself over to destruction. On the contrary, here if anywhere he has the chance of clinging to all of his Jewish ways and aspirations. To be regarded as a man he need not cease being a Jew. Nay, the more of a Jew he is, the more of a man he is likely to be.

It is said that the author does not intend his work to be regarded as dealing with Jews alone, but with America and all its peoples. If so, it is unfortunate that the Jew is chosen as the vehicle of expression. For is not the position of the Jew different from that of others? I have already said that when he gives up his race he gives up his religion. This does not hold good with other nationalities. Furthermore, if indeed all of the races are here to be merged, that will not mean their extinction from the earth, for they are all indigenous in some fatherland of their own. The Jew, however, has his fatherland only in history and in his hopes, and until that fatherland be secured to him, America spells his great hope for the preservation of Judaism.

Indeed, it may appear strange to many that Mr. Zangwill, a Zionist, believing in the creation of a national home for the Jewish nation, advocates with such brutal frankness the destruction of Judaism in America. That is, however, one form, if rather a backward form, of Zionism. Its thesis is that anti-Semitism or the fires of hate on the one hand, and America or the fires of love on the other, make it impossible for Judaism to exist in the Diaspora, that is, outside of a Jewish land. In a spoken aside, not in the printed edition, the young hero puts the alternative: America or Zion. This alternative, however, is by no means necessary. For myself I would say: America and Zion—America for the thousands who can live as Jews here, Zion for the thousands who must live as Jews there. Anti-Semitism would, it is true, be of itself sufficient reason for the creation of a Jewish fatherland, the existence of which would remove one of the chief causes of anti-Semitism. Pessimism as to the outlook here would also be sufficient reason for the fatherland. But while these two powerful elements are not to be overlooked, they are not the higher motives of Zionism. Zionism is the desire not so much for the mere preservation of Jewish religion and Jewish nationality. These can and will be preserved here. Zionism is rather the desire for the live and unhampered and harmonious further development of Jewish nationality and Jewish religion. Zion is the complement to, the fulfillment of America, not its alternative. Zion is the foundation stone and the capstone of the whole structure. It is our duty and our privilege to preserve and develop Judaism in America to the utmost of our powers. The difficulties are great. That does not excuse our ceasing to try. What we cannot do here, Zion will help us do—revive and develop our national life and make it fuller and finer than it ever was.

If Mr. Zangwill were describing but one phase of Jewish life in America no criticism would be offered. What we now resent, however, is the preachment he delivers himself of. He exhorts us to absorption and destruction, and he does it boisterously, joyously, without so much as a suggestion of the great tragedy that may be involved. I have no quarrel with such Jews who have become so far removed from Jewish life as to find in Mr. Zangwill’s play a text justifying their own attitude. But there are the thousands who still feel themselves living members of a living people, who still love Judaism, for whom Judaism is an actual help in reaching answers to the questions of life. We object to being urged that we give up our Jewish identity, that we and our children prove disloyal to our Jewish heritage and our Jewish religion. For Judaism is a religion to us. It is the finest and most important part of our lives. It brings us strength in our life’s battle, and through it we can express much of what is deepest in us.