Chosen Peoples by Israel Zangwill — Read

If I were asked to sum up in a word the essential difference between / Judaism and Germanism, it would be the word "Recessional. " While the / prophets and historians of Germany monotonously glorify their nation, / the Jewish writers as monotonously rebuke theirs. "You only have I / known among all the families of the earth," says the message through / Amos. "_Therefore_ I will visit upon you all your iniquities. " The / Bible, as I have said before, is an anti-Semitic book. "Israel is the / villain, not the hero, of his own story. " Alone among epics, it is out / for truth, not high heroics. To flout the Pharisees was not reserved / for Jesus. "Behold, ye fast for strife and contention," said Isaiah, / "and to smite with the fist of wickedness. " While some German writers, / not content with the great men Germany has so abundantly produced, / vaunt that all others, from Jesus to Dante, from Montaigne to Michael / Angelo, are of Teuton blood, Jewish literature unflinchingly exposes / the flaws even of a Moses and a David. It is this passion for veracity / unknown among other peoples -- is even Washington's story told without / gloss? -- that gives false colour to the legend of Israel's ancient / savagery. "The title of a nation to its territory," says Seeley, "is / generally to be sought in primitive times and would be found, if we / could recover it, to rest upon violence and massacre. " The / dispossession of the Red Indian by America, of the Maori by New / Zealand, is almost within living memory. But in national legends this / universal process is sophisticated.

Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento, the AEneid told the all-invading Roman, putting of course the / contemporary ideal backwards -- as all missons are put -- and into the / prophetic mouth of Jove: --