Page:The International Jew - Volume 2.djvu/189

 into Cleveland schools, for in April the superintendent of public schools issued an order that it was not to be used again.

1911—Rabbi Harry W. Ettleson and Solomon Elsner request the Hartford, Connecticut, school board to have “The Merchant of Venice” dropped from the reading list of schools. The board complies.

1912—Jewish residents of Minneapolis, Minnesota, inaugurate a movement to have “The Merchant of Venice” dropped from the public schools.—In Boston, Massachusetts, the superintendent of schools refuses to withdraw “The Merchant of Venice” as a textbook, on the demand of Rabbi Phineas Israeli.

1916—On demand of Jews the New Haven, Connecticut, board of education votes to prevent the reading of “The Merchant of Venice,” and extends the prohibition to “Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare” until an edition is published which omits the play.

And so on down the list of cities. A diversion was created by the Jewish attack on Sargent’s painting entitled “The Synagogue” in the art scheme of the Boston Public Library. Many denunciatory resolutions were adopted throughout the country with regard to that, but the painting is still there.

It is all part of one mistaken program, to prohibit free speech, with reference to the Jew. It is utterly at one side of all that American principles mean. Shut him up! Boycott him! Tear down his painting! Bar his words from the mails and public library!—what a waste of energy and what a self-judgement such an attitude is!

And it has become pretty general. Last Christmas most people had a hard time finding Christmas cards that indicated in any way that Christmas commemorated Someone’s Birth. Easter they will have the same difficulty in finding Easter cards that contain any suggestion that Easter commemorates a certain event. There will be rabbits and eggs and spring flowers, but a hint of the Resurrection will be hard to find. Now, all this begins with the designers of the cards. And even in this business one comes upon that same policy of declaring Anti-Semitic everything that is Christian. If Rabbi Coffey says the New Testament is the most Anti-Semitic book ever written, what must be the judgement