Page:The International Jew - Volume 2.djvu/29

Rh, they are usually not correctly analyzing and describing their own feelings and attitude. * * * If a Jew is baptized, or, what is not necessarily the same thing, sincerely converted to Christianity, few people think of him as no longer being a Jew. His blood, temperament and spiritual peculiarities are unaltered." ("The Jews a Nation.")

Bertram B. Benas, barrister-at-law: "The Jewish entity is essentially the entity of a People. 'Israelites,' 'Jews,' 'Hebrews'—all the terms used to denote the Jewish people bear a specifically historical meaning, and none of these terms has been convincingly superseded by one of purely sectarian nature. The external world has never completely subscribed to the view that the Jewish people constitute merely an ecclesiastical denomination. * * * " ("Zionism—The National Jewish Movement.")

Leon Simon, a brilliant and impressive Jewish scholar and writer, makes an important study of the question of "Religion and Nationality" in his volume, "Studies in Jewish Nationalism." He makes out a case for the proposition that the Religion of the Jews is Nationalism, and that Nationalism is an integral part of their Religion.

"It is often said, indeed, that Judaism has no dogmas. That statement is not true as it stands." He then states some of the dogmas, and continues—"And the Messianic Age means for the Jew not merely the establishment of peace on earth and good will to men, but the universal recognition of the Jew and his God. It is another assertion of the eternity of the nation. Dogmas such as these are not simply the articles of faith of a church, to which anybody may gain admittance by accepting them; they are the beliefs of a nation about its own past and its own future." (p. 14.)

"For Judaism has no message of salvation for the individual soul, as Christianity has; all its ideas are bound up with the existence of the Jewish nation." (p. 20.)

"The idea that Jews are a religious sect, precisely parallel to Catholics and Protestants, is nonsense." (p. 34.)

Graetz, the great historian of the Jews, whose monumental work is one of the standard authorities,