From: mars1933@hotmail.com   
      
      In his 1911 book The Jews and Modern Capitalism, German economist   
   Werner Sombart made this striking assertion: "For what we call   
   Americanism is nothing else than the Jewish spirit distilled."1 What   
   could prompt such a claim?   
      
      From a present-day perspective in America, it is clear that indeed   
   a "Jewish spirit" dominates our culture. It was evidently clear even   
   100 years ago, in Sombart's day. But I will not recount this story   
   here. My interest at the moment is to trace the origins and   
   development of this situation, and in particular to examine some   
   prominent opinions and concerns about the growing Jewish role in the   
   United States.2 The focus here will be on the more prominent and   
   insightful critics, as they typically offer the most valuable   
   contributions. Historically speaking, anti-Jewish sentiment was   
   widespread in the English-speaking world, and it extended to some of   
   our most famous writers, philosophers, and intellectuals. This fact   
   suggests that there are certain objectionable or problematic qualities   
   that are intrinsic to the Jewish character, and that these have become   
   repeatedly manifest over time.   
      
      American attitudes toward the Jews have their cultural and histori-   
   cal origins in England, and so I will begin there. A Jewish presence   
   existed in that nation as far back as the time of William the   
   Conqueror, circa 1060. As elsewhere, they quickly established   
   themselves in business, trade, and finance. And as elsewhere, they   
   came into conflict with the local populace for both theological and   
   practical reasons, the latter mostly revolving around usury and tax   
   collection for the royals.   
      
        On the tax issue, noted British economist William Cunningham ob-   
   served that "the Jews served the purpose of a sponge which sucked   
   up the resources of the subjects, and from which their wealth could be   
   easily squeezed into the royal coffers."3   
      
      Then a more serious incident: In 1255, in the northern English town   
   of Lincoln, a 9-year-old boy named Hugh was found murdered, his   
   body thrown into a well. The body showed signs of ritual murder,   
   and local Jews were charged with the crime. One of them confessed,   
   possibly under torture, that it was Jewish custom to kill a Christian   
   child every year-a variation on the so-called blood libel charge that   
   dates back to Theophrastus' remarks of 310 B.C.4   
      
      The tragedy of "Little St. Hugh" was apparently one in a string of   
   events that led, in 1290, to the expulsion of all Jews from England by   
   Edward I. This was the first major expulsion of the modern era, and   
   foreshadowed those to follow on the Continent over the subsequent   
   two centuries. Unlike the other nations, this one was quite   
   successful; there was almost no Jewish presence in England for the   
   next 400 years.   
      
      Hugh's story was also inspiration for Chaucer's "The Prioress's   
   Tale," a chapter in his Canterbury Tales, written in the late 1300s.   
   The Prioress recounts the story of an unnamed Christian city in Asia   
   with its own "Jewerye," or Jewish ghetto. The Jews were enclosed there   
   "for foule usure [usury]" and ill-gotten profits. The young son of a   
   local widow takes to singing a Christian hymn as he walks through the   
   town, which offends the Jews. Satan, who "hath in Jues herte [Jew's   
   heart] his wasps nest," incites them to kill the boy:   
      
       Fro thennes forth the Jues han conspired   
       This innocent out of this world to chace.   
       An homicide therto han they hyred,   
       That in an aleye hadde a privee place.5   
      
         Out of this world this innocent to chase;   
         They found themselves a murderer for hire,   
          Who in an alley took his hiding place.   
      
      The "cursed Jew" held the boy, "kitte his throte" (slit his   
   throat), and threw him into a pit. Fearing the worst, the distraught   
   widow goes out into the town, and "among the cursed Jues she hym   
   soghte." She finds the body, and the local authorities then sentence   
   the Jews to death. Chaucer concludes the tale with a bleak reminder:   
   "O yonge Hugh of Lyncoln, slayn also / With cursed Jewes, as it is   
   notable."   
      
      The Jews had been banished, but English writers were not unfamil-   
   iar with the common European attitudes of the time. Shakespeare's   
   Merchant of Venice, written about 1598, includes the infamous portray-   
   al of Shylock the Jewish moneylender. Jews were still active in Ven-   
   ice-an eviction order of 1571 was never carried out-but they were   
   publicly stigmatized by distinctive clothing, and were compelled to   
   live in the Jewish ghetto. In the play, Shylock alludes to abuse by   
   Christians: "You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, / And spit upon   
   my Jewish gabardine . . ." Launcelot decries his indebtedness, and   
   seeks "to run from this Jew my master"; he adds, "Certainly the Jew is   
   the very devil incarnal." Later, when the debt is defaulted, Shylock   
   shows no mercy: "Why, this bond is forfeit; / And lawfully by this the   
   Jew may claim / A pound of flesh, to be by him cut off / Nearest the   
   merchant's heart."   
      
      By the mid-17th century, Jews were returning to England and lob-   
   bying for civil rights. But it wasn't until the notorious "Jew Bill"   
   of 1753 that they were allowed to become naturalized citizens, and   
   full emancipation would not come until the legislative debates of the   
   1830s to the 1850s.   
      
      The influential historian Edward Gibbon, whose monumental work The   
   History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was completed in   
   1788.  Gibbon observes that a single people refused to join in the   
   common intercourse of mankind. The Jews . . . emerged from obscurity .   
   . . and multiplied to a surprising degree . . . The sullen obstinacy   
   with which they maintained their peculiar rites and unsocial manners   
   seemed to mark them out a distinct species of men, who boldly   
   professed, or who faintly disguised, their implacable hatred to   
   the rest of human-kind.7   
      
      The acquisition of civil rights did not mean the end of anti-Jewish   
   sentiment, even among the more enlightened British. William Blake   
   harbored a kind of "hostility" toward the Jews that found subtle ex-   
   pression in his poems. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake pre-   
   sents a metaphorical discussion with the Jewish prophets Isaiah and   
   Ezekiel, when the latter states that, due to their monotheism, "we   
   cursed in [God's] name all the deities of surrounding nations."9 As a   
   consequence of the Jews' "firm perswasions," "all nations believe the   
   jews code and worship the jews god, and what greater subjection can   
   be?" His Song of Liberty recalls an old stereotype, "O Jew, leave   
   counting gold!"10 And on a number of occasions Blake refers to the   
   "Synagogue of Satan," the standard anti-Jewish epithet of the day. For   
   example in Jerusalem he remarks that man needs religion, and   
   if he has not the Religion of Jesus, he will have the Religion of   
   Satan, & will erect the Synagogue of Satan. . . . Every Religion   
   that Preaches Vengeance for Sin is the Religion of the Enemy &   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)