No More Apologies
All God’s Children: A Jew Speaks.
by Armond E. Cohen.
New York, The Macmillan Co., 1945. 104 pp. $1.50.
Rabbi Cohen writes a series of “open letters” to Christians. Each is addressed to his “Dear Neighbor.” This “neighbor” is an intolerant fellow, an unworthy stereotype created by the author, who assumes that all Christians share the same prejudices about Jews. “In short,” writes Rabbi Cohen to his “neighbor”: “the Jews give you a headache.” As a matter of daily experience, there are very many Christians to whom the Jews are by no means a headache. Unwittingly, Rabbi Cohen, by accepting the hypothesis that Jews are universally disliked, reinforces the sales talk that anti-Semites find most effective in peddling their wares.
While addressing all Christians as though they had no individual minds (which is in itself an exhibition of prejudice), Rabbi Cohen also assumes that he can speak as “I” for all Jews. In most instances, however, it is apparent that Rabbi Cohen alone is “I.” The Jewish people certainly did not take that trip down south or attend Miami University. Nor is it clear in whose name “I” states certain very definite opinions about chain stores, labor unions and similar institutions. Having expressed views with which many Jews would certainly differ, “I” asks his “neighbor”: “Now let me ask you, is there anything to hate in my radicalism?” Is Rabbi Cohen asking all Christians to judge all Jews by Rabbi Cohen’s position on various economic and political issues? If so, he is inviting them to indulge in the very habits of thought that constitute bigotry.
It is appalling to what depths of self-abasement the author is ready to go in assuring Christians that if Jews become doctors or lawyers, “Christians will not have to patronize them if they do not want to. No one can compel them to.” Similarly, the “Dear Neighbor” is invited into the writer’s home to gain assurance, among other things, that “there is no voodoo or witchcraft” in the Mezuzah on the doorpost and “that it is no superstitious symbol and has no secret power.” In this instance the author offers anti-Semites a blasphemous notion that has not yet been publicized in America, except in Rabbi Cohen’s presentation.
The book has some good paragraphs about Jewish faith, culture and the like. But in his anxiety to secure respect and justice for his people, the author overlooks the ultimate subconscious reactions this whining sort of apologetics creates. His book will be applauded by many Jews and by friendly Christians who think anti-Semitism a bundle of misconceptions which can be pulled apart and destroyed by restating and debating each slander. They should study the psychology of prejudice. By now American Jews should profit by the failure of their co-religionists in Germany, where scores of pamphlets and articles as well as several books treated every anti-Jewish canard as though it were a reasonable statement worthy of public debate.
How are Jews to appeal to the American public? Courageous men do not kowtow to bigotry by accepting its basic premise that the victim is guilty until he proves himself innocent. Why should anyone be so ready to furnish disproof of slanders for which no genuine proof has been offered? Place upon bigots the burden of proof.
It is time we abandoned a negative approach to the problem of combating anti-Semitism. Let us simply state facts and truths about Jews (or others) without paying heed to falsehood. Not even for the dubious privilege of sweeping it away should Jewish authors soil themselves with the filth of anti-Semitic slander.