Article April 3, 1902 Issue

The Attitude of the Jews toward Christianity

WE copy from the Dayton (O.) Herald the following article by the Rev. David Lefkowitz, Rabbi of the Jewish synagogue.

There was a time, not many years ago, when scholars were intent upon discovering and pointing out the differences between peoples and the disagreements amongst religions and sects. The scholarly research in this direction affected the thoughts and actions of the masses, and especially was the latter end of last century marked by a rise of the national instinct, which did much to change the map of Europe; while the revival of Anti-Semitism is directly traceable to Renan's studies in this field. This emphasis upon the differences and the disagreements has arrayed nation against nation and creed against creed, until, in the twilight of the nineteenth century and at the dawn of the twentieth, there arose the ideal of a broader, all-embracing culture based upon and inspired by a better understanding on the part of Christendom of the peaceable doctrines of Him whom it worships and whose life it strives to follow. Signs of this change of emphasis are patent on all sides; amongst nations, in the Pan-American Congress recently held; amongst religions, in the Congresses of Religions that are made the feature of our great Expositions. In these conferences the agreements are sought out and underlined; and the links which our common humanity throws out are welded together into a chain of better understanding, of freedom from prejudice, and of catholicity of sympathies.

It is with a view to make that chain stronger that this article on the attitude of the Jew towards Christianity is written. No one is eager to hold out the hand of friendship to one supposed to hide a murderous dagger in his sleeve. And many Christians, I have no doubt, hesitate to manifest this new spirit toward the Jew, because they are uncertain as to his attitude of friendliness. They were prejudiced enough in the year 1348 to believe that the Black Death, which took off a fourth part of all humanity, was due to the poisoning of the wells by the Jews. And even now many cannot be induced, in spite of unanswerable arguments, to give up the belief that a special law bi is the Jew to love his co-religionist and hate the Christian; that Shylock's grasping spirit and revengeful nature is a truthful picture of the Jew, in spite of the well-known fact that the "Gesta Romanorum," from which Shakespeare took the story which he worked up into his "Merchant of Venice," shows the Shylock of the tale to have been a Christian.

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