JEWS AND GENTILES

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 2682, 12 January 1924, Page 4

JEWS AND GENTILES

ZANGWILL EXPLAINS

CHARLIE CHAPLIN AND SHYLOCK. One of the chief causes for antiSemitism is that the Jews have no country they can call their own, said Israel Zangwill, author and playwright in an address before the Women’s Auxiliary of Beth Moses Hospital in Brooklyn Academy of Music. His subject was “Anti-Sem-itism —Its cause and its Cure.” He said:

“Every race hates every other race; especially on the boundary lines. The Jews haven’t any boundary line. If you had your own country anti-Semitism would be concentrated. Now you have neighbours on every hand, and antiSemitism is almost universal. “Yet the presence of Jews in England or America is no problem for those countries. The problem is for the Jews. Jews are a great asset to every country, and if there was a Jewish country, it would surely be great, and T certainly should want some Jews there.”

Mr Zangwill answered with customary humour and satire almost every attack or innuendo made against the Jews. - He blamed them for much of the situation, and he censured Charlie Chaplin for veiling his boyhood, saying: OUGHT TO BE ASHAMED.

“Of course, Chaplin is a Jew, and lie ought to lie ashamed not to own it. There are a lot more like him. You tell other people you are not Jews, and they know you are and scorn you for your lie. Tf you’d come out frankly and admit you are Jews other people would respect your pride. “It is this eternal pursuit of Gentiles and the tenable crawling to them you perform that makes antiSemitism. One nation has been trying to prove it is the lost ten tribes, while we—-we’re trying to get lost.

“They laugh at ns for calling ourselves the chosen people. We are the chosen people—not to be pampered, but to do great things. As for thinking ourselves especially chosen of God, let us see what England has to say for herself.” Thereupon Mr Zangwill read three verses of “Rule Britannia,” and laid special emphasis on the lines that assigned Britannia Heavenborn creation.

Mr Zangwill said Jews were accused of being wealthy, yet he said there are many more Gentiles in America than there are Jews, that Jacob H. Schiff ranked thirtieth in the list, and Meyer Guggenheim ranked thirty-fifth. He said Shylock in the original manuscript was a Gentile, and that Shakespeare afterwards changed the character, and that Jews are getting their revenge by becoming the greatest scholars and actors of Shakespeare and thereby advertising him extensively.

“Shylock is the only Jew the world really knows,” Mr Zangwill said. The speaker called attention to great Jews in history and noted that Jews had given the Christian nations' their religion. He said that while Jews might have assisted, it was the Romans who really killed Christ. He continued: UNMERCIFULLY ATTACKED.

“I’ve been all my life trying to lift up Zionism and I’m attacked on every hand. That’s how you treat people who try to help you. My book, ‘Children of the Ghetto,’ reacted so that anti-Jewish immigration laws were withheld in England. And now in six months you will see how the resolution passed by the American JeAvish Congress, Avhich was Avritten by me, and for Avhich I was unmercifully attacked, Avill do great things for the cause of a home land in Palestine.

“We are in a state of war with all the nations, and we’ve got to realise it is a fight and that there is much more to be done than to pay another man to live in Palestine. There must he a Jewish vote, not as

a political thing, hut as self-expres si on and self-protection of a religi mis minority.

“You’ve goi to vote that way aguinst the Klan, not-because it is n menace to Jews alone, hut because it is a menace to Catholics and to negroes and to Americanism itself. “You can get out of the golus (exile), you can get out of your mental dungeon bv not being afraid to be called Jews, by doing the right thing and by voting as a religions minority.”

Mr Zangwill added that the an dience, different from the one 1

Carnegie Hall a feAV weeks ago, was one of the most intelligent he bad ever addressed.