Every generation discovers a new Jewish "peril". Today our enemies talk of political Jewish peril, and are anxious to make people believe that the Jews are planning to conquer the world for their own sinister purposes. A hundred years ago there was another Jewish "peril"-the peril of superstition. At that time our enemies wanted to make the world believe that the Jews are a barbaric race, that are practicing a barbaric religion, and need the blood of Christian children for ritual purposes. Two hundred years ago, they also spoke of the Jewish "peril". Some of the best Gentile minds in Germany and in France spoke of the peril of the Ghetto and described the Ghetto as a menace to white man's civilization. In the middle ages they spoke of the Jewish "peril". The Jews were held responsible for all sorts of plague, calamities, and catastrophes, and it may be taken for granted that one hundred years from today, people will speak of the Jewish "peril".

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As a matter of fact, our enemies through all the ages have not been satisfied with slandering us, but have tried hard to convince humanity that we are the enemies to civilization, enemies of the human race. This uninterrupted, ceaseless hammering away at the Jews, these uninterrupted attacks against the Jewish people through all the ages, is something mystifying; it is one of the most peculiar phenomenon in history. After all, we are only a small minority everywhere, and after all we have not troglodytes. Our life does not differ much from theirs, and our habits and customs are the habits and customs of every other people. The traits of our national character and the psychological peculiarities of our mind, striking though they may be, are certainly not of such a nature as to mystify people, or to make them shiver. What then is it that makes many people believe that we are a strange and amazing people, so strange that there is something mystic about us, so strange that every fable [t] old about us is accepted as true?

Some people believe that the eternal enmity against the Jewish people must be ascribed to our religion. But none of the scholars or historians who believe that the Jewish religion is the source of our trouble can explain why it is 3so obnoxious to the Gentiles, or can even prove that it is obnoxious. The fact is that he who hates the Jews does not think of the Jewish religion, but thinks of the Jews as a collective body. He finds fault with the group of human beings, but not with their abstract belief. He who preaches the gospel of pogroms certainly does not consider the Jewish religion. We believe that just as the so-called Jewish "peril" is a fable, the religion as a source of anti-Semitism is also a fable. In many anti-Semitic countries baptized Jews are placed on an "equal footing" with the Jews who cling to the Jewish religion, and there is an old German saying, "A Jew whether baptized or not is a Jew".

It is not the Jewish religion that arouses the ire and makes one talk of the Jewish "peril". Is it the Jewish nationality, is it the fact, that the Jews still form a separate ethnic group, the fact that they do not intermarry and do not assimilate themselves with the people sheltering them?

Many a fanatic Gentile native thinks that it may or may not be obnoxious, but 4it surely does not arouse his ire against it. The peoples of the earth have been satisfied to know for more than a couple of thousand years that we are a separate ethnic group, called race or nationality, and that we mean to preserve our ethnic identity. A fact known so long to humanity cannot possibly be the cause of hatred. They may or they may not resent this fact-in 99 out of 100 cases they will not resent it-but if they should resent it, their resentment cannot be so strong as to make them hate us with the savage hatred of an anti-Semite.

What then is it which makes them talk of the Jewish "peril" a fable that is renewed every century?

To our mind the talk of the Jewish "peril" is due to two causes-a political and a psychological one. The political cause is our homelessness. A people without a homeland of its own is just as much held in contempt and despised, and hated, as is a vagabond, as is a wandering beggar, who has no home of his own. There are many people in the world, who are stepchildren in history, who are 5subject to foreign rule and to foreign oppression. But they all live on their national soil and their freedom is often a matter of a change of political conditions. The Jews are the only people on God's earth who, for the last two thousand years, have had no home of their own, and we are wandering in the full meaning of the term. The wanderer, the vagabond, is always distrusted and a suspicious character, and people are ready to believe almost anything about him. That is the reason why people are so ready to believe every fable about us.

The second, psychological cause of the belief in the Jewish "peril" throughout the ages is the fact that we disturb the uniformity of their life. It is true that we adapt ourselves everywhere to the conditions of our environments, but still we always preserve our ethnic identity. They may not object so much to our ethnic identity as they do to our nonconformity. We are nonconformers and thus disturb their uniformity of life. Hence, the talk about the Jewish peril even by men who are intelligent and by no means malicious.