Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 June 1881 — The Persecution of the Jews. [ARTICLE]

The Persecution of the Jews.

The Jews have been from all time an exclusive people; pride of race and contempt of the Gentiles round about them distinguished them already in the days when they warred against the Am alekites. They sincerely and truly believed that it was not pleasing to Him that His children should act like the peoples round about them. Eighteen centuries of cruel, senseless persecutions, of enforced exclusion from intermixture with other nations, of inter-marriage in small communities, have intensified all the distinctive physical and mental features of the Jews, so that not only their good but their bad qualities have become accentuated. Not even the eighteenth century, so ready to boast on its enlightenment, had opened the gates of the Ghetto and accorded civil liberties to a people who, of all peoples, are peace-loving, law-abiding and least likely to abuse these privileges. The gates have now been thrown down, the liberties freely granted, and it is difficult to foretell what the Jew will be a few centuries hence —indeed, if there will be Jews left at all. They are far too assimilative, far too keen-sighted, not to be affected by and to recognize the propriety inherent in, the cosmopolitan tendencies of the present day. For ourselves, we have no faith in the schemes of enthusiasts portrayed by Daniel Deronda and his friend Mordecai, in the national restoration of the Jewish people, and feel convinced that, were the attempt made, it would result in a mere exodus of the scum of the population. What has distinguished the Jewish people and kept them a nation so long is the fact that their nationality is not rooted in the land from which they have so long been absent, but in the law, which they can bear about with them everywhere. The Jews are at present in a transitional state. It is commonly said it takes three generations to make a gentleman. It must? certainly take as long to obliterate all the cruel memories of Christian oppression that linger among those whose grandfathers remember the pressure of disabling laws. — Exchange. i ;