The Jewish Question

A Classic Statement

These simple words designate one of the saddest and most shameful pages of history. We have not used to pronouncing them without a violent feeling of loathing and disgust. Nevertheless, these words designate a whole series of injustices; they are saturated with streams of human blood. In them there is expressed one of the most repulsive black spots in the chequered life of humanity.

The Jewish question, which is thickly smeared by men with filthy lies and slanders, is in my opinion a quite simple question. It has as its source the peculiar way of thinking of that kind of people whose attitude to society is based on the principle. "The world exists solely in order to provide me with comfort and enjoyment."

For people who do not notice anything outside their own petty egos; who are completely indifferent to everything outside their own miserable requirements and enjoyments—for such people the Jew is a puzzling and hateful creature. They are compelled to hate the Jew on account of his idealism; to hate him because obviously no power in the world is able to destroy his admirable all-enquiring mind.

I consider necessary to explain my thoughts so that nobody will be able to doubt in which sense I am using the worlds "idealism" and "materialism." In the present case I understand by idealism not a definite philosophical outlook but the heroic spirit which inspires man with self-confidence, like the Hercules of Greek legend, which maintains in him the courage to sweep away and destroy everything feeble and rotten, just as Hercules cleansed the Augean stables and swept away all the useless rubbish. This idealism of the mind in no way contradicts the materialist view of the history of humanity, for this idealism is in fact the creator of the materialist conception of history, and the creator of the teachings of materialism.

In the course of humanity's painful journey on the path of progress towards the light, there stands at every stage of the weary road the Jew, as the living protest, as the explorer. He has always been that light-house which from its proud and lofty height issued forth into the whole world the irrepressible protest against all that is dirty, all that is degraded in the life of man, against man's cruel and harsh treatment of man, against repulsive shallowness and against the spirit of ignorance.

One of the causes of this terrible hatred of the Jew lies in the fact that they gave to the world Christianity, which has awakened in man the consciousness; the feeling of human love, the necessity to think of the well-being of all men and women. That does not please the Lords and masters of life. They wish to see in Christianity a religion of submission and suffering, in order that men shall voluntarily grovel under the heel of the enslaver. And they have also succeeded in converting. Christianity into a religion of slaves; into a yoke of our people, and their own protecting shield in the fight against justice.

But in the teachings of Christianity there was the great spirit of idealism of the Jewish people, an invincible spirit, and in spite of all the agitation and incitement of the governments and the Church this spirit is not extinguished in it even now. This spirit, on the contrary, permeated the mind of the people and not infrequently it blossomed forth in the shape of such rich intellectual products, as the philosophy of a Spinoza, or the Utopian dreams of a Thomas Moore.

This idealism which finds expression in the indefatigable striving to reshape the world on new foundations of equality and justice is the most; important and, perhaps, the sole cause of the hostility to the Jews. It disturbs the peace of the well-fed and self-satisfied, and sheds rays of light into the darkest corners of life. Through their energy and enthusiasm the Jews have carried into life fire and the indefatigable search after truth. They have kept the peoples awake by allowing them no rest, and finally—and this, however, is the most important—I his idealism has produced that which is most terrible for the possessing classes, namely socialism.

I do not believe in the hostility of nations and races. I do not believe in the existence of a special way of thinking which calls forth in the white, man a natural hatred of the man belonging to the black or coloured races, or in the slaves an inmate hatred of the English, or among the Russians contempt for the Jews.

Thanks to the special conditions of life in Russia, there every feeling, good or bad, finds sharper and stronger expression than elsewhere. This is the reason why the Jewish question has assumed such a terrible form in Russia, such a sharp form that it has attracted to it the attention of the whole world, which has been roused to indignation. In Russia the Jewish question is above all a political question. The chief enemy of the Russian Jews is officialdom. In Russia the Jews have been placed by the government in an unbearable position. The government is doing everything in order to suppress them spiritually and cause them to perish physically. But the wonderful vitality of this race is not crushed even under the weight of this yoke; its spiritual and mental capacities are not destroyer, but strike roots under the altered circumstances.

It is impossible to enumerate all the persecutions to which the Jews are subjected in order to oppress them. But all the tortures remain without [unclear: res] The Jews [unclear: re] in the foremost ranks of the intellectual opposition.