THE JEWISH RACE.                     529

a new career of world-conquest. And five centuries after the
destruction of Jerusalem, its wandering scions had impreg-
nated Mohammed with the ideas of Islam. Half the world
was thus won for Hebraism in some form or other and the
notion of "the Jewish mission" triumphantly vindicated. A
nucleus of the race, however, still persisted, partly by national-
ist instinct, partly by the faith that its doctrines had been
adulterated by illegitimate elements and its mission was still
unaccomplished, and it is this persistence to-day of a Hebrew
population of twelve millions-a Jewdom larger than any that
its ancient conquerors had ever boasted of crushing--which
constitutes the much-discussed Jewish problem.
  But there was a Jewish disapora even before Jerusalem fell;
settlements of Jews all around the Mediterranean, looking
however, to Jerusalem as a national and religious center. The
Book of Esther is historically dubious, but it contains one
passage which is a summary of Jewish history: "And Haman
said unto King Ahasuerus, There is a certain people scattered
abroad and dispersed among the people in all provinces of thy
Kingdom, and their laws are diverse from all people; neither
keep they the King's laws: therefore it is not for the King's
profit to suffer them. If it please the King, let it be written
that they may be destroyed." The Jewish problem in fact,
from the Gentile point of view, is entirely artificial. It springs
exclusively from Christian or heathen injustice and intolerance,
from the oppression of minorities, from the universal law of
dislike for the unlike. In Russia, which harbors nearly half
of his race, the Jew is confined to a Pale and forbidden the
villages even of that Pale, he is cramped and crippled at every
phase of his existence, he must fight for Russia but cannot
advance in the Army or the Navy or the Government service,
except at the price of baptism. Occasionallybands of Black
Hundreds are loosed upon him in bloody pogroms, but his
everyday existence has not even this tragic dignity. It is a
sordid story of economic oppression designed to keep this mere
four per cent. of the population from dominating Holy Russia.
Ten years ago Count Pahlen's Commission reported that
"ninety per cent. of the Jews in the Pale have no stable occu-




			

OHS/National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center Serial Collection

African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, Vol. 28, Num. 2

Volume:  28
Issue Number:  02
Date:  10/1911