530                  A. M. E. REVIEW.

pation" and if the Government enforces the Sunday Law re-
cently passed by the Duma, it means that they will in many
cases be forced to choose between their own Sabbath and semi-
starvation. Already the ancient hope and virtue of the most
cheerful of races are slowly asphyxiating in the never-lifting
fog of poverty and persecution.  A similar situation in Rou-
mania, if on a smaller scale as affecting only a quarter of a
million of Jews, is accentuated in bitterness by Roumania's
refusal to fulfill the obligation of equal treatment she undertook
at the Berlin Congress, and the passivity of the Powers in
presence of violated treaties adds to the Jewish tragedy the
tragedy of a world grown callous of its own spiritual interests.
The Jews, whose connection with Roumania is at least fifteen
centuries old, are not even classed as citizens.   They are
"Vagabonds" In Morocco the situation of the Jews is one
of unspeakable humiliation. They are confined to a Mellah,
and as the Moroccan proverb puts it, "One may kill as many
as seven Jews without being punished." The Jews have even
to pickle the heads of decapitated rebels.  Tested by the Jud-
daeometer, Germany herself is still uncivilized, for if she has
had no Dreyfus case, it is because no Jew is permitted military
rank. Even in America with its lip-formula of brotherhood, a
gateless Ghetto has been created by the isolation of the Jews
from the general social life.
   But if from the Gentile point of view the Jewish problem is
an artificial creation, there is a very real Jewish problem from
the Jewish point of view-a problem which grows in exact pro-
portion to the diminution of the artificial problem. Ortho-
dox Judaism in the diaspora cannot exist except in a Ghetto,
whether imposed from without or evolved from within. Rigid-
ly professing Jews cannot enter the general social life and the
professions. Jews qua Jews were better off in the Dark Ages
living as chattels of the king under his personal protection
and to his private profit, or in the ages when they were con-
fined in Ghettos. Even in the Russian Pale a certain measure
of autonomy still exists. It is emancipation that brings the
"Jewish Problem." It is precisely in Italy with its Jewish
Prime Minister and its Jewish Syndic of Rome that this prob-




			

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