Are the Jews Victims or Persecutors?
By Henry Ford (of car fame)

"Half of Christendom worships a Jew; the other half worships a
Jewess." -- Jewish editorial.

"If the gospel story is correct, Judas was a pretty decent sort of
fellow. It was only after he had become a convert to Christianity that
he became that which has made his memory an accursed thing for
nineteen hundred years." -- Jewish editorial.

"Our land is frequently called a Christian nation. No doubt the
majority of our citizens believe this. No less an authority than
Justice Brewer of the Supreme Court so expressed himself in 1892. But
the statement is clearly false . . . . This is not a Christian nation.
In inspiration, at least, it is a Hebrew nation, for the Constitution
which we now enjoy traces back to the Hebrew Commonwealth." -- Jewish
editorial.

(From the minutes of a meeting of the Committee on Families of the
New York Board of Child Welfare.)

Mr. Hebbard: "That is one of the things I have in mind, that a
widow brings deliberately into her home a nameless child and the
inevitable consequence of that is that her legitimate children are
always thereafter pointed out."

Miss Sophie Irene Loeb: "As far as nameless children are
concerned, Christ himself was a nameless child. Let us get away from
nameless children."

Dr. Dirvoch: "I think where there are three or four children in a
home and a little stranger enters that home without a father, you are
corrupting the morals of those legitimate children by permitting them
to remain in such surroundings."

Miss Loeb: "I say to you that this committee, if it takes such an
attitude as that, is one hundred years behind the times."

Mr. Cunnion: "Anything against purity is immoral."

Miss Loeb: "What has that to do with the question of purity? Was
the mother of Christ pure?"

Mr. Cunnion: "Certainly."

Miss Loeb: "He had no name!"

Mr. Cunnion: "You can't bring that in here. We believe he was
conceived without sin."

Mr. Menehan (to Miss Loeb): "That is very wrong to make that
statement." -- Cited in a letter of complaint to Mayor Hylan.

"The intimate relation of church and state in the great non-
sectarian United States of America received direct demonstration on
August 12 (1913), when a deputy sargeant-at-arms of the Senate was
hurriedly sent out to get a preacher of any old denomination to open
the Senate with prayer. The session opening an hour earlier than
usual, the regular chaplain as not at hand, but with still two minutes
to spare the deputy returned in an automobile, hurried to the Vice
President's office and introduced the Rev. Dr. C. Albert Homas, of
Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, to Mr. Marshall just in time for the Vice
President to lead the way into the Senate chamber to open the session
at 11 o'clock, and once again the Union was saved. We shudder to think
what might have happened if no preacher had been captured in time to
open the session with prayer!" -- Jewish editorial.

"President Wilson in his inaugural address said: 'The firm basis
of the Government is justice, not pity.' This is sound Jewish doctrine
as laid down by Moses and the Prophets in contradistinction to the
doctrine of love, as attributed to Jesus. This coming from so good a
churchman as President Wilson might be a little surprising were it not
that it is a well-known fact that whenever our Christian brethren want
to talk to reasoning men they go to the Old Testament for their
inspiration." -- Jewish editorial.

"President Wilson at his inaugural gave another instance of the
well-known fact that in solemn moments when they need comfort and
inspiration, Christians turn to the Old Testament and not to the New.
So President Wilson, when he kissed the bible after taking the
inaugural oath, selected the passage, Psalm 46." -- Jewish editorial.

"Reference has frequently been made in these columns to a number
of addresses made by the late Isaac M. Wise at the celebration in
honor of his 80th birthday anniversary in the course of which he
predicted that in a quarter of a century from that date (1899) there
would be practically nothing left in Protestant Christianity of a
belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ or the distinctive dogmas of
Christianity, and that all Protestant Christians by whatever name they
call themselves, would be substantially Jews in belief. To any one who
notes the signs of the times, it is apparent that this prophecy is
being rapidly fulfilled . . . . The Jesus superstition and the
fantastic dogmas built upon his supposed divine origin, die but
slowly, but that they are dying is nevertheless apparent." -- Jewish
editorial.

The subject of this article is "Religious Prejudice and Persecution --
Are the Jews Victims or Persecutors?" A study of history and of
contemporary Jewish journalism shows that Jewish prejudice and
persecution is a continuous phenomenon wherever the Jews have attained
power, and that in neither action nor word has any disability placed
upon the Jew equaled the disabilities he has placed and still
contemplates placing upon non-Jews. It is a rather startling reversal
of all that we have learned from our Judaized histories, but
nevertheless, it seems to be the truth.

Attention is once more called to the fact that the Jews themselves are
not raising the cry of "religious persecution" here or elsewhere, but
they are allowing their "Gentile fronts" to do it for them -- just as
they have not denied the statements made in this series (among
themselves they freely admit most of them) but let "Gentile fronts" do
it for them. The Jews would not be averse to raising the cry of
"religious persecution" perhaps, (provided they could make it stand)
were they not afraid that it would call attention to their own
persecuting activities. But their "Gentile fronts" have brought that
upon them.

There is no Christian church that the Jews have not repeatedly
attacked.

They have attacked the Catholic Church. This is of special interest
just now when Jewish agents are doing their utmost to arouse Catholic
sentiment in their favor by circulating charges which these agents
personally know to be false. THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT has perfect
confidence in the information which Catholic leaders may have on the
Jewish Question. On this subject the Catholic priesthood is not
misled.

Examples of this attack are numerous. "Half of Christendom worships a
Jewess," is not a statement but a slur, flung by Jewish men who say in
the ritual of morning prayer: "Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King
of the Universe, who hast not made me a woman." The Talmudists'
discussions of the Virgin Mother are often vile. The Christian
festivals, whose preservation is due to the Catholic custom and
conscience, are all attacked by Jews.

The American Israelite, whose great prestige in American Jewry is due
to its having been founded by Rabbi Isaac M. Wise, opposed the
establishment of Columbus Day and berated Governor Hughes for signing
the law making it a holiday in New York. The act that established it
deserved "the contempt of thinking men." Why? Is not the discovery of
America a memorable event? Yes, but Columbus was a Catholic! However,
in recent months the Jews are proving him to have been a Jew, so we
may expect some day to see Columbus Day insisted upon with Jewish
rites.

The Catholic Columbian made editorial reference to the increasing
Jewish influence on the American press, in these words: "Jewry is
getting its grip on the news of this country as it is on Reuter's and
the Havas agency in Europe." -- A perfectly polite and true
observation.

But the Jewish editorial thunderer came back -- "The Columbian, in its
sneaking Jesuitical way, does not mention the fact that these (the
Jewish) papers are the very cleanest in the country. The Columbian
cannot point to a single daily owned by one of its co-religionists
that begins to compare with the above papers."

The sweet spirit here evidenced is very significant today when an
appeal is being made to create a strong pro-Jewish Catholic sentiment.

If there is in the world any extra-ecclesiastical undertaking by
Catholics which has won the undivided approval of the Christian world
as the Passion Play of Oberammergau has done, the present writer does
not know what it is. Yet in a volume entitled "A Rabbi's Impressions
of the Oberammergau Passion Play," Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf, D.D., of
Philadelphia has stigmatized that notable production as reeking with
falsehoods and vicious anti-Semitism. In the rabbi's eyes, of course,
it is, for to him the entire Christian tradition is a poisonous lie.
The whole fabric of Christian truth, specially as it concerns the
person of Christ, are "the hallucinations of emotional men and
hysterical women."

"Thus," says the rabbi (p. 127) "was invented the cruel story that has
caused more misery, more innocent suffering, than any other work of
fiction in the range of the whole world's literature." And thus the
simple peasants of Oberammergau, presenting the Catholic faith in
reverent pageant, are labeled anti-Semites.

These are not isolated instances. Antagonism to the Catholic Church
runs throughout Jewish literature. The Jewish attitude was summed up
in an editorial in the Jewish Sentinel of November 26, 1920, as
follows: "Our only great historical enemy, our most dangerous enemy,
is Rome in all its shapes and forms, and in all its ramifications.
Whenever the sun of Rome begins to set, that of Jerusalem rises."
These, however, are matters well known to Catholic leaders.

In their turn the other Christian denominations have been attacked.
When the Methodist Church put on a great pageant entitled "The
Wayfarer," Rabbi Stephen S. Wise played critic and made the solemn and
silly statement that had he been a South Sea Islander (instead of the
itinerant platform performer which he is) his first impulse after
seeing "The Wayfarer," would have been to rush out into the street and
kill at least three Jews. It says a great deal, perhaps, for the
channel in which Rabbi Wise's impulses run, but the tens of thousands
of Methodists who saw "The Wayfarer" will not be inclined to attribute
such a criticism to the spirit of tolerance which Rabbi Wise so
zealously counsels the Christians to observe.

The Episcopal Church also has felt the attack of the Jews. Recently
the Jewish press raised a clamor that the Episcopal Church was not
competent to teach Americanism in our cities because it held that
Christianity and good citizenship were synonymous. And when the
Episcopal Church made provision for mission work among the Jews, the
torrent of abuse that was poured out gave a very vivid picture of what
the Jewish mind naturally turns to when aroused. This abuse is not
reproduced here because of its excessive violence and disrespect. It
is similar to that which is heaped upon all attempts to explain
Christianity to the Jews. "What would the Gentiles do if we sent
Jewish missionaries to them?" ask the violent editors. Any Gentile can
answer that -- nay, even the Jews can answer that. In the first place,
the Jews dos not want to teach their religion to Gentiles because
there is a Talmudical restriction against it; Talmudically the
Gentiles are not good enough to mingle with the religious matters of
the Jews. In the second place, the Jews do send missionaries
everywhere, not to spread Jewish religious principles, but propaganda
favoring the Jews as a race and people, as is done in our colleges
through the so-called "Jewish Chautauqua." In the third place, let
there be produced one Jewish missionary who has ever received anything
but considerate reception wherever he has appeared.

The Jews are bitter against all Christian denominations because of the
conversion of numerous Jews to them. A large number of Jews have
become Catholics; one of the Knights of Columbus' most useful
lecturers against the menace of radical socialism is a converted Jew.
It is so also with the Presbyterian Church which has been the most
recent victim of Jewish vituperation. But only upon the Catholic
Church has the Jew poured more wrath and malediction than he has
poured upon Christian Science. The Christian Science church has
attracted large numbers of Jewish converts. Some of them have become
very active, devoted members of that form of faith. Scores of columns
and pages have been devoted to their denunciation in Jewish
newspapers, magazines and books. Christian Science is a peculiar
anathema to the Jew.

Where then is the religious prejudice? Search through the publications
of all the churches named, and you cannot find in all their history so
much of the spirit of prejudice and persecution as you can find
expressed in the Jewish press in one single day. Jewry reeks with such
prejudice. In politics, education, social functions, public holidays,
literature, and newspapers, they see everywhere traces of
"Christological manifestations" and cry them down.

No public man has ever given public evidence of his Christian faith
without rebuke from the Jews. Mr. Bryan, Mr. Marshall, Mr. Taft, Mr.
Wilson, two of them Presidents, one of them Vice President, and the
other Secretary of State, have all been taken to task from time to
time for their sins in this respect. Mr. Marshall is a devout man,
whose faith is real to him, and he speaks very naturally about it at
times. He has, therefore, been attacked oftener in the Jewish press
than has any other public man of recent times. Nothing is more
ludicrous to the Jewish press than a Vice President of the United
States openly confessing that he is an "idolator," that is, a
worshipper of the dead Jewish imposter whom the Christians ignorantly
call "Christ." To Mr. Marshall's honor, be it said, he never
apologized, he never begged to withdraw his public statements. Neither
did William J. Bryan, whose lecture "The Prince of Peace" contained
statements in honor of Christ which brought him into conflict with
Jewish spokesmen everywhere, and whose remarks about missions after a
trip around the world were savagely attacked by Jews. Mr. Bryan did
not apologize either. Mr. Taft was promptly called down on several
occasions for using forms of the word "Christian," which were
particularly offensive to the Jewish press because they had advertised
far and wide the Taft campaign that Mr. Taft was practically a Jew in
his belief in that he had abandoned all the distinctive Christian
doctrines pertaining to Christ. After his lapses in which he used the
term "Christian" approvingly, it was explained on his behalf (1) that
he was accommodating himself to the audience, and (2) that he used the
term as a synonym for civilization! But isn't it significant that the
name of Christ should be an integral part of the very name of the
highest civilization? Mr. Taft was a true liberal, liberal enough to
tolerate Christian orthodoxy. And that was a rather weak spot, as far
as the Jews' estimate of him went.

Mr. Wilson, while President, was very close to the Jews. His
administration, as everyone knows, was predominantly Jewish. As a
Presbyterian elder, Mr. Wilson had occasional lapses into the
Christian mode of thought during his public utterances, and was always
checked up tight by his Jewish censors. In 1914, speaking before the
American University at Washington, he said:

"That is the reason why scholarship has usually been most fruitful
when associated with religion, and scholarship has never been, so far
as I can at the moment recall, associated with any religion except the
religion of Jesus Christ."

That was terrible. So terrible that Herman Bernstein was chosen to
administer the castigation.

And Mr. Wilson made proper reparation:

"My dear Mr. Bernstein: I am sorry that there would have been any
unfair implication in what I said at the opening of the American
University. You may be sure that there was nothing of the kind in my
mind, or very certainly nothing in my thoughts that would discriminate
in the important matter you speak of against Judaism. I find that one
of the risks and penalties of extemporaneous speaking is that you do
not stop to consider the whole field, but address yourself merely to
the matter in hand. With sincere respects and appreciation,

Cordially yours,
Woodrow Wilson."

The heading given this notice in the Jewish press was, "He Did Not
Mean It."

All of the President's offending took place in 1914. The second
offense he gave was by taking the position of honorary chairman of the
International Lord's Day Congress, which was to be held the next year
in connection with the Panama Exposition. It was, however, the
Christian Sunday which received the bulk of the abuse on that
occasion.

The subject is "religious prejudice." Where does it exist in this
country in more continuous and virulent character than among the Jews?
Read these items selected at random from Jewish papers:

"District Grand Lodge No. 4, Independent Order B'nai B'rith, voted at
the annual election held in San Francisco, March 2 (1911) to exclude
from the order Jews who join the Christian Science Church. The body
after earnest discussion decided that the portals of the order shall
be closed against the Christian Scientist Jews on the ground that such
Jews have abjured Judaism. The vote upon the question was almost
unanimous."

"The Jewish Community of Philadelphia has found it necessary to
publish a warning to the Jewish people against the Daily Vacation
Bible Schools which are being established in various parts of the
city, also against certain missions and settlement houses, all of
which are traps into which Jewish children are decoyed for the purpose
of seducing them from the religion of their parents. These
institutions belong to that class of conversionist agencies which wage
a campaign for the seeking of converts through workers . . . (who) are
a class of criminals that keep just within the law and deserve no
better treatment than is usually accorded to people of that kind."

When a bishop of the Episcopal Church said, "We must make the United
States indisputably a Christian nation," the Jewish press retorted
that such a thing could not be done until the Constitution of the
United States had been "abolished." "Christian America" is a
persecuting term according to the professional Jewish spokesmen, and
the most laborious efforts have been put forth by them to prove on
paper that the United States is not and cannot be Christian.

Not only do the Jews disagree with Christian teaching -- which is
their perfect right, and no one dare question it -- but they seek to
interfere with it. It is not religious tolerance in the midst of
religious difference, but religious attack that they preach and
practice. The whole record of the Jewish opposition to Christmas,
Easter and certain patriotic songs shows that.

When Cleveland and Lakewood arranged for a community Christmas, the
Cleveland Jewish press said: "The writer of this has no idea how many
Jews there are in Lakewood, but if there is only one, there should be
no community Christmas, no community religion of any kind." That is
not a counsel of tolerance, it is a counsel of attack. The Christmas
literature of American Judaism is fiercer than the flames of the
Inquisition. In the month of January, the Jewish press has urged its
readers to begin an early campaign against Christmas celebrations the
next Christmas -- "Only three hundred and sixty days before Christmas.
So let us do our Christmas arguing early and take plenty of time to do
it."

If anything, Easter is attacked yet more bitterly. But we refrain, for
good reasons, from repeating what Jews commonly say on such occasions.
The strange inconsistency of it all is to see the great department
stores of the Levys and the Isaacs and the Goldsteins and the
Silvermans filled with brilliant Christmas cheer and at Easter with
the goods appropriate to the time. The festivals of the "heathen" are
very profitable. Jewish merchants have been chided for this -- not
over-severely -- by certain rabbis. But on the whole the rabbis had
better remain content, for there are no forces more rapidly
secularizing the two festival days than are the merchandising and
profiteering forces.

Even religious intolerance has its gleesome moments, and the Jews'
come whenever the signs appear of the greater secularization of the
church. One parallel between the Protocols and the real hopes of the
Jews is written in the common Jewish prophecy that Christianity is
doomed to perish. It will perish by becoming, to all intents and
purposes, Judaism. And it will become Judaism, first, by ousting all
the doctrines pertaining to the person of Christ, excising from the
Gospels the great "I Ams" which are His distinctive teachings
concerning Himself; and, second, by devitalizing Christianity of all
the spiritual content which flows from a union by faith with a Person
believed to be divine. That is the only way it can be done. There may
be a union of all the churches of the Christian faith because the
fundamentals are the same; no union of Christianity and Judaism can
occur unless Judaism takes in Jesus as the Messiah, or unless
Christianity ejects Him as the Messiah. Judaism sees the union coming
by the ejection of the Lord as the Messiah, and rejoices at every sign
of it.

Dr. Charles F. Aked, who has since blossomed out as a Jewish
spokesman, delivered a sermon in which he cast aside all the "super-
natural" elements in the life of Christ, from His birth, to the
significance of His death, and was hailed by the Jewish press as "the
fulfillment of the prophecy that within fifty years the religion of
all the American people, outside the Catholic Church, would be Judaism
in principle even though not in name."

"No Jew," says the American Israelite, "will conceal his gratification
when he finds Christians virtually admitting that liberal Christianity
is practically an acceptance of the doctrine of liberal Judaism."

Unfortunately, this is true. Liberal Christianity and Liberal Judaism
meet, but only by the surrender of all that is distinctively Christian
in doctrine. A liberal Christian is more Jewish than Christian. The
statement may sound harsh and arouse resentment, but it is a very
simple matter for any liberal Christian to convince himself of this by
reading the volume of liberal Jewish doctrine put out by Kaufman
Kohler, president of the Hebrew Union College. Liberalism is the
funnel by which Christianity is expected to run into Judaism, just as
liberalism so-called in other departments of life is expected to bring
about certain other Jewish aims.

"Liberalism" in Jewish thought means a wide open country in every way.
Judaism has opposed every significant reform that has come to the
country; prohibition, Sunday decency, movie and stage regeneration,
and community reverence for sacred things. Judaism has been the prop
of the liquor traffic, Sunday desecration, movie and stage excesses,
and public contempt for the sacred things of the prevailing religion;
and it is all too evident that the Jewish propaganda has made serious
inroads everywhere.

A Congregational Church in New Jersey decided to abandon the Bible in
some of its classes and substitute sociology, politics, municipal
government and kindred subjects for study, and the Jewish press hailed
it as another sign that the church was "in a fair way to adopt what is
in substance American Judaism." In St. Louis a clergyman, instead of
preaching sermons, began to act out moralistic dramas which he himself
had written, and the Jewish press again hailed it as a sign of the
dissatisfaction of the Christian with his church. Everything done in
every branch of the Christian church has been closely watched, and
wherever a departure occurred from the distinctly Christian position
it was extravagantly applauded; and wherever loyalty to the landmarks
appeared, it was just as extravagantly condemned. Judaism does not
wish the Christian church to remain Christian. This accounts for
destructive Higher Criticism being almost exclusively the work of
Jews, although the world has long known them under the guise of
"German critics."

Jewish intolerance today, yesterday and in every age of history where
Jews were able to exert influence or power, is indisputable except
among people who do not know the record. Jewish intolerance in the
past is a matter of history; for the future it is a matter of Jewish
prophecy. One of the strongest causes militating against the full
Americanization of several millions of Jews in this country is their
belief -- instilled in them by their religious authorities -- that
they are "chosen," that this land is theirs, that the inhabitants are
idolators, that the day is coming when the Jews will be supreme. How
can they otherwise act than in agreement with such declarations? You
can see what is meant if you read Jewish articles describing the
shoving aside of the New England people by the Jews; the supercilious
attitude adopted toward the stock that made America is merely a fore-
shadowing of what would be the complete attitude if power and
influence made it possible. Bolshevism, which began with the
destruction of the class that contained all the promise of a better
Russia, is an exact parallel for the attitude that is adopted in this
country regarding the original stock.

We are not permitted by the Jews to sing "The Battle Hymn of the
Republic" in our schools because one of the stanzas has a Christian
flavor. The Jews claim that the presence of one Jewish child in any
assembly of children ought in "fairness" to prevent the singing of
that historic song.

Norman Hapgood, writing in a Jewish publication, said: "I need hardly
explain that I do not think Jews ought to insist overmuch on their
rights or nationality in a negative sense. They ought to be as much
Jews as they can, but ought to be as little as possible of what is
merely anti-Christian. For the Jews to try to get a song out of the
public schools because it praises Jesus is perhaps natural but hardly
wise." Mr. Hapgood received a lot of abuse for his well-conceived
counsel.

Again we come to the end of our space with the record hardly
scratched. Sufficient has been presented to show the strong, unceasing
anti-Christian activity of the Jews in the United States. Had the
Jewish press been read extensively by non-Jews during the past 15
years, this present series of articles would have been unnecessary --
the people would have known the facts. It is to present some of the
facts that are illustrated in the Jewish press along the line of
religious intolerance that these two articles have been written.

Jewish spokesmen plead for suppression of facts in the name of
"religious tolerance," and they denounce exposure of facts as being
"religious persecution." Read the whole non-Jewish and secular
publications and you will not find one one-hundred-thousandth part of
the animosity against the Jewish religion which is found in the Jewish
press -- continuously found week after week for long years -- against
the Christian religion. The present writer has never seen nor heard of
an article attacking the Jews' religion.

So, once for all, in spiking the cry of "religious persecution," we
show that it exists in quantity and strength among the Jews -- nowhere
else. No one imbued with the American spirit would or could condemn,
hinder, or even remonstrate with any person on account of the faith he
holds.

As to "religious prejudice" or "persecution" entering into the present
series of articles -- there they are, reprinted in booklet form for
permanent examination: where is the prejudice or persecution? Cite the
page!

Jewish spokesmen would use their energy to better advantage, and more
to the honor of the Jewish people, if they would address themselves to
what is in the articles, rather than to what is not in them. The
statements made by THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT have been voluminously
discussed; but they are still awaiting an answer.

[THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT, issue of 11 June 1921]