Page:You Gentiles (1924) by Maurice Samuel 1895-1972.djvu/142

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You Gentiles

We are disliked on "scientific" grounds, as we were disliked on "religious." But both the "scientific" and the "religious" reasons were rationalizations. The true reasons underlay these analyses.

Nor can the revulsion of the war, with its release of primitive instincts, be blamed for this. German anti-Semitism antedates the war. The Higher Anti-Semitism has nothing to do with either conscious religion or localizations, like patriotism. It is true modern anti-Semitism. It is the old dislike of the Jew transvaluated into modern terminology, and it has been evoked by the appearance of that new phenomenon, the Westernized Jew.

For many Jews were fooled by appearances. They took the word of the gentile literally. The gentile said: "We dislike you because you are different from us in religion and in usages; you are separate; you are old-fashioned." And the Jew, believing these charges to mean what they say, abandoned his customs and his usages: took to baptism;

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