B'nai B'rith Leader Discusses the Jews

by Henry Ford

(Reprinted from the 14 May 1921 Issue of the house journal of the Ford Motor Co., the Dearborn Independent and slightly edited by Raymond Bray to eliminate the numerous uses of "which" for "that" in the original.)

To the pro-Jewish spokesmen who have filled the air with cries of "lies" and "slander" to those self-appointed guardians of "American ideals" who rule out with rare finality all those who would dare suggest that possibly there is a hidden side of the Jewish Question, it must come as something of a jolt to be reminded that in this series there is scarcely a line that is without high Jewish authority.

The Protocols themselves are written for centuries in Jewish authoritative teachings and records. All the plans that have been described from time to time in these articles are written in the fundamental laws of the Jews. And all that the ancients have taught, the modern Jews have reaffirmed.

The writer of these articles has had to take constant counsel of prudence in his selection of material, for the Jews have always counted confidently on the fact that if the whole truth were told in one comprehensive utterance, no one would believe it. Thus, bigots and minds bursting with the discoveries they have made, have never been feared by the Jews. They counted on the incapacity of the non-Jews to believe or receive certain knowledge. They know that facts are not accepted on proof but only on understanding. Non-Jews cannot understand why human beings should lend themselves to certain courses. They are, however, beginning to understand, and the proof is therefore becoming more significant.

There are yet more important revelations to be made, always following closely the best Jewish sources, and when these revelations are made, it will be impossible for the Jewish leaders to keep silent or to deny. The time is coming for American Jewry to slough off the leadership that has led it and left in the bog. Leadership knows that. Indeed it is amazing to discover the number of indications that the attempts made to suppress THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT have been made principally to prevent the Jews from reading it. The leaders do not care how many non-Jews read these articles; but they do not desire their own people to read them. The Jewish leaders do not their people's eyes to be opened.

Why ? Because just now, only Jews can truly know whether the statements made in these articles are true or not. Non-Jews may know here and there, as their observations may confirm the printed statements. But informed Jews really know. And large numbers of the messes of Jews really know. When they see the truth in all its relationships in these articles, the hitherto "led" Jew may not be so tractable. Hence the effort to keep the non-Jewish point of view away from him.

In support of the statements that these articles have been based on Jewish authority, we quote today a series of declarations by one of the most able of the presidents of the B'nai B'rith, Leo N. Levi. Mr. Levi was American-born and died in 1904. He was a lawyer of distinction and attained the presidency of the international Jewish order, B'nai B'rith, in 1900. He took part in the international politics of his people and is credited with collaborating with Secretary of State John Hay on several important matters. The utterances here quoted were for the most made while he was president of B'nai B'rith, but all of them were published the year after his death under B'nai B'rith auspices. There is therefore no question of their Jewishness.

Non-Jewish defenders of the Jewish program have pretended to much indignation because of references that have been made to the Oriental character of certain Jewish manifestations. The references in these articles have been two in number, once regarding Oriental sensuality as it has been introduced to the American state by Jewish theatrical panderers, and again in quoting Disraeli, the Jew who became premier of Britain, to the effect that the Jews - his people - were "Mosaic Arabs."

But it never seemed to have occurred to Leo N. Levi to deny the Oriental character of his race. Instead, he asserted it. On page 104 of the B'nai B'rith memorial, he excuses certain social crudities of the Jew on the ground "that hailing originally from the Orient and having been compelled for twenty centuries to live in a society of his own, he has preserved in his tastes much that is characteristically Oriental." Again on page 116, he excused the multiplicity of religious rites as being due to the fact that the Jew "drew upon his Oriental imagination for a symbolism that appealed to his ideal emotions." On page 312, he speaks of the Jews' "Oriental devotion to their parents." This easy recognition of the fact is commended to those bootlicking editors who, out of the vastness of their ignorance of the Jewish Question, have seen in the reference of Orientalism an "insult" to the Jews and an unfailing indication of anti-Semitism.

The Jewish Question! Ah, that is another point that pro-Jewish spokesmen hasten to deny, but they will be somewhat disturbed by the candor with which true Jewish spokesmen admit the Question.

In a strong passage on page 101, Mr. Levi says:

"If I have dwelt so long upon this subject, it is because I recognize that if the Jew has been denied so much that is rightfully his, he often claims more than is his due. One of the claims, most persistently urged, is that there is no Jewish Question; that a Jew is a citizen like any other citizen and that as long as he abides by the law and does not subject himself to criminal prosecution or civil action, his doings are beyond legitimate inquiry by the public at large.

"This contention on his part would certainly be well based if he claimed nothing further than the right to live in peace, but when he demands social recognition the whole range of his conduct is a legitimate subject of inquiry against which no technical demurrers can be interposed . . . nor must the Jew be over-sensitive about the inquiry.

"The inconsistencies and the unwisdom exhibited in the consideration of the Jewish Question are not to be found altogether on the side of those who are hostile to the Jews."

"Since then the refugees from Russia, Galicia and Rumania have raised the Jewish Question to commanding importance. Since then it has dawned on the world that we are witnessing another exodus that promises soon to change the habitat of the Jews to the Western Hemisphere." (Page 59).

"The Jewish Question cannot be solved by tolerance. There are thousands of well-meaning people who take to themselves great credit for exhibiting a spirit of tolerance toward the Jews." (Page 98)

Mr. Levi also lays down rules for "the study of the Jewish Question," and he says that if they were followed the result "would be startling at once to the Jews and the general public." (Page 93) How far present Jewish leadership has departed from that frank and broad view taken by Mr. Levi, is everywhere evident.

Not that Mr. Levi was a critic of his people, but he was a lawyer who was accustomed to weighing facts, and he saw facts that weighed against his people. But he was pro-Jewish even in his most severe observations. He could make an attack on the rabbis, taunting them with the saying that "many of you are 'rabbis for revenue only,'" but he could also insist on Jewish solidarity and exclusiveness.

In this connection it may be interesting to see how strongly Mr. Levi supports the contention of Jewish leaders (as outlined in THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT of October 9 and 16, 1920) that the Jews are a race and not merely a religion, a nation and not merely a church, and that the term "Jew" is biological rather than theological. This is specially commended to the attention of those dim-minded shouters of "religious prejudice" who come into action whenever the Jewish Question is mentioned. (Of "religious prejudice" there are many examples to give in future articles.)

"certain it is that thus far the race and the religion have been so fused as it were that none can say just where the one begins and the other leaves off." (Page 116)

Attacking the contention of the "liberals" or "reformed Jews" to the effect that "Jew" is the name of a member of religious denomination, and not of a member of a certain race, Mr. Levi says:

"Nothing to my mind is more pregnant with error than this postulate of unreason. (Page 185) It is not true that the Jews are only Jews because of their religion." (Page 189)

"The Jews are not simply an indiscriminate lot of people who hold a common belief." (Page 190)

"A native Eskimo, and American Indian might conscientiously adopt every tenet of the Jewish church, might practice every form and ceremony imposed by the Jewish laws and the Jewish ritual, and as far as religion is concerned, be a Jew, but yet, no one who will reflect for a moment would class the with the Jews as a people. If the truth were known, a very large percentage of so-called Christians would be found to be believers in the essentials of the Jewish religion, and yet, they are not Jews.

"It requires not only that men should believe in Judaism, but that they should be the descendants in a direct line of that people who enjoyed a temporal government and who owned a country up to the time of the destruction of the second commonwealth.

That great event took away from the Jews their country and their temporal government; it scattered them over the face of the earth, but it did not destroy the national and race idea that was a part of their nature and of their religion."

"Who shall say, then, that the Jews are no longer a race? . . . . Blood is the basis and sub-stratum of the race idea, and no people on the face of the globe can lay claim with so much right to purity of blood, and unity of blood, as the Jews."

"If I have reasoned to any purpose, the inquiry of rights in the premises is not to be limited to Jews as exponents of a particular creed, but to the Jews as a race." (Pages 19--191)

"The religion alone does not constitute the people. As I have already maintained, a believer in the Jewish faith does not by reason of that fact become a Jew. On the other hand, however, a Jew by birth remains a Jew, even though he abjures his religion." (Page 200)

This is the view of such men as Justice Brandeis, the Jew who sits on the Supreme Court of the United States. Justice Brandeis says, "Let us all recognize that we Jews are a distinct nationality of which every Jew, whatever his country, his station, his shade of belief, is necessarily a member."

Believing all this, Mr. Levi subscribes to the Jewish law and practice of exclusiveness.

Describing the state of the Jews, Mr. Levi says (page 92): "The Jews have not materially increased or diminished in numbers for 2,000 years. They have made no proselytes to their religion . . . . They have imbibed the arts, the literature and the civilization of successive generations, but have abstained very generally from intermixture of blood . . . . They have infused their blood into that of other peoples but have taken little of other peoples into their own."

As to intermarriage between the Jew and non-Jew, Mr. Levi calls it misegenation. "In remote countries, sparsely populated, the choice may lie between such marriages and a worse relation." Those are his words on page 249. He does not advise the worse relation, but he has said quite enough to indicate the Jewish view of the case. He continues:

"It seems clear to me that Jews should avoid marriages with Gentiles and Gentiles with Jews, upon the same principle that we avoid marrying the insane, the consumptive, the scrofulitic or the Negro." (Page 249)

This exclusiveness goes down through all human relations. The Jew has one counsel for non-Jews and another for himself in these matters. Of the non-Jew he demands as a right what he looks down upon as shady privilege. He uses the Ghetto as a club with which to bludgeon the non-Jew for his "bigotry," when as a fact he chooses the Ghetto for well-defined racial reasons. He condemns the non-Jew for the exclusion of the Jew from certain sections of society, when as a Jew his whole care is to keep himself unspotted from that very society to which he seeks entrance. The Jew insists on breaking down non-Jewish exclusiveness while keeping his own. The non-Jewish world is to be public and common, the Jewish world is to be kept sacrosanct. Read the teachings of this enlightened leader of Jewry as published by the B'nai B'rith.

He favors the public school for non-Jewish children, not for Jewish children; they are to be kept separate; they are the choice stock of the earth:

"Because the government tenders free education, it does not follow that it must be accepted; if education be made compulsory, it does not follow that government schools must be attended . . . . As a citizen I favor free schools, because the education they afford, imperfect as it is, is better than none, and society is benefited thereby; but as an individual I prefer to pay to support free schools and send my children to more select places." (Page 253) He speaks of the fact that "all classes of children frequent the public schools" as an argument against Jewish children going there.

"In my judgement, Jewish children should be educated in Jewish schools." (Page 254) "Not only is it a positive and direct advantage to educate our children as Jews, but it is absolutely necessary to our preservation. Experience has shown that our young people will be weaned from our people if allowed indiscriminately to associate with the Gentiles." (Page 255)

Discussing the possibility of Jews losing their crudeness, Mr. Levi asks, "How shall we best accomplish that end?" Then he quotes the frequent answer: "Since the exemplars of gentility most abound among the Gentiles, we should associate with them as much as possible, in order to wear our own rudeness away." He meets the suggestion this way:

"If gentlemen were willing to meet all Jews on a parity because they are Jews, we should doubtless derive much benefit from such association. But, while it is true that no gentleman refuses association with another because that other is a Jew, he will not, as a rule, associate with a Jew unless he be a gentleman. As we are far from being all gentlemen, we cannot reasonably expect to be admitted as a class into good society. So, better keep by ourselves," concludes Mr. Levi. (Page 260)

That is, Mr. Levi admits the willingness of society to meet Jews on equal terms, as with all others, but not on unequal terms. And this being so, Mr. Levi holds they had better meet as little as possible, they had better keep apart; in the formative years, certainly, Jewish young people should be kept rigidly apart from non-Jews. The exclusiveness of which the Jews complain is their own. The Ghetto is not a corner into which the non-Jews have herded the Semites; the Ghetto is a spot carved out of the community and consecrated to the Chosen People and is therefore the best section of the city in Jewish eyes, the rest being "the Christian quarter," the area of the heathen. Mr. Levi himself admits on page 220 that there is no prejudice against the Jew in this country.

Certain wild-eyed objectors to the series of studies on the Jewish Question have made the assertion that THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT has declared cowardice to be a Jewish trait. That the statement is false as regards this paper does not change the fact that the subject has been generally discussed in and out of army circles. If it ever becomes necessary to discuss it in these studies, the facts will be set forth as far as they are obtainable. But the point just now is that Mr. Levi has had somewhat to say that may repay reading:

"Physical courage has always been an incident, not an element, of Jewish character. It has no independent existence in their make-up, and always depended on something else. With some exceptions this may be said of all Oriental people. The sense and fear of danger is highly developed in them, and there is no cultivation of the indifference to it that has distinguished the great nations of Western Europe.: (Page 205)

Were a non-Jew to call attention to this difference between Jews and others, he would be met with the cry of "anti-Semitism" and he would be twitted with the fact that all his relatives may not have served in the war. Loudest to twit him would be those who served in what our soldiers called "the Jewish infantry," the quartermaster's corps in the late National Army.

It is to this aversion to danger, however, that Mr. Levi attributes the Jews' greatness among the nations. Other nations can fight, the Jews can endure, and that, he says, is greater. Note his words (the italics are his own):

"Other nations may boast conquests and triumphs born of aggression, but though the fruits of victory have been manifold, they have not been enduring; and it may be truly said that the nation whose greatness grows out of valor passes through the stages of discord and degeneracy to decay . . . . In the virtue of endurance I believe the Jews have a safeguard against the decay that has marked the history of all other peoples."

It appears, therefore, that the draft-dodger, if he can endure long enough, may get come to own the country.

Jewish leaders have lately tried to minimize as "wild words" the disclosures made by Disraeli with reference to the Jews' participation in European revolutions. What Disraeli said can be found in his "Conningsby," or in the quotations made therefrom in THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT of December 18, 1920. With reference to the German Revolution of 1848, Disraeli wrote - before it had taken place:

"You never observe a great intellectual movement in Europe in which the Jews do not greatly participate . . . That mysterious Russian Diplomacy which so alarms Western Europe is organized and principally carried on by Jews. That mighty revolution which is at this moment preparing in Germany, and which will be, in fact, a second and greater Reformation, and of which so little is yet known in England, is entirely developing under the auspices of Jews."

It is interesting, therefore, to hear Mr. Levi confirming from the American side those significant statements made by Disraeli.

"The revolution of 1848 in Germany, however, influenced a great many highly educated Jews to come to America." (Page 181) "It is unnecessary to review the events of 1848; suffice it to say, that not a few among the revolutionists were Jews, and that a considerable number of those who were proscribed by the government at home, fled to the United States for safety." (Page 182) These German Jews are now the arch-financiers of the United States. They found here complete liberty to exploit peoples and nations to the full extent of their powers. They still maintain their connections with Frankfort-on-the-Main, the world capital of International financial Jewry.

With these quotations from the speeches and writings of Leo N. Levi, a famous president of the B'nai B'rith, it would seem to be a fair question as to the reason for the denial and denunciation that have followed the making of these statements in the course of this series of studies. Leo N. Levi studied the Jewish Question because he knew a Jewish Question to exist. He knew that the Jewish Question was not a non-Jewish creation but appeared wherever Jews began to appear in numbers. They brought it with them. He knew the justice of many of the charges laid against the Jews. He knew the impossibility of disproving them, the futility of shrieking "anti-Semitism" at them. He knew, moreover, that for the Jews to solve the Jewish Question by departing from the peculiar racial traditions of racial superiority would be to cease to be Jews. Therefore, he threw his whole influence on the side of the Jews remaining separate, maintaining their tradition of The Chosen Race, looking upon themselves as the coming rulers of the nations, and there he left the Question just about where he found it.

But in the course of his studies he gave other investigators the benefit of his frank statements. He did not put lies into the mouths of his people. He was not endeavoring to maintain himself in position by prejudiced racial appeals. He looked certain facts in the face, made his report, and chose his side. Several timers in the course of his argument, his very logic led him up to the point where, logically, he would have to cast aside his Jewish idea of separateness. But with great calmness he discarded the logic and clung to the Jewish tradition. For example:

The better to facilitate such happiness in every country and every age, various kinds of organizations have existed as they exist today. The Jews have theirs.

"For many reasons they are exclusive. In theory they should not be so. In our social organizations we should, in deference to the argument which I have already named, admit any congenial and worthy Gentile who honors us with his application. But what may be theoretically correct may be found practically wrong. It certainly is a wrong to exclude a worthy person because he does not happen to be a Jew; but on the other hand, where are you to draw the line."

This is frankness to a fault. Of course, it is wrong, but the right is impractical! Logic goes by the boards in the face of something stronger. Mr. Levi is not to be blamed for having gone to his tribe. Every man's place is with his tribe. The criticism belongs to the lick-spittle Gentile Fronts who have no tribe and become hangers-0n around the outskirts of Judah, racial mongrels who would be better off if they had one-thousandth of the racial sense that the Jew possesses.

This brief survey of the philosophy that Mr. Levi both lived and taught, and which is shared by the leaders of American Jewry, is in strict agreement with Jewish principles all down the centuries. In his published addresses Mr. Levi does not touch upon all the implications of the separateness that he enjoins upon his nation. Why do they keep by themselves? What is it that keeps them distinct? Is it their religion? Very well; let us regard them as a sect of religious recluses and with them well in their endeavors to keep themselves unspotted of the world. Is it their race? So their leaders teach. Race and nationality are strictly claimed. What is it? Palestine? Not that any one can notice. A great deal may be read about it in the newspapers, the newspapers in turn being supplied through the Associated Press with the Jewish Telegraph Agency's propaganda dispatches; but no one in Palestine notices the Land becoming more Jewish. Jewry's political outlook is world rule in the material sense. Jewry is an international nation. It is this, and nothing else, which gives significance to its financial, educational, propagandist, revolutionary and immigration programs.