ow Zangwill's stories of the Ghetto and your heart is wrung by the
injustice, cruelty and inhumanity visited upon the Jews by the people
who worship a Jew as God and make daily supplications to a Jewess.

But read between the lines and you will see that Israel Zangwill, child
of the Ghetto, knows that the Peculiar People are peculiar through
persecution, and not necessarily so through innate nature. Zangwill
knows that no religion is pure except in its stage of persecution, and
that Judaism, grown rich and powerful, would oppress and has oppressed.
Martyr and persecutor shift places easily.

The Jew arrives in a city at night, and in the morning takes down the
shutters and is doing business. The Jew winds his way into the life of
every city and becomes at once an integral part of it--a part, yet
separate and distinct, for his social and religious life is not colored
by his environment.

Children imitate unconsciously. The golden rule is not natural to
children: it has to be taught them. They do unto others as others have
done unto them, and have no question as to right or wrong. We are all
children, and have to think hard before we are conscious of any feeling
of the brotherhood of man. As soon as the Jews relaxed in Amsterdam--got
their breath, and felt secure--they did unto others as they had been
done by--they persecuted.

A Jew must be a Jew, and as they had been watched with suspicion in
Spain and Portugal by the Christians, so now they watched each other for
heresies. They compelled strictest obedience to every form and ceremony.
To the Jew the Law forms the firmament above and the earth beneath. All
is law to him, and his part and work in this life is obedience to law.

The Jewish religion is a concrete, unbroken mass of laws. The Jew is
bounded on the east by law; on the north by law; on the west by law; on
the south by law. There are set rules and laws that govern his getting
up, his going to bed, his eating, drinking, sleeping, and praying. There
is no phase of human relationship that is not covered by the Mishna and
Gemara. Being learned in the Law means being learned in the proper way
to kill chickens, to dress ducks, wear your vestments, go to prayers,
and what to say when you meet two Christians in an alley. If a Jew
quarrels with a neighbor and goes to his Rabbi for advice, the learned
man gets down his Talmud and finds the page. The relation of wife and
husband, child and parent, brother and sister,