Page:Sarolea - Great Russia.djvu/171

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PROBLEM OF RUSSIAN JEW
155

Greek geographer, Strabo, for instance, mentions that there was not a city in the world of Greece and Rome in which there was not to be found a Jewish colony.

No other people surpass them in versatility and vitality. They adapt themselves to every form of civilization, but they refuse themselves to be assimilated. They preserve their rites and customs, and retain their pride of birth as the chosen people. For over two thousand years they have been persecuted, but they emerge from every persecution more powerful than ever, and their power is everywhere resented and everywhere resisted. They are a distracting problem to the philosopher, and their contradictions are bewildering. They are intensely tribal, yet they are cosmopolitan and ubiquitous. They are worshippers of Mammon, yet no people has such a passion for ideals. They are in turn extravagantly rich and miserably poor, insolently proud and abjectly cringing. They are now on the side of the oppressor, now heralds of revolt.


III

Most misstatements and prejudices about the Jew arise from the fundamental misstate-