THE COMMUNITY
    The community as the conservator of Jewish life - Variations among modern communities - Factors determining the character of a community - Origin of Eastern communities and their character - Differences between Eastern communities - The voluntary character of Western communities - Their heterogeneity - The Western Ghetto - The Western Ghetto, a half-way house
The corporate life of the Jewish people for nearly two thousand years has been founded upon a communal basis. Exiled from the land in which they had developed their national life, and dispersed in the process of ages unto the four corners of the earth, they have succeeded in preserving most of the distinctive traits of a separate people. The survival of these traits through an endless cycle of wanderings and persecutions is one of those strange phenomena that challenge the analytic power of the scientific historian and that are popularly attributed to the favour of Providence. But this riddle of the Jewish persistence can be explained by forces and factors of a human order. Those forces were twofold, internal and external. The internal force was the attachment to a religion whose innumerable prescriptions controlled and coloured the life of every day and necessitated close congregation; the external force was the oppression which compelled the Jews to live in isolation in the various lands of their dispersion. In some countries the isolation was only social, due to the prevalence of religious prejudice and the feudal system; in others it assumed the form of a special Jews' quarter, or Ghetto, bounded by tall gloomy walls and barred by an iron gate. Within the communities in which they thus dwelt, especially in Central Europe, they enjoyed a certain measure of autonomy and consolidated their social organization. They conserved their religious rites and customs, they developed particular institutions, and they kept alive traditional culture, the racial consciousness, and national genius of their people. 

As they have lived throughout their dispersion, so, the most part, they live at the present day - in communities. These communities are, with very few exceptions, of urban character; those of a rural character comprise little more than a quarter of a million Jews altogether. Th exist in every part of the globe, forming an integral fact in the social fabric of different countries, and sometimes, Eastern Europe, occupying the greater part of a town and giving it its dominant character. In these settlement differing in external structure and internal character, the specific life of Jewry manifests itself in countless forms and with varying intensity. Where the Jewish pulse beats most vigorously, there the people lead a life distinct from that of the surrounding nation, not merely in religious observance but in every other sphere of human endeavour and aspiration. They confine their social intercourse for the most part to themselves; they organize their own education, industries, and charities; pursue their own intellectual ideals, and combine occasionally for self-defense in the political arena, though into their midst inevitably penetrate echoes and elements of the national life around them. Even where Jewish life is at its lowest ebb there will be found a synagogue which provides a bond of union among those who still wish to remain within the fold. Where there is no synagogue nor any attempt to provide a substitute there may, indeed, be Jews, but there is no Jewish life: the Jews become so many indistinguishable atoms in the general social mass. 

The most important factor determining the constitution and character of a Jewish community is environment, and next to this is the density of the Jewish population. Either of these factors is sufficient in itself to engender a robust communal spirit; where the two are combined; the ideal conditions are present for a vigorous communal life in its countless ramifications. These ideal conditions are found throughout the lands of the East, in Asia and North Africa, as well as in Eastern Europe, where political despotism and religious fervour or fanaticism provide a favourable soil for separatist settlements. But in the lands of the West, whether in Europe, America, or the British Colonies, where the Jews enjoy civil and political freedom in varying degree and are not excluded by legal barriers from social intercourse with their neighbours, a certain compactness of population alone can give substance and strength to communal life. Thus, in the East the adhesion to separate communities is mostly compulsory, in the West it is entirely voluntary. Even in the countries of Central Europe, where the congregations are under a sort of State supervision, every Jew can please himself whether he joins one or not. 

In the lands of the East the communities owed their establishment to differences of religion, to the sentiment of national separateness, and to the position of political servitude, to which, with occasional intervals of clemency, the Jews were mostly condemned. The forces that brought them into being in the early ages, and which preserved them throughout the medieval tribulations, serve to maintain them intact at the present day. The religious differences have lost little of their acuteness in the process of centuries; the sentiment of national separateness has been deepened by the accumulated memories and traditions of the past; while the political despotism of medieval days continues for the most part to hold uninterrupted sway. The countries in which these conditions prevail in varying degrees contain far more than half of the Jewish people: they comprise Russia, Rumania, Turkey and its dependencies, Morocco, Persia and Afghanistan. In the Ottoman Empire the establishment of constitutional government has removed one of the main forces favourable to segregation, but the effects of centuries of political bondage cannot easily be annulled. In the other countries, however, the Jews still live in a state of outlawry, unrelieved by the revolutions that have taken place in Russia, Morocco, and Persia. In Russia they are mostly confined to the Pale of Settlement, where again they are limited to the towns; in Rumania too they are confined to the towns; and in Morocco, Persia, and Afghanistan they must live in Ghettos. Sundered from the national life both by legal and physical barriers they are thrown back upon themselves and concentrate their energy upon their own communal interests. 

Jewish life in these Eastern countries has all the intensity and distinctiveness of the life of an independent nation. Not only is it distinguished by its own traditions, customs, and institutions, by its home life and social intercourse, but also by language and occasionally even by dress. By reason of their historic migrations and communal isolation, the Jews have developed new languages or dialects of their own which are written in Hebrew characters. The most widely spoken of these idioms is Yiddish or Judeo-German, the development of the language which they took with them from Germany on their eastward migration in the sixteenth century, which they cultivated on Slavic soil with graftings from Hebrew, and which is now spoken not only throughout the Russian Pale of Settlement and adjacent lands, but also in every part of the world in which Russian Jews have settled. In the greater part of the Ottoman Empire, as well as in Bulgaria and Serbia, they speak Ladino or Judeo-Spanish, the development of the language which they carried away on their expulsion from Spain in 1492, and which they cultivated on Turkish soil, likewise with graftings from Hebrew. In Arabic-speaking countries, from Morocco to Mesopotomia, they have developed a peculiar form of Arabic; in Persia, of Persian, and in Bokhara, of Bokharan. The distinction of dress is by no means so marked or so prevalent as that of language. In Morocco the Jews must arrange the folds of their outer garment so as to leave only the left hand free; in Persia they are not allowed to wear the kolah, the national head-dress. In Poland and Galicia they voluntarily wear long gaberdines and round fur hats, whilst those who belong to the sect of Chassidim also wear white socks into which they tuck the bottom of their trousers. 

There are two other features which Eastern communities have in common and which distinguish them from conditions in the West - their homogeneity and their poverty. The population of the Eastern communities is mostly of one kind: it is an indigenous population, whose history dates back many hundreds of years and in some cases, such as Damascus and Cairo, more than two thousand years. It is mainly in Palestine that the Jewish population comprises different elements, originating not only from neighbouring countries but also from Russia and other parts of the world. As for the poverty, that is a natural product of the political despotism and chronic persecutions that hold sway in these Eastern regions. 

Similar in the various features just enumerated, the communities of Eastern Europe differ notably from those of the Orient in some intellectual and physical respects. The former are distinguished by intellectual vitality and physical mobility; the latter by intellectual stagnation and physical inertia. The mental torpor of the East has been gradually stirred by the educational labours conducted in its midst by Western Jewry; and the immobility of its masses has also undergone a change of late, particularly in Morocco, where the ravages of civil war have inflicted terrible sufferings upon the Jews, forcing many of them to seek a home in Algeria, Egypt, and Palestine. But mental and physical inertia are still the general characteristics of Eastern Jewry. On the other hand, Jews in Eastern Europe, particularly in Russia, have manifested a vigorous intellectual activity by their production of a literature, press, and drama of their own; while their mobility is one of the most dominant factors in modern life. For close upon thirty years the current of migration has flowed steadily from Russia and Rumania westward, leaving a deposit in its course. The primal impetus was an outbreak of persecution; but oppression is now such a normal phenomenon that the stream of migration flows unceasingly. The communities of Eastern Europe are not undergoing a depletion of numbers, however, as the loss through emigration is more than compensated by the natural increase.1 The most favoured lands of refuge are England, America, and the British Colonies, in which populous and thriving Jewish centres have arisen. 

The most important feature that distinguishes the communities of the West from those of the East is their voluntary character. There is no legal power that isolates Jewry from its surroundings, although in several countries on the continent of Europe the ecclesiastical administration of the community is to a certain extent still under the supervision of the State. The spontaneous character of Jewish settlements is exemplified most forcibly in those that have sprung up in the latter half of the nineteenth century in England, the United States, and the British Colonies. The forces that have contributed to their foundation were mainly the racial and the religious consciousness, and a supplementary cause was the foreign origin of the founders of the community, which impelled them to form some sort of separate association in the beginning. But foreign origin alone would not have sufficed to preserve a separate community, for prolonged residence and commercial intercourse tend to assimilate its members to the dominant nationality. The vital factors in its preservation were the historic consciousness that differentiated it from the people around it, and the religious consciousness that needed for its manifestation a place of worship and subsidiary institutions. The strength of these factors is shown in the size and solidity of numberless communities in the lands of freedom, made up of a variety of special institutions. Of these the first in point of time and importance is the synagogue, after which come the school and the cemetery, followed by societies for charitable, social, intellectual, professional, and even political purposes, according as the numbers and needs of the community increase and its problems develop. Communal life in the West is thus built up on a voluntary basis, and is independent of the concentrated settlement which is an invariable feature of all Jewries in Eastern countries, although this feature is also found very frequently, particularly in the larger and old-established centres. 

Western communities differ markedly from Eastern in another respect, as they generally comprise two main sections - the native and the foreign, the latter consisting mostly of immigrants from Russia, Rumania, and Galicia, whilst including representatives from many other countries in the East. The native section lived in some sort of concentration in the early history of their community, within a convenient distance of the synagogue and the kosher butcher-shop; but a rise in material prosperity would be followed by removal to a better district, where a new Jewish area might be created, though one less distinguished from its environment by external tokens. The foreign section, however, live in a state of dense concentration. Their poverty makes them settle in a poor quarter of the town, where they reproduce the social conditions in which they have been born and bred, so far as the new environment will allow. They have been accustomed to live as one large family, speaking the same tongue and breathing the same air, and all revolving around the synagogue, which is for them not merely a house of worship and religious instruction, but a centre of charity and of social intercourse; and although they are now free to settle wherever they please, they cannot easily break away from the engrained habits of generations. The Ghetto in the East may be a symbol of political bondage; but in the West the only bondage that it typifies is that exercised by sentiment and tradition. To a large extent the modern Ghetto is necessitated by the precepts and practices of orthodox Judaism, by the need of dwelling within easy reach of the synagogue, the schoolroom, and the ritual bath, the kosher butcher-shop and the kosher dairy. But even for those who are indifferent to religious observances and ritual practices, residence in the Ghetto is necessitated by social and economic circumstances. Ignorance of the language of the new country, of its labour conditions, and of its general habits and ways of thought, as well as the natural timidity of a fugitive from a land of persecution, compels the immigrant Jew to settle in the colony of his co-religionists. Among them he is perfectly at home: he finds the path of employment comparatively smooth, and if his effort to attain it be delayed he is helped in the interval by charity from a dozen hands. 

The modern Ghetto is found in most of the large cities of Western Europe, America, and South Africa, its rise being due to the chronic persecution of the last thirty years in Russia and Rumania. In dimensions it is generally equal to, and occasionally greater than, its Eastern prototype, the Ghetto of New York being the largest in the world. There is more of the colour and intensity of Jewish life in the Ghetto than in the rest of the community. Innumerable blocks of mean houses, covering a wide area, are wholly inhabited by immigrant Jews, who swarm into the streets, talking their strange tongue, and sometimes still clad in the peaked hat and top-boots of their native countries. The streets are lined with shops and restaurants bearing foreign names and Hebrew signs; the walls are covered with multi-coloured posters in Yiddish; the gutters are occupied by rows of stalls and barrows, laden with exotic wares. In the larger centres there are special market-places which present a scene of tremendous bustle on the eve of Sabbaths and festivals, when every Jewish housewife lays in a store of fish and fowl to celebrate the sacred day with fitting honours. Newsboys rush through the motley crowd, crying the names of Yiddish papers; a stringed band at a street corner discourses some haunting Hebrew melody; a poor woman, with a child at her breast, sings a Yiddish song of sadness; a blind man offers for sale the little four-cornered fringed garments prescribed in Deuteronomy; a peripatetic bookseller proffers religious code-books and sensational romances; a labour agitator harangues a knot of workmen; an unctuous missionary quotes the New Testament in Yiddish and seeks to lure his hearers to apostasy; a Zionist orator waxes eloquent over the glories of a rejuvenated Judea. Synagogues great and small, houses of Talmudic study, big religious seminaries that resound with boyish voices chanting the Torah, and little private schools tucked away in fifth-floor back-rooms, religious "courts of judgment" and libraries, baths, hospitals, and dispensaries, clubs, theatres, and dancing-halls, asylums for newly-arrived immigrants, for the poor and the aged-these and countless other institutions make up the compact variegated fabric of the modern Ghetto. 

But the inhabitants of the Western Ghetto are never permanent inmates; they use it at most as a half-way house, as a transitional stage between East and West. The influences from without penetrate slowly and subtly, luring the Jew into the outer world. By dint of industry, sobriety and thrift he improves his worldly position and moves to a more spacious quarter. By that time he will have mastered the vernacular and become pretty familiar with the principal conditions of his adopted fatherland. He possesses a hereditary gift for adaptability, which is stimulated by his native co-religionists, who make "Anglicization" or "Americanization," or whatever else the local term may be, a cardinal principle in their communal policy.2 The actual immigrant from the East who settles in a Western Ghetto may, by reason of age, poverty, or prejudice, remain there and die there. But his children very seldom, perhaps never, do so: their modern education weakens the sentimental attachment to the Ghetto, and they prefer to live farther afield and enjoy a sense of actual equality with their non-Jewish neighbours. This steady migration of the children of the Ghetto into the outer circle of the communal area exercises a conservative influence upon religious conformity and Jewish life in general, which are everywhere exposed to the corroding effects of a Western environment. But simultaneously with the outflow from the Ghetto there is a regular influx from Eastern Europe, which is impelled by the forces of oppression and will continue as long as those forces prevail. Nothing but the grant of complete equality to the Jews of Eastern Europe can check the current of migration and the growth of Western Ghettos. Such an act of justice would have far-reaching results: it would ensure the material advancement of those who have hitherto been downtrodden, but it would also deprive Western Jewry of those successive bands of pietists who contribute so greatly to its conservation. 

1 The annual increase of the Jews in Russia is about 120,000 (2 per cent), while the annual emigration is estimated at 100,000 (Mr. Benjamin Grad in Jewish Chronicle, 10th April 1914). 

2 Cf. "The Problems of Anglicisation," by the Rev. S. Levy, M.A., in Proceedings of the Second Conference of Anglo-Jewish Ministers, London, 1911.

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