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in this country, and the demagogue plays the same trick on every one of them. I may add that this is a tendency which in any long political activity I have always consistently opposed as vigorously as I could, whenever I found it among my own compatriots.
Such teachings as to separate interests different from those of the rest of the community are mischievous in the extreme, and in their ulterior consequences especially dangerous to the Jews in their peculiar historic situation. The Jews are accused of being clannish. That charge is not without a show of foundation. And just the charge of Jewish clannishness is one of the principal points brought forward by the advocates and defenders of that most shameful and hideous blemishes of modern civilization—the Anti-Semitic movement. Indeed, those who accuse the Jews of obnoxious clannishness omit to say at the same time that such clannishness has for centuries been forced upon them by the most cruel persecution. But all the more necessary it is for the Jews to abandon that clannishness to the best of their ability, and to identify themselves as completely as possible with the rest of the community as to their notions of interests and rights, where the persecution forcing them into clannishness does not exist, and where in fact the interests and rights of all are the same. I am well aware that Anti-Semitism has never been as virulent in this country as elsewhere; but even here there are currents of its malignant and contemptible spirit which on occasion might acquire mischievous potency.
I say, therefore, to my Jewish citizens as their sincere friend, that they cannot give the people under their care any more wholesome and necessary counsel and admonition than this: that in their political action they should most carefully abstain from doing anything that might look like an attempt to form a Jewish party, or like the consolidation of the Jewish vote on the ground of separate Jewish interests; but that each one of them, instead of blindly following any leader, should conscientiously seek to form for himself an intelligent and independent conviction as to what is best for the common interest of the whole people and the whole country, and then act upon that conviction with courage and fidelity. This will be the surest way for them to make themselves trusty and useful citizens of this republic, to secure the esteem and confidence of all the people surrounding them, and to disarm the mischievous prejudices and contemptible malignities
