more than most nations one of the elements of nationality—namely, the race element; this may be proved, of course, by the common sense test of their distinguishability. You can more easily see that a Jew is a Jew than that an Englishman is English.”
Moses Hess is also quite clear on this point. He writes of the impossibility of Jews denying “their racial descent,” and says: “Jewish noses cannot be reformed, and the black, wavy hair of the Jews will not turn through conversion into blond, nor can its curves be straightened out by constant combing. The Jewish race is one of the primary races of mankind that has retained its integrity, in spite of the continual change of its climatic environment, and the Jewish type has conserved its purity through the centuries.”
Jessie E. Sampter, in the “Guide to Zionism,” recounting the history of the work done for Zionism in the United States, says: “And this burden was nobly borne, due partly to the commanding leadership of such men as Justice Louis D. Brandeis, Judge Julian W. Mack, and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, partly to the devoted and huge labors of the old-time faithful Zionists on the Committee, such as Jacob de Haas, Louis Lipsky, and Henrietta Szold, and partly to the aroused race consciousness of the mass of American Jews.”
Four times in the brief preface to the fifth edition of “Coningsby,” Disraeli uses the term “race” in referring to the Jews, and Disraeli was proud of being racially a Jew, though religiously he was a Christian.
In The Jewish Encyclopedia, “the Jewish race” is spoken of. In the preface, which is signed by Dr. Cyrus Adler as chief editor, these words occur: “An even more delicate problem that presented itself at the very outset was the attitude to be observed by the Encyclopedia in regard to those Jews who, while born within the Jewish community, have, for one reason or another, abandoned it. As the present work deals with the Jews as a race, it was found impossible to exclude those who were of that race, whatever their religious affiliations might have been.”
But as we are not interested in ethnology, the inquiry need not be contained further along this line. The point toward which all this trends is that the Jew is conscious of himself as being more than the member
