One day when I made a perilous ascent to Keidansky's garret, barely escaping harm through boxes and barrels and darkness and things in the way, I found him hard at work on an article—this time in the English language—on "What Constitutes the Jew?" A kind and interested editor to whom I had the honor of introducing him, asked my discovery to write on the subject, and pleased with the suggestion he took it up. He motioned to an up-turned coal scuttle for a seat as I entered, and bade me take a Jewish paper and be quiet. While I waited he finished his essay. "I haven't any time to talk to you," he said, looking disconsolate and running his long fingers through his curly black hair: "I want to read you this thing I've just scribbled. There he goes again—" he broke off in despair, as the old man in the next attic began to chant the Psalms. "But I shall read louder than he does," said Keidansky, "I pay rent here—sometimes—and King David, the fruit vendor, in there, sha'n't put me down." I listened, and he read as follows:

"And after we have read about him in the comic weeklies, have seen him delineated in popular works of fiction, have observed him caricatured in various publications, have beheld him portrayed on the vaudeville stage and have heard from the slum student of the Ghetto; after we have visited a few money lenders—on important business—have heard our minister talk patronizingly of him, telling pityingly of how he hath a great past and possessed more than a few commendable qualities, and of how he was, alas! doomed to damnation because he would not accept the religion that he hath given to the world; after we have bought clothing in one of his stores, taken a personal peep at the Ghetto, met a reformed rabbi, conversed with a distant descendant of his people, read the polite charges of his friend, the anti-Semite, and gone down and made beautiful speeches before him prior to the election; I say even after we have done these things, or some of these things have happened to us, we must still ask the question: What constitutes the Jew?

"For, of a verity, he is so complex in his character, so heterogeneous in his general composition, so diverse in his activities, so many sided in his worldly and heavenly pursuits, so widely varying in his appearance, so wonderfully ubiquitous, and withal such a living contradiction, that even after we have made the above painful efforts to understand him, we are still at a loss to know—what we know about him.

"He represents one of the ancient races and yet is as up to date as any; he reaches deepest into the past and looks furthest into the future; he is the narrowest conservative and the most advanced radical; in religion he is the most dogmatic, sectarian, stationary, orthodox, and also the most liberal and universal reformer; he is a member of the feeblest and strongest people on earth; he has no land of his own and he owns many lands; his wealth is the talk and the envy of the world, and none is so poor as he; his riches have ever been magnified and exaggerated, his dire poverty ever overlooked. 'As poor as a Jew' would be a truer simile than the one now in use. He is the infamous Shylock, the money-lender, yet he borrows as much and more money than he lends to others, only he pays his debts and so there is no talk about it; Christians and others who borrow from him go to court, denounce him, call him Shylock, and give him several pounds of 'tongue,' though he asks not for flesh, because it is not 'kosher,' and because whatever he is he is never cruel. Come to think of it, what a fine thing the Shylock story has ever been for those who did not want to pay their debts!

"He loans money to kings, and the kings oppress the Jews; he is the great concentrator of wealth, and he is the Socialist and Anarchist working ardently for the abolition of the private ownership of wealth; he is eminently practical, and is ever among the world-forgetting dreamers, 'the great host of impracticables'; he has no fine arts of his own, and he carries off the highest prizes for his glorious contribution to the arts of the nations. Now he is exclusively confined to his own Hebrew, religious lore, believing that beyond it there are no heights to scale, no depths to fathom, and then he becomes a Georg Brandes, a great interpreter of the literatures of the world; his own literature is so Puritanical, so religious and chaste that there is hardly a single love song to be found therein, and then comes a Heinrich Heine. He is the slave of traditions and the first to break them; persecute him and he will die for the religion of his fathers; give him freedom and he will pity them for their crude conceptions and applaud Ingersoll; he is intensely religious and the rankest infidel; he condemns the theatre as being immoral, and he is the first to hail Ibsen and applaud him, even on the Yiddish stage; there is no one so clannish and so cosmopolitan as he is, and these contrasts can be multiplied to the abuse of time and space.

"If, then, he is everything and to be found anywhere, to be seen in all sorts of circumstances, in all walks of life and walking in so many diverse ways, making his way in such strongly contrasting conditions, how shall we know him? How shall we know what constitutes the Jew? He does not always abide in the Ghetto, and, things are coming to such a pass, that he rarely has the old Ghetto appearance. I suppose if our dear Mr. Zangwill had his own way he would fill the world with Ghettos. He could use them in his business. But perhaps the time is drawing nigh when we must have the books of Mr. Zangwill and other works of such excellence to preserve the most picturesque life of a unique people and save it from oblivion. The Ghetto walls are falling, falling.

"Old-fashioned folk, like other things, go out of fashion. The old-style long garb, the 'capota,' will take itself away after the toga, and such is the awful power of civilization that even the time-honored skull-caps of the men and the wigs of the women are vanishing before it. Time, with its scythe, cuts down even the curling sidelocks and the long beards dear to tradition. Up-to-date fashion is a democratic tyrant, an expansionist invading and permeating all places and peoples. So we cannot count on these externals. Physiognomy is another thing by which to be misguided. Other outer details may help us as much as medicine can help the dead—or the living, for that matter. Then there are names. What's in a name? An opportunity for misunderstanding. One cannot even know himself by his name. All these artificial designations do not designate.

"What, then, are the telling traits, the conspicuous characteristics by which the typical, representative Jew may be known? Now I am blissfully ignorant of anthropology, and could not analyze scientifically, even at the risk of being destroyed critically. But through a certain accident—an accident of birth—I may be enabled to make a few suggestions, which I will offer with all due and undue apologies, of course.

"First and foremost I should mention his wonderful versatility; he is the most versatile actor in this play called life. He has acquired this versatility throughout his wanderings, sufferings, trials and tribulations, and, together with his prodigious adaptability, it constitutes the secret of his survival. Originally a being of the highest talent with the radiant glow of the Orient upon his brow, he had walked through the histories of many nations, and being persecuted by all peoples who recognized his talent, he received a most liberal education in the school of sorrow. Thus his abilities were cultivated and he learned to adapt himself easily to all circumstances and to create his own little world wherever he pitched his tent.

"Mentally alert, keen of comprehension, quick to grasp any situation, almost too shrewd to be wise, practical to the detriment of his high ideals, calm, careful, cautious, calculating, hopeful in the face of despair, optimistic to a discouraging degree, often too regular and respectable to become great; intensely individualistic, proud of his past, anxious about the future, ever devoted to his cause, self-appreciatory, at times too sure of his capabilities, confident in the ultimate decency of things, deeply in love with life—these are among the qualities that may be attributed to the Jew.

"His isolated, peculiar and purely religious life, 'the spiritual Palestine' which he has carried along with him in his wanderings through the darkness and cold of the Ghettos, has under all circumstances and in all hazards preserved those fine domestic and social qualities for which he is noted. What can now be said about his domesticity, his love of home and care of family; his sobriety, thrift, peacefulness and good deportment, the readiness with which he cares for his poor, his public spirit in the interests of his community—wherever that may be—his unequalled kindness; what can now be said about these things would be mere repetition; but these are nevertheless some of the undisputed qualities which constitute the Jew. Believing himself chosen of God, he has strong faith in the part he plays, the work he does, and the mission he is to perform with his being. And like others who have much faith in themselves, he has abundance of conceit. But let us not call it that. 'Sublime egotism' sounds so much better, and besides, the line of demarcation between the two is so fine that it does not exist. The Jew is strongly individualistic in his social tendencies, and for that reason often so progressive. He dares to deviate from the trodden path. He is not always in harmony with the rest of his community in which there is from time to time much discord—discord that sometimes amounts to war. Thus the persecution of the Jews often begins at home. His receptive mental attitude often brings him into the ranks of the most radical, despite his traditions, which would hold him back.

"He has talent to waste, and much of it is really wasted because he lacks opportunity for cultivation and frequently has not the required concentration and application. Perhaps it is better so; for if all Jewish talent was brought out in the various forms of greatness, what would—what would the anti-Semites not say? They would say that the Jews have stolen their talents. For anti-Semitism is the cry of despair of defeated mediocrity, or it is the plaint of the blinded Christian maddened by jealousy because he has been beaten by the wandering Jew in his own game of trade, commerce, politics, or art. But the Jew is kind, his kindness is unsurpassed, and the Hebrew line in which his people are called 'merciful sons of the merciful' is literally true. He pities the anti-Semite as he pities all who suffer and who are in want of the good things and the good qualities of life.

"The Jew is a great possibility. Sensitive of and susceptible to all things, to the very color of the atmosphere around him, with a soul sharpened by sorrow and a mind of keenest understanding, he can become anything and everything, assimilate himself with any and all conditions, and illustrate life with a new meaning or adorn it with a worthy work. He is like unto an Æolian harp on which various breezes play various tunes.

"His beautiful, consecrated, peaceful, religious, home life, the life wherein the home is a synagogue and the synagogue is a home, this on the one hand and the strange world with its hard realities, with its stumbling-blocks and stunning blockheads, on the other, have created in the Jew a striking two-sidedness, a kind of duality and, if I may so call it, a sort of conciliation between the ideal and the real. This forms another trait by which you may tell him. Thus he is very practical, and still dreams, hopes for the restoration of Palestine, and loves his home and his country wherever he abides. He is an ardent Zionist and a good citizen at the same time.

"Murder, or any other kind of talent, will out. Say rather that talent will out even if it must come in the shape of murder, so to speak. People capable of the highest good and noblest greatness are often cast down into the abyss of degradation by their loving neighbors, or other circumstances. People must live, you know, and therefore they often live a living death. Not permitted to live rightly and happily, they still must live somehow. The instinct of self-preservation preserves much evil, but life is life. Those who have talent and are not permitted to use it for the good of all, use it for their own temporal good, regardless of the consequences. The thought that I wish to leave here as we part with the Jew is: That they who walk in darkness find the ways that are dark. Over-praise is damning, and I want to be careful. The Jew has on the whole been far, far better than he has been permitted to be—and this, too, is one of the charges against him. He is a graduate of the school of sorrow, with the highest honors.

"What is that story about the man who in his long quest after the ideal, at last found her in the woman who has suffered?

"Well, here is the Jew, a being who has suffered."