Federation in Jewish Philanthropy; A Description of the Boston Plan (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 Excerpt: ...create organs and institutions for that consciousness, and it will always be more or less in intimate union with the ancestral seat of its national culture. And if these groups develop themselves lustily and vigorously there will be a fine conflict of nations within America. As a matter of fact, America itself is a nation, and a unique and incomparably grand nation at that. It is a nation which, for the first time in the world's history, has organized itself not on the basis of race or inherited nationality, but on the basis of moral ideas, the fundamental rights of man as such. America is a democracy which deals with the individual and not with national groups. America has not yet developed all its possibilities. But when it shall be full grown and mature, as the great democracy foreseen by its founders, it will prove the most original and greatest nation on the face of the earth, because it will be a humanitarian nation, in which racial divisions will not only not be emphasized but will be altogether minimized. The emphasis of racial divisions in America means a disintegration of American nationhood and a disloyalty to American humanitarian democracy. The Jews in America, until the rise of Jewish secular Nationalism, have held that their group-consciousness is essentially and exclusively religious. They did not deny that they had an historic heritage, a great tradition, which bound them with Jews all over the world. But this tradition is summarized in its quintessence in the cry, which every Jew all over the world understands: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One." If a Jew can no longer repeat this cry, he has ceased in spirit to be a Jew. And conversely, if any man or woman of non-Israelite origin accepts the Jewish faith and joi...