The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 | Page 8

birthright
of inheritance of the traditions of the earliest and virilest of the cultured
peoples of earth is impoverishing his very being. The Jew who is a
"little Jew" is less of a man.
The Menorah lights the path for the fellowship of young Israel, finely
self-reverencing. Long be that rekindled light undimmed!
[Illustration: Signature: Stephen S. Wise]

A Call to the Educated Jew
BY LOUIS D. BRANDEIS

[Illustration: Louis D. Brandeis (born in Louisville, Ky., in 1856),
lawyer and publicist, is a distinguished leader in the voluntary
profession of "public servant." His extraordinary record of unselfish,
genuine achievement in behalf of the public interest--for shorter hours
of labor, savings bank insurance, protection against monopoly, against
increase in railroad rates, etc.,--gives peculiar aptness to the appeal
for community service made in this article, which Mr. Brandeis has
prepared from a recent Menorah address. From the beginning Mr.
Brandeis has taken a keen interest in the Menorah movement as a
promotive force for the ideals he has at heart.]
WHILE I was in Cleveland a few weeks ago, a young man who has
won distinction on the bench told me this incident from his early life.
He was born in a little village of Western Russia where the
opportunities for schooling were meagre. When he was thirteen his
parents sent him to the nearest city in search of an education. There--in
Bialystok--were good secondary schools and good high schools; but the
Russian law, which limits the percentage of Jewish pupils in any school,
barred his admission. The boy's parents lacked the means to pay for
private tuition. He had neither relative nor friend in the city. But soon
three men were found who volunteered to give him instruction. None of
them was a teacher by profession. One was a newspaper man; another
was a chemist; the third, I believe, was a tradesman; all were educated
men. And throughout five long years these three men took from their
leisure the time necessary to give a stranger an education.
The three men of Bialystok realized that education was not a thing of
one's own to do with as one pleases--not a personal privilege to be
merely enjoyed by the possessor--but a precious treasure transmitted
upon a sacred trust to be held, used and enjoyed, and if possible
strengthened--then passed on to others upon the same trust. Yet the
treasure which these three men held and the boy received in trust was
much more than an education. It included that combination of qualities
which enabled and impelled these three men to give and the boy to seek
and to acquire an education. These qualities embrace: first, intellectual
capacity; second, an appreciation of the value of education; third,
indomitable will; fourth, capacity for hard work. It was these qualities

which enabled the lad not only to acquire but to so utilize an education
that, coming to America, ignorant of our language and of our
institutions, he attained in comparatively few years the important office
he has so honorably filled.
Now whence comes this combination of qualities of mind, body and
character? These are qualities with which every one is familiar, singly
and in combination; which you find in friends and relatives, and which
others doubtless discover in you. They are qualities possessed by most
Jews who have attained distinction or other success; and in
combination they may properly be called Jewish qualities. For they
have not come to us by accident; they were developed by three
thousand years of civilization, and nearly two thousand years of
persecution; developed through our religion and spiritual life; through
our traditions; and through the social and political conditions under
which our ancestors lived. They are, in short, the product of Jewish life.
The Fruit of Three Thousand Years of Civilization
OUR intellectual capacity was developed by the almost continuous
training of the mind throughout twenty-five centuries. The Torah led
the "People of the Book" to intellectual pursuits at times when most of
the Aryan peoples were illiterate. And religion imposed the use of the
mind upon the Jews, indirectly as well as directly, and demanded of the
Jew not merely the love, but the understanding of God. This necessarily
involved a study of the Laws. And the conditions under which the Jews
were compelled to live during the last two thousand years also
promoted study in a people among whom there was already
considerable intellectual attainment. Throughout the centuries of
persecution practically the only life open to the Jew which could give
satisfaction was the intellectual and spiritual life. Other fields of
activity and of distinction which divert men from intellectual pursuits
were closed to the Jews. Thus they were protected by their privations
from the temptations of material things and worldly ambitions. Driven
by circumstances to intellectual pursuits, their