"The vast majority of Jews do not remain Jews by choice. Basically, the Jew hates his Jewishness, and bewails his fate. The only force that stiffens his neck - is the opposition of the outside world. Anti-Semitism is what keeps Judaism alive - ."

   The claim often made, that "religion is the bond that keeps Jews Jews" has no foundation in fact in this country, within the borders of which nearly one-third of the world's Jewry reside. In fact over three-quarters of the Jews do not know what Judaism is, save that it calls for worship on Saturday instead of Sunday, and that they are not allowed to include pork in their menu. Rabbi Solomon Goldman, Chicago, noted this recently. In answering the question, "What is wrong with the Jew?" he replied.

"Nothing but his ignorance." "Jewishly, the Jewish adult is uneducated. He may be, and he often is, a skilled lawyer, a celebrated physician, a talented journalist, a far-seeing social worker, a benign philanthropist, an astute politician, a gifted artist, and in every way a gentleman, but he is unfamiliar with his people's past, its current history in literature, its religion or philosophy" ("The Sentinel," Jewish weekly, Jan. 1, 1942).

   It is this lack of knowledge of Judaism, that compels priests to teach prospective converts from Jewry some of the basic principles of Judaism before baptising them. Without that knowledge, such prospective converts cannot properly appreciate who Jesus is, and the historic part the Church plays as the divine successor of the Aaronic priesthood, sacrifices, and Jewish ceremonialism.
   I have found that though American-born "Jews" are generally rationalists, they are not devoid of interest in religion. They are ever ready to talk religion, but it is generally merely talk, talk, talk, and it invariably includes saying something disparagingly about rabbis who are in the front pages of the public press, as no persons have less regard for their ministers than Jews have for rabbis.
   I regret to say that whether Jews are inside or outside the synagogues; whether they be Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, or Rationalist; they are unified in their prejudicial attitude towards converts from the Synagogue to the Church. This prejudicial trait in the Jewish make up, which is a factor in preventing conversions, is reprehensible, as no persons have suffered more from prejudicial judgments than have Jews themselves.
   The impression is deliberately fostered in Jewry that conversions are rarely, if ever, sincere. In Charles H. Joseph's "Random Thoughts," published in the Jewish weekly press throughout our country, this commonplace effrontery appeared -

"When a Jew says he is converted, he has been converted for money."

   If an attempt is made to refute such an insult, by giving reasons for sincerely believing that Jesus is the Messiah, and the Catholic Church the Messianic kingdom prophesied by the prophets of Israel, the Jewish satirical response is likely to be - "Sag das dem Goy" (Tell that to the Gentiles). This would be equivalent to saying, "Tell that to the marines," were it not generally said with a shrug that dismisses the convert as unprincipled. I dealt with this question of "money, money, money" as the motive of conversion somewhat in detail in my Autobiography, and I have been sorry every since for dignifying it with an answer.
   No such hostility is manifested in Jewry nowadays towards persons who break away from Judaism as a religion. For instance, to deal with but three out of a hundred of the world's most prominent "Jews," as they are called in Jewish books. In a review of "Faithful Rebels," Isaac Levine, the author, informs us that the "participation of Jews in philosophy" is said to have begun "with Spinoza"; and, that "with the emancipation from the Ghetto, the Jew contributes bountifully to the universal stock of culture." As evidence of this cultural work, there is presented the "19th and 20th century remarkable succession of Jewish thinkers, some of whom like Marx, Freud, and Einstein, were seminal pioneering minds."
   Let us look at these three men of world-wide fame, who are hailed as Jews, with encomiums of delight, by the very persons who condemn converts from Judaism to the Church. It is enough to say of Marx, that he is the author of the phrase - "Religion is the opium of the people" - which visitors to Moscow saw prominently displayed in Red Square. Socialists the world over, whatever their party affiliation may be, though bitterly opposed to the tactics of the Soviet Union, are one in approving of the application of the principles of Marx to religion in the Soviet Union. Lenin could say, without a word being uttered to the contrary in any Socialist publication, that "Atheism is an integral part of Marxism" ("Religion," Lenin, International Publishers, Inc., N.Y., 1933)
   Next comes Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. In "Moses and Monotheism" (N.Y., 1939) we find him one with Marx in hostility towards religion. He declares therein that Moses was the bastard son of an Egyptian princess; that the "God of Moses" was a "volcanic God"; that the "Jews depend upon the myths of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" for their belief in Jahve, their God; that the Jews took their form of worship from the Arabic tribe of Midianites."
   Marx held the capitalist class to have fostered religion for its doping effect upon the working class, whereas Freud attributes religion to nervous disorder. He says, still quoting from his latest book, "Moses and Monotheism," "I have never doubted that religious phenomena are to be understood only as a model of neurotic symptoms of the individual." He praises the Soviet Union for its war against religion, saying that "The authorities were bold enough to deprive a hundred million people of the anodyne of religion and wise enough to grant them a reasonable measure of sexual freedom." Mistaking atheism and sexual license for freedom, it was no surprise to find Freud writing disparagingly of the Catholic Church as an implacable enemy of all freedom of thought." Freud proceeds to say,

"Psychoanalytic research is in any case the subject of suspicious attention from Catholicism. I do not maintain that this suspicion is unmerited. If our research leads to a result that reduces religion to the status of a neurosis of mankind and explains the grandiose powers in the same way as we should neurotic obsession in our individual patients, then we may be sure we shall incur in this country (Austria) the greatest resentment of the powers that be."

The third in this triad of the great "Jews" in modern Jewry is Einstein, who has been hailed, like Spinoza, as "God-intoxicated." In answer to Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein, Einstein cabled from Germany -

"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."

   Such a concept of God is in line with Marx, Lenin, Freud, and every other enemy of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Some of the Reform Rabbis came to the support of Einstein's God of Spinoza, whose pantheistic, anti-Jewish concept of God caused him to be excommunicated from the Synagogue in Amsterdam in 1656 A.D. Rabbi Abba I. Krim of Newark, N. J., is an exception. He said, in taking the editor of the American Israelite to task -

"In your opinion, then, every Reform Jew has the right to believe in God or disbelieve. For to deny God's providential care of individuals, as Einstein and Spinoza do, is the same as Atheism. If you approve of Einstein's view of God, you must abolish the religious services in Reform temples. To whom does the Reform Jew pray? Does he pray to the heavenly harmony merely? Does he not come to the Temple because he believes that God listens to his prayer and takes care of him and every action? This is what the Union Prayer Book maintains. To pray to Spinoza's God would be absurd" ("Am. Israelite," July 5, 1929).