Logo
Prev
Bookmark
Rotate
Print
Next
Contents
All Pages
Related Articles
Browse Issues
Help
Search
Home
'
National Geographic : 1919 Jul
Contents
VOL. XXXVI, No. 1 THE NATIONAL \ AGAZENEJI 'COPYRIGHT.1919. BY NATIONALGEOGRAPHICSOCIETY.WASHINGTON.D. C. THE PROGRESSIVE WORLD STRUGGLE OF THE JEWS FOR CIVIL EQUALITY* BY WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT AUTHOR, IN THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, Or "SOME RECENT INSTANCES OF NATIONAL ALTRUISM," "THE ARBITRATION TREATIES," "WASHINGTON: ITS BEGINNING, ITS GROWTH, AND ITS FUTURE," "GREAT BRITAIN'S BREAD UPON THE WATERS," "THE HEALTH AND MORALE OF AMERICA'S CITIZEN ARMY," AND "THE LEAGUE OF ° NATIONS" WITHIN the limits of this article one can hope to give only the merest sketch of the history which the subject of the Jews involves. I need not pause to emphasize the re markable character of the Jewish people. They are unique in that for eighteen hun dred years they have had no country, have been dispersed to the four quarters of the globe, and yet have retained their religion, their cohesion, their intellectual capacity, their loyalty to their race, and have, whenever there was any pretense of equality of opportunity for them, forged their way ahead into positions of prominence, influence, and power in business, professions, in philosophy, in art, in literature, and in government. They have at the same time made loyal subjects or citizens of the countries in which they have lived whenever they have been accorded any reasonable pro tection of civil rights. No other people has ever been subjected to such continu ous persecution in denial of opportunity to make a living and pursuit of happi ness, in humiliating restriction uoon their liberty, in exclusion from education, and * An address delivered bv the ex-President. William Howard Taft. before the National Geographic Society at Washington, D. C, indeed in actual physical cruelty and massacre. THE DISPERSION OF THE JEWS BEGINS During the three hundred years before Christ, the Jews were under Greek con trol and influence. Jerusalem was at tacked many times and sacked, with the consequent dispersion into other coun tries of many of its people. They mi grated into Syria, into Arabia, into Egypt, and became numerous and promi nent in Alexandria. Indeed, there were, it is said, as many as a million Jews in Egypt before the Christian era. When the Roman and the Parthian empires constituted the world, Jews were to be found in every commercial center, and in each there was a Jewish com munity and synagogue and a relationship maintained with Jerusalem. The Jews flocked to Rome. Tiberius issued an order excluding them, but it was only enforced for a short time and they returned in great numbers. Al though the Emperor Claudius announced his intention of banishing them again, they were so many that he gave it up. In the first and second centuries after Christ, Nero, Vespasian, Titus, Trajan, and Hadrian found the Jews of Palestine WASHINGTON JULY, 1919
Links
Archive
1919 Aug
1919 Jun
Navigation
Previous Page
Next Page