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246 Like the previous selection, this item expresses the views of the Zionist newspaper Die Welt. The number of distinguished scholars who are engaged with the Jewish racial problem and who have on account of this been won over to the Zionist cause is increasing. The Amsterdam chapter of the Netherlands Organization of Zionist Students held a well-attended meeting on Wednesday evening, at which Herr Professor Dr. S. R. Steinmetz, professor of ethnology at Amsterdam University, appeared as a speaker. The chairman, Mr. B. P. Gompertz, welcomed those present and pointed out that, given his academic subject, Professor Steinmetz is in a position to speak about the Jewish problem, too. His chosen topic is surely one that must demand the interest of all intellectual circles, (particularly) as so many new works on the topic [the Jewish Question] have appeared in recent times. Herr Professor Steinmetz said that before he accepted the invitation of the executive board to speak about the cultural worth and the future of the Jews, he asked himself whether there still was good reason to address this question in the twentieth century, a century after all of cosmopolitanism and general brotherhood . He said that he had to conclude, however, that the Jewish Question unfortunately remains an issue of current interest, and that there could hardly be a place better suited to addressing it objectively than Holland. For, on the one hand, it can certainly not be claimed that this should be a burning issue here, while the fact that there are nonetheless many thousands of Jews to be found in the country allows for an accurate assessment. After a number of statements of a general sort, the speaker turned to the actual theme of the lecture. What, then, is the Jewish race? We must confess that our science, in dealing with the problem, has not yet arrived at any definitive conclusions. There is as yet not even any unified notion about the criteria for racial classifications. It has been proposed to view the Jews as a mixture of Hittites, Semites, and, to a lesser degree, Amorites; there are also those who would claim 33 | On the Jewish Racial Question “Zur jüdischen Rassenfrage,” unsigned editorial, Die Welt 16, no. 5 (1912): 141–42. “On the Jewish Racial Question” | 247 that the Jews are actually not Semites at all. Furthermore it has been claimed that, due to the Diaspora, the Jews have been so intermingled with others that one should actually no longer speak of a Jewish race at all. And finally, there are those who wish to demonstrate that the two main groups of European Jews have nothing in common racially. The Jewish race, whose relative purity and persistence the speaker believes it is necessary to maintain, constitutes a particular group within the Near Eastern race; they are closely related to the Völker of Arabia and North Africa and, somewhat less closely, to the Völker of Southern and Southeastern Europe. Together with the Jews, the ancient Babylonians, Phoenicians, Arabs, and perhaps also the Egyptians must be reckoned as belonging to the Near Eastern races. This sort of classification of the Jewish race is necessary in order to understand in which environment and under what types of influence, of nature, and of neighboring peoples the Jewish Volk developed during those periods that history sheds no light upon; and to know as well, with which peoples with similar innate traits to compare the Jews. [Ignaz] Zollschan, then, correctly enters into elaborate detail about the truly imposing culture of the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians; Weber45 testifies to the fact that ancient Arabic culture, before Islam, had already inseminated the noblest of minds. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians did indeed perish, but what power emanated from them despite their small numbers! Eduard Meyer,46 who judged the Jews severely, asserted nonetheless that they constituted an extraordinarily gifted racial Volk, with enormous achievements for the history of mankind. And truthfully, Islam, which brought countless primitive peoples to a higher level, must be seen as a powerful cultural achievement. And how much has the Arabic golden age done for the preservation and development of GrecoRoman culture! A race that brought forth ancient Babylon, Egypt, Phoenicia, Carthage, and the great Arabic era certainly cannot be said to be incapable of high culture. As for the overall central features of the Jewish psyche—if we may be allowed to judge it by drawing an analogy with those...

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