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THE OBLIGATIONS OF HEREDITY

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JEWISH history admonishes the Jews: ‘Noblesse oblige’. The privilege of belonging to a people to whom the honourable title of the ‘Veteran of History’ has been conceded puts serious responsibilities on your shoulders. You must demonstrate that you are worthy of your heroic past.

S. M. DUBNOW, 1893.

OUR virtues are Israel’s: all our success in life we owe to the fact that the blood of the ‘toughest of peoples’ is coursing in our veins. Our vices are our own. Now the world inverts the distribution. Our virtues it credits to us, to our individual brilliancy, diligence, courage. Whereas the crimes, vices, and failings of any single Jew, no matter how estranged from his people or his people’s faith he may be, it puts down to his Jewishness, and fathers them upon the entire Jewish race.

Is it not a matter of sacred honour, as far as in us lies to counteract the world’s injustice to our people by rendering, when the opportunity is ours, some repayment for all we owe to Israel?

J. H. HERTZ, 1915.

A Book of Jewish Thoughts

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