he activities of Jewish university men in Germany are chiefly
literary and intellectual, for the problem with which they are faced
is quite different from that of ours. With us the problem of
Americanism and Judaism is in its ultimate analysis the possible
conflict between two sets of social duties, in themselves not
necessarily contradictory, which can be easily reconciled by a working
program adjusting the practical demands of both without curtailing the
scope and efficiency of either. For Americanism in the abstract has no
existence. The American mind is as yet unknown in its essence; it is
only manifest by its functions, of which Jewish activities may form a
complementary part. In Germany it is quite different. If Germanism
stand for Aryanism and Occidentalism, Judaism must inevitably stand
for Semitism and Orientalism,--and can the twain ever meet? That the
Jew manifests in his works and actions good practical patriotism does
not radically solve the problem; that the Jews are capable of being
good patriots is no longer questioned, but can they be genuine ones?
Will not the Jews always remain the carriers of an alien culture,
unabsorbable and unassimilable, despite their conversion and
intermarriage? It is this problem that confronts the Jewish
intellectuals in Germany, in the over-hanging shadow of which the
"Sorrows of the Jewish Werther" was written, and the martyrdom of Otto
Weininger, self-inflicted, was made possible. Hence the great
introspective literary activity of the German Jewish youth.

There is, on the one hand, the great, ever-increasing inrush of the
Jews into the inmost sanctum of German cultural life, where their
Germanic protestations are more vociferous than those of the native
Teuton,--and they sometimes have, too, as must be admitted, a false
ring. Ludwig Fulda openly proclaims that as to his relation with
Judaism there is none: Goethe is his Moses and the German war of
liberation is his Exodus; and Jewish "Gymnasium" seniors inundate the
columns of the _Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums_ with introspective
analyses of their Teutonic souls. On the other hand, there are those
who, while quite as good Germans as the others, so far as practical
patriotism is concerned, do not renounce the intellectual and
spiritual heritage which is their own. Their self-imposed task is
therefore the cultivation, enrichment, and modernization of Jewish
thought and tradition. Hence the great output of highly meritor