Occasionally a sunbeam of recognition concerning their misery emanates from Jewish writers themselves. [ . . . ] [A reform Jewish weekly] finds the courage to lay before its readers the following verse:
Everywhere it seems plain to the wise
That the number of Jews is on the rise.
In theaters, concerts, and at the balls
It’s mostly Jews who fill the halls.
If it’s more Christians than Jews you want to see,
Then in the New Synagogue you ought to be.
“It is quite certain that in Berlin not a quarter, probably not even a tenth, of the Jewish prep-school students over the age of thirteen hear a word of religious instruction.” “Morality remains limited to the sentence: what the penal code does not forbid or what cannot be detected by the judge is permissible, useful, clever.” These Jewish voices date from 1871. It has become much worse today. The Jews combat our faith even though they know that man cannot exist without religion.* [ . . . ]
All [these pretensions to importance] have worked to produce in the Jews, especially the Jewish newspaper writers, a degree of intolerance that will soon be unbearable. In all seriousness, we address our second petition to the Jewish press: pray, be a little more tolerant! We shall not, as others who have written on this theme, cite the Talmud's contempt for foreign peoples or its hatred toward every human right. We do not believe it proper to make all the Jews of today responsible for books written millennia ago. We would then have to charge the Catholics with all the persecutions of heretics and the Inquisition (even though none of the popes have ever denounced them as an injustice). In fact a change has taken place. The strict Jews still hold that the Talmud is as infallible as the Law, and a few benightedly declare the entire Talmud, even the vengeful and wild passages, is holy to them. Nevertheless, long years of living together with Christians, mutual business relations, and the gentler spirit of the age have served to diminish the hatred for Christians in the synagogue.
* Berthold Auerbach (1812–82), a Jewish writer who prided himself on his "Germanness," registered the pain felt by many highly acculturated Jews upon the appearance of political antisemitism with an often-quoted lament: "I have lived and worked in vain."
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