Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SOCIOLOGIC FUNCTION OF THE JEW BOARDING the Jew's place in the work of world-reconstruction, I am constrained to pre- sent as a curious exhibit a magazine article of mine written in 1904, entitled, "Sociologic Function of the Jew." It is a casual composition, hastily written, without preparation, as an emergency "filler," and bears abundant evidence of immaturity; yet, in the light of today it appears strangely prophetic. While I would not now write quite in such fashion, I have not revised my opinions except in detail and have not departed far from early essentials. My sense of relative values has strengthened with the years. I now can see that the spiritual significance of Judaism is more than the utilitarian importance of the Jew. The Jew is to be esteemed because and to the extent that he personifies Judaism. Concerning the problem of Zionism I am not at present so confident. The impracticality of the movement does not appear to me quite so unquestionable. I am not prepared to say even that I am not pro-Zion. Certainly I now would write with less of the cocksure- ness of youth. I had then given the matter no serious attention; it will be noted, in fact, that I had but a vague notion of what Zionism might mean. At best, the presentation of the subject is one-sided. In subsequent chapters I shall go into the proposition more extensively, giving both its pros and its cons. This article elicited wide comment in the Jewish press, which generally characterized it as "remarkable. '' At that time my views were regarded as novel and radical, but they since have been adopted by so many writers that they have become familiar almost to the point of being commonplace. The article is here given for what it may be worth: "Zionism, as it presents itself to me, is a beautif...