Monday, May 14, 2007
Wonderful and informative excerpt:
For two years in Independence, a Jewish family called the Viners lived next door to Truman's family. As Sarah Viner much later recalled, her brother Abe was "very close friends" with the future president: "Harry was always over at our house ... I think this was his first contact with Jewish people." On the Sabbath, when observant Jews could not do household chores, Harry served as the Viners' "Shabbos goy."
While a 16-year-old student at Independence High School, young Truman was assigned to write about Shylock, Shakespeare's Jewish villain in "The Merchant of Venice," in an essay discovered in 2000. Given vast potential for indulging in anti-Semitism when writing of Shylock, Truman viewed the Jewish people with unexpected sympathy: "We cannot blame Shylock for getting money as a means for revenge upon those who persecuted him. He was not a miser, and if one of his own nation had been in trouble, he would have helped him as quickly as a Christian would help a Christian ... I never saw Jew, Christian or any other man who, if he had the chance, wouldn't take revenge."
Truman went on to insist that no one "except the Hebrews" had "ruled" the world, then "when they fell," remained "a distinct people." He wrote that after 2,000 years, the Jews were "a nation apart from nations ... persecuted for their religion," still "waiting for a leader" to gather their "scattered people."...
It's a long piece, worth checking out.
I'm sorry to say that sixteen-year-old Truman got Shylock all wrong when he wrote: "We cannot blame Shylock for getting money as a means for revenge upon those who persecuted him."
Shylock made his living from money-lending, as many Jews did (as well as Italians known as the "Lombards"). Very few professions were open to Jews. They were not allowed to own land and therefore farming was out of the question. Shylock did not lend money of revenge for being "persecuted". When he did resort to revenge upon Antonio, that Venitian kicker of Jews and spitter on Jews, it was not money Shylock was after but blood (and in fact all the money he was offered, three times the original loan, did not dissuade him from his revenge). Young Truman was not commenting on the text but on his own pre-conception of the text.
From Truman's diaries, we have this excerpt:
"[M]ost surprising . . . were Truman's remarks on Jews, written on July 21, 1947, after the president had a conversation with Henry Morgenthau, the Jewish former treasury secretary. Morgenthau called to talk about a Jewish ship in Palestine -- possibly the Exodus, the legendary ship carrying 4,500 Jewish refugees who were refused entry into Palestine by the British, then rulers of that land.
"He'd no business, whatever to call me," Truman wrote. "The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any judgement [sic] on world affairs. Henry brought a thousand Jews to New York on a supposedly temporary basis and they stayed."
Truman then went into a rant about Jews: "The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as DP as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog."
http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/003779.php
These are not the words of a man who had grown up respecting and liking Jews. But it hardly matters, what he personally felt in his heart of hearts (like Jimmy Carter's "lust" in his heart). What matters is that when the moment of truth and decision was presented to him by history, those sentiments were put aside as he made a moral upright choice based on reality, and historical necessity. Therefore, it is for this that Truman can be remembered by the Jewish people as an honourable man, a bona-fide gentleman.
Yes, the article is pretty straightforward with the fact that Truman - especially the private Truman - had a lot of attitudes we could easily name as anti-Semitic by today's standards. I think that's too simple, though. I riffed on that some time ago: Truman and a Fair Shake
Let's not judge Harry too harshly. Yes, Jews weren't allowed in his wife's home, but he had good basic values, and people with good basic values usually end up getting it right in the end.