Our adversaries are perpetually throwing dust in our eyes with accusations of materialism and tribalism, and we in our pitiable endeavor to conform to the required standard plead guilty and fall into the trap they set.
In defiance of the hostile construction that may be put upon my words, I do not hesitate to say that our national defect is that we are not “tribal” enough; we have not sufficient solidarity to perceive that when the life and property of a Jew in the uttermost provinces of the Caucasus are attacked, the dignity of a Jew in free America is humiliated. Until we are all free, we are none of us free.
But lest we should justify the taunts of our opponents, lest we should become “tribal” and narrow and Judaic rather than humane and cosmopolitan like the anti-Semites of Germany and the Jew-baiters of Russia, we ignore and repudiate our unhappy brethren as having no part or share in their misfortunes—until the cup of anguish is held also to our own lips.