“The (so-called) Jewish Problem”

“THE (so-called) JEWISH PROBLEM”

Excerpts from Alice Bailey’s works

With the current state of world affairs regarding Israel, its influence in national governments worldwide, its growing loud cries of “Antisemitism!” especially in the West, it is time once again to go to the source of what is behind all this and to take a wider view. What follows is a collection of quotes from the Tibetan, via Alice Bailey’s books, and some of Alice’s own thoughts on Jews and Judaism, which may perhaps shed some light on what is behind the now dangerous situation in the Middle East. Much of that plays upon domestic politics in Western nations and in Israel, but in reality is based upon selfish interests bent on control of the resources in the region of the Levant and Iran. If we substitute “Zionist” for “Jewish” in the title, perhaps the reason for our current strife becomes clearer. For myself, I will say at the outset that I personally have no issues with Jews and Judaism, and have always had good relations, having had Jewish friends and clients.

Let peace and goodwill prevail.

The Jewish Problem. The Jews constitute an international minority of great aggressiveness, exceedingly vocal, and they also constitute a minority in practically every nation in the world. Their problem is, therefore, unique. Problems of Humanity, p. 96

In connection with the nations and the rays I want now to indicate to you certain fundamental conditions which partially account for the (so-called) Jewish problem,—a problem which has existed for centuries, and which is, at this time, causing the deepest possible concern to many, including members of the planetary Hierarchy. If this problem can be solved, it will be one of the potent factors in the restoration of world understanding and harmony. It cannot be solved without the cooperation of the men of good will throughout the world. There is little that I can say anent this matter that can be checked and proved, for the clue to the problem is to be found back in the very night of time and, literally, when the sun was in the constellation Gemini. At that time the two pillars were set up which, as all Masons know, are two great landmarks in Masonry. Hence the Jewish colouring of all the Masonic work, though it is not Jewish [Page 394] in the sense that that word conveys today. Who, therefore, if the facts are of such ancient import, shall say that I speak with accuracy, or establish the right or wrong nature of my conclusions? I but present the facts as I know them from my access to records more ancient than any known to man.

The personality ray, the material form ray of the Jewish people, is the third ray. Their egoic ray is the first. Their astrological sign is Capricorn, with Virgo rising. Mercury and Virgo play a prominent part in their destiny. These clues should suffice to give to the advanced student and astrologer those salient points which will give him light upon their strange history. Because of this third ray influence, you have the tendency of the Jew to manipulate forces and energies, and to “pull strings” in order to bring about desired ends. As a race, they are natural law makers, and hence their tendency to dominate and govern, because their egoic ray is the first. Hence also the constant appearance of the goat in their history, and their teaching about the virgin mother who should give birth to the Messiah.

In every grouping,—whether in heaven or on earth—there is always evidenced a tendency by some units in the group to revolt, to rebel and to show some form of initiative different to that of the other units in the same grouping. When our solar universe came into being, we are told in the allegorical language of the ancient scriptures, there “was war in Heaven”; “the sun and his seven brothers” did not function with true unanimity; hence (and herein lies a hint) our Earth is not one of the seven sacred planets. There is, as we know, the ancient legend of the lost Pleiade, and there are many such stories. Again, in the council chamber of the Most High, there has not always been peace and understanding, but at times, war and disruption; this is made abundantly clear by several of the stories in the Old Testament. Symbolically [Page 395] speaking, some of the sons of God fell from their high estate, led, at one time, by “Lucifer, Son of the Morning”. This “fall of the angels” was a tremendous event in the history of our planet, but was nevertheless only a passing and interesting phenomenon in the history of the solar system, and a trifling incident in the affairs of the seven constellations, of which our solar system is but one. Pause and consider this statement for a moment, and so readjust your sense of values. The standard of happenings varies in importance according to the angle of vision, and what (from the angle of our Earth’s unfoldment in consciousness) may be a factor of prime importance and of determining value may (from the angle of the universe) be of trifling moment. The affairs of an individual are, to him, of momentous import; to humanity, as a whole, they are of small concern. It all depends upon which unit holds the centre of the stage in the drama of life, and around which central factor the happenings, trivial or important, pursue their cyclic way.

Within the radius of power and life which is the expression of the fourth kingdom in nature, the human, there was to be found a correspondence to that “assumption of independence” and to that “breaking away” which characterised the major grouping. Back in later Lemurian times, a group of men of high development, from the point of view of that time, and numbered among the then disciples of the world, took issue with the planetary Hierarchy, and broke away from the “law of the initiates”. It was a time wherein the emphasis of the teaching was upon the material side of life, and where the focus of attention was upon the physical nature and its control. The Old Commentary expresses what happened in the following terms, and as you read the measured cadences of that ancient script, it would be wise to try and realise that the phrases are referring to that group of [Page 396] disciples who were the early founders of the present Jewish race:

“The law went forth from the inner group which guided the destinies of men: Detach yourselves. Withdraw within yourselves the power to hold and gain and get. The sons of God, who train themselves to leave the world of men and enter into light, they ever travel free. They hold not what they have. Release yourselves, and enter through the gates of peace.

“Some of the sons of God, waiting outside those gates, ready to enter when the Word went forth to roll the gates aside, were laden with the treasure of the earth. They brought their gifts as offerings to the Lord of life, who needed not their gifts. They sought to enter through those gates, not with a selfish end in view, but to present the garnered treasures of the world, and thus shew their love.

“Again the Word went forth: Leave all behind and pass beyond the portal, laden with naught of earth. They waited and discussed. The rest of those who were prepared entered into light and passed between the pillars of the gate; they left behind the loads they brought and entered free, and were accepted, carrying naught.

“Because they travelled as a group, and as a group progressed and grasped, the group responded to the divine command and halted. There they waited, standing before the portal of the Path, grasping the garnered treasures of a thousand cycles. Naught did they wish to leave behind. They had laboured for the riches which they held. They loved their God, and Him they sought to dower with the fullest measure of the riches they had gained. They loved not discipline.

“Again the Word went forth: Drop on the ground all that you hold, and enter free.

“But three revolted from that stern command. The rest obeyed. They passed within the gates, leaving the three outside. Many were raised unto the heights of joy. The three remained without the gates, holding their treasure firm.”

In this ancient writing, older than any of the written scriptures of the world, is to be found the secret of the Masonic story and of the slaying of the Master by the three most [Page 397] closely associated with Him in His death and burial. Masons will all recognise the three to whom I here refer. These three were the founders of the modern Jewish race. They were three advanced disciples who resented the command to enter, free and untrammelled, the place where light is to be found. They sought to hold that which they had gathered and to dedicate it to the service of God. Their unrecognised motive was love of riches and a desire to hold safe their gains. Ancient tradition, as taught by the teachers of the past, tells us that…

“They turned their faces towards the gates of earth. Their friends went on….. They stayed behind….. The Masters met in conclave and decided what should be the fate of those who, having reached the Gates of Light, loved the possessions of the world more than they loved the service of the light. Again the Word went forth to the revolting three, who waited still without the gates:

“`Hold what you have and gather more, but know no peace. Garner the fruits of mind, and seek your power in wide possessions, but have no sure abiding place.

“`Within yourselves, because you are disciples of the Lord, you shall have no share in peace, no sure and certain knowledge of success, nor power to hold your gains.

“`Always shall there be the knowledge dim of Him Who watches over all. Always the urge to gather and amass. Never the time to hold and to enjoy. Pass on therefore until the time shall come, and again you stand before the Gates of Light, this time with empty hands. Then enter, free, accepted by the Servants of the Lord, and know, forever, peace.'”

The ancient legend tells us that the three went forth in sorrow and revolt, laden with their treasures, and thus the history of the wandering Jew began. It is significant to remember that one of the greatest sons of God Who has worked on earth, and Who epitomised in Himself the way and the achievement, Jesus of Nazareth, was a Jew. He reversed all the earlier conditions. He possessed nothing at [Page 398] all. He was the first of our humanity to achieve, and was a direct descendant of the eldest of the original three disciples who revolted from the drama of detachment. The Jew embodies in himself the world prodigal son. He is the symbol of the disciple who has not yet learned the lesson of a just sense of values. He has been the victim of the Law of Light and of his inability to comply with that Law. He sinned wilfully and with his eyes wide open to results. Hence he knows the law as no other race knows it, for he is eternally its victim. He has enunciated the law from its negative angle; the Law of Moses today rules most of the world, and yet fails to bring into life justice and true legality.

The other group of disciples, the representatives (in their day and age) of the race, passed through the ancient portals of initiation and took the first great step. They came back with a latent and dim recollection of the episode which separated them from three of their co-disciples. On their return to life on earth, they spoke of this event. This was their error; the long antagonism started, which persists until today. Those particular disciples have themselves passed through their long pilgrimage and have entered into eternal peace, but the results of their early betrayal of the hidden events of initiation still persist.

Curiously enough, this ancient race, founded by the three who loved that which they had to offer more than that which they longed to take, were the originators of the Masonic tradition. Their history (and incidentally the history of humanity) is embodied in that dramatic ritual. The reward for their sincerity,—for they revolted in utter sincerity, believing they knew best—was the permission to enact each year, on the return of the day when they might have entered into light, the story of the search for light. Because they had been so [Page 399] nearly resurrected from the death of earth into the life of light, the great tradition of the mysteries was started by them. They chose death and slew that which “had lived and which could have claimed reward”, and which could have spoken the word of power which would have caused the gates of resurrection to open wide.

We are told that these three swore an everlasting vow to stand together and never to desert each other. This vow down the ages they have kept; it has consequently produced that racial separativeness and community of interests which arouses the antagonism of other races.

Down the ages, the Jew has been wandering, producing much of beauty in the world, and giving to humanity many of its greatest men, but he has (at the same time) been hated and persecuted, betrayed and hounded. He embodies, in himself, symbolically, the history of humanity. The ancient tendency of the Jews to grasp and hold, and also to preserve their racial and national integrity, are their outstanding characteristics. They cannot be absorbed, and yet so ancient is the race that nevertheless today no nation in the world but has its roots in that group which—in old Lemuria—had advanced so far that all its foremost people stood upon the path of discipleship. There are no racial strains in the Western world which are not offshoots of this oldest select people, with the exception of the Finns, Lapps and those nations which show definite mongoloid strains. But the admixture of what is now called Jewish blood is not found to the same extent, and the modern Jew is as much a by-product as is the Anglo-Saxon race, only, through an imposed selective tendency and racial segregation, he has preserved intact more of the original characteristics.

It is the realisation of this common origin which has led [Page 400] the British-Israelites into their travesty of the truth, and caused them to trace our modern Western history to the Jews of the Dispersion. It is a far more ancient relation than that, and dates back into a period that antedates the history of the Jews as it is related for us in the Old Testament. The original three disciples and their family groups were the ancestors of three major racial groupings, which can be generalised as follows:

1. The Semitic race or races of Biblical and modern times; the Arabs, the Afghans, the Moors and the offshoots and affiliations of those peoples, including the modern Egyptians. These are all descended from the eldest of the three disciples.

2. The Latin peoples and their various branches throughout the world, and also the Celtic races wherever found. These are descended from the second of the three disciples.

3. The Teutons, the Scandinavians, and the Anglo-Saxons, who are the descendants of the third of the three disciples.

The above is a broad generalisation. The period covered is so vast, and the ramifications down the ages are so numerous, that it is not possible for me to do more than give a general idea. Gradually the descendants of two of these three disciples have accepted the legends which were promulgated in Atlantean times, and have ranged themselves on the side of those who are antagonistic to the Jew, as he is today; they have lost all sense of their common origin. There is no pure race in the world today, for intermarriage, illicit relations and promiscuity during the past few million years have been so numerous that there exists no pure strain. Climate and environment [Page 401] are fundamentally greater determining factors than any forced segregation, except that which comes through a constant racial intermarriage. Of this latter factor, only the Hebrew today has preserved any measure of racial integrity.

When humanity awakens to the fact of its common origin, and when the three great major strains in our modern civilisation are recognised, then we shall see the old hatred of the Jew die out, and he will fuse and blend with the rest of mankind. Even the oriental races, who are the remnants of the great Atlantean civilisation, have in them traces of intermarriage with the ancestors of the modern Jews and other racial types, but they have not mixed well, and have therefore preserved their characteristics more successfully than have the groups of our Western men.

If you ponder upon the above, and if you study the Masonic tradition with care, much will become clarified in your mind. Ethnologists may disagree, but they cannot disprove what I have said, for the origins of the present racial world situation lie so far back in the history of mankind that they cannot even prove their own contentions. All they are capable of considering is the history of the past one hundred thousand years, and their work lies with effects of that past and not with originating causes. Esoteric Psychology I, pp. 394 – 402

1. The Jewish Problem

This problem is so old and so well known that it is difficult to say anything about it which will not be in the nature of a platitude, that will not indicate a bias of some kind (from the point of view of the reader) and that will not arouse in the Jewish reader above all an undesirable reaction. There is little usefulness, however, in saying that which will be acceptable or which agrees with all points of view or is a statement of all that has hitherto been said. There are things to be said which are not so familiar and which have seldom been said, or have been said in a spirit of criticism or of anti-Semitism instead of in a spirit of love, as is attempted here.

Let us look for a moment at the situation of the Jews, prior to the bitter and unpardonable attack made upon them by Hitler and prior to the war 1939-1945. They were to be found in every land and claimed citizenship in every country; within the nation of their birth, they preserved intact their own racial identity, their own peculiar way of life, their own national religion (which is everybody’s privilege) and a close adherence to those of their own race. Other groups have done this but to a much lesser degree and have been eventually absorbed and assimilated by the land of their citizenship. The Jews have always constituted a nation within a nation, though this has been less marked in Great Britain, Holland, France and Italy than elsewhere, and therefore, in none of these countries has there been any strong anti-Semitic feeling.

In every country and down the ages, the Jew has turned to commerce and has worked with money; they [Page 97] are a strictly commercial and urban people and have shown little interest in agriculture, except lately under the Zionist Movement in Palestine. To their extremely materialistic tendencies they have added a great sense of the beautiful and an artistic conception which has added much to the world of art; they have ever been the patrons of the beautiful, and have also been amongst the world’s great philanthropists and this in spite of undesirable and devious business methods, which have made them greatly disliked and mistrusted in the world of business. They are and remain an essentially oriental people—which the occidental is apt to forget; if he remembered it he would realize that the Eastern approach to truth and honesty and to the use and possession of money is widely different to that of the Western, and herein is to be found a part of the difficulty. It is not so much a question of right and wrong as one of different standards and inherent racial attitudes which are shared with the whole of the East.

The modern Jew is also the product of many centuries of persecution and of migrations; he has wandered from country to country and from city to city, and in the course of these wanderings he has inevitably developed certain habits of living and thinking which, again, the occidental fails to recognize and for which he makes no allowance; the Jews are, for instance, the product of centuries of tent-dwelling and hence the untidy effect they have on any community in which they live and which the more organized Westerner (a cave-dweller) fails to recognize. They are also the product of their need, down the centuries, to live off the people among whom they wander, to seize the presented chance to take what they want, to see to it that their children get the best of everything available, no matter what the cost to others, to cling to their own people in the midst of the alien races among whom they cast [Page 98] their lot, and to preserve inviolate, as far as may be, their national religion, their national taboos and the ancient landmarks. This has been essential to their existence under persecution; it has been compulsory for them to preserve these factors in their ancient forms as far as possible, so as to provide evidence to other Hebrews in new lands and cities that they were Jews as they claimed to be. It is this that makes them the most reactionary and conservative race in the world.

Racial characteristics have become increasingly pronounced owing to the inevitable intermarriage during the past centuries and the emphasis laid by the orthodox Jew in the past upon racial purity. The young and modern Jew lays no emphasis upon this and has usually no objection to intermarriage with the Gentiles, but this is only a late development which meets with no approval from the older generation. The Gentile also objects in many cases.

The Jew is a good citizen, law-abiding, kindly and decent in his ways, anxious to play his part in community life and ready with his money when asked for it but—he still remains apart. The Ghetto tendency, as one might call it, can be seen spreading everywhere, particularly in the larger cities in the different countries. Down the ages, the Jews for measures of protection and for communal happiness tended to herd together and to seek each other out, and the Gentiles among whom they found themselves fostered this tendency; thus habits of association were formed which still control. Added to this, and due to the separative action of the Gentile world, restricted areas and cities began to appear in many countries in which no Jew was permitted to reside or to purchase property or to settle. Because of the aptitude of the Jew to live off other people and to live within a nation, benefiting by its customs, culture and civilization but retaining a separate identity and not [Page 99] becoming a true part of the national life, the Jew has ever been subjected to persecution; as a race, he is nowhere liked and people are on guard against him and his methods.

This general statement is often untrue where the individual Jew is concerned. There are Jews in every nation and locality who are deeply loved by all who know them, whether Jew or Gentile, who are respected by all around them, who are sought after and valued. These belong to the great spiritual aristocracy of humanity, and though they function in Jewish bodies and bear Jewish names, they join forces with men and women gathered out of all nations who belong to humanity and who have outgrown national and racial characteristics. These men and women are, as a group, the hope of humanity, the guarantee of the new and better world for which we all wait; their numbers are increasing daily. In a broad generalization about any race or nation, the individual necessarily suffers, but the statements made about the race or nation as a whole are correct, true and verifiable.

Perhaps the major factor which has made the Jew separative and which has cultivated in him the superiority complex which distinguishes him (under an outer inferiority) in his religious faith. This faith is one of the oldest in the world; it is older than Buddhism by centuries; older than many of the Hindu faiths, and much more ancient than Christianity, and there are features in it which have definitely made the Jew what he is. It is a religion of taboos, built up carefully to protect the wandering Jew as he drifted from one community to another; it is a religion with a distinctly material basis, emphasizing the “land flowing with milk and honey”; this was not symbolic in the days of its use, but a presented objective of his travels. The colouring of the religion is separative; God is the God of the Jews; [Page 100] the Jews are God’s chosen people; they must be preserved in physical purity and their well-being is of major importance to Jehovah; they have a messianic destiny, and Jehovah is jealous of their contacts and interest in any other people or God. To these divine requirements they have, as a people, been obedient and hence their plight in a modern world.

The word “love” as it concerns relation to other people is lacking in their religious presentation, though love of Jehovah is taught with due threats; the concept of a future life, dependent upon conduct and behaviour to others and on right action in the world of men, is almost entirely lacking in The Old Testament and teaching on immortality is nowhere emphasized; salvation is apparently dependent upon the keeping of numerous physical laws and rules related to physical cleanliness; they go so far as to establish retail shops where these rules are kept—in a modern world where scientific methods are applied to purity in food. All these and other factors of less importance set the Jew apart, and these he enforces no matter how obsolete they are or inconvenient to others.

These factors demonstrate the complexity of the problem from the Jewish angle and its irritating and frictional nature to the Gentile. This irritating factor is something which the Jew seldom if ever recognizes. The Gentile today neither remembers nor cares that the Jews were instrumental in having Christ put to death (according to The New Testament); he is more apt to remember that Christ was a Jew and to wonder why the Jew was not the first to claim and love Him. He remembers far more acutely Jewish business methods, the fact that the Jew, if orthodox, regards Gentile food as impure for him and that the Jew considers his citizenship as secondary to his racial obligations. He regards the Jew as a follower of an obsolete religion; he intensely [Page 101] dislikes the cruel and jealous Jehovah of the Jews and looks upon The Old Testament as the history of a cruel and aggressive people—apart from the Psalms of David, which all men love.

These are points to which the Jew at no time seems to pay attention and yet it is these things in their aggregate which have set the Jew apart from the world in which he wants to live and be happy and in which he is the victim of an inheritance which could with profit be modernized. Nowhere is the emergence of a new world religion more greatly needed than in the case of the Jew in the modern world.

Yet—God has made all men equal; the Jew is a man and a brother, and every right that the Gentile owns is his also, inalienably and intrinsically his. This the Gentile has forgotten and great is his responsibility for wrong doing and cruel action. The Jew for ages has not been wanted by his Gentile brother; he has been chased from place to place; constantly and ceaselessly the Jew has been forced to move on or move out—across the desert from Egypt to the Holy Land, from there (centuries later) to the Mesopotamia Valley and from that time on in a constant series of migrations, with great streams of wandering Jews moving ceaselessly north, south and west and a small trickle going east; expelled from cities and countries during the Middle Ages, then after a period of relative quiescence again the displaced Jews were on the move in Europe, homeless, drifting hither and thither (along with many thousands of other nationalities, however), helpless in the hands of a cruel fate, or not so helpless but organized by certain political groups for international and selfish ends. In the countries where anti-Semitic feeling has been practically nonexistent for decades, antagonism is rising; in Great Britain its evil head can now be seen, and in the United States of America it is a mounting menace. [Page 102] It is for the Gentiles to bring the cycle of persecutions to an end once and for all; it is for the Jew to take those steps which will not arouse the dislike of the Gentiles among whom he lives.

The need of the Jew at this time is for a solution of this ancient problem which has disturbed the peace of countries down the centuries. The responsibility of the non-Jews, in the light of humanitarian demand, is vital; the record of the persecution of the Jews is a grievous and ghastly story, only paralleled by the Jewish treatment of their enemies, as related in The Old Testament. The fate of the Jews in the world war is a terrible tale of cruelty, torture and wholesale murder and the treatment of the Jews down the ages is one of the blackest chapters in human history. For it there is no excuse or condonation, and right thinking people everywhere are aware of this and are eagerly demanding that these persecutions end. The spiritual forces of the world and the spiritual leaders of humanity (both those working on the outer plane and those guiding from the inner side of the veil) are seeking a solution.

The solution, however, will be found only when the Jews themselves seek to find the way out and cease their present policy of demanding that the Gentiles and Christians make all the concessions, find the solution of the problem alone, and, unaided by the Jews, bring the evil situation to an end. The Jews voice loudly and constantly their demand for redress and help; they blame the non-Jewish nations for their miseries; they fail always to recognize any conditions on their own side which could account for some of the general dislike with which they are confronted; they make no concessions to the civilizations and cultures in which they find themselves but insist on remaining apart; they blame others for their isolation, but the fact remains that they have been given equal opportunity as citizens in all open-minded [Page 103] countries. Their contribution to the solution of this ancient problem is a material one, and shows no psychological insight or any recognition of the spiritual values involved; no problem can today be solved entirely along material lines. Man has as a whole outgrown that.

The problem of the Jews goes deeply into the entire question of right human relations; it can only be solved on that inclusive basis. It concerns the interplay between people of different races but recognizing brotherhood in the human family; it evokes the whole problem of selfishness and unselfishness, of consideration and of justice, and these are factors which must condition all parties. The Jew needs to recognize his share in bringing about the dislike which hounds him everywhere; the Gentile must shoulder his responsibility for endless persecutions and pay the price of restitution. The Jew has evoked and still evokes dislike, and for this there is absolutely no need.

To sum up, the Jew has set up an ancient pattern of living within other nations; as a citizen with all the rights of citizenship, he has built up a wall of taboos, of habits and of religious observances which separate him off from his environment and make him non-assimilable. These must go, and he must become a citizen not only in name but in fact. There is no other problem like it in the world today—an entire people of distinctive race, religion, goals, characteristics, culture and a uniquely ancient and most reactionary civilization, scattered as a minority in every nation, positing an international problem, possessed of great wealth and influence, claiming citizenship in every nation but retaining deliberately their racial identity, creating dissension among the nations, attempting in no way to meet harmoniously their complex problem on any large scale with due psychological understanding or consideration of the Gentile environment [Page 104] to which they ceaselessly make appeal, proffering only material solutions and constant, almost abusive, demands for the Gentile to shoulder the entire blame and end the difficulty.

Alongside of this, one must place the long and sorry story of the persecution of the Jews by the Gentiles—widespread in the Middle Ages (if one goes no further back), sporadic in more modern times, but culminating in the violent treatment of the Jews during the world war. It was, however, a treatment not uniquely theirs but meted out also to Poles, Greeks and the helpless of many nations. This is a point which the Jews today appear to forget. They have not been alone in their persecution. The Jews constituted only twenty per cent of the dispersed persons in Europe after the war.

This same sorry story of Gentile cruelty includes also the growing anti-Semitism which can be seen even in countries which have been relatively free from it; there is a constant discrimination against the Jew in business circles; restricted areas are increasing everywhere; the plight of Jewish school children in the U.S.A., for instance, who are discriminated against, hooted at and abused, is shocking to contemplate. The situation also exists wherein no country anywhere wants to open its doors and offer the unwanted Jews asylum. No nation wants to admit them in their hundreds. Right thinking people in every nation are seeking and will continue to seek a solution, and one will be found. This problem child within the family of nations is a child of the one Father and spiritually identified with all men everywhere. People know that there is “neither Jew nor Gentile”, as St. Paul expressed it (facing two thousand years ago the same sad problem), and men and women in both groups have constantly and increasingly proved the truth of this statement.

[Page 105] Such is the problem of the Jewish minority, given with a frankness which will evoke much criticism, but given in this way in the hope that because it is prompted by love, the Jews will shoulder their own responsibilities, will cease crying aloud to the Gentiles to solve the problem alone, and will begin to cooperate with a full sense of spiritual understanding and so aid the thousands of Gentiles who earnestly want to help. There has never been a time when the Gentile world has been more keen to do what is right by the Jew or more anxious to solve this problem and make restitution for all he has suffered. Changed inner attitudes are needed on both sides, but very largely on the side of the Jews; there is evidence that these new attitudes are germinating, even if the finding of the right solution may take much time. There are Jews who today are saying what is said here. Problems of Humanity, pp. 97 – 106

Alice Bailey’s personal views on Jews

(From The Unfinished Autobiography, pp 188 – 122)

I shall never forget as long as I live the extraordinary kindness of the man who owned the grocery store in the little town where I was living and where Walter Evans had his last charge in the San Joaquin diocese. We owed a couple of hundred dollars on our grocery bill, though I was quite unaware of the fact. Word, of course, had gone around the village of everything that had happened. The morning after my husband had been sent away to San Francisco, the telephone rang and it was the grocery store. The owner was a Jew and a very ordinary looking Jew. I had never done anything for him except be courteous and, being British, had made it evident that I had no anti-Jew feeling. There has never been any anti-Semitic attitude in Great [Page 118] Britain, particularly in my youth there. Some of our greatest men have been Jews, such as Lord Reading, Viceroy of India, and others. This man asked me over the phone for my order. I asked him how much we owed him and he said, “Over two hundred dollars” but that he was not worrying as he knew it would be paid even if it took five years. Then he added, “If you don’t send in an order I shall have to send up what I think you need and you wouldn’t like that, would you?” So I turned in an order. When the groceries arrived at the rectory that morning I found an envelope with ten dollars “incidental cash” in it which he had sent up, in case I was short of ready money, and which he had added to the bill as he knew I would not accept charity. He also asked for the key to our mail-box, so he could look after my mail for me. I have felt and still feel deeply indebted to him. It took me over two years to pay off his bill but it was paid, and each time I sent him five dollars on account I would get back a grateful letter from him just as if I had done him a favor.

Apart from the fact that I had been brought up in England where no anti-Jew feeling has prevailed and where the problem of the Negro is better understood than in the United States, I have been deeply indebted to members of these two suffering minorities. The problem of the Negro has always seemed to me simpler than that of the Jew, and one that can be much more easily solved.

The Jewish problem has seemed to me well nigh insoluble. I, at this time see no way out, except through the slow process of evolution and a planned educational campaign. I have no anti-Jewish feeling; some of my most beloved friends such as Dr. Assagioli, Regina Keller and Victor Fox I love devotedly, and they know it. There are few people in the world as close to me as they are, and I depend upon them for counsel and understanding and they [Page 119] do not fail me. I have been officially on Hitler’s “blacklist” because of my defence of the Jews whilst lecturing up and down western Europe. In spite, however, of knowing full well the wonderful qualities of the Jew, his contribution to western culture and learning and his wonderful assets and gifts along the line of the creative arts I still fail to see any immediate solution of their crucial and appalling problem.

There are faults on both sides. I do not here refer to the faults or rather the evil criminality of the Germans or the Poles towards their Jewish citizens. I refer to all those people who are for the Jews and not against them. We Gentiles have not yet found out what to do in order to liberate the Jews from persecution—a persecution that is many, many centuries old. The Egyptians in the early phases of Biblical history persecuted the Jews, and persecution has been their record down the years. I hesitate to state my conclusions but am going to do so in the hope that it may help. It is only possible however very briefly to bear on one or two points, and from the start it must be necessarily inadequate.

There must be some basic cause for this constant and ceaseless persecution, some reason why they are not liked. What can it be? The basic cause probably lies deeply rooted in certain racial characteristics. People complain (and it is frequently true) that the Jews lower the atmosphere of any district in which they reside. They hang their bedding and their clothing out of the windows. They live on the streets, sitting in groups on the sidewalks. But for centuries the Jews were tent dwellers and had to live this way and may still react to hereditary qualities. The complaint is made that the moment you permit a Jew to get a footing in your group or business organisation, it will not be long before his sisters and his nephews, his uncles and his aunts [Page 120] are in it too. But the Jews have had to hang together in the face of centuries of persecution. It is claimed that the Jew is strictly material, that the all-mighty dollar matters more to him than the ethical values and that he is quick and expert in taking advantage of the Gentiles. But the Jewish religion lays no emphasis upon immortality or upon the life after death, and this is true because I have discussed this problem with Jewish theological students. Why, therefore, should they not get the best out of life along material lines? Let us eat and drink and get worldly goods for tomorrow we die. All this is understandable but does not make for good relations.

As I have studied and thought and asked questions, certain things have clarified in my mind and are—for me—part of the answer. The Jews hang on to a religion which is basically obsolete. I asked myself a few days ago what part of·the Old Testament was worth preserving. Much of it is dreadful, cruel and only because the literature is found in the Bible does it pass the post-office regulations. I decided that the ten commandments must be preserved, one or two of the Bible stories such as the love of David and Jonathan, the 23rd Psalm and the 91st Psalm with a few others and about four chapters in the Book of Isaiah. All the rest was largely useless or undesirable, and much that was left fed the pride and nationalism of the people. That which stands between the orthodox Jew and the mass of the Gentiles are his religious taboos, for the Jewish faith is largely a religion of “Thou shalt not.” That which conditions Gentile thinking concerning the unorthodox and younger Jew is his materialism, of which Shylock is a symbol.

As I write these words I am conscious of their inadequacy and lack of complete fairness and yet from the standpoint of a broad generalisation, they are absolutely true— [Page 121] although from the standpoint of an individual Jew they are in many, many cases grossly unfair. There is much in the Jew and the German which is alike. The German regards himself as a member of the “super race” whilst the orthodox Jew regards himself as the Chosen People. The German emphasises “racial purity” and so have the Jews down the ages. The Jew never seems assimilable. I have met Jews in Asia, in India and in Europe as well as here and they remain Jews, and in spite of their citizenship they are separate from the nation in which they dwell. I have not found it so in Great Britain or in Holland.

The Gentiles have frequently treated the Jews abominably, and many of us are heartsick about it and working hard to help. One handicap comes today from the Jews themselves. Personally, I have never yet found a Jew who would admit that there might be faults or provocation on their side. They always take the position that they are the abused and that the whole problem could be solved by the Christian taking right action. Lots of us, thousands of us are trying to take right action but we get no cooperation from the Jews.

Forgive this digression, but the memory of Mr. Jacob Weinberg who so befriended me, started me off on a subject about which I am acutely concerned.

Other references

The Jews are a group of people in whom the principle of separation is pronouncedly present. For ages they have, with determination and in obedience to the injunctions in the Old Testament, insisted on regarding themselves as a people set apart. For ages they have held themselves separated off from all other peoples in the world. The result is that they are now evoking from the races among whom they are scattered a corresponding desire to force that very separation upon them. Under the law, we draw forth from others what is actually present within ourselves, and to this law, races and nations are no exception. Through the inter-relation of Jew and Gentile, of Semitic and Aryan, and through the solving of [Page 581] the Jewish problem will the great heresy of separateness eventually be fought out. Esoteric Psychology II, p.581

Karma is therefore that which Man—the Heavenly Man in whom we live, humanity as a whole, mankind in groups as nations, and individual man—has instituted, carried forward, endorsed, omitted to do or has done right through the ages until the present moment. Today, the harvest is ripe and mankind is reaping what it has sown, preparatory to a fresh ploughing in the springtime of the New Age, with a fresh sowing of the seed which will (let us pray and hope) produce a better harvest.

The outstanding evidence of the Law of Cause and Effect is the Jewish race. All nations prove this Law, but I choose to refer to the Hebrew peoples because their history is so well known and their future and their destiny are subjects of worldwide, universal concern. The Jews have always had a symbolic significance; they sum up in themselves—as a nation, down the ages—the depths of human evil and the heights of human divinity. Their aggressive history as narrated in the Old Testament is on a par with present-day German accomplishment; yet Christ was a Jew and it was the Hebrew race which produced Him. Let this never be forgotten. The Jews were great aggressors; they despoiled the Egyptians and they took the Promised Land at the point of the sword, sparing neither man, woman nor child. Their religious history has been built around a materialistic Jehovah, possessive, greedy and endorsing and encouraging aggression. Their history is symbolic of the history of all aggressors, rationalising themselves into the belief that they are carrying out divine purpose, wresting away from people their property in a spirit of self-defense and finding some [Page 264] reason, adequate to them, to excuse the iniquity of their action. Palestine was taken by the Jews because it was “a land flowing with milk and honey,” and the claim was made that the act was undertaken in obedience to divine command. Later, the symbolism gets most interesting. They divided into two halves: the Israelites with headquarters at Samaria, and the Jews (meaning two or three special tribes out of the twelve) locating around Jerusalem. Dualism ran through their religious beliefs; they were schooled by the Sadducees or the Pharisees, and these two groups were in constant conflict. Christ came as a member of the Jewish race and they renounced Him.

Today the law is working, and the Jews are paying the price, factually and symbolically, for all they have done in the past. They are demonstrating the far-reaching effects of the Law. Factually and symbolically, they stand for culture and civilisation; factually and symbolically, they are humanity; factually and symbolically, they stand as they have ever chosen to stand, for separation. They regard themselves as the chosen people and have an innate consciousness of that high destiny, forgetting their symbolic role and that it is Humanity which is the chosen people and not one small and unimportant fraction of the race. Factually and symbolically, they long for unity and cooperation, yet know not how to cooperate; factually and symbolically, they are the “Eternal Pilgrim”; they are mankind, wandering through the mazes of the three worlds of human evolution, and gazing with longing eyes towards a promised land; factually and symbolically, they resemble the mass of men, refusing to comprehend the underlying spiritual purpose of all material phenomena, rejecting the Christ within (as they did centuries ago the Christ within their borders), grasping for material good and steadily rejecting the things of the spirit. They demand the so-called restitution of Palestine, [Page 265] wresting it away from those who have inhabited it for many centuries; and by their continued emphasis upon material possession they lose sight of the true solution, which is that, symbolically and factually again, they must be assimilated into all the nations, and fused with all the races, thus demonstrating recognition of the One Humanity.

It is interesting to note that the Jews who inhabited southern Palestine, and whose chief city was Jerusalem, have succeeded in doing this and have fused with and been assimilated by the British, the Dutch and the French in a way that the Israelites, ruled from Samaria, have never done. I commend this to you for your consideration.

If the Jewish race would recall, therefore, their high symbolic destiny, and if the rest of humanity would see themselves in the Jewish people, and if both groups would emphasise the fact of human stock and cease thinking of themselves in terms of national and racial units, the karma of humanity would radically change from the retributive karma of the present to the recompensing good karma of the future.

Regarding this question from the long range vision (looking backward historically as well as forward hopefully), the problem is one to which the Jews themselves must make the larger contribution. They have never yet faced candidly and honestly (as a race) the problem of why the many nations, from the time of the Egyptians, have neither liked nor wanted them. It has always been the same down the centuries. Yet there must be some reason, inherent in the people themselves, when the reaction is so general and universal. Their approach to their direful problem has been one of supplication, or of distressed complaint, or of unhappy despair. Their demand has been for the Gentile nations to put the matter right, and many Gentiles have attempted to do so. Until, however, the Jews themselves [Page 266] face up to the situation and admit that there may be for them the working out of the retributive aspect of the Law of Cause and Effect, and until they endeavour to ascertain what it is in them, as a race, which has initiated their ancient and dire fate, this basic world issue will remain as it has been since the very night of time. That within the race there are and have been great, good, just and spiritual men is unalterably true. A generalisation is never a complete expression of the truth. But, viewing the problem of the Jews in time and space, in history and today, the points which I have made will bear careful consideration by the Jews.

What I have said in no way mitigates the guilt of those who have so sorely abused the Jews. You have a proverb, have you not? that “two blacks do not make a white.” The behaviour of the nations towards the Jews, culminating in the atrocities of the second quarter of the twentieth century, have no excuse. The law must inevitably work. Though much that has happened to the Jews originated in their past history and in their pronounced attitude of separativeness and nonassimilability, and in their emphasis upon material good, yet the agents who have brought the evil karma upon them equally incur the retributive aspect of the same law; the situation has now assumed the form of a vicious circle of error and wrong doing, of retribution and revenge, and in view of this the time must come when together the nations will confer upon this problem, and together they will cooperate to bring to an end the wrong attitudes on both sides. All karma of evil nature is solved by the presentation of an accepting will, a cooperative love, a frank acknowledgment of responsibility and a skillful adjustment of united joint activity to bring about the good of humanity as a whole, and not just the good of an individual nation or people or race. The Jewish problem will not be solved [Page 267] by taking possession of Palestine, by plaint and demand and by financial manipulations. That would be but the prolongation of ancient wrong and material possessiveness. The problem will be solved by the willingness of the Jew to conform to the civilisation, the cultural background and the standards of living of the nation to which—by the fact of birth and education—he is related and with which he should assimilate. It will come by the relinquishment of pride of race and of the concept of selectivity; it will come by renouncing dogmas and customs which are intrinsically obsolete and which create points of constant irritation to the matrix within which the Jew finds himself; it will come when selfishness in business relations and the pronounced manipulative tendencies of the Hebrew people are exchanged for more selfless and honest forms of activity.

The Jew, owing to his rays and point of development, is outstandingly creative and artistic. This he must recognise and not seek as he now does to dominate in all fields, to grasp all opportunities away from other people, and so better himself and his own people at the expense of others. Release from the present situation will come when the Jew forgets that he is a Jew and becomes in his inmost consciousness an Italian, an American, a Britisher, a German or a Pole. This is not so at this time. The Jewish problem will be solved by intermarriage; that of the Negro will not. This will mean concession and compromise on the part of the orthodox Jews—not the concession of expediency but the concession of conviction.

Let me point out also that just as the Kabbalah and the Talmud are secondary lines of esoteric approach to truth, and materialistic in their technique (embodying much of the magical work of relating one grade of matter to the substance of another grade), so the Old Testament is emphatically a secondary Scripture, and spiritually does not rank [Page 268] with the Bhagavad-Gita, the ancient Scriptures of the East and the New Testament. Its emphasis is material and its effect is to impress a purely materialistic Jehovah upon world consciousness. The general theme of the Old Testament is the recovery of the highest expression of the divine wisdom in the first solar system; that system embodied the creative work of the third aspect of divinity—that of active intelligence, expressing itself through matter. In this solar system, the created world is intended to be the expression of the second aspect, of the love of God. This the Jew has never grasped, for the love expressed in the Old Testament is the separative, possessive love of Jehovah for a distinct unit within the fourth or human kingdom. St. Paul summed up the attitude which humanity should assume in the words: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile.” The evil karma of the Jew today is intended to end his isolation, to bring him to the point of relinquishing material goals, of renouncing a nationality that has a tendency to be somewhat parasitic within the boundaries of other nations, and to express inclusive love, instead of separative unhappiness.

And what of the Gentile attitude? It is absolutely necessary that the nations meet the Jew more than half way when he arrives at altering—slowly and gradually—his nationalistic orthodoxy. It is essential that they cease from fear and persecution, from hatred and from placing barriers to cooperation. The growing anti-Semitic feeling in the world is inexcusable in the sight of God and man. I refer not here to the abominable cruelties of the obsessed German people. Behind that lies a history of Atlantean relationships into which it is needless for me to enter because I could not prove to you the truth of my statements. I refer to the history of the past two thousand years and to the everyday behaviour of Gentile people everywhere. There must be a definite effort upon the part of the nationals of [Page 269] every country to assimilate the Jews, to inter-marry with them, and to refuse to recognise as barriers old habits of thought and ancient bad relations. Men everywhere must regard it as a blot upon their national integrity if there is the appearance within their borders of the old duality—Jew and Gentile. There is neither Jew nor Gentile; there is only Humanity. This war (1914-1945) should be regarded as having brought to a conclusion the ancient enmity between Jew and Gentile, and the two groups have now the opportunity to originate a newer and happier measure of living and a truly cooperative relation on either side. The process of assimilation will be slow, for the situation is of so ancient a date that habits of thought, customary attitudes and separative customs are well established and hard to overcome. But the needed changes can be made if goodwill directs the spoken word, the written presentation and the mode of living together. The Hierarchy sees no distinction. The Head of the Hierarchy, though not in a Jewish body at this time, achieved the highest spiritual goal for humanity whilst in a Jewish vehicle. The Hierarchy is also sending into Jewish bodies certain disciples who will work with full intent at the changing of the situation. There are Jews today, a few in number, who do not think in terms of being Jews; who are not preoccupied with the Jewish problem to the exclusion of all else, and who are endeavouring to fuse all people into one humanity, thus bridging the gap.

Again, I say, that the Masters of the Wisdom see neither Jew nor Gentile, but only souls and sons of God. Esoteric Healing, pp. 264 – 269

We come now, for a brief moment, to a consideration of the Jewish question. Remember that it is an interesting fact that the Jews are found in every land without exception, that their influence is potent and widespread (far more so than they themselves are willing to recognise), and that they wield most potently that peculiar concretisation of energy which we call money. They constitute, in a strange manner, a unique and distinctly separated world centre of energy. The reason for this is that they represent the energy and the life of the previous solar system. You have often been told how, at the close of this solar system, a certain percentage of the human family will fail to make the grade and will then be held in pralaya, or in solution, until the time for the manifestation of the next and third solar system comes around. Then they will constitute the advanced guard and the symbol of the coming humanity of that system. The same thing occurred in the system before this one and those whom we now call the Jews (a purely modern name and distinction, as I tried to show in the last few pages of A Treatise on the Seven Rays, Vol. I, Esoteric Psychology), are the descendants of that earlier group which was held in pralaya between the first and second solar systems. If you will remember that the third ray governed that system and also governs the Jewish race, if you bear in mind that that system was occupied with [Page 77] the divine aspects of matter only and with external conditions, and that the Jews were the highest product of that system you can come to an understanding of the Jew, his separateness, his desire for racial purity and his interest in that which is commercial and tangible. The Jew, down the ages, has insisted upon being separated from all other races but he brought over from the previous system the knowledge (necessary then but obsolete now) that his race was the “chosen people.” The “Wandering Jew” has wandered from System One to this where he must learn the lesson of absorption and cease his wandering. He has insisted upon racial purity, for that was his major problem in early Lemurian times when the race came into a world that had in it no human beings, for it was before the coming of the Lords of Flame; this insistence has been carried down the ages and has governed the rules of marriage and the preparation of food instead of being dropped (as it should have been) thousands of years ago. It is these facts (unknown to the modern Jew) which has militated against him down the years and made it possible for the forces of separativeness and of hate, to use the Jewish race to stir up world difficulty, and thus bring to a crisis the basic human problem of separation. When humanity has solved the Jewish problem (with the understanding cooperation of the Jew) and overcome ancient antipathies and hatreds, it will do so by fusing the problem in one vast humanitarian situation. When that happens, the problem will be rapidly solved and one of the major difficulties will disappear off the face of the earth. Racial fusion will then be possible. Our earth humanity and the group of human beings who are far more ancient in their origin than we are, will form one humanity and then there will be peace on earth.

Why our planet and this solar system should have been constituted the nursery for the seeds of separativeness and why this remnant of humanity, far more advanced than ours, should have been destined to work out its future on our earth, is hid in the knowledge of the Lord of Shamballa, and is unattainable knowledge for you and, indeed, for many [Page 78] in the Hierarchy. It is simply a fact to be accepted by you. The solution will come, as I said, when the races regard the Jewish problem as a humanitarian problem but also when the Jew does his share of understanding, love and right action. This he does not yet do, speaking racially. He must let go of his own separative tendencies and of his deep sense of persecution. He will do this latter with great facility, when he grasps, as a race, the significance and inevitability of the Law of Karma, and from a close study of the Old Testament and of the acts and deeds there claimed by him as his racial acts and deeds (conquest, terrorism and cruelty), realises that the law is working out and incidentally releasing him for a greater future. There must, at the same time, be a realisation by the Jew and Gentile of equal responsibility and equal liability for the present world difficulty.

The two forces to which I have been referring must, therefore, be taken into account by all disciples as they seek to serve in this critical cycle; these two forces must also be taken into your calculations as you start this new group work or your wrong idealisms and thoughts may hinder the group work. You must recognise theoretically the five forces (three major and two minor) which meet and clash in the human family at this time. It has been necessary for me to bring these facts to your attention. If disciples are to do group work together on mental levels, they must clear their minds of prejudice, hatreds and any tendency to superiority and criticism. You cannot work, as a group, if these ideas and thoughts are present, and I am preparing now to teach you some of the first stages of group work and usefulness. It would not have been necessary for me to deal with these world problems if you had been immune from emotional reactions to them, but very few of you have your minds clear from prejudice and free from hatred. Those few make the work possible and it is also possible for the rest of you to detach your minds from undue influence and wrong ideas.

I ask you, in this work, to concentrate upon the Shamballa and the Hierarchical forces. I ask you to regard yourselves [Page 79] as pure and unclogged channels and to seek only to be linked with the soul of each and all, whose nature is pure love, realised synthesis and divine potency.

It is essential, however, in spite of the work to which I have called these groups and which—as you know—is intended to lay the basis for the work of the esoteric schools of the future, that the members of all the groups realise that exoteric group work must also be undertaken. Too many in these groups are satisfied with the significance of their own group work and permit it to usurp the place of objective service.

If it is so hard, my brothers, to arouse aspirants, such as yourselves, to urgent service and a full sense of responsibility; if men and women with all the information that you possess cannot be aroused to sacrificing effort, you can gain some idea of the magnitude of the task with which the Hierarchy is confronted at this time. You can realise, perhaps, the sense almost of frustration which could sweep over me (if I were limited by any time concept) when, for instance, those to whom I look for cooperation, are preoccupied with their own affairs, have no sense of immediacy and prefer to concentrate upon their own development, their own families, their own problems, rather than achieve the larger world view which would lead to full cooperation. The averting of a world debacle is the aim of our effort and towards this aim I have asked your help. EofH

The fourth type of force, which is responsible for the state of world affairs at this time, is that of the Jews; they, as a whole, constitute the solar plexus of the planetary Logos; their problem is being used today to focus, qualify and condition the world feeling-nature and the emotional reactions of the sensitive nature of humanity and of the planetary Logos. Forget not that the Personality of our planetary Logos is not yet perfect, hence the fact that His body of manifestation, the planet, is not reckoned as being one of the sacred planets. Through the Jewish people throughout the world, feeling—sympathetic or antagonistic, expressive of love or conditioned by hate—is being gathered to a focus in the planetary solar plexus centre, preparatory to a great and permanent change. It is for this reason that I have said to some of my pupils that when humanity will have solved correctly the Jewish problem, and when it has been resolved in a humanitarian and sound manner, then the energy of the planetary solar plexus centre will have been raised to the heart and a great transmutation will have taken place.

The Dark or Materialistic Forces correspond in their entirety to the energies of the sacral centre of the planet, dealing with the generation of forms, and their work is to keep the direction of planetary interest upon the form side of divine expression. They are concerned with the life of matter itself, with its magical usage, and with that which is regarded as dark because, for humanity at its present stage of development, that divine aspect should have lost its major [Page 88] hold and should lie behind “in the darkness of that which has been outgrown and which has no further hold upon the son of God”. You therefore have the following tabulation expressing what I have sought above to make clear to you.

I would point out here that the fourth energy, focussed in the Jewish problem, is definitely producing cleavage as a part of the divine plan. The Jews are instruments in the working out of the Plan for the production of certain syntheses and to bring humanity to certain realisations and decisions. A close study of this tabulation will bring you much of knowledge. However, it only expresses the present situation in this interim period between the old Piscean age which is passing and the new Aquarian age which is coming in. It depicts this present world cycle. The emphasis of the rays changes in connection with the last two types of energy expressions quite constantly, because they are symbolic (in this day and age) of the personality nature in its physical and emotional forms.

I wonder whether you can grasp the implications of this paragraph. When the mind aspect (the third aspect of the personality) is more fully developed, then the focus of the effort of the Dark Forces will change and the problem of the Jews will disappear. Mankind is not yet handling its problems intelligently. Thus the forces and energies of the creative process are exceedingly active at this time in preparing what I might call the “material of the world” and the substance of all the four kingdoms in nature for the coming changes. As the ploughman turns the soil of his field and harrows it, and so brings that which is underneath to eventual fruition, so a similar process is taking place in the world today, and all is preparatory for the sowing and its resultant effects. These effects will constitute the new Aquarian culture and civilisation. In this process the Hierarchy is taking a definite and influential part and is working more uniquely and specifically than ever before in the history of the world, under instruction and vital aid from Shamballa. Externalisation of the Hierarchy, pp. 77 – 89