Alice Bailey - Autobiography

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Autobiography of Alice A. Bailey - Chapter III

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 generalization, they, are absolutely true - although [121] 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 emphasizes "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.

The problem, therefore, facing Walter and myself was what should we do? I understood Walter's fate was largely in my hands. If I could induce him to behave himself and treat me with ordinary decency eventually the Bishop would endeavor to get him another charge in another diocese where he would not be handicapped by his past, though the bishop of that diocese would, of course, have to know the details. I remember well the evening in which I put the situation flatly and baldly to Walter, after having a long talk with the Bishop. I made him see that his fate [122] did lie in my hands and that it would be the part of wisdom for him to stop knocking me about. I told him that any time I could get a divorce from him on the strength of the testimony of the doctor who had looked after me when Ellison was born and who had seen me with bruises all over my body. This threat from the point of view of the Episcopal Church was potent. His career as a priest would be over. He was a proud man and (being inwardly shocked by the publicity) from that day on he never laid a finger on me. He sulked and would not talk for days on end and gave me the bulk of the work to do but I had no further cause to be afraid of him.

We took a shack of three rooms in the depths of wild country not far from Pacific Grove and I started in to keep hens, and to make a little money by selling their eggs. I found out very quickly that unless you could keep hens on a very large scale (which involves capital) you don't make much money. Hens are such silly things; they have such silly faces; they have such stupid habits; they are completely devoid of intelligence; the only exciting part about poultry keeping is hunting the eggs, and that's a dirty job. But I did manage to feed the family, and the shack was only $8.00 a month and not worth that.

My life at this time was entirely monotonous - looking after three babies, one morose husband and several hundred stupid hens. We had no bathroom or indoor toilet. Even keeping the children and the place clean was a problem. We had practically no money and part of the grocer's bill was paid with the eggs, which the grocer always took because he was my friend. I used to go out in the surrounding woods with a wheelbarrow, the children trotting after me, and collect the wood for the fires. I cannot, therefore, say that this was a pleasant time. Again, I don't feel humorous about it. It was like an entirely new incarnation [123] and the contrast between this humdrum life of a housekeeper and a mother, poultry keeper and gardener and my rich life as a girl and my full life as an evangelist finally got me completely down.

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