It is the general opinion that with the passage of the new immigration bill, American Jewry is entering a new epoch in its history. With immigration severely restricted, American Jewry will from now on have to depend for its spiritual development on its own resources. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency considers this moment opportune to portray to the Jewish public these figures in American Jewish life who are at the head of Jewish public affairs, and are responsible for the molding of Jewish public opinion through the medium of the Jewish press of this country.
Herman Bernstein
What is Journalism? Is it merely to write of things that happen through the will of other people, or is it rather writing that influences other people and creates in them the will to do? What is the inner force of a man who has enriched the globe, come in contact with kings, presidents and diplomats, discovered secret treaties and unearthed the most intimate letters of Emperors?
Is it merely the journalistic search for “good newspaper stuff,” or is there in back of it a central idea that employs these methods in order that some higher ideal may be achieved?
With these questions in mind I went to see Mr. Herman Bernstein. I had met him several years before. It was in the city of Warsaw during the Versailles Peace Conference. The prestige of President Wilson and America was at its height. Rumors were afloat in Central and Eastern Europe that President Wilson was determined to see to it that his fourteen points, including the point, introduced for the first time in the history of the world, of self-determination for small nations, should be carried out. Reports had been circulating in the Polish press that the “anonymous power” (meaning Jewish representatives at the Paris conference), had set all forces in motion to influence the contracting parties to guarantee in a special international treaty, the rights of small nations whose fate it was to live on territories ruled by other nations. It was merely rumored, but not believed; and here is Mr. Herman Bernstein, who on a shortcut from Paris to Moscow, stopped over in Warsaw and brought with him the actual text of the treaty, before it was intended to be published.
He came armed with a letter of introduction from the then-powerful Prime Minister Paderewski to Minister of the Interior Wojciechowski, now the President of the Polish Republic. Surely a document brought by him is authentic. However, when the document was published, the Polish press poured out its wrath on the “anonymous power” and most of all on the wandering Jew, Herman Bernstein.
But the Wandering Jew did not stay long enough in the capital of the resurrected Poland to see these attacks upon him. In pursuit of his mission, he proceeded . . . north, or west, east or south? Who could tell?
When I sat down in his apartment in New York for the purpose of interviewing Mr. Herman Bernstein, I thought I had a very hard task before me. To interview a president or a minister is not a hard thing. If you concentrate on your subject, you will “catch him.” But to interview an interviewer, one who knows the ins and outs of the interviewing game, seemed to be rather a difficult task. However, Herman Bernstein, the great interviewer, proved to be not so terrible after all. On the contrary, he seemed to have decided in advance to make up for all the suspense which he must have caused in others, by repaying with kindness those who come to interview him. As I looked at the amiable, smiling countenance and listened to his fluent conversation, a most interesting tale of a life started in Russia, developed in New York and exercised in Tokyo, Petrograd, Paris and Vladivostok, unfolded itself.
* * *
Born in 1876 in Neustadt-Shervint, raised in Mogilow in a well-to-do, enlightened Jewish family, he received a thorough religious training combined with a sound secular education. As early as at eleven years of age, his interest in the affairs of his people manifested itself in his attempts to become the correspondent of the then-influential and widely read Hebrew daily paper “Ha’ Meilitz,” in Petrograd. While learning by heart Talmudic volumes, he endeavored to write Russian poetry, his heart having been captured by the poetry of Pushkin and Lermontov. However, the life of the promising lad was destined to undergo an important transformation and all the pain of a transplantation into a new and entirely strange environment. It was his uncle, Hirsch Bernstein, the family’s first “discoverer of America,” who having found in the ‘80s a refuge in New York, proceeded immediately to prepare the ground for a large settlement of his race in the New World. He was the first to establish a Hebrew newspaper in this country, under the name “Hazopheh B’eretz Ha’Khadacha” (The Observer in a New Land). Soon the entire family came over and the young Herman had to assume part of the family’s responsibilities.
Changing jobs and professions as many times as is imaginable in the course of five years, he finally landed on Division Street, New York, in a clothing store, where the position of bookkeeper seemed to offer him a livelihood with the possibility of continuing his education and his literary work. Having mastered the English language, his old literary ambition found expression in continuous attempts at Russian poetry, translations into English from the Russian and numberless short stories in English. While some of his poetry and translations were published in weekly Jewish magazines, his short story offerings were always returned to him; until one day, a quarter of a century ago, the young Bernstein found to his own surprise that a story of his pen had been published in the literary section of the then-widely read “New York Evening Post.”
The name of the story was “Sareh Rivke’s Vigil.” It was a sad story of a Jewish mother watching over her son who, in her brooding, seemed to be in danger of being led astray. Herman Bernstein has been ever since vigilant of the important problems in the life of America and in the life of his people all over the world. Although an immigrant of not more than five years’ residence, Bernstein’s stories, which had been sent back to him time and again, were now in great demand by American editors and publishers. Although unrecommended and unsponsored, Herman Bernstein’s journalistic work won success on its own merits and placed him in a short period of time in the rank of those who form American opinion on international affairs, and one of the molders of Jewish public opinion in this country and many others.
* * *
It is hard to choose from the multitude of problems which attracted the attention of Herman Bernstein’s pen, those which are of greater significance. In fact, they were all significant and all important in their day. It is the tragedy of the journalistic profession that the greatest amount of intellect and skill, invested in “burning issues” is no longer duration than Jonah’s gourd. With the difference, however, that while the leaves of the journalistic Jonah disappear as soon as the sun rises and a new day is marked on the calendar, the work of the Jonah in journalism, the one, who is in his sea-crossings is driven by an inner search for truth and has at the point of his pen a message of real value, endures. Because of his literary activities, particularly in the translations from the Russian into English, Mr. Bernstein found one day a short story in the Russian magazine “Viestnik Europy,” under the name of S. Witte. Being anxious to translate the story into English, he wrote to S. Witte, in care of the journal, asking for permission to do so. In return, Mr. Bernstein received a letter from Mlle. Sofia Witte, enclosing an entire volume of her stories which she thought would prove to be as interesting as her first story. However, some of the stories were ink-spotted, in a manner that indicated censoring. The censored spots proved to be unpleasant references to the Jews. Without being personally known to each other, author and translator engaged in a heated correspondence concerning the Jewish question in Russia. The somewhat bitter controversy ended, however, in a sincere friendship which was to lead to a great change in Herman Bernstein’s activities.
Sofia Witte proved to be none other than the aristocratic sister of the then-powerful Count Witte, the Prime Minister of Russia, who at the time was due to arrive in the United States, at the invitation of President Roosevelt, to negotiate the Russian-Japanese peace treaty of Portsmouth.
Starling revelations of an international character, probably still remembered by devoted newspaper readers, were the result of this correspondence, and Bernstein rose to be the feared and fearless American journalist, exposer of international intrigue and corruption.
* * *
What is the outstanding problem in American Jewish life at the present time, was the question that I put to Mr. Herman Bernstein in conclusion. “There are two questions which are of interest to leaders of American Jewry above everything else,” he answered. “The first is the question of securing Jewish education for our youth. It has been the evil of our life in this country that in exchange for the material blessings which our people have received here, many of us, in our anxiety to become fully American, have overdone it. Many have become 110 percent American, crushing entirely their Judaism, and losing thus their rich racial and cultural heritage, the things that make for their individuality. It is evident that if Jewish life in America is to continue it must have a sound foundation in a proper Jewish education. There is no conflict between real Americanism and the ancient teachings of Judaism.
“The second problem which ought to get the attention of our people in his country is the problem of rebuilding Palestine. With the other relief work stopped, the work of rehabilitating Palestine is the only great task, the fulfillment of which is rightly expected from us.”
“What is the future of the Yiddish press in this country?” I ventured to ask the founder and former editor of the great Yiddish daily “The Day,” “and what tendency is likely to predominate in Jewish life in this country after the complete stoppage of immigration?”
“While it is true,” Mr. Bernstein said, “that the Yiddish press has already seen its best days in this country, there is no ground to hold any pessimistic views regarding the future of American Jewry which has already sufficiently strong elements of communal vitality, learning and leadership.”
“Do you think that the passage of the anti-immigration bill, together with the talk about the superiority of the so-called ‘Nordic’ [people] may create a ferment of racial discrimination in America, affecting the Jewish people first of all?” I asked in conclusion.
“America, as well as the rest of the world, has not yet demobilized its spirit of unrest and the wave of chauvinistic madness. The anti-immigration bill is one expression of this general unrest which is still prevailing. America will sooner or later free itself from it. But while we need not be alarmed, we should not follow any longer the course of the ‘Great Non-Resistant’ as Tolstoy named us. We ought to combat anti-Semitism openly and vigorously at any time it makes its appearance.”
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