The fourth visit to America of Dr Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, is a matter of intense interest not only to Zionists, but also to non-Zionists.
The reception rendered to him this time, and the messages delivered on this occasion, differed from those on his previous visits. Little was left of the pomp, grandeur, and high phrases so frequently used in the effort to enlist the cooperation of the most important Jewish community in the world -- American Jewry -- in the process of rebuilding Palestine as a Jewish center.
Enthusiasm has played a great role in the history of all nations, when these nations had to lay the foundation for their existence or to start out on the road of cultural development. It is the driving power that gives the start. Soon, however, the actual realities of human life, the complex problems of hardships, disabilities and obstacles have to be faced and calmly dealt with. Since the war, Zionism has passed its enthusiastic flame of youth. It has grown to manhood and is facing immense tasks.
Dr. Weizmann, in delivering his message on the occasion of his fourth visit to the United States, could do no better than to state the facts. And stating facts of Jewish realities in Europe means reviewing the economic, cultural, political and ethical conditions prevailing on the vast space from the Rhine to the Volga, where nine million Jews are on the verge of economic destruction.
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Leaders of men, as the recent record of the stormy period during the world war has amply shown, often depend upon their ability to summarize the situation confronting them and coin one phrase which would bring home the command of the hour.
"Taxed out of existence" is the remarkably well-coined statement made by Dr. Weizmann at the Carnegie Hall meeting in describing the situation of the Jewish communities from the Volga to the Rhine, particularly in Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Soviet Russia. A feeling of security has developed lately owing to the fact that reports of severe anti-Jewish excesses have begun to arrive with less frequency than in previous times, or owing to the fact that we have stopped reading such reports.
There is, however, a stronger machinery of extermination directed against the large Jewish communities at work. The difference is only that the wheels of this powerful machine, frequently operated by the states, is well-oiled and its grinding is not so loud that it can be heard across the ocean.
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A report of the Bureau of Immigration of the United States Department of Labor for the period of July to December 1924 states that of a total of 147,737 new immigrants to this country, 4,975 were Jewish. Of a total of 28,098 immigrants to the United States during the month of December, 1151 were Jewish. The total growth of the Jewish community in the United States for this period through immigration, counting those who left the country, amounted to 5,835.
The National Bakers and Confectionery Workers Union in the City of New York called a conference of kindred organizations for March 1st to consider the critical situation which has arisen in the Jewish bakery industry in the City of New York.
Is there any connection between these two news items?
You will no doubt be inclined to say most emphatically "No."
Upon close examination and through a study of the undercurrent in American economic and social life, the connection will become more than apparent, even highly instructive and characteristic.
The story revolves around a loaf of rye bread.
Among the many contributions of the various immigrant groups to the manifold forms of American life, the loaf of rye bread remained an epic which awaited telling: rye bread, the favorite food of the Jewish middle classes in the various East and Central European countries, was introduced into American city life as a non-quota immigrant. Pardon -- there was no quota as yet dreamed of.
Baking as an industry, relieving the American housewife of this trying task and laying the foundation for her higher social status, paving the way for her political equality and suffrage, was introduced by immigrants fifty years ago. These were the Germans who were the best bakers on the European continent. Upon their heels followed the Jewish baking industry in New York City. Galicia, the poor strip of land which had not enough corn to make bread salable to a poverty-stricken population, exported to these shores great numbers of bakery hands who felt it their duty to feed the hungry ones. Not only hands were sent -- also some heads arrived and a great industry developed.
One of the foundations of this industry was the novelty of rye bread, the favorite food of the Jewish immigrant masses. In the European countries where the Jews occupied a central position between the peasants (the lower class which fed itself upon black bread) and the nobility which was fed on French rolls or German "Kaiser rolls," the economical Jewish housewife chose the golden mean. A compromise was brought about in the shape of the rye bread loaf, a kind of bread which neither entirely black nor entirely white.
Since the closing of the gates to immigration and the shifting of the second generation into professional and business occupations, the rye bread is about to make its exit. The rapidity of the Americanization process of the Jewish immigrant groups in New York City can be ascertained by this phenomenon, affecting a sphere of dietary habits which are the least susceptible to change.
The annals of Jewish cookery and baking have witnessed the ascent and descent of Egyptian bread, the Hamantaschen, the Challah and the Kreplach, and many other kinds of foods and dishes with the change of times, tastes and customs. Further developments concerning the rye bread can be watched quite calmly.
Has not the Bible said, "Not on bread alone the man liveth"?
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