Of late, it has become fashionable to divide time into five-year periods. We moderns apparently grew tired of the symbolical setting. So we hear of five-year plans for the future of this or that country, community or enterprise. This survey proposes to deal with an equal period of five years that have gone by in the history of American Jewry. The forthcoming session of the Constitution Grand Lodge of the Independent Order of B'nai B'rith [I.O.B.B.], coming after a five-year intermission, provides an excellent opportunity.
The new five-year period opens under conditions quite different facing American Jews five years ago when the Constitution Grand Lodge adjourned.
President Hoover in a letter just made public, addressed to Felix Warburg, expressed his consent and approval of the observance of April 13th, Jefferson's birthday, as America's religious freedom day. A presidential committee, to be appointed by the chief executive, is to take charge of the nationwide observance of this religious freedom day. It is a thoughtful idea which well signifies the spirit of the age or at least the enlightened leaders' aspirations for it. Passover, Easter and the birthday of Jefferson, author of the ordinance of religious freedom, coinciding on one day, make a remarkable combination.
Quite different were the conditions in America five years ago. When the period opened, the Ku Klux Klan was still a strong factor in the political and social life of wide sections of the country. The agitation for the introduction of religious instruction in the public schools had not yet abated. The Nordic superiority propaganda which culminated in the enactment of the 1924 immigration act was still going strong. Henry Ford's anti-Jewish campaign was at its climax and the Dearborn Independent virtually became the depositary for all the nonsensical outpourings of the sickly imagination and European anti-Semites.
It had become increasingly and painfully clear that although eight years had elapsed since the end of the World War, the world had not yet recovered from war hatreds and hysteria. Furthermore, evidence had been accumulated showing that so far as the Jews are concerned, and in particular, those ancient Jewish communities of Eastern and Central Europe, the period of misery, oppression and suffering had just begun. It seemed as if the evils, the mistakes, the hatreds and the passions of a thousand years of European history were erupting in volcanic fashion, pouring their devastating lava on the eternal scapegoat -- the Jew.
American Jewry, new in its size and comparative prosperity, had just emerged from a continuous ten-year effort on behalf of war-stricken European Jewry. A fight on a double front, at home and abroad, had become tiresome and exhausting. With the domestic pressure unrelaxed, the pressure from abroad tended to create a new impetus, which found expression in the popular campaign slogan: "Tired of giving? You don't know what it is to be tired."
With the annual communal budget for social, charitable and educational purposes amounting to approximately $60,000,000, the Jews of America, under the leadership of the Joint Distribution Committee, again undertook a $25,000,000 drive for the relief and reconstruction of their brethren abroad. As the five-year period comes to a close, over $21,000,000 of the amount sought was raised and expended for the purposes outlined and particularly for the furtherance of the settlement of Jews on the land in Russia. The Zionist movement, functioning mainly through its financial drives for Palestine purposes, seems to be losing its force. Due, however, to what seemed to be a threatening clash with the non-Zionist interests in the Russian colonization, it gained new power, starting a cycle of the so-called United Palestine Appeal drives.
Simultaneously an internal process of consolidation and construction was going on in American Jewry itself. New congregations for the purposes of worship were being formed; old congregations erected new synagogues and temples at an expense ranging between fifteen and twenty-five million dollars annually. The community center, advocated for many years before as the best vehicle for adjustment, came to the fore. Various types and kinds of agencies and institutions were created and renewed. The old problem of the future of the youth or, more specifically, the imparting of a Jewish education to the growing generation, had begun to receive more attention. With the I.O.B.B. taking the lead, the academic youth now came for its share of the Jewish heritage. A successful Wider-Scope campaign for $2,000,000 was conducted by the I.O.B.B. for putting into operation the plan of the Hillel Foundations in various universities and for kindred Jewish educational purposes.
The three branches of American Judaism, Orthodox, Conservative and Reform, continued to show their determination to survive and gave substantial evidence of their vitality. The Hebrew Union College, inaugurated and successfully concluded its $5,000,000 Endowment Campaign; the Jewish Theological Seminary started the construction of its new buildings, with the assistance of a fund of over a million dollars left by the last Mr. Brush; the Yeshiva College, the institution for the training of Orthodox Rabbis and teachers, raised an amount exceeding $3,000,000, completed the construction of its new magnificent building in Washington Heights, and undertook an unparalleled and daring program of opening, with the charter of New York State University, a college for liberal arts and sciences under Jewish auspices.
While these communal developments were unfolding, a vigilant battle against the forces of prejudice and bigotry had to be continued with the dramatic and memorable recantation by Henry Ford of his charges against the Jewish people in a statement he addressed on June 30, 1927 to the late Louis Marshall. Memorable was also the vigilant fight conducted by the I.O.B.B. against anti-Jewish defamation through the output of the film industry and notably its preventive work in regard to the "King of Kings."
In the economic field, a notable development was that which took place in the New York needle industries. A large section of the workers came for a while under the influence of the Moscow-minded left wingers, leading to the impoverishment and ruin of many of the workers, the wreckage of the unions and the return of the despicable sweatshop system. The Jewish labor movement, seeing itself menaced and the gains of its struggle for a quarter of a century endangered, gathered new forces. The socialist right-wing waged a severe battle against the Communists and wrestled from their hands the control over the leading labor organizations. The fight against the sweatshop system was renewed and successfully conducted. The contribution of American Jewry, 3,225,000 strong, to the progress and development of America, in the fields of commerce, industry, letters and politics was obviously an impressive one. It is deplorable that the instruments of accurate research, yielding undoubted facts and figures, are not and perhaps cannot be available to draw a complete picture of that contribution. However, the contribution of the Jews to America, so often a topic of discussion, expresses itself primarily in the upbuilding of the life of the country as a whole and secondarily in the upbuilding of the educational, social and welfare institutions which dot the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific and which throb with vigorous life. The array of Jewish philanthropists establishing vast foundations for general non-sectarian and educational purposes, such as the Rosenwald Foundation, the Ten Million Dollar Fuld Foundation, the several Guggenheim Foundations (for aviation, for advanced studies abroad, for dental clinics) is too numerous for detailed registration in this review.
The contribution of the numerous Jewish writers to the field of American letters, researches leading to new discoveries by men of science like the late Dr. Goldberg, Dr. Falk of Chicago, the veteran Professor A.A. Michelson, the artists and singers, stand out in the public eye.
As the years advance and the eternal processes are consummated, American Jewry seems to be advancing to an unparalleled position. Already now, the leadership of American Jewry in world Jewish affairs, not only in regard to fundraising activities, is conceded. The recent union between the Zionists and non-Zionists in the Jewish Agency for Palestine, with the Americans playing a dominant role in it, places the mantel of leadership of world Jewry on the shoulders of the Jews of America.
(Publication details unknown. Text from a typewritten manuscript. Date appears to be 1930.)
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