New York Topics

The Jewish Post, July 1929.*


Thirty thousand garments workers, mostly Jews, are on strike since July 3. The Manhattan district from 23rd Street to 40th Street, called the Garment Center, is the scene of daily unrest. Nothing fundamentally dangerous, to be sure. Those who have witnessed revolutionary labor struggles in other world centers, with their direct threat to society as now constituted, will be inclined to view these events as a rather mild occurrence. The fights develop, not between the State and labor as a class, but between organized labor as a social force, constructive and state-building in the fight against this social plague, [the] antisocial forces of the sweatshops on one side and the left-wingers on the other.

The sweatshop was the enemy that stood at the cradle of the Jewish labor movement a generation ago.

The individualism and the innate sense of justice of the Jewish worker waged a fierce battle against it. Due to the energy and intellect invested in the fight against this social plague, it was by and by recognized that the abolition of the sweatshop is not only in the interest of labor but perhaps more to the benefit of the State, of industry as such, and of business in general. Under the influence of these labor struggles, social legislation was placed on the statue books[, an] example of a fair and humanitarian approach toward a solution of the problems under modern conditions.

As a result of the unfortunate 1926 strike under the left-wing leadership, the ladies’ garment workers, who were in the forefront of progress, seem again to be threatened with the sweatshop menace. The war declared against it is significant in more than one direction. It certainly has the sympathy of the enlightened New York public, who think in social rather than in narrow class terms.

The appointment by Gov. Roosevelt of our Lieutenant Governor, Colonel Herbert H. Lehman, who was Chairman of Governor Smith’s board during the 1924 strike, augurs well for a speedy and just settlement. It has a particular meaning from a Jewish point of view when it is remembered that the welfare of almost 30,000 Jewish families directly affected and about as many indirectly interested, is at stake.

A housecleaning in the New York needle industry has even greater importance from a Jewish political point of view. The outstanding feature in the Jewish mass immigration to the United States during the beginning of the twentieth century was the compulsory, rapid transformation of a large number of our people from the “Luft menschen”[1] class into a healthy and productive factor in the economic fabric of American life.

Of late, alarming signs of an increasing exodus of many workers and their children into the ranks of the lower-middle classes were beginning to be noted. This fact not only tended to undo the work of the first generation of pioneers, but also to raise many weighty economic and social questions.

The elimination of the sweatshop evil and the raising of the standard [of living] in the need industry may be a step in a direction perhaps beyond the program of the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union and the American Federation of Labor which lends to it its support.

* Note: this essay appears to have been edited “for style,” and thus doesn’t resemble the writer’s other essays. It also doesn’t make sense and/or makes odd, unsubstantiated claims in places, which suggests that it was hacked up so that it could fit the space that was available.

[1] Yiddish expression (“air people”) for people who have no apparent means of support.

Menahem Ussishkin

The Pittsburgh Tri-State Pinkas, 1947.

(Attributed to Z. Alroy.)

Within Menahem Ussishkin’s life span (1863-1941) many dramatic events and profound revolutionary changes occurred in the world. From the historian’s angle, these turbulent 78 years have witnessed a remarkable upward trend in the scientific, cultural, economic and political progress of the peoples that were the players in the world’s drama. Only one member of the human family has not benefited from the new development that was under way before the advent of Nazism: Jewry. Its status has not only not been improved, but has steadily been deteriorating. Two-thirds of the Jewish world population face today physical and spiritual extermination.

When Menahem Ussishkin saw the light of day in Dubrowna, Russia, in the year 1863, Alexander II ruled over All The Russias. Wilhelm I sat on the throne of Prussia. Napoleon III reigned over France. Victoria was Queen of England and the Dominions beyond the seas. Abraham Lincoln, having freed the Negroes, fought the Civil War for the principles of Emancipation. In Palestine, under the Sultan’s sovereignty, there lived but a handful of old and pious Jews who had come to the Holy Land to die there. In the United States the Jewish community numbered less than 250,000 souls.

The era of the Isms was then in its mere infancy. Only fifteen years had elapsed since Karl Marx and his associates had issued their Communist Manifesto. But in Germany, the land of Goethe and Schiller, Kant and Hegel, anti-Semitism, the forerunner of Aryanism and Hitlerism, began to raise its head in the garb of “scientific anti-Semitism.” The upper strata of West European Jewry, which had striven hard to persuade itself that the Emancipation, which had come painfully and slowly, really wrote “finis” to the Jewish Question, began to wonder whether this was really so.

In Eastern Europe the Poles were rising against the oppression of Czarist Russia. In Russia proper the Nihilists and the social revolutionaries were busily engaged in surreptitiously setting the stage for that process of revolt which culminated in the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. Russian Jewry, 6,000,000 strong and a reservoir of Jewish life, tradition and culture, was in the throes of an inner severe crisis which resulted from the struggle between the traditionalists and the adherents of the Haskalah (Enlightenment). It was yet to experience the pogroms, the humiliations and the oppressions of the decades that were to follow. Its confinement to an official Czarist Pale of Settlement was yet to be enacted.

It was not a happy world into which Menahem Ussishkin was born and in which he grew to manhood. So oppressive was the life of the Jewish masses on the steppes of Russia and in the adjacent lands that the misery and hopefulness that hung over it produced among the more thoughtful and forward-looking leaders of the older generation a feverish desire for a radical change. Some joined the forces of the revolution that promised release. Others sought release through national revival in accordance with a pattern that had its living roots in the deep-seated traditions of the Jewish masses and its incentive in the ancient glories of Israel.

As a youth of 18 – then a student in the Moscow Technical Institute from which he later graduated as an engineer – Ussishkin was already engaged in founding a branch of the Chovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion), the Palestine colonization movement which preceded Theodor Herzl’s Political Zionism. Stirred to the depth of his soul by the anti-Jewish pogroms of 1882 in Russia, he joined the Bilu (abbreviated Hebraic description of those who issued the slogan “House of Jacob, come, let us go!”), the first group of Russian Jewish students who abandoned their careers to take up the life of agricultural pioneers on the malaria-ridden swamps of Judea. To be admitted into the group it was necessary for Ussishkin to pay into its treasury an amount of 450 rubles. He pawned his gold watch to make the first payment, but when the day of departure arrived the leaders of the group found that only seven members could embark. There was not sufficient money to cover the traveling expenses from Odessa to Jaffa. Ussishkin, together with his schoolmate Tchlenow, who subsequently played an outstanding role as a leader of Russian Zionism, were left behind.

Thereafter Menahem Ussishkin’s life was wrapped up in ceaseless work for the realization of his Zionist idea. From 1891, when he paid his first visit to Palestine, to October 2, 1941, the day of his death, he was a vital factor in and a living symbol of Zionism and Eretz Israel. It is difficult, almost impossible, to conceive and to describe the development of Jewish and Zionist life in Europe and in Palestine without a full appreciation of Ussishkin’s predominant part in it. The saga of his labors, struggles, setbacks and achievements in the five decades is, indeed, inseparable from the story of Zionism and the upbuilding of Eretz Israel. His single-minded devotion to the cause and his unswerving loyalty to it have been universally recognized by friend and adversary alike. Admirer and opponent alike have concurred in conferring upon him the title of Zionism’s Man of Iron, a label which expressed the affection of his supporters and the respect of his opponents.

His was a simple faith in Israel and in the Land of Israel. Yet no man’s faith could be more profound. So deeply rooted was it that no storm could shake it, much less uproot it. In the annals of Zionism, there are many interesting [stories about] his lifetime, all of which would involve one in writing a condensed history of Zionism and Palestinian development during fifty years. The man became a legend even during his lifetime. There is the story about his rallying to the call of Theodor Herzl and then bitterly opposing him on the issue of Uganda versus Palestine. There is the epic of his struggle, together with Weizmann, for a Hebrew University idea; there is the intricate story of the relationship between Ussishkin and Weizmann; there is the epic of his great influence upon the masses of Russian Jewry prior to and during the World War; there is the dramatic scene of Ussishkin’s plea in Hebrew before the Supreme Council of the Peace Conference in Paris; there is the interesting and instructive part played by Ussishkin in the controversy of national versus private capital of 1921; there is the story of his determined fight against the partition plan. But, above all, there is the epic of Menahem Ussishkin’s everlasting contribution to the resettlement of Eretz Israel – the contribution which he made as the World President of the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (the Jewish National Fund).

In the twenty years during which he presided over the Keren Kayemeth in Jerusalem and directed the activities of our Palestine Land Fund, Menahem Ussishkin became the Keren Kayemeth of the Keren Kayemeth. After a fruitful, long and stormy Zionist career, he had been chosen at the age of 60 to head and direct that instrumentality for Palestine Land Redemption which Theodor Herzl created at the Fifth Zionist Congress and which had made but meager progress up to that date. We of the Jewish National Fund who had the great privilege of close and intimate collaboration with Menahem Ussishkin for, alas, too brief a period, are perhaps able to appreciate more fully the true significance of his contribution and the sterling qualities of his inspiring leadership.

In retrospect it appears that the twenty years that had elapsed between the founding of the Keren Kayemeth and the assumption of its leadership by Menahem Ussishkin were merely a preliminary measure for the new advance that was to follow.

The stage for the new advance was set at the London Conference of 1920 which restored to the Keren Kayemeth its original character as that of a Palestine Land Fund which is to collaborate with its sister fund, the Keren Hayesod, which was entrusted with the task of serving as the fiscal instrument of the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the colonization fund of the Zionist movement.

How great is the progress that has been made since that turning point? Great as it is, it was not satisfactory enough for Menahem Ussishkin. The extent of the advance must be measured, however, against the background of the events that crowded that eventful twenty-year period between the San Remo decision to award the Mandate over Palestine to Great Britain and the outbreak of World War II. The entire development of the Jewish National Home in the course of the two decades is inconceivable without the land foundation which Ussishkin and the Keren Kayemeth laid. His first large-scale accomplishment for Geulath Ha-aretz – a purpose to which he had been singularly devoted even while other phases of the movement occupied his attention and energies – was the purchase of the first extensive land tract in the Valley of Jezreel. It was a venturesome enterprise which was opposed by some but which has been proved in the light of history as the act of a great man of vision and action.

Superficially, it may appear that the task which was entrusted to Menahem Ussishkin when he was called to the presidency of the Palestine Land Fund was a job calling for administrative skills only. Actually, the implementation of the Geulath Ha’aretz program, as a national enterprise which is based upon the principles of national land ownership and social justice, is predicted upon consideration[s] of much greater scope than ordinary real estate transactions, which are based on business and financial considerations alone. In the truest meaning of the term, the task was that of nation- and homeland-building, requiring high talent and inexhaustible energies in properly evaluating and coping with historical, political, strategic and psychological elements and phases of the complex Palestine problem. Only a man of great stature, whose roots have struck deep into the core of the Jewish soul and soil, could be equal to the task. Ussishkin proved his great capacity to perform the historic mission which he undertook at an age when most people might be inclined – and justifiably so – to rest on the laurels of their past achievements.

The Jewish people in all parts of the world, including our own United States, have instinctively sensed the intrinsic value of the great leader and the urgency of his mission. Responding to his exhortations, pleadings and demands, the broad mass of our people has contributed in ever-increasing measure to the Jewish National Fund. Under his administration, the Keren Kayemeth was entrusted with new resources amounting to LP 5,100,000 or approximately $25,000,000. The bulk of this amount has not been the gift of the well-to-do, but the mite of those who have not been blessed with too much of worldly goods.

What has Menahem Ussishkin accomplished with the resources the Jewish masses have placed in his trust? Although the epic of Keren Kayemeth achievements during the past two decades is pretty well-known in a general way, it will be refreshing to glance here at but a few figures. When he took the helm, the Keren Kayemeth’s world income amounted to LP 667,000 or approximately $3,335,000. At the same time our national land holdings in Palestine stood at 19,000 dunams. Only a score of agricultural settlements existed on National Fund land at that time. On October 3, 1941, when Ussishkin’s mortal remains were carried for burial in Nicano’s Cave, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, the national land possessions had been brought by the Jewish National Fund to the formidable height of 550,000 dunams, and on these strategically located land tracts in Palestine’s four principal valleys there stood 81 Moshavim and Moshavoth, 70 Kibbutzim, 57 workers’ camps, 15 rural quarters, 16 urban quarters and 12 agricultural schools – the very backbone of the Jewish National Home and its bastions of strength and hope. This is not the record of a mere administrator’s job, but the achievement and the life work of a trailblazer, a man of vision and action, a statesman, a nation-builder whose memory will long be cherished.

What was the driving power behind this man of vision and action? His simple but unshakable faith; his long historic memory of what Eretz Israel meant to the Jewish people in the past and what it will mean in the future; his deep human sympathy for the suffering of the broad mass of Jewry and the recognition that the pattern offered by the Zionist idea is a way of salvation; and his anxiety for progress before it is too late. One need not delve into the numerous essays, programs, exhortations and reminiscences which this man of action wrote, although he was not a writer, to appreciate the magnitude of the force that drove him on. The key to his mind is found in the 38 recorded epigrams that were uttered by Ussishkin at critical periods in the life of the movement and of Palestine. They embody his testament to his people. He said:

“Do not say ‘we shall buy land in Palestine tomorrow’; tomorrow may be too late.”

“If the soil of Palestine will be ours a dozen (Lord) Passfields will not prevail against us; if not – a dozen Balfours will not help us.”

“Jewish capital may redeem the land of our fathers; Jewish intellect may build the Jewish homeland, but only Jewish labor has it within its power to make the land the permanent possession of the Jewish people.”

“When the People of Israel will redeem the Land of Israel, the Land of Israel will redeem the People of Israel.”

“When Eretz Israel went up in flames, the Jewish people went into Diaspora; when [the] Diaspora goes up in flames, the Jewish people must return to Eretz Israel.”

“I once told Professor Einstein: it is much easier for the Jewish people to produce a dozen Einsteins than a single genuine and efficient farmer.”

“Sentiment and reason are often at variance; Will is, however, supreme over both. There is nothing that stands in the way of the Will.”

Contrasted with the Jewish tragedy of 1941 and with the problems of Jewish homelessness that will confront Jewish leadership even after Nazism will have been crushed, the sufferings of Jews in the 19th century and in the first three decades of the 20th appear to have been relatively tolerable. When the practical phases of the Zionist program were being formulated by Ussishkin and his colleagues, the Jewish people needed a homeland but it could still count on a margin of safety in the Diaspora. Today, with two-thirds of the Jewish population of the world either homeless wanderers or slowing starving to death behind the barbed wires of the concentration camps and the ghetto walls, the vision of a Homeland is not an answer to a nostalgic prayer, but a stark and urgent necessity.

Because Menahem Ussishkin lived as he did, labored, fought and achieved as he did, the answer to the call of distress of the Jewish people can be given not in terms of a theory or an idealist’s exhortation, but as a practical method of salvation. This method rests on the firm foundation of an experience of sixty years of successful colonization and on the tangible assets of land and colonies. These colonies and the Jewish National Home which they compose have served as a laboratory for colonization and social progress and, in a world which is to be reconstructed on the basis of individual liberty and national freedom, will serve as an example of a modern design for Jewish living.

Four Decades of Geulath Ha’Aretz: Program, Achievements and History of the Jewish National Fund Briefly Described

The Pittsburgh Tri-State Pinkas, 1947.

JEWISH NATIONAL FUND (English name for the Keren Kayemeth Le Israel), Palestine land-purchasing agency of the Zionist World Organization. Headquarters: Keren Kayemeth Building, Jerusalem, Palestine.

AIMS: (1) To acquire the soil of Palestine as national and inalienable property; (2) To carry on drainage work on the land it has acquired; (3) To carry on afforestation; (4) To install in the settlements modern water-supply systems; (5) To give the soil under a 49-year hereditary lease for cultivation to settlers as individuals or as collective groups.

PRINCIPLES: Underlying the work of the Jewish National Fund since its inception was the urge of the Zionist movement to reestablish the union between the People and the Land of Israel. Concepts of social justice were woven into the Jewish National Fund program. These concepts found their most tangible expression in a set of principles adopted for the development of a national land-acquisition program. The principle of the Mosaic Law (“And ye shall grant redemption to the land” – Leviticus, XXV: 24) governing the transfer of land to its original owners after each fifty-year cycle, lent a continuity and the halo of ancient tradition to the advanced doctrine. These principles were adopted not merely because it is obviously right that land bought with money raised through popular contributions should remain national property, but also because it represented the best way for preventing abuses which often arise out of private land ownership.

The national capital was employed in a manner that benefited not merely the individuals settling upon the soil, but the community. Hence the decision to apply the funds for the purchase of land that shall forever remain the inalienable property of the Jewish people. Out of these principles flow the conditions under which the Fund places its land holdings at the disposal of settlers, to wit: (1) The settler receives the land on hereditary lease only and has not, in any way, either direct or indirect, to refund the value of his holding. He is given the land in usufruct alone. (2) The settler is expected, after the expiration of the first five years from the date of his release, to pay the Fund an annual rental equivalent to 1 to 2 percent of the assessed value of the land he occupies. At the end of fifteen years, the land is reappraised and the rent adjusted to the then-current value. (3) The lessee is obliged to reside in the holding and to cultivate it regularly. (4) The lessee is obliged to execute, with Jewish labor only, all works in connection with the cultivation of the land.

ACHIEVEMENTS: Up to January 1, 1944, the Jewish National Fund acquired 670,400 dunams of land (a dunam equals one-quarter of an acre) in all parts of Palestine. Of these, 197,600 dunams were acquired during the war years (since September, 1939). Upon the Fund’s land there have been established by the Keren Hayesod, the Palestine Foundation Fund, and by individual settlers and groups, 190 agricultural settlements, comprising 68 percent (of a total of 276 Jewish agricultural settlements) of the number of Jewish villages in the country. Thirty-three settlements were founded on the land of the Jewish National Fund since the beginning of the war. The colonies established on the land of the Jewish National Fund are either (a) Kvutzoth or Kibbutzim, communal or collective villages; or (b) Moshevi Ovdim, smallholders’ settlements.

In the 42 years of its operations, the Fund has invested about LP 7,000,000 in land redemption. By draining swamps, the Fund reclaimed more than 300,000 dunams of land and transformed them into fertile areas. The Fund has reforested more than 14,000 dunams by planting thereon over 3,000,000 trees.

In the settlements established on the land of the Jewish National Fund there live and work 72,500 men, women and children. Fifty-one thousand, constituting 44 percent of the Jewish rural population and 66 percent of the actual agricultural working population of the country, live in the settlements on Jewish National Fund land. Twenty-one thousand five hundred live in urban and suburban residential quarters on the land of the Fund. Settlements on Keren Kayemeth land provide 63 percent of all the Jewish output of milk, 73 percent of poultry and eggs, 62 of cereals, 75 percent of vegetables, and 82 percent of potatoes. All the land acquired by the Jewish National Fund during the war has been put under cultivation and has thus served to increase the production of food in the country. Before the war, Jewish agriculture provided 34 percent of the Yishub’s requirements of milk; today it supplies 58 percent. Its egg production has risen from 37 percent to 64 percent, and vegetable production from 44 percent to 63 percent of consumption. Jewish production of potatoes, a crop which was introduced only on the eve of the war, now satisfies 55 percent of the Yishub’s needs.

The Fund has also installed modern water-supply systems in 57 agricultural settlements and provided the sites for the Hebrew University on Mt. Scopus, for hospitals, synagogues and schools. Fifty industrial enterprises have been founded on the land belonging to the Fund.

By reason of its land policies and achievements in the field of colonization, the Jewish National Fund is regarded as the backbone of the structure of the Jewish National Home which was reared in Palestine in the era following World War I, and on the basis of the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917 and the League of Nations Mandate of July 24, 1922.

FINANCIAL OPERATIONS: The Jewish National Fund, conceived and fashioned as one of the two (the other is the Keren Hayesod) financial instruments to translate into reality the Zionist program in Palestine, has enlisted the support of large numbers of Jews in all parts of the world. A variety of popular fundraising methods and special campaigns have been put into operation since the Fund’s inception forty years ago. Up to October 1, 1943, a total of LP 7,812,800 was contributed by the Jewish communities toward the Jewish National Fund. Before September, 1939, branches or committees, manned and directed by representatives of the public at large, were engaged in raising funds for the Jewish National Fund in fifty-two countries. Following the outbreak of World War II, the major part of the financial support became the responsibility of US Jewry, the Jewish communities in the British Empire and Palestine Jewry itself.

These funds which are raised under the slogan “Geulath Ha’aretz” (the redemption of the soil) have been and are being obtained largely through the medium of popular methods which are calculated to obtain the cooperation of all classes within Jewry. Chief among these are the widely known Jewish National Fund methods: (1) Stamps; (2) Blue-White Boxes; (3) The Golden Book; (4) Sefer Ha’Yeled; (5) Tree Planting; (6) Semi-annual street collections known as Flower Day and Flag Day; (7) Dunam Land Contributions; (8) Bequests and Living Legacies; (9) Nachloth – the acquisition of a specifically delineated tract of land for the establishment of colonies bearing the names of outstanding personalities or of geographical units.

HISTORY: The idea of a Jewish National Fund was first conceived by Dr. Herman Schapira, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. He proposed its establishment in a telegram dispatched to the first conference of Chovevei Zion which met in Kattowitz on November 6, 1884, but no action was taken. He proposed it again to the First Zionist Congress convoked by Dr. Theodor Herzl at Basle, Switzerland, in the summer of 1897. But it was not until December, 1901, when the Fifth Zionist Congress met at Basle, Switzerland, that the proposal was adopted on the recommendation of Johann Kremenezky of Vienna and Dr. Theodor Herzl, the President of the Congress. The Jewish National Fund was incorporated in England, as a Limited Liability Company under the Companies’ Act, complete and permanent control over it being vested in the World Zionist Congress. The Fund is being administered by a Board of Directors of nine members who are elected by the Actions Committee (General Council) of the Zionist Organization, which is in turn elected bi-annually by the Zionist World Congress. One-third of the Directors resign each year in rotation.

During Dr. Herzl’s presidency of the Zionist Organization, when the administration of the Zionist movement had its seat in Vienna, the head office of the Jewish National Fund was also located in that city, with Johann Kremenezky as President of its Board of Directors. In 1905, when David Wolffsohn succeeded Theodor Herzl as President of the Zionist Organization, Zionist headquarters, including the head office of the Jewish National Fund, were removed to Cologne, Germany, with Dr. Max Bodenheimer as President of the Board of Directors. Upon the outbreak of the World War in 1914, the Jewish National Fund headquarters were removed to The Hague, Holland. Nehemiah de Lieme, an outstanding Dutch Zionist, became the Fund’s President. At the close of the war, the head office was removed to London, England, which then became the headquarters of the World Zionist Organization. In 1921, at the Zionist World Conference held in London, England, a new Board of Directors was chosen with Menachem Ussishkin as President, a post he held until his death in October, 1941. In 1922, the head office of the Jewish National Fund was transferred to Jerusalem, and on May 6, 1930, it moved into its own home which is now a part of the group of Jewish Agency buildings in Jerusalem. Ussishkin’s assumption of the leadership of the Fund inaugurated a new era in the Fund’s fundraising and land-acquisition activity. Under his guidance, the Fund’s resources grew from $4,177,000 in 1921, to $29,825,000 in 1941, and from its meager land holdings of 19,000 dunams in 1921 to 550,000 dunams in 1941. Since Menachem Ussishkin’s death, the affairs of the Keren Kayemeth Le Israel have been administered by a Presidium of three, namely, Dr. A. Granovsky, Rabbi Meyer Berlin and Berl Katznelson. The world income for the last fiscal year which ended on September 30, 1943, amounted to LP 1,145,500.

A recent tabulation of disbursements shows that the Fund’s receipts were expended in the following ratios: 72 percent on land for rural settlement; 7 percent for afforestation; 7 percent on drainage of swamps; and 6 percent on water supply.

[Note: though published in 1947, this text was clearly finished in early 1944.]

Is the Orthodox Jew in America Re-Awakening? An Interview with Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein, President of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America

The Canadian Jewish Chronicle, October 9, 1925.

(Attributed to Z. Alroy.)

When the first symptoms indicating that immigration to the United States would be restricted, a feeling of uncertainty and even anxiety manifested itself in various Jewish quarters. Both Orthodox and Reform seemed to be fearful of the fate of the American Jewish community in the United States. The impression prevailed that Judaism in America can be sustained only if immigration continues. Should the doors of America be closed, should the influx of new Jewish masses with their fresh Jewish traditions and adherence to Jewish forms of life cease – what might happen?

Those who were seized with these feelings had some justification. From early days there was a remarkable situation prevalent in those religious organizations which formed the background of American Judaism. As the membership of the reform congregations and temples decreased, it continually drew fresh recruits from the Orthodox. Viewed from this experience, anxiety had its justification.

Enactment of the quota laws and the practical closing of America’s doors to Jewish immigration are only of recent date. Developments within American Jewish life in this short period, however, carry sufficient evidence to show that this fear has no justification. The opposite has been proven.

The consolidation of the American Jewish community is taking place. One of the forces of this consolidation was the rise of the influence of Orthodox Jewry in America.

When, twenty-seven years ago, a small group of immigrants from Eastern Europe heard of the death of Rabbi Isaac Elchanan, the dean of the Yeshiva in Kovno, they decided to honor his memory by fulfilling a rabbinical dictum: “When a great man dies, an academy is set on his grave.” They formed the Isaac Elchanan Yeshiva in America which was an attempt to imitate the Yeshiva of European fame. Now, a $5,000,000 Yeshiva college, which is to be the exponent of traditional Judaism under modern conditions and methods of instruction[, is going to be built]. The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America is about to hold its twenty-seventh annual convention in New York City with a large number of delegates representing hundreds of congregations. The long latent forces of Orthodox Judaism in America are awakening. What is their direction and what power do they represent?

Dr. Herbert S. Goldstein, president of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, belongs to this school of American Orthodox rabbis who are both American and Orthodox. The writer of these lines was eager to hear Rabbi Goldstein’s views on the present situation of Orthodox Jewry and the tasks which it confronts and which will be the subject of profound deliberation at the forthcoming convention.

“In recent years it has become fashionable in American Jewish ranks to speak fervently and almost religiously about the need of ‘Jewish education’ and ‘Jewish culture.’ Something is seeking expression, but it seems to me that those who feel this inner wedge are afraid to be consistent. They speak of the need of Jewish education and Jewish culture, fervently, religiously, but avoid saying ‘Jewish religion.’ Until the close of the eighteenth century, there was only Orthodox Judaism. Jewish life meant Jewish religion. In fact, the difference between Jewish and non-Jewish life was the religious discipline under which the Jews lived. Human society, organized government and even industrial and commercial progress are inconceivable without the principle of self-discipline. This was in essence the doctrine which Judaism from its very outset proclaimed and which has, as 1,500 years of history has proven, been the driving power in the maintenance of orderly life and the progress of the world. True, this influence went through a variety of channels, but its source is, without denial, unmistakably Orthodoxly Jewish. If this influence is to continue and exercise its power for good, the source must be guarded and kept alive. This is the duty of the Orthodox Jew. Judaism was the first religious doctrine to recognize the importance of the forms of everyday life for impressing the higher principles. An occasional hearing of even an inspiring sermon [is] sufficient to bring about the required results. It is Orthodox Judaism which has created the guarantees for the realization of the high principle by the creation of a set of rules of conduct which must be observed if the belief is adhered to.”

What is the present situation in Orthodox Jewry in America? I asked the President of the Union.

“Those who are trained to observe things in the making cannot fail to admit that the reawakening of the Orthodox Jew in the American Jewish community is not far off. Gone are the days when the religious affiliation of American Jewry was determined by commercial success or failure. You must not labor under the false illusion that those members who have left the Orthodox congregation to join the Reform temples did so after a profound study of the principles of Orthodox and Reform Judaism which was followed by a recognition that the principles of Geiger and Lindon were better than those of traditional Judaism. This was only natural in the first years of the forming of the American Jewish community. The Jewish community was divided into two distinct groups: a minority of settled families who were acclimated and successful; the other, of recent arrivals who lacked the feeling of certainty and stability both in their material and spiritual status. The majority of the individuals being of a progressive nature, as evidenced by the fact of their immigration to this country, when a little more settled, joined the minority. This condition has undergone a fundamental change. Given time, applied thought has performed this change. The intuition of the Jewish masses in America and their desire for self-preservation, not to speak of the strength of family traditions which are age-old, directed the return to Orthodox Judaism. Speaking of a return is misleading. There was, in fact, no departure. The present moment marks only a full-power reawakening. When, twenty-seven years ago, almost at the dawn of the present American Jewish community, the principles of Orthodox Judaism were re-proclaimed on American soil by the founders of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations.”

“Do you think, Rabbi Goldstein, that Orthodox Judaism in America can continue the old forms of orthodoxy as lived in other countries?”

“It has been the contention of many of the enemies of Orthodox Jewry that its source is European, implying, thus, that it would be un-American. What a great mistake this is. The spirit of America is essentially religious. It is on the precepts of the Bible that the fundamental laws of this country are based. The living of a real Orthodox Jewish life in America cannot be impaired by living in America. Take for instance the dietary laws which are one of the fundamentals of Orthodox Jewish observance. Not only is this not an impossibility, but, as is well demonstrated by the New York State Kosher Law, a desirability. The observance of the Sabbath is also not contrary to the trend of modern industrial life in America,” Rabbi Goldstein concluded.

Land for Victory

The Jewish Post (Winnipeg), September 25, 1941

Attributed to Z. Alroy.

A thorough evaluation of the year 5701 in Palestine must include a study of the development of agricultural settlement – the basis for any permanent economic existence in a country. Z. Alroy bases this interpretive picture of Palestine on the achievements of the Jewish National Fund, which is preparing to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its land purchasing operations in Palestine and which last year alone provided the land for eight new agricultural settlements. – The Editor.

What fate does the future hold in store for Palestine? If and when the cause of the democracies prevails [in World War II], will Palestine (a) become incorporated in a Federation of Middle Eastern or Arab States? (b) be set up as a bi-national state in which Jews and Arabs will hold political parity? (c) be partitioned into two states, one Arab and the other Jewish? (d) remain mandated territory, as heretofore, and administered by Great Britain? or (e) be admitted into the British Commonwealth of Nations as the Seventh Dominion?

These and similar questions occupy the minds of publicists, political analysts, contact men, negotiators and statesmen, as the second year of World War II, coinciding with the Hebrew year 5701, has drawn to a close. In Cairo, negotiations are said to be going on with Arab leaders regarding the shape of things to come in the Arab world. Political thought, after a self-imposed prolonged silence on the part of Zionist leadership, is also beginning to stir in London, in Jerusalem, in New York and in Washington, D.C.

All this is, of course, predicated on the conviction that the Axis powers will be ultimately defeated, and that the new order that will be established after the war will be determined not by the proponents of the “might is right” principle but by the victorious adherence of individual liberty and national freedom. Of the three parties that are interested in the present and future of Palestine – the British, the Jews, and the Arabs – only the first two cling to this hopeful assumption. The Arabs still retain an open mind on the question. Actually, insofar as the Jewish National Home in Palestine is concerned, the “status quo ante bellum” still prevails. The restrictions in respect to Jewish immigration and land purchase, promulgated in the MacDonald White Paper before the outbreak of the war, when Chamberlainian appeasement was at its height, are still the law of the land. Moreover, these restrictions which violate the very essence of the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations Mandate do injury to the country’s most vital economic interests that have been and are being implemented by the Palestine Government.

And yet, the objective reviewer of the Palestine scene in the second year of the war is pleasantly surprised at the conclusion which the facts seem to warrant. Considered against the background of the tragedy, chaos and misery that have swept over the Axis conquered and dominated lands, and the catastrophe that has come over the Jewish communities of these lands, the story of the Jewish National Home at war constitutes a remarkable epic of progress and achievement. It is the one bright spot in the Jewish sector of the worldwide Battle for Freedom on which not only no position has been lost, but new bastions of strength have been gained and are being held firmly as a preparation for and a promise of the future. The story is most objectively and, simultaneously, most graphically told in the facts and figures pertaining to the operations of the Jewish National Fund during the Hebrew year 5701. The Fund is one of the two major instruments of the Zionist movement through which national resources are being mobilized and made available for upbuilding and strengthening the Jewish National Home. Its special task is the acquisition of “land,” as national and inalienable property, for current and future needs.

What is the sense of buying land in wartime? Is the application of public funds for such a purpose a “wise” investment? Is there no danger that the land might fall into the hands of the invader? These and similarly “optimistic” questions have been hurled at the leadership of the Jewish National Fund since the collapse of France and the entry of Italy into the war. It is characteristic that these questions came from the “prudent” lips of those who were far removed from the danger zone themselves. The Jews of Palestine, where the danger of invasion seemed imminent several times during the year, entertained no such misgivings or fears. For them – and this occurred long before the psychological V for Victory campaign was launched for the benefit of the subjugated or threatened lands – there was only one orientation: Ultimate victory.

The months of anxiety have only served to stimulate greater exertions, with the result that since September 1939, up to August 1941, the continuity of Jewish constructive as well as defense effort has remained unbroken in Palestine. Vision, determination and unshakeable faith in ultimate victory have borne fruit. After two years of war, in which the country experienced a number of air attacks by Fascist and Nazi bombers, and faced the dangers of invasion from the North, East and South, the Jewish National Home stands on a firmer “land” foundation, has a greater locally-grown food supply, and houses a larger number of agricultural settlers rooted in the soil than it had at the outbreak of hostilities. The same progressive trend has come to the fore in the other parts of the Jewish National Home structure. In these paragraphs, however, the reviewer limits his observations to the progress in [rests of article lost].

Changing Values in American Jewish Fraternities

The Canadian Jewish Chronicle, July 31, 1925.*


The wave of tropical heat which [recently] descended upon the northeast gave way to a lower temperature. People were relieved. However, a new wave has descended. It is the wave of conventions.

The convention is a product “made in America.” Conferences are known everywhere. Conventions, with their large attendance, [a] combination of business and pleasure, politics and amusement, are typical of a great democracy.

“The fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man” – a Jewish idea which has remained an ideal through the centuries – would justify one to believe that brotherhoods, fraternities and orders were an important factor in Jewish life. However, Jewish history has only one record, and that an incomplete one, of the existence of a Jewish fraternal order: the Essenes, a product of Palestinian soil, which left to posterity only an unexplainable name.

The Essenes, as described by Josephus Flavius, were, perhaps, the first fraternity which gathered its membership with caution and held it in a strong common bond of brotherhood, social justice and religious purity. It was, perhaps, also the first effective teacher of hygiene, imposing the duty of cleanliness upon its members. The “sunrise bathers” is the vague expression which they left upon the Jewish mind, giving rise to the movement which preceded the birth of Christianity and precedence to the various Orders of the Bath.

Since then, however, Jewish history represents a “tabula rasa” with regard to fraternities. Perhaps it was due to the environment which prevented such organizations. Perhaps it was due to the common fate which created, as it were, a Jewish fraternity at large. And it was not until the glorious chapter in American Jewry was added to Jewish history that Jewish fraternal orders came into existence.

Perhaps in no other country is the social life of its citizens so colorful as in the United States. The color introduced by the fraternities is particularly radiant against the grey background of the democracy. This is also perhaps one of the motives responsible in this country.

But there were many more and much deeper reasons. Critics of Jewish life have frequently indulged in an accusation, which on the surface might appear true, that when Jews form a community, the first care of the community is to purchase a cemetery. When non-Jews form a settlement, their first care is to create a park. On examination this accusation is only half-truth. Physicians in Jewish districts know better. The Jewish people consider life above everything. “And you who are united in God, you are all alive today” was the commandment of optimism and encouragement which has sounded in Jewish ears since the days of Moses.

But life is not eternal and must be followed by death. The practical Jewish mind cares for both, life and death.

When the wave of immigration to America brought on its crest thousands of newcomers who needed assistance in life and were subject to sickness and death, the fraternity was formed to take care of the sick and the burial of the dead. Numerous orders were in operation. Rituals were composed, by-words created, [and] forms laid down for their increasing membership.

Some of the older fraternities, such as the B’Nai Brith, swiftly abandoned their primate form and ascended to greater heights of social service. Others, with greater individual numbers, underwent a slower process. Large bodies move slowly, but the process is going on with its attending difficulties, obstacles and trying situations.

Observers of Jewish life in America have often given expression to the fact that only a small minority are affiliated with any kind of congregational life, whether it be reform, conservative or orthodox. An observer at the Thirty-Ninth Convention of the Independent Order of B’Nai Abraham, a fraternity with a membership of 135,000, could find a reply to this comment. While the bulk of the membership is apparently of the type which is termed “unaffiliated,” the proceedings of this gathering proved beyond doubt how deeply tradition, and Jewish tradition at that, holds them in its grip.

Not objecting to the new and progressive ideas of widening the scope of the fraternity, and introducing social membership lodges, the convention persistently objected to all attempts of the leaders to do away with the old-fashioned post-mortem assessments and to introduce a modern, scientific system of mutual insurance. With only a $2,000,000 reserve fund and 135,000 members, and with an increasing rate of mortality, the financial situation can be saved by nothing short of a miracle. However, the majority voted for optimism and tradition. “We have existed for thirty-nine years on the post-mortem assessment system; we will continue to do so,” they argued. More than this, adherence to tradition came to the surface when the convention preferred to delay the transaction of business on the agenda to listen to a well-known cantor sing religious songs.

“From dust does man come and to dust doth he return.” There could be no better expression of the spirit of this type of Jewish fraternity in this period of changing values in American Jewish life.

*Note: this essay, it seems, was heavily edited, if not rewritten, by its publisher, and thus barely resembles the author’s other texts.

A Century in Retrospect: Survey of Trends and Events in the Course of the Hebrew Calendar Century Closing on Rosh Hashanah

The New Palestine, September 12, 1939.

When the sun sets on September 13th, the people that counts time from Creation will mark the end of a hundred years in its history. The eighth century in the sixth millennium of the Hebrew calendar will begin.

The history of mankind, examined from the point of view of its progress, is only the story of the periods between natural catastrophes or those catastrophes which mankind brings upon itself through hate and war. The century which has now come to an end (the period between 1839 and 1939), although heralded as the period of enlightenment and progress, did not essentially differ from the centuries that preceded it. Many armed conflicts and large-scale wars ravaged the earth and consumed life and treasure. In fact, this span of time has the dubious distinction of having been the period within which the first World War was fought and the second World War was begun. What will follow may be the subject of speculation but since the past is a preparation for the present, the future cannot be expected to be more than an extension of the latter. One could not indeed derive much comfort from this prospect were it not to be modified by the recognition that at least the present and future are subject to the dynamics of the human will, and to the powers of the human mind at its best, if and when these factors do come into play.

The story of the seventh century in the sixth millennium in retrospect would indeed to a monotonous tale of man’s inhumanity to man – not unlike the story of Jewish life of preceding centuries of exile and persecution – were it not for the dynamics of the Jewish will to live and of its proved ability to survive after seemingly crushing blows and to carry on along the path that started, four millennia ago, at Ur of the Chaldees. It is on this dynamic aspect of the past and the guidance that it provided for the future that our interest centers.

Light From America

As the drama of the seventh century in the sixth millennium opened, the scene was illuminated by the powerful rays of the light that was kindled in 1775 by the American Revolution. Derived from Hebraic sources, the proposition that “all men were created equal” hardened into a principle that was incorporated into the Constitution of the United States thirteen years later. Only an insignificant number of Jews who had trickled across the great expanses of the Atlantic came under the beneficent rays of this light. When, however, the French Revolution burst forth and the cry of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” resounded from the banks of the Seine to tyrant-ridden Europe, the most martyred of all members of the human family – the dispersed, oppressed and despised Jew – was emboldened to hope that for him, too, the era of enlightenment and progress would bring deliverance.

The fifty years that elapsed between the French Revolution and the beginning of the Seventh Century (1839) brought, however, only partial relief and proved the Great Hope to have been largely illusory for the Jews of Europe. The Jewish communities were teeming with excitement and expectancy. There was strife between the “enlighteners” who believed that all that their brethren would have to do to gain the desired emancipation would be only to shed a part of their ancient culture and “improve” the forms of their religious worship, and the “reactionaries” who were equally desirous of obtaining their natural rights but insisted on maintaining the loyalty that sustained their people for so long and bitter a period. But even the enthusiastic “enlighteners” were destined to recognize that at best Emancipation meant only a constant struggle for equal rights.

The Inquisition in Spain was officially revoked as late as 1834. The abolition of the legal disabilities against the Jews in the various Kingdoms and Provinces of Germany was not officially decreed until 1869 (to last only until April 1st, 1933 – 64 years!). Even in England, it was not until 1858 that Parliament passed the Jews Disability Bill. Baron Lionel de Rothschild was the first Jew to take a seat in Parliament, in the same year, without taking the oath “On the true faith of a Christian,” which was customary until then.

The light that was kindled in Independence Hall, Philadelphia and flamed into a mighty torch in the French Revolution, required more than half a century before its rays reached in 1848 the plateaus of Central Europe. A popular movement for freedom then reached a temporary zenith followed by swift reaction. Even so, Emancipation of the Jews, in a civic and economic sense, never crossed the Vistula River into the lands of the Russian Czars. True, under the guidance of Benjamin Disraeli, [the] first statesman of Jewish origin to become Prime Minister in England, the Berlin Congress, with the approval of Bismarck, took action to guarantee, by means of an international agreement, the civil and religious rights of Jewish minorities in Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania. But these “guarantees” were never taken seriously by any of the signatories. Romania, which long rivaled Russia in the art of Jew-hatred, has found it easy to evade its international obligations up to this day.

Origins of Hitlerism

The Seventh Century will be known in the history of our people as the span of time in which the most despicable figure that ever trod God’s earth made his appearance among the human species: the anti-Semite.

Not that hatred and persecution of the Jew were unknown or unpracticed before his arrival. Almost everything that the anti-Semite said and did with regard to Jews was said and done many times before. His contribution lay in the fact that he, the anti-Semite, made a “science” and, more often than not, a lucrative profession out of his hatred. Hitlerism, against which England and France have now declared war and against which the sympathies and cooperation of all civilized men are now so fervently invoked, rode into power, unchecked, on the Trojan horse of anti-Semitism. No one could or should have been deluded for the thing was not new. It was conceived and practiced and developed into a political science long before the Hitlerian pestilence made its appearance. It was “made in Germany” and bears the imprint of German politics.

Adolf Stoecker (1835-1909), chaplain at the Emperor’s Court, founder and leader of the “Christian Socialist” Party, was the true forerunner of Adolf Hitler. The term anti-Semite made its appearance in German letters in 1879, when – the irony of history! – Wilhelm Marr, an apostate and former Social Democrat, bewailed the “victory of Judaism over Germanism” in a pamphlet of that name. He founded in Berlin the first “Society of Anti-Semites.” Heinrich von Treitschte (1834-1896), a professor of history at the University of Berlin, was the first German scholar to formulate the foundations of “scientific anti-Semitism.” It suited the politics of Bismarck to employ anti-Semitism in his fight against the progressive elements and particularly against the Social Democrats in Germany, among whom Lasker, Edward Bernstein and Lassalle played a leading part.

The slush fund fittingly described in those days as the “Reptiles Fund,” at the disposal of the German Chancellor, unleashed a flood of “scientific anti-Semitism,” which became in 1880, and for many years after, the leading issue not only in Germany but also in Central Europe and elsewhere. The poisonous gases, foreshadowing Hitlerism, infected wide areas all over the Continent and embittered the lives of generations of Jews.

It never required much argument or persuasion to whip anti-Jewish feeling into fury. In 1840, the first year of the century saw the revival of the ritual-murder accusation. The celebrated Damascus case necessitated the journeys of Sir Moses Montefiore and Adolph Cremieux to the Orient and the unfolding of many efforts before the falsity of the accusation was established. The anti-Semitic agitation under the slogan (Hitler has not been original!) “The Jews are our misfortune” resulted in reviving ritual-murder accusations in Xanten, and in Konic, Prussia, and opened up a series of ritual-murder accusations against Jews in other lands, beginning with the famous Hilsner Affair (1899), in which the late Thomas Masaryk, founder and first President of Czechoslovakia, played a leading part as a defender of the Jewish name, and ending with the Beillis affair in Kiev, Russia, in 1913.

Under the Czars

In Czarist Russia where the largest segment of European Jewry was herded into the “Pale of Settlement,” the drama of Jewish survival against overwhelming odds was enacted during the major part of the century. The several Romanoffs differed only in degree of severity with which they carried through their programs of legalized oppression, forcible “enlightenment,” and outright curtailment of elementary rights of a Jewish population of nearly 6,000,000 souls. The height of cruelty was reached, however, with the anti-Jewish decrees and riots of 1880 which had their sequel in the regime of Nicholas II, the last of the Czars. His ignominious defeat in the World War and death at the hands of the Bolsheviki closed the saddest chapter in the history of Jewry.

It was within the crowded cities of the Pales of Settlement and on the steppes of Russia that Jewish vitality and ability to withstand the heaviest pressure was most severely tested and found not wanting. For Russo-Polish Jewry, yearning as it did for Emancipation and equal rights and persisting in its struggle for them, kept aloft the torch of Jewish loyalty and, unlike its more fortunate but Jewishly less sturdy brethren in Western Europe, it was never willing to attain its coveted Emancipation at a price like that paid by the upper stratum of French Jewry or so eagerly offered by some sections of German Jewry. East European Jewry, far from being ready to denounce its ancient culture and national characteristics, absorbed the ideas and ideals of the modernized West but constantly strove, through various means, to evolve a solution that would not conflict with its past or inner self. To be sure, no unanimity was ever achieved. Various schools of thought, flourishing under the impact of world events and the ideas for social and economic justice that arose in the West in the wake of the industrial revolution, warred with each other for dominance over the Jewish scene. However, the bulk of Russo-Polish Jewry, long the reservoir of Jewish tradition and intellectual strength, remained an immovable rock of Jewish loyalty, acting as a stabilizing and restraining influence on the flight from Judaism in the West.

It was precisely here that the dynamics of the Jewish will to live – and not only to live ad loco, but to seek release through initiative and through daring thought and unflinching action – flourished.

In the West

The flight from Judaism in the West, too, was by far incomplete. The constant remainder of Jewish misery in the East and the recurring pressure in the lands of full or partial Emancipation activated the best elements in Western Jewry. With the new wealth and influence that accrued to an ever-widening circle in France, England and parts of Germany, Western Jewry was in a position to undertake remedial action that was formerly not possible. Thus, the century witnessed the organization and development of Jewish organizations like the Alliance Israelite Universelle (established in 1860) and the Hilfsverein of German Jewry, the Foundation of Baron Maurice de Hirsch, which, after the death of the philanthropist, developed into the Jewish Colonization Association. These instruments of philanthropy rendered, indeed, great service to the masses of Jews in helping to solve some of the acutest problems of the day. Some of these instruments also served as vehicles for diplomatic action at special occasions and under particular circumstances. The first and the last mentioned also acted as disseminators of modern education and European culture, but they never went beyond the philanthropic gesture.

The “poor brethren” had ideas of their own. Drawing from the wells of Jewish yearning for justice, of loyalty to its national tradition and culture, of the ever-present memory of a Homeland lost but to be regained, and of the invaluable treasures of [an] original and unique culture, East European Jewry – fructified, to be sure, by the seeds of progress and enlightenment from the West – labored hard and steadfastly along the paths of creativeness to bring about its deliverance.

Sources of Hope

First in this development during the century was the revival of Hebrew letters. Taking its cue from the “enlighteners” of the West, East European Jewry avidly began the process of the Hebrew Renaissance, which culminated in a Modern Hebrew literature in which thinkers of the stature of Achad Ha’am and poets of the sweeping vision of Chaim Nachman Bialik came to the fore, a growth that flowered in the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language and in the cultural fabric that is now the foundation of the new Jewish life in Eretz Israel. Parallel to this process went the development of what was known in the middle of the century as “jargon” into Yiddish in which a galaxy of gifted novelists, poets and essayists gave expression to their creative genius and established vital and intimate contact between the Jewish masses and the thought and the feeling of the age. A powerful Yiddish press in the United States and in Eastern Europe arose to serve the Jew in his search for freedom at home or in his endeavor to find liberty and opportunity at more hospitable shores overseas and – last but not least – to advocate the realization of the vision of Zion, which he had been cherishing so long in the depths of his soul.

Religious Changes

In the field of religion, the century witnessed a mighty struggle against the alienating influences of the extreme forms of Reform Judaism, which in the early part of the Nineteenth Century threatened, if unchecked, to bring about disintegration of Jewry. As the period opened, a great champion of traditional Judaism appeared in Germany, the birthplace of its new rival, in the person of Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888). As the century rolled into eternity, the desire for adjustment to the outside world through shedding as much as possible of the original forms of Jewish religious observance was definitely checked in Europe [only] to be transplanted – on the crest of the German-Jewish immigration that followed the year 1848 – into the United States, where it was to arise as “American Judaism.”

Untouched by this struggle in the West, the stream of Jewish piety and learning continued in the East and brought to the fore such outstanding and widely recognized authorities on Jewish religious law as Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchcik of Brest-Litovsk, Rabbi Israel Salanter, who enriched the seats of traditional earning with his “Mussar” (ethics), Rabbi Samuel Mohilever (1824-1898), who was one of the first sponsors and leaders of the Chovevei Zion, and Rabbi Abraham Ha’cohen Kook, who became the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi in Palestine during the Mandate era.

Cultural Advances

Of Jewish contributions to civilization and the welfare of mankind, the century saw an abundance which can hardly be matched even by more numerous and more firmly established peoples. Ever since the seats of learning were opened to Jews with freedom of thought and expression, Jewish men of genius have left their imprint on nearly all branches of human thought. But three names need be mentioned: Albert Einstein, in physical science; Karl Marx in political science; [and] Sigmund Freud in psychology.

In the field of Jewish culture the outstanding contribution of the century is the development of what has been loosely called the “Science of Judaism,” but which actually represents a scientific evaluation and appraisal of the history of the Jewish people and the literary and cultural heritage of its ancient and medieval periods. The People of the Book, prolific and fruitful in the fields of religion and culture, somehow in the Diaspora lost their aptitude for the systematic recording of their history. This, too, has been remedied in the period under review. Within the century, there arose Jewish historians of note: Heinrich Graetz and Simon Dubnow, whose monumental works, complementing each other, made it possible for the scholar as well as the lay reader to familiarize himself with the authenticated history of the Jewish people.

Searching for a Solution

But more important and more interesting contributions towards a solution of the Jewish problem along three lines originated during the century and still are progressing with full impetus and vitality. These three developments burst forth into life almost simultaneously and stemmed from the same sources: the plight of the Jewish masses, the crying need for their deliverance, and the dynamics of the Jewish will to survive. They were (a) the emergence of American Jewry as the most numerous and powerful Jewish community in the world; (b) the formulation and partial fulfillment of Zionism; and (c) the birth of an organized Jewish labor class.

All three developments received their impetus from the 1880s, when “scientific anti-Semitism” raised its head in Germany and had its repercussion in the form of anti-Jewish violence in Russia with severe decrees of expulsion and persecution. The recently erected juridical structure of Emancipation in Central and Western Europe began to crack. The palliatives of Jewish philanthropic endeavor already then began to show their futility. Organization, based on an inspiring ideal and on self-help, was clearly the need, but recognition of this truth was slow in coming.

Origins of Zionism

Two rival thoughts strove for supremacy as lines of guidance for a mass of people caught in the maelstrom of history. The one – vaguely described as “love of Zion” – played on the strings of the Jewish heart and held out a distant hope for a Homeland that was never forgotten; the other, nurtured by the revolutionary ideas of an emerging proletariat, held out the promise of liberation through the ultimate Social Revolution. The first had just made its initial step on the sand dunes of Palestine under the yoke of the Turks. It had kindled the imagination of Orthodox Rabbis like Mohilever and Kalisher, on the one hand, and intellectuals and students, on the other hand, to whom the clear analyses of Moses Hess’ (1812-1875) “Rome and Jerusalem” and Leo Pinsker’s “Auto-Emancipation” made a strong appeal. “Love of Zion” made its entry into the students’ circles of the Russian universities and into the study rooms of Orthodox Rabbis and Hebrew writers, but it was yet to be equipped with the organization and the power to cope with the problem at hand. The promise of deliverance with the arrival of the social revolution was no less enchanting to the intellectual youth but it, too, required a long and slow struggle which involved many sacrifices and acts of heroism in collaboration with the slowly maturing non-Jewish proletariat before it could attain an initial success. The bulk of East European Jewry, whether in Russia or in Romania, or in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, was in dire distress and was, except for occasional philanthropic aid, unaided and unguided as it embarked on the great exodus to the Western hemisphere, to the sidewalks of New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia.

U.S. Jewry Emerges

Up to 1880, the Jewish population in the U.S. of America did not exceed 250,000 souls. The exodus that continued almost uninterruptedly from 1880 to a few months prior to the World War brought in its wake the great mass that now composes American Jewry, by now fully integrated into the economic, cultural and political fabric of these United States and which has demonstrated its great worth in an atmosphere of freedom.

The emergence of American Jewry is one of the greatest epics in the history of the Jewish people. This event remained not unrelated to the other two methods of salvation for the Jewish masses. When Herzl appeared in 1897 at the first World Zionist Congress and evolved the idea of political Zionism, he found a warm echo in American Jewry. When the Jewish labor movement began, first in the form of the Bund and several years later in Labor Zionism (the Poale Zion Party was established in 1901), they found their adherents among the Jews of America.

At this stage, the two trends merged, producing the most remarkable and admirable figure in the Jewish life of the century – the Chalutz, the Palestine pioneer.

A Jewish Homeland

It was American Jewry that coalesced into a united body when, towards the end and after the close of the World War, the need for political and relief action for war-stricken European Jewry and in behalf of the Jewish National Home in Palestine arose. It was American Jewry that clothed men like Louis Marshal and Felix M. Warburg in authority and strength to undertake and carry though a gigantic war and post-war relief program and followed, in ever-increasing measure, the leadership of Zionism, as exemplified by Louis D. Brandeis, Chaim Weizmann, Stephen S. Wise, Louis Lipsky and others, to further the realization of Zionism.

The outcome of the first World War, insofar as the Jewish people is concerned, was expressed in two acts of international scope and importance: (a) the insertion of clauses into the peace treaties with the newly established States, guaranteeing minority rights for the Jewish population; and (b) the issuance of the Balfour Declaration and the promulgation, under the aegis of the League of Nations, of the Mandate for Palestine. Of the first, hardly a shred has remained. Of the second, the present Yishuv, 500,000 strong, has emerged as an immovable reality that, for the first time since the destruction of Judaea, raised the issue of a Jewish State in the Land of Israel.

As the seventh century in the sixth millennium of the Hebrew calendar comes to a close, and as the second World War gets under way, the fate of the Jewish people and of Eretz Israel is again at stake. Again it is on American Jewry that the responsibility for timely, wise and effective action devolves.

The Year’s Events in Diaspora Jewry: A Review of the Highlights of 5696

The New Palestine, September 11, 1936.


The division of time into convenient spans for the purposes of review is, historically, a strictly Jewish concept. The New Year of the Hebrew calendar is not, as is well known, an occasion for hilarious celebration, but a day of judgment. The Auditor on High opens on Rosh Ha’Shanah the “Sofer Hazichronoth.” Solemnly and fearfully “all creatures pass in review” before their Creator. Their record of achievement or of failure, within the period under review, is the basis for the award of merit or the infliction of punishment. Individually, the Jew has thus been trained to a knowledge of the facts affecting his own life, to a rigorous discipline of strict accountability in relation to God and fellow man. Diaspora life has made this system of meticulous accounting almost imperative with regard to the acts, facts and conditions affecting Jewry as a whole. Too frequently the view and review have been localized and narrow.

It is to the birth of our national movement and to Zionism in particular that we owe the habit – instituted by Max Nordau at the early Zionist Congress – of assembling the facts of Jewish life from all four corners of the globe and of preparing Jewry’s national balance sheet. For this purpose, the totality of the Jewish scene, as reflected in the events within a given time, had to be studied and reviewed. At the turn of the century and for decades afterwards – how incredibly good those “good old days” now appear by comparison! – the world would hear from the platform of the Zionist Congress a detailed account of events affecting Jewry everywhere. With a penetrating analysis and in lucid accents, the unforgettable Nordau would, on the stones of Jewish misery, hew in relief what the immortal Herzl had diagnosed in brief as the “Juden-not.” On the basis of the facts he would make a presentment before the bar of public opinion, which, in every detail, constituted a true indictment of humanity’s inhumanities to the Jew. Charging the Jewish will to survive with new energy for self-aid and redemption through a national rebirth, his word-picture of the Jewish scene would simultaneously carry with it a ringing challenge to the conscience of a civilized world.

The reviewer of events in 5696, no matter how tenaciously optimistic his belief may be in the ultimate triumph of right, cannot delude himself with the hope that his reader will, however indirectly, derive a measure of dubious comfort that usually fills the heart of the aggrieved in relation to the wrongdoer. The defendant before the bar of public opinion does not deny his guilt; on the contrary, he boasts of it. In a world that cherished liberty, still clinging to the ideals proclaimed by the American and French Revolutions and pretending to be guided by them, there was comfort as well as hope in an appeal to its conscience, although that “conscience” reacted hesitatingly and rather grudgingly to an appeal for right that was not buttressed by might. What comfort or hope, it may seem, can there be found in a world which is driven by fear, consumed by hatred and guided by madness on a road that leads to certain disaster unless the unforeseeable and the miraculous happen? Where is the ray of light to be found on a horizon which is dominated by the nightmare of a Nazism apparently triumphant?

He who contemplates the 5696 scene is not, however, without cheer. That cheer has its origin in the reassurance – call it faith or life instinct – that resides in a people which looks at the world and its history from the height of 5696: a people that has a recorded history of three thousand years, having survived and triumphed over oppression and tyrannies in preceding dark ages.

Nazism Spreads Out

The events which cast their shadow over the 5696 scene may thus be reviewed and understood in their proper relation if the scene is divided into two distinct zones: the areas which have been infested or affected by the Nazi disease; and that fortunately larger part of the globe where quarantine measures, taken in time, have been successful in keeping out or at least in preventing the spread of the plague. From the outset it may be stated that the year under review witnessed a series of amazingly successful moves on the part of the Hitler machine to spread out its tentacles far beyond the frontiers of the Third Reich. Having established itself on a firmer basis within the Reich, Hitlerism put an abrupt end to the gains of the emancipation era obtained by German Jewry after a long struggle. The legal, cultural and economic status of the Jew in Germany has been completely destroyed.

The year opened with the enactment of the infamous Nuremberg Laws which virtually transported German Jewry back to the dark ages. In September, the Reichstag, convening in that ancient German city, “affirmed” Adolph Hitler’s decree which deprives the Jews of their citizenship, excludes them from the army, forbids what has been described as “race shame” (any relations between a Jew and an Aryan), prohibits the employment by Jewish housewives of Aryan female servants up to an advanced age, and imposes numerous other restrictions, all of which have as their purpose the degradation of the Jew to the status of a pariah.

Although it was stated at the time that legislation as to the economic position of the Reich’s Jewry was being postponed to a later date (presumably until after the Olympic Games), a ruthless and relentless process of “liquation” (synonymous in present-day German with practical confiscation) of Jewish business enterprises in various fields was going on throughout the year. Particularly was this process severe in the smaller towns and cities, where the eyes of foreign observers could not easily penetrate. True enough, the Olympic games which Hitler was anxious to retain in the face of a strong opposition abroad, and particularly in the U.S., have served a humanitarian purpose. They provided the bleeding Jews of the Reich with a comparative breathing spell from more drastic measures.

As it was, the pressure upon German Jewry was of such crushing force that, according to a reliable estimate, 100,000 Jews (of whom 35,000 settled in Palestine) left the Reich since the advent of Hitlerism. Within the same time, the number of Jewish deaths exceeded the number of Jewish births in the Reich by 25,000. The problem of the 400,000 Jews still remaining in the Reich was thus reduced to the terrifying formula: emigration or extinction. Coupled with this process was the systematic cultural segregation of German Jewry which now lives in a virtual ghetto. A separate Jewish school system has been established to which a majority of Jewish children have been transferred.

These conditions led the Hon. James G. McDonald, the outstanding American publicist and statesman, to resign from his post as League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (Jewish and other) from Germany. His letter of resignation, addressed to the League Council, contained a scathing denunciation of Nazi barbarities and appealed for the League’s intercession. This unprecedented persecution aroused the warmest compassion of Jews throughout the world for their kinsmen. It also led to two acts of violence: an assassination and a suicide. David Frankfurter, a Jewish student, shot and killed Wilhelm Gustloff, chief Nazi propagandist in Switzerland. This occurred in February at Gustloff’s home in Davos, Switzerland. Frankfurter is to be tried for murder by a Swiss court in October. In July, a Jewish newspaperman from Czechoslovakia committed suicide while attending a public session of the League as a means – according to a note left by him – of drawing the attention of the assembled statesmen to the bitter fate of German Jewry.

But the Nazi regime has not remained satisfied with its successes within the Reich. Parallel with its violations of international treaties and the revival of the old dream of a Mittel-Europa under the German heel, a gigantic Nazi propaganda machine has been working overtime on all fronts. Seeking its own political ends and exerting its vilest influence to entangle its near and distant neighbors in its design for conquest and world domination, the Nazi machine used its “exemplary” solution of its Jewish problem as the most effective bait as well as screen. First in the line of the attack came the countries with comparatively compact Jewish populations, where anti-Semitism has had a fertile field even without the example of instigation of the Nazi.

Clouds over the Vistula

Heavy clouds hung over the misty skies on the banks of the Vistula as the Republic of Poland, which had sprung into existence by the magic of President Wilson’s fourteen points, continued its dangerous flirtation with Nazi Germany. While it was doubtful whether the fraternity between Poles and “Szwabs” would withstand the first clash of interests or arms (within the past fortnight Poland has returned to the embrace of its former ally, France), this fraternizing between Warsaw and Berlin has had a most salutary effect on the mood of the Polish urban [masses] as well as [the] rural masses in regard to the three and one-half million Jews of the Republic.

The heirs and successors to the power and glory of the late Marshal Pilsudski cannot be accused of instigating anti-Semitism in a vulgar or wild form. They cannot, however, be exonerated of the charge that governmental policies, often taking the shape of legislation, are directly aimed at destroying the economic foundations of the country’s Jewish population. Nor can they be credited with willingness or ability to enforce law and order – they are somehow very effective when other interests are at stake – when the safety of Jews is being menaced.

And so the year opened with a strong movement in government circles to prohibit the Shechitah in the Republic. A bill to this effect had been introduced in the Sejm by no less a personage than the wife of the speaker of the Polish Senate. A day of fast[ing] and prayer was declared by the Rabbinate of Poland. A wave of indignation and protest against this unjustifiable attack on the Jewish religion swept over the Western world. Suddenly, those interested in the prevention of cruelty dropped their tender feelings for Polish animals. They remained satisfied with passing a law restricting the volume of Kosher slaughtering with the result that a great many Jewish families lost their means of gaining a livelihood.

Political and economic pressure on the Jews of Poland has become so heavy that this vast population, which has had its deep roots in the country since the middle of the 9th century [Christian Era], is literally in a state of a bottled-up exodus. The economic misery of Polish Jewry simply cries to heaven for relief. And while Polish statesmen are not at all adverse to manifesting sympathetic interest in the matter on the international arena (they are preparing now to raised the issue of Jewish emigration at the September session of the League Assembly; incidentally, this may place in their hands an additional powerful argument in support of Poland’s demand for oversea colonies), the authorities that exercise power in the country have done little, if anything, either to alleviate the oppressive conditions or to curb the organized attempts at intimidation, which often take on the character of an anti-Jewish terror.

Illustrative of these conditions, which are particularly acute in the smaller towns, were the events which took place in March in the small town of Przytyk, Poland. Following the prolonged agitation among the local peasantry, a mob attacked the Jewish community in broad daylight. With unusual ferocity, Jewish homes were ransacked, two Jews brutally murdered and scores wounded. The Jewish population throughout the Republic declared a one-day strike in protest against the Government’s failure to prevent the attack or to hold the mob in check. Non-Jewish labor groups joined in the protest. Subsequently, 14 Jews and 43 Poles were tried on charges arising out of the Przytyk events. What ensued cannot be regarded in any other manner but as a mockery of justice, for the Polish judge saw fit to free the murderers of the two Jewish victims while a Przytyk Jew who shot and killed one of the attackers in self-defense was sentenced to death. Stale falsehoods against the Talmud, long disproved, were aired in court by counsel for the defense.

Under the Swastika

The shadow of the Swastika fell gloomily and menacingly on the Jewish communities of Austria, Romania, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

Austrian Jewry lived through a year of high tension intensified by the unfriendly and discriminatory attitude of the Schussnig government as the Fascist but not officially Nazified regime carried on its zigzag policy of swaying now toward Rome, now toward Berlin. The near future does not appear too bright, now that Berlin and Vienna have become closely linked through the recently concluded pact.

Romania, whose Cuzists and anti-Semites are of many varieties have never ceased to engage in the daily task of annoying and harassing its Jewish population of one million, has welcomed a new addition to the anti-Semitic family: the Iron Guard. The Nazi parentage of this new Romanian offspring is clearly discernible. The country, long an ally of France, has during the past year been torn between two powerful blocks: the pro-French and the pro-German. After a year of extensive Nazi propaganda in which Jew-hatred a la Hitler played no small part, the pro-French forces, headed by the former foreign minister, Titulescu, were pushed into the background. Romania, governed by a new Cabinet in which the Titulescu party has no influence, may definitely be placed in the Nazi column. What this means to the safety and status of Romanian Jewry needs hardly to be pointed out.

In Czechoslovakia, whose government under that truly great statesman, Edouard Benes, maintains the friendliest attitude toward Jews and Jewish problems, the Nazi menace assumed considerable proportions. The Henlein party, professing to represent eight million Germans in the Republic, with irredentist leanings, scored a great victory at the polls in the last general elections. But here, the Jews are not alone, as the growth of the danger is an equal menace to the existence of the Republic [itself].

The saddening picture presented by the state of affairs in the countries enumerated above has its happy contrast in conditions on the Balkan Peninsula. The Balkans, once the powder keg of Europe, are now in close economic connection with Nazi Germany. Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey are Germany’s best buyers. Germany is also their best customer. And yet quiet prevailed on the Balkan front, except for a minor anti-Jewish disturbance in Yugoslavia and the decree issued by the Greek government prohibiting the teaching of modern Hebrew in the Jewish community school for some unexplainable reason.

Turkey absorbed a considerable number of Jewish scientists, refugees from Germany, making room for them on the faculties of its institutions of learning.

Interest in Zionism and emigration to Palestine have grown considerably in Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey, even though the country of which Palestine was formerly a province still looks with disfavor on [the] Zionist movement. The Turkish government is placing great obstacles in the way of those Turkish Jews who immigrate to the Jewish National Home.

On the other hand, it should be noted that the tentacles of Nazism have reached as far as South Africa, where Hitler’s agents carried on extensive propaganda in the former German colonies. Nazi influences were also rampant in Shanghai, China, where a strong pro-German and anti-Jewish movement was noticeable in certain press organs.

In the South African Union, where Jews enjoyed tranquility and prosperity, the government officially took a stand against the boycott of Nazi goods and services fostered by Jews. There was also on foot a strong movement pushed by the nationalists to close the Union’s gates to the small stream of refugees from Germany that had been trickling in.

Democracy Stands Guard

Democracy stood guard over its cherished liberties, refusing to fall for the Nazi bait of anti-Semitism in the expansive English-speaking world, in France, in Holland, in Belgium, and in the Scandinavian countries.

In the United States, a marked decline was noted in the public activities of the Nazi societies among the German Americans. Our country was also the battleground for the most energetic fight against the participation of American athletes in the Olympics. This gallant fight, led by the Hon. Jeremiah T. Mahoney, although it failed of its purpose, has served as an occasion as well as an indicator for the abhorrence in which the overwhelming majority of the American people held the Nazi practices.

While the undercover attempts to inject anti-Semitism as an issue in the current presidential campaign may be ascribed to the usual eruptions of the political volcano and may be expected to evaporate after November, considerable concern has been aroused by the emergence of what seems to be a native American anti-Semitic movement with a strong Hitler tinge. Interest is centered in the influence of the none-too-friendly, although only indirectly anti-Jewish radio-priest, [Father] Coughlin. Secret terroristic bands, of which the Black Legion, recently exposed and suppressed in Michigan, have also made their appearance in what may rightfully be described as the anti-Semitic underworld.

British Jewry, too, has had for the first time in decades to take special measures of defense against anti-Semitic agitation and attempts at violence inspired by Fascists. Mosley’s Black Shirts and kindred groups developed a propaganda of growing extent. Attacks on Jewish passersby in the East End of London have had their repercussions in the House of Congress. The ritual-murder accusation was revived and made use of by one of the Jew-baiting journals.

The world watches with the greatest interest the developments in France, where Leo Blum, Socialist and Jew, rose to power as Prime Minister of the Popular Front Government. It is the irony of history that the year which witnessed some of Hitler’s great impudences should be coincidental with the period of the rise of Leon Blum as France’s leading statesman and defender. On the success of the Blum “new deal” policies depend not only the fate of democracy in France, but also the lot of French Jewry. The first Jew to occupy this high position, Blum has been the target of attack on the part of reactionary forces in the country where De La Roque’s “Croix de Feux” had previously developed a not inconsiderable later of anti-Jewish feeling.

The fate of some 30,000 Jews in Spain and in North African positions is bound up with the outcome of the civil war now raging in the country. Tragically enough, some of the Jews in Spain now awaiting with anxiety the outcome have but recently left the land of the Nazis.

U.S.S.R.

In Soviet Russia, where anti-Jewish hooliganism of the old type seems indeed to have been stamped out, the cultural and religious disintegration of a once-virile Jewry continued under the Communist dictatorship. Safe in body, the spirit of Russian Jewry as known for centuries is slowly but surely taking on a new aspect.

Much expectation was aroused by the avowed intention of the Stalin regime to implement a new Soviet Constitution under which freedom of religious worship will be guaranteed. This, it was thought, may possibly lead to the lifting of the severe restrictions on the instruction of Hebrew and to the repeal of prohibitions on Zionism. It was also hoped that under a more liberal procedure the Zionist exiles would be allowed to return home from their internment in the Solovetzky Islands. But the new fundamental law has not yet been implemented and what course events will take is merely a matter of speculation.

Biro-Bidjan, which is now a Jewish Autonomous Region and is slated to become a Jewish Republic within the Soviet Union, if and when its population growth and upbuilding progress warrant it, has not a population of 50,000 souls. Of these, 15,000 are Jews. A considerable number of the first pioneers who could not adjust themselves to their new environment returned to their native towns and villages in the other parts of the Union. Negotiations were, however, under way between the Moscow authorities and Jewish groups abroad with a view to allowing and encouraging the immigration to Biro-Bidjan of non-Soviet Jews.

The swift executions which followed the Zinovieff-Kameneff trial, and the ensuing mass arrests of Trotskyites among whom many Jews were to be found, gave rise to an opinion in some quarters that the Stalin regime is determined to “purge” the party of the influence of its Jewish members.

Constructive Defense

Under the impact of the attack on the status of the Jew and under the pressure of the swiftly occurring events, Jewish life in 5696 took on the aspect of a people fighting with its back to the wall, but exerting every effort for defense of its position. Parallel with the defensive action, there were numerous efforts at reconstruction: relief in the Diaspora countries; constructive upbuilding work in Eretz Israel.

Outstanding on the defense front was the event which took place in the month of August in Geneva, Switzerland. There the first session of the World Jewish Congress was held with the participation of about 300 delegates representing five to six million Jews who reside in 32 countries. The World Jewish Congress, an idea and ideal which occupied the thought of Jewish democracy for several decades and became the subject of bitter controversy, particularly in the United States, was finally fashioned, under the leadership of Dr. Stephen S. Wise and Louis Lipsky, into an authoritative agency for the defense of Jewish rights and the protection of the Jewish position. The sessions, which were held in the League of Nations Assembly Hall and were conducted on a high and dignified level, attracted world-wide attention and resulted in the formulation of constructive plans and the establishment of an apparatus that, it is hoped, will soon be fully equipped to cope with the great responsibilities entrusted to it.

The various plans to cope with the problem of German Jewry through coordinated emigration – a subject which had impelled Sir Herbert Samuel, Lord Bearsfed and Simon Marks to undertake a special trip to the United States for the purpose of conferring with leaders of American Jewry – have finally crystalized into the creation of a Council for German Jewry with Sir Herbert as Chairman of the British section and Felix M. Warburg as Chairman of the American section. The Council is to undertake the gigantic task of transferring 100,000 Jews, up to the age of 35, from Germany to Palestine and other lands. Fifty percent of that number is to be directed to Palestine. A revolving fund of $15,000,000, to be contributed by British and American Jewry, is to be placed at the disposal of the Council.

Plans for extending the scope of Jewish emigration from Eastern and Central Europe have also been formulated and special steps taken to extend immigrant aid service at the HIAS-ICA Emigration Association Conference held in the early part of July in Paris. Representatives of emigrant and immigrant aid societies from 30 countries attended this conference, which marked the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the HICEM, a partnership in service to the cause of the Jewish wanderer between American Jewry’s HIAS and the Jewish Colonization Association.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which has a distinguished record of service in the field of philanthropic aid to Jewish communities in many parts of the world, has continued its work during the year under review.

The boycott on Nazi goods and services, adopted by numerous Jewish organizations in cooperation with labor and liberal groups, as a measure of defense against Hitlerism, has continued. Valuable services have been rendered in this field by the Non-Sectarian League, the Boycott Committee of the American Jewish Congress,[1] the Jewish Labor Committee, and the American Federation of Labor. It should be recorded that in the past year the prosecution of the boycott has met with growing difficulties in many countries caused by the political maneuvers of the respective governments.

The American Jewish Committee, the Alliance Israelite Universelle and a number of other organizations have drafted and submitted to the League of Nations a document of international importance relative to the status of German Jewry under the Nazi regime. The document, which bears the form of a petition, urges the intervention of the League and it is expected that one of the leading European powers will sponsor this move at the forthcoming session of the League Council.

Zionism Gains Momentum

Zionism, as the expression of the Jewish people’s will to live, has scored even greater gains during the past year, notwithstanding the disquieting and even alarming reports coming out of Eretz Israel since April 19th, the beginning of the Arab terror.

In the United States, Zionist fundraising agencies have been consolidated into the United Palestine Appeal, which, seeking to raise the amount of $3,500,000, has presented to American Jewry the claim of Eretz Israel to a position of parity in the planning of Jewish communal budgets. Notable has also been the progress made by the Jewish National Fund,[2] which attained an income unprecedented since the peak year of the prosperity period. Corresponding gains have also been recorded by the Keren Hayesod and Keren Kayemeth in their fundraising activities in all parts of the world.

A notable event in the annals of American Zionism was the 39th Annual Convention, held in Providence, Rhode Island, which resulted in the election by acclamation of Dr. Stephen S. Wise as the President of the Zionist Organization of America.

The unshakable faith of Jewry in the Zionist ideal and in the ultimate attainment of the Zionist goal in Eretz Israel, notwithstanding temporary difficulties and setbacks, was demonstrated in the attitude of the Jewish communities toward the events in Palestine during the progress of the Arab campaigns of terror. Admiration for the strength of the Yishub in the face of provocation-protest against the vacillating policy of the Palestine Government and a demand upon the Mandatory Government to live up to the letter and spirit of the Mandate have been the notes, sounded with confidence, courage and hope, in the mighty echo which has vibrated throughout Diaspora Jewry in response to the events in Eretz Israel.

[1] William Z. Spiegelman was the head of the American Jewish Congress’ Boycott Committee in 1934.

[2] William Z. Spiegelman had been the head of the JNF’s publicity campaigns in the U.S. since 1930.