Herman Bernstein, well known American Jewish writer, playwright and editor of the “Jewish Tribune” was the recipient of many congratulatory messages on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday which he celebrated on Tuesday. Among those who congratulated Mr. Bernstein were Adolph S. Ochs, Nathan Straus, Gov. Alfred E. Smith, Felix M. Warburg, Alfred W. Anthony of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, Col. Edward M. House, Professor G. E. Woodbury, William Johnston, former Ambassador Abram I. Elkus, Roger W. Straus, Louis Lipsky, Samuel Untermyer, Alexander Black. Adolph Lewisohn, Lillian D. Wald, James W. Gerard, Morris Gest, Senator James W. Wadsworth and many others.
Adolph S. Ochs, publisher of the New York “Times”, declared in his message: “I want to extend my heartiest congratulations and good wishes. You certainly do not look that old. You carry your years well, but I have no doubt that you appear nearly twice that old to those who have never seen you, and judge you by your works. Your fund of knowledge, your wide experience, your philosophical observations, and your sage advices, all overflowing with the milk of human kindness, would cause one to believe that you are a noble, old patriarch.
“In common with all who know you and your activities I hold you in the highest esteem and regard, and wish you many more years of happy, useful life.”
Herman Bernstein was born on September 21, 1876, in Neustadt-Scherwindt, a town in Russian Poland, on the German frontier. When he was six years of age, his family moved to Mohilev on the Dniepr, White Russia, whence he left for the United States in 1893.
Mr. Bernstein turned to a literary career, and only six years after his arrival in the United States, began to bring out short stories, novels and translations of Russian classical writers. His earliest stories and articles appeared in the New York “Evening Post.” He was a pioneer in introducing to the English-speaking world the works of such masters as Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky and Andreyev. He is the author of “In the Gates of Israel,” “Contrite Hearts,” “With Master Minds,” “Celebrities of Our Times,” “The Road to Peace,” and has contributed numerous articles and stories to leading American magazines and newspapers.
He toured Europe many times as special correspondent of the metropolitan newspapers.
In 1912, after the abrogation by the United States of its treaty with Russia of 1832, because of the continued refusal of that country to observe its provisions in so far as American Jews were concerned, Mr. Bernstein, who sought entrance into Russia as a special correspondent of the New York “Sun,” was debarred on the charge that by his writings he had sought to do injury to the autocracy.
During all his journalistic work, Mr. Bernstein maintained a deep interest in Jewish affairs, and was one of the earliest, after the Russo-Jewish exodus, to interpret that element of the “new immigration” to the American public.
In 1913, he was elected Secretary of the American Jewish Committee, a position which he held until the following year when he founded the well known Jewish daily, “The Day,” of which he was editor for two years, when he acquired the “American Hebrew,” of which he was the publisher and editor for three years, after which he resumed his journalistic work. In 1921, he published “The History of a Lie,” in which he exposed the notorious “protocols of the Wise Men of Zion,” as a clumsy forgery.
Since June, 1923, Mr. Bernstein has been the editor of “The Jewish Tribune.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
