Digest of Public Opinion on Jewish Matters

[The purpose of the Digest is informative. Preference is given to papers not generally accessible to our readers. Quotation does not indicate approval.–Editor.]

The report of the Kiwanis Club, claiming that only four out of twenty-four Jewish children in Manhattan get religious education, through Sunday School or equivalent registration, as against four out of five Catholic and four out of seven Protestant children, is challenged by the “Jewish Morning Journal.” In its Jan. 6 issue the paper contends the Kiwanis figures are misleading, saying:

“We frequently hear the complaint that the Jews neglect the religious education of their children and various figures are brought forward to prove the assertion. But the difference between Catholics and Jews cannot be so big. Every Jew who observes conditions about him knows that more than one out of six Jewish children receives some kind of religious training.

“If the investigators of the Kiwanis Club took into consideration only Sunday School registration, forgetting or ignoring the fact that Jews do not regard Sunday in the same way as Christians, then they are simply not justified in expressing an opinion on the subject. Jews have private religious education and schools which can not be classified as Sunday Schools. A different criterion must be applied to the question of religious education among Jews, even if one knows the inner Jewish situation so little as not to realize that the training given in Jewish Sunday Schools is the least valuable of all. We confess that religious education is being greatly neglected among us, but such exaggerations as those of the Kiwanis Club report bring no good, and it is surely an injustice to put a large part of the population of New York in a bad light, even if the intentions are the best.”

NEW YORK PAPERS URGE REPEAL OF “NATIONAL ORIGINS” CLAUSE

The passage of Senator Shipstead’s bill for the repeal of the “national origins” quotas is urged by the N. Y. “World” (Jan. 6). Enumerating the objections to the “national origins” clause, the paper concludes:

“This clause of the 1924 act was passed with hasty and inadequate debate, at a time when attention was centered upon Japanese exclusion. The happiest way of disposing of it till such time as we can undertake a general re-examination of the immigration question would be to pass Mr. Shipstead’s repeal bill.”

The belief that the national origins quotas should not be enacted is voiced by the N. Y. “Herald-Tribune,” in commenting on the report that the President is not expected to issue the proclamation which is requisite to the enforcement of the new quota system. The paper remarks:

“If the national origins committee should produce a report of unquestionable accuracy or so close an approximation that it could not fairly be challenged there would be no just ground of complaint. But if out of the welter of figures and probabilities only a supposititious reckoning can be fabricated, the national origins arrangement had better be aabandoned.”

The N. Y. “Times”, dealing with the same subject, does not take a definite stand, but observes:

“The opposition has come almost exclusively from the Representatives of districts in which are large foreign colonies. Congressmen from other regions are strongly in favor of continuing, and perhaps even of tightening, the restrictions on the admission of aliens. It may be decided, therefore, to clarify the law of 1924 so as to make it obligator## the President to put the nation## plan into effect. The matter ## now to rest with the immigration committees of the Senate and the House.”