The centennial of the birth of Jacob H. Schiff, which occurs tomorrow, is to be observed by Jewish organizations and communities throughout the nation, according to plans which have been drawn up in recent weeks.
Although Schiff’s birthdate is Jan. 10 the observances will be held at varying times during the coming year in different communities. First of the commemorative meetings will be held at the Jewish Theological Seminary this Sunday evening, with Joseph M. Proskauer, president of the American Jewish Committee, as principal speaker.
Schiff, who emigrated to the United States at the age of 18 from Frankfurt, Germany, his birthplace, and became one of the nation’s leading financiers, was the outstanding leader of American Jewry in the field of philanthropic and communal affairs. His period of active leadership, which was greatly responsible for the development of Jewish communal life in this country, has gone into American Jewish history as the “Schiff era.”
He was one of the founders of the American Jewish Committee, a leader in the Jewish center movement and one of the prime movers in the formation of the Jewish Welfare Board, a director and contributor to the nation’s leading Jewish theological seminaries and educational and cultural organizations and one of the leaders in the first large-scale drive in the U.S. for overseas relief, which resulted in the collection of nearly $2,000,000 in 1905 for the relief of pogrom victims in Russia.
Schiff was active in the fight of the American Jewish Committee to secure revocation of a trade treaty between the United States and Russia, because of the Czarist Government’s discrimination against Jews, which barred U.S. Jews from entering the country. He led delegations to Presidents Roosevelt and Taft and appeared before Congressional committees.
Although not a Zionist, he gave $100,000 for the founding of the Haifa Technicum in Palestine, purchased stock in the Jewish Colonial Trust and helped to finance Jewish wine growers in Palestine. He also financed archaeological studies in Palestine. As part of his support for liberal immigration to the United States, he gave $500,000 for the “Galveston Experiment” during which more than 10,000 Jewish immigrants from Russia, Poland and Rumania were distributed by the Galveston Jewish Immigrants’ Information Bureau as far west as the Pacific Coast and as far northwest as Winnipeg, but primarily in the scuthwest of the United States.
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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.
