Samuel Levy, borough president of Manhattan and candidate for reelection, doesn’t mix his religion with politics. Whichever of the two derives the greatest benefit is an unsettled question. But. Mr. Levy, a two-fisted, bitter-tongued, seldom-outshouted individual, insists that no living man can claim more patriotic feelings toward his race or toward his political banner than he.
On the seventeenth floor of a Fifth Avenue skyscraper where Mr. Levy has offices, the borough president sat busily scanning a heap of paper. He has venerable gray hair and half-moon eyeglasses used for reading. From above he glared when the reporter was announced.
“All right. Have your interview. What do you want? Have you got pencil and paper?”
Manhattan’s Jewish borough president talks rapidly. From years before the bar he has acquired a positive manner, a tempestuous voice and a self-assertive movement of his head which bobs in emphasis.
“I put my religion over my office,” he said. “I will not mix my religion and politics. My stand must be taken after a communal life of twenty-five years. I won’t stand for any belittling for my religion.”
This was in answer to a question asking his comment on the charges against alleged anti-Semitism of Joseph V. McKee and Fiorello H. LaGuardia, mayoralty candidates opposing Borough President Levy’s Tammany colleague, Mayor John P. O’Brien.
Asked to say something about his record, he replied: “They know all about me. I’ve got nothing to say.”
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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.
