Daily 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 indicate approval.–Editor.]

“A Jewish sect without a trace of Judaism in it”–this is the way the “Day” of May 18 describes the Ethical Culture movement which last week celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. Though Dr. Felix Adler’s original plan was to gather Jews and Christians into his purely ethical movement, the paper says, only the Jews responded, so that the membership today is almost exclusively Jewish.

“Thus,” we read “Ethical Culture has become a Jewish sect, with Jewish leaders, Jewish followers, financed with Jewish money, but without Judaism, without a trace of the Jewish spirit.

“During the 50 years of its existence Ethical Culture did not even once show an interest in Jewish problems, in the Jewish need, not because it was ashamed of Jews and Judaism, but simply because it severed connections with everything and anything Jewish.

“One thing it accomplished: it gave an opportunity to a large number of weak Jews who were ashamed to enter the Christian world through the door of apostacy, to sneak away from the Jewish fold through the back door of Ethical Culture.”

Dr. Felix Adler, leader of the Ethical Culture Movement, is taken to task in the “Jewish Daily News” (May 16 issue) for his criticism of the Ten Commandments.

“He who says,” we read in an article by Dr. Mordecai Katz, “that the Jewish morality is inapplicable in the modern world, testifies to his own lack of knowledge of Jewish culture and Jewish history. He proves that he has a very limited conception of the long chain which extends from the Ten Commandments through the Talmud and the various Jewish philosophical works of later centuries down to the creations of our own day which contain the pure essence of Judaism. The Ten Commandments are the strongest pillars of Judaism which the fiercest winds and storms of the ages have been unable to shake.”

In the English section of the same paper an editorial declares:

“When Dr. Adler assails the Ten Commandments and Judaism there is only one thing to say, and it is that Dr. Felix Adler is woefully ignorant of Judaism. In fact, he never had any knowledge of it Dr. Adler received his theological and so-called Jewish training in the heyday of radical Reform and the result was what was to be expected–departure from the ancestral faith. A knowledge of Judaism must be gained from Jewish sources.”

THE PASSING OF A PROUD JEW

The death of Sir Stuart Samuel has deprived world Jewry as well as the British Jewish community of one of its outstanding personalities, the Jewish press points out.

Sir Stuart Samuel was a proud Jew, says the “Jewish Morning Journal” drawing an analogy between him and his famous uncle, the late Lord Swaythling. “In Parliament and in his work as a Jewish leader,” we are told “the nephew was more truly the spiritual heir of that noted man than the younger Lord Swaythling, who, despite his official orthodoxy, seems to be too removed from Jewish life.”

He performed his Jewish activities not from the point of view of a party man but of a Jew whose heart responded to everything Jewish, the “Jewish Daily News” emphasizes. “As an orthodox Jew who was interested in Palestine he belonged to the Mizrachi organization, and though his activities in this respect were limited he was always interested in everything relating to Palestine. It was as a firm Jew who held the Jewish flag aloft that Sir Stuart went to Poland as representative of the British government at the time of the anti-Jewish excesses. In all his words and actions in Poland it was evident that here was a Jew who felt that it was an honor to bear the Jewish name. Sir Stuart never permitted the Englishman in him to overshadow the Jew,” the paper says.

TAKES “HERALD-TRIBUNE” TO TASK

The suggestion of the New York “Herald-Tribune” that instead of admitting the families of declarants to this country the declarants should return to their native countries, is criticized by the “Jewish Daily News” of May 18.

Quoting an editorial of the “Herald-Tribune.” the “Jewish Daily News” terms it “an outpouring of hate and wrath” which serves to illustrate the extent to which animosity toward the immigrants has gone, and remarks:

“It would have been impossible some ten years ago or so to imagine that a big newspaper in New York would write in this way about the immigrants. In respect to narrow-mindedness and hatred of immigrants America has made great ‘progress’.”

THE FALLACY OF INTERMARRIAGE

A reply to the defense of intermarriage by the well known Socialist, August Claessens, who himself has a Jewish wife, is made by Nathaniel Zalowitz, in the “Forward” of May 16. Mr. Zalowitz contends that intermarriage is especially objectionable from the Jewish standpoint because it threatens to deprive the Jews of a certain portion of their intellectual and artistic classes.

“When Jews oppose intermarriage,” he writes, “it is not because they think they are too good to mix with Gentiles. But if they are to preserve their racial wholeness they can do it only at the price of a certain amount of isolation. In other words, the Jew must keep to himself, marry his own kind exclusively. Not for a moment do I fear that the Jews en masse will fuse with the Gentiles; such a thing cannot and will not happen. But I am afraid that a certain portion of our intellectual and artistic classes will drift into intermarriage, thus impoverishing the entire race. I’d rather see ten Jewish cloak-and-suit salesmen marry ‘shikses’ than one Harry Hershfield or Irving Berlin or Ludwig Lewisohn or Joseph Schildkraut. We have plenty of traveling salesmen but not enough Schildkrauts.”

NO JEWISH COLLEGE

“It is interesting.” writes the “Jewish Times” of Baltimore (May 14 issue) “to see the Yiddish press come out against the idea of establishing Jewish universities in this country to give a general education to the Jewish youth. It contends that since we are out of the Ghetto we should stay out and not voluntarily return, which in effect would amount to the same thing if we decided to send our sons to a Jewish college. We say this is interesting because such suggestions for a Jewish university were received from Orthodox sources.

“It stands to reason.” the paper continues, “that if every Jewish boy wants to become a lawyer, a doctor or an engineer it will be exceedingly difficult to supply sufficient educational facilities. It is quite natural that, with the ever-increasing population in this country and with an ever-increasing number of families who are financially able to give their children a college education, the colleges simply cannot take care of them all.

“It means that thousands of Jewish young men may as well make up their minds that they cannot get an education at the principal universities. It will be necessary for them to look with more favor upon some of the smaller colleges, or those that are not so well advertised. But even these, within a brief period of time, will not be in a position to take care of the applicants. Everybody seems to want to be college-educated these days, but a large proportion simply clutter up the place and take up valuable room that should be given over to those who are really entitled to the opportunity. At any rate we are pleased to note that despite Mr. Adolph Lewisohn’s suggestion we are still far from having a Jewish college in the United States.”

More than 400 persons attended the $100-a-plate dinner in honor of Rabbi Mordecai Moses Epstein, Dean of the Slabodka Yeshivah, recently transferred to Hebron. Palestine, in the grand ballroom of the Hotel Astor Sunday night.

Gedaliah Bublick, editor of the “Jewish Daily News,” was toastmaster. Among the speakers were Herman Bernstein, editor of the “Jewish Tribune”; Dr. Elias L. Solomon, President of the United Synagogue of America; Judge Otto Rosalsky of General Sessions and Morris Stern, Chairman of the Dinner Committee.