Digest of Public Opinion on Jewish Matters

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

The belief that the difficulty encountered by Reform Judaism in America lies in its having lost contact with the masses and the conviction that spiritually Reform has become dependent on East European or Orthodox Jews are voiced in the “Day” and the “Jewish Morning Journal” of Wednesday, in editorial comments on the conference of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in Cleveland.

The “Jewish Morning Journal,” which is an orthodox paper, referring to the financial crisis facing the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, remarks : “Our own opinion is that Reform Judaism has seen its best days and that it will continue to weaken in the future, even if its income were to rise no matter how high. The truth is that spiritually Reform has become almost entirely dependent on Eastern Judaism that is on the sources of Orthodoxy. Polish and Lithuanian Jewish students fill the Hebrew Union College and the Sominary, ‘landsleit’ of our Yeshiva students accupy the pulpits in the largest Reform Temples. They have even dragged the much hated Zionism into the temples and they are drawn to orthodoxy more than they would date to admit.

“The East-European Jew sticks to his idealism when he becomes rich and he makes bigger sacrifices than the Western Jew, who is wealthier. In London Bernard Baron, a Russian cigarette makes from New York is teaching the Rotschilds and the Montagues how to render charity. In New York Russian Jewish ‘builders’ are teaching the German American Jews how to build institutes for higher Jewish education.”

The “Day” expresses its view thus : “Seventy-five years ago. when the first Reform rabbis came over here from Germany, they were able to bring into being a movement which in the spiritual sense bore a revolutionary character. Wise and Lilienthal and Kohler represented the torch beaters of a new idea which attracted the German-Jewish masses who had just immigrated here. The contact with the Jewish masses lent the Reform movement life and energy : Reform was an actual problem then. But in the course of the past quarter century a change has taken place in the character of the Reform movement in America. Instead of going ahead further along the lines of the masses’ needs it has stopped, and has become the interest of a small group of well-to-do German Jews. It has lost contact with the masses. Temple Judaism is an atrophied Judaism and Reform has been unable in recent years to free itself from this state.” the paper says.

The “Jewish Daily News.” orthodox organ, in yesterday’s issue, directs an attack on Rabbi Philipson, who, according to the paper, is alleged to have said in his address before the Cleveland convention, that “Titus the Cruel” performed a good deed by destroying the Temple and disposing the Jewish people to all the corners of the world, for “by doing that he broke down the walls of the narrow scope of Jewish life.” The paper heads its editorial, “Titus the Cruel, in Cleveland’ and charges Dr. Philipson with anti-Jewish semtiments.

Comment on the convention of the Jewish Reform leaders in Cleveland is contained in the “Cleveland Press” of Jan. 19, wherein we read:

“The deliberations show that the reform Jews of America are bending their efforts to the things which make for peace, good will and happiness in American and the world. Here are some of the things that they are doing:

“Calling upon President Coolidge to avoid war with ‘Mexico and Nicaragua and to settle the difficulties with those cunotries by peaceful methods. Affirming their belief that all laws, including the prohibition law, must be obeyed. Calling upon the civilized world to protest the ill-treatment of Jews in Roumania. Making plans to keep the youth religious. Making plans to increase good will between Christian and Jew thru mutual understanding.

“These things show that the Jews of America are doing their best for the future of the nation.”

THE CHANGING EAST SIDE

That New York’s East Side can no longer be classed with the world’s great slums, that it constitutes “the finest consumer market of high-grade products in America” and that improvements such as contemplated by philanthropists are now already in rapid progress in this section, are the facts gleaned from an article which will appear in the “American Mercury” for Febreuary from the pen of Zelda F. Popkin who writes on “The Changing East Side.” We read :

“While from their office-buildings uptown certain philanthropists still fill the newspapers with news of a venture by which all the tenements of the East Side are to be torn down and replaced by model dwellings, a change is taking place down there which makes all the clamor sound a little silly. In 1916, 542,061 persons lived in the narrow streets south of Fourteenth Street and east of the Bowery. But in 1924 there were only 416,108 inhabitants in the district, and this year the estimate generally agreed upon runs between 300,000 and 350,000. As it declines in numbers the East Side rises in aspiration. An individual householder cannot hire a plumber today for love or money. The gentlemen of that profession are rushed to the limit of their union working hours with the installation of bathtubs. Into kitchens where for years a scabrous washtub sufficed for a whole family’s ablutions, into little hall closets, into corners that are darkness leading into dark, go new white porcelain tubs. And these tubs are not put in for the storage of coal, but to forestall the departure of the tenants.

“The exodus of population and the installation of modern improvements are, however, only minor paragraphs in the story of the changing East Side. Of far greater significance is its altered character and outlook. The old spirit of self-sacrificing idealism is dead. It sickened with the Armistice. It died with the election of Calvin Coolidge. It was buried when the nails were hammered into the coffin of its symbol and hero, Meyer London. Before the war, if you wanted to get information about the East Side, you went to the social service agencies and studied their poverty surveys. Today you go to the advertising agencies. A daily newspaper which recently made a survey on behalf of its advertisers decided that the new East Side presented the “finest consumer market of high-grade products in America.’

“It would be decidedly inaccurate to say or imply that there is no longer any poverty on the East Side-no families living below the actual minimum of subsistence. No population group of more than 300,000 could be without its share of dependents. But it may be said with assurance that there are not enough persons living below the subsistence minimum in the district to justify classifying it any longer with the world’s great slums.”

“TIMES” ON THE LATE LEE KOHNS

The late Lee Kohns, observes the N. Y. “Times,” was “a citizen of the type which Pericles praised as the ideal.” The paper adds :

“Though he attended assiduously and successfully to private business, he took an active interest in public affairs. Suggested for office more than once, he served his city and his country only as a private citizen. but with a public spirit as disinterested and devoted as that of any official.

“He came of that distinguished Straus stock which has made such varied and beneficent contribution to the betterment of this city and of other parts of the world. His mother was a sister of the brothers Straus, Oscar, Nathan and Isidor. He thus had fine example in their public-mindedness and far-seeing philanthropy which did not stop at the bounds of our city or our continent.”

The struggle between conservative and radical elements for control of the needle trades unions in New York resulted in a fight between groups of right and left wing garment workers about 8 o’clock Wednesday morning at Thirty-sixth Street and Eighth Avenue, New York City.

After about ten minutes fighting many of the fifty men who participated on both sides were badly beaten. Four detectives of the Industrial Squad, on strike duty in the garment district, fired several shots in the air. Seven were arrested by the detectives.

Four of the arrested were held in $500 bail each by Magistrate Alexander Brough in Jefferson Market Court for a hearing on Friday. Two were held in $250 bail each for a hearing on Monday. One was released in custody of his counsel pending a hearing on Monday.