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 suggestion that the controversy going on in Mexico could best be solved by a Jew is made by the “American Israelite” of Jan. 21. The paper says:

“How would it do for President Coolidge to send a Jew to Mexico as the representative of the United States Government? Before the anfortunate World War when there was a good deal of friction in Turkey between the heads of the Mohammed Church and the Christian missionaries, several Jews were successively sent to Turkey and one of them, Henry Morgenthau, did specially good work in restoring good relations. Some years ago when the feeling between Mohammedans and Hindus in India was very bitter, a Jew was appointed Viceroy. namely Lord Reading, and he succeeded in restoring peace and good feeling to a remarkable degree. In both cases the Jew was the neutral, and was, therefore, not antagonized by either party to the strife.”

“CURRENT HISTORY” REVIEWS ROUMANIA’S PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS

The persecution of the Jews in Roumania, the anti-Semitic policy pursued by the Roumanian government since 1919, despite solemn treaty obligations to treat the Jews equally with the rest of the population, and the anti-Jewish excesses which have recently stirred the whole civilized world, are reviewed in the “Current History” magazine for February by Solomon Sufrin, formerly president of the United Roumanian Jews of America and at one time a member of the N. Y. State Legislature.

Referring to the attitude of the present government in Roumania, Mr. Sufrin writes:

“While the anti-Semitic movement in Roumania continues to grow more intense daily, the Government takes no measures to abate it. The Penal Code provides penaities for those who incite one section of the people against another. In spite of the frenzied agitation that has been carried on against the Jews throughout the country, there is not one case on record of a single person having been brought to justice by reason of such incitement. Thousands of pamphlets are published and distributed charging the Jews with being murderers and with killing Christians, or declaring that the Jewish religion is a criminal religion, that the Jews need Christian blood for Passover, that the Jews are traitors, that they acted as spies during the war, and that the Jewish people have nothing in common with their Christian neighbors. The official press representing the Government is encouraged to promote this propaganda by the Government itself. The Government, indeed, so far from suppressing or even curbing the campaign against the Jews, has instead shown itself actually sympathetic to the perpetrators of anti-Semitic acts. The purpose of the Government seems to be to make the Jews always responsible for anything and everything that goes wrong in the country.”

CHARGES “NUMERUS CLAUSUS” AGAINST JEWISH PROFESSIONALS BY MINNEAPOLIS OFFICE BUILDINGS

Charges of anti-Jewish discrimination appear in the current issues of two Anglo-Jewish weeklies, the “American Jewish World” of Minneapolis and the “Canadian Jewish Chronicle” of Montreal.

In Minneapolis a number of office buildings in the business district have been closed to Jewish professionals, in some cases a sort of numerus clausus against Jewish physicians and dentists being in force, the “Jewish World” declares in its issue of Jan. 21. The paper specifically alleges the following facts:

“The deliberate policy of discrimination against Jewish physicians and dentists in the matter of rental of space in certain of the Minneapolis down town office buildings is being pursued as rigidly as ever. Several cases of actual discrimination recently have been reported, the most flagrant pertaining to the Yeates building.

“It is known that Mr. Yeates, at the time he erected his office building, entered into an agreement with some of those who were to become tenants not to lease space to Jews on what was designated the ‘professional floors’ Although no such restrictions were to be imposed on the ‘commercial floors.’ The first two floors were set aside for commercial tenants and the other floors for professional tenants, although the third floor is a sort of fiftyfifty proposition at the present time. In return for keeping out Jewish professional men, those who entered into this agreement with Mr. Yeates promised to keep all space in the building rented, it is said.

“The situation in the other important office buildings such as the Physicians & Surgeons, the La Salle, the Syndicate, and the Donaldson buildings, according to report, is somewhat similar to that existing in the Yeates building, with the exception that in the Yeates building an absolute ban exists against Jewish professional men, whereas in the other buildings it seems to be a numerus clausus proposition.

“The situation has become well nigh intolerable. Young Jewish physicians and dentists find it practically impossible to obtain office space in the downtown district in any of the so-called first class buildings, and in some cases in the second class buildings. The matter had been allowed to rest for one months in the hope that the renral agents themselves would see a way to agents themselves would see a way to remedy matters. This they have failed and refused to do.”

That Jews are barred from public office in the Province of Quebec is the charge made by the “Canadian Jewish Chronicle” (Jan. 21), wherein we read :

“In this Province there is an unwritten law that a Jew is ineligible for public office. In the face of it, even the leading politicians pretend to be impotent. fearing that if their own personal objections to Jewish preferment were appeased. that its breach would bring about their downfall under an avalanche of general protest from the French commonality and the church. That the protest would have the disastrous efiects pretended, we are more inclined to doubt. In truth the powers-that-be are themselves altogether hostile to the idea of bestowing office on Jewish pretenders, and they continue to elevate their own incompetents to power, to the chagrin and despair of ours.”s