Of all the effects of anti-Jewish discrimination in New York the worst is the fact that “it has shriveled the Jew’s spiritual life by causing him to deny his race and religion; it has slain his soul. Out of it has come the basest of all arts—the art some Jews have followed of crawling on their bellies into places from which they were excluded when upstanding and self-revering. Discrimination has made of many a Jew of rich spiritual potentialities and inheritance a sodden materialist”.
These were some of the statements made by the Rev. Dr. Stephen S. Wise in an interview with Evelyn Seeley, appearing in the New York Telegram of Tuesday. Anti-Jewish discrimination in employment in New York City, said Dr. Wise, has forced the Jew here to resort to wile and stratagem, to methods of unfrankness and indirection in the world of affairs. Speaking of the discrimination of some Jewish firms themselves against Jewish employees, Dr. Wise said:
“It would be as easy for me to be elected to the presidency of the Ancient Order of Hibernians as for a Jewish youth or maiden to secure employment in some establishments owned by Jews”.
Some of the ways through which anti-Jewish prejudice might be done away with were suggested by Dr. Wise as follows:
“We must end the Christ-killing lie about the Jew and affirm anew the Christ-bearing truth of the Jew in the world. Christians should refuse to stand for anti-Semitic discrimination; if ‘no Jews need apply’, neither should a Christian. The processes of education must allow no place in the Christian world for a formula of hatred proscription, or of bitterness”.
“Only a cheap Babbitt discriminates against the Jew, and one wouldn’t have anything to do with him anyway”, declared Michael Gold, radical author and editor, in an interview with Miss Seeley appearing in yesterday’s Telegram. The rich Jew of New York is just as ready to discriminate against the poorer Jew when it comes to giving the latter a job as is the rich Christian, thinks Mr. Gold.
Mr. Gold believes that the tendency of American-Jewish youth is towards assimilation and intermarriage, which he regards as a good thing.
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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.
