“No attempt toward the economic reconstruction of European Jewries will succeed unless we stem the anti-Semitic wave,” declared Dr. William Filderman, president of the Union of Roumanian Jews, on the eve of his departure for Europe on the Berengaria yesterday. “There is no use educating Jewish artisans if anti-Semitic prejudice deprives them of any market for their products,” he explained.
“The Jews are a small percentage of the population in the various countries in which they live and the economic reprisals due to anti-Semitic agitation have attained so large a scope that the Jew finds it more and more difficult to gain a livelihood in whatever trade or department of commerce he chooses. Even the most fantastic and ridiculous exaggerations gradually find belief, even in educated and liberal circles.
“We Jews must trace every anti-Semitic allegation or accusation and disprove it; we must answer the persistent and ever increasing anti-Semitic propaganda with an equally persistent refutation. Anti-Semitic propaganda in various European countries now aims at legislative action against the Jews and our effort must be multiplied if we want to check it effectively” he declared.
“The following example will illustrate the possibilities of successfully counteracting propaganda. Anti-Semitic leaders started an agitation to the effect that the agrarian reform, which took away the land from the owners and gave it to the peasants in Roumania free of charge, be imitated with a similar land reform in the urban areas where the real estate should be taken from the owners and divided ‘among the people’, claiming that the majority of the real estate owners in Bucharest and other Roumanian cities are Jews. Upon examination of the records, it was found, in Bucharest. for example while the Jews number 20% of the population, the Jews own only 2% of the real estate and this they own not in area, but in land value, because of the fact that the Jewish owned houses are located in the commercial district where the property is valued higher.
“I am opposed,” Dr. Filderman continued. “to the attempt to establish a Jewish political party in Roumania as recent reports have indicated. I believe that the Jews of Roumania just as the Jews in the United States, should participate in the general parties. We can learn from Poland. What have the Jewish parties in the Polish Sejm succeeded in accomplishing? Is there a single real success to which they can point? It is only natural that a Jewish party has all other parties as its opponents.”
Asked about the naturalization question in Roumania Dr. Filderman stated. “This probably no longer exists in Old Roumania. As far as Transylvania, Bessarabia and Bukowina are concerned, there are still. I believe, about 15,000 Jews whose citizenship continues to be questioned. The government claims that the figure is only about 5,000. Future developments will clear this matter up.
“As far as the Jewish schools are concerned, the government has accepted our demand that the Jewish schools be entitled to issue certificates which will be recognized just as the certificates of other schools. With regard to languages, I took the stand that the language of instruction should be Roumanian or Hebrew at the choice of the parents. The government has accepted this viewpoint. However, I am opposed in this by some of the Jewish groups in the newly acquired provinces,” he stated.
Dr. Filderman was nominated as candidate for parliament in his absence. Elections will take place on May 25.
Dr. Maurice Bloomfield, professor of Sanskrit and comparative philology at the Johns Hopkins University, has tendered his resignation to become effective at the close of the present academic year. The resignation is in the nature of a retirement.
Dr. Bloomfield is the oldest member of the university faculty from the point of view of continued service. He was called to Hopkins in 1881 to teach Sanskrit and comparative philology. He is widely known both for his teaching and for his writing and is considered one of the world’s most noted Orientalists and philologists.
Dr. Bloomfield is the author of many works on the history, religion, literature and language of ancient India, on Sanskrit, Greek and Latin grammar, and ethnology and the science of religion. In 1908 he was awarded the Hardy prize of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich.
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