Editorials

President, World Organization of Jewish Women

Jewish womanhood all over the world is eager to help. It is eager to do what it can to alleviate the conditions which have been inflicted upon the Jews of Germany by the anti-Semitic party now in insolent power. American Jewish womanhood is eager to help, as a unit and as part of the great international effort of the women of Israel. The World Organization of Jewish Women has already made known its desire to assist in the general relief work by being represented on the Joint Committee which has been organized in Germany.

The relief crisis which Jewish women must meet is not so much less intense now than it was during the years of the World War. Just as then Jewish women were united in the effort to relieve the stricken women and children of their race in Europe, so now are they united in their desire to help until every Jewish family in Germany has been cared for. The crisis is different in degree, not in kind. The World Organization of Jewish Women believes that all Jewish women can do their best work under the aegis of the Joint Distribution Committee. Whatever differences of opinion may arise as to the crisis facing German Jewry there can be no difference of opinion as to the need for help and the wish to bring help to the stricken. Jewish womanhood in the United States, as in the world, is united on this point.

BANISHED FROM THE LAND, TOO

The proposed new land inheritance tax of Prussia, made public a few days ago, provides that no Jew may inherit farm land. We know by this time that the Nazi interpretation of the word Jew includes even those “assimilated” Germans, one of whose grandparents was of Jewish blood. As if the restriction of Jews in the free professions to the top limit of one percent were not enough, the Jew must be prevented now and forever from adapting himself to the pursuit of agriculture.

Russia, drastic in its revolutionary tactics as it was, was not so unjust to any class of any race. It is true that as a result of the new economic policy implied in the creed of Bolshevism, the Soviets did dislocate the Jewish middleman, but at least it did not forbid him the use of the soil. Following the dislocation, the Russian government considered it its duty to help in a far-reaching program of colonization. It provided free land; it provided railroad facilities; it provided financial assistance.

German Jewry is making a valiant attempt to adjust itself to the new conditions. Schools for the training of artisans are being planned, but it has yet to be seen whether Nazi vengeance will not wreck those plans. It seems that every new Nazi regulation is another nail hammered into the hope of those Jews who want to adjust themselves even to changed circumstances of life in Germany. Particularly significant is the following example: Wholesale German grocers have decided not to sell to Jewish retail grocers. German retail grocers, completing the circle, have decided not to make purchases from Jewish wholesalers. In many small towns German storekeepers will not sell to Jewish customers. Circumstances such as these have accelerated the natural tendency of Jewish migration from the provinces to the large towns; the lesser evil has to be chosen.

Nazi discrimination is exercised even in the lower grades of the German school system. Poor Jewish children may not share in the free luncheons and other relief opportunities. The latest reports, however, indicated that no obstacles are being placed in the way of those wishing to migrate from Germany, except that a strict watch is kept to prevent the emigrants from taking with them large sums of money. But emigration, in view of the very restricted possibilities, can offer a solution to only a comparatively small number of German Jews.

The exploitation of these limited possibilities depends upon prompt and concerted action on the part of Jewish leaders and organizations throughout the world.

HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY!

Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, will be sixty-three years of age Wednesday.

He is one of those rare individuals—rare in any race, in any nation, at any time—about whose character, capacity and achievement there is neither doubt nor debate. They have called him the modern “Nathan the Wise”; less romantically, the greatest living philosopher of the law.

Those qualities in Justice Cardozo which the American Jew proud-fully proclaims the non-Jew in America gratefully concedes. Justice Cardozo is so much above party that Democrat and Republican almost vie with one another in their eagerness to endorse and to elect him. He sat for years in the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest judicial tribunal and, toward the last, as its Chief Justice. When, in response to what might be termed a clamor for his services, he was nominated by President Hoover to the Supreme Court, to fill the place vacated by the nonogenarian Oliver Wendell Holmes—Cardozo was then 61—the nomination was confirmed unanimously within ten seconds. This has not happened often in the history of Supreme Court nominations—certainly not when the nominee was a Jew.

The rightful esteem in which Justice Cardozo is held by the present President of the United States is indicated in the statement made on the occasion of the Justice’s six-tieth birthday, three years ago, by the then Governor of New York. Franklin Delano Roosevelt then described Justice Cardozo as “personally a gentleman of the utmost attraction; intellectually a scholar of immeasurable attainments; professionally a lawyer of unbounded legal erudition; judicially the very embodiment of impartiality, fairness and justice.” Justice Cardozo was honored in the name of another Roosevelt, the great T.R., when, in 1931, he was awarded one of three medals conferred by the Roosevelt Memorial Association for distinguished service, the other two being Dr. C. Hart Merriam, naturalist; and Hamlin Garland, author.

He is one of those jurists who charms both as speaker and writer; the peculiar qualities of his spoken decisions do not evaporate when condensed within the covers of a book. His “Law and Literature, and Other Essays and Addresses”, published several years ago, elicited from The New York Times the acute commentary that Cardozo combines the “tough” mind of the man who sits in judgment with the gentle heart of the teacher and guide.