Let’s Take Stock!

To Be Continued Tomorrow

The following is the first of four articles outlining American Jewry at work today. “Abel Borden” is the pseudonym of a well-known American-Jewish writer. The second article will appear tomorrow.

The Jewish Daily Bulletin will offer a prize of ten dollars for the best letter of not more than 756 words based on Mr. Borden’s articles. All replies must be mailed before midnight, Dec. 30.

I.

There are 4.228,000 Jews in these United States. They have furnished the nation with two Justices of the United States Supreme Court, three Governors of States, eleven members of the House of Representatives, a Secretary of the Treasury and a host of other important officials.

But there has not been found a successor of the late Louis Marshall as the voice and conscience of the Jewish people.

There are at least one hundred national Jewish organizations which claim to be representative of large segments of the American-Jewish population.

ALL REPRESENT MINORITIES

Yet not one of these organizations actually represents more than a trifling minority. Not one of these organizations is truly national or representative of more than a few closely associated groups or individuals.

The voice of four million Jews is not clear and distinct. It is a babel of conflicting shouts, bellows and murmurs.

America has more and finer synagogues than any section of Jewry since the fall of Jerusalem. Her synagogues compare architecturally with the houses of worship of all other faiths.

RABBIS REVIEW PLAYS

But the synagogue is a negligible factor and its influence on the younger generations is minute in most instances. Its rabbis furnish book reviews, theatre criticisms and political advice from the rostrum of the pulpit, give lectures on the Dionne quintuplets, the NRA and the munitions inquiry, competing with the Washington correspondents and the editorial writers. They have press agents and publicity directors to fight for space in the papers against actresses and athletes, evangelists and radio stars.

And they come out second best. The youngsters go to the movies and the parents play bridge.

For years now, we have heard dire warnings regarding the fate of Jewish youth. The young ones are falling away from the flock, they are being seduced into the Communist fold, they are growing into maturity without the proper religious and educational background.

‘Y’ RENTS ITS HALL

Yet in the city of Hartford, Connecticut, with a Jewish population of 28,000—most of them in moderate or fairly wealthy circumstances—young Jews have no place to congregate and their Y. M. H. A. organization must meet around in rented halls.

With all the solemn warnings that Jewish young men and women are over-crowding the professions and are disproportionately filling the white-collar stratum, no intelligent effort is under way to correct this. The country boasts one institution—the National Farm School—which teaches the dignity of manual labor and trains the young Jew for tilling the soil right here in the United States.

What’s wrong with the Jews!

They recognize many of the dangers that beset them, they preach against them and warn against them. But they do nothing else about them. And many of the grave dangers (not Hitler who has done more to bring the Jews out of a fool’s paradise than all the Jewish leaders) go unheeded.

To Be Continued Tomorrow