(The following is the third of four articles outlining American Jewry at work today, “Abel Borden is the pseudonym of a well-known American-Jewish writer. The last article will appear tomorrow.
Akron isn’t an isolated example, Cross the border into Montreal and look at a community of 80,000 Jews trying to maintain a million dollar hospital. Consider its Talmud Torah mortgage. Look at your own community dispassionately. Or look at New York.
The census lists 1,765,000 Jews in New York City. Half of these, it is estimated, are orthodox. The Mosaic laws are important to them. Kashruth is their vital concern.
Yet for years they have let the question of Kashruth develop into a major racket second only to bootlegging in the prohibition era.
CAN’T GET SUPERVISION
The largest Jewish community in the world n ever could establish a workable system of kashruth supervision, never could be certain that the kosher imprint was a guarantee of conformity with the dietary laws. Today, when a plan of sorts has been worked out, it is apparently only to serve as the focal point of a merry wrangle between rabbis, schochtim, city and federal officials, retailers, wholesalers and influences which have profited so hugely through the rackets perpetrated on a complaisant public.
The Lord only knows how many unfortunate orthodox Jews, late of New York, are now expiating their sin in eating treife meat!
EVERY TOWN HAS ONE
It would not be an exaggeration to state that every Jewish community in the United States and Canada can boast of some monument or instance of communal unintelligence. It is a fact that many of these situations are recognized by the members of the community —but they do nothing about it except deplore them.
The fault, however, lies not entirely within the communities. It is a condition that applies with equal force to every national Jewish endeavor or aspiration, such as the Zionist movement.
It is not going too far to assert that at least half the Jews of the United States regard Zionism with sympathy. Yet the Zionist Organization of America numbers only about 20,000 and it has convincingly failed to capitalize on this sympathy. It has not taken any measures to make the movement attractive to the rank and file or to interest individuals who could bring new life, vigor and strength into the work of creating a Jewish National Home in Palestine.
FAILED TO GET RECRUITS
It has obtained from the Jews of America hardly more than the poverty-stricken Jews of Poland have sweated out of themselves for Palestine. It has not militantly and convincingly preached Zionism and changed sympathy into active support. It has failed thus far in its attempts to recruit the Jews of America in the movement despite its elaborate budgets for propaganda and Zionist missionary endeavor.
Of late we have heard much of the effort of the Zionists to attract American Jewish youth. The net result, as with most of the national youth movements, has been the creation of unimportant, im-
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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.
