That one or two prominent rabbis had tried to influence the Jewish vote in favor of Al Smith in the last presidential election is one of the charges contained in a secret report on the 1928 presidential election submitted by the Rev. Dr. Clarence True Wilson to the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals, according to a Washington story appearing in the “New York American”. The Rev. Dr. Wilson in his report denounces the Catholic Church, the Jews, Smith and the “liquor interests” as working together in the last election.
“We went up against the worst combination that ever fought together in the United States;” declares Dr. Wilson in his report, “an effort to corral all the foreigners to get the united voice of one great thoroughly organized church, which for the first time gave its sisters, its nuns, its religious order the right to register and voted them almost up to a man, and almost to the last woman.
“Then the entire group of wets, the thirsty and those whose cupidity wanted a continuance of the booleg trade; an effort to make the Jews believe that they had something in common with the Catholics in this contest and with the aid of one or two distinguished rabbis, who tried to whip them as a race into line back of the marching column for Al Smith, and then that carefully created class known as ‘tolerants’ who wanted to be so broad that they were glad to vote against their own and denounce their own leaders in order to show how very liberal and tolerant they were”.
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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.
