The Bulletin’s Day Book

Dispatches from Baltimore carried the news that the will of Frank A Furst, financier and prominent Catholic layman, has been filed in that city. The will itself was not an extraordniary document, simply a formal testament listing a number of personal and public beneficiaries. But because of the nature and character of these latter bequests, it is a matter of pressing importance that some mention of Mr. Furst and the provisions of his will should be made in this column.

Aside from private inheritors and a total of $134,000 which went to specified charities, schools and hospitals among which were Catholic, Protestant and Jewish institutions, there was a legacy of $125,000 assigned to Jewish charities alone. This money left by Mr. Furst will doubtless be put to wise and generous use by the administrators, but aside from the good it will do in relieving distress, the legacy will perform a service of the greatest consequence to American Jewry. For here is a note of genuine inter-racial regard that rings high and clear above the discordant tumult of this day’s hate and madness.

The news that Walter S. Mack Jr. has been chosen a trustee of Temple Emanu-El in New York does not come altogether as a surprise to those familiar with the active, intelligent service that Mr. Mack has rendered within the ranks of Jewry. At a time like the present it is well that strong and willing spirits are coming to the fore; new minds are needed, new thought, new strength.

Mr. Mack, following his graduation from Harvard University in 1917, served as an Ensign in the Navy during the war. He was a candidate for the State Senate in 1932. While president of the 15th Assembly District Republican Club he led the fight against Koenig’s domination. At present, Mr. Mack is treasurer of the New York County Republican Committee.

Among the worshippers at Emanu-El are numbered some of the oldest names and many of the wealthiest families in American Jewry. The pulpit of such a synagogue must, therefore, constitute a mighty soundingboard of the Jewish soul, a potent force in transmitting the Jewish viewpoint. For significant reasons, the Gentile ear in New York listens more often to the doctrines and opinion expounded from such a pulpit as Emanu-El’s than it does to lesser known and less well attended synagogues, extent, the Gentile world as well, is watching with hospitable interest the coming of Dr. Samuel H. Goldenson who replaces Emanu-El’s time-honored rabbinical triumvirate. In Albany, where he succeeded Rabbi Martin Meyer, and in Pittsburgh where he followed Rabbi Leonard Levy, Dr. Goldenson established a reputation for fearless and eloquent assaults upon injustice, whether racial–indulged in by nations, or economic–exploited by the powerfully fortified industrialists. As Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, Dr. Goldenson inherits a challenge and a magnificent opportunity. The world’s largest Jewish community awaits his answer.

Last week a delegation representing several leading Jewish organizations went to the home of Arturo Toscanini and presented him with a document attesting that his name is inscribed in the Jewish National Fund’s Golden Book of Honor. This was in recognition of Mr. Toscanini’s protest to Hitler on behalf of Jewish musicians and his subsequent refusal to conduct at the Wagnerian Festival held in Bayreuth, last June. Not many people could be crowded into the composer’s suite on the ninth floor of the Hotel Astor; the ceremony was extremely simple, but solemn and touching. Toscanini wept as Dr.#rael Goldstein, Rabbi of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun and President of the Jewish National Fund, handed him the certificate and spoke a few quiet words.

What these words were, and the fact that they prompted Mr. Toscanini’s display of emotion, was unknown to most of those present. Only the ones who stood closest to the two men heard the rabbi remark that he hoped Mr. Toscanini would come and conduct for an audience in Palestine someday.

“But, there, in an undeveloped land, do the people have any interest in music? I doubt that they would listen to me.”

“They will surprise you, if you think that”, Dr. Goldstein assured him. “When Jascha Heifetz was on a tour of the world, he came to Palestine. Out in the open fields of Eretz Israel, he took up his bow and performed for the farmers and townsfolk. He played a whole concert, there; under the Palestine sky. For hours, thousands of our people stook without speaking, hardly moving, while little children and young men hung down over the branches of trees listening Heifetz will not forget that day as long as he lives.”

It was then that the great condue “Someday”, he promised, “I will go and play in your Israel.”

Bolder and bolder became the tactics of Nazi emissaries and Nazi advocates within our borders. Four thousand German-Americans sing the praises of Adolph Hitler and National Socialism until dawn, in celebration of Hitler’s year of power, at a large opera house in New York. The Swastika banner, the American flag, the German flag and the flags of storm troop legions are massed together. Herr Fritz Gissibl, one of a half-dozen orators who praised, in fervent German, the grandeur of Chancellor Hitler and the supremacy of the German race, exhorts the crowd to “fight with the same thirst for victory and fanaticism for battle” that the fatherland displayed in the last war.

“If there are people who stand in our way”, he screamed, “regardless of race, we’ll crack them down.”

All in all, it was quite a party and no attempt was made to conceal the fact that here was an audible and visual expression of the most vicious type of anti-American feeling. Herr Gissibl was very much the center of things.

N.R.T.