The editors reserve the right to excerpt all letters exceeding 250 words in length. All letters must bear the name and address of the writer, although not necessarily for publication.
To the Editor, Jewish Daily Bulletin:
May I not express my opinion on Ludwig Lewisohn’s “Warning” in your December 30, 1934, issue. I am not at all surprised, knowing his social, financial and political background, at his attitude on Communism; but deliberately using your paper which I understand is national, not political, to further his own selfish ends, is more than even a Zionist (not the exploiting kind) can tolerate without registering a complaint.
Mr. Lewisohn has been careless with the truth and shamelessly distorted the facts. He knows that Communism is not the cause of anti-Semitism. If it were so, these anti-Semites would not howl at the international Jewish bankers who surely are not Communists.
“It is the builders and upholders who will prevail,” he goes on. What builders and what upholders? Steel thirty-seven per cent capacity, automobiles forty per cent capacity, education reduced twenty-seven per cent, especially in the rural districts, twelve to seventeen million unemployed, destruction of wheat, cotton and livestock, farms and homes foreclosed at the rate of 3,000 per week, malnutrition among children increased twenty per cent, cost of living raised twenty per cent, which means a reduction of “real wages,” suicides increased tenfold, insanity twenty-two per cent, one million homeless youths wandering over the country, to lessen the burdens of their parents, families broken up and desertions by the thousands, prostitution and white slavery rampant, and the unprecedented increase in bloody labor strikes. Is that the builders and upholders he is talking about?
It is true, as you have noticed, that I am a sympathizer with the Communist society. In his column, I see nothing but fear, not of pogroms or persecution, because he and his class will be safe, just as they were safe in Germany (the Jewish bankers were declared Aryan by decree). It is fear that the social and economic structure which is toppling, and will naturally carry him and his parasitic gang along with it.
Benjamin Tarkel.
New York City,
Jan. 7, 1935.
HADASSAH MININTERPRETED
To the Editor, Jewish Daily Bulletin:
In the section, “Digest of World Opinion,” the Jewish Daily Bulletin of January 7 carried an item under the sub-head, “Need for Coalition of Zionist Executive,” which is a misinterpretation of the quotation it contains from the Hadassah News Letter, the official organ of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America.
The Jewish Daily Bulletin states that the Hadassah magazine “speaks in its recent issue of the necessity for establishing a coalitionary Executive of all parties in the Zionist movement rather than an Executive of one party, as is the present one.” This statement in the Bulletin is made to appear as Hadassah’s official viewpoint, when as a matter of fact it is reported as the viewpoint of the delegates to the Kracow conference of Group A and B of the General Zionists. Hadassah has taken no official standpoint in this matter, but in the News Letter article referred to merely presented the facts as information to its readers.
Judith Epstein.
New York City,
Jan. 7, 1935.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
