Wants Controlling Body to Coordinate Efforts of National Philanthropies

A national controlling body which should co-ordinate the activities of various national Jewish philanthropic institutions in this country, is suggested by Hyman Kaplan, executive director of the Federation of Jewish Charities of San Francisco, in an article in a recent issue of the “Emanu-el,” of that city.

Speaking of the need for wider interest and control of the programs and policies of national Jewish organizations, Mr. Kaplan mentions the National Appeals Information Service, which was created in 1927 by Jewish charity federations of about 40 cities. ### he thought protests would do any good.

“I think it would be cowardly not to protest,” he quickly retorted. At the same meeting an eminent lay representative of official Reform Judaism was asked for his opinion on the religious persecutions in Russia. He rose and very politely excused himself from saying anything on the subject. “I am not at all familiar with the situation,” he stated. I am sure Dr. Morgenstern would not hesitate a moment before choosing this man as the model type of his conception of statesmanship.

That brings me to the main object of this letter, which is to stamp as the veriest twaddle and balderdash Dr. Morgenstern’s talk about Jewish politics and statesmanship and about having innocently been trapped into the publication of hastily written views, which, after careful meditation, he now repeats with perverse and offensive variations. If you face the realities of Jewish life unflinchingly, if you summon Jews to a manly assertion of their rights, if you dare to antagonize vested Jewish interests and fight courageously for every unpopular cause, if you expose in their utter nakedness all shams and pernicious views, as the writer has humbly endeavored to do for thirty years, then you are “playing politics” and are held up to contumely. But if you hesitate and hem and haw, if you are timid, uncertain, afraid of your own shadow and always counsel caution, if you are badly informed, completely out of sympathy with the feelings and aspirations of the Jewish masses, if in every crisis affecting our people you first block action then attack the Jews for being wrought up about it and then either advise them what not to do or allow yourself to be driven into some kind of commitment, if you propound theories of Jewish life based upon all manner of inhibitions and negations, almost equal in number to the taryag mitzvoth, if you foster ideas which leave us bereft of all positiveness of thought or dignity of attitude—then you are a statesman or the endowed arbiter of statesmanship. If you persistently advocate an essentially Jewish and wholesome idea of organization, and if, in accordance with that democratic idea, you endeavor to draw the largest number of Jewish men and women first into a knowledge of conditions affecting our people and second into a deeper sense of communal responsibility, you are a trouble-maker and seeker of publicity. But if you either sulk in your tent and do nothing or else arrogate to yourself the right to think and act for all Jewry, usually without reference to fundamental convictions and aspiration, then you are a far-seeing statesman and benevolent spokesman Statesmanship cannot, alas, be summoned at will by the mere pronouncement of the word; it develops out of human grappling with conditions and ideas and it does not grow in the atmosphere of inhibition and negation. The very word statesmanship presupposes conceptions which are at ### theories of Jewish life inherent in Dr. Morgenstern’s utterances. But that would lead me too far afield and there is altogether too little promise of accomplishment in pursuing the controversy.

Dr. Morgenstern has repeatedly thanked me for having taught him a lesson. I bow in modesty and say: “Il n’y a pas de quoi.” I have taught him nothing. How could I aspire to such great achievement when the starkest Jewish tragedy in a hundred years has failed to bring the long-for illumination.

Very truly yours,

Bernard G. Richards.