Waving the Jewish National Flag, Mr. Grossmark Leaped into Breach

Thousands of Jews have passed a small, stuffy store on Norfolk street, not aware of the fact that within its unpromising interior, sits the original manufacturer of the first Jewish national flag made in America.

This Betsy Ross in trousers is none other than Mordecal Grossmark, a stocky, rubicund gentleman of middle age, who, for a quarter of a century, has, in his own words, “stuck to flags.”

The whole business was more orless of an accident. A paper-box cutter by trade, he arrived in this country at the age of eighteen and found himself thrown out from job after job because of his refusal to work on Saturdays.

ZIONISM A SOLACE

Zionism became his solace, and his forced idleness gave him lots of time to devote to this ideal. In 1909, he was elected delegate to the Zionist Convention in New York City. On the schedule of events was a parade. When all arrangements had been completed, it was dicovered, with some horror, that throughout the length and breadth of the city, or for that matter, in the whole country, there was not one Jewish national flag to be procured. And a parade without a flag was out of the question.

So Mr. Grossmark and some others elected on a special committee hied themselves over to the first flag company they could locate. There they presented to the bewildered Gentile owners an order for several thousand of Jewish national flags. They left careful instructions as the design and colors of the emblem, embodying the stipulations in the contract.

Lucky that they did. For the company, which in its whole life had never seen or heard of a Jewish national flag, made up 20,000 banners, with green and white stripes, instead of blue and white.

IN TO THE BREACH

Right then it was that Mr. Grossmark decided to go into the business for himself. He and two others invested their entire hoard of money, ten dollars each, in a stock of white muslin and blue dye. When everything was in readiness in Mr. Grossmark’s dingy flat on the East Side, for the historic work to begin, the two partners fled, fearing that the business would not be “a paying proposition.” But Grossmark stuck to his purpose and advertised his project in a Zionist paper. He was so flooded with orders in one week that on the credit thus obtained, he was able to hire employees and to begin manufacturing immediately. That is how the Jewish National flag first came to be.

Now, he proudly relates, he makes and sells from one to two million Jewish flags a year. He has them in all sizes, from one inch square to 12×18 feet and at all prices, from a penny to $45 each. This country is not his only selling territory. He sends flags all over the world, to Palestine, to Australia, even to Africa, where in Johannesberg and Capetown, dwell many ardent Zionists.

LETTERS FROM NOTABLES

Besides, in his crowded little store, loaded with badges, mazuzas, talaisem, Hebrew books, calendars, and flags of paper, cotton, wool and silk, in all sizes, you can see pasted on the walls and shelves, letters from notable customers.

Displayed prominently among these is one from Nathan Straus, addressed in his own hand, and calling for some several hundred flags to be sent to Jerusalem.

The largest order he ever received, was from the Poale Zion campaign for the Palestine Labor Fund. This called for seventy-five thousand flags. He up and delivered. No order has stumped him yet.

Not even in 1914, when a Tammany. Hall club on Madison street ordered a huge Jewish flag to be delivered to them before Election day. This done, they hung it from their window, side by side with the American flag, when it fluttered proudly in the breeze in such excellent company. To every jew his day,-especially before Election time.

The Manischewitz matzoth firm owns the largest Jewish flag in existence, the one measuring twelve by eighteen feet, which waves from the roof of their factory.

During the war, when many Jewish soldiers went to Palestine, Mr. Grossmark sold them thousands of Jewish flags, made of s#k. Some of these are still streasured in the museums of Tel-Avow and Jerusalem.