Daily Digest of Public Opinion on Jewish Matters

[The purpose of the Digest is informative: Prefernco is given to papers not generally accessible to our readera Quotation does not indicate approval — Edition.]

Courage is not a monopoly of the Nordies, the New York "Times" and the "World" (Feb. 7 and Feb. 8 respectively) point out, listing the names of the President Roosevelt’s boat crew, including that of the Jewish sailor, Jacobowitz.

"Among those who carried the work to its splendid conclusion there are the names like Diaz and Wilke, Abertz and Arenada, Franelich and Fugelsang, Hahn and Jacobowitz. Americans all in citizenship and ideals. . . " the "Times" says.

"The tablets which commemorate the contribution of America to the late war for the world’s freedom have accustomed us to the fact that courage is the monopoly of no single racial strain. In contemplating the stirring feat of the President Roosevelt, we are made aware that the heroism of peace is likewise part of the common tradition of mankind. Those who are prone to see in our immigrant peoples some danger to American ideals may well ponder the names of the gallant men who to the honor of America saved the Antinoe’s crew."

The "World." terming them "All Nordics," remarks:

"If courage and competence are a monopoly of the much-lauded Nordics,’ these men qualify."

URGES JEWISH AUDIENCE TO BANISH JEW CARICATURE FROM STAGE

The charge that the Jew is being ridiculed on the American stage, made in the New York "American" by Alan Dale, dramatic critic, is endorsed editorially in the English section of the "Day" of Feb. 7, which declares its opinion that the banishing of the Jewish caricature from the stage rests with the Jewish theatre audiences.

"The most effective way of banishing the low caricature, which passes as Jewish portraiture on the stage leads," it is emphasized, "not so much through the editorial offices of the newspapers as through the aisles of the theatres and vaudeville houses. The Jewish audiences that travel up and down these aisles nightly at the expense of good money are the only constituencies that can have the final say in the matter of the Jewish comedian. If they only refuse to be entertained by calumnies on their own people the Jewish comedian will disappear without leaving even a trace."

"WORLD" FAVORS WADSWORTH-PERLMAN BILLS

"In principle," writes the New York "World," "the Wadsworth-Perlman bill, so amending the Immigration Law that wives, husbands and other near relatives of American citizens may be admitted as non-quota immigrants, should be enacted, Without abandoning the policy of exclusion or the quota method, surely some of the cruelty-breeding excrescences of the law can be pared away."

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AIDED JEWISH CONGREGATION

The names of Benjamin Franklin, William Bradford, the printer; David Rittenhouse, the celebrated astronomer; Charles Biddle and John D. Sargeant, are signed on the subscription list of Congregation Mikve Israel, the oldest Jewish religious organization in Philadelphia, we read in the New York "Times" of Sunday.

These names, the article states, were put to the first appeal addressed by the congregation in 1788 to "their worthy fellow-citizens of every Religious Denomination." In that year six years after the first synagogue in Philadelphia was dedicated, Congregation Mikve Israel was in financial difficulties because, the appeal ran, many of their number at the close of the late War returned to New York, Charleston and elsewhere, their homes (which they had been exiled from and obliged to leave on account of their attachment to American Measures) leaving the remaining few of their religion here, burthen’d with a considerable charge consequent from so great an Undertaking."