Public officials, Jewish leaders and organizations joined today in paying tribute to the services of Dr. Cyrus Adler. Excerpts from representative statements follow:
Mayor LaGuardia, In a statement made public by Stanley Howe, his secretary: “I want to add my own word of sorrow to those of the Jewish people in the United States and of the entire world today in the loss of Dr. Cyrus Adler. He was a distinguished leader, a great educator and an influence for the good of his people throughout the world. His achievements, however, were not limited to his fellow Jews. His services extended to all of mankind.”
The American Jewish Committee, in resolution of its executive committee signed by Chairman Sol M. Stroock and Secretary Morris D. Waldman: “The executive committee of the American Jewish Committee, at a special meeting, records its profound grief at the passing of its beloved president, Dr. Cyrus Adler…a post which he filled with destination to his dying day. Dr. Adler was peculiarly fitted to head an organization whose purpose is to protect the civil and religious rights of Jews throughout the world…Dr. Adler’s outlook and understanding were world-wide in scope…The American Jewish Committee deeply mourns his passing. We shall sadly miss his able and Inspired leadership.”
The Jewish Theological Seminary, in a resolution of its board of directors and faculties, signed by Provost Louis Finkelstein, Board Chairman Stroock and Honorary Secretary Henry S. Hendricks: “The members of the faculties and board of directors of the Jewish Theological Seminary record their grief at the death of Dr. Cyrus Adler, president of the Seminary……His personal piety, his devotion to the cause of Judaism, his love of learning, his indefatigable seal on behalf of the suffering, won him the affection and admiration of all those who worked with him…In a day of increasing tension throughout the world, he stood as a symbol of traditional religious moderation. In his death, Judaism and the whole American community suffer an irreparable loss.”
The Joint Distribution Committee, in a statement signed by Chairman Paul Baerwald, Co-Chairman Edward M.M. Warburg and Executive Committee Chairman James N. Rosenberg: “The officers and members of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee profoundly mourn the death of their beloved friend and colleague, Dr. Cyrus Adler. A man who was preeminent in many fields of endeavor — in scholarship, in humanitarianism, in communal service and indeed in the art of living — Dr. Adler’s life was fruitful with service and rich with the esteem of his fellow men..For the many years which Dr. Adler devoted to the work of this committee, its officers and members will always be grateful and we would like to record our deep personal sense of loss.”
ACTIVITIES EMBRACED MANY FIELDS; NAMED PEACE AIDE BY ROOSEVELT
Leader of American Jewish religious, communal and intellectual life, and only three-and-a-half months ago chosen by President Roosevelt as the Jewish representative in a move to organize religious forces for peace, Dr. Cyrus Adler had persisted in working until a few weeks ago, when his physicians forbade any further activity.
His activities extended into almost every field of constructive Jewish enterprise. He was president of the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and Dropsie College in Philadelphia, an officer of a host of scholarly organizations, editor of several Jewish scholarly publications and author of a number of books.
Although a layman, he devoted his life to advocating the religious view of Jewish life, as opposed to the materialistic. He had a deep interest particularly in Jewish life in America, about which he had hoped for years to be able to write a book, but never found the time for. Although his vast mental scope encompassed all of Jewish life throughout the world and a multitude of other studies, he still was a proud citizen of Philadelphia, contributing his services to such local activities as the Free Library of Philadelphia, of which he was president, and taking delight in dwelling, in private conversation, on the noted men born in this city.
His death came as a blow not only to the Jews of America, whose senior leader he was, and the Jews of the world, whose interests he had often defended, but to the United States as a whole.
Dr. Adler’s was “a rich and full career of varied activity and great use fulness,” President Roosevelt said in a statement published in a volume issued on Sept. 13, 1938, on his 75th birthday. “Your labors have ever been directed to the happiness of others and the well-being of the community.” Secretary of State Cordell Hull had paid tribute to his “long and useful life”; Secretary of Interior Harold L. Ickes had called his life “a monument to better understanding between man and man.”
It was because Dr. Adler represented the best in Jewish life that President Roosevelt last Dec. 25 chose him as the Jewish representative in a tri-faith move for cooperation between Government and religion towards restoration of peace and alleviation of war suffering. Despite his ill health, Dr. Adler accepted the heavy responsibility, stressing that “Israel’s mission is peace.”
He had given much of his time and energy in recent months to the cause of peace. On Dec. 27, together with a Protestant leader, he conferred with President. Roosevelt at the White House and later announced that all parties involved were in complete agreement. He had planned to return at a future date for another conference with the President. On Jan. 10 he sent copies of the President’s peace appeal to the 2,000 rabbis throughout the country with a letter inviting suggestions “with regard to the method and procedure to be followed in obtaining peace for the world.” He said: “I am sure you will agree that every effort should be made to spread this idea and that no time should be lost in doing so.”
Dr. Adler believed to the last that despite the unprecedented plight of the Jews in Europe, Jewry would survive the present crisis. He frequently warned Jews against “suffering themselves to acquire an inferiority complex by the constant impact of the stream of hatred and propaganda directed against them.”
“We cannot muster armies,” Dr. Adler said in a statement on his 75th birthday, “we cannot build navies and we cannot compete with the air fleets of the world, but by the study of the Bible, our history and our literature, we can build a citadel in our own hearts which none can conquer.” He held an abiding faith that “mankind will rid itself of the aberrations now afflicting a part of the earth. Neither Alexander nor Caesar nor Napoleon lasted, and their many imitators of modern times will not last either.”
Dr. Adler was born on Sept. 13, 1863, in Van Buren, Arkansas, the son of Samuel Adler and the former Sarah Sulzberger. He was educated at the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University and the Hebrew Union College.
His early training was in education, and he served successively as fellow, instructor and associate in Semitic languages at Johns Hopkins; librarian and assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and curator of archaeology at the United States National Museum. He was a former president of the American Oriental Society and of the American Historical Association, which he founded, Dr. Adler was also a founder of the Jewish Publication Society and supervised that body’s monumental translation of the Bible.
As one of the founders of the American Jewish Committee, Dr. Adler became the logical heir to the president’s mantle when Louis Marshall died in 1929. As president of the committee he led in moves to safeguard the civil and religious rights of Jews and other minorities.
He also carried forward the work which he and Marshall had begun to bring about closer collaboration between Zionists and non-Zionists in the rehabilitation of Palestine through the medium of the Jewish Agency. He was a member of the Jewish Agency Council and, in January, 1930, at the request of a League of Nations Council special commission, prepared a memorandum on the Wailing Wall question, all of whose points but one were accepted by the commission.
As president of the Jewish Theological Seminary, he was the leader of Conservative Jewry in the United States, but enjoyed the esteem of all wings of American and European Jewish life.
An expert of Semitic customs and folklore, Dr. Adler wrote vividly on the results of his research in the public press. He was chosen as special commissioner of the Chicago Exposition to oriental countries and brought back valuable material from Turkey, Egypt and the Barbary states. As a result of this work he was sent on a diplomatic and scientific mission to the Near East by President Benjamin Harrison which took a year and a half. In 1898 he represented the United States at a conference in London dealing with catalogues and scientific literature.
As a staunch American patriot, Dr. Adler assumed the task, upon the United States’ entry into the World War, of coordinating the social, religious and educational activities of Jewish soldiers and sailors. He organized civilian local and national groups for the purpose, out of which emerged the Jewish Welfare Board. He was chairman of the Committee on Chaplains and subsequently served as chairman of the Welfare Board. At the time of his death he was chairman of its Army and Navy Committee.
Dr. Adler gave greater service when the war ended. In 1919, at the Paris Peace Conference, he cooperated in sponsoring the inclusion of the minority rights clauses in the treaties with newly-formed and enlarged States.
His published works include: “I Am a Hebrew,” “Told in a Coffee House” (Turkish folk tales),”Jacob H. Schiff: His Life and Letters,” sketches of Oscar S. Straus, Louis Marshall, Samuel Pierpont Langley, Thomas Jefferson, Israel Zangwill, Albert Einstein, Moses Aaron Dropsie, etc.
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.
