News Brief

the heavy and inescapable duty which this lays upon each and every one of us, Jews of America and of other favored lands, is this the time for petty politics and for attempts to blacken a man’s reputation and to weaken whatever influence he may have come to exert and to frustrate whatever service, great or small, he may have been able and eager to render to the cause which ought to rise above all others in the mind and heart of every loyal Jew? It seems to me that what we need at this critical time, need above all else, is not Jewish politics but Jewish statesmanship and broad-visioned, tolerant, constructive leadership. With each passing day we appreciate more and more the character and the quality of the statesmanship and leadership of Mr. Marshall, and we miss him more and more. Our hope and prayer are for another like him.

In conclusion, it is, I believe, almost needless to assure you, and through you the general Jewish public, that I do hold positive views with regard to the present situation in Russia. I am unwilling that these views should be gathered by the public from a letter which, hastily and none too carefully dictated by me, and believed by me to be altogether a matter of private correspondence, was subsequently made public entirely without my knowledge or consent. Still less am I content that my views on this important and delicate subject should be gathered from misinterpretations and misrepresentations in Mr. Richards’ last letter to me and in the significant caption of the American Jewish Congress’ “release.” I shall therefore in a subsequent statement endeavor to present my real views upon this crisis, with perhaps a suggestion of what might be done to meet the situation, so far as it is possible to meet it at all. For these views, thus expressed, I shall, of course, accept full responsibility; but for no others. I trust that you will be able to grant me space, valuable though I know it is, for this statement. Meanwhile I am deeply grateful to you for this opportunity and privilege of informing the Jewish public of the true facts in the “Morgenstern-Richards Controversy.”

Very truly yours,

JULIAN MORGENSTERN.

Mr. Richards has given the Jewish Daily Bulletin a copy of the following letter, which is in reply to a letter of Dr. Morgenstern’s dated February 18:

February 28, 1930.

Dr. Julian Morgenstern,

Hebrew Union College,

Cincinnati, Ohio.

My dear Dr. Morgenstern:

I received your letter of the 18th instant, and was very much disappointed in your failure to reply to the questions which I addressed to you in my communication of February 3, and in the answers to which not only I, myself, but a large portion of the Jewish public is now considerably interested. You have agreed that the situation affecting the Jews in Russia is a very serious one; I endeavored to inform you more fully on the subject and to place before you as clearly as I possibly could the appalling conditions which have developed in connection with the suppression of Judaism and the persecution of adherents to the Jewish religion, Jewish culture and ideals, and I was extremely sorry to note that you did not avail yourself of the present opportunity of defining your attitude in the light of this restatement of the problem.

Instead you have addressed an inquiry to me with regard to the publication of your letter of the 3rd ultimo and my reply of the 3rd inst. This is readily answered. It is surprising to observe that you considered our correspondence to be of a private character. I know that in certain circles the tragic plight of the Jews and Judaism in Russia has been treated as a private matter; but that is not the attitude of Jews who face the problems of our life in an unflinching manner. It was not in that spirit that I addressed myself to you. I wrote to you about a report which was presented at a public conference, communicating with you as one man in public life to another similarly situated. I brought before you a problem which is of vital as well as wide public interest. There was no indication in either one of your replies that you wished me to treat your views confidentially.

You ask me what worthy and worthwhile purpose I hoped to achieve by issuing these letters for publication. That question, too, is quickly answered. For a long time we have been anxiously and despairingly knocking at the doors of influential Jewish circles in order to tell them that the spiritual life of nearly three million Jews was wellnight doomed to destruction and that the black shadow of death was hovering over the confines of a great, historic community. The doors would not open; our calls and cries brought no response; there was a silence, grim, mysterious, ominous, only occasionally disturbed by strangely misleading murmurs. No one could understand the reason for the curious apathy and irresponsiveness on part of an important section of American Jewry.

Then came the amazing presentation of your conception of the problem of Russian Jewry. You thought that the Jewish community of that country was merely passing through a belated and therefore more difficult period of adjustment to what you consider progressive or liberal ideas; that the arch atheists of the Yevsektzia, though mistaken in their methods, nevertheless represented the new Jewish spiritual leadership and that the real solution of the problem was to introduce Reform Judaism in Russia. Here at last appeared to be some explanation of the silence which had become too acutely painful to bear. Your letter brought consternation, it brought sorrow, but it also brought a measure of illumination. It brought to mind a calamitous situation at home which was responsible for the callous indifference to the catastrophe abroad and, without resorting to justifiable shock methods, it seemed highly desirable and necessary to make your views known to the Jewish public as soon as—after an absence from the city—I was able to issue them together with my comment. My letter was mailed to you a number of days before publication and I had no way of knowing that upon arrival you could only, as you say, read it rather hastily and put it aside for subsequent consideration.

In my letter to you I expressed the desire to believe that your utterances did injustice even to your own school of Reform Judaism. I will not entertain that desire long if you will not immediately seek a direct way out of the dilemma in which you have placed many of your associates and yourself.

Yours very truly,

BERNARD G. RICHARDS.