Commenting on the possibility that the candidates of both major parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, in the forthcoming campaign for the governorship of New York may be Jews. “The Day,” Democratic Yiddish dailyy which is supporting Governor Alired E. Smith for President in the national campaign, urges that if the selection of Jewish candidates is to be made it must be on the merits of the candidates and not merely with a view of attracting what is termed “the Jewish vote.”
The newspaper takes the position that there is not and there should not be a “Jewish vote.” Jews would, of course, take it as a compliment if Jewish candidates are nominated, but if such nominations are made, the merits of the men and not the Jewish origin is of paramount importance.
“Jewish public opinion must consider clearly the significance of a ‘Jewish vote’ for the Jews, not less than for America. It must be considered whether it is well for Jews to creat such a thing as a ‘Jewish vote’ in the United States. It must also be conceded that if a Jew is nominated as candidate because he is a Jew, Jewish public opinion has the right to inquire into the Jewishness of the Jewish candidate. Jewish public opinion may say to the political fathers: ‘If you do give us a Jewish candidate because he is a Jew, then let us have a Jew who is genuinely Jewish, who has a close relationship to Jewish life, to the hopes and the aspirations of the Jewish masses.’
“We American Jews have no Jewish political questions in this country. Here we have no Jewish politics. America is neither Poland nor Roumania; America is built not on nationalities, but on broad principles of democracy,” the paper says.
Declaring that American Jews are interested in questions of religious tolerance and liberal immigration as Americans, not as Jews, the paper proceeds:
“Jews will certainly accept as a compliment the fact that a Jew is nominated as candidate for governor. However, when the vote is to be cast. Jews will first of all want to know what kind of man the candidate is, how fit he is for his office and what is his platform. With Jewishness alone he will not travel far with Jews. If a Jewish consideration is to play a role, then the leaders of the political parties should have in mind that it is by far not enough to have been born a Jew in order to win Jewish sympathy. American Jews today have already outing involved in the preparation for a medical career. Some optimists are inclined to believe that after the revolution. when the civil service was made accessible to the German Jews on a larger scale than before, those Jews who would otherwise have chosen medicine as a profession preferred to enter the various government departments as officials. This optimism, however, is shown to lack justification, for the simple reason that statistics prove that only a very slight percentage of government officials are Jews. As if this were not enough, there are statistical data showing that the number of Jewish students has shrunk also in other branches of learning. The obvious explanation is that the present generation of Jewish youth in Germany simply has no means to go through years of study before entering upon a professional career, and are compelled able to do without a university education to go to work at anything they are tion.
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.
