BRANDEIS CONFIRMED
THE JEWISH CHRONICLE
The only Jewish publication in the State of Michigan
Devoted to the interests of the Jewish people
Vol. I. No. 14
DETROIT, MICH., JUNE ‘2, 1916
$1.50 per Year
Single Copies 5 Cents
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Judaism and Americanism :ri .?
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By JACOB H. SCHIFF
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is much greater than bodily or phys-
I HAVE prepared no address ;
ical suffering. I feel, my friends,
EDITOR'S NOTE—Only last week the Yiddish press bitterly assailed Mr. Jacob II.
wish simply to make a few re-
that unless we live our Judaism as
Schiff fur certain defamatory statements alleged to have been made by hint of the Jews
of Poland and Russia. The following is the full text of Mr. Schiff's address in which
marks as the spirit moves me, and
a religion, and as a people in Am-
those statements were said to occur and will enable our readers to judge whether or not
it doesn't take much to move me
erica we feel that we are Ameri-
the attack upon hint is justified.
in an assembly like this, Or to speak
cans, our posteritg may become
subjected to great prejudice and to
upon the topic of Jewish religion.
right to devote and to give to the pressing the feeling of hundreds of great moral suffering. I am second
The great advantage that Jews pos-
Jewish people of New York or to thousands of Jews in New York to none in my feeling for our op-
sess over any other people is that
the Jewish people of Russia, Rou- and in the United States, and, my
with us civic life has fr()Ill our early mania and the people of the war friends, I believe, and I might say pressed brethren in Russia and Po-
beginning, from the day when the zone. I le claimed that I was dic- I am afraid, he was right. What land, not only for what they are
law was proclaimed upon Sinai, tating to the Jews of New York he said, no doubt, the handful of suffering now, but what they have
been raised to the plane of religion. what they ought to do ; that I was the narrow circle in which he moves suffered for the last fifty years:'But
)ur Torah, that great book of all a ditcator and clot a leader, because feels towards me, just as he ex- it has occurred to me—and it is con-
ages, is the greatest code that has I didn't do what the Jewish people pressed it, and, moreover, hundreds siderable thought I have given to
ever been assembled of the highest of America wanted to have done. of thousands of the 3,000,000 Jews this—that if the Jews of Russia,
civic law. ( )ur Torah is a religious He meant, if I wanted to he a of the United States feel that the and the Jews of Poland would not
book because, as I have said, with leader, I must be a follower. I say. lew in the United States has no have been kept as a separate people
by discriminatory laws, the preju- •
us Jewish civic life is Jewish re-
dice and t11 , , persecution to which
ligion. That has been so in all ages,
they have been subject would not
i:, so, or should be, to this day. .\
have reached the stage to which we
friends, Jews of the City of New
all regret it has unfortunately come.
York as we all are, we stand in
And so it is here, if hundreds of
these times at the parting of the
thousands
of Jews in America in-
ways. Are we to he American
sist
that
the
Yiddish language—not
Jews or Jews who happen to dwell
the Jewish language, for the Jewish -
in America?
language is Hebrew, which I love
Very recently thet: e has been
and for which I have the greatest
made upon me—and I say it in all
attachment—but Yiddish should be
humility—a vicious attack by a Yid-
retained almost to the exclusion of
dish writer. It has been published
English, and must be the language
in a special Yiddish leaflet from the
of intercourse not only in their
office of the Forward. When it was
homes but in public assemblies, in
sent to me I had it translated into
their Cheders, and ill their Talmud
English and the first impression I
Torahs, it \yin be a misfortune to
had after I had read it was one of
our people. They will then be
amusement. Then second set me
looked upon as a separate people.
deeply thinking. The man who
So \ye should have none of this.
wrote it is, I am told, a very good
\\'e hold our Jewry, our flag, as
man. Far be it from me to bear
high
as our fathers did, but we
him any ill will; just the contrary.
recognize
that we are Americans
After I had read it I sent for him
and we want our children to be
in order to show him how very
Americans. We want our children
mistaken he was in his conception
to love our religion ; we want them
of the duty of the American Jewish
to be able to read in the original
citizen. The man is not an Ameri-
language our laws and our codes,
JACOB
H.
SCHIFF
can citizen—could not be, for he is
but
we also want them to think in
only eighteen months ill this coun-
try. And he undertook to review I and glad if I and criticized ; I am other right than to consider himself English, to read in English, to adopt
my life of fifty-one years in the City glad because anyone can learn from first a Jew and not first,an Ameri- American ways.
My friends, we want the children
of New York and he reached the criticism. Where is mortal man call—not a Jew because of attach-
conclusion that it was all a failure. who does not err ? And I sent for ment to his religion, but a Jew be- of the Russian and Polish and Ru-
He• took the stand that I had no the man and I discussed with him cause of the separateness which we manian parents—men and women
right to live a life of philanthropic what he had written and I showed should maintain as a people, instead who are flesh of our flesh and blood
and utilitarian application. He him how wrongly he conceived the of becoming part and parcel of the of our blood—we want these chil-
claimed, so I understand him, that I duty and the purposes of an Amer- great American nation. dren to understand the soul of our
Now, my friends, I feel that this people. We want these great Yid-
had no right to devote my means— ican Jew. But while he expressed
is
all
wrong, and if persisted in will dish tales, these great Yiddish writ-
which, he said, were, after all, only regret—in fact he wrote me after-
gained by money changing—I had wards so—for what he had written, bring us untold suffering—not suf- ings which represent, as I have said,
no right to devote my means to he said while he may have ex- fering as our brethren have suf- the soul and the heart of at least
purely secular purposes; that any- pressed himself unfortunately, he fered in Russia and Rumania and part of our people—for instance,
thing I gave away I had only the was in part right ; that he was ex- Poland, but soul suffering, which the outpourings of men like Sholem
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