THE JEWISH CHRONICLE
Phones: Grand 29
Hemlock 1915
L orner
ewish Woman s Corner
The Jewish
FOX DELICATESSEN CO.
Fine Groceries and Choice Meats
Conducted by
. ADA GREENHUT,..A.
A thoughtful and historically accurate presentation of the subject of
Jewish emancipation, this article is especially timely in view of the impetus
given by the proposed American Jewish Congress to the movement for Jew-
ish rights.
F
Our Meats STRICTLY KOSHER
895 Woodward Avenue
MARRIAGE AND INTERMARRIAGE.
LANKED by a patent medicine advertisement and tucked away
in the least conspicuous corner of the least important page of
last night's newspaper was the following item:
2116 Woodward Avenue
Send money to your friends and relatives, wherever
they are, through
A decree of divorce was granted by the court yesterday in the case
of Edith F. vs. Robert F. on the grounds of cruelty and desertion.
I wondered as I read the above lines whether the reporter who wrote
them realized their full significance, whether he knew that they struck
at the vitals of a great problem, the problem of intermarriage between
Jew and Gentile.
You see, I know Edith F. I remember her as I knew her when she
and I were school chums and belonged to the same set. She was a
beautiful girl of 18 then, tall and slender, with black eyes and raven
tresses and a face of unusual serenity. Mentally, she was high-strung,
full of fire and flash and possessed of a keen intelligence which made
her the dominant figure of our circle. In short, hers was the perfect
type, physically and intellectually, of vigorous, budding Jewish woman-
hood.
It was several months later that I received my first inkling of the
affair that was to develop into the great tragedy of her life. A per-
sistent rumor was going about that one of her usual romances was de-
veloping seriously. At a school dance she had met a young man, a
Gentile, and had fallen desperately in love with him. Of course, we
girls were promptly shocked. The very idea of a Jewish girl having an
- affair with a young man who was not of her faith was scandalous, to say
the least. It was a violation of the most fundamental rule taught us 1)y
our mothers—that it is wrong to intermarry. And when Edith, in re-
sponse to our questions, defiantly tossed her curls and declared that
she didn't care, that she loved Robert and was going to marry him, we
promptly "cut" her.
The Second Meeting.
T NEITHER saw nor heard of Edith until some years later. I had
I moved from my native city to the great metropolis, where as a
member of the staff of its largest newspaper, I was daily receiving fresh
proof of the bitterness of the battle for existence and, especially, of
the hard lot of the "independent" woman. One day, on the street, I
came face to face with Edith. But, oh, what a changed Edith! She
was no longer the romping, carefree girl I had known—with laughing
mouth and mischievous glance and youth's glowing vitality. I saw
before me an old woman, a woman sad and tired, with lusterless eyes,
upon whose face the cares and tragedies of years had left their indelible
imprint.
In answer to the startled query which she must have read in my
eyes, she told me her story.
It was the old, old tragedy of mismated souls that it revealed. It
illustrated anew how utterly hopeless it is for two human beings, radic-
ally different in training, environment and point of view, even though
they be cemented by the ties of love, to try to walk together down
the path of life. At first everything was lovely. Robert and she were
happy as only two young people can be who had found in marriage
the fulfillment of their love and who literally worshipped each other. But
the period of blissful harmony soon passed. Robert was undergoing an
indefinable change. The things he had willingly done before, now be-
came concessions on his part. He who formerly had been her equal,
now patronized her. And here and there differences of opinion were
beginning to crop out, small and petty and trivial things, but which
carried with them a menace and foreboding of dark and dreadful shadows.
She had no direct cause for complaint. He still treated her with the
same care, consideration, and courtesy which he had always accorded
to her. The atmosphere, however, was not the same. It was tingling
with that pent-up, impending feeling which is in the air before a storm.
••• ■ •
,
--41601110111 "
Herman Eichners
9
Foreign Exchange and Steamship Ticket Agency
435 HASTINGS STREET
,
Cor. Winder
DETROIT, MICH.
Correspondence in all Languages.
Steamship tickets on all lines. Real estate, farms
and farm lands for sale.
NOTARY PUBLIC
WM. DEVLIN
DAVID BLOCK
Block & Devlin
Successors to Steere Jewelry Co.
OS Woodward Ave.
Diamond Importers, Jewelers and Silversmiths
31 Year. in one Location
Established 1885
Religion and the Climax.
IND you, never during this time had the question of religion been
raised or discussed. Neither were religions, in the usual sense.
M
Neither went to synagogue or church and neither observed religious
forms and ceremonies. Yet, neither felt .easy. Both divined that there
yawned between them an abyss which made a perfect mutual under-
standing impossible. And this feeling that there was a dead-line be-
tween them, a "no-man's" land which neither could cross—was always
uppermost in their minds and made itself apparent, if not in words, at
least in the restrained and artificial attitude which they developed to-
ward each other.
At last came the climax. It was reached some years after their
child, a boy, was born. As the boy grew older, the question of his re .
ligious instruction naturally came up for attention. There had been an
agreement between them that no attempt was to be made by either to
impose their religious views upon him, but that he was to be allowed
to develop independently and to follow his own inclinations when he
grew up. This policy may have been good in theory, but it failed sadly
in practice. Unconsciously, the religious views of the parents began to
color their attitude towards and conversation with the son. And the
day soon came when both realized that the situation had developed into
a fight for supremacy between them, a fight which permitted of no corn-
promise, and in which but one of them could win. The mother, being
nearer to the boy and in constant association with him, naturally be-
came the victor. It was at this juncture that the father left.
*
* *
The story of Edith illustrates the gravest and most momentous prob-
lem with ,which the Jewish people has to contend—the problem of the
intermarriage of its sons and daughters.
That it is morally wrong to intermarry is a point that I shall not
attempt to discuss. I shall leave it for Rabbis as a subject for thbir ser-
mons.
But that it is practically inexpedient to intermarry—of that I am
convinced. And that the union between Jew and Gentile can end only
in unhappiness and misfortune to both of the parties concerned—is the
lesson taught us by the life story of Edith g• F.
• 1.1110.11••• ••■ •
—
-
.".101001MersOlit1.
OTTO MISCH
Republican Candidate for
7-Man School Board
6-Year Term
(President of Builders & Traders Exchange)
(Builder of Shaarey Zedek Temple)