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)