Chapter XXXVI

SYNAGOGUES AND INSTITUTIONS. THE ENCYCLOPEDIA.
ROUMANIA AND THE ROUMANIAN NOTE.

Synagogues and other Jewish Institutions――General improvement
and moderation――The Jewish Encyclopedia――Its editors and
contributors――The Roumanian situation and the American
Government’s interest in it since 1867――Benjamin F. Peixotto,
United States Consul-General in Bucharest――Diplomatic
correspondence between Kasson and Evarts――New negotiations with
Roumania in 1902――The Roumanian Note to the signatories of the
Berlin Treaty――The question still in abeyance.

More than six hundred thousand Jews arrived in the United States from the beginning of the new exodus in 1881 until the end of the nineteenth century, and the total number in the country was now considerably more than one million. There were Jews in more than five hundred places, and there were 791 congregations, 415 educational and nearly five hundred charitable institutions of a distinctly Jewish character, according to an enumeration made in the beginning of the new century.[52] But the number of congregations or synagogues was very much larger, probably more than double than the figures gathered by the enumerators. For the American, even the American Jew, had then not yet learned to take seriously those small and exceedingly unchurchlike synagogues of the small congregations, of which five or six, or even a larger number, can sometimes be found in one block in a thickly settled Jewish neighborhood in the great cities. A second and more thorough enumeration made in 1907 gave to New York City alone a number of synagogues almost as large as the one given by the statistics of 1900 to the entire country; but the actual increase was very far from such proportions. Probably four-fifths of the congregations of New York and of the other great Jewish centers in the East and the Middle West were more than ten years old, and they simply escaped the notice of former enumerators. The organizing of small synagogues is now out of fashion; the tendency is to consolidate the smaller ones and to erect more fashionable and spacious buildings in the newest neighborhoods, to which the immigrants usually move after they leave their earliest abode in the tenement house districts. In the fields of charity and education the predilection for new organizations is disappearing, and there is a desire to build on more solid foundations, and to improve and strengthen rather than form anew. New synagogues are now built usually in new communities or in new Jewish neighborhoods, or by old congregations who need a larger edifice.

America now had the largest community of free Jews in the world, _i. e._, of Jews who labored under no special disadvantages and who had no special difficulties, like those which are making life a burden to the Jews of Russia or Galicia. The great masses which arrived in the last twenty years progressed rapidly and were becoming Americanized in every respect. There arose new intellectual needs; the extremists had to yield to the influence of those who were more acclimatized, and even the most radical periodicals began to respect the susceptibilities, if not the opinions, of the other classes. The number of the educated and the well-to-do was fast increasing, and the community was now well prepared for “the capital event in the history of Jewish learning in America”――the publication of the _Jewish Encyclopedia_.

This monumental work, the greatest Jewish work of reference in any language, was projected by Dr. Isidore Singer (b. in Weisskirchen, Moravia, 1859; a. 1895) and edited by a board of well-known scholars, of whom Dr. Isaac Funk (b. in Clinton, O., 1839; d. 1912; of the firm of Funk and Wagnalls, which published the work) was chairman, and Frank H. Vizitelly (b. in London, Eng., 1864) secretary. The original editors were: Cyrus Adler, Gotthard Deutsch (b. in Kanitz, Austria, 1859; a. 1891), Professor of History at the Hebrew Union College; Louis Ginzberg (b. in Kovno, Russia, 1873; a. 1899), now Professor of Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York; Richard Gottheil; Joseph Jacobs (b. in Sydney, N. S. W., 1854; a. 1900), the folklorist and statistician; Marcus Jastrow; Morris Jastrow, Jr.; Kaufman Kohler; Frederick de Sola Mendes (b. in Jamaica, W. I., 1850; a. 1873), rabbi of the West End Synagogue of New York; Isidor Singer, and Crawford H. Toy (b. in Norfolk, Va., 1836), Professor (now “emeritus”) of Hebrew and Oriental Languages at Harvard University. This editorial board was given on the title page of the first volume which appeared in May, 1901; but several changes were made during the five years of its publication. From the beginning of the second volume Herman Rosenthal became editor of the new Department of the Jews of Russia and Poland, and it is due to his efforts that the Jews of the Slavic countries are more extensively treated in the historical and biographical parts of the Encyclopedia than was ever the case in works of Jewish science which appeared outside of Russia. Dr. Emil G. Hirsch of Chicago succeeded Morris Jastrow as editor of the Department of the Bible, with the beginning of the third volume. From the fourth till the seventh volume the name of Solomon Schechter (b. in Fokshan, Roumania, 1847; a. 1902), the President of the Jewish Theological Seminary, appears as editor of the Department of the Talmud; and from the eighth volume to the end the name of Wilhelm Bacher of Budapest (b. in Hungary 1850) appears as editor of the Department of the Talmud and Rabbinical Literature, succeeding both Schechter and Ginzberg. The editorial board was assisted by boards of American and foreign consulting editors, which included many of the best known Jewish scholars and Orientalists, and many other scholars from various countries were among the four hundred contributors who participated in the preparation of the work, in which the vast “Record of the History, Religion, Literature and Customs of the Jewish People from the earliest times to the present day” was for the first time systematized, classified and made available in a modern scientific manner.

Illustration: Prof. Gotthard Deutsch.

* * * * *

The situation of the Jews in Roumania had been growing worse since the financial crisis of 1899, and in the last year of the century there was a stampede of Jews from that country, some of them walking hundreds of miles before they could find a place to rest or until they reached a port from which they could embark for England or America. Still, neither the Jewish immigration in general nor the immigration from Roumania could give the slightest cause for uneasiness to the government of the United States, the tide of immigration was now again rising from the lowest ebb it had reached since 1879――229,295 in 1898――and neither the 5,613 Roumanian Jews who arrived at the port of New York in 1901 nor the 6,395 who came in 1902, when the general immigration was 487,918 and 648,743, respectively, could be taken seriously as a cause for interference or protest. There would have been much more cause for protests of that nature after the great massacres in Russia several years later, when the number of Jews who arrived in one year (1906) exceeded 150,000. The interest that the Government of the United States took in the Roumanian situation is therefore believed to have been due principally to the friendly attitude of President Theodore Roosevelt and Secretary of State John Hay towards Jews in general.

It was, however, nothing new for the American Government to use its good offices in behalf of the persecuted Jews of Roumania. As early as 1867, Secretary of State Seward corresponded with Mr. Morris, the American Minister to Constantinople, about the persecutions of that year; and the latter reported having told Mr. Golesco, the agent of the Danubian principalities, that the sufferings of the Jews there “has all the appearance of religious persecution, and that the confidence of the Government of the United States would be impaired in the Government of Bucharest, unless the proscriptive measures against the Jews discontinued.”[53]

In 1870 official――or it would perhaps be more correct to call it semi-official――relations with Roumania were established temporarily, by the appointment of a consul-general of the United States in Roumania. The man chosen by President Grant for this position was a prominent Jewish attorney-at-law, Benjamin Franklin Peixotto (b. in New York, 1834; d. there 1890), who later served as United States Consul at Lyons, France (1877–85), and when he returned to New York founded (1886) the “Menorah,” a monthly Jewish magazine which existed for more than two decades. The Jewish official became an intimate friend of Prince (now King) Charles, but Roumania continued on its old way, and the riots of Ismail and Bessarabia occurred during Peixotto’s stay in Bucharest. “His reports to the United States Government resulted in that government addressing letters to its ministers at the various European courts inviting co-operation in the humane endeavor to stop Jewish persecution in Roumania. Peixotto’s reports were also the cause of a great meeting at the Mansion House in London, which called forth Lord Shaftesbury’s message of sympathy. Peixotto was instrumental, too, in founding the Society of Zion in Roumania, an organization with similar aims to the B’nai B’rith; and it was his influence as a United States official, his intimacy with the European philanthropists and the force of his own personal magnetism that finally caused the calling of the conference of Brussels, to which he was a delegate, and which culminated in the action taken by the Berlin Congress of 1878, when Roumania acquired the status of a sovereign kingdom only upon the express condition that the civil and political rights of the Jews should be recognized.” (E. A. Cardozo, in _Encyclopedia_ IX, p. 582, s. v. Peixotto.)

Peixotto remained in Roumania six years, and about two years after he left Bucharest, Mr. John A. Kasson, the American Minister to Austria, wrote to Secretary of State Evarts (under date of June 5, 1878) that in anticipation of Roumanian independence, which was soon to be granted by the Congress of Berlin, Germany, had begun negotiations with the Roumanian Government for a commercial treaty. But Germany finally dropped the negotiations because, “according to information received here, the hostility of Roumania to the recognition of equal rights for Jews of a foreign nationality with other citizens or subjects of the same nationality would have practically proscribed a portion of the German subjects.” Yet Mr. Kasson proposes in the same letter that: “It would be to the honor of the United States Government if it could initiate a plan by which at once the condition of American Hebrews resident or travelling in Roumania and the condition of natives of the same race could be ameliorated and their equality before the law at least partially assured.” In the following year Mr. Kasson reports about the attempt to enter into diplomatic relations with Roumania, and about a conversation he had with Mr. Balatshano, the envoy and minister of Roumania to Austria, in the course of which allusion was made to the preliminary requirements of the Berlin treaty in respect to the Jews. According to the letter (dated February 16, 1879), the representative of Roumania replied “that the necessary changes would be made in their laws to give satisfaction on this point, and to establish for the Jews the basis of absolute equality with other races.” On November 28, 1879, Secretary Evarts writes to Mr. Kasson:

“In connection with the subject of Roumanian recognition, I
inclose for your consideration the copy of a letter under date
of the 30th ultimo from Mr. Myer S. Isaacs, president, and other
officers of the board of delegates on civil and religious rights
of the Hebrews, asking that the Government of the United States
may exert its influence towards securing for its Hebrew subjects
and residents in Roumania the equality of civil and religious
rights stipulated in Article XLIV of the treaty of Berlin.

“As you are aware, this government has ever felt a deep interest
in the welfare of the Hebrew race in foreign countries, and has
viewed with abhorrence the wrongs to which they have at various
periods been subjected by the followers of other creeds in the
East. This Department is therefore disposed to give favorable
consideration to the appeal made by the representatives of a
prominent Hebrew organization in this country in behalf of their
brethren in Roumania, and while I should not be warranted in
making a compliance with their wishes a _sine qua non_ in the
establishment of official relations with that country, yet any
terms favorable to the interest of this much-injured people
which you may be able to secure in the negotiations now pending
with the Government of Roumania would be agreeable and gratifying
to this Department.

“I am, etc.,

“WM. M. EVARTS.”

It was therefore only a continuance of its old policy when the Government of the United States, which has――as Mr. Evarts expressed it in 1879――“ever felt a deep interest in the welfare of the Hebrew race in foreign countries,” again began, in 1902, to pay attention to the pitiable condition of the Roumanian Jews. There still existed no treaty or diplomatic relations between the United States and Roumania, and a new attempt was made by our Department of State to negotiate a naturalization convention, and perhaps by these means influence that country to treat its Jews more favorably. The negotiations were carried on through the American legation at Athens, Greece, and Secretary Hay sent, on July 17, 1902, a long confidential dispatch to Mr. Charles L. Wilson, the _Charge d’Affaires ad interim_ in Athens, which contained the largest part of the famous “Roumanian Note” to the signatories of the Treaty of Berlin, which was issued in the following month. Wilson’s reply, dated August 8, states that “since the draft of the treaty approved by the Department was submitted to the Roumanian minister for foreign affairs nothing further has been accomplished, as the Roumanian Government refused to consider the project favorably.” The Roumanian Minister to Greece frankly admitted to the American representative that the King was against the proposed treaty, because, “according to His Majesty’s opinion, a naturalization treaty would be most injurious to Roumania, for the reason that it would complicate the already troublesome Jewish question in that country.”

Three days after the date of that dispatch, John Hay issued, on August 11, 1902, the Roumanian Note, which was sent to the representatives of the United States to France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Russia and Turkey. The full text of this unique circular note, which made a profound impression in the entire civilized world, is as follows:

“Department of State.
“Washington, August 11, 1902.

“EXCELLENCY:――In the course of an instruction recently sent to
the Minister accredited to the Government of Roumania in regard
to the base of negotiations begun with that government looking
to a convention of naturalization between the United States
and Roumania, certain considerations were set forth for the
Minister’s guidance concerning the character of the immigration
from that country, the causes which constrain it, and the
consequences so far as they adversely affect the United States.

“It has seemed to the President appropriate that these
considerations, relating as they do to the obligations entered
into by the signatories of the Treaty of Berlin of July 13, 1878,
should be brought to the attention of the Governments concerned,
and commended to their consideration in the hope that, if they
are so fortunate as to meet the approval of the several Powers,
such measures as to them may seem wise may be taken to persuade
the Government of Roumania to reconsider the subject of the
grievances in question.

“The United States welcomes now, as it has welcomed from the
foundation of its Government, the voluntary immigration of all
aliens coming hither under conditions fitting them to become
merged in the body politic of this land. Our laws provide the
means for them to become incorporated indistinguishably in the
mass of citizens, and prescribe their absolute equality with
the native born, guaranteeing to them equal civil rights at home
and equal protection abroad. The conditions are few, looking
to their coming as free agents, so circumstanced physically and
morally as to supply the healthful and intelligent material for
free citizenhood. The pauper, the criminal, the contagiously or
incurably diseased are excluded from the benefit of immigration
only when they are likely to become a source of danger or a
burden upon the community. The voluntary character of their
coming is essential; hence we shut out all immigration assisted
or constrained by foreign agencies. The purpose of our generous
treatment of the alien immigrant is to benefit us and him
alike――not to afford to another state a field upon which to
cast its own objectionable elements. The alien, coming hither
voluntarily and prepared to take upon himself the preparatory
and in due course the definite obligations of citizenship,
retains hereafter, in domestic and international relations, the
initial character of free agency, in the full enjoyment of which
it is incumbent upon his adoptive State to protect him.

“The foregoing considerations, whilst pertinent to the
examination of the purpose and scope of a naturalization treaty,
have a larger aim. It behooves the State to scrutinize most
jealously the character of the immigration from a foreign land,
and, if it be obnoxious to objection, to examine the causes
which render it so. Should those causes originate in the act of
another sovereign State, to the detriment of its neighbors, it
is the prerogative of an injured State to point out the evil and
to make remonstrance; for with nations, as with individuals, the
social law holds good that the right of each is bounded by the
right of the neighbor.

“The condition of a large class of the inhabitants of Roumania
has for many years been a source of grave concern to the United
States. I refer to the Roumanian Jews, numbering some 400,000.
Long ago, while the Danubian principalities labored under
oppressive conditions which only war and a general action of
the European powers sufficed to end, the persecution of the
indigenous Jews under Turkish rule called forth in 1872 the
strong remonstrance of the United States. The Treaty of Berlin
was hailed as a cure for the wrong, in view of the express
provisions of its forty-fourth article, prescribing that in
Roumania the difference of religious creed and confessions shall
not be alleged against any person as a ground for exclusion or
incapacity in matters relating to the enjoyment of civil and
political rights, admission to public employments, functions,
and honors, or the exercise of the various professions and
industries in any locality whatsoever, and stipulating freedom
in the exercise of all forms of worship to Roumanian dependents
and foreigners alike, as well as guaranteeing that all
foreigners in Roumania shall be treated without distinction of
creed, on a footing of perfect equality.

“With the lapse of time these just prescriptions have been
rendered nugatory in great part, as regards the native Jews, by
the legislation and municipal regulations of Roumania. Starting
from the arbitrary and controvertible premises that the native
Jews of Roumania domiciled there for centuries are ‘aliens not
subject to foreign protection,’ the ability of the Jew to earn
even the scanty means of existence that suffice for a frugal
race has been constricted by degrees, until every opportunity
to win a livelihood is denied; and until the helpless poverty
of the Jew has constrained an exodus of such proportions as to
cause general concern.

“The political disabilities of the Jews of Roumania, their
exclusion from the public service and the learned professions,
the limitation of their civil rights and the imposition
upon them of exceptional taxes, involving as they do, wrongs
repugnant to the moral sense of liberal modern peoples, are
not so directly in point for my present purpose as the public
acts which attack the inherent right of man as a breadwinner
in the ways of agriculture and trade. The Jews are prohibited
from owning land, or even from cultivating it as common laborers.
They are debarred from residing in the rural districts. Many
branches of petty trade and manual production are closed to
them in the over-crowded cities where they are forced to dwell
and engage, against fearful odds, in the desperate struggle
for existence. Even as ordinary artizans or hired laborers they
may only find employment in the proportion of one ‘unprotected
alien’ to two ‘Roumanians’ under any one employer. In short,
in the cumulative effects of successive restrictions, the Jews
of Roumania have become reduced to a state of wretched misery.
Shut out from nearly every avenue of self-support which is
open to the poor of other lands, and ground down by poverty
as the natural result of their discriminatory treatment, they
are rendered incapable of lifting themselves from the enforced
degradation they endure. Even were the fields of education, of
civil employment and of commerce open to them as to ‘Roumanian
citizens,’ their penury would prevent their rising by individual
effort. Human beings so circumstanced have virtually no
alternative but submissive suffering or flight to some land
less unfavorable to them. Removal under such conditions is not
and cannot be the healthy, intelligent emigration of a free
and self-reliant being. It must be, in most cases, the mere
transplantation of an artificially produced diseased growth to
a new place.

“Granting that, in better and more healthful surroundings,
the morbid condition will eventually change for good, such
emigration is necessarily for a time a burden to the community
upon which the fugitives may be cast. Self-reliance and the
knowledge and ability that evolve the power of self-support
must be developed, and, at the same time, avenues of employment
must be opened in quarters where competition is already keen
and opportunities scarce. The teachings of history and the
experience of our own nation show that the Jews possess in a
high degree the mental and moral qualifications of conscientious
citizenhood. No class of immigrants is more welcome to our shore,
when coming equipped in mind and body for entrance upon the
struggle for bread, and inspired with the high purpose to give
the best service of heart and brain to the land they adopt of
their own free will. But when they come as outcasts, made doubly
paupers by physical and moral oppression in their native land,
and thrown upon the long suffering generosity of a more favored
community, their immigration lacks the essential conditions
which make alien immigration either acceptable or beneficial.
So well is this appreciated on the Continent that, even in the
countries where anti-Semitism has no foothold, it is difficult
for these fleeing Jews to obtain any lodgment. America is their
only goal.

“The United States offers asylum to the oppressed of all lands.
But its sympathy with them in no wise impairs its just liberty
and right to weigh the acts of the oppressor in the light of
their effects upon this country and to judge accordingly.

“Putting together the facts now painfully brought home to
this Government during the past few years, that many of the
inhabitants of Roumania are being forced, by artificially
adverse discriminations, to quit their native country; that
the hospitable asylum offered by this country is almost the
only refuge left to them; that they come hither unfitted, by
the conditions of their exile, to take part in the new life of
this land under circumstances either profitable to themselves
or beneficial to the community; and that they are objects
of charity from the outset and for a long time――the right
of remonstrance against the acts of the Roumanian Government
is clearly established in favor of this Government. Whether
consciously and of purpose or not, these helpless people,
burdened and spurned by their native land, are forced by the
sovereign power of Roumania upon the charity of the United
States. This Government cannot be a tacit party to such an
international wrong. It is constrained to protest against the
treatment to which the Jews of Roumania are subjected, not
alone because it has unimpeachable right to remonstrate against
the resultant injury to itself, but in the name of humanity.
The United States may not authoritatively appeal to the
stipulations of the Treaty of Berlin, to which it was not and
cannot become a signatory, but it does earnestly appeal to the
principles consigned therein, because they are the principles
of international law and eternal justice, advocating the broad
toleration which that solemn compact enjoins and standing ready
to lend its moral support to the fulfilment thereof by its
co-signatories, for the act of Roumania itself has effectively
joined the United States to them as an interested party in this
regard.

“You will take an early occasion to read this instruction to the
Minister for Foreign Affairs and, should he request it, leave
with him a copy.

“I have the honor to be

“Your obedient servant,

“JOHN HAY.”

The note made a great impression on the entire civilized world, but was followed by no practical results. The only government which took any notice of it was――as could have been expected――the British. Mr. John B. Jackson, who had in the meantime been appointed minister of the United States to Greece and was also accredited to Roumania, wrote from Athens (March 31, 1903) that, having been in charge of the American embassy at Berlin at the time when the note was received, he “understood that immediately after the same instruction has been communicated to the foreign office at London, the British Government, without in any way making known its own views contained therein, had addressed a communication to the other Governments which were parties to the Berlin treaty of 1878, inquiring what they proposed doing in the matter. So far as I am aware, however, no action was taken by any of these Governments, and the contents of the circular was never formally brought to the attention of the Roumanian Government....”

This letter, and another dated Athens, April 18, and still another dated September 7, 1903, contain statements made by Roumanian statesmen explaining the situation from their point of view, and observations made by Mr. Jackson himself during his travels through Roumania. The last letter, which closes the correspondence, ends with the remark that “the general feeling (in Roumania) is that the naturalization of Jews must be a gradual matter, as they become educated up to being Roumanians”――a feeling much more likely to be found in America than in Roumania.

There is still no treaty with Roumania, but there is an American Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary (the usual designation of an ordinary minister) sent to Roumania and accredited also to Servia and Bulgaria, who resides at the Roumanian capital, Bucharest, where there is also an American consul-general. The representation is, as was the case in the time of Peixotto, one-sided, the Roumanian Government having no representative in the United States. The Roumanian question may therefore be considered neither as solved nor as abandoned, but to be in abeyance until a favorable opportunity shall present itself for further negotiations, which may ultimately lead to the only adjustment which can be acceptable to the United States as well as to the Jews.