Chapter IV: Part 4

Nor is this all a pious wish or simply a flow of rhetoric: we shall have to do that,--cultivate in one another the best gifts,--or we shall reap a harvest of the worst; for in the Scandinavian we can see how the very best may become like the worst simply through our own neglect. We must believe about one another only the best, for people, like bad boys, live up to their reputation.

This country ought to be no place for racial or national hatreds, and no people must be branded as this or that simply because of one superficial or even deep seated fault. How often I have heard from well meaning, respectable people: “You can’t trust the Scandinavians, they are immoral, they are treacherous;” when in fact they had no proof for their assertions, and simply sowed seeds of discord of which they must some day reap the harvest.

IX

THE JEW IN HIS OLD WORLD HOME

It is said of a certain English scientist that he began a work on “Snakes in Ireland” by the sentence: “There are no snakes in Ireland”; and one could easily without seeming to be facetious begin this chapter by saying: “The Jew has no home.”

He is a man without a country, and without a king; he belongs to a nation which, scattered over the face of the earth has yet retained the chief elements of an ancient faith, although no centralized authority guards it. Inheriting the cultural influences of his past, he absorbs the culture of each race which harbours him for a season. Although driven in turn from each insecure habitation, he has not degenerated into a nomad, but begins the task of home and fortune making, wherever a more hospitable people affords a resting place for his weary feet.

In his ancient home in Palestine, in the very citadel of his faith,--Jerusalem, he is the greatest stranger, and people of alien beliefs have built their monuments on the sites of his grandest spiritual conquests, and over the tombs of his prophets and seers.

Weeping, he tears his garments and beats his head against a wall which is all that is left of the temple thrice rebuilt, thrice ruined, and now having upon its ancient foundations a mosque, with crescent crowned minaret, from whose height the Muezzin cries: “Allah ho Akbar,” a sound which vibrates against the ears of the Jew like the mocking of the prophets who seem to say: “I told you so.”

Among the Arabs, his kinsmen, he is a stranger; for although in speech, dress and bearing he is like them, in thought and feeling he is above them; yet the coarsest Mohammedan servant will pronounce the word “Yahudi,” with all the scorn of a superior and all the hatred of an enemy.

His features have not changed since the time when Egyptian artists drew with crude touch on their temple walls the story of the stranger’s coming, his slavery and his exodus.

Wherever you find him, among the Arabs of North Africa or among the Danes of Northern Germany, he still bears the marks of his race, with the flame of Sinai in his look and the fire of the Southland on his cheek.

In Africa he is most numerous in Morocco, where 300,000 souls struggle for daily bread and are hated according to their number; while in Egypt where once he was found in largest numbers, now only about 10,000 Jews live.

The whole number for Africa does not exceed half a million; in Asia he is 200,000 strong or weak, in America above 2,000,000, while Europe has given him room enough to grow into 7,000,000. Between 10,000,000 or 11,000,000 is about the whole number of Jews now in existence, with the city of New York as the largest Jewish centre in the world, having no less than 600,000 of the faithful.

To describe the Jews in their varied environments means to draw many pictures and yet one; for while they differ widely according to the degree of civilization by which they are surrounded, certain characteristics remain the same.

Everywhere the Jew becomes outwardly like his masters--but often remains unlike them in his spiritual life and in those deeper things which express themselves spontaneously and which are too well grounded in his nature to be wiped out entirely by the mere touch of the stranger.

Physically he is usually smaller and weaker, has brown or gray eyes and dark hair, although not seldom it is red and curly. Among the Europeans his head and neck are always large; but his face is the smallest.

There are a vivaciousness in his manner, a rather emphatic and constant gesticulation, and a certain something in his speech which always mark him, and mark him unmistakably, the Jew.

He quickly reciprocates both good and evil, and is regarded with apprehension because of his aggressiveness; for as both friend and foe he is intense. Where an inch of approach is granted he may want an ell, while where he hates he does not hate in moderation. His business shrewdness is proverbial, although it is not his native genius for the proverb current in the Orient: “It takes one Jew to cheat three Christians, it takes one Armenian to cheat ten Jews, it takes one Greek to cheat twenty Armenians,” while no more correct than such generalities are likely to be, proves the assertion that he is not the champion in the chief game of life.

He has had bad environment for the development of business honesty, yet I know of scarcely a community in the world, in which the Jew plays any part, where he would not have a strong representation, if a group of the most trustworthy citizens was called together for any purpose.

The world in which he lives and in which he trades, is the world which he reflects, and he has not always created the conditions which exist there.

To “Jew down,” which is a synonym for beating down in price, is as current in business where he is no factor, as where he is. In Italy it is an economic disease, and in Russia, in those regions closed to the Jewish tradesman, the native haggles with the priest about the price of a funeral or a baptism, with the cab driver over the fare, and even attempts to bargain on the railroad when he buys his ticket.

To generalize about the good or bad characteristics of the Jew is as difficult as it is to portray those of any race. When he judges himself he is either unjustly severe or profusely apologetic, for a people which has lived for so many centuries under abnormal conditions, cannot be known by the stranger, nor can it know itself.

At present the Jew is somewhere between Shakespeare’s Shylock and George Elliot’s Daniel Deronda; and more Shylock where the hate of the middle ages makes it impossible for him to grow into George Eliot’s ideal. He is most uncomfortably felt in those countries where he is in the transition period, when he is apt to be over-bearing and given to sensuous pleasure; even then he is not so grasping as Shylock although not so lovable as Daniel Deronda. He does not need much time to come to his full development. His genius quickly manifests itself, and while he is charged with superficiality, the fact that in all sciences there are accurate scholars of the Jewish race, disproves that accusation, although his emotional nature does not best fit him for the patient task of the investigator.

His neighbours are quickly conscious of his faults because he is not yet schooled in the art of suppressing them, and his virtues are often unrecognized because they shine the brightest in the inner circle, from which the neighbour is usually excluded by mutual consent.

In Northern Africa we find him to-day just as he was thirty-five or forty years ago when Sir Moses Montefiore tried to alleviate his inhuman treatment and his impoverished and miserable condition. The Moors without knowing the prophecy concerning the fate of Israel are actively engaged in fulfilling it with a cruel literalness. In every city and village the Jews have their separate quarters and their own judges.

They are not permitted to study the reading and writing of Arabic lest their eyes defile the sacred pages of the Koran; they are not allowed to ride a horse although they may ride a donkey; and they must walk barefooted before the mosques.

They are prohibited from going near a well when a Mussulman is drinking, and must wear black, a colour despised by the Moors.

The men are all ugly because of the abject fear on their faces; their eyes are always cast down and their walk is unsteady while the whole posture is expressive of the worst kind of slavery.

They may be beaten, kicked and spit upon at any time without being able to protect themselves or even having the spirit to do it.

The women are unusually handsome and some of the homes are splendidly furnished and are hospitably opened to the traveller. The same conditions existed in Algiers until it passed under the rule of France, when the Jews asserted their superiority and became landowners, manufacturers and business men, so that nearly half of the property in Algiers is said to be in their hands, for which they are again beginning to feel hatred and persecution.

The Egyptian Jews are found only in the two cities of Cairo and Alexandria; but they have followed the victorious arms of England and have entered the heart of Africa where in Khartum and the fabled Timbuctoo there are Jewish communities.

In Asia Minor the largest Jewish population outside of Jerusalem is in Smyrna; where there are over thirty thousand in the city and vicinity. These Jews, like those of Morocco, are descendants of Spanish fugitives and are considered, even by their enemies, honest and industrious, performing the commonest and hardest labour.

Jerusalem remains to this day the unhappiest city in the world for the Jew, who sees in it his glorious past and his present shame, and who must feel the pangs of persecution most in the city in which once he was master and lord.

Highly interesting is the story of the Jews in China. That they existed there, was known as early as the sixteenth century when the Jesuit, Ricci, found them in Khai Fung Fu, the old capital of Honan.

How they came to China is not definitely known, but according to Chinese history they came as far back as 58 B. C.

In 1848 they were found by some English missionaries, who reported their synagogues in ruins and the Jews unable to read the one scroll of the law which remained. At present there are only about twenty families left, and but a few years ago, a number of Jews came from the interior to Shanghai, to be taught Hebrew by the English Jews and to have the rite of circumcision performed.

The real Jewish world, and that which touches our own each day is in the eastern part of Europe; in Hungary, Poland, Russia and Roumania.

While most of the Jews in the south of Europe and Asia are the descendants of Spanish Jews, from whom they inherit a peculiar language and certain tendencies of worship and belief,--those of Eastern Europe are nearly all under the cultural influences of Germany, whose language they speak, in a more or less corrupt form. They left Germany because of the persecutions of the middle ages and settled among the Slavs, where they have lived for many centuries; never quite sure of an abiding place, and suffering ever recurring persecutions of varying degrees of intensity.

The Jews of Bohemia, whose spiritual centre was the Ghetto of the city of Prague, as well as the Jews of Hungary, exhibit certain liberal tendencies in their faith, and are midway between orthodox and reformed Judaism. They are generally classed among German Jews, while the Jews of Poland, Lithuania and Bessarabia, are classed with the Russian Jews, by far the largest number, and the one great source of Jewish immigration to this country.

The cause of this immigration is found in the persecutions, not new in the history of Israel, but like death, always holding a new terror.

In Russia the horrors of these persecutions are shared by other non-Russians, yet there is in the Jewish persecutions an element of hatred and contempt which makes them exceptionally galling, and affects not only the Jews’ civic, social and economic condition but their self-respect also. They are classed with the Kalmuks, the Samoyedes, the Kirghese and other aboriginal tribes of low mental capacity and still lower standards of civilization; while not sharing with them their legal status, being as Jews, regarded as outlaws, for whom special repressive legislation is necessary.

Above all else, these laws tend to keep them within the pale, which pale is the old kingdom of Poland, and the western provinces originally belonging to Poland. On this territory which is by far the smaller portion of European Russia, over 5,000,000 Jews are virtually imprisoned, entrance into the larger Russia being permitted only to:

1. Merchants of the first class, who have to pay an annual tax of nearly $500.

2. Professional men who have university diplomas. As, however, of the entire number of pupils admitted to the higher schools only from five to ten per cent. are permitted to be Jews, this class is very small.

3. Old soldiers who have served twenty-five years in the army.

4. Students of higher education.

5. Apothecaries, dentists, surgeons and midwives.

6. Skilled artisans, who have no legal residence outside the pale but who may follow their vocation anywhere, provided they earn their living by their trade, and that they are members of their trade guilds; a privilege rarely granted to Jews.

Worst of all is the element of uncertainty as to the interpretation and operation of the laws, which are now lax, now severe, but always means of extortion and a recognized avenue of income for numerous officials.

The greatest hardship suffered comes from the fact that in the villages, only those residents who were there prior to a certain date, are permitted to remain; while the vast majority is herded together in the city Ghettos, which offer but a scant living to the normal population.

The Jewish part of the city, the Ghetto, is invariably sunk in mud or dust, according as there is rain or sunshine, and is the picture of melancholia. Cadaverous men in long, black, greasy cloaks, countless children and women, who alone carry sunshine; for in the Jewish woman’s heart the hope of giving birth to the Messiah is not yet dead.

All of these people are narrow chested, with the melancholy eyes deep set; they have long bodies and short limbs with which they make ambling strides like the camel in the desert.

It is a haggling, bargaining, pushing, crowding, seething mass; ugly in its environment, hard for the stranger to love, cowed by fear, unmanned by persecution; a thing to jeer at, to ridicule, to plunder and to kill.

This is no apology for the Jew. He carries the faults and the sins of ages; not only his own, but those of his persecutors also. He is himself the keenest critic of racial faults, and once awakened to them hates them and his race most unmercifully. His people are greedy, greasy, and pushing, or doggedly humble; as might be expected of hunted human beings, who for 2,000 years have known no peace, wherever the cross overshadowed them. They could escape torment in a moment by having a few drops of holy water sprinkled over them, for baptism opens to all, the door of opportunity. Whatever else may have died, the ancient fire is not dead in them, and they prefer to suffer, to die, if need be, rather than to enter a so-called Christian church through the door of expediency. Sometimes that door has to be entered, but the Jews who enter it are still Jews, and often they suffer agonies of mind and of spirit, to which persecution might be preferable.

A friend of mine in Moscow, a manufacturer of tobacco, who had lived in that city for thirty years, received sudden notice to dispose of his business and leave the city. He was prosperous, his children were going to school, they knew no home but Moscow, and the town to which they were to go was in the crowded Jewish pale which he had left as a child.

He and his family were baptized, he became a full-fledged Russian, with all the rights of citizenship, and his business went on as usual.

Soon afterwards, however, he became depressed, the depression increasing each time that he had to take part in religious ceremonies which were hateful to him, and it was not long before he grew violently insane.

I have no doubt that as soon as the Jewish disabilities are removed, most of those who have entered the Greek Church will return to the faith of their fathers which they have never really left.

It is said in Moscow of a certain Jew, that after the priest had instructed him in the catechism, he asked: “Now what do you believe?” and he replied: “I believe that now I shall not have to leave Moscow.”

Much more than this, these so-called converted Jews do not and cannot believe.

Most of them prefer to live in dirty little hovels, hungry and wretched, to brood over the ancient lore, the Psalms of David, the prophets’ messages from God, the law of Moses and the sayings of the sages. Day and night, while hunger gnaws and poverty oppresses, they look to Jehovah and fast and mourn and believe.

Minsk, Wilna, Kovno, and Warsaw contain Jewries in which from 80,000 to 200,000 souls are living--no one knows how; two-thirds by manual labour, the commonest and the coarsest, for the lowest wage. To-morrow’s bread is always an unknown quantity, and these people do “Walk by faith and not by sight.” No labour is too heavy or too dirty; and the mournful Jewish face will look out at you from the pit of a mine, from under a burden of wood or water, from the margin of the river as boats are unloaded, or from the seat of a miserable cab, whose horse and driver are alike most pitiable. Because of their weak bodies they are not regarded as good labourers, except at tailoring.

Locked in the city, hampered in their movements by unreasonable laws, groaning under taxes too heavy to be borne, the government, labour, religion--life itself a burden, they are living Egypt over again, waiting and praying for their deliverance. Why are they persecuted? Can any one answer that question? Has any one yet found the reason for blind hate, that blindest of all,--the hate of race? They are hated because they are supposed to be rich; yet seventy-five per cent. of them are poorer than Chinese coolies.

They are hated because they have strange customs, because they hold themselves, in a large measure, aloof from the common life. How can they be anything but strangers to the adherents of a religion who choose a holy day, the day of resurrection, to kill them? Easter time is almost invariably the time of persecution. How can they be other than strangers to a church, the ringing of whose bells marks the carnage of hundreds of thousands--murdered for the glory of Jesus--a Jew.

How can they be anything but strangers to a government whose officials will step among the mobs to encourage them, shouting: “Steady boys, keep it up.”

They are hated by the government because they are supposed to be revolutionists. If only they were! The masses of the Jews are so cowed by fear that they are unmanned. They do not know the use of a weapon. Here and there a Jew, alert and keen, sees his misery and is brave enough to defend himself. Many of them advocate Socialism; it attracts them because it knows no race, because it preaches a certain kind of peace, because it is a brotherhood. The Jew does not find in the orthodox church the meek and lowly Nazarene, because the Messiah whom the church preaches, is masked behind church millinery; because the representative of the lowly Nazarene sits upon the throne of the haughtiest autocrat, and because the cross is an ornament and not an element in the salvation of men.

The Jew in Russia is persecuted because he is supposed to use the blood of Gentile children for his passover. This false accusation has followed him through the years, in spite of the fact that those who promulgated it knew that it was false. The shedding of human blood was never one of Israel’s crimes, and killing is a desire which the Jew lost long ago, having never been a master in this art.

The root of the persecution of the Russian Jew is found in his superior ability to cope with the difficulties of existence, in his thrift and shrewdness which know no bounds.]

Frankly, the root of this persecution of the Jews is found in their superior ability to cope with the difficulties of existence in Russia, in their thrift and shrewdness which know no bounds and which have almost crushed in them their spiritual longings, making them a byword among the nations.

But a new inspiration has come to the Jews of Eastern Europe through the Zionistic movement; a revival of Jewish nationalism, a desire to win back the lost Palestine,--the Fatherland of their spiritual sires.

The way back to Palestine is a difficult one and neither their Maccabean spirit nor the wealth they accumulate may avail them as a nation, to reach their goal. But the way there is beautiful, the dream is glorious and the spiritual and physical miracles wrought among the wealthiest and the poorest of them are remarkable. A new literature and a new psalmody are being born, a new Maccabean spirit is filling the emaciated bodies of these sons of Israel, and one of them sings and he but one of thousands:

“Arise, and shine, Jerusalem,
In costly jewelled diadem;
Put off thy ash strewn garb of gray,
In glorious dress, thyself array.

“Jehovah made thy people free;
Now that they long for liberty.
At end is all thy suffering night,
Jerusalem, send forth thy light.

“A note of ancient psalmody
Fills heaven and earth with melody;
A sacrifice of grateful praise
From altars old, we now upraise,

“And God looks pleased from glory down,
His smile oh! Israel is thy crown.
Put off thy ashen garb of gray,
Jerusalem, see thy glorious day.”

But for a long time to come, this Jerusalem will have to be New York, and their Palestine, America.

One can but hope that the Jew will so live and act, as to become one with the highest ideals of his new country, and so unwrap himself from ancient faults that in the truest sense, Jerusalem will be the “Bride adorned for her bridegroom,” and the city come down from heaven among men, in whose midst the reign of God will be an acknowledged fact.

X

THE NEW EXODUS

In a little studio on the West side of New York, a Jewish sculptor modelled the clay for a medal upon which he was to engrave for grateful Israel, the memorial of its settlement in America two and a half centuries ago. The face of the medal bore the veiled form of Justice, casting the evil spirit of Intolerance from his throne and placing upon it the Goddess of Liberty, who is bestowing on all alike the rich gifts in her keeping. On the reverse side of the medal, Victory is engraving the date 1655, the year of the landing of the Jewish forefathers. The Victory modelled by this Jewish genius is not the triumphant, over-bearing, conquering spirit; but in her noble form are embodied graciousness, determination and a sincere gratitude.

At the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the landing of the Jews in America, held in Carnegie Hall on Thanksgiving day, November 30, 1905, these feelings were given utterance in various ways by various persons; but by none more truly than by the Rev. Dr. Joseph Silverman, in his opening prayer.

“We thank Thee for America, this haven of refuge for the oppressed of the world. We thank Thee for the blessings of a permanent home in this country, its opportunities for development of life and advancement of mind and heart, for its independence and unity, its free institutions, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We reverently bow before Thy decree, which has taught us to find enduring peace and security in the sure foundation of this blessed land.”

The Jewish pioneers were cultured and far travelled men, who came from Portugal, Holland and England and their provinces. They were imbued by the adventurous spirit of the people whom they had left, in order to seek the undiscovered paths of the sea which led to fabled wealth.

It is no wonder if, at that early period when Jewish persecutions were at their height and the Jewish name under the darkest cloud, they had difficulty in gaining free entrance to their desired haven, and that the charter which was granted them was given grudgingly. It reads thus:

_“26th of April, 1655._

“We would have liked to agree to your wishes and request that the
new territories should not be further invaded by people of the
Jewish race, for we foresee from such immigration the same
difficulties which you fear, but after having further weighed and
considered the matter, we observe that it would be unreasonable
and unfair, especially because of the considerable loss sustained
by the Jews in the taking of Brazil, and also because of the large
amount of capital which they have invested in the shares of this
company.[1] After many consultations we have decided and resolved
upon a certain petition made by said Portuguese Jews, that they
shall have permission to sail to and trade in New Netherlands and
to live and remain there, provided the poor among them shall not
become a burden to the company or the community, but be supported
by their own nation. You will govern yourself accordingly.”

These Jews, true to their religious instincts, built synagogues wherever they settled and were called Sephardic Congregations. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, they were the dominating religious and cultural type, and while yet retaining certain racial characteristics, they blended into the national life, having no small share in its development.

With the coming to this country of the German peasantry, there was brought from the villages and towns a not inconsiderable number of Jews, who scattered through the North and South upon all the highways of commerce, and who finally became the second strata of the Jewish life in America. At first, they were more or less amalgamated with the Portuguese Jews, but as their numbers grew overwhelmingly great, they developed their religious and social life after their own traditions and were distinguished from their Sephardic brethren by the generic name “Ashkenazim” (Germans).

Within this group developed the German Reform movement, which has in greater or less degree attracted all the Germanic Jews, and from which the merely traditional and ritualistic element has quite disappeared; so that at the present time it is not far removed from Unitarianism in faith and practice. Later, when the population of the Eastern portion of Europe found its way across the sea, under the impulse of great nationalistic movements in Austria, Hungary and Poland, a new factor was introduced into the Jewish communities, which brought with it Rabbinistic lore and faithfulness to the traditions of the Elders, and this factor tended to strengthen the Jewish consciousness. In after years a good portion of this group attached itself to the Reform movement and cannot be differentiated from the Germanic group; while the residue has become the link between it and the overwhelmingly large mass of Russian Jews, which was to come and which now forms the greatest proportion of the Jewish population.

This Russian Jewish group is not easily analyzed; it is neither heterogeneous nor homogeneous; it is Polish, Roumanian, Lithuanian, Bessarabian and Galician. It is steeped in traditionalism, overburdened by ritualistic laws, loaded by the fetters of Rabbinism, held under the spell of Kabalism and Wonder Rabbis, swayed now by this teacher and now by that one. It has no common centre or common aim, and has not analyzed itself nor its environment. Strongly individualistic, its members are united to one another and to the other groups, only by their common misfortune, an indefinable racial consciousness; intellectually and culturally, far below the other groups, it bears the marks of oppression and of the oppressor in its thought and in its action. Nevertheless, it is destined to be the determining influence in the future of Judaism in America, and as such, deserves special study and consideration.

The Jewish population may be divided into four large groups, some of which are subdivided. I. The Sephardic or Spanish-Portuguese Jews, who have not retained their native speech, but who have preserved certain peculiarities in their worship, and distinctive ritualistic forms which are dignified and stately. The Hebrew language which they use in their service is pronounced in a peculiar way and in better harmony with the spirit of the language than one hears elsewhere. They are the real aristocracy among the Jews; rarely poor, with much of old time Spanish pride remaining in their bearing and expressed in their attitude towards the other Jewish groups. They are centred almost entirely in the Eastern cities, where they are found in the upper world of finance and in business and professional life.[2] The second group, the “Ashkenazim” or German Jews, has most quickly adjusted itself to the life in America and has developed what might be called an American Judaism, in which liberal tendencies have prevailed and have played havoc with the traditions of the past, very often at the expense of the spirit of Judaism. Some of these congregations have made Sunday the Sabbath of their week, and the service is conducted in the English language with the Hebrew almost entirely eliminated. Out of this group have come most of the prominent Jews in the United States, and in nearly every community of any size we find German Jews, engaged in reputable business, most often owning dry goods or clothing stores.[3]

The third group is composed of Austrian and Hungarian Jews many of whom have remained orthodox without being slavishly attached to Rabbinism; while their congregations are usually upon what is called the “Status Quo” basis, which is neither extremely orthodox nor reformed, and consequently is sterile.

They are apt to be more clannish than the German Jews, grouping themselves into centres according to the districts from which they come, strongly retaining the characteristics of the races among which they lived so long, and bringing with them many of the antagonisms engendered in that conglomerate of nationalities, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. This is especially true of the Hungarian Jews who have become convivial, like the Magyars, and are not over fond of work. The coffee houses of “Little Hungary” in New York, draw their revenue largely from these Jews, to whom life without the coffee house would not seem worth the living, and for whom each day must hold its pause for a friendly game of cards or billiards, and a pull at a long and strong black cigar. Among them are shrewd traders, pawn-brokers and a very small proportion of peddlers; although the occupation of peddler entails a position not agreeable to their proud spirits. In a larger degree than the other groups mentioned, they are engaged in mechanical labour, being wood and metal workers, and makers of artificial flowers and passementerie. In these trades they have attained real proficiency. They are not so well distributed as the German Jews, and are found largely in New York with a slowly increasing number in Chicago and St. Louis. They have brought with them many of the looser ways of such cities as Vienna and Budapest; therefore they are less thrifty than the Russian Jews and less intelligent than those from Germany. Their Judaism is apt to sit very lightly upon them, as they have neither the spiritual vision of the first group, nor the ethical conception of religion which the second group possesses. Racially they are also less conscious of Judaism, and easily intermarry with Gentiles or lose themselves among them where their physique does not betray them. A Hungarian Jew usually prefers to be called a Magyar; yet I know of many instances where that fact was stoutly denied, though undoubtedly the Magyar spirit was grafted upon Semitic stock.

The last and largest group, the Russian Jews, the youngest army of the immigrants, is ultra orthodox, yet ultra radical; chained to the past, and yet utterly severed from it; with religion permeating every act of life, or going to the other extreme, and having “none of it”; traders by instinct, and yet among the hardest manual labourers of our great cities. A complex mass in which great things are yearning to express themselves, a brooding mass which does not know itself and does not lightly disclose itself to the outsider.

More broken into individualistic groups than the Austrians and Hungarians, they have the strongest racial consciousness, and perhaps are also the depository of the greatest Jewish genius. The synagogue is the centre of each provincial or village group gathered in some Ghetto and, being subject to no ecclesiastical law outside of itself, is thoroughly Congregational. These synagogues vary in size and untidiness as the services vary in monotony and disorder. Each man prays or chants as fast or as slowly, as high or as low, as he pleases. Naturally, the effect is not harmonious, neither is there much harmony in the administration of ecclesiastical affairs.

Rabbi, Cantor and Shochet (the official slaughterer) are usually out with each other and with various members of the congregation, and quarrels during service are not unknown. While the worship seems fervent, it is often spiritless, and only a small portion of the Russian Jewish population works seriously at the business of its organized religious life. The younger generation has much unsatisfied longing for the real spiritual life, and there are a few Jewish Endeavour Societies entirely apart from the synagogues, in which this spirit expresses itself. A still larger number of the young people have slowly but surely drifted into complete antagonism to the faith of their fathers, and here lies the great conflict as well as the great problem.

Nothing in the whole story of immigration is so pathetic as this growing breach between the old and the new; this ever widening gulf which is not being bridged.

The Ethical Culture Society has a hold, although not a very vital one, upon a small number; and here and there one or the other of the young people drifts into a Christian church, but this makes no serious impression upon the mass.

Zionism has become the strong rallying point for many of them, and has gathered into its various lodges much of the radical element, which is coming back to the law and the prophets by the way of an awakened consciousness.

The Russian Jews are the busiest of our alien population, and although at first among the poorest, a respectable middle class is growing up, and is marching towards wealth, if not as yet enrolled among the millionaires.

Of the total of 600,000 Jews in New York City, nearly 100,000 are engaged in various branches of the clothing industry, and in mechanical and manufacturing pursuits. This is a remarkable showing for people who nearly all had to adjust themselves to manual labour for which they were not physically fitted, and which they had no opportunity to perform in Russia.

In the trades which they have entered they usually maintain a satisfactory wage, and cannot be regarded as a serious economic menace. If they remain crowded in the Ghettos of the Eastern cities, it is due, not so much to their gregarious habits and to the needs springing from their religious observances, as it is due to the fact that the trades in which they find readiest employment are here concentrated, and the wages most satisfying. The needle above all else is to blame for the congestion of the Ghetto, and a great transformation must come over Israel both physically and mentally, before the needle will be exchanged for the plow.

XI

IN THE GHETTOS OF NEW YORK

At last we are free, although still upon Uncle Sam’s ferry boat, which carries those of us who have passed muster, to the Battery, the gateway into the gigantic city and the vast country which lies beyond where, “sans ceremonie,” we are landed.

Boarding house “Runners” call out the names of their hostelries, express men entreat us to entrust to them our belongings, the voice of the banana peddler is heard in the land, and through the babel of sounds there arise the joyous shrieks of those who welcome their dear ones.

Over in Hoboken, where the cool-blooded Anglo-Saxon awaits his wife, who “toiled not neither did she spin” during her year abroad,--the joy remains unexpressed. She may say to him: “Hello, old man!” and he will reply: “How are you, old girl?” and that is all, so far as the public knows. But here on the Battery, where Jacob meets his Leah, for whom he has toiled and suffered these five years, for whose sake he ate hard rye bread and onions that he might save money to bring her to him;--when Jacob meets his Leah, there are warm embraces and kisses through the tears. Here, men embrace and kiss each other, and children are held up to the father’s gaze,--fathers who left them as infants and now see them grown.

Half a dozen stalwart men and women will almost crush a little wrinkled “Mutterleben,” their mother, coming to them for the sunset of her life, which is to be bright and beautiful after many dark mornings and cloudy noondays.

I attached myself to a young Russian Jew of about my own age, who had no relatives waiting for him, but who had the address of his parents’ friends. They had come here a few years before, and now served as the clearing house for that particular district in Russia, of which their native town was the centre.

We went up Broadway, and after plunging into the whirlpool of its traffic, emerged safe at the City Hall, crossed the Bowery and were at the edge of the great Ghetto, the heart of the largest Jewish community in the world. It numbers now nearly 700,000 souls, scattered through all parts of Greater New York, and massed in four centres, commonly called Ghettos; of which the one through which we are passing is the “Great Original” one. It is less dirty, less suspiciously fragrant than the Ghetto which my comrade has left, and in spite of squalor and visible signs of poverty, a certain air of joyousness pervades its life which is lacking in the old home. The hurdy gurdy grinder lures nimble footed children from block to block, like the “Pied Piper of Hamelin,” and they are happier and more graceful than the much be-starched children of the rich who take lessons in dancing and in conventional deportment.

The sidewalks and driveways are packed by humanity, most of it children, for the Abrahamitic promise that his “seed shall increase like the sands of the sea” has not yet departed from Israel--only the illustration is not quite complete, for while the Ghetto children are as numerous as the sands (I counted almost two thousand in one block), they are not nearly so clean.

The language of the Ghetto is Yiddish, a mixture of German, Hebrew, and Russian; but with enough English mixed with it to make the immigrant halt before such words as “gemovet,” “gejumpt,” “getrusted,” which sooner or later will become part of his own vocabulary.

Street signs are written in Hebrew letters, and the passer-by is invited by them to drink a glass of soda for a cent, to buy two “pananas” for the same sum, to purchase a prayer-mantle or “kosher” meat, to enter a beer saloon or a synagogue. Many of these signs are translated into English, and Rabbi Levinson on Cannon Street has in large English letters, “Performer of Matrimony;” in the same house one finds “wedding dresses for hire,” and can have his “picture photographed,” and also may buy “furnitings for pedrooms and barlours.”

East of the Bowery in New York City is the heart of the largest Jewish community in the world. Sidewalks, street signs, language, all indicate the process of development.]

Everything is for sale on the street, from pickled cucumbers to feather beds, and almost all the work done in this Ghetto is done by Jewish workmen. There are Jewish plumbers, locksmiths, masons, and of course tailors; and work and trade are the watchwords of the Ghetto, where, in all my wanderings through it, I have not seen that genus Americanum, the corner loafer.

The prevailing type of dwelling, even after tenement-house legislation, is much too crowded and too dirty. The New York Ghetto looks remarkably decent from the outside, but pharisaic landlords have beautified the “outside of the cup and platter,” while within, the house is poorly prepared for human habitation. A good example is the house into which I lead my friend. It is an old fashioned front and rear tenement with fifty families as residents, and on climbing the stairway to the fifth story to which our address directs, our nostrils are greeted by a fragrance which, compared with the well remembered smells of the steerage, is like unto the odours of Araby the blest.

We come into the kitchen, where the family of nine is just at dinner; two of the number, a husband and wife, are regular boarders. I doubt whether anywhere else, under similar circumstances, we would have received so genuinely hearty a welcome, in spite of the fact that we were practically strangers to them, and that I had no claim whatever upon their hospitality.

One of the children has already been dispatched to the nearest store to buy additional dainties, and room is made at the already crowded table for two very hungry adults.

My Russian friend, amazed as he was at the turmoil of the streets and the height of the buildings, is still more awed by the sight of such abundant and wholesome food, to which he may help himself without stint. There are large sweet potatoes which taste better than cake, and are permeated by the delicate flavour of nuts; they are a greater contrast to the small, gnarly, scant portion of potatoes which it has been his lot to eat, than any forty story sky scraper can be to the tumble-down shanty in which his father kept store. Meat,--a huge piece of meat, on his plate,--and in the memory of his palate, only the soft end of a soup bone, as a special delicacy. What a contrast!

“Last, but not least,” the pie, that apple pie, of which he had a whole one for himself and knew not how to attack it; until finally, following good precedent, he took it into his trembling hands and let his joyous face disappear in its juicy depths. After the dinner, he was catechized, all the inhabitants of the far away town were inquired after, and the record of the living and the dead told to the news hungry hearers.

What a marvellous group this is! and typical of thousands. The father is a cloak presser. He is a small, cadaverous looking man of very gentle mien, who knows not much beyond the fact that to-morrow the whistle will blow, and that he will be on the fifteenth floor of a great cloak factory, “doing his allotted task,” (God willing). The enemies that await him are many; the red-headed Irish “Forelady,” who looks hard after the creases in the cloaks, and who in turn, is suspected by him of all the evils in the catalogue of sin; the cloak designer, a Viennese Jew, who hates all Jews, especially Russian Jews, and more especially this particular one with whom, after the fashion of the Viennese, he quarrels for pastime. His fellow cloak presser, whose name was Elijah and who now calls himself Jack, is an ardent Socialist, who “pesters” my host by his economic theories which are obnoxious to him in the extreme. “I yoost haf to led him dalk,” is the refrain of my host’s complaint. Our hostess is corpulent and somewhat untidy; her horizon is even more limited than that of her husband. She, too, works; she is a skillful operator, and from 8 A. M. until 6 P. M. she hears nothing but the whirr of the machine. She does not even have an enemy to vary the monotony by her Socialistic doctrines. The oldest daughter is called Blanche, although she was named Rebecca; she too works, and has worked for several years, albeit she is not past sixteen. She embroiders in a fashionable dressmaking establishment on Broadway, and likes her place; she sees fine ladies and handles fine stuffs, and, “above all,” she says to me in good English, “I don’t have to associate with Russian Jews.” She reads good books,--fiction, biography, history--everything. The two on her shelf that evening, were “Ivanhoe,” and “The Life of Florence Nightingale.” Other children are growing up and going to work soon; so the family is on the up grade, in spite of the fact that work is not always steady, that the wife’s parents who live with them are old and feeble, that the youngest child is threatened by blindness, and that they have paid much money to quack doctors who advertise and to those who do not. It was pathetic in the extreme to see this family crowd together to make room for us for the night. My friend slept on a sofa, the ribs of which protruded like those of Pharaoh’s lean kine, and I slept soundly on the smoother surface of the floor.

The next day brought to us the momentous task of going out to find work, and before the whistle blew for the night’s rest, my friend was part of a sewing machine, while I being stronger, was assigned to pressing cloaks. My fellow cloak presser told a piteous story of his wife and four children on the other side, who had been almost heart-broken because he had been here two years and been kept by “hard luck” from sending for them. I worked by his side for a day, receiving my first lessons in cloak-pressing from him, and the last letter from his wife was so pathetic, that it drew tears from my eyes and money from my pocketbook towards those tickets. When the day’s work was over, and the possibility of soon seeing his family was almost realized, he said as we parted, “I shall sleep happily to-night;” and so did I, in spite of heat and sore muscles.

Rarely do these clothes pressers rise to a higher place in their trade, although occasionally by strict economy and much hard labour, one may own a shop and “sweat” the “greener” as he has “been sweated.”

In my wanderings through the Ghetto I dropped into a pawnshop on Avenue C one day, and after I made some purchases the proprietor grew friendly and introduced me to his family. He is the happy father of seven sons, all of them “smart as a whip,” and all of them doing well. The youngest one, Charles T., the smartest, is still in school and, like all the Yiddish boys, at the head of his class. Charles T. knows everything, from Marquis of Queensberry rules to the schedule of lectures at the Educational Alliance building. “What are you going to be, Charles?” I asked. “A business man like my father;” and the keen look in his big eyes, the determination of his whole frame and face, showed that he would succeed even better than his father, who is beginning to think of “being at ease in Zion,” and retiring from business. Charles T.’s father began life by buying rags on Houston Street; his sons will sell bonds on Wall Street.

The Ghetto is not all barter and manual labour, for there are many synagogues in which prayers are said every day; although only a few of these synagogues are anything more than halls or large rooms in tenement houses, sometimes above or below a drinking-place and in many instances in ball rooms, which on Saturdays and holy days put off their unholy garb.

If all the population of the Ghetto attended to its religious duties, these one hundred synagogues would have to be increased to a thousand; but on Saturdays many have to work, and increasingly many wish to work, so that not twenty per cent. of the Ghetto population attend religious services. However, on the great feast days, New Year’s day and the day of Atonement, everybody goes; or as Charles T.’s father would say: “I go to the synagogue twice a year and pay my dues, and then I’ll not have a ---- thing to do with them for another year.” Charles T.’s father is a politician.

Most of the Ghetto rabbis are, like Mr. Levinson, “Performers of Matrimony” and not much else; they are professionally pious and not deeply religious; they have no vision and measure a man’s religion by his observances of fasts and feasts; they are ignorant of all literature except the Talmud, that treasure house of Jewish thought and prison-house of Jewish souls. They are as superstitious as their constituency, and often less honest, but in not a few cases truly devout and charitable. There is no ecclesiastical control over these rabbis, and they are in some cases self-made men in the worst sense of the word, while their influence upon the ethical life of the Ghetto is almost “nil.” They are the Jews’ law court and judges in matters which pertain to ritualistic questions, but they are almost nothing to them in life. There is very little preaching, less pastoral visitation, and much useless bending of the back over musty books full of “dry bones” of rabbinical lore.

The one great Jewish intellectual and ethical centre of the Ghetto is the Educational Alliance building, with its various scattered branches; it is everything which a Young Men’s Christian Association is to a Gentile community, only more, inasmuch as it ministers to all, from childhood to old age. Israel’s intellectual hunger is as great as its proverbial greed for wealth, and this gigantic building, covering a block and containing forty-three classrooms, is entirely inadequate to meet the demand. The main entrance is always in a state of siege, and two policemen are stationed there to maintain order and keep the crowding people in line. I visited it on a hot Sunday afternoon in July, and I found the large, well-stocked reading-room uncomfortably filled by young men. The roof-garden is a breathing-place for thousands, and is always crowded by children, who are supervised in their play and who enjoy it eagerly.

The annual report reads like a fairy tale. Many of the lectures and entertainments have to be given a number of times to give all an opportunity to hear and to see, and some of the most difficult subjects discussed find the most numerous and enthusiastic hearers. Baths, sewing and cooking schools, are maintained, and to give even a list of all the agencies employed to lift this population would exhaust my space. There has been marked improvement among its constituency mentally and ethically, and the redemption of New York from Tammany was in no small measure due to the faithful work done by this and other similar centres, not the least among them being the University Settlement.

There are several Christian churches in this district, but what their influence upon the newcomer is I could not determine. In the main it may be said that the churches do not concern themselves greatly regarding this problem around them, although there are a few notable exceptions.

The following letter does not give one a hopeful view of the situation. The gentleman to whom this letter was written, Mr. User Marcus, was actively engaged in the kind of politics in which the churches ought to have an interest. He organized a club, and through one of its members secured a room in the Woods Memorial Church on Avenue A. After the first meeting Mr. Marcus received the following letter:

NEW YORK, NOV. 1, 1901.

_Mr. User Marcus, 157 Second Ave., City._