was assured until the refugees placed it in jeopardy. Were
these few established Jews of more account than the refugees?
Were they entitled to immunity from the real or fancied dan-
gers due to the dispersion of the Spanish Jews? What were
their rights and duties? The same question demands an an-
swer now at the hands of the American Jew.
It is contended by some that the American Jews had won
a proud station in this country before the dispersion began;
that politically, socially and economically they were prosperous,
and highly respected; that the Eastern Jews have endangered
the prestige ."previously enjoyed; that they have driven the
American Jews out of certain lines of business and threaten
to monopolize many others; that they congest our seaboard
cities, and, finally, that they in many ways bring odium to the
Jewish name.
If all this were true, what then? Does it justify the perse-
cutions here which are denounced when practiced in Eastern
Europe? Does it justify hostility to a people who seek an asy-
lum in the land which is great because it has been from the
beginning the refuge of the oppressed? Whatever may be said,
truly or falsely, about the Eastern Jews, we must find ou»r
proper relation to the problem they present. The American
people as a whole has taken its stand on the broad platform of
sympathy and humanity. The American Jew who in this crisis
is less humane and sympathetic than the whole American people
is neither a good American nor a good Jew.
If it were necessary to choose between the welfare of the
one million Jews in this country and the millions who must
ultimately come here, justice would turn to the greater number.
The millions are on the march. The dispersion is on in full
force. No power on ea«*th can stop it. Potentates and legions
30 LEO N. LEVI MEMORIAL VOLUME.
are powerless to stem the tide. The few Jews who selfishly
deplore the immigration to this country may as well resign
themselves to the inevitable first as last. The current of the
Mississippi cannot be reversed by imprecations or the onrush
of Niagara stopped by making faces at it.
It is, however, a grievous error to spell danger or misfor-
tune to the Western Jews from the dispersion of the Eastern
Jews. If the former have in the course of generations thrown
off many useless impediments, they have suffered along with
them the loss of many family jewels. The idealism, the poetry,
the ascetic virtues, the family sanctity, the religious fervor,
which were formerly so accentuated in Jewish life, have been
in a measure lost in the process which eliminated certain Orient-
alisms that are found and decried in the contemporary Eastern
Jews. The American Jews will profit by contact with the re-
positories of ancient Jewish virtues. For this advantage they
can make an adequate return by aiding the newcomer to throw
aside the faults which the Western Jew has gotten rid of. The
two classes must be complementary. Each has its faults and its
virtues. If folly prevails the virtues of neither will survive: if
wisdom governs, the contact of the classes will minimize the
worst qualities of each and start from the Modern Dispersion a
chapter in Jev.'ish history as glorious as any that precedes it.
And this wisdom is to the fore. Broad men in both classes are
assuming the leadership. The gospel of discord and hate is
giving way to the gospel of harmony and love. The monger of
sneers and denunciations has had his day. The forces of destruc-
tion are spent and those of construction are growing. The con-
temned beggar of twenty years ago is the man of affairs to-day ;
the beggar of to-day will be a man of substance in the near
future. The arrogant and shallow minded inheritor of his fath-
er's wealth without his father's thrift will pass out with the
wealth he has not the wit to preserve. There will be a com-
mingling of the classes to make a stronger and better class. It
is manifest destiny.
The duty to promote the betterment of both so that the in-
evitable end mav be better, surer and sooner is obvious. History
MODERN DISPERSION. - 3 1
is being made at a tremendous pace, and it is being written while
it is being made. In a few years we shall see on this continent
a re-born, rehabilitated, virile, powerful Jewry, enriching the
world with its virtues, its energies and its genius. Those who
contribute to the chronicle which is being made up will in their
own lives and in those of their children gather fruits from the
seeds they have planted. Those who remain deaf to the call
of duty, who do not rise to the standard of their country and
their race, must inevitably forfeit the respect of their fellow-
men at large as well as the social, political and economic rewards
which now quicken in the womb of the future for the Jews.
The Modern Dispersion means on this hemisphere the re-
generated Jews in whom shall be united what is best among the
dispersed, and from whose numbers will be eliminated the weak-
lings, the degenerates and the unfaithful.
ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE NATIONAL
CONFERENCE OF JEWISH CHARITIES.
HELD AT DETROIT. MICH..
MARCH. 1902.
Mr. President, in a circular which I had sent forth a year
ago in my official capacity as the Chairman of the Executive
Committee of the Independent Order of B'nai B'rith, and in
which circular I dealt with what is known as the removal work
of Roumanian immigrants and the dwellers in the Ghetto of
New York, I employed a sentence which I beg to read now as
the text of what I am about to say: "The Jew must be taught
that no era in Jewish history exceeds the present in importance
and solemnity, and that to play a proper role therein is a high
privilege and a higher duty; that it is the concern of each Jew
to rescue his brethren from poverty, disease and death, and,
above all, to give to their boys the chance to become honest men,
and their girls the sacred right to remain pure."
I realize that I am addressing an audience composed not of
the rank and file, but of the leaders of communal Jewish activity
in the United States, and that my auditors are familiar with the
larger outlines of every Jewish question which challenges the
attention of Jewish minds, and therefore I shall not go into the
details in presenting thoughts that I wish to convey to you, and
the first idea is to impress upon you the fact that this is a great
historical era in Jewish affairs. We all know, from the teach-
ings of our childhood, how great an event was the Exodus of
the Jews from Egypt. We know that a civilization worthy of the
name is broadly based upon that great event so full of glory and
of gloom. Now if you will reflect for a moment upon the many
thousands of Jews who left Egypt for the Holy Land, and if
you will reflect that in the nature of things these Jews, while
living in Egypt were not confined within any one locality, you
must realize that the preparation at least for the emigration, if
32
ADDRESS TO UNITED JEWISH CHARITIES. ;^
not the emigration itself, was not instantaneous. It must have
proceeded over a considerable portion of time, and a very distinct
parallel can be drawn between that exodus and subsequent migra-
tions of the Jews under the stress of persecution.
If we come to the great event in the history of the Jews and
observe their expulsion from Spain at the end of the fifteenth
century, we must again realize, if we think of the subject, that
that expulsion proceeded over a considerable duration of time.
I know that until my mind was specially directed to it, I had a
vague and nebulous idea that the edict went forth that the Jews
should leave Spain, and that between sunrise and sunset Spain
was rid of her Jews ; but when I come to think that, with all the
facilities we have for moving the people across the Atlantic in
this advanced era, it is a great achievement to move 100,000
people from America to Europe during the summer, and when
I reflect how imperfect were the facilities for transportation at
the end of the fifteenth century, I must know, even without con-
sulting passages of history, that the many thousands of Jews
in Spain, many of whom were compelled to seek foreign parts,
could not have abandoned their native country except after the
lapse of considerable time.
Now I mention this fact because I wish to impress upon you
how strong is the parallel between the exodus in ancient history
and the expulsion of the Jews in the middle ages, or at the end
of the middle ages, and the great movement which began some-
thing over twenty years ago from Southeastern Europe towards
the Western Hemisphere.
The movement has been continuous. It has been more acute
at some periods than at others, but it has been a steady stream of
Jews moving from Southeastern Europe to the western hemi-
sphere, and mainly to the United States of America, and no one
can tell you when that stream will be stopped unless the source is
exhausted. Now it is no light thing in the history of so impor-
tant a people as the Jews, to contemplate the complete transfer-
ence of the balance of population from one hemisphere to an-
other. And when you reflect that the influx of Jews during the
past 21 or 22 years to this country has been at the rate of 50,000
34 LEO N. LEVI MEMORIAL VOLUME.
per annum, and that the total Jewish population of the world is
variously estimated at from eight to eleven million, it is easy to
understand that there may be people within the sound of my
voice at this moment who will live to see the majority of the
Jews of the world at home in the United States of America.
So I think that when these plain facts are before you, it is easy
to assent to my initial proposition that we are in the midst of a
great Jewish historical era.
Now we have our emotions aroused, we have our indignation
aroused, we are driven to horror when we read or hear of the
persecutions of the Jews in Egypt and their exodus from that
land, and of the terrible edict which went forth imder the reign
of Ferdinand and Isabella, which drove the Jews to flee to
poverty, and alas ! in many instances, to suicide as an alternative
to dishonor. But we remain indifferent to the great historical
movement that is going on in our own day — that stream which
passes by our own door, the suffering which appeals to us by im-
mediate contact with us. I have tried to understand why it is
that so many people can have sentiments of pity and horror
aroused by the far-off suffering Jews in Egypt and Spain, and
yet turn with loathing and disgust from the suffering that now
confronts us. And my analysis is this:
Poverty and suffering are always loathsome, and history and
art and literature abhor, eschew and avoid features of that kind.
So that when the historian or writer sets down for the contem-
plation of the artist, those things which occurred in Egypt or in
Spain, he addresses himself to the work of the romantic and the
beautiful and attractive side of the picture, even making suffer-
ing attractive; but when we are confronted with horror and
with disease, with the terrors of persecution, when we are com-
pelled to look at it with our eyes, and not through the eyes of
the artist and poet, the seams, the faults, the patches and sores
obtrude themselves upon us, and what is on the surface claims
more attention than what is beneath.
Now I ought not to be required to do more than to touch
upon this point to these leaders of charity work, and I touch
upon it because I hope you will teach those who come within
ADDRESS TO UNITED JEWISH CHARITIES. 35
the sphere of your influence the importance of this truth, that
in dealing with charity and philanthropic problems, we must
learn to look with an unflinching eye on those features, which
are repulsive, because in the absence of the repulsive feature
there is no adequate challenge for philanthropic work. Now,
I have heard much in the course of my experience about meas-
ures of one kind or another to stop this influx of people from
Europe to the United States. Now and then some one introduces
a bill in Congress or writes an article in the magazine or news-
paper, and suggests a remedy for what seems to be an evil, and
whenever that problem has come to me for consideration, I have
solved it, at least to my own satisfaction, if not to any one's else,
by this fact gleaned from the teachings of history, that wherever
a people as such has been impelled by social economy or religious
consideration to move from the home of their nativity, en masse,
to some other part of the globe, there is no power under the
sun that can stop them. There are no laws that can be put on
the statute book, nor armies that can be marshalled on the
frontiers, that will stop a people, who are driven by a force from
the rear greater than any resisting force that can be put in
front; and when a people are threatened with starvation at
home, when they are deprived of the means of making a liveli-
hood, when they are denied the right to rear their children with
the rudiments of even a common school education, when they
are forbidden by restrictive legislation and a hostile environment
from making honorable men of their sons and pure women of
their daughters, you can put no barriers in their pathway that will
stop them from going elsewhere. That, I believe, is one of God's
dispensations, and it goes beyond the power of man to set it aside.
(Applause.) So that I think we may just as well settle down to
the conviction that as long as the countries in Southeastern
Europe, or anywhere else, persecute the Jews because they are
Jews, deny them the right to make a living because they are
Jews, those Jews are going to move out of the country in which
they were born, because they are commanded to do so by cir-
cumstances. And as President Harrison said in his second
message (certainly one of his messages) to the country: "When-
36 LEO N. LEVI MEMORLA.L VOLUM£.
ever a country, by its treatment of a people, or by its laws,
commands them to step out of that country, they give them a
command to step into some other country." The command seems
to have been interpreted in Roumania and in Galicia when they
are ordered out of their country that they should step into the
United States. They have been coming here for 20 odd years.
Their coming has been looked upon with fear and trembling,
but they have come nevertheless. Those who predicted untold
disasters 20 years ago because of the influx of the Russian
Jews have been refuted by the developments of the last two
decades, because the refugees of 20 years ago are the artisans
and manufacturers and the merchants and the bone and sinew
of the Jewish part of this country today. (Applause.)
And let me tell you another thing, my friends, even you who
are disposed to turn up your noses at the Russian Jew and the
Galician Jew and the Roumanian Jew, that just as certainly as
the children of the Portuguese Jews in the middle of the 19th
century were destined to meet with the descendants of the Ger-
man Jews who came over in the middle of the century, just so
certain it is that the sons of these derided Russian and Rou-
manian and Galician Jews will meet with your daughters, and
your sons will meet with their daughters.
Now they are coming. Where do they come? They come
to New York. The great steamship lines that are engaged in
transportation are nearly all centered at New York as a port of
entry. The statistics show that of a million who came to this
country in 20 years, probably 90 per cent came into the port of
New York. The statistics also show that over 60 per cent of
those who arrive remain in New York, certainly in the first
instance. Now what becomes of them in New York? It was
said here this morning by a very interesting representative from
Kansas City that these people who go out from New York
think so much of us in New York that they want to get
back. Now that strikes me as humorous, but it is tragic.
It is worthy of your consideration. If you had an opportunity
to see the conditions in New York, you would understand why
it is that they want to get back. The so-called Ghetto of New
ADDRESS TO UNITED JEWISH CHARITIES. 37
York, bounded on the north by Houston Street, on the west by
the Bowery, and running southward and eastward to the river,
contains as many Jews as Detroit contains people. The whole
city of Detroit, if crowded into that Httle section, would displace
a similar number of Jews who have come to this country from
Southeastern Europe in the last 20 years, and their descendants.
And that is a very small territory. There are thousands, yea,
tens of thousands of citizens in the city of New York, a good
many of them Jews, who have never set foot in that territory.
Just think of dumping the whole city of Detroit down into the
city of New York, and a large proportion of the city of New
York, not knowing it was there, — but that is the fact. It is a
region almost unknown to a very large portion of the population
of New York, and, of course, it goes without saying, unknown
to those who do not live in that vicinity. In that region the
language that is spoken is the traditional Yiddish of the Jews.
In the stores, the articles they were accustomed to purchase in
the land of their nativity are offered for sale. The signs are
written in their own language in the Hebrew character. The
cafes and places of amusement, the theater hall, the dance hall,
everything is there which they were accustomed to, and what-
ever their tastes, whether good or evil, demand, is purveyed for
their gratification. They think in their own language; they can
worship there according to the rituals they are accustomed to;
their atmosphere is one which they are acquainted with, and all
other atmospheres are foreign to them. Now if you take any
one of this audience and suddenly transport him to a foreign
land, if there be a group of Americans in any one portion of
that foreign country, it would be perfectly natural for you and
me to gravitate to that little colony. And we would not like
to get out into the interior of the country where we did not know
the language of the country, the geography of the country, the
habits of the people ; where no one could understand us, and we
could understand no one. A feeling of homesickness would over-
come us, our hearts would become terrified, and if that would
be true of us who are presumed to have at least some under-
standing of the configuration of this globe and of the difference
38 LEO N. LEVI MEMORIAL VOLUME.
in nationalities and habits and customs of peoples, how much
more so must that be true of a class of people whose whole world
had no larger horizon than the little town in which they were
born and raised in some obscure part of Southeastern Europe?
For them to come to America means for them to come to New
York. They have an idea that what lies beyond the limits of
New York is a wilderness; that once they get away from the
Ghetto they lose the friends they were accustomed to; that if
sickness, trouble or death comes they have no one to turn to.
If they are religiously inclined — and the Russian Jews are —
they have no place in which they can worship in harmony out-
side of the Ghetto. And so they cling there tenaciously, even to
the brink of starvation rather than to go out into a wilderness
or to give up that which is so precious to them. But the limit
has been reached. It was reached long ago. You have heard
papers here on the subject of tuberculosis, mentioned by the
President in his message also. You will hear others dealing
with conditions in the New York Ghetto. Some of the speakers
and some of those who have written papers have toyed with the
fringes of the garment so to speak. Perhaps none of them are
qualified to deal adequately with the subject. If there be any
one here who is so qualified, and who should discharge the duty
of acquainting the public with it, you would have no time to
listen to anything else. But let me tell you, and I will call
witnesses to prove the proposition, that no man, however intel-
ligent or industrious in his reading and his research, can form
the remotest idea of the conditions prevailing in the lower portion
of New York, unless he goes there and makes personal inspec-
tion. Now I can not deal with these conditions today because
time does not permit, but I can give you a few side lights. I
want to tell you just one little instance. At 11 o'clock at night
I, together with some companions, sat in a famous cafe on Canal
Street, and while we were drinking the Russian tea, I heard a
flutter at my elbow, and turned around, and there discovered
a little girl about 13 years of age with a head of hair that would
be worth a fortune to a painter, with eyes that were tinged with
melancholy and a face of perfect and pitiful beauty, and she
ADDRESS TO UNITED JEWISH CHARITIES. 39
had under her arm a bundle of Yiddish newspapers, which she
was peddling out at a penny apiece at 1 1 o'clock at night. When
she was interrogated, she informed us that her name was L ;
she went to school until 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and then
immediately, after getting a crust of bread and a glass of tea,
went out to sell papers. When asked how long she remained
out, she said until all her papers were sold. And at 11 o'clock
at night she had 25 yet undisposed of. We bought her papers
and sent her home. I forgot to say that she informed us that
her mother was with her, and that she was compelled to employ
all her time not spent at school in selling newspapers in order
to realize a few pennies to support the family. When she left,
I turned to my companion and asked him: "Can you under-
stand the inevitable fate that is in store for that poor girl?"
And he sprang up with tears in his eyes, saying: "For God's
sake let us do something to rescue her." I pulled him back,
and I said that is an impulse which is always tugging at my
heart when I come down here, — to devote myself to an indi-
vidual case. It appeals to me because I see it before me. But
that is not an isolated case. There are thousands like that in
this district — thousands of children that are denied the most
sacred privilege that God gives to every girl, to grow up to be a
respectable woman, a respectable wife and a respectable mother.
I am not unduly earnest when I speak to my friends, to my
brethren in all parts of this country, that the care of that child's
purity is no more my business because I live in the upper portion
of Manhattan Island than it is the care of a Jew who lives in
Oregon. It is my business — it always has been my business,
whether I live in New York or elsewhere, and what I claim and
what I preach as the gospel that animates my soul, is that it is
your business, that it i'S the business of every Jew, if he is entitled
to that honorable name. It is not to be left to those people to
choose where they shall live. They are unable to form a fair
judgment. They are no more qualified to form a fair judgment
as to where they shall locate when they land as foreigners from
Europe than are your children or my children to determine what
IS best for them. They must be guided, led until they are strong
40 LEO N. LEVI MEMORIAL VOLUME.
enough educationally to move for themselves. They must be
educated to a better understanding of the conditions that prevail
in the interior of this country, of opportunities offered every-
where for men able to work, to lift themselves and their fam-
ilies. That is an educational campaign which is proceeding sys-
tematically, tediously and painfully slow in the lower east side
of New York. But there is something more needed than that
in order to ameliorate the conditions which obtain in the Ghetto
and which are continually being augmented by the fact that the
influx from Europe is greater than the efflux from New York.
You understand this, who strive to aid those who will move out
of the Ghetto. We must realize that not only are the numbers
increasing, but the tone constantly being lowered. Is that any
concern of yours? Is it less your concern than it is mine?— r
when I speak of mine I am speaking as a citizen of New York.
I think not. I have asked that question, looking into the eyes
of Jewish gatherings all over these United States, and I have
never received but one answer: That just as truly as it is the
business of the New York Jew, it is the business of the American
Jew becaiise it is not a local question. It is not at the invitation
of New York they come there. It is not a matter of choice upon
the part of New York that they land there. I will take that