(5= r ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN PRODUCTION NOTE University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library Brittle Books Project, 2017.COPYRIGHT NOTIFICATION In Copyright. Reproduced according to U.S. copyright law USC 17 section 107. Contact dcc@librarv.uiuc.edu for more information. This digital copy was made from the printed version held by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was made in compliance with copyright law. Prepared for the Brittle Books Project, Preservation Department, Main Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign by Northern Micrographics Brookhaven Bindery La Crosse, Wisconsin 2017>f /- ,V feu LIBRA HY OF THL ' U N IVER.5 IJV or i LLi N o'nTHE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SOCIOLOGICAL SERIES Editorial Committee Ellsworth Faris Robert E. Park Ernest W. BurgessTHE University of Chicago Sociological Series, established by the Trustees of the University, is devoted primarily to the publication of the results of the newer develop- ments in sociological study in America. It is ex- pected that a complete series of texts for under- graduate instruction will ultimately be included, but the emphasis will be placed on research, the publications covering both the results of investi- gation and the perfecting of new methods of discovery. The editors are convinced that the textbooks used in teaching should be based on the results of the efforts of specialists whose studies of concrete problems are building up a new body of funded knowledge. While the series is called soci- ological, the conception of sociology is broad enough to include many borderline interests, and studies will appear which place the emphasis on political*, economic, or educational problems dealt with from the point of view of a general conception of human nature.THE GHETTOTHE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS THE BARER fit TAYLOR COMPANY NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LIMITED TORONTO THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO, VUKUOKA, SENDA1 THE COMMERCIAL PRESS, LIMITED SHANGHAITHE GHETTO By LOUIS WIRTH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM WOODCUTS BY TODROS GELLER THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO ' ILLINOISCOPYRIGHT I928 BV THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PUBLISHED DECEMBER I928 COMPOSED AND PRINTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, CHICAGO. ILLINOIS, U.S.A.TO MARY 694165FOREWORD The ghetto seems to have been originally a place in Venice, a quarter of the city in which the first Jewish settle- ment was located. It became, in the course of time, an in- stitution recognized in custom and defined in law. It be- came, in short, not merely the place in which Jews lived, but the place in which they were compelled to live. The walls of that ghetto have long since crumbled, but the ghost of the ancient institution lingers. It is still a place of refuge for the masses of the Jewish people and still imposes upon them, for good and for ill, something of the ancient isolation. Meanwhile other alien peoples have come among us who have sought, or had imposed upon them, the same sort of isolation. Our great cities turn out, upon examination, to be a mosaic of segregated peoples—differing in race, in cul- ture, or merely in cult—each seeking to preserve its peculiar cultural forms and to maintain its individual and unique conceptions of life. Every one of these segregated groups inevitably seeks, in order to maintain the integrity of its own group life, to impose upon its member some kind of moral isolation^ So far as segregation becomes for them means to that end, every people and every cultural group may be said to create and maintain its own ghetto v In this way the ghetto becomes the physical symbol for that sort of moral isolation which the "assimilationists," so called, are seeking to break down. It is in this sense that the word is used in this volume. "Ghetto/' as it is here conceived, is no longer a term that is limited in its application to the Jewish people. It has come ixX FOREWORD into use in recent times as a common noun—a term which applies to any segregated racial or cultural group., The ghetto, as it is here conceived, owes its existence, not to legal enactment, but to the fact that it meets a need and performs a social function. The ghetto is, in short, one of the so-called "natural areas" of the city. The casual observer, looking over this vast complex, the modern metropolitan city, is likely to see it as a mere congeries of physical structures, institutions, and peoples contiguous in space, bound together in some sort of mechani- cal fashion, but in no sense a whole consisting of organically related parts. This impression finds an indirect expression in the familiar statement "God made the country, but man made the town." Nowhere else, in fact, is the order which exists so manifestly the order imposed by man's intelligence and design; nowhere else has man shown himself more com- pletely the master of the world in which he lives. On the other hand, nothing is more certain, as recent studies of .the urban community have shown, than the fact that the city as it exists is very largely the product of tenden- cies of which we have as yet little knowledge and less con- trol. Under the influence of these forces, and within the limitation which .geography and historical accident impose, the city is steadily assuming a form that is not conventional merely, but typical. In short, the city is not merely an artefact, but an organism. Its growth is, fundamentally and* as a whole, natural, i.e., uncontrolled and undesigned. The forms it tends to assume are those which represent and cor- respond to the functions that it is called upon to perform.. What have been called the "natural areas of the dty" are simply those regions whose ideations, character, and functions have been determined by the same forces whichFOREWORD n have determined the character and functions of the city as a whole. The ghetto is one of those natural areas. The his- torical ghetto, with which this study is mainly concerned, is merely the one most striking example of a type. It is in the history of the Jews, in the Diaspora, that we have ac- cess to a body of facts which exhibit in convincing detail the moral and cultural consequences of that isolation which the ghetto enforced; consequences that touch both those who live within and those who live without the pale. The history of the ghetto is, in. large measure, the history; since the dispersion, of the Jewish people. The ghetto has been the center of all that may be de- scribed as sectarian and provincial of Jewish life. It has put its imprint, not only upon the manners of the Jew, but upon his character. It is the interaction of this culture of the ghetto and that of the larger gentile community outside* involving the more or less complete participation of Jews in both worlds, that is the ^ource of most that is problematic live in Poland, but were entirely excluded, for instance, front Finland, and, except in the case of convicts, from Siberia/ In modern times the word "ghetto" applies not specif- ically to the place of officially regulated settlement of th Jews, but rather to those local cultural areas which have arisen in the course of time or are voluntarily selected or built up by them. It applies particularly to those areas where the poorest and most backward group of the Jewish population of the towns and cities resides. Jn our American cities the ghetto refers particularly to the area of first settle- ment, i.e., those sections of the cities where the immigrant finds his home shortly after his arrival in Americaj; Some- times the area in which the Jews once lived but which is subsequently inhabited by other population groups, partic- ularly immigrants, still retains the designation of ghetto. Moreover, there seems to be a tendency to refer to immi- grant quarters in general as ghettos. ^ From the standpoint of the sociologist the ghetto as an institution is of interest first of all because it represents a prolonged case of social isolation. It is the result of the ef- fort of a people to adjust itself, outwardly at least, to strangers among whom they have settled. The ghetto, there- fore, may be regarded as a form of accommodation between divergent population groups, through which one group has effectually subordinated itself to another. It represents at least one historical form of dealing with a dissenting minor- ity within a larger population. At the same time it is a form of toleration through which a modus vivendi is established between groups that are in conflict with each other on funda- 1 Philipson, op. cit., chap. vii. See also Encyclopedia Americana, iQCI (1919 ed.), 138.INTRODUCTION 5 mental issues. Finally, from the administrative standpoint, the ghetto served as an instrument of control. Some of these functions, as we shall see, are still being served by the modern ghetto, which, in other respects, has a character quite distinct from the medieval institution out of fWh it has developed, nfhe ghetto of Western Europe and, of America, however, is cnprimary interest because it shows concretely the actual processes of distribution and grouping of our population in urban communities^ It illustrates picturesquely the ways in which a cultural group gives ex- pression to its ancient heritage when transplanted to a for- eign setting, the constant sifting and resifting of its mem- bers, and the forces through which the community main- tains its integrity and continuity. Finally, the ghetto dem- onstrates the subtle ways in which this cultural community is transformed by degrees until it blends with the larger community about it, meanwhile reappearing in various altered guises of its old and unmistakable atmosphere. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GHETTO The ghetto has a written history extending over a period of at least one thousand years. Even before the ghetto be- came the characteristic form of Jewish community life we find a richly documented history of Jewish settlements that takes us back to the days before the opening of the Christian era. The adventures of the Jewish people since the end of their national sovereignty, which a recent writer has retold under the fitting title, Stranger than Fiction,z find their set- ting in every country of Europe, and in almost every corner of the globe. The history of the ghetto offers a rare oppor- tunity, therefore, of converting history into natural history. 1 Lewis Browne, Stranger than Fiction. New York, 192s.6 THE GHETTO The numerous narratives of ghetto life, the vivid auto- biographies, the drama, the fiction, and the poetry of the ghetto; the reports of travelers, the reflections of philoso- phers, and the argumentation and pronouncements of rabbis and Talmudists—all these go to make up not merely a his- tory of the ghetto; they also furnish the raw material foi searching comparative study of an institution—a cultural community. As we link up an isolated fact and a strikingly unique detail of ghetto life of one period with that of another, and of one locality Kith that of another, we see emerging similarities in lines ^Hferelopment that furnish the basis for generalizations, for when Paul IV established the ill-omened ghetto in Rome, there were very few Jewish families resident anywhere else than in the ser- raglio delli hebrei, or septus hebraicus, as the Jewish quarter at the left bank of the Tiber was called. But though few Jews dwelt elsewhere, many of the noblest Christians resided in the very heart of the Jewish quarter. Stately palaces and churches stood in the near neighbor- hood of the synagogue, and the Roman Christians held free and friendly intercourse with their Jewish fellow-inhabitants. . . . £&t first the ghetto was rather a privilege than a disability, and sometimes was claimed as a right when its demolition was threatened^" The Jews drifted into separate cultural areas not by- external pressure nor by deliberate design.(The factors that operated toward the founding of locally separated com- munities by the Jews are to be sought in the character of Jewish traditions, in the habits and customs not only of the Jews themselves, but those of the medieval town-dweller in general. *fl?o the Jews the geographically separated and so- cially isolated community seemed to offer the best opportu- nity for following their religious precepts, of preparing their food according to the established religious ritual, of following their dietary laws, of attending the synagogue for prayer three times a day, and of participating in the numerous func- tions of communal life which religious duty imposed upon every member of the community^tn some instances it was the fear of the remainder of the population, perhaps, which induced them to seek each other's company for the sake of security. Sometimes the prince or ruler under whose pro- 1 Abrahams, op. cit., pp. 62-65.20 THE GHETTO tection they stood found it desirable to grant them a sepa- rate quarter for this purpose, as a privilege. The general tenor of medieval social life must also be reckoned with in this connection. It was customary for members of the same occupational group to live in the same street or locality, and the Jews, forming, as a whole, a separate vocational class and having a distinct economic status from the rest of the popu- lation, were merely falling in line, therefore, with timirarnp- work of ^medieval society.1 In addition, there were the "rfttmeroTlsties of kinshiplind acquaintanceship which formed the basis of that esprit de corps which is a significant factor in developing community life.^There was the element of a common language, of community of ideas and interests, and the bare congeniality that arises even between strangers who, coming from the same locality, meet in a strange environment^ The voluntary segregation of the Jews in ghettos had much in common with the segregation of Negroes and im- migrants in modern cities, and was identical in many re- spects with the development of Bohemian and Hobohemian quarters in the urban community of today. The tolerance that strange ways of living need and find in immigrant colonies, in Latin quarters, in vice districts, and in other localities is a powerful factor in the sifting of the population and its allocation in separate cultural areas where one ob- tains freedom from hostile criticism and the backing of a group of kindred spirits. ^Finally, the voluntary ghetto was an administrative device, at least in part. It facilitated social control on the 1 See, for instance, Stobbe, op, cit.t p. 176; and Honiger, "Zur Geschichte der Juden im friiheren Mittelalter," Zeitschrijt fiir die Geschichte derJuden in Deulschland, I, 90.THE ORIGIN OF THE GHETTO 21 part of the community over its members; it made tax collec- tion much easier; and it made the supervision that medieval authorities exercised over all strangers and non-citizens pos- e gradual transition from direct, spontaneous, per- sonal, to indirect, formal, and legalistic relationships be- tween the Jew and his Christian neighbors is indicated in the earliest document available granting to a local group of Jews a separate quarter. This first written charter emphasized the fact that a ghetto was being assigned to the Jews as a right. The security that comes with such written instru- ments can hardly be overestimated when it is remembered that the powers of the medieval authorities were almost unlimited and the person of the sovereign was likely to change frequently. It must be recalled, furthermore, that* during the Middle Ages strangers were generally not allowed to remain in a community for any length of time, and were subjected to heavy taxation. In purchasing this right, how- ever, the Jews both gained and lost something. They ob- tained the formal protection of a sovereign power, but they lost that personal relationship and self-evident statue in the community which every member of a primary group enjoys without being conscious of any formal and legal right(jThe rights of residence and of trade which the Jews acquired marked a break with their former spontaneous symbiosis with their Christian neighbors and a transition to a second- ary relationship in which they constituted a distinct das£0 The document reads as follows: In the name of the holy and indivisible Trinity, when I, Riidiger, also called Huozmann, Bishop of Speyer, changed the town of Speyer into a city, I thought that I would add to the honor of our place by bringing in Jews. Accordingly, I located them outside of the com- munity and habitation of the other citizens, and that they might not22 THE GHETTO readily be disturbed by the insolence of the populace, I surrounded them with a wall. Their place of habitation I had acquired in a just manner; the hill partly with money, partly by exchange; the valley I had received from [some] heirs as a gift. That place, I say, I gave over to them on the condition that they would pay three pounds and a half of the money of Speyer annually for the use of the [monastery] brothers. Within their dwelling place and outside thereof, up to the harbor of the ships, and in the harbor itself, I granted them full per- mission to change gold and silver; to buy and sell anything they pleased, and that same permission I gave them throughout the state. In addition, I gave them out of the property of the church a burial place with hereditary rights. I also granted the following rights: If any stranger Jew lodge with them [temporarily], he shall be free from tax. Further, just as the city governor adjudicates between citizens, so the head synagogue officer is to decide every case that may arise between Jews or against them. But if, by chance, he cannot decide, the case shall be brought before the bishop and his chamberlains. Night watches, guards, fortifications, they shall provide only for their own district, the guards, indeed, in common with the servants. Nurses and servants they shall be permitted to have from among us. Slaugh- tered meat which, according to their law, they are not permitted to eat, they can sell to Christians, and Christians may buy it. Finally, as the crowning mark of kindness, I have given them laws better than the Jewish people has in any city of the German empire. Lest any of my successors diminish this favor and privilege, or force them to pay greater tribute, on the plea that they acquired their favorable status unjustly, and did not receive it from a bishop, I left this document as a testimony of the above-mentioned favors. And that the remembrance of this matter may last through the centuries, I have corroborated it under my hand and seal, as may be seen below. Given on the fifteenth of September, in the year of the Incarna- tion 1084, in the twelfth year since the above-mentioned bishop com- menced to rule in this state.1 The concessions granted to the Jews of Speyer in this document were notable, and, as the bishop states, more favorable than elsewhere. It gave them local autonomy, 1 Orient (1842), p. 391. Quoted from Philipson, op. cit., pp. 36-38.THE ORIGIN OF THE GHETTO with juridical powers vested in the hands of the Jewish com- munal authorities themselves, which the Jews generally did not acquire until considerably later. The document further- more defines their economic relations to the general popula- tion, which, for instance, permitted the Jews to have serv- ants from the Christian population for their necessary serv- ices in the synagogue and the homes during the Sabbath, and at other required times, and to sell to the Christians that part of the meat (generally the hind part of the carcass) which the Jews were not permitted to eat. Without the privilege of disposing of this, meat consumption among the Jews would have been a very expensive indulgence. All these circumstances fostered the development of autono- mous Jewish institutions, and gave the organized com- munity such control over its members as to assure its con- tinuity and reduce the individual to a state of dependence upon community life which made for effective subordination and strict discipline. The physical barrier which the docu- ment calls for, in the form of a wall, was characteristic and was indicative of the insecurity of town life in the Middle Ages. That the Jews did actually look upon this protection as a privilege is indicated by the fact that the Jews, in in- stances when the demolition of the ghetto was threatened, resisted these attempts, and sometimes repurchased their right to a separate residence at considerable cost to the com- munity.1 [ The document just cited indicates that the Jews, from the standpoint of the ruler, were a mere utility. Just as contract labor may be imported to a community, so the Jews were brought in because, as the Bishop says, they "would add to the honor of our place," and served a number 1 See Abrahams, op. cit.y p. 65.24 THE GHETTO of functions which the inhabitants of the town were inca- pable of exercising. The Jews were allowed to trade and en- gage in exchange—occupations which the church did not permit Christians to engage mr* Besides, the Jews were valuable taxable property and'could be relied upon to fur- nish much needed revenue. On the other hand, the Jews, too, regarded the Christian population as a means to an k end—as a utility The Christians could perform functions such as eating the hind quarters of beef, and could purchase the commodities that the Jews had for sale; they could borrow money from Jews, and pay interest. The Christians could perform services for the Jew, such as lighting his fires on the Sabbath and holidays, which the Jew himself was not allowed to undertake by his strict religious ritual. In the religious and the social life of both groups, then, we find those factors which are responsible for the genesis of a rela- tionship of utility between the two groups. This was quite in accord with the whole tenor of medieval life when the place of every individual in a community was rigidly de- fined, and the functions of each class were definitely circum- scribed by custom and by law. \_As the life of the Jews changed, it became more and more, what life always is, an adaptation to the physical and social Surroundings of a localityIn the locality in which the Jews now found themselves, everyone was tied to something—the soil, the feudal lord, the house in which he and his ancestors lived, or the guild of which he was a member. In this rigid structure the Jews found a strategic place(>The attitude of the medieval church had coupled trade and finance with sin. The Jews were at least free from these taboos, which made the occupation of merchant and banker seem undesirable toTHE ORIGIN OF THE GHETTO 25 the Christian populatiorfi The Christian churchmen were not troubled about the '^perils of the Jewish soul," for, as far as they knew, the Jew had no soul to be saved, since he was damned anyway. What made the trade relationships possible, however, was not merely the fact that they were mutually advan- tageous, since they offered a living to the Jew, and pros- perity and revenue to the community at large, but the fact that trade relationships are possible when no other form of contact between two peoples can take place. Trade is an abstract relationship, a form of symbiosis, physical rather than social in its nature. It is rational, and the emotions drop into the background. One can trade with one's enemies because trade involves none of the elements of personal prejudice. The less personal, the less emotional, and the more impersonal and the more abstract the attitude of the trader, the more efficiently and successfully can he exercise his function. One cannot very easily trade with relatives and friends, because personal considerations interfere with the abstractions on which trade rests. jThe Jew being a stranger, and belonging, as he did, to a separate and distinct class, was admirably fitted to become the merchant and bankerl He drifted to the towns and cities where trade was possible and profitable. Here he could utilize all the distant contacts that he had developed in the course of his wanderings. His attachment to the community at large was slight. As a result he was free from sentiment, and when necessity demanded it he could migrate to a local- ity where opportunities were greater. He had no real prop- erty to which he was tied, nor was he the serf of a feudal lord. His mobility in turn developed versatility. He had a26 THE GHETTO sense of perspective, and his ignorance of local traditions and taboos enabled him to discover opportunities in places where no native could see them. While Ms contacts with the outside world were categoric and abstract, within his own community he was at home. Here he could relax from the etiquette and the formalism by which his conduct in the gentile world was regulated^fhe ghetto offered liberation. The world at large was cold and strange, his contact with it being confined to abstract and rational intercourse. But within the ghetto he felt free. His contacts with his fellow-Jews were warm, spontaneous, and intimate. This was especially true of his family life^Within the inner circle of his own tribal group he received that ap- preciation, sympathy, and understanding which the larger world could not offer. In his own community, which was based upon the solidarity of the families that composed it, he was a person with status, as over against his formal posi- tion in the world outside. His fellow-Jews and the members of his family, to whom he was tied by tradition and common beliefs, strengthened him in his respect for and appreciation of the values of his own group, which were strangely different from the alien society in which for the time being he lived. ^Whenever he returned from a journey to a distant mar- ket, or from his daily work which had to be carried on largely in a gentile world, he came back to the family fold, there to be re-created and reaffirmed as a man and as a Je^f Even when he was far removed from his kin, he lived his real inner life in his dreams and hopes with them. With his own kind he could converse in that homely and familiar tongue which the rest of the world could not understand. He was bound by common troubles, by numerous ceremonies and senti- ments to his small group that lived its own life obliviousTHE ORIGIN OF THE GHETTO 27 of the world beyond the confines of the ghetto. Without the backing of his group, without the security that he enjoyed in his inner circle of friends and countrymen, life would have been intolerable. ^Through the instrumentality of the ghetto—the volun- tary ghetto—there gradually developed that social distance which effectually isolated the Jew from the remainder of the population. These barriers did not completely inhibit con- tact, but they reduced it to the type of relationships which were of a secondary character—trade and other formal inter- course^ As these barriers crystallized and his life was lived more and more removed from the rest of the world, the soli- darity of his own little community was enhanced until it be- came strictly divorced from the larger world without/ The* voluntary ghetto marked, however, merely the beginning of a long process of isolation which did not reach its fullest de- velopment until the voluntary ghetto had been superseded by the compulsory ghetto.^Tctlmndic StudentCHAPTER III THE GHETTO BECOMES AN INSTITUTION THE COMPULSORY GHETTO The forms of community life that had arisen naturally and spontaneously in the course of the attempt of the Jews to adapt themselves to their surroundings gradually became formalized in custom and precedent, and finally crystallized into legal enactments AVhat the Jews had sought as ajDrbi* lege, and what was hitiierto merely sanctioned by personal courtesies and custom, was soon to become a measure forced upon themj. There had been a great deal of intimacy and friendly intercourse between the Jews and their neighbors. Jews played the roles of merchants, bankers, physicians, and soldiers, among others, and not a few became distinguished advisers of the rulers, and teachers in the seats of learning of the day. Except for their dress and customs, they could scarcely be distinguished from the rest of the population. Their religious ideas and practices, however, or rather the notion that the churchmen and the populace had of their religion, brought them at times into sharp conflict with the established order. When, with the beginning of the Crusades, the church became militant, there set in a period of active oppression of which the ghetto regulations were the culmina- tion, but which, in some instances, notably in Spain and Poland, took the form of wholesale slaughter and expulsion. rfiy the fifteenth century the ghetto had become the legal dwelling place of the Jews. The motives which actuated the church and the state in taking these repressive measures are sufficiently obvious in the numerous decrees that were pro- 2930 THE GHETTO mulgated by rulers or passed by various church councilgJ The following is part of the proceedings of the ecclesiastical synod held at Breslau in 1266: Since the land of Poland is a new acquisition in the body of Chris- tianity, lest perchance the Christian people be, on this account, the more easily infected with the superstition and depraved morals of the Jews dwelling among them .... we command that the Jews dwelling in this province of Gnesen shall not live among the Christians, but shall have their houses near or next to one another in some sequestered part of the state or town, so that their dwelling place shall be sepa- rated from the common dwelling place of the Christians by a hedge, a wall, or a ditch.1 The fears of the church were not altogether without foun- dation, as is evidenced by the "Judaizing heresy" of Poland in the fifteenth century,2 although they were based generally upon unconfirmed rumors of hyper-zealous churchmen, or were deliberate inventions of interested sections of the popu- lation. At various periods during the Middle Ages conver- sions to Judaism occurred, but on the whole the Jews were not seeking converts, and had a feeling of the superiority of their own group.3 \The mere fact of the presence of a foreign, dissenting population, however, was sufficient to arouse fears as to the possible effect with reference to heresy on the natives. Heretical movements within the established church wefe not infrequently blamed on the Jews. The intellectual movement in the majority of the nations of Europe was everywhere preceded by a revolt against the Church. In France the revolt occurred in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and 1 Philipson, op. cU.f pp. 39-40. 2 S. M. Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland (Philadelphia, 1916), I, 36. a Abrahams, op. cti., p. 411.THE GHETTO AN INSTITUTION is associated with the Albigensian heresy. In England the fourteenth century saw the rise of Lollardism; in Bohemia the real foundation of the great Prague University was connected, in the fifteenth century, with the reform of the Hussites. Now the second of these movements was, from the theological point of view, undoubtedly a Judaic reaction. As to the first and third, it is sufficient to say that the ruling powers regarded the Jews as the fomenters of the movements, and paid them in bloody coin for their assumed participation.1 How the church met the danger of the Jews is illustrated by the following instance: The third provincial council of Ravenna, held in 1311, desiring to put an end to the free commingling of Christians and Jews, apparently in vogue in that province, decreed, among other restrictive measures, one in regard to the habitation of the Jews: "Jews shall not dwell longer than a month anywhere, except in those places in which they have synagogues." It appears, however, that the commands of this council were not very much respected, for another held in the same place in 1317 deals more stringently with the same subject. The fourteenth rubric of this council begins, "Although the Jews are tolerated by the church, yet they ought not to be tolerated to the detriment or severe injury of the faithful; because it frequently happens that they return to Christians contumely for favors, contempt for familiarity. Therefore, the pro- vincial council held at Ravenna some time since, thinking that many scandals have arisen from their too free commingling with Christians, decreed that they should wear a wheel of yellow cloth on their outer garments, and their women a like wheel on their heads, so that they may be distinguished from Christians," and then it continues, in reference to our subject: "And Jews shall not dwell longer than a month anywhere except in those places in which they have synagogues. But because some, not being able to abstain from forbidden things, disregard the sound decree of the aforementioned council, and pretend ignorance, a penalty shall teach them to know how grave an offence it is to disregard ecclesiastical decrees; and with the approbation of the sacred council, desiring to prevent this offence hereafter, we warn all 1 Abrahams, op. citp. xxi.32 THE GHETTO clerics as well as laymen of our province, and we decree no one shall erect houses for Jews, nor rent or sell them any already built, nor under any pretense grant them [any of their houses], or permit them to occu- py them. If any one acts contrary to this, he shall by that very deed incur excommunication, from which he cannot be absolved until he shall satisfy the above-mentioned requirements."1 Decrees of this general tenor were enacted in every country of Europe, in Turkey, and in Morocco. Some of the decrees read: .... The faithful incur serious danger of body and mind.2 That too great converse with them [Jews] may be avoided, they shall be compelled to live in certain places in the cities and towns, separated from the dwelling place of the Christians, and as far from the churches as possible.3 We strenuously demand of the rulers that they shall designate in the different cities a certain place in which Jews shall live apart from Christians. And if Jews have houses of their own in [other portions of] the city, they [the rulers] shall command them to be sold to Chris- tians within six months, in actuality and not by any pretended con- tract.4 Qwith the example of the Roman ghetto, instituted by Pope Paul IV, in 1556, before them, ghettos became general throughout Christendom, in every city where there was a Jewish community. These ghettos were generally walled in and had one or more gates, which were locked at night. At sunset the Jews had to be inside the gates, or suffer severe punishment. They were generally not permitted to appear on the streets outside the ghetto walls on Sundays and im- portant Christian holidays. The fact that some authorities refused to grant the Jews more space than had originally been designated for the ghetto generally led to overcrowding when the population grew^ 1 Philipson, op, cit., pp. 40-42. 3 Ibid., p. 44. 2 Ibid., p. 42. 4 Ibid.THE GHETTO AN INSTITUTION 33 Besides the isolation which the ghettos more or less effected—I say more or less, for it is quite certain that many Jews contrived to secure the privilege of living outside the ghetto gates—the most serious effect of the new persecution was the terrible overcrowding that necessarily followed from herding thousands of Jews in confined spaces. The Jewish population grew, but the ghettos remained prac- tically unchanged. Enlargements were occasionally permitted, but on the whole the original limits of the ghettos were not expanded. Hence even when the localities in which the ghettos were constructed were not slums, they rapidly became so. Sometimes the Jewish quar- ter, as in Cologne in the thirteenth century, was the narrowest part of the town, and was even called the "Narrow Street."1 ^Not infrequently the Jews were expelled from their ghettos, the most notable of these occasions being the expul- sions of Vienna, in 1670, and Prague, 1744-45?) The latter was during the wars of the Austrian succession, when Maria Theresa, on the ground that "they were fallen into disgrace," ordered the Jews to leave Bohemia. The decree was revoked under pressure of the powers, but the Jews, being ignorant of the revocation, petitioned for readmission on payment of a yearly tax, which they paid until 1846.3 ; The motives actuating the authorities to confine the Jews in ghettos have already been in part indicatecj. The occasions of open conflict with the established church were rare, but there was great fear that the presence of the Jews would weaken the faith of Christians. The argument was often made that the Jews were out to make_converts. One decree already cited indicates that there was fear that they might interfere with Christian worship, and for that reason they were to live as far as possible from Christian churches. The greatest factor of all, among overt reasons, was the fear of heresy, which more often was the fear of enlightenment x Abrahams, op. ciLt p. 67. * Encyclopedia BriUanica, XI (nth ed.), 920.34 THE GHETTO that might come from the people who had a more cosmopoli- tan outlook on life and were more widely traveled and read than their neighbors. A somewhat contradictory admixture of reasons is indicated by the following instance: When a ghetto was about to be established in Vienna in 1570 the citizens objected to having a place outside the city assigned to the Jews for the following three curious reasons: (1) They feared that if the Jews lived alone outside the city they could more easily engage in their "nefarious practices." (2) The Jews would be liable to be surprised by enemies. (3) The Jews might escape! The citizens therefore proposed that all the Jews should live in one house having only one exit, that windows and doors should be well fastened, so that no one might go out at night; and that the possi- bility of entrance or exit by secret passages should also be guarded against. As the Jews objected to this scheme, the project was soon dropped.1 GHETTO ATMOSPHERE It will probably be worth while in this connection to reconstruct, as well as possible, the atmosphere of ghetto existence. The effect of this involuntary isolation from the world is dramatically stated by Philipson: The solution had at last been found; the Jew was effectually ex- cluded. The Christian no longer would be corrupted and contaminated by the close proximity of the followers of the superstitio et perfidia Judaicay "the Jewish superstition and perfidy." For four centuries this lasted. As we today remove the victims of a pestilence far away from the inhabited portions of our cities, so the Jews were cut off by the walls of the ghetto as though stricken with some loathsome dis- ease that might carry misery and death unto others if they lived in close contact with them. The ghetto has' been well stigmatized as a "pest-like isolation." Speaking of the sixteenth century, one writer says: "Stone walls arose in all places wherein Jews dwelt, shutting off their quarters like pest-houses; the ghetto had become epidemic.2 1 Jewish Encyclopedia, V, 652. 3 Philipson, op. cit., pp. 21-22.THE GHETTO AN INSTITUTION 35 What a picture the ghetto recalls! The narrow, gloomy streets, with the houses towering high on either side; the sunlight rarely streaming in; situated in the worst slums of the city; shut off by gates barred and bolted every night with chains and locks, none permitted to enter or depart from sundown to sunrise!1 \ In some cities the houses of prostitution were transferred to the ghetto, because the ghetto was a fitting place for an institution of ill repute?) Several families often lived in a single building, and the location of the quaxter was usually in the least desirable region of the city. One writer speaks of the ghetto of his native town as an "outcast quarter, which stretches along the unhealthy morasses of the river of our town. Pestilential vapors poison the atmosphere, which remains gloomy in spite of the clearest sunshine."3 The protests which emanated from the Jews with the establish- ment of the compulsory ghetto were numerous but unavail- ing. Even when calamities such as fires and epidemics visited the ghetto and often destroyed it or great portions of its inhabitants, the conditions of their settlement were not improvedlpAnd yet, in spite of all misery and oppression, the life in the ghetto had a sunny side. It is necessary to view a typical ghetto concretely to appreciate the fact that when active persecution ceased for the time being, the life within the ghetto walls was as rich and as human as in the world outside. In fact, ghetto existence sometimes stood out amidst the darkness of the world surrounding^it^i The historians of the ghetto are usually inclined to over- 1 Ibid., p. 2i. 3 Stobfre, op. cit., p. 276. In the town of Schweidnitz the Jews com- plained, and the council promised that no women of ill repute should there- after be transferred to the Jews' street. * Karl Emil Franzos, quoted by Philipson, op. cti., p. 30.36 THE GHETTO emphasize the confining effect of the barriers that were set up around the Jew, and the provincial and stagnant charac- ter of ghetto life. They forget frequently that there was nevertheless life within the walls of the ghetto; "life with ideals and aspirations; with passions, and even human na- ture."1 It has taken the artists and poets to rediscover this life of the ghetto^ The life in the ghetto was probably al- ways more active and teeming than was life outside. The ghetto made the Jews self-conscious. They lived on the fringe of two worlds: the ghetto world and the strange world beyond the ghetto gates. Life in the ghetto was possible only because there was a larger world outside, of which many Jews often got more than a mere glimpsep The Jews of the Middle Ages certainly had more con- tacts and more varied and extensive contacts than their Christian neighbors. They traveled from one town to an- other, and even when they themselves were unable to see much of the world, their ghetto was visited by Jews from all the corners of the eartff. Particularly in the synagogue we find the center of though^ the meeting place where strangers often dropped in to tell of what went on in distant lands. The Jewish communities thus came to share the life of their distant co-religionists, and probably knew more of what was goiffg on in the world than even the most educated Chris- tians!) In fact, for a long time the Jews were the intellectual intermediaries between Orient and Occident. They were the physicians and emissaries of the secular princes. There was always some movement to get out of the ghetto on the part of individuals who were attracted by the wide world that lay beyond the horizon of the ghetto walls. 1 Abrahams, op. cit.y p. xxii.THE GHETTO AN INSTITUTION 37 Sometimes a Jew would leave the ghetto and, enticed by the opportunities that were supposed to await him outside, become a convert to Christianity; and sometimes these con- verts, broken and humiliated, would return to the ghetto to taste again of the warm, intimate, tribal life that was to be found nowhere but among their own people. On such occasions the romance of the renegade would be told in the ghetto streets, and the whole community would thereby be welded into a solid ma§^ clinging more tenaciously than ever to its old traditions! The occasional estrangements from family and communityties of rebellious spirits served only to strengthen the bonds of family and community solidarity when the stray members would return to the fold and be- come reincorporated, amidst solemn ceremonies, into the communal organization^ l^The real inner solidarity of the ghetto community always lay in the strong family ties. In this inner circle deep bonds of sympathy had been woven between the members through a colorful ritual. Here each individual, who was just a mere Jew to the world outside, had a place of dignity, and was bound to the rest by profound sentiment^ The adventures of each were shared by all, and enriched tlie store of familial lore.(Through the organization in the synagogue, in turn, the family unit was given a definite status, based not so much on wealth as on learning, piety, the purity of family life, and services rendered to the community?! The com- munity, in turn, acquired a reputation—sometimes of world- significance—through its outstanding personalities, partic- ularly through its philanthropists and scholars. Ghetto life was hardly ever at a standstill. There were always new problems to be faced, which called for the col-3« THE GHETTO lective action of its members. There were countless sub- jects of great importance to its inhabitants to be discussed and acted upon. Sometimes it was not possible to offer a united front to the hostile world outside without long de- bates and serious rifts within the community. Confined as the province of the ghetto was, there was ample opportunity for the display of capacity for leadership. There were prob- ably more distinct types of personality and well-marked characters withiruthe narrow ghetto streets than in the larger (world outsidejr The ghetto community was minutely spe- cialized and highly integrate#* J At the same time it afforded a rich, intense, and variegated life to its members. ^The outward manifestations of separateness, the ghetto wall, the gates, the Jewish badge, all tended to enhance the group- and self-consciousness of the Jews. They became the physical symbols of the social isolation which manifested itself in the social distance that was preserved between Jews and Christians^ In the course of time the Jews adjusted themselves t6 these restrictions and managed to build up a society of their own, in which life was bearable and at times even exciting. From this little world of kinsmen they gained courage to live and venture into the larger cosmos that loomed enticingly beyond the high walls, tjhe ghetto offered security and status in a narrow but intimate community, sheltered from the storms that raged without; but these storms were frequently too alluring to keep the Jew effec- tively in his place^It took a larger world to satisfy the crav- ing for new experience, for excitement and adventure on the part of the restless spirits among the ghetto inhabitants. The formal restrictions that bound them served merely as an additional stimulus which made entrance into the for- bidden world all the more enticing.THE GHETTO AN INSTITUTION In order tq show in concrete terms something of the structure of the society that grew up in the ghetto, and the life that went on in it, we shall turn to a ghetto which was typical of the institution as it developed in most of the coun- tries of Europe.sT'- KabbalistCHAPTER IV FRANKFORT: A TYPICAL GHETTO HISTORICAL ASPECTS The most famous ghetto in history is that of Frankfort on the Main, in Germany. What transpired there may be taken as typical of the history of ghettos everywhere in Western Europe.1 The Jewish congregation of Frankfort came into being in the latter part of the twelfth century. Until 1349, whpn the city bought the right over them, the Jews stood under the direct protection of the emperor. In that year, remembered by the Jews of Europe as one of the darkest in their history, the Black Death was ravaging the continent. The Jews, it was said, suffered fewer casualties than did the rest of the population. They were accused of having poisoned the wells, and reports spread by the Flag- gelants, who were sweeping from town to town, led the mobs to unspeakable excesses against the Jews. Fire was set to the Jewishghetto, and apparently the whole community per- ished. (For a consideration the Jews were again granted the right, in 1360, to settle in Frankfort, by the city council. At this time they could own real estate and fix their residence at will, but as a matter of fact most of the Jews did live in the Jewish quarter, where, however, many Christians, in- cluding the mayor, resided.! Every three months, Irom the fifteenth century on, the Jews had to renew their lease permitting them to live in the IThe literature on the ghetto of Frankfort is extensive. See Isidor Krakauer, Gesckichte der Juden in Frankfurt. The details of this account are taken mainly from Philipson, op. cit., chap. iv. 4142 THE GHETTO city. The city council, on these occasions, had to pass an act known as Judenordnung, which the Jews, by means of money, were always successful in having passed.fin one of these acts, that of 1460, the Jews were compellea to leave their homes and move to a segregated area, thus establishing the Judengasse, or ghetto. This decree gives as the reason for instituting the ghetto the fact that many Jews lived in the immediate neighborhood of the chief church and were thereby exercising a profaning and contaminating influence. J Besides, the decree states, it was nothing short of an affront to the Christian religion for Jews to worship so near the church, since their noises while chanting their prayers dis- turbed the Christian worshipers. Furthermore, the Jews could see the holy host and hear the church songs, which was nothing less than shameful. These reasons, or rationaliza- tions, rather, are probably not worth serious consideration ^ in themselves, but they indicate that in the course of social 7 contact between Jews and Gentiles there had developed cer- tain areas of friction which found formal expression in the segregation of the Jews. The Judengasse established by this decree, which had been urged by the Emperor himself, was situated in a sparse- ly inhabited portion of the city, far removed from the rest of the inhabitants, on the border between the old and the new city, on a part of the dried-up moat which ran along the wall of the old city. This area, from all accounts, might be de- scribed as an interstitial area. This, together with the cir- cumstance that the ghetto was located near the market place, was characteristic of all the ghettos of Europe. Besides the wall, a typical medieval symbol of town life, the ghetto had three gates, one each at the beginning, at theFRANKFORT 43 end, and in the middle of the wall. They were locked at night, and superintended by watchmen. The Jews did not submit passively to this stringent order. They pleaded and protested, urging upon the council that the decree be revoked. In their petition they set forth the strongest reasons they could find. The street, they said, would be so far removed from the rest of the city that if they ever needed the help of the townsmen they would not be able to assist. The Jews complained that of late they had been stoned and mocked in the streets which led to the ghetto, and that this practice would be all the more trouble- some if they had to continue to walk through those very same streets. They pointed out that during the fairs they might be attacked by visitors. They offered to sell their houses near the church, and to build a higher wall around their dwellings and content themselves' with one gate, to be locked at night. The order went into effect, however, and the Jews were locked up in what was at once termed "New Egypt," recalling the slavery of the Jews in biblical times. JTo the Jews the most oppressive features of the order were, not the discomfort and the loss of freedom of movement which was involved in the ghetto edict, but rather something which they did not mention in their petition, namely, the surrender of status and self-respect which the ghetto im- plied^ The density of settlement is pictured by Philipson in the following terms: It was a most gloomy street, twelve feet broad, in its widest por- tion fifteen or sixteen feet. A wagon could not turn in it, and that the great confusion incident to the many stoppages thus caused might be avoided, the city council had the middle entrance widened. The Gasse contained 190 houses, built very close together, some of them very44 THE GHETTO high and containing many souls, the 190 houses harboring 445 families. In each house there were two or three families, and as the community consisted of between twenty-five hundred and four thousand persons, each house contained, on an average, between thirteen and twenty persons. On account of the extreme narrowness of the street and the height of the buildings on either side, the tops of the buildings seemed almost to touch each other.1 To this must be added the fact that the Jews could not leave their street at will, not even for recreation. They were ex- cluded from the rest of the city, and were locked in behind the ghetto walls nightly. If Jews dared make their appear- ance at places in the city, such as on the promenades, or the public squares, their hats were snatched from their heads by passers-by. The story is told that in certain German cities, in Hanover until a few years ago, a sign was displayed promi- nently at the entrance to the public park, bearing the legend: Ein Jude und ein Schwein dilrfen hier nicht herein. (A Jew and a pig are not permitted to enter here.) There was one occasion, however, when the Jews were permitted to enter the city hall through the front entrance, and that was on New Year's Day, when they were expected to bring their annual gifts of spices to the city fathers and to express their allegiance and gratitude for the privileges which they en- joyed. At all other times they had to use the rear entrance. When Jews made their appearance even at specified places where their presence was not prohibited, they were usually subjected to insults and abuse. The cry "Hep! hep!" which has been revived lately in antisemitic parts of Germany, usually followed them as they were chased through the streets. A law passed by the city council prohibiting anyone from striking or insulting a Jew on the streets proved of little avail. 1 Philipson, op. cit., p. 56.FRANKFORT 45 There are three dramatic events in the history of the Frankfort ghetto which, while they give to the ghetto of Frankfort a great deal of its historical fame, might stand as typical of what crises ghetto life brought almost anywhere in EuropeTjThe first of these concerns a converted Jew. John Pfefferkorn, who, in order to give overt evidence of his loyalty toTnsnewly adopted faith, wrote several diatribes against the Jews, accusing them of anti-Christian expres- sions in the Talmud and their prayer books. He gained favor with the Dominican order, and got the backing of the Emperor. On a feast day he appeared in the synagogue of Frankfort, accompanied by priests and councilmen, and con- fiscated what books he could find. The Jews were able to obtain the intervention of the Archbishop, whom Pfeffer- korn had affronted, in their behalf. Pfefferkorn was able to get the Emperor to appoint a committee of inquiry. Among its members were Hoogstraten, the grand inquisitor of the Dominican order; John Reuchlin,1 and Victor von Carben, "formerly a rabbi and now a priest." To the great surprise of the conspirators, Reuchlin declined to serve, and wrote a defense of all Jewish books except such as contained direct aspersions on Christianity. In it he told, in rather plain words, his opinion of Pfefferkorn. The Jews were saved, as the fight was now on between Reuchlin and the Pfefferkorn party, that is, the Dominicans.3 [The second and more tragic incident arose out of the hostility of _lhe guilds toward the Jews^tlaving failed in thefratfemptto have the Jews expelled from the city, they organized an attack on the Jewish quarter under the leader- ship of a baker, Vincent Fettmilch. The Jews were prepared for the attack. They removed their families to the ceme- tery, and met the mob with arms, after having prayed and 1 The famous humanist and scholar. a Philipson, op. cii., pp. 65-66.46 THE GHETTO fasted. The mob broke through the gates, and in spite of determined resistance the Jews were overcome. With the aid of armed citizens and on the advice of the council, they left the city for over a year, and took up their abodes in the neighboring towns. In the meantime, order had been restored, and steps were taken looking to the return of the Jews. The leaders of the mob, Fettmilch and six others, were beheaded. On the very day that this took place, February 28, 1616, the Jews returned. Their return was celebrated with music. When they arrived in front of the Gasse, they were formed into a circle, and the new Judenordnung, drawn up by the im- perial commissioners, was read to them. The town council having shown itself so powerless to guard them, the protection of the Jews re- verted to the emperor; they once again became his private property. After their return into their "street," a large shield was placed upon each of the three gates, upon which was painted the imperial eagle, with the inscription, "Under the protection of the Roman Imperial Majesty and of the Holy Empire." Strange to say, the Christian popu- lation was compelled by imperial mandate to pay the Jews 175,919 florins indemnity for the loss they had sustained. In memory of these events, the Jewish congregation of Frankfort annually celebrated two events, the nineteenth of Adar, as a fast day commemorative of their departure from the city, and the twentieth as a holiday, called Purim Fettmilch, in memory of their return.1 It was events such as these that stood out in the traditions of the ghetto and that still linger in the memory and lore of the people, although the ghetto walls have long ago ceased to exist. (There was a third great crisis that the Jews of the Frank- fort ghetto still recall, which is even more typical of ghetto 1 Philipson, op. cit.f pp. 68-69. Purim refers to the Jewish holiday in commemoration of the deliverance from Hainan through Mordecai and Esther. There is also a Purim Prague, commemorative of a similar event in another celebrated European ghetto. See A. Kisch, "Die Prager Judenstadt wahrend der Schlacht am Weissen Berge," AUgemeine Zeitung des Juden- thums, LVI, 400-FRANKFORT 47 experiences generally than the other two events cited, name- ly, the great fire of 1711, which completely destroyed the Gasslry The population had greatly increased, but the space for habitation was not enlarged. The number of houses did not increase, and the 190 houses that, in a former day, had sheltered but two thousand persons, were now the homes of some eight thousand, according to the smallest calculation the Jewish population at this time. Each house, therefore, on an average, harbored forty-one persons. The Gasse is an example of the worst evils of the tenement system. On January 14, 1711, the fire broke out in the house of the chief rabbi, which stood in the middle of the "street." The cause of the fire was never discovered. It wiped out the Jewish quarter completely, and was called the great Jewish conflagration, in contradistinction to the great Christian conflagration eight years later. The Christian population, as soon as the fact of the raging of the fire became known, hurried to the Gasse to give as- sistance. But the Jews, in an agony of terror, and remembering former days, had locked the gates for fear of plunder, and kept them closed for an hour. When at last they opened them, the flames had gained great headway. The fire spread throughout the quarter, and with the exception of three houses standing at the extreme end of the street, everything was destroyed. The Jews, now homeless, had to look about for shelter. Some were harbored in Christian houses. After the "street" was rebuilt, they lingered in these houses with the hope that they might be permitted to remain outside the Gasse, and have free- dom of residence, but they were all ordered back in 1716.1 Other fires, less disastrous, followed, but the ghetto was rebuilt on the same site each time. Gradually the streets were widened and modernized, so that today, when most of the houses have disappeared, the Borne Strasse bears little resemblance to the old Gasse. In other ways as well the Jews began to fare better.! In 1811 they gained political emancipa- tion, being accordecrThe right of citizenship, which they lost 1 Philipson, op. tit., pp. 69-71. The street is named in honor of Lob Baruch, known in German literary history as Ludwig Borne.48 THE GHETTO again after the fall of Napoleon, to regain it in 1848, to loge it again in 1850, and finally to receive it a third time in 1864J While still known among the population as the Juden- gasse, few Jews have lived there since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Two great reminders still stand: the ancestral home of the Rothschild family, which has been turned into a museum, and the Jewish cemetery. Even the cemetery shows some signs of the tenement conditions of the old ghetto, for the graves are close together, and two or three on top of one another.1 The Frankfort Jewish community of ° today is scattered all over the city. The ghetto seems to have vanished more completely than in most large American cities, where the compulsory ghetto has never been known. The ghetto of Frankfort occupies a conspicuous place in the history of the Jews in Europe, for several reasons. In the first place, Frankfort was one of the largest Jewish com- munities during the Middle Ages. But it was not size alone that placed the Frankfort ghetto in the front rank. Other and smaller communities, such as Rothenburg ob Tauber, one of the most interesting medieval towns of Germany, had an inconspicuously small Jewish population, but was known throughout the world wherever Jews lived. It gained its fame because of the great renown of its learned Rabbi Meyer of Rothenburg, whose Responsa2 were accepted as au- thoritative by medieval Jewry. An outstanding personality was able to give his community world-wide prestige. rankfort had other claims to fame. It was the home of 1 H. Baerwald: Der aUe Friedhof der israelitischen Gemeinde zu Frankfurt am Main, Frankfort, 1883. 3 'Responsa is the technical name applied to the discourses of rabbis in response to questions propounded to them (see chap, vi, p. 85). GENERAL CHARACTERISTICSFRANKFORT 49 the noted Rothschild family, whose wealth and social position gave to the ghetto of their native town a glamor which has not yet vanished. Frankfort became one of the most signifi- cant commercial and banking centers of Europe^YThe Jews, with their partial monopoly of trade and finance, were the very core of the commercial and industrial life of that city. The Rothschilds became the counselors and bankers of kings, who sent their emissaries to the Jewish financial magnates to negotiate loans and advise them about their fiscal pol- icies. The Jews have left their impress on the life of Frankfort as they have on no other city in Europe. In time of need, it was Frankfort that came to the rescue of Jews everywhere. Shere was a third reason for the pre-eminence of the o of Frankfort. As has already been indicated, Frank- fort gave birth to Ludwig Borne, whose personality pro- foundly .mfluenced the romantic movement in European literaturejHe was representative of the intellectual life that animated the Jews of Frankfort. In spite of their narrow ghetto street, they led a cosmopolitan existence. Frank- fort, during the eighteenth century, became the literary center of Germany, and the liaison station between the thinkers and poets of France and the rest of Europe. In this intellectual current the Jews had a conspicuous rdle. The Jews of Frankfort had a Weltanschauung which far trans- cended the confines of their ghetto. It was Heine who, in his essay on Ludwig Borne,said: "'Juden' und 'Christen' sind fur mich ganz sinnverwandte Worte im Gegensatz zu 'Hellenen'! mit welchem Namen ich ebenfalls kein bestimm- tes Volk, sondern eine sowohl angeborene als angebildete Geistesrichtung und Anschauungsweise bezeichne." The Jews of Frankfort had tasted sufficiently of the life of theTHE GHETTO country in which they lived to feel themselves a part of its fabric. The ideas that were current in the world were their own. It is no accident, therefore, that the Jews of Frankfort should form the cultural nucleus of the Jews of Central Europe. In spite of all conversions and intermarriages that have taken place in that city, the Jewish community there still remains one of the most influential in the whole of Europe. Its older families are probably more decidedly orthodox than those of any other German city. They have a noticeable pride of ancestry and a strong feeling of group solidarity. Besides the ghetto of Frankfort there were a great many other ghettos in Europe whose history would be worth re- telling. There were the ghettos of Worms and Speyer, of Regensburg and Nuremberg, and smaller ghettos all along the important trade routes of Western and Southern Ger- many. Perhaps the most famous ghettos outside of Germany were the ghettos of Prague, of Vienna, of Rome, and of Venice. Some of them achieved fame through the important schools of rabbinical thought which were centered there, others through the spectacular r61e they played in the polit- ical, military, and economic history of Europe. Still others are remembered in Jewish folklore for the massacres and the heroisms of their inhabitants. But as the ghetto of Frank- fort, so, in general, were the ghettos everywhere throughout Europe. \*fhe ghetto arose, in the first instance, out of a body of practices and needs of the Jewish population. Gradually it became an established institution without the Jews them- selves being aware of the invisible walls that they were build- ing around their community. Only when it became formally recognized and sanctioned by law, or, rather, decreed byFRANKFORT 5i law, however, did it become an object of resentment because is was a symbol of subjugationTY The typical ghetto of the sixteenth century is a densely populated, walled-in area usually found near the arteries of commerce or in the vicinity of a market. But before the segregation became expressed in physical barriers the Jews already had in all cities where they lived in considerable numbers what was in every respect a cultural community definitely set apart from the Christian or Moslem culture about them.tjrhe forcible confinement within ghetto walls merely served to give the community a more definite geo- graphical expression on the one hand, and to intensify the self-consciousness of the members of the community on the other?) The ghetto was the product of a sifting process that went on for several centuries, in the course of which the Jews, a mobile, transient, homeless people, became set apart from the natives, whose cultural life was of a different character from their own. Even when conditions were fairly settled and the community had made a fairly stable and satisfactory adjustment to the circumstances imposed by the times, the ghetto was hardly ever more than a mere stopping-place. Centuries of shifting fortune and ceaseless wandering ever since jthe beginning of the diaspora had left on the Jew something of the character that we associate with the gypsy. The Jew was a person of many contacts, and often of many "homes." In the course of his migrations he established himself in the remotest parts of the globe^He was not a lone "hobo," however, for, as a rule, Jews settled in groups. g The reason for this must be sought in the religious tra- ditions of that peopleTj52 THE GHETTO ^ The ^simplest and commonest form of Jewish solidarity is the or- ganized community, which will be found in any town containing even a handful of Jews!} The motor force in its organization is the desire for public worship, which cannot be properly conducted according to re- ligious law without a minimum of ten adult males. The primary force is thus religious, and its external expression gradually materializes into a synagogue. This institution forms the pivot and centre of com- munal life throughout Jewry, and its establishment is followed by the growth of a cluster of other institutions, each answering some definite social need or aspiration.....1 This institution was of such significance as an organizing factor in Jewish communal life as to merit more detailed description. ^ THE SYNAGOGUE jThe Jewish quarter, even before the days of the com- pulsory ghetto, "seems to have grown up round the syna- gogue, which was thus the center of Jewish life, locally as well as religiously^"*} This concentration round the synagogue may be noted in the social as well as in the material life of the Middle Ages. The synagogue tended, with ever increasing rapidity, to absorb and to develop the social life of the community, both when Jews enjoyed free intercourse with their neighbors of other faiths, and when this intercourse was re- stricted to the narrowest possible bounds. It was the political emanci- pation, which the close of the eighteenth century witnessed, that first loosened the hold of the synagogue on Jewish life.....But through- out the Middle Ages proper the synagogue held undisputed sway in all the concerns of Jews.3 f The dominant position held by the synagogue in Jewish life Is to be accounted for on the basis of the function of religion in that life and the synagogue as an expression of that func- 1 Israel Cohen, Jewish Life in Modern Times (London and New York, 1914), p. 23- 2 Abrahams, op. citp. 1. »Ibid., pp. 1-2.FRANKFORT S3 tion^Whatever else they may have been, the Jews were certainly and primarily a group of people held together by common religious traditions and practices. This bond, which found expression through the synagogue, as the center of re- ligious life, colored the whole of their existence. It is not enough to say that the Jew's religion absorbed his life, for in quite as real a sense his life absorbed his religion. Hence the synagogue was not a mere place in which he prayed; it was a place in which he lived; and just as life has its earnest and its frivolous mo- ments, so the Jew in the synagogue was at times rigorously reverent, and at others quite at his ease.1 In the synagogue the members of the community assembled for prayer three times a day, and in the synagogue they re- mained almost throughout the day on special occasions, such as the Day of Atonement. Prayer was not merely a ritual performed by the rabbi, but it was a communal activ- ity, in which all the adult males participated actively, at least ten being required for this purpose. In other ways than this was the synagogue the center of Jewish life in the Middle Ages. Their "religion was truly their life/'2 and every act of daily conduct was in need of religious sanctioni^fhe synagogue had three traditional functions. It was, of course, first of all, a Beth HattejUah, a^Eouse"ot prayer," in the widest sense of that term. Here not only was the scene of the routine services and ritual, but here too gathered the Jews for those more spontaneous prayers in time of crises, when death threatened a member of the community, or when enemies assailed the gates of the ghetto, or when disease or pestilence swept the country, or when their political fate was in the balance. The synagogue was also a Beth Hamtnidrash, a "house of 1 Ibid., p. 15. 2 Philipson, op. ciip. 31.54 THE GHETTO study." The association between school and synagogue in the Jewish community has always been close. Before and after the services the Jews studied in the synagogue, read, and argued about the "Law" and the commentaries of the rabbis. The rabbis were generally not only the religious but also the intellectual leaders of the community, and learning has always been a primary duty and a mark of distinction for every Jew. Here, at the synagogue, moreover, was the meeting place for strangers, who brought news from the world without, and here one gathered such knowledge of conditions of affairs in foreign lands from wandering stu- dents, scholars, and merchants as the medieval world af- forded. In the synagogue centered those currents of thought that gave the Jewish medieval life some of its distinctiveness, in strange contrast to the intellectual stagnation in the world joutside. The synagogue was, finally, a Beth Hakkeneseth, a "house of assembly." In the synagogue centered all those activities that were vital in the life of the community and held it together. The synagogue was the administrative cen- ter of the ghetto and at the same time the community cen- ter. Most of the public announcements that concerned the entire community were made there, and through the syna- gogue the secular authorities were able to reach the Jews. Here taxes were assessed and such functions as were left to the Jewish community itself by their civil or ecclesiastical overlords, such as local regulations, passed and proclaimed. The synagogue officers had important judicial functions which they sometimes exercised with the assistance of the secular government. In the synagogue centered the educa- tional, the philanthropic, and much of the recreational life of the community. The synagogue organization remained forFRANKFORT 55 several centuries a highly integrated and undifferentiated unit, and thus strengthened its hold on the community/ As the ghetto became more and more an autonomous community, there arose, as differentiations from the syna- gogue, several well-defined functionaries. The democratic constitution of Jewish society in the Middle Ages shows itself in the method of electing the governing body .... the voting being always secret. The officials elected were essentially the same in all Jewish congregations; they differed little from those enumerated in the Talmud, or from those familiar to students of the New Testament records. There was the President or par excellence Parnass, the Treasurer or Gabay; there were sometimes special officers to whom the care of the poor and the care of the sick were entrusted, and—except that differentiation of functions is now more complete— the modern organization of the synagogue existed in the Middle Ages with very slight variation. The other unpaid officials were the Coun- cil, mostly of seven, and, until the thirteenth century, the Rabbi and two Dayanim (or members of the court). These became later salaried officers, and the class of paid officials included the Schochet (or officer to superintend the slaughtering of cattle for Jewish use), the Chazan or precentor, and the teacher. But the most powerful officer of all was the Shamash or beadle. This functionary rapidly became ruler of the synagogue. His functions were so varied, his duties placed him in pos- session of such detailed information of members' private affairs, his presence so permeated the synagogue and the home on public and pri- vate occasions, that the Shamash, instead of serving the congregation, became its master. Unlike the parish beadle, the characteristic of the Shamash was not pompousness so much as overfamiliarity. He did not exaggerate his own importance, but minimized the importance of everyone else. He was at once the overseer of the synagogue and the executor of the sentences of the Jewish tribunal or Beth Din.1 The Jewish tribunal, before mentioned, was far from being the external, powerless institution that it might ap- pear to be, judging from the extent that Jewish communal x Abrahams, op. tit., pp. 54-56.THE GHETTO life was regulated from without. The communal life of the Jews was strictly regulated by ordinances or Tekanoth which covered every phase of life^Tf a distinction between the reli- gious and secular applies to most modern ghettos and other communities, no such distinction existed in the medieval ghetto^The punishment for violations ranged all the way from fine, imprisonment, corporal punishment, to excom- munication and even the death penalty. These ordinances were usually passed by the community council, with the consent of the rabbi. In some instances the individual ghettos were bound into a sort of federation, such as the "Union of the Four Districts," which practically ruled Pol- ish Jewry for a long time. Generally, however, the local communities were jealous of their autonomy. The rabbi exercised power over his congregation fairly unmolested by civil authorities, although in some instances his election had to be confirmed by them. y \ 'the rabbis of the Middle Ages exercised an influence oveFtlie whole of Jewry, however, through their reputation rather than their official position. The legal decisions and opinions rendered by these rabbis were of world-wide signifi- cance to the Jews, and were regarded as a sort of supreme court. 7 EXTRATERRITORIALITY MThere was one fact which contributed probably as much as any other toward the communal solidarity of the ghetto, and that was the fact that the civil authorities treated the ghetto as a community. The Jewish community as a whole was held responsible in very essential matters for the con- duct of its members^ This was true first of all in matters of taxation. >FRANKFORT 57 Though .... the Jews were jealous of the right to manage their own communal affairs, their internal organization was largely affected by their relations to the external civil powers. Their organization, indeed, revolved on the pivot of the taxes. Wherever and whenever one casts his eye on the Jewish communities of the Middle Ages, the observer always finds the Jew in the clutches of extortionate tax-col- lectors.....In most cases, if not in all, tlvj various medieval govern- ments exacted the taxes en masse from the Jewish community, and left ^the collection of this lump sum to the officials of the synagogue.1 ^Through the circumstance that the wealthy members of the community paid more than their share of the taxes, and vir- tually paid the taxes of the poorer Jews, there arose gradual- ly in the ghetto an aristocracy of wealth which displaced in prestige that of Wrnj|)g n a. former day. This is very marked by the close of the seventeenth century?jThis ar- rangement gave the community organization tremendous strength, for it tightened the hold of the community on the individual members. Furthermore, it gave to the officials of the community an intimate knowledge of the private affairs of each member, vastly increasing the force of com- munal control. These taxes ranged all the way from the "protection" tax, permitting the Jews to live in the ghetto, to a tax to pay for the king's dinner, or to contribute to the popular sports, such as the Roman circuses.3 Some special forms of this communal responsibility will bear mention.4 One of these has to do with the jus gazzaga, or tenant rights, which were governed by equity rather than statute. 1 Abrahams, op. tit., pp. 40-41. 3 H. Graetz, History of the Jews, Vol. V, chap. vi. 3 A. Berliner, Geschichte der Juden in Rom, IE, 61; see also Abrahams, op. cit., p. 47- « A scholarly account of the nature and development of the self-govern- ment in the ghetto is to be found in Louis Finkelstein, Jewish Self-Govern- ment in the Middle Ages, New York, 1924. 158 THE GHETTO The Jewish community discouraged and even punished members who would avail themselves of the power of the civil courts or civil law against fellow-members of the ghetto. Informers, those who betrayed the Jewish community to outsiders, were severely punished. In this respect the atti- tude of the Jewish a ^nmunity was much the same as that of the Sicilians toward their North Italian conquerors. The jus gazzaga made it unlawful for a Jew to oust an- other Jew from property which he rented or had leased, even though that property was owned by a Christian. This ar- rangement arose to prevent the charging of exorbitant rents by owners of houses in the ghetto. The Roman ghetto shows an interesting result of the exercise of this right. In reference to this jtcs gazzaga, or possession of leaseholds of the houses in the ghetto, Alexander VII (1655-67) issued a decree favor- able to converted Jews. The popes made continual efforts to convert the Jews by every method in their power.....At times they suc- ceeded, and naturally these converted Jews were not regarded with the most affectionate feelings by their former brethren in faith. Now, it happened at times that a converted Jew was in possession of a jus gazzaga. He, of course, could move out of the ghetto, and live wherever he desired; that was one of the inducements held out for conversion. Thereby his house in the ghetto, of which he held the perpetual lease, became vacant, and he was anxious to rent it, since he had to pay rent to the Roman owner. The Jews, however, banded themselves together, and agreed not to rent such houses, in order to injure the faithless and keep others from accepting Christianity. Alexander, therefore, issued - a brief in 1657 to the effect that the Jews of the ghetto, as a commu- nity, had to make good the rent of such houses as long as they stood empty.1 Pope Paul II, in 1468, compelled a certain number of Jews to participate in the races for the amusement of the Roman populace. This custom was discontinued two centuries later, 1 Philipson, op. cit., p. 134.FRANKFORT 59 when the Jews promised to pay 300 scudi yearly to the papal treasury.1 jOne final, striking arrangement of theJRoman ghetto wiTT be introduced here to illustrate the measures by which the authorities were unwittingly welding the bonds of com- munity life of the JewsT^ One of the great objects of the popes was to convert the Jews to Christianity by any means whatsoever, since they firmly believed that by this they were accomplishing an important and holy work. From their standpoint they looked upon the Jews as lost. They attributed the refusal to accept Christianity to obstinacy and blindness. Various methods were employed by them, but the strangest of all was that introduced by Pope Gregory XIII, at the instigation of a converted Jew, Joseph Tzarfati. In his bull, Sancta mater ecclesiay of September 1, 1584, he commanded that in all places where there was a sufficient number of Jews, a sermon be poached to them on the truths of Chris- tianity every Saturday. . . . rAll Jews above the age of twelve, unless prevented by sickness or some other adequate excuse, to be given to the bishop, were to attend, so that always at least one-third of the Jewish population was to be present?)This was carried out in Rome, especially in the eighteenth century. On Saturday afternoon the strange sight of the police driving men, women, and children over twelve to church with whips could be witnessed in the Roman ghetto. Saturday afternoon was chosen because it was thought that the words preached to them in the church, setting forth the doctrines and truths of Christianity, compared with the teachings of Judaism listened to in the morning in the synagogue, would appear so far superior and so much more worthy of acceptance that they would be converted easily. At first one hundred fifty had to appear, but the number was later made three hundred. At the entrance to the church stood a watch- man, who counted those that entered, to make sure that the number was full. In the church, the police made the people pay attention; if anyone appeared inattentive, or under the soporific influence of the sermon fell asleep, he was roused by blows of the whip.... uNeedless to say, the effort proved entirely fruitlessjyrom a weekly it dropped 1 Ibid., pp. 141-42.6o THE GHETTO into an occasional service held five times a year. It was gradually dying out when Leo XII revived it in 1824, and it was finally abol- ished in 1847, the first year of Pius IX.1 By these forces from within and without the synagogue was perpetuated as the center of ghetto life, and the ghetto main- tained as a cultural community. COMMUNITY INSTITUTIONS Besides the synagogue there were a number of other institutions that made up the framework of the ghetto com- munity.^^ common feature of all ghettos was the cemetery. Around the cemetery centered the most sacred traditions of the grcmp^ Here, as in the instance already cited from Frankfort^ the Jews often made their last stand against in- vading enemies. The cemetery wfe variously referred to the "house of life" and the "good place." Thecareof the cemetery was one of the chief collective responsibilities of the community. The dead were treated with kindly rever- ence, and the cemetery was left undisturbed even tnough the growing population within the ghetto walls made every fookof land precious. LMost large communities had a house for the poor and the sick, a public bath, and a ritual bath-house {mikvah), since in most instances the Jews were prohibited from bath- ing in rivers, and they were unable to find refuge in those institutions for the care of the sick which were located out- side the ghetto, in the few places where they existed, even if it had not beenjor their religious scruples about following the dietary laws. J A communal bake-house and slaughtering place could generally be found in the ghetto. The larger communities had a guest-house, where strangers could find 1 Philipson, op. citpp. I43~45-FRANKFORT 61 shelter and refuge. The. larger Jewish ghettos also had a dance-house, where the Jewish girls could appear without the identifying two blue stripes on their veils, and the men without the distinguishing mark on their clothes, or the peaked hats on their heads.1 Here, too, the celebrations and often the weddings, pageants, and dramas were staged. It was the bright spot of the humdrum ghetto existence. jJTn connection with the synagogue, as has been indicated already, there were the house of justice and the school. The fact that the term Shut (German Schule) is still often used among orthodox Jews to refer to the synagogue attests to the traditional close relationship between house of worship and house of study! The school was a fairly distinct institu- tion, however, though oftpn housed in the synagogue build- ing. There were two kinds of schools: the elementary school, or Cheder, and the advanced institution of higher learning, the Yeshiba. This distinction still survives in the modern community. There were also a number of less concretely crystallized institutions in the ghetto, such as a board of guardians to care for the poor and to carry on the philanthropic enter- prises of the community, and usually a committee to deal with the civil authorities, "holy leagues" or burial societies, and various other cultural and economic organizations. In the close life within ghetto walls, almost nothing was left to the devices of the individualsC^ife was well organized, and custom and ritual played an organizing and institu- tior alizing r61e, which still accounts for the high degree of organization of Jewish communities, often verging on over- ' A. Berliner, Aus dent inneren Leben der deutschen Juden im Mittelalter, p. and Philipson, op. citpp. 33-34*62 THE GHETTO organization, and the persistence of old, outworn institutions long after their raison d'etre has ceased to operate?^ These institutions did not arise ready made. Every one of them, and particularly those that had to deal with the conflict and disorder within the group, was the characteristic form of accommodation to the situation created by the ghetto and the isolation which it symbolized and enforced. This is true, not only of the typical institutions of the ghetto, but it may even be said that the race itself, as we know it, is a product of the ghetto.CHAPTER V THE JEWISH TYPE THE JEWS AS A RACE Who are the Jews The traditional view is that they are a Semitic people, and thatthroughout many centuries of dispersion their purity of Blood has been preserved. Recent accumulations of material, however, indicate that the Jews^ are bj^o-ineaiisjiniform in their physical characteristics, and that the majority ot them are of a type different from that found among other Semitic-speaking peoples, for the Semites are primarily a linguistic rrnup.1 Anthropologists and sociologists are becoming more cautious in generalizing about biological and temperamental differences between races, nationalities, and cultural groups. There is probably no people that has furnished the basis for more contradictory conclusions than the Jews. The traits with which they have been credited by their friends, their enemies, and themselves fairly exhaust the vocabulary. /Still, the elementary question as to whether the Jews are a ra^e7^Tn^^nality? or k religions or cultural group remains „ unseUle^Mhereare those who, with Chamberlain, believe that the Jew constitutes a clear racial type whose character- istics are unmistakable. His amazing words are worth quot- ing: Very small children, especially girls, frequently have quite a marked instinct for race. It frequently happens that children who have no conception of what "Jew" means, or that there is any such thing in 1 Roland B. Dixon, The Racial History of Man (New York, 1923), chap. vL 6364 THE GHETTO the world, begin to cry as soon as a genuine Jew or Jewess comes near them. The learned can frequently not tell a Jew from a non-Jew; the child that scarcely knows how to speak notices the difference. Is not that something? To me it seems worth as much as a whole anthro- pological congress.....Where the learned fails with his artificial constructions, one single unbiased glance can illumine the truth like a sunbeam.1 / Hilaire Belloc prefers to think of the Jews, not as a race, but primarily as a nationality. InTteHThe points out that the Jews themselves have adjusted their notions of themselves to suit the varying circumstances with which they were con- / fronted. They were a race when it suited them, a nationality when necessity demanded it, a religious group, and, finally, a cultural unit when their situation made such a status de- sirable.2 7 The distinctive physical character of the Jew is impor- tant in this study because the presence or absence of such characteristics would be a significant consideration in de- termining the basis of group-consciousness, race-prejudice, and the r61e played by social and non-biological factors in the historical isolation and cultural development of that people. A physical mark may facilitate the singling out of a member of a group and therefore serve as a sort of racial uniform, as is the case with the Negro because of his color, for instance, in a white community. In the absence of any distinctive physical traits, however, artificial and external marks may come into use which will serve as efficient sub- stitutes for the branding of a people. This is, in fact, what happened in the case of the Jews. 1 Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, II, S37* 8 Hilaire Belloc, The Jews, Boston and New York, 1923.THE JEWISH TYPE 65 That the Jewish face is characteristic, and that a Jew can be singled out from among a thousand Christians, is a recent opinion. In medieval ages the tormenters of the Jews did not place much confi- dence in the so-called "Jewish" type as a safe, distinguishing mark. It seems they knew that appearances are often deceptive, that one who has a hook nose, black eyes and hair, thick lips, etc., may be a Christian, a Mohammedan, or a heathen, as well as a Jew, and that one devoid of these traits is not necessarily a Gentile. They were, however, determined to know a Jew when they met one, and to avoid mistakes, many enactments were promulgated compelling Jews to wear badges in order that they might be easily distinguished from non-Jews.1 t|n the isolating effect that it produced, and in the degrada- tion which it heaped upon the Jews, the device of the badge is second only to the institution of the ghetto itsep. In fact, the ghetto and the badge became twin institutions. Pope Innocent III, who proposed the Jewish badge, advanced the argument that "the measure was imperative if intermarriage or concubinage was to be prevented between Christians and non-believers."2 It was decreed by th^Jfourth Lateran Council, ip and thereafter by most church councils of that century—from that of Oxford in England in 1222 to that of Buda in Hungary in 1279—that every Jew was to wear on his clothes a mark, usually a piece of yellow cloth, by which he might at once be known as a Jew. "From that time on the Jew was a marked creature. The command was received by the unfortunates with a wail of despair resound- ing throughout Europe. Effort upon effort was made to have it revoked or to evade it, but all in vain."3 Among modern anthropologists the notion of "pure" 1 Maurice Fishberg, The Jews: A Study in Race and Environment (New York, 1911), p. 92. •Abrahams, op. cit.t p. 296. * Philipson, op. cit.t p. iq.66 THE GHETTO races is no longer seriously entertained. The Jews are ap- parently a hybrid people, like all the rest. It has been held, however, that their peculiar historical experiences have con- tributed to maintaining a fairly close adherence to the char- acteristics which they displayed when they first appeared on the European scene, nearly two thousand years ago. In speaking of their dark skin, Ripley says: Perhaps the most conspicuous example of the racial fixity of this trait of pigmentation is offered by the Jews. They have preserved their Semitic brunetness through all adversities. Socially ostracized and isolated, they have kept this coloration despite all migrations and changes of climate. In Germany today 42 per cent of them are pure brunets in a population containing only 14 per cent of the dark type on the average. They are thus darker by 30 per cent than their gentile neighbors. As one goes south this difference tends to disappear. In Austria they are less than 10 per cent darker than the general popula- tion; and finally, in the extreme south, they are even lighter than the populations about them. This is especially true of the red-haired type common in the East.1 Ripley attributes this darker complexion to the sedentary, indoor life which the Jews have led for centuries. Ever since the days of Darwin, isolation has been recognized as one of the basic factors in the development of biological variants. The Jews therefore furnish a crucial experiment. Behind the walls of the ghetto the Jewish type was carefully pro- tected from the influence of its alien environment, and there it also received a special impress, the product of exile and oppression. The chronic outbreaks of massacre and banishment, the unceasing reign of petty despotism, economic misery, and nervous alarm, have wrought traces upon the organism of the Jew; they have bent and stunted his body, whilst they have sharpened his mind and brightened his eye; they have given him a narrow chest, feeble muscles, and a pale com- plexion; they have stamped his visage with a look of pensive sadness, 1W. Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe (New York, 1899), p. 73.THE JEWISH TYPE 67 as though ever brooding upon the wrongs of ages. But the frame that has endured and survived so much suffering is also endowed with a high degree of resistance.1 Not only this rather strict isolation, but the consequent inbreeding which had its foundation in the religious scruples of the Jews, has tended to develop a physical type. There is a great deal of evidence to support the contention that the Jews, even in the dark ghetto days, frequently intermarried with non-Jews; but the consequence of such intermarriage was that usually the member of the group who did this was thereafter no longer considered a part of the Jewish com- munity, but rather was merged with the Christian popula- tion. The Negro in the United States gets credit for all mulattos, while the offspring of mixed marriages between Jews and Christians are usually accredited to the latter. Since the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, that is, from about 400 B.C., marriage between Jew and non-Jew has been strictly prohibited. The Kohanim (priests) were not allowed even to marry with those who had been converted to Judaism. The common people, however, were permitted to do this, and during the Hellenic period, and in the dias- pora, it was very common; of this the Judaised Chazars are a good ex- amftjg. On the other hand, during the diaspora such marriages were de- nounced by the Christians as well as by Jews, and were forbidden* under pain of heavy penalties.....But intermarriage, toward the end of the Middle Ages, as the social position of the Jews deteriorated, became very rare, and has been since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries till recently a negligible quantity. The social and religious gulf between Christian and Jew had become so wide that that alone precluded the possibility of intermarriage and rendered the legal pro- hibition quite unnecessary. Nevertheless this prohibition stands to, this day, and still holds good in Spain, Portugal, Russia, and all countries belonging to the Greek Church.2 1 Cohen, op. cUp. 116. 2 Arthur Ruppin, The Jews of Today (New York, 1913), pp. 157-58*68 THE GHETTO While the Jews on their part had thus only limited oppor- tunities for intermarriage with Gentiles, the latter were scarcely ever attracted to Judaism, which, in view of the disabilities that the group was under, together with its own strict ritual, especially dietary laws, was not inviting to „ proselytes.^The ghetto from the standpoint of population was a relatively closely inbreeding, self-perpetuating group, to such an extent that it may properly be called a closed community^ The combination of various features of ghetto existence tended toward the development and perpetuation of a definite type, which to a marked extent persists to the pres- ent day, especially in countries where the circumstances of Jewish communal life have remained relatively un- changed, as, for example, in Eastern Europe and the Orient. One of these features was the strenuous effort that was made to embark every member of the group on a matrimonial career. No strict restrictions against intermarriage between close relatives existed; in fact, such marriages were fre- quently encouraged. This fact, it has been pointed out by many students of the subject, tended to increase the proportion of defectives in the population.1 The insanity rate, it has also been ob- served, is inordinately large among the Jews. The same is said to hold true for similar inbreeding groups, such as the population of the Orkneys and the Society of Friends. The explanation of the frequency of insanity among Jews is to be found in social considerations.....The outstanding fact in regard to social environment of the Jews is that they are today mainly an urban ^ population, and in the past have been a ghetto population.....An ordinary population is spared the degenerating effects of many genera- tions of town life, because any incipient decadence is neutralized and 1 J. Snowman, "Jewish Eugenics," Jewish Review, IV, 173.THE JEWISH TYPE 69 compensated for by the infusion of fresh country blood, as the stream of life is constantly flowing toward the large cities. A Jewish popula- " tion, on the other hand, has not this reserve of vitality, and thus the evils generated by city life are so liable to remain impressed upon future generations.1 Not only is the circumstance of urban life to be noted as a powerful influence in shaping the physical characteristics of the Jews, but the special conditions under which they, as a persecuted and segregated population, lived must be added. The ghetto life was not only unwhoV,snrrT/> P^ysic^y, but un- wholesoiHS" mentally,. emotionallvf and spiritually. Living in constant dread of massacre, exposed to ridicule, degradation, and more sinister disaster, the race developed an apprehensiveness and acquired a lower threshold for fear stimuli. This kept up by the drawing in toward an overintimate family life.2 If, as is generally conceded, psychic conflict is the most important cause of neuroses, the Jews have had ample opportunity to cultivate the most fruitful soil for their development. For centuries they lived in an acutely hostile environment which always threatened their de- struction and regularly put the threat into partial execution. Segrega- tion became the usual mode of existence.® The Jews have frequently been pointed out as the classic illustration of the great force of religious and racial preju- dices in giving rise to a distinct physical type. Little did the medieval enemies of the Jews dream that by their very measures against them they were unconsciously helping to develop and preserve a distinct population in their midst. Ripley says of them, "Social ostracism, based upon differ- ences of belief in great measure, has sufficed to keep them 1 Ibid., p. 168. 3 Abraham Myerson, "The 'Nervousness' of the Jew," Mental Hygiene, Iv, 69. 31. S. Wechsler, "Nervousness and the Jew," Menorak Journal, X, 121.7° THE GHETTO truer to a single racial standard, perhaps, than any other people of Europe."1 It wouM be-difficult^to cover briefly all the material that has accumulated in recent years on the description, not to speak of explanation, of the physical type, or types, of the Jews in the world today.2 Instead, it will suffice to introduce the conclusions of Fishberg, whose views seem to conform most nearly to the facts, which, in this case, have been perverted and confused on many an occasion by partisan bias. What is that "Jewish type," that Jewish physiognomy, which characterizes the Jew? It is the opinion of the present author that it is less than skin deep. Primarily it depended upon the dress and the deportment of the Jews in countries where they live in strict isolation from their Christian or Moslem neighbors. A striking example is furnished by the side-locks of hair which most oriental or semi-oriental Jews allow to grow on their temples. In Austrian Galicia one of the Jewish faith may be of any ethnic type; he may be a Slavonian pure and simple, as many of them are; still, as long as he wears side-locks anyone can distinguish him as a follower of Judaism, because nobody of any other creed wears side- Ipcks.....A man in Galicia dressed in a long caftan or frock-coat, an under-cap (skull cap), a hat pushed to the back of the head, and two spiral locks hanging down in front of his ears, can only be a Jew, no matter what his face looks like. If the same individual should one day shave off his beard, cut his ear-locks, and don the dress of his Christian neighbors, the change might be magical. All the so-called "Jewishness" might disappear, and a Slavonian pure and simple might be evident to anyone who knows the physical type of the East- ern European races. This can best be seen among the Jewish immi- grants to the United States. 1 Ripley, op. tit., pp. 32-33. a Professor Roland B. Dixon in his Racial History of Man, pp. 162-75, furnishes an excellent brief summary of the physical anthropology of the Jews, emphasizing not merely the fact that they are a hybrid people, but indicating that the physical differences between the Jews of the different countries today are very marked.THE JEWISH TYPE 7i Next to dress and deportment, the Jew in Eastern Europe has often a peculiar attitude of the body which is distinctly characteristic. The inferior hygienic, economic, and social conditions under which he was compelled to live in the ghettos have left their mark on his body; he i§ old prematurely, stunted, decrepit; he withers at an early age. He is emaciated, his muscles are flabby, and he is unable to hold his spinal column erect [the "ghetto bend"].....As an acquired char- acter it is not transmitted by heredity. .... It is not the body which marks the Jew; it is his soul. In other words, the type is social or psychic.....Centuries of confine- ment in the ghetto, social ostracism, ceaseless suffering under the ban of abuse and persecution have been instrumental in producing a char- acteristic psychic type which manifests itself in his cast of countenance which is considered as peculiarly "Jewish." The ghetto face is purely psychic, just like the actor's, the soldier's, the minister's face.1 THE SOCIAL TYPE Whatever may be said concerning the effect of ghetto life on the physical characteristics of the Jews applies with even greater force to the social characteristics. If their sojourn in the ghetto for many generations was potent in producing the ethnic type of the Jew, it has been more effective in pro- ducing and maintaining the social conditions which may be called characteristic of the children of Israel. Isolation, which has been called by Darwin the cornerstone of breeders, is more effective in en- gendering social types than ethnic types; in man isolation is seen to be mostly of two kinds, geographical and social, and it was mostly social isolation which was operative in moulding the Jew as we meet him today. In fact, geography played only a minor role, in his case. Notwithstanding that the seed of Israel were scattered in various parts of the habitable globe, in spite of the fact that the different Jew- ish communities have been separated geographically from each other in a manner unknown among any other social group, they still lived everywhere in the same milieu. It was only after their emancipation in Western Europe during the first half of the nineteenth century that 1 Fishberg, op. cit.t pp. 162-66. 72 THE GHETTO there were to be noted differences in the environments of the Jews in different countries.1 limitations which the world imposed upon the Jews did not merely affect the range and the kind of their contacts with other people, but also determined to a great extent) the life they had to live in their own provincial ghettosJTurther- more, they were Excluded from the many important spheres of public life, such as politics and civic and social functions, that were open to the members of the community about them. They were, in most instances, prohibited- from own- Jng land, or living outside the cities (except in the East); they were excluded from the guilds, and the number of oc- cupations open to them was narrowly prescribed. In addi- tion, their own religious ritual and community life closely defined the conduct of the individuals and restricted their contact with the outside world. "Who can say what would have been the effect of such a treatment prolonged through- out several hundreds of years?" asks Leroy-Beaulieu. "If the Mohammedans could have tried the expenment on the Christians, they probably would have obtained as clearly marked a type in ten generations."2 The Jew is a much more clearly defined social type than physical typeij^hat is typical of the Jews as a group is their characteristic "run of attention," or the direction of their habits and interests which have become fixed through centuries of communal life in segregated areas: "Judaism has been preserved throughout the long years of Israel's dispersion by two factors: its separative ritualism, which oprevented close and intimpe contact with*liolEfows, and * Ibid., p. 533. 'Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, L'antisemitisme, Paris, 1897; quoted from Fishberg, op. cU.t p. 534.THE JEWISH TYPE 73 the iron laws of the Christian theocracies of Europe^ which ^ en cou7a^^°^^eS^cerisoi^on^J There is probably no people tliat has been subjected to the persistent influence of so rigid a social pattern as have the Jews. This pattern was furnished by their religious ritual, and this ritual pervaded every sphere of their existence. Though widely scattered, they were subject to a fairly uni- form set of customs throughout the worldiThe folkways and the mores of the Jews stood in strange contrast to those of their neighbors. Besides, the Jews were segregated from the rest of the population by rigid customs and explicit lawsT^ Living, as they were, in segregated areas, they were enabled to develop and perpetuate a cultural life barely touched by the happenings in the outside world. When suddenly the Jews awoke in the midst of the modern world they found, themselves outstripped in every important sphere of activ- ity with the exception of commerce. Their culture seemed archaic in comparison. All the devices that operated to keep the Jew apart, at the same time made him crave the contacts that were taboo. ^He lived on the periphery of two worlds, and not fully in either. As a result, he developed that keen sense of self- consciousness which is often expressed in his awkwardness and lack of poise when in the company of stranger^ He is either shy and self-effacing, or he overcompensates in the direction of aggressiveness. In either case he is seldom him- self. |He finds himself haunted by loneliness in the outer world, and when he returns to his familial hearth he is rest- less and anxious to escape?) T^fhe Jew was tied to this ritual not merely through the relative isolation of his social life, but through the ties of 1 Fishberg, op. ciip. 555.74 THE GHETTO sentiment on which this ritual rested. Iffis life was full and real only where the values to whicKne was accustomed were dominant. The Jew is not merely a product of his past social life, but his character is constantly being re-created along the old pattern because his past experience has so indelibly impressed upon him the value of this heritage that he inevitably sets to work to shape his environment to con- form to his accustomed pattern. But ultimately, as is in- dicated in a subsequent chapter (chapter vii), the so-called Jewish racial type disappears with the disappearance of the ghetto.CHAPTER VI THE JEWISH MIND MENTALITY AND THE DIVISION OF LABOR To the modern psychologist mind is not so much the cause as it is the result of activity. If we would know the mentality of a people, we must get acquainted with their activities and experiences.} Isolation has exercised the most significant influence upon the Jew as a physical and social type. In the following pages we shall undertake to show the effect which the social life of the ghetto produced upon the mind of the Jew!) The most striking index of the mentality of a community Is perhaps to be found in the degree to which the division of labor has been carried, and the number of distinct occupational groupings that the community sup- ports. If there is a "Jewish mentality" it ought, therefore, to become apparent through an examination of the occupation- al aspects of Jewish life, and the place of the Jews in the division of labor of medieval society. All that we know of Jewish life in the diaspora points to the con- clusion that only an insignificant number of Jews devoted themselves to agriculture even in those lands where no difficulties were placed in their path. Perhaps Poland in the sixteenth century is the best in- stance. There they appear to have taken up farming. But even in Poland they showed a preference for city life. For every 500 Chris- tian merchants in the Polish towns of the period, there were to be found 3,200 Jewish merchants. lies, they became town-dwellers—whether voluntarily or by stress of circumstance is of no consequence—and town-dwellers they have remained^!. • . 7576 THE GHETTO Now the modern city is nothing else but a great desert, as far re- moved from the warm earth as the desert is, and like it forcing its inhabitants to become nomads. The old nomadic instincts have thus through the centuries been called forth in the Jew by the process of adapting himself to his environment, while the principle of selection has only tended to strengthen those instincts. It is clear that in the constant changes to which the Jews have been subjected, not those among them that had an inclination to the comfortable, settled life of the farmer were the ones likely to survive, but rather those in whom the nomadic instincts were strong.1 Whether one agrees with Sombart's explanation or not is unimportant; the fact to which he refers, that the Jews be- came a dominantly city people, is indisputable. Sombart goes on to show how the Jew, by nature and by experience, was eminently fitted to find a place in, and to give great' impetus to, the whole capitalistic movement that has trans- formed the world in the past few centuries into a highly complex interdependent unit. He says: Unlike most other writers on the subject, I will begin by noting a Jewish quality which, though mentioned often enough, never re- ceived the recognition which its importance meritedj/l refer to the extreme intellectuality of the Jew. Intellectual interests and intel- lectual skill are more strongly developed in him than physical [manual] powers.....No other people has valued the learned man, the scholar, so highly as the JewsS^'The wise man takes precedence of the king, and a bastard who is aTscholar, of a high-priest who is an ignoramus." So the Talmud has it. Anyone who is acquainted with Jewish students knows well enough that this overrating of mere knowledge is not yet a thing of the past. And if you could not become "wise," at least it was your duty to be educated. At all times induction was compulsory in Israel. In truth, to learn was a religious duty; and in Eastern Europe the synagogue is still called the Shool. Study and worship went hand in hand; nay, study was worship, and ignorance was a deadly sin. A 1 Werner Sombart, The Jews and Modem Capitalism (New York, 1913), p. 334.THE JEWISH MIND 77 man who could not read was a boor in_t?"g wnrM in the next In the popular saying of the ghetto, nothing had somuclTscorn poured upon it as foolishness. "Better injustice than folly," and "Ein Narr ist ein Gezar" (a fool is a misfortune) are both well known. The most valuable individual is the intellectual individual; hu- manity at its best is intellectuality at its highest.....One conse- quence of this high evaluation of intellectuality was the esteem in which callings were held according as they demanded more "head- work" or more "handwork." The former were almost in all ages placed higher than the latter.....As Rabbi said, "The world needs both the seller of spices and the tanner, but happy he who is a seller of spices." .... The Jews were quite alive to their predominant quality and al- ways recognized that there was a great gulf between their intellectual- ity and the brute force of their neighbors. One or two sayings popular among Polish Jews express the contrast with no little humour. "God help a man against Gentile hands and Jewish heads." "Heaven pro- tect us against Jewish moach (brains) and Gentile koach (physical force)." Moach vs. Koach—that is the Jewish problem in a nutshell. .... He will look at the world from the point of view of end, or goal, or purpose. His outlook will be teleological, or that of practical rationalism. No peculiarity is so fully developed in the Jew as this, and there is complete unanimity of opinion on the subject.1 Most other observers start out with the teleology of the Jew; I, for my part, regard it as the result of his extreme intellectuality, in which I believe all the other Jewish peculiarities are rooted. .... No term is more familiar to the ear of the Jew than Tachlis, which means purpose, aim, end or goal. If you are to do anything it must have tachlis; life itself, whether as a whole or in its single activities, must have some tachlis, and so must the universe.2 1 The writings of Somba^t have aroused considerable controversy. The criticisms directed against him have been, mainly, that his facts do not justify his conclusions, and that they have been gathered from a biased point of view. For a more recent account, see H. Waetjen, Das Judentum und die Anfitnge der modernen Kolonisation, Berlin, 1914. See also Joseph Jacobs, Jewish Contributions to Civilization (Philadelphia, 1919), pp. 265 ff. 2 Sombart, op. cit.t pp. 258-^66.78 THE GHETTO Sombart points out a number of other characteristics besides these which tended to fit the Jew for his role as capitalist. Among these was his mobility, his adaptability, his flexibil- ity, which fitted him to be a successful undertaker, organizer, trader, and negotiator. As to the Jews' experience, he adds that the Jew, by the nature of his contacts—largely of a categoric and secondary sort—was especially fitted to be- come the commercial individual and less fitted to become the artisan, who requires close and intimate personal con- tacts with his clientele. ][The Jew had wide and scattered contacts; he knew languages; he had connections; and he had some wealth—these were the foundations that served him for a commercial career. Moreover, the Jew was not prevented by his religion, as were others, from dealing in money. He therefore became the money lender and the bankerT)By the time that the medieval church relaxed its stand xm the question of usury the Jews had already a fair start. In other ways than these the Jews found for themselves an important place in medieval society. They were frequent- ly the physicians and emissaries of rulers and princes. What there was of Oriental medicine they had brought to the West, and their wide contact and correspondence placed them in a favorable position for extending their knowledge. They were, as Simmel has pointed out, the typical stranger, and in that rdle they acquired the objectivity and built up the relationship of the confidant, which served them well as counselors and diagnosticians. j The Jews did not, however, avoid the crafts and arts, as one might be led to believe by the generalizations of Som- bart. They plied numerous trades, they peddled many arti- cles, but in many cases they were also the manufacturers ofTHE JEWISH MIND 79 their wares. There were numerous Jewish dyers, silk weav- ers, gold- and silversmiths, tailors, and printers,1 besides a great variety of other occupations The restrictions placed upon them by the government, the church, and the guilds, besides their own religious ritual, account for their predomi- nance in some, and their scarcity in other, occupations. In Poland, where they were less of an urban people and lived in self-sufficing areas of settlement, their occupations tended to approximate those of the Christians. \lt must not be supposed that the Jew was always or even typically successful and ricEj He was often nothing more than the indirect tax-collector for the ruler, and periodically his fortune was taken from him by force.^The number of poor Jews in the medieval ghettos was large, and the pro- vision made for them by their more prosperous fellow-Jews was generous^ "Although the Jew has acquired the reputa- tion of being the personification of the commercial spirit, he is sometimes quite shiftless and helpless, failing miserably in everything he undertakes, as though pursued by some mock- ing sprite, and good-humouredly nicknamed by his brethren a Schletniel."2 (^Not only do we find in the ghetto distinct vocational types, but the religious and community'life tended to de- velop other numerous specializations of activity and status which gave rise to distinct personality^types. borne'of these, such as the Rabbi, the Shamus or sexton, the Parnass, or councilman, have already been mentioned. There are others, such as the Shochet, or slaughterer, the Mohel, or circumciser, 1 See Abrahams, op. cU.t chaps, xi and xii, and Appendixes A to H. Also Joseph Jacobs, Jewish Statistics (London, 1891), chaps, iv-vi, and Ruppin, op. cit., chap. iii. 2 Cohen, op. cit.t p. 186.8o THE GHETTO and the Shadchan, or marriage broker/ The last of these is a picturesque character that finds frequent expression in fic- tion, and that still serves an important function in the Eastern European communities: In Eastern countries, such as Morocco, Persia, and India, the marriage is arranged by the parents of the young couple, who sub- missively acquiesce in their fate. In Eastern Europe the parental ne- / gotiations are preceded by the activity of a matrimonial agent, who ) is rendered necessary by the segregation of the sexes still observed in j most of the communities of Eastern Europe. The Shadchan, as he is ) called, is a prized visitor in the home of every marriageable girl, whose chances depend, apart from natural charms, upon the size of her dowry and the family reputation for piety, learning, and philanthropy.1 His services were in constant demand, and his area of opera- tions was not even confined to any particular country, but extended throughout the Russian Pale and into Galicia, Roumania, and more distant regions. Frequently the mar- kets and the fairs were places at which marriages could be arranged, for here Jews of various localities had opportunity to meet and to discuss such problems. £Spmething has already been said of the emphasis on learning and scholarship. This scholarship was usually of a / religious nature. The talmudicai student, known as Yeshiba Bachur, enjoyed a favored position in the community^ / The highest virtue of the bridegroom is excellence in talmudic study, which surpasses in value a splendid pedigree or a dazzling in- come bedimmed with ignorance. In most of the teeming communities of Russian and Galician Jewry the father still regards sacred learning as the noblest possession in a son-in-law, and if he can ally his daughter to a budding rabbi he believes the union will find especial grace in Heaven. The lack of worldly means on the part of the bridegroom forms no deterrent, for it is customary for the father of the bride to 1 Ibid.j p. 41.THE JEWISH MIND 81 keep his son-in-law in his own house for the first two years after mar- riage, and then to set him up in a home and business of his own.1 Here is an instance in which the values that the group at- taches to a certain type of behavior become an important selective agency in the perpetuation of a social type. In modern times secular knowledge has in great measure been able to take the place of religious learning. A number of other types center around the religious life of the ghetto. Among them are the Zaddik, or righteous individual, the leader of the community; the BaUanim, or the men of leisure or hangers-on in the synagogue, who, like a modern coroner's jury, are always at hand when a minyan, or assembly of ten men, is required for prayer. The old ghetto also had its professional jester, known as Marshallik, and Badchan, who entertained at weddings, on holidays, and particularly at the feast of Purim. Finally, there was the Meshumed, or apostate, whose lot was an unhappy one in the ghetto. He was shunned by the community, and was often ostracized. These are some of the types that life in the ghetto brought forth, and that have acquired a distinctive place in the memories and attitudes of the group. There were others, some of them specializations of types already mentioned; there were even some types that the Jews recog- nized among the Goyim, or Gentiles, with whom they had occasional contact(jOne more type is worthy of special mention, namely, the beggar, or Schnorrer. The relation be- tween the giver and the receiver of charity was a peculiar one in ghetto society. Charity was more or less synonymous with justice, and to give to the poor, the orphans, and the helpless, was a religious duty.7 *lbid.82 THE GHETTO It cannot be too strongly emphasized that this relation between giver and taker was in itself a strong preventive to pauperism in the modern sense. But it is undeniable that it led to that insolence in the Jewish beggar which, growing out of the theory that the recipient of the gift was enabling the donor to perform a religious duty, and was, in a sense, the benefactor of the donor, made the schnorrer, or beggar, come to be a most persistent and troublesome figure in modern Jewish society.1 INTELLECTUAL LIFE The enforced confinement of the Jews in ghettos through- out the major part of the Middle Ages, especially during that brighter period of the Renaissance almost up to the begin- ning of the nineteenth century, left profound effects upon not only their bodies, but upon their minds. When the rest of the world about them had already outgrown feudalism, the Jews were still living in a social milieu whose patterns had been cut by the feudal order. While the Jews were on the one hand spared the effect of the ecclesiastical morass of the Christian church in the Middle Ages, they built up an intolerant medieval theology of their own which governed conduct and restricted thought: Shut off from all contact with the world at large, the Jew within the walls of the ghetto naturally did not respond to the culture of the world. Learning, certainly, there always was, and learning was held in the highest respect; but it was the learning of the ancients, the Talmud and rabbinical dialectics. These studies sharpened the mind, it is true, and later, when emancipation came, the Jewish intellect, exercised for centuries in this dialectical training school, readily mastered the diffi- culties of the various branches of learning in the universities. JBut in the ghetto, notably in Germany and the countries of Eastern Europe, this terrible, systematic exclusion of the Jews from all contact with the outer world contracted the mind and prevented all cultivation of learning outside of Jewish studiesTJ 1 Abrahams, op. cit., pp. 310-11. 3 Philipson, op. cit., pp. 195-96.THE JEWISH MIND 83 There were some mitigating circumstances in this domi- nation of the synagogue over Jewish life, however: The synagogue was the centre of life, but it was not the custodian of thought. If Judaism ever came to exercise a tyranny over the Jewish mind, it did so, not in the Middle Ages at all, but in the middle of the sixteenth century. A revolt against medievalism such as oc- curred in Europe during and at the close of the Renaissance may be said to have marked Jewish life towards the close of the eighteenth century.1 1 From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century the Jews were about as closely bound by rabbinical authority and ritualis- tic customs as the Roman church ever had bound the Chris- tian peoples of medieval Europe^ During the Middle Ages proper, however, the Jews playecl an important role in the intellectual life of Europe, jThe medieval universities were not altogether closed to the Jews, and where their personal influence was lacking, there was the indirect influence which they exerted in mediating between the culture of the Orient and the barbarism, or rather the incipient civilization of the West.2 It was not so much external pressure as internal con- trol in response to that pressure that left a marked effect upon the mental life of the ghetto. The Jews suffered more from the dispiriting calms of life within the ghetto than from the passionate storms of death that raged with- out itlThe anti-social crusade of the medieval church against the Jews did more than slay its thousands; it deprived the Jews of the very conditions necessary for the full development of their genius. The Jewish nature does not produce its rarest fruits in a Jew- ish environment? I am far from asserting that Judaism is a force so 1 Abrahams, op. cit., p. xvii. 2 See Andrew White, Warfare of Science with Theology, II, 33; also Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages; also H. O. Taylor, The Medieval Mind; and especially Joseph Jacobs, Jewish Contributions to Civili- zation (Philadelphia, 1919), chaps, iv and v.84 THE GHETTO feeble that its children sink into decay so soon as they are robbed of the influence of forces foreign to itself. But it was ancient Alexandria that produced Philo; medieval Spain, Maimonides; modern Amsterdam, Spinoza. The ghetto had its freaks, but the men just named were not born in ghettos. And how should it be otherwise? The Jew who should influence the world could not arise in the absence of a world to influence.1 Quite early in the medieval history of the Jews there grew up partisan camps in the larger Jewish community. On the one hand were the Spanish, or Sephardic Jews, who prided themselves on the purity of their stock and the superi- ority of their status; on the other were the German Jews, or Ashkenazim, whose ghetto history considerably lowered their status. But it is a striking fact that the "German" Jews, more character- istically Jewish than their Spanish brethren, ended by gaining control of the whole of European Judaism. The Jewish schools in the Rhine- land flourished, not, as in Moorish Spain, in imitation of neighbouring illumination, but in contrast to surrounding obscurantism. There was no Christian university till the middle of the fourteenth century, but the Rhinelands had what were practically Jewish universities in the era of the first Crusade.2 /Jewish life in the Middle Ages was by no means identical in the various countries, nor unified, much as the ghetto ex- ercised a uniformizing influence. In each country and locality the Jews worked out their problems created by local circum- stances as the situation permitted^ There were gradually arising certain integrating currents which began to weld the scattered communities of Jews into something resembling a unit, which, however, did not take the form of a nationalistic movement. Perhaps the most potent influence in this direc- 1 Abrahams, op. cU.t pp. xxi-xxii. 3 Ibid., pp. xxii-xxiii.THE JEWISH MIND 85 tion was the prestige attaching to the opinions of certain rabbis whose reputation for piety and learning gave them a unique position in the intellectual life of the Jews. The Geonim of Persia, who swayed Judaism during the seventh to the eleventh century, and their spiritual successors, the rabbis of North Africa and Spain, carried on a world-wide correspondence. The answers which they made to questions addressed to them constitute one of the most fertile sources of information for Jewish life in the Middle Ages.....Meir of Rothenburg was probably a greater man with a greater mind than some of his Spanish contemporaries, but the latter corresponded with a far wider circle of Jews. True, the codifica- tion of Jewish law was inaugurated by Spanish Jews in the "golden age," but the code which finally became the accepted guide of Judaism was the work of the sixteenth century. Codification implies the sup- pression of local variation, but in the Responsa1 of the later French and German rabbis there is already far less heterogeneity of habits than in the Responsa of the Spanish Jews, and certainly of the Geonim. And this is quite natural. If your horizon is narrow, you regard your own conduct as the only normal or praiseworthy scheme of life. Hence, without any conscious resolve to suppress varying customs, these were as a matter of fact much contracted by the local tendencies of the great French rabbis who became the authority for all Judaism from the fourteenth century onwards. After the end of the twelfth century even the Spanish Jews relied on their German brethren for guidance in the Talmud.2 is important to point out that the isolation of the ghetto was, after all, only relative. Before confinement in the ghetto became effective the Jews had set in motion a number of currents of thought and activity which brought them into contact with the outside world, and which the ghetto wall was not able to shut out completely^ 1 The answers to the questions propounded to the rabbis are known as Responsa. The Responsa literature is quite extensive. 1 Abrahams, op. citpp. xxv-xxvi.86 THE GHETTO The seventeenth was the gloomiest century in the pre-emancipa- tion history of the Jews, but until the beginning of the sixteenth century they were never for long cut off from the common life around them. Nay, their interests were wider than those of their environ- ment, for they had the exceptional interest of a common religion desti- tute of a political centre. It is hard to exaggerate the importance of this factor in molding Jewish life. Thus was begotten that cosmo- politanism which broke through the walls of the ghettos and prevented the life passed within them from ever becoming quite narrow and sordid.1 ^Through the synagogue, which, as has already been indicated, oecame the center not only of religious but of intellectual life, the isolated communities were kept in intermittent con- tact with each other, and a social movement that had its origin in one was likely to be propagated by travelers, students, and rabbis, who, first of all, of course, sought the synagogue whenever they arrived in a new community. "Thus Jewish life was not narrow, though its locale was limited.^? The Jews continued to share to some extent the larger life about them, often in a measure exceeding that of their Christian neighbors/so that "in the Middle Ages proper, Jewish life, with all tKeTinnate 'provincialism' from which it has never, in all its long and chequered history, contrived to free itself, was freshened and affected by every influence of the time?j5 Abrahams has an eloquent passage in which the contrast between medieval life at large and the Jewish as- pect of that life is contrasted: When one thinks what human life was for the majority of men in the Middle Ages, "how little of a feast for their senses it could possibly 1 Ibid., p. 4. a Ibid., p. 5. 3 Ibid., p. 6. See also I. Husik, Medieval Jewish Philosophy, New York, 1916.THE JEWISH MIND 87 be, one understands the charm for them of a refuge offered in the heart and the imagination." More than to any others, this remark applies to the Jews. As the Middle Ages closed for the rest of Europe the material horizon of the Jew narrowed. Prejudice and proscription robbed them of the attractions of public life and threw them within themselves, to find their happiness in their own idealized hopes. But the fancies on which they fed were not of the kind that expand the imagination. Jews were not inaccessible to ideas, for they never confused the land of Philistia with the land of the children of light. But the ideas which came to them in the really dark ages of Jewish life were not the ideas which freshened Europe and roused it from its mystic medieval dreams.1 Indeed, Judaism became more mystical as Europe became more ratibnal; it clasped its cloak tighter as the sun burned warmer. The Renaissance, which drew half its inspiration from Hebraism, left the Jews untouched on the artistic side. The Protestant Reformation, which took its life-blood from a rational Hebraism, left the Jews un- affected on the moral side. It was, in a sense, a misfortune for the Synagogue that it had not sunk into the decadence from which the Reformation roused the churAs it was not corrupt it needed no rousing moral regeneration, and so it escaped, through its own in- herent virtues, that general stirring-up of life which results from great efforts for the redress of great vices.1 During the period of the Renaissance the Jewish com- munities, still suffering from the effects of the persecutions begun during the Crusades and continuing during the four- teenth and fifteenth centuries, and culminating in the Spanish Inquisition, were split up into numberless local and factional cliques. Under this continuous oppression "the Jew found relief in an unreal world conjured forth by an unbridled imagination. The great wave of mysticism in the thirteenth century, and the great wave of Chassidism of the eighteenth century, are the historic evidences of the psy- chological reaction."2 1 Abrahams, op. cit., p. 160. a E. M. Friedman, Survival or Extinction (New York, 1924), p. 131.88 THE GHETTO j By the middle of the sixteenth century we find evidences oFccmsolidation of the scattered local settlements and the isolated and provincial thought of the ghettos. The codified Jewish law, known as Shulchan Aruch (table prepared), compiled by Joseph Caro, stimulated the accommodation of practices and beliefs of the various Jewish communities to each otherjThe uniformity produced in religious and social life of the Jews everywhere as a result of the wide circulation and acceptance of this code was due in large measure to the fact that "it had the good fortune of being compiled in an age of printing/' and the fact that during the age of the ghettos it was primarily through the religious channel that life could be influenced at all.1 /Until the dawn of the social and political emancipation of the Jews at the end of the eighteenth century their intellectual life, on the whole, was of a uniform and specifically Jewish character, for they were sundered by ghetto walls from external influences^ They were trained in traditional Hebrew lore in the schools of the Synagogue, and nurtured on Jewish ideals; with the exception of a Spinoza or a Stisskind of Trimberg, they devoted themselves mainly to the study and enrichment of their own national literature; and even when they occupied themselves with alien subjects they still laboured in a Jewish milieu and retained a Jewish outlook. But with the advent of emanci- pation a radical change sets in.2 „ LIFE IN THE PALE The general outline of the description of the Western ghetto, given in the preceding pages, applies also to the Eastern pale. There remain a few facts of special signifi- cance, however, with reference to Jewish settlements in Eastern Europe, on which it is proposed to dwell briefly here. 1 Abrahams, op. cit.9 p. xxvi. 2 Cohen, Jewish Life in Modem Times, p. 224.THE JEWISH MIND 89 Contemporaneous with the migrations of the Jews along the Mediterranean to Italy, Spain, and Western Europe, there went forth another wave of immigrants through Asia Minor, the Caucasus, up to the shores of the Caspian and the Black seas. It is even possible that this movement ante- dated that toward the West.1 From the East had also come a pagan people, the Khazars, who around the year 740 a.d. became converted to Judaism. By the year 1100 the Jews had a considerable community at Kiev. With the conver- sion of Russia to the Greek Orthodox faith their fate gradu- ally changed. By the beginning of the twelfth century they had already experienced their first massacre or pogrom. Occasional merchants and scholars visited these Eastern settlements from the West; and from the East, by the time of the Crusades, studious young men came to study with the German rabbisQDuring the Crusades, beginning with the first in 1096, a steady stream of Jews who found themselves persecuted in the provinces of the Danube and the Rhine began to find their way to Poland, which by this time had already come under the influence of the Roman church, but took a less active part in the persecution of the Jews incident to the Crusades/) V^From their (German brethren the Jews of Poland received their communal organization, their religious culture, and their language, which was a German dialect interspersed with Hebrew and Polish expressions and forms which gradu- ally developed into what is known at the present time as Yiddish?) The special relationship to the ruler, the hostility of the church, and the partial local autonomy of the Jewish 1 Most of the details of this section are taken from S. M. Dubnow, His- tory of the Jews in Russia and Poland from the Earliest Times until the Present Day (3 vol., Philadelphia, 1916, 1918, 1920).9° THE GHETTO communities were transferred from the West to the East almost in their entirety. In Lithuania, however, the Jews enjoyed a great deal more autonomy and tolerance than in Poland. This accounts for the superior status which the Lithuanian Jews have maintained to the present day as over against the rest of Eastern European Jewry. On the whole, the Jews were not so closely confined to the cities in the East as they were in the West, and they had more lenient regula- tions as to land tenancy than they enjoyed in the West. But in general they drifted into the same economic functions that they had practiced in Germany: "By the beginning of the fourteenth century Polish Jewry had become a big eco- nomic and social factor with which the state was bound to reckon. It was now destined to become also an independent spiritual entity, having stood for four hundred years under the tutelage of the Jewish center in Germany.'^JIn Poland, unlike Germany, the Jews frequently settled in villages and engaged in farming, while in the towns they were not chiefly absorbed in petty trades and money-lending, but had open to them a varied field of economic activities. They engaged in the trades, handicrafts, and many other economic func- tions, including the leasing of crown and Shlakhta estates,2 with the right of propination (distilling and selling spirituous liquors), which they continued to exercise on behalf of nobles even after the partition of Poland^ The Jews were also the leading tax-farmers of the country.* They found themselves favored by royalty and partly by the big Shlakhta, or estate owners, and opposed by the clergy and the burghers. The changes of the position of the Jews in Poland depended upon the shifting dominance of these classes in the Polish state. 1 Dubnow, op. citI, 65. a Shlakhta refers to landed nobility.THE JEWISH MIND 9i The Jews found themselves the intermediaries between the nobles and the peasantry on the one hand, and the keen competitors of the burghers on the other. q.hnl*^-rtr 1. .^;rmnitieRT the Jews of Poland enjoyed even greater autonomy than the German Jews did in their ghettos. These Kgjwls were, moreover, more closely knit together into larger units than they were in the West. These conferences, or councils, as they were called, the most noted of which was the "Council of the Four Lands," were not only the guardians of the Jewish civil interests in rela- tion to the government, but they appointed rabbis, passed laws for the Jews, decided upon religious ritual, education, taxes, and sat as a sort of supreme court in matters Jewish. The Kahals had compulsory education, which centered around the Bible and the Talmud, for all children between the sixth and thirteenth year. The elementary schools, or cheders, were either public or private, while the higher education, carried on in the yeshibas, was entirely under community control. [Poland, during the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries, rapidly became the center of Jewish reli- gious study, and was less influenced by secular interests than hadj>een the case in France and Germany?] \ By the middle of the seventeenth century the Jews of Eastern Europe began to suffer from periodical massacres at the hands of military peasant bands or Cossacks, and later the invading Muscovites. The clergy fomented many ritual murder accusations1 against the Jews, and the pans, or rural estate owners, together with the guilds in the cities, con- trived to make the next century and a half a period of almost uninterrupted massacres of JewsTj 1 The charge that the Jews slaughtered Christian children and used human blood in their religious ritual has often been made the basis of massa- cres and lately of judicial persecution. The Beilis case is a recent example.92 THE GHETTO The social and economic decline of the Polish Jews, which set in after 1648, was not conducive to widening the Jewish mental hori- zon, which had been sharply defined during the preceding epoch. Even at the time when Polish-Jewish culture was passing through its zenith, Rabbinism reigned supreme in school and literature. Needless to say, there was no chance for any broader intellectual currents to con- test this supremacy during the ensuing period of decline. The only rival of Rabbinism, whose attitude was now peaceful and now war- like, was Mysticism, which was nurtured by the mournful disposition of a life-worn people, and grew into maturity in the unwholesome atmosphere of Polish decadence.1 During this period of decadence the masses became increas- ingly ignorant and superstitious, while the talmudic culture, narrow and circumscribed as it was, became the exclusive possession of a small circle of scholars. The magic and superstition of Cabalism gained not only a strong hold upon the masses but on tfie spiritual leaders of the various com- munities as well. During this period the Sabbatian movement, started by the self-appointed messianic liberator, Sabbatai Zevi, swept like wildfire through the superstitious masses of Jews. This was followed later by another messianic movement known as Chassidism, which, however, was outlawed by the or- thodox rabbis. They were followed by another sect, known as the Frankists. These movements were in part a revolt against the dry-as-dust Rabbinism of the day, but could not have flourished had it not been for the degraded social and intellectual position of the Jews, and the restlessness inci- dent to the political disturbances of the period of persecu- tion. Up to the partitions of Poland the Jews had been fairly consistently excluded from Russia proper. With Poland 1 Dubnow, op. cit., 1,198-99.THE JEWISH MIND 93 partly incorporated in the Russian Empire, the rulers of that empire had also inherited the problem of the Jews in their new domain. Their fate from now on was decided on a larger scale and from a more distant center than ever before. Furthermore, with the ascendancy of the Greek Orthodox church the history of the Eastern Jews takes on a more local and special aspect. The Jews of the East share less and less the fate of their Western brethren.new device develops, commensurate with the new problems presented by the vast territory of Russia, namely, the pale of settlement. By these measures, which were enacted, revoked, and re-enacted several times in the course of the latter part of the eight- eenth, the whole of the nineteenth, and part of the twenti- eth, century, the Jews are restricted to certain provinces of the empire. Furthermore, within these provinces the Jews are restricted to certain localities, particularly the towns and cities^JOccasional expulsions from the rural districts, in whi6h they had at various times been permitted to settle, resulted in the overcrowding of the Jewish quarters of the cities and in the duplication in aggravated form of the slum conditions of the Western ghettos. Meanwhile the Jewish population was often decimated by pogroms. With all this came the exclusion from public life, from many occupations, and from popular education and the universitie£TNot only was the ghetto life of the East, during this specific period at least, in many instances more confining and isolating than that of the West, but it persisted long after the walls of the Western ghetto had vanished, and the Jews of the West had come toshare the cultural life of the Western European peoples, i The Jews of the pale, the Russian, Polish, and in part the Roumanian Jews, came, as a result, to be differentiated94 THE GHETTO from those of Western Europe, the German, French, Dutch, and English Jews, in several fundamental respects. For a long period the Jews of the East were merely a cultural dependency, an outpost of Western Jewry. When an inde- pendent cultural life did develop in Russia, Poland, and Lithuania, it was self-sufficient and self-contained, apart from the larger world beyond the pale. Not so with the Jews of Western Europe. They were never quite imper- vious to the currents of thought and the social changes that characterized the life of Europe since the Renaissance. While the Jews of the East lived in large part in rural com- munities—in a village world—those of the West were pre- dominantly a city people, in touch with the centers of trade and finance near and far, and in touch also with the pulsating intellectual life of the world. While the Jews of the Rhine cities were associating with kings and princes, with men of thought and of practical affairs, their brethren in Russia were dealing with peasants and an uncultured class of decadent, feudal landlords. When the Jewries of the West were already seething with modernist religious, political, and social movements, those of the East were still steeped in mysticism and medieval ritual. While the German Jews were moving along with the tide of progress in science and modern industry, those of Russia and Galicia were still sharing the backwardness and isolation of the gentile world of villagers and peasants!. Although, until the middle of the last century, the Jews ofthe East were, as a rule, never quite so confined in their physical movements as were the ghetto Jews of the West, they lived in a smaller world—a world characterized by rigidity and stability—and when they were herded into cities in which they constituted the preponderant bulk of the total population they merelyTHE JEWISH MIND 95 turned these cities into large villages that had little in com- mon with the urban centers of the Westj^When we charac- m terize the Jews as an urban people, therefore, we do so with f the important qualification that the Jews of Eastern Europgjl occupied until recently the status of a village people. This distinction between the two large camps of modern Jewry goes far to explain the features of Jewish communal life in the New World to be dealt with in subsequent chapteredHoly EmissaryCHAPTER Vn THE GHETTO IN DISSOLUTION SOCIAL MOVEMENTS Scarcely had the medieVal Jewish communities attained the position of fairly autonomous settlements with a culture more or less distinct from that of their neighbors when pro- found currents from without and within the ghetto began to stir the imagination and the activity of their inhabitants. Some of these, such as Cabalism and Chassidism, have al- ready been alluded to in the previous chapter. These, how- ever, were just the beginning of a whole series of social move- ments which agitated the life of the people. While some were intended to preserve what there was of separatism and sectarianism, others tended to break down the ghetto walls both in the literal and the figurative sense. ^Toward the end of the sixteenth century the Cabalistic movement was making headway, especially in Eastern Europe, rapidly'enveloping Jewish life in a deep veil of mysticism and superstition. Intellectual activities were at their low ebb. The air of the ghetto and the pale was stag- nant with ignorance, religious bigotry, and fanaticism which fed on th^ exclusion from the world without and the violent persecution^ The intellectual life of the Jews was then limited to the study of the Bible and Talmud. These studies, principally encouraged in the Talmudic schools in Poland, were not primarily directed to finding out the spirit of these books. They made of the text of the Bible a palaestre for interpretations which, though clever, were hair-splitting and fantas- tic; nor did the Talmud, upon which they piled commentary upon 9198 THE GHETTO commentary, and supercommentary upon supercommentary, fare much better. By the side of these flourished the Kabbala, which in its most important book, the Zohar, professed to have revealed the key to all wisdom, and to be able thereby to dispense with all other knowl- edge. The innumerable ritual ceremonies were slavishly followed and made the pivot of daily life. Nothing gives us clearer insight into the mental attitude of the Jews of that period than that event which moved the whole of the seventeenth century Jewry to its very depths— the appearance of the Messiah, Sabbatai Zevi, and the subsequent cult of Sabbataism in the eighteenth century, led by Nehemiah Chija Chajon and other less scrupulous adventurers. On the same level was the quarrel between Emden and Eybenschiitz in Hamburg (1750-56), a quarrel which raised the passions of Jews all over Europe to the boiling point, raising the question whether or not the life-saving amulets sold to midwives by Rabbi Eybenschiitz contained the name of Sabbatai Zevi in their formula. Such was the intellectual standard of Jewry in the eighteenth century.1 -vl The Chassidic movement was an outgrowth of the Caba- listic lore. It was essentially rustic in origin, and at first was taken up only by the most provincial and ignorant masses of Jews residing in isolated towns and villagesIsrael Baal Shem Tob (known by the abbreviated form of his name, "Besht," the "master of the good name"), born around 1700 on the border line of Podolia and Wallachia, became the founder and leader of the sect. He had great advantages for his calling: he was poor, he was ignorant, he was enthusias- tic, and he was obscure. More important, however, was the fact that he began his practice as wonder-worker at a time when the whole mass of Jewry was looking for a messiah, and when the orthodox rabbis had become detached from the people. I Be§ht became the favorite of the masses. Warm-hearted and simple in disposition, he managed to get close to the people and to find out 1 Ruppin, op. tit., pp. 4-5.THE GHETTO IN DISSOLUTION their spiritual wants. Originally a healer of the body, he imperceptibly grew to be a teacher of religion. He taught that true salvation lies, not in Talmudic learning, but in whole-hearted devotion to God, in un- sophisticated faith and fervent prayer.....Besht preached that the plain man, imbued with naive faith, and able to pray fervently and whole-heartedly, was dearer and nearer to God than the learned for- malist spending his whole life in the study of the Talmud. Not to speculate in religious matters, but to believe blindly and devotedly, such was the motto of Besht. This simplified formula of Judaism ap- pealed to the Jewish masses and to those democratically inclined scholars who were satisfied neither with rabbinic scholasticism nor with the ascetic Cabala of the school of Ari.1 The opponents of 'Chassidism called themselves Mithnagdim, "Protestants," and persecuted and excommunicated the Chassidists wherever they could lay their hands on the mem- bers of the sect which had grown powerful and had become harder to manage because it had transformed itself into a secret society. Meanwhile, in Lithuania Jewish scholarship had taken an intellectualistic turn, but remained definitely within the restricted horizon of talmudical learning. During the second half of the eighteenth century a new light began to shine for the Jews of Western Europe which sent some of its rays to the East and left profound impres- sions upon the whole complexion of Jewry. This was the wave of the so-called ^Enlightenment," the inception of which is usually associated with the name of Moses Mendels- sohn. Partly influenced by the enlightenment of the whole of Western Europe during the latter half of the eighteenth century, and particularly by the French philosophers of that period, and partly by the development of commerce and industry, which took off some of the stigma of the usurer from the Jew and facilitated numerous contacts, a new social 1 Dubnow, op, cit.f I, 224-25.IOO THE GHETTO and economic outlook began to characterize the Jews of the West. The old separatism began to break down, and left its marks upon Jewish religious and communal iif£ < • While in the West the increased personal intercourse be- tween Jews and Christians also stimulated the Jews to par- ticipate in the wider world of thought, to read French and German books, to abandon their ghetto jargon (Jiidisch- Deutsch) in favor of the language of the country in which they lived, in the East matters stood differently. /The breezes of Western culture had hardly a chance to penetrate to this realm, protected as it was by the double wall of Rabbinism and Hasidism. And yet here and there one may discern on the surface of social life the foam of the wave from the far-off West. From Germany the free-minded "Berliner," the nickname applied to these "new men," was moving toward the borders of Russia. He arrayed himself in a short German coat, cut off his earlocks, shaved his beard, neglected the religious observances, spoke German or "the language of the land," and swore by the name of Moses Mendelssohn. The culture of which he was the banner-bearer was a rather shallow enlightenment, which affected exterior and form rather than mind and heart. It was "Ber- linerdom," the harbinger of the more complicated Haskala of the fol- lowing period, which was imported into Warsaw during the decade of Prussian dominion (1796-1806). The contact between the capitals of Poland and Prussia yielded its fruits. The Jewish "dandy" of Berlin appeared on the streets of Warsaw, and not infrequently the long robe of the Polish Hasid made way timidly for the German coat, the symbol of "enlightenment/^/ The Eastern interpretation of "enlightenment" was con- siderably influenced by the Russian government's zeal to have the Jews "enlightened" by compulsory methods, among which was forcible recruiting of Jewish boys into the army, there to be made into good Christians and Russians. Another feature of the government's program was the partial 1 Ibid., pp. 284-85.THE GHETTO IN DISSOLUTION IOI abolition of the communal autonomy of the Jews and com- pulsory instruction in secular subjects, without, however, permitting the Jews to participate in civil functions or to attend the secular educational institutions. Finally, the Russian government sought by decree to force the Jews to abandon their characteristic Jewish dress and appearance. All these efforts, while they made for great numbers of con- versions—feigned as well as genuine—to Christianity, on the whole merely tightened the hold of ritualism and provin- cialism upon the Jews of Russia. QTwo other social movements of profound significance swept Judaism before the era of emancipation opened: r nationalism and socialismj Since Zionism has grown into a formidable movement, attempts haveT5£en made at various times to show that the Jews had never lost the desire of at some time returning to Palestine and there re-establishing their national sovereignty.rThe Zionists point to the fre- quent references by medievalthinkers and poets to the Holy Land as indicative of the fact that Jewish nationalism had never ceased to play a role even at a time when the morale of the Jews in the diaspora was at its lowest eb This is to be attributed to the necessity of such a moventent as Zion- ism to find a raison d'etre, to justify itself and seek support for its aims in the historic experiences of the people. But a more objective study reveals the contrary: [■Judaism became nationalized by the fall of feudalism and the rise df the ghettosj The superficial appearance of a national entity has, I fear, originated the movement now popular with some modern Jews in favor of creating a Jewish state, politically independent and per- haps religiously homogeneous. I speak regretfully, because one does not like to see enthusiasm wasted over a conception which has no roots in the past and no fruits to offer for the future. The idealized love of Zion which grew up in the Middle Ages had no connexion whatever102 THE GHETTO with this process of nationalization through which Judaism passed. Still less was it connected with an aspiration for religious homogeneity which did not exist in the Middle Ages, and is not likely to survive in Judaism now that it has once more become denationalized. National aspirations are nursed by persecution, but the medieval longing for the Holy Land grew up, not in persecution, but in the sunshine of literature. The Spanish-Jewish poet, to use Heine's famous figure, came to love Jerusalem as the medieval troubadour loved his lady, and the love grew with the lays. Jehuda Halevi used the very language of medieval love in this passionate address to his "woe-begone darling": 0! who will lead me on To seek the spots where, in far distant years, The angels in their glory dawned upon Thy messengers and seers? 0! who will give me wings That I may fly away, And there, at rest from all my wanderings, The ruins of my heart among thy ruins lay? The same Jehuda Halevi who sings thus declared that Israel was to the nations as the heart to the body—not a nation of the nations, but a vitalizing element of them all.1 Whatever parallels may be found by the historian between Zionism and the European nationalism of the nineteenth century, the former had the added stimulus of the messianic hopes which repeatedly stirred the Jewish world during the Middle Ages, and which had found vivid expression in Jew- ish literature. In the ghettos the Jews spoke a jargon of Judeo-German, Judeo-Spanish, Judeo-Polish, or whatever the admixture might be in accordance with local circumstances. These Yiddish dialects had already developed something of a literature. The movement of enlightenment, however, which 1 Abrahams, op. cit., pp. xxiv-xxv.THE GHETTO IN DISSOLUTION 103 was given great impetus by Moses Mendelssohn's translation of the Pentateuch into pure German, put a stigma upon the use of Yiddish, which thereafter was not considered a polite language/ The talmudic scholars, even, who used the jargon in their study and conversation began to look with horror upon the occasional translation of the Scriptures into Yid- dish.(By the opening of the nineteenth century the enlight- enment movement, especially in the East, had taken the form of a neo-Hebraic Renaissance, known as the Haskalah movement. Plays, poems, scientific, political, and religious treatises began to appear in Hebrew, and many translations of literary works from other languages into neo-Hebrew were perfected 5 This literary revival lent itself readily to the propagation of nationalism^ From quite another source the Jewish nationalistic movement gained strong support. During several attempts to "solve the Jewish problem" in Russia on the part of the government, efforts had been made to settle the Jews on the land in some uncolonized areas. These Jewish settlements received only half-hearted encouragement from the govern- ment, but in spite of that some had a fair measure of success. Large parts of the Jewish population began to feel that a territorial basis for the Jewish communities on a sufficiently large scale to assure economic self-sufficiency, accompanied by religious and political autonomy, was the only way to save the Jews from persecution on the one hand, and from conversion and disintegration on the other. The social and political disabilities that hampered even those Jews who had achieved something in the secular world, especially the Jewish students, added strength to the Zionist movement. These "intellectuals" found themselves rebuffedio4 THE GHETTO as undesirables and inferiors in European society, and many of them returned to their people enthusiastic about the movement to establish a Jewish nation. . \*£ionism did much to reunite Eastern and Western Jews whom the different historical experiences and the unequal rate of social and econoniic progress of the East and the West had widely separatedJToward the middle of the nine- teenth century numbers of Jews, particularly aged Jews, journeyed to Palestine, there to pass their last days. Some of them, and more often their children, became apostles of Zionism. The advocacy of the colonization of Palestine as the only solu- tion of the Jewish question was made as early as 1818 by Mordecai Manuel Noah, in America, and was repeated in different countries at intervals throughout the century. In France it was urged in 1830 by the historian Joseph Salvador; in Germany, in 1862, independently by Moses Hess, in his Rome and Jerusalem; and by Hirsch Kalischer, in his Quest of Zion} the one a socialist, the other an orthodox rabbi; in England, in 1876, by George Eliot in her famous novel, Daniel Deron- da; and in Russia, in 1880, by the Hebrew writers Moses Lilienblum and Perez Smolenskin, and soon after by Leon Pinsker, too, who, in his historic pamphlet, Auto-Emancipation, eloquently argued that the settlement of the Jews in a land of their own was the only salvation from their sufferings, though he did not specifically propose Palestine for the purpose.1 In 1870 the Alliance Israelite, which had been estab- lished in Paris in i860 to assist the Jews of Eastern Europe, established an agricultural school in Palestine. In 1884 the "Society of Lovers of Zion" was founded in Kattowitz, at a representative Jewish conference to promote extensive settlements in Palestine. The work of colonization, however, lagged at the beginning, partly owing to the early settlers being endowed only with zeal, but with 1 Cohen, op, cit,, p. 328.THE GHETTO IN DISSOLUTION 105 little practical knowledge, and partly owing to the obstacles inevitably associated with pioneer settlement; and it was not until Baron Edmond de Rothschild came to its aid with his munificent generosity that it made any appreciable progress. The Lovers of Zion were animated, it is true, by the national sentiment, but the general character of their activity was a blend of philanthropy and religious piety, whilst the aid contributed by Western Jews was also prompted mainly by charitable motives tinged with the racial consciousnesf Not until the advent of the feuilletonist and playwright, Theodor Herzl, in 1896, was the Jewish national sentiment propounded as an idea whose expression should not limit itself to the creation of scattered colonies in the Holy Land, but which should expand into an organized endeavour of the Jewish people to work for its national regeneration^] With this, Zionism became a political movement. HerzFs pamphlet, The Jewish State, in spite of strong opposition from rabbis and laymen, had the effect of bringing together the first International Congress at Basle, in 1897, to consider the program outlined by him. Since then Zionist congresses have been meeting regularly. ^Sonism^jt must be remembered, wasnot a ghetto move- mej$T It began with those who had already partially emerged from the ghetto. It did not start with the Jews of the pale, for they had too little contact with the world of practical politics to inaugurate a nationalistic movement of this sort._ The Jew, as long as he finds himself inclosed by ghetto walls, is not only helpless, but is extremely naive about the world^ outside. The Zionist movement was, at least in part, the cul- mination of the attempt on the part of the Western Jews, who had already acquired some experience with politics and civic life, to assist their Eastern brethren, who were still held strictly under the thumb of Tsaristic autocracyTj As the Zionist movement gained momentum, howeverfrTwas the 1 Ibid., pp. 328-29.io6 THE GHETTO Jews of Eastern Europe who became its most ardent cham- pions. Pogroms and exclusion from the common life of the country were the levers that compelled their adherence, while the Western Jews, who began to feel fairly comfortable under the changed conditions of the last half of the nine- teenth century, maintained a philanthropic interest in the movement and often were compelled by idealistic motives of cultural solidarity or personal motives of leadership to maintain their affiliation and contribute their "shekel," as the annual dues were called; but on the whole the political life of their own locality was much more immediate and ab- sorbing. Not until the recrudescence of anti-Semitism in recent times has their attitude toward Zionism changed. But already it is becoming evident to many who otherwise are favorably inclined to Zionism that the establishment of an independent Jewish state, far from solving the "Jew- ish problem," would merely result in making the ghetto international.1 Side by side with Zionism a great number of Jews thought that they had found another road leading to free- dom, the road of political and social revolution, which found expression in the Socialist movement. In France, Germany, and Russia numbers of Jewish workers and intellectuals looked to the general revolt of the masses as the surest means that would bring political and social equality to them. Even while they were still excluded from the sphere of political activities of the various countries, they could participate in the agitation and discussion that first centered around the question of constitutional monarchies and later took the form of Utopian socialism, finally culminating in the move- ments generally identified by the names of two Jews, Karl 1 See Karl Kautsky, Are the Jews a Race? London, 1926.THE GHETTO IN DISSOLUTION 107 Marx and Ferdinand Lasalle. The Jews, being predominant- ly members of the middle class, and particularly the petit bourgeoisie, stood as a whole on a liberal democratic plat- form. They were represented in the Socialist movement less by numbers than by enthusiasm and outstanding personal- ities. Russia, socialism among the Jews took partly the form Zionism, and became incorporated in the Poale Zion party^-The federation of Jewish socialist organizations, known as "Bund," exercised an important r61e in the forma- tion of the Russian Social Democratic party. It was com- posed largely of Jewish workingmen, but received its leader- ship and enthusiasm from numerous students and intellectu- als who joined its ranks. It was a secret movement, of course, ancLJiad about it much of the romantic atmosphere. t Finally there came a movement within Judaism which confined itself largely to reforming the ritual, known as the Reform movement. This movement not only brought Jew- ish religious services in accord with the procedure in Chris- tian churches, such as introducing organs, mixed choirs, and the substitution of the vernacular for Hebrew, but it also permitted greater latitude in the personal conduct of the individual. In the Reform temples praying shawls and phil- acteries araniiers- At present the Jewish population of the world numbers around fifteen million.1 Of these, approximately 3,600,800 live in the United States.2 The government of the United States, in its census reports, takes no account of religious affiliation. As a result, no official figures are available. There are a number of national Jewish agencies, however, who have credible sources for the determination of the ap- proximate statistics on Jewish population. The great pro- portion of the Jewish population in this country lives in the following cities:3 1 American Jewish Yearbook (1927-28), p. 232. The number is given as 14,780,000. a Bureau of Jewish Social Research, estimate, 1920. * American Jewish Yearbook (1927-28), pp. 243-46.IS° THE GHETTO New York City Chicago....... Philadelphia... Cleveland..... Boston........ i, 643,012 Baltimore.. 285,000 Newark 240,000 St. Louis... 7 8,996 Los Angeles 77,500 Pittsburgh., 67,500 55,000 55,000 43,000 42,450 The following table indicates the influx of Jewish immi- grants since the beginning of the large-scale Russian immi- gration: \Two-thirds of the Jewish immigration of 1924 was from Poland, Russia, and Roumania, the strongholds of orthodox Judaism.^ In view of the new immigration restrictions, esti- mates of orthodox accretions to American Jewry are likely to be inaccurate, since many immigrants now have to seek admission under the quota of countries other than their own. The influx of Reformed Jews from Germany and other western countries is, therefore, probably less than one-third of the total indicated by statistics. In spite of immigration barriers, therefore,, the tendency for the Jewish immigration from the East vastly to outnumber that from central and western Europe persists. The future composition of the Jew- ish population of the United States promises to change at a rate and in a direction not far different from that shown during the last fifty years. Similarly the regions in which the new arrivals tend to settle remain about the same. The Years 1881-98... 1899-1907 1908-26... Number 533.478 829,244 976,219 Net increase since 1881 2.338,941* *Ibid.t p. 250.THE JEWS IN AMERICA 151 statistics on the destination of the Jewish immigrants show that they continue to prefer the large urban centers, New York alone being the destination of 55.6 per cent of all Jewish new arrivals, during the year ending June 30, 1926, while it was the destination of only 23.3 per cent of non- Jewish immigrants.1 1 Ibidp. 255.Street MusiciansCHAPTER IX ORIGINS OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY IN CHICAGO THE PIONEERS1 Of the three thousand Jews in the United States about the year 1818, when Illinois was admitted into the union, only one apparently had ventured as far west as Illinois. The principal Jewish settlements of that time were those along the Atlantic seaboard. The first Jew to arrive in the swampy region around Lake Michigan known as Chicago was a peddler, J. Gottlieb, in 1838. Little is known about him, but it is believed that he found California even more attractive than the thriving settlement at Chicago, and went west during the gold rush of 1849. I^4I we evidence of at least four or five Jewish residents in the city, which then had a little over five thousand inhabitants. These early arrivals were mainly Bavarian Jews, who had come to America just a few years before, and had first settled in eastern communities. At this time one feature of governmental restriction in Europe proved particularly irritating to the members of the expanding Jewish communities. In the German principali- ties families were limited in number by law, and before mar- 1 For further details of this account, see H. L. Meites, History of the Jews of Chicago, Chicago, 1924, one of the most detailed and comprehensive works of its kind of any Jewish community in the United States. Also A. T. Andreas, History of Chicago, Chicago, 1877; H. Eliassof, "The History of the Jews of Illinois," and "The History of the Jews of Chicago," in Re- form Advocate, May 4, 1901, and January 30, 1909; also article, "Chicago," in Jewish Encyclopedia. 153154 THE GHETTO riage licenses were issued, "vacancies" were supposed to exist in the community for the establishment of another family. This right to marry and settle in a community was called Familiantenrecht, and existed in certain parts of Europe until quite recently. Many efforts were made to evade it, and emigration was one of the paths open to a young couple contemplating marriage. The settlers of this period were for the most part very young men engaged in peddling or merchandising. An in- teresting and representative account of these pioneers is furnished by one of them: It was on the first of September, in the year 1840, just at a time when great excitement prevailed in New York, in fact, all over the country, on account of the election between Harrison and Van Buren, that I landed in New York, a stranger in a strange land. There were no steamers at that time, and people came from Europe in sailing vessels; all were dumped in New York and kept together as near as possible. Now began the problem of how to proceed to make a living, for the majority of the immigrants were poor, and strangers to the lan- guage and customs of the country. Upon the advice of those who were here before them, the greater part of the Jewish young men went peddling. There were two or three Jewish merchants who supplied Jewish peddlers with "Yankee notions," which they called Kuttle Mutile. The principal merchant was dubbed Hershd Ganef (Hirsch, the thief); he trusted them all, instructed them what to call things, and how to offer them for sale. There was a synagogue in New York called the "India Rubber shid" because it was principally upheld by peddlers whose stock in trade was mostly suspenders.....All those absent from home hur- ried to the city on a holiday, in order to be there for the service..... The families had all brought with them their old-country piety, and also their Shdbboth lamps with six or seven arms, filled with stearic oil, made cotton wicks by hand, and on Friday evening before the beginning of the Sabbath, would light them, then offer a consecra- tive prayer, and after that would not touch fire and, of course, had toJEWISH COMMUNITY IN CHICAGO 155 have a fire woman, Shabboth goye, whenever a light or fire was needed on the Sabbath. They had a congregational oven to which all who belonged brought their pots and kettles on Friday afternoon. The oven was heated, the pots placed in, and the oven doors sealed with clay in order to retain their heat, and kept closed until Saturday noon, when they came to get them. The coffee for the Sabbath morning was kept hot on ashes on top of this oven. At one time I was honored with an invitation by an acquaintance of mine to participate in eating a genuine German Shabboth Kugel (pudding). When seated at the table the fire woman came in and wanted her money for her services, when the wife said, "We don't pay money on Shabboth. You come to- night, and my husband will pay you."1 As a rule, relatives came together to a given community and » co-operated in establishing themselves and maintaining their religious and family life, but there were a number of lone wolves who lived in boarding houses or "temperance hotels" and attached themselves to the rest of the community. Among the early settlers were several merchant tailors and dry goods dealers, a tobacco dealer, a grocer, and several peddlers who made Chicago their headquarters. Most of the Jews established themselves on Lake Street, which was then the principal business section of Chicago. They lived behind or above their stores. The early newspapers and directories of the city indicate that they advertised their wares widely and became active participants in the economic and political life of the community. The first brick house in Chicago was built for Benedict Shubert, in the business district, on West Lake Street. This was an undertaking which in those days was an unmistakable sign of prosperity. Others fared not so well. Among them was a peddler, Isaac Ziegler, whose lack of traditional Jewish business enterprise is attested to by the fact that "it is said of him that he spent much of his time 1 Mayer Klein, quoted from Meites, op, cit.$ p. 40.THE GHETTO helping to extricate teams that had sunk into the mud on Madison and Clark streets, in front of his place of business, and finally, in an effort to divert traffic, caused signs to be put up in the middle of the road reading 'Bottomless' and 'Road to China.'"1 Early in the forties the tide of immigration from Ger- many became so great that the older settlers in the East be- gan to look for ways and means of establishing the new- comers in the outlying regions. While this might have been a self-defense measure, they regarded it as one of their reli- gious obligations. A Jewish philanthropist, Renau, of New York, sent an agent to Chicago to investigate the possibili- ties of founding a Jewish settlement there. A colonization project was started near Chicago in Schaumburg, Cook County. The agent reported to the colonization society under whose auspices he was sent at Mr. Renau's instance, that "this part of the land, especially the town of Chicago, opens a vista into a large commercial future." A number of Jews came, but left after a short stay, either taking up a plot of land of their own as a farm (land sold then at about one dollar an acre) or else settling in Chicago to engage in business. Characteristically enough, Meyer, the agent, him- self finally left the Schaumburg project to engage in the real estate business in Chicago. In comparison with the thriving business life that was developing in the near-by metropolis, farming in Schaumburg seemed altogether too prosaic for the enterprising Jewish settlers. Between 1840 and 1844 the Chicago Jewish community was increased by about twenty new immigrants. This influx continued until 1849, when a strong tide of new settlers was brought in following the completion of the Galena & Chicago 1 Meites, op. tit., p. 38.JEWISH COMMUNITY IN CHICAGO 157 Railway to Elgin, and the great wave of emigration follow- ing the European reaction after the abortive revolutions of 1848. By this time the Jewish element had come to include, besides the Bavarians, an increasing number from the Rhenish Palatinate, and from Posen and East Prussia. Although the Jewish community had grown, the various families lived within a few blocks of each other, within the area that now constitutes the Loop, or central business dis- trict. Only one family lived on the West Side: Henry Hor- ner, a grocer, who established himself on Randolph and Canal streets. These settlers, most of them coming from localities in Europe very close to each other, maintained intimate relations with one another. They visited frequently at one another's homes, and especially on Friday evenings and on Saturdays, when their places of business were closed, they took advantage of the opportunity for comradeship and the mutual interchange of news from the Old World and their relatives in the East. Newcomers in the community generally found the older settlers helpful, not only in im- portant material respects, but in getting accustomed to the new conditions of life and maintaining their morale. As in the communities from which they came, so in Chicago, the Jewish settlers soon felt the need of establishing those immediately essential institutions of communal life such as the synagogue and the burial society. The first reli- gious services were held on the Day of Atonement, 1845, *n a room above the store of one of the members, on what is now Wells Street, at the corner of Lake. For the first time in their history they were able to bring together ten adult males to constitute a minyun. The next year, it seems, the at- tendance was no larger. Before a congregation could be formally organized, the need for a communal cemetery wasTHE GHETTO felt. An acre of ground was purchased from the city in 1846, for forty-six dollars, in what is now Lincoln Park, in the heart of the residential section, but what was then outside the city limits. ^The organization of a burial society was the first overt act toward the organization of a Jewish community in Chicago^ Because of the presence of certain pious members in the community who attempted to subsist on a limited diet rather than violate the prescribed ritual, a congregation was organized in 1847, and a shochet and reader procured from New York. The burial-ground society turned over its prop- erty to the newly organized congregation, which assumed the name Kehilath Anshe Ma'ariv (Community of the Men of the West). The orthodox Ashkenazic ritual was intro- duced and the members strictly observed the Sabbath. Signs appeared in the windows of the places of business owned by Jews, on Sabbath, reading "Closed on account of Holiday." The first place of worship was in a room above a store on Wells and Lake streets but as the community grew and became more prosperous a frame synagogue was con- structed on the site of the present post-office at Clark and Quincy streets. The dedication of this synagogue aroused the interest of the Chicagoans of that day. The Daily Democrat of June 14, 1851, reported it as follows: DEDICATION OF THE JEWISH SYNAGOGUE The ceremonies at the dedication of the first Jewish synagogue in Illinois, yesterday, were very interesting indeed. An immense number had to go away, from inability to gain admittance. There were per- sons of all denominations present. We noticed several clergymen of different religious denominations. The Jewish ladies cannot be beaten in decorating a church. The flowers, leaves, and bushes were woven into the most beautiful draperyJEWISH COMMUNITY IN CHICAGO 159 that Chicago ever saw before. The choir, consisting of a large number of ladies and gentlemen, did honor to the occasion and the denomina- tion..... No person that has made up his mind to be prejudiced against the Jews ought to hear such a sermon preached. It was very captivating and contained as much real religion as any sermon we ever heard preached. We never could have believed that one of those old Jews we heard denounced so much could have taught so much liberality towards other denominations and so earnestly recommended a thor- ough study of the Old Testament (each one for himself) and entire freedom of opinion and discussion. We would sooner have taken him for one of the independent order of free thinkers, than a Jew. Mr. Isaacs is an Englishman and is settled in New York City. There are Jewish synagogues as far west as Buffalo and Cleveland. The Jews in our city are not numerous, but are wealthy, very re- spectable and public spirited. The Jewish Sabbath is on Saturday, and a very interesting service takes place today. The whole Mosaic law written on parchment (they never have it printed for church services) will be unrolled from a large scroll and read from. Rev. Mr. Isaacs will again preach. The service will commence at 8 a.m. and last until 11 a.m. The earlier part of the service will be most interesting. Gentlemen are requested to keep their hats on, and to take seats below. The ladies will take seats upstairs, according to the Jewish custom of separating the sexes. During the cholera epidemic of 1849, the Jewish com- munity ranks were somewhat thinned. But the stream of incoming settlers, among them some who had intended to seek their fortune in the gold fields of California, but felt that Chicago was a promising stopping place, soon replen- ished the ranks(JThe community was closely knit, and each shared the fortunes of every other member. Weddings and funerals were communal affairs, and every Sabbath and holi- day brought the Jews from the neighboring regions togetheri6o THE GHETTO in the temporary synagogue, which, in spite of its liberal rabbi, retained most of its Old World familial and communal character. As newcomers arrived they were introduced to the older settlers in the synagogue, and the homes of the established families were thrown open to themT) OLD AND NEW SETTLERS fThe' first Jewish settlers of Chicago, as has already been indicated, were Bavarian Jews^The congregation which they had formed was coming to be known as the Bayerische Shul, in contradistinction to the Polische Shul, the Kehilath B'nai Sholom (Congregation of the Men of Peace), which was organized in 1852 by the growing Landsmannsckaft of German-Polish Jews who were also known as Herzogtiimer, because they hailed from the Herzogtum of Prussian Poland. The Bavarians considered themselves the earliest settlers, and looked down upon the Poles as an inferior caste. Most of the German Jews had by this time acquired considerable means, and could afford to maintain a higher standard of living. Some of them were men of education. On religious questions they were influenced by the modernist movement in vogue among German Jewry. Some of the Bavarians even thought the Bayerische Shul's ritual too orthodox, and agi- tated for greater reforms. A small group of the members of this congregation organized a Hebrew Benevolent Society in 1851, with the following object: "To provide in time of health for each other; for times of need and sickness to which the human frame is liable; and also to pay the last duty and homage in what must fall to all living; and____while we are able, to do good and to assist our brethren and fellow-men while life is granted to us."1 They organized a second ceme- 1 Meites, op. tit., p. 52.JEWISH COMMUNITY IN CHICAGO 161 tery association and bought three acres of ground in Lake View, near Graceland, as a burial ground. The meetings of this society, says the historian, "were marked by commend- able decorum, as the meetings of other Jewish organiza- tions in the early days unfortunately were not."1 A similar organization was formed by the members of Congregation B'nai Sholom. Meanwhile this congregation and the burial organization had each bought an acre from Kehilath Anshe Ma'ariv, so that there were now four Jewish cemeteries, three of them side by side. But this was merely an outward manifestation of the division that was beginning to characterize the Jewish community. Old World class distinctions and intertribal prejudices were reasserting them- selves even in the small pioneer community of Chicago. The pioneer congregation found it necessary to revise and modernize its ritual to satisfy the growing elements who were dissatisfied with the rigid, orthodox procedure. In this group intermarriage with Christians was not unusual, but conversion to Judaism of the non-Jewish mate was insisted upon. No one could be a member of even as liberal a group as the Hebrew Benevolent Society who, if he had married a Gentile, did not insist that conversion to Judaism take place, or who failed to observe the Day of Atonement. During this period the Jews began to play an active part in the local life. Henry Greenebaum, who, with his brother Elias, had established a bank in Chicago, was elected alderman from the sixth ward, and his brother became school agent. The local Jews began to participate in the national Jewish movement9p£ local lodge of the Independ- ent Order of B'nai B'rith was established in 1857. This organization made active efforts to heal the breach between 1 Ibidp. 53-162 THE GHETTO the various dissenting elements in the Jewish community. After two years it was able to unite the Polish and German elements in the consolidated United Hebrew Relief Associa- tion^ The Jews of Chicago also took an active part in the campaign to defeat the treaty with Switzerland, which discriminated against Jews, referred to in the previous chapter. They sent a delegate to a national convention of Jews in Baltimore in 1857 to protest against the treaty and present a memorial to the President of the United States. Reverberation of the American Reform movement began to reach Chicago from its center in Cincinnati, largely through its organ, the Israelite. In 1857 about forty members of the oldest congregation organized themselves as a secessionist party into the Israel- ite Reform Society. They wrote to the Israelite: "We will have service in the style of Temple Emanu El in New York. .... A nice organ and a good organist are already pro- vided." In true ghetto style, one of the main bones of con- tention within the congregation was the prayerbook to be used. The "Polish" congregation had already adopted its own Polish Siddur (prayerbook). The Reform element in- sisted that Kehilath Anshe Ma'ariv adopt the version used in the Reform Temple of Hamburg, but the conservative element insisted that the Roedelheimer Siddur (in use in Frankfort and printed in Roedelheim, near Frankfort) be continued. The controversy assumed violent proportions, all the contentiousness of older established communities being duplicated in the young settlement of Chicago. Had the community remained stable, it is probable that great divisions would not have occurred^But there was a constant influx of new members and of religious leaders who were enthusiastic about the new doctrines, in which they saw theJEWISH COMMUNITY IN CHICAGO 163 only successful method of continuing as Jews and yet over- coming the medievalism and separatism of the orthodox creed. The Reform movement had assumed all the charac- teristics of a sect^When an election was held in Kehilath Anshe Ma'ariv in 1857, a member who signed himself "Observer" wrote to the Israelite the following report: The Congregation Kehilath Anshe Ma'ariv has just closed its meeting, having passed through a most spirited and closely contested election for their officers for the ensuing year. There were two formal organizations supporting their respective nominees, and upon distinct platforms. "Equality, Reform, and Education," was the motto of the suc- cessful party; equality among members to be inaugurated in lieu of a self-constituted privileged class (of but few), who have from time im- memorial contrived to manage the congregational affairs in accordance with their own out-of-place ideas; reform in the divine service; de- votion and harmony in prayer; introduction of a choir; the mainte- nance of decorum by the members, which has been most sadly neg- lected; education by procuring able and competent men to fill the places of preacher, teacher, and reader..... The Congregation numbers 98 members. At the first ballot there were 83 votes cast, with the following results, viz., for the reform candidate for President, Elias Greenebaum, 51 votes; opposition, 32 votes. Oh! what a fall was there, my countrymenI Upon indication of the state of facts, after the first ballot, the present chairman, Mr. S. Cole, declared the meeting adjourned, but had to yield his temper to the calm, stern, and just indignation of the meeting, and re-opened..... Such a glorious triumph on the one hand, and complete defeat on the other was anticipated by none! Chicago at last has spoken for progress, and you may put her down as a sound pillar in the beautiful temple of the God of Israel.1 No such violent storms struck the more homogeneous and conservative Polish group represented by congregation 1 Quoted from Meites, op. cit.164 THE GHETTO B'nai Sholom. The slow accretions in the membership of this organization merely served to strengthen the religious and communal ties. Meanwhile, even in the local distribution of the Jewish community of Chicago, there had taken place a definite crystallization of social and religious strata. By 1858 the Jewish community, which had grown substantially, was no longer centered on Lake and Wells streets. Numerous Jew- ish firms were to be found on Randolph, on Clark, and on La Salle Street. Some were north of the river. But the older and more prosperous members of the community were now to be found predominantly on Edina Place (Plymouth Court) and Buffalo Street (Federal Street). A few lived north and northwest of the present Loop; one lived "out in the country on Wabash Avenue, corner New Street, seven blocks south of Twelfth, where the houses were not yet numbered." There was only one Jew living close to the neighborhood west of the Chicago River that was later to develop into Chicago's Ghetto, and that was a butcher, Moses Goodman, who lived on Harrison Street, between Clinton and Jefferson. While it is difficult to trace substantial migrations from one part of the city to another during this period, it is ap- parent that by i860 there were definite areas of settlement to which one could point in Chicago: one area containing the older settlers, who had already adjusted themselves fairly well to their new surroundings, toward the south of the Loop, and another on the western fringe of the Loop, made up largely of later arrivals. The new settlers drifted into the area abandoned by the older ones, since it was in process of becoming a business area.JEWISH COMMUNITY IN CHICAGO 165 COMMUNITY PROBLEMS Before the outbreak of the Civil War the most important question before the Jews of Chicago was still the question of reform in the religious ritual. By this time, however, under the influence of outstanding local leaders and with the moral support from the older Jewish communities in the Eastern United States, particularly New York, Baltimore, and Cin- cinnati, the Reform section in Chicago had crystallized into a separate congregation which later became one of the out- standing bodies in American Jewry—Sinai congregation. The new congregation bought a Christian church at Monroe and Clark streets and converted it into Chicago's first "temple."1 In the "Polish" group there also occurred a split, which, in the spirit of Civil War days, was called a "Secesh" movement. The basis of this division, however, unlike that in the German camp, was not programistic, but purely per- sonal and factional. The synagogue to which it gave rise was known until recently as the Secesh Shul. Minor organi- zations such as Jewish young men's, young women's, and ladies' societies sprang up around the congregations then in existence and added strength and solidarity to the communal organization. During the Civil War the Chicago Jews were numerous enough to organize a company of their own and finance it themselves. They had no difficulty, although the Jewish population did not exceed a thousand, in raising one hundred men and over $11,000. Meanwhile the factional conflicts within the community smoldered. The end of the war brought a renewed interest on the part of the Jews in the 1 The term "synagogue" is applied to orthodox and conservative houses of worship, while the Reform congregations have "temples."166 THE GHETTO political life of Chicago. More than ever before, Jews were elected and appointed to local public office. $7,000 for the property, attesting to the growing strength and prosperity of the membership. For the first time in a Jewish service in Chicago the men removed their hats in the temple, a radical innovation for the timer^The rabbi of the congregation, Bernard Felsenthal, whoT5y this time had achieved a national reputation in Jewish Reform circles, de- clined re-election when the congregation refused to elect him for more than one year at a time, and a number of his fol- lowers organized a new congregation, known as Zion, but based on practically the same principles as Sinai. The former held services in a Baptist church on the West Side, but soon thereafter erected a building on Desplaines Street, between Madison and Washington—the first Jewish house of worship on the West Side. The Polish congregation mean- while had grown and its membership could afford a new synagogue of its own, which was erected on Harrison Street, south of the Loop, at a cost of $2o,ooo.\ The most important undertaking of the Jewish community afc a whole, however, was the building of the first Jewish hospital, which was opened in 1868/It was located on the North Side, on La Salle Street, between Schiller and Goethe, although the cen- ter of the Jewish community atjthat time was along Van Buren, Clark, and Wells streets.\JThe Chicago Jews, partic- ularly the B'nai Brith lodges, of which there were two at that time, contributed generously to the establishment of the first Jewish orphan asylum in Cleveland. This was in- dicative of the beginning of Jewish philanthropic activities on a national s /In 1863 the Sinai congregation built a new temple at Plymouth Court and Van Buren Street. They had paid JEWISH COMMUNITY IN CHICAGO 167 The sixties represent a period of expansion, not only for Chicago, but for its Jewish community. A Jewish settle- ment on the near North Side had grown to such proportions that a new synagogue was established on Superior Street, near Wells. The expansion of the area of the city, magnified by the poor transportation facilities, seems to have been the motive for the new organization. In this, as in most of the other Jewish congregations of that time, German was the current language. Dr. Chronic, the enterprising and scholarly rabbi whom Sinai had imported from Germany, established the first Jewish publication in Chicago which was printed in German, called Zeichen der Zeit. The Bavarian congregation was still the leading Jewish organization in the city, and, in keeping with the standing of its members, bought a church in the then fashionable district of Wabash Avenue and Peck Court for $50,000. Two new national elements had meanwhile been added to the Jewish settlement: a small group of Holland Jews who linked up with the "Polish" congregation of B'nai Sholom, and a more important group both from the standpoint of numbers and their subsequent r61e—the Latvian Jews. Un- like their predecessors, this latter group spoke Yiddish. They were ultraorthodox, and had behind them a tradition of rabbinical scholarship. They, like the Germans before them in the early days, engaged in peddling, taking up the occupation abandoned by the earlier immigrants. Finding all the Chicago congregations too radical, they organized a minyun of their own in 1865. A rival minyun was formed the next year, when David Zemansky, who had sent most of the "Litvish" peddlers West with packs which he sold them, arrived in Chicago from New York. These two groupsi68 THE GHETTO united in 1867 and formed the Beth Hamedrash Hagodol (the great synagogue), located on Pacific Avenue, south of Van Buren Street. This orthodox group proceeded imme- diately to establish a cheder for the religious instruction of the young. New immigrants came in such numbers that other synagogues were established in rapid succession. Among them was the Ohave Emuno congregation, nicknamed die halbe Emuno (the half-faith) because it was noticed that some of its members who peddled were accustomed to driving up with their horses and wagons on the Sabbath to attend services, which was contrary to the orthodox prac- tice. Several members of the old "Polish" congregation united with this group, thus adding strength to this new faction whose ritual they found more akin to their own. The new element, however, was torn by all sorts of strife. They were considerably more provincial than their Bavarian and Hinter-Berliner predecessors. They settled by small town or village groups, and rigidly maintained their lines of distinction. Thus, the Mariampol group se- ceded from the Beth Hamedrash Hagodol in 1870, because, the story goes, one of the attendants at the synagogue was seen saying Kaddish (memorial prayer for the dead) while wearing a straw hat, which violated the strict commands of the faith. Unlike the Germans and the "Poles," this group did not enter actively into the secular life about them. They lived in a village world, and within that village they were concerned mainly with their fellow-Jews who came from Mariampol, Suwalk, Litvinova, and similar localities. The affairs of their synagogue were the only public life they knew, and as a consequence, whenever a quarrel occurred about a chazan (cantor), a shochet (slaughterer), and a mohel (circumciser), they were ready to gather up the members ofJEWISH COMMUNITY IN CHICAGO 169 their Landsmannschaft and organize a store-front congrega- tion of their own. Just before the great Chicago fire another congregation was organized in what was then known as the "South West Side," around Halsted and Fourteenth streets, where a German and Bohemian settlement had been established in the midst of a neighborhood of substantial residences where some of the most important Chicagoans then lived. This was the B'nai Abraham congregation, organized in 1870, com- posed mainly of German-speaking Bohemian Jews. The center of Jewish population about 1870 was in the area bounded by Van Buren Street on the north, Polk Street on the south, the river on the west, and Clark Street on the east, in the immediate vicinity of the city's business area. The location of' the B'nai Abraham congregation on the Southwest, Zion on the Northwest, North Chicago Hebrew congregation on the near North Side, and the Bavarian con- gregation on the South Side, mark the outposts of the Jew- ish settlements before the great fire. One other aspect of Jewish life of this period is worth mentioning. During the three decades between the time of the first Jewish arrivals in the city and the great conflagra- tion, the Jewish settlers, coming as they did from German communities that had sent great numbers of non-Jewish pioneers to the West, were on friendly terms with the grow- ing German population of the city. They spoke the same language, and many of them shared the same political views, especially since the revolution of 1848 was the incentive to emigration for a large number. During the Civil War a number of Jews who were not in the "Jewish Companies" had served in the ranks predominantly made up of Ger- mans. It was therefore not unusual for the German Jews to170 THE GHETTO be found often in company with their German acquaintances at Turner Hall or at the Concordia Club. Most of the Jew- ish meetings and social functions since the beginning of the Civil War had been held in the Concordia Club^jThe pros- perous element among the German Jews in 1869 organized the "Standard Club," which became the center of the social life of the Jewish aristocracy of Chicago. The club built a home in the most fashionable district of South Michigan Avenue. Even more than the separate religious institutions that characterized the Jewish community and divided off the various strata from one another, this club was indicative of the great chasm which separated the Bavarians from the Hinter-Berliner, and especially the latest arrivals, the Rus- siansTICHAPTER X THE JEWISH COMMUNITY AND THE GHETTO THE GROWTH OF THE COMMUNITY The great Chicago fire of 1871 marks not only a turn- ing-point in the history of the city of Chicago, but also in the development of the Jewish community^ The Jews, being in most instances dependent upon their businesses for their livelihood, found themselves especially hard hit by the ca- tastrophe, for most of the business establishments were located in the area that was swept by the fire and reduced to ashes. The core of the Jewish area in and around the Loop was completely destroyed. Hundreds were homeless and helpless who had formerly been affluent and active in the philanthropic enterprises of the community. The Jewish lodges and relief organizations, with the assistance that came from many other Jewish communities in various parts of the country, mobilized for relief and reconstruction. Many communal institutions were wiped out by the fire, and great parts of the population were dislodged from their neighbor- hoods. Besides bringing important changes in the economic posi- tion of many members of the community, the fire brought about a complete realignment of areas of residence. While the fire was still burning, a group of Jews organized the Ger- man-speaking congregation Rodfe Sholom, later called Beth El, on the Northwest Side, in the neighborhood of Mil- waukee Avenue, on May and Huron streets. Numerous new lodges and associations were organized immediately after 171172 THE GHETTO the fire, among them the Chicago Rabbinic^ which did much to foster co-operation between the various elements and factions of the Jewish population represented by different congregations. Scarcely had the community recovered from the first fire when another broke out in 1874, which swept over the near South Side, and did its greatest damage among the Russo- Polish settlers, who had been spared by the first. The United Hebrew Relief Association responded to their need, since most of the afflicted section of the population was poor. It was difficult, however, to raise the necessary funds. This was due in part to the fact that the community had not yet fully recovered from the earlier catastrophe, but it was due also to the criticism by the German Jews that the Russians had not contributed their share during the former crisis, and were therefore schnorrers. In order to counteract the narrow sectional spirit to which the community suddenly had re- turned, the Relief Association asked Dr. Liebman Adler, the former rabbi of Bavarian congregation, who was a respected member of the community at large, to draw up an appeal for funds. His appeal read as follows: Scarce two decades have elapsed since all the Israelites of this city were living as in the bonds of one family and circle. Each knew the other. All worshipped harmoniously in one temple and shared others' woes and joys. How great is the change! Thousands scattered over a space of nearly thirty miles, in hundreds of streets, divided by pecuniary, in- tellectual, and social distinctions, provincial jealousies, and even reli- gious distinctions and differences. Separation, division, dissolution, estrangement, repeated and continual, are the words which character- ize the history of our brothers in faith until now. Dissolved in the mass of our population, we are losing the consciousness of our homo- geneity and the strength gained for each individual by concerted ac- tion.JEWISH COMMUNITY AND THE GHETTO 173 Let us also consider the oft-heard complaint that Poles and Rus- sians absorb a disproportional large share of the means of this Associa- tion. Brothers and sisters, are these poor ones less to be pitied, are they less poor, are they less Israelites because Poland or Russia is the land in which they first saw the light, or rather the darkness, of this world? The poor of those countries are doubly poor. These unfortunates come to us from a country which is the European headquarters for bar- barism, ignorance, and uncleanliness. In those countries, thousands of Israelites are densely crowded into small towns and villages, and they become singular and peculiar in their customs, manners, and ideas. In conferring charity it is the duty of the Israelite first to look to the needs and then to the deserts of the recipient.1 jjThis appeal brought the desired help. Coming as it did from a spokesman of the German Jews, it was the first for- mal acknowledgment after the fire of the disintegrating forces within the community^ It showed clearly that the German*" Jews took their superior status for granted, and looked down with pity—benevolently, to be sure, but with a certain con- tempt—upon their Russian and Polish co-religionists. The physical distance over which Chicago Jewry had spread was, as Rabbi Adler noted, an indication of the social distance that separated the two camps in the Jewish community from each other. ^ The realignment that followed the second fire clearly showed the lines of division that had by this time become firmly imbedded in the community structure. The East European Jews, who had lost their homes and synagogues east of the river, now crossed to the West Side. The Mari- ampol congregation was the first to take that step which marked the beginning of Chicago's real ghetto district. The full consequences of this movement did not become ap- 1 Meites, op. cit,9 p. 133.I74 THE GHETTO parent, however, until the great Russian influx of the next decade. Meanwhile, efforts to achieve a reintegration of the divergent elements in the community continued. A com- mittee from Sinai and Kehilath Anshe Ma'ariv congrega- tions made efforts to reunite their respective groups, espe- cially since both congregations had lost their synagogues. By this time the Reform movement had already progressed to a point where Sinai had substituted Sunday for Saturday services, in an effort to bring the religious life of the members more in harmony with that of the community at large, and also to obtain better attendance, since a large part of the congregation was employed on Saturdays and the Saturday attendance was confined mainly to women and the older and more conservative men of the congregation. Sinai was even willing to compromise by holding services on Saturdays and Sundays, but Kehilath Anshe Ma'ariv was unalterably op- posed to Sunday services, and the attempted rapprochement failed. Sinai thereupon built a synagogue near the fashion- able Prairie Avenue district on Indiana Avenue and Twenty- first Street, while Kehilath Anshe Ma'ariv bought the build- ing of Plymouth Church, on Indiana Avenue and Twenty- sixth Street. These new locations indicate the extent of the southward movement of the more prosperous German ele- ment of the Jewish population by 1875. To these structures there was added, in 1880, the new Michael Reese Hospital, on Twenty-ninth Street and the Lake, which was the most ambitious institutional undertaking of the Jewish com- munity. \The cultural life in the Jewish community during this periocl, while it showed many evidences of adaptation to the temper of the city, was by no means independent of theJEWISH COMMUNITY AND THE GHETTO 175 sources from which it had sprung. The orthodox groups al- ways imported their rabbis from the East European centers of rabbinical learning, and even the reformed groups, who in many respects had gone farther in the introduction of innovations in ritual and belief than the reformed congre- gations in Germany, were still a cultural dependency of the Old World to a much greater degree than the intellectual life of America at large was compelled to lean on European scholarship^ This is indicated by the call for a rabbi issued by Sinai in 1879. It read: With a view of securing to this congregation a minister whose name will be an honor to Judaism, and of whom we may have reason to expect that by word and deed he will teach the tenets of our faith in full accord with the convictions shared by all members of this con- gregation; and thereby inspire young and old with that love for our holy cause which is essential to the preservation of our religion, be it Resolved, That the Executive Board be herewith requested to in- vite and receive applications for the position of minister of this con- gregation from Jewish theologians of modern reform principles and of good repute who have graduated at a German university, with honor, are excellent also in all those branches of study which characterize the learned rabbis of our day, and who are good orators, able to preach in the German and English vernacular.2 Sinai's rabbi had to be not merely learned in religious lore; he had to be, above all, ein moderner Mensch who could speak to the public at large in the name of the Jewish con- gregation. The man whose response to this call was accepted was Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch, who held the outstanding posi- tion in the Jewish community of Chicago for over forty years. Some years before the reform and semi-reform groups in the city had become conscious of the fact that there were in 1 Meites, op. cit.t p. 138.176 THE GHETTO the community no unifying cultural forces, and that its life was not of such a character as to be self-perpetuating. The orthodox sections of the Jewish population, and^particularly the Russian and Polish groups, were in a different position. They were less absorbed into the larger life of the city; they continued to speak their familiar Yiddish; they lived close together; they gathered round their synagogues in daily prayer; they had their cheders that transmitted the heritage to the younger generation, and what numbers deserted the group were more than compensated for by the constant influx of orthodox and pious immigrants from Europe. A futile attempt was made by the reformed and semi- reformed groups to introduce new vitality into the com- munal life by the organization of the Jewish Educational Society of Chicago, which followed the parochial pattern set by other denominations, but which attempted to combine some of the principles of the orthodox traditions. The fol- lowing appeal was issued in 1876: Israelites of Chicago: What have you done for preserving our faith and transmitting the noble bequest of ages to posterity? True, you have in the different parts of this city formed congregations and erected beautiful houses of worship, redounding to the honor of the God of our Fathers. You have ministers preaching to you every Sabbath and Festival Day, well accredited by the surrounding world. You have Sabbath schools and teachers, besides, to imbue the youth with all elements of Jewish religion and history. But are you satisfied that thereby you have done all in your power to maintain the religion of our Fathers in its pristine glory and purity? True, you have raised your children as Jews, but do you believe that they, after having at- tended the Sabbath school up to the time of their confirmation, will be able to expound and to defend Judaism before the world? Or do you know of any one of them desirous of pursuing the study of JewishJEWISH COMMUNITY AND THE GHETTO 177 lore and history, in order to know what Judaism is, and what it has accomplished in its wonderful march? And suppose there are such people, what opportunities have they of studying Hebrew and ac- quiring the knowledge indispensable for a thorough understanding of Judaism? Where are the schools from which you expect your future rabbis and teachers and the well-read laymen to come? The latter can certainly not be imported from the old country for the purpose of up- holding our Jewish institutions. Indeed, indifference and dissension, ignorance and shallowness have long enough eaten the very marrow and root of our sacred in- heritance. Compare the zeal and devotion, the generosity and sym- pathy manifested in Christian churches by young and old, with the indolence and lethargy which have estranged the young, particularly, to our holy cause, so as to make every attempt of enlisting their inter- est fail at the very outset. Christian mission societies send forth their soul-hunting agents to ensnare Jewish young men and tear them away from the breast of their religion, while the Jewish community, for want of religious education and protection, leaves them to spiritual starva- tion. You are no doubt aware of the call issued both in the east and west, for establishing a Jewish theological seminary, in response to which several congregations of this city have joined either the one or the other movement. Yet this undertaking must be regarded premature as long as in the various centers of American Judaism there are neither pupils imbued with the spirit of Jewish lore, so as to feel induced to enter upon a theological career, nor high schools where talented youths could prepare themselves for such a course. We must have a Jewish high school in every large community, where especially gifted young people from their eleventh or twelfth year are to be advantageously taught in Hebrew literature and Jewish history, in addition to the various branches of a general high school, the Hebrew forming an organic part of the entire school system; where, moreover, lessons in Jewish religion, history, and literature are given twice or thrice during the week to such young people who are anxious to receive information about Judaism, while pursuing their mercantile or scientific course during the day.....1 1 Pamphlet, Jewish Educational Society of Chicago, September 15, 1876.i78 THE GHETTO What suddenly began to concern the older generation of Jews, who had been brought up in the spirit here outlined, was the growing generation of Jewish children in the Chicago community. They were aware that the European rabbis and teachers who had been imported into the community hitherto had not been able to enlist the respect and arouse the enthusiasm of the rising generation. What was needed, they thought, was a type of leadership that was adapted to the new conditions—a native leadership—which the community thus far had not produced. The solution they sought again in the traditions of the ghetto of the Old World, but ap- parently the community itself was neither fully convinced of the need nor of the suitability of the remedy. In spite of the vision of "soul-hunting Christian missionaries," present- ed by this appeal, they were not aroused to action. The interests and attitudes of the various elements within the community itself were so divergent as to make collective action on a program of internal organization of the whole Jewish community impossible. ^It was, as it has always been, only in defending itself from without that the Jewish community has been able to act with any unanimity) The older generation did try, how- ever, to preserve its cultural traditions in various ways. Under the auspices of the Zion Literary Society, educational and musical programs were given from 1877 on, and a weekly newspaper was issued which appealed to the communal in- terests of the more liberal section of the German faction. Other papers were established in English and German, but on the whole, during the seventies, the field for these journal- istic enterprises was very limited. The community was still too small and lacked the cultural unity to make any of these sectional enterprises a success. It is important to note,JEWISH COMMUNITY AND THE GHETTO 179 however, that as early as 1879 a weekly Yiddish paper ap- peared in Chicago Presse, but survived for only a few months. While local papers encountered dif- ficulty, the Jews of the various classes did read the papers published in New York and Cincinnati, which gave space to local items. By 1880 the Jews of Chicago, in a total population of 500,000, were estimated to number io,ooo.x The Jewish population was now increasing and spreading out over wider areas of the city. Two new synagogues were organized by the German-speaking group: Anshe Emeth, in 1878, by the Jews who lived on what was then the far North Side, on Division Street; and Emanuel congregation, on Blackhawk and Sedgwick streets, in 1880. The Russian group in 1875 organized another minyun known as the Russische Shul, familiarly spoken of as "Shileler," since it was organized by a group coming from the village of Shilel, Russia. With the growth of the Russian population this became one of the most substantial groups on the West Side, and built a syna- gogue on Clinton and Judd streets. THE TIDE FROM THE EAST ifjrhe so-called "May Laws" of 1882, which virtually ex- pelled great masses of Jews from their homes in the villages and towns of Russia, inaugurated a tide of immigration to America which was destined to change the whole complexion of American Jewry within a decade^The years preceding this final governmental action were marked by intermittent pogroms and violent persecution which had already brought Jews in considerable numbers to the United States. But 1 "Union of American Hebrew Congregations," Statistics of Jews of the United States, 1880.i8o THE GHETTO these earlier immigrants settled mainly in New York and the larger cities of the East. Only a small proportion came as far west as Chicago. A report of the United Hebrew Relief Association for 1881, however, already speaks of "Russian refugees," and a year later we read in the report of that organization,"____Our office is constantly crowded by refu- gees." These newcomers had few friends or relatives to welcome them here. They were pioneers, as were the Ger- mans before them. Most of them had, however, lived at least for a short time in the tenements on the East Side of New York, and were sent West by friends, Landsleute, and immigrant aid organizations, where they hoped to find com- petition less keen and opportunities for establishing them- selves greater. \fn Chicago these immigrants of course sought the area where rents were cheapest and where the surroundings made their own cultural life possibles This they found in the area west of the river and south of Harrison Street, close to the business section, or "Loop," in the vicinity of the markets and the light manufacturing district, where they could save carfare in going to and from work. One of these newcomers tells of arriving in Chicago and asking a stranger where the Jews lived: He was directed west, where he was told the "greenhorns" were to be found. He had no idea then that Jews were to be found elsewhere in Chicago.....He tells us: "Chicago, especially the West Side, then was a place of filth, infested with the worst element any city could produce. Crime was rampant. No one was safe. Jews were treated on the streets in the most abhorrent and shameful manner, stones being thrown at them and their beards being pulled by street thugs. Most earned their living peddling from house to house. They carried packs on their backs consisting of notions and light dry goods, and it was not an unusual sight to see hundreds of them who lived inJEWISH COMMUNITY AND THE GHETTO 181 the Canal Street district, in the early morning, spreading throughout the city. There was hardly a streetcar where there were not to be found some Jewish peddlers with their packs riding to or from their business. Peddling junk and vegetables, and selling various articles on the street corners also engaged numbers of our people. Being out on the streets most of the time in these obnoxious occupations, and ignorant of the English language, they were subjected to the ridicule, annoyance and attacks of all kinds.1 The Jews of this period, unlike their predecessors in the city, spoke Yiddish, and their dress and their demeanor consti- tuted easily recognizable marks. Most of them wore beards, and the long coats and boots of the Russian pale. They never ventured outside of their streets and houses unless necessity compelled them. They brought with them the hunted look of the pale, which had become fixed through constant dread of pogroms and attacks. They lacked self- confidence and poise, a lack intensified by the inability to communicate with strangers; and often they were unable to communicate even with the Jews whom they met, who did not speak Yiddish^ The area into which they came was occupied mainly by Germans and Bohemians, although a small German-speak- ing group of Bohemian Jews had already established itself there, and another German group bordered their settlement on the north and the northwest. Very few among the immigrants of the eighties had any skilled occupations, as in the villages and towns from which they came they were mostly petty merchants and trades- men. Only a few were prevailed upon by the colonization agencies to go on farms, and still fewer remained on the farms. They had no capital with which to open business establishments. Unskilled labor and peddling were the only 1 Account of Bernard Horwich, quoted by Meites, op. cit., pp. 150-51.I&2 THE GHETTO occupations that seemed at all adapted to them. Often they took to the former only long enough to enable them to get into some small business of their own, even if it were only selling stationery or notions on the street cornersi^TJnlike the typical Jewish immigrants that preceded them, they had not come to improve their economic or social position, but rather they had fled from conditions that threatened life itself-V Oi the thousands that came to America in the first years of the eighties, approximately two thousand came to Chicago during 1881-82. The entire Jewish community, which num- bered little more than 10,000, organized to meet this tide of impoverished and panic-stricken people. A Russian Refugee Aid Committee was organized. "Families were separated into groups of ten, each group being installed in a temporary home, with one family at the head. The privileges of such a home were ordinarily granted for three weeks. At the end of that time a family was expected to be in a position to take quarters on its own responsibility."1 Many of the heads of families found employment in the establishments of the German and Polish Jews, particularly those engaged in the manufacture of clothing. The immi- grants were suffering from additional industrial handicaps because their orthodoxy prevented them from working on Saturdays. A free employment bureau was established to care for their vocational needs/jlie fund-raising appeals of the Chicago Jewish community for this period emphasize that it is the duty of the established members of the com- munity to help their co-religionists in less fortunate circum- stances to become self-supportin" Allusion is often made to 1 Minnie F. Low, "Jewish Philantl py in Chicago," in Charles S. Bernheimer: The Russian Jew in the United States, p. 87.JEWISH COMMUNITY AND THE GHETTO 183 the probability that unless these numerous immigrants with their peculiar appearance and strange customs are adequate- ly cared for they are likely, not only to become a burden to the community at large, but also to reflect on the character of the Jewish community. Jews on the South and the North Side were becom- ing conscious of the growth of a ghetto on the West Side, which, though removed from their own residential districts by considerable distance, would be regarded by Gentiles as an integral part of the Jewish community.jfthey considered themselves even farther removed in social distance than in ^ miles from these poor, benighted peddlers with long beards, with side-locks, and long black coats. They sensed that all the progress they had made in breaking down barriers, in preventing the development of a ghetto, and in gaining recognition for themselves, as persons rather than as Jews, with their Christian neighbors might now, with the new connotation that was attached to the word Jew, come to a sudden haltj And yet they did not wish to have these Jews too close to them. These Russians were all right—of that they were quite certain—but, like the southern Negro, they had to keep their place. All sorts of philanthropic enterprises were undertaken in their behalf, but in the management of these enterprises the beneficiaries were given no voice. Charity balls by the debutantes of the German-Jewish 61ite in behalf of the wretched West Side Jews were held at the splendid clubs of the German Jews~which by this time had increased to four, and charitably inclined young Jewish men and ladies-bountiful spent their leisure hours in alleviating the hardships of the Jewish slum dwellers. But the Russians did not take altogether willingly to the184 THE GHETTO American ways of dispensing zdoko (charity). They were accustomed to assisting one another in the Old Country in much more informal style. The Jew* communities they had known in Russia were self-sufficient large families. These German Jews of the "societies" asked all sorts of em- barrassing questions before they dispensed their financial and other aid. They made investigations and kept records. Most of all, they did not understand—they did not know— their own people; in fact, they were only halfway Jews; they did not even understand mama loshon (the mother-tongue), or Yiddish. The Russian Jews were not slow in building up their own separate community life. Numbers of new small congrega- tions were formed, some of them with barely a minyutt. But these shtds, most of which were merely private rooms or store-front synagogues, were places that glowed with the familiar, intense religious enthusiasm of old. They were not pretentious structures in which hundreds were gathered once a week or on holidays, with organs and choirs, but they were ^ family or village gatherings in the side-streets of the ghetto. [Each of these congregations constituted a little world by itself, but a full world, in which were gathereclall the inter- ests of the people, religious, educational, sociay In addition to these shuts there were cheders with bearded teachers, where the young boys learned to daven (pray), to lay tphillin (philacteries) and read the Torah, In October, 1884, there took place a notable celebration which for the first time brought the West Side Ghetto dwellers and the rest of the Jews in the city together on a large scale. The occasion was the celebration of the one-hundredth anniver- sary of the birth of the Jewish philanthropist, Sir Moses Montefiore. The most distinguished citizens of Chicago andJEWISH COMMUNITY AND THE GHETTO 185 the leaders of the Jewish community took part in the gather- ing, which was held in the finest hall in Chicago, the Central Music Hall. It gave the new arrivals their first dramatic view of the New World, the Jewish world beyond the pale. Among the spectators in the gallery were some of the more recent Russian arrivals who did not understand a word of the proceedings, but came away with impressions that they did not soon forget, of how dignified a Jewish celebration could be made. They carried this im- pression back with them, and from that time felt prouder than ever before that they were Jews. It gave them their bearings in Chicago- and America. The first immediate result was agitation on the West Side and throughout Chicago for the establishment of a Talmud Torah to bear the name of Moses Montefiore. In this work all "sides" of Chicago took a hand.....1 As the number of "refugees" continued to increase, literary societies and mutual aid organizations came into existence, in which the members of the Russian group who had accumulated some wealth took the lead. In 1887 Leon, Zolotkoff established the first successful Yiddish newspaper in Chicago. This organ, at first a weekly, but soon a daily, exercised a tremendous pressure in welding the orthodox, Yiddish-speaking group together, and in stimulating their communal life. It gave local Yiddish writers an opportunity to exercise their talents, and brought to the Yiddish group the movements that were stirring the ghetto of New York. In an effort to divert the younger generation of Russian immigrants into other vocational channels than peddling, two efforts were made by the Jewish community at large. One of these was the founding of the Jewish Agriculturists' Aid Society, with the object of establishing immigrants on farms, and the other was the Jewish Training School, to en- courage the learning of the crafts and manual arts among the 1 Meites, op. tit., p. 154.i86 THE GHETTO younger generation} As was the case in similar efforts here and in other cities, these devices did not stem the tide of Jews who flocked to the night schools to study for the pro- fessions, or those who went to peddling and entered the sweat-shops of the developing clothing industry. EXPANSION AND DIVERSIFICATION L While the West Side was developing institutions of its own,, which were organized along orthodox lines, and thus was giving form to its cultural heritage by building up a ghetto, the Jews on the South and the North Side were merg- ing their interests more and more with those of the city at large^The members of the Standard Club had taken an active interest in the fund-raising campaign of the newly organized University of Chicago. Dr. Hirsch, of Sinai, had by this time become the outstanding spokesman of the Jewry of the city. By 1887 he was receiving a salary of $12,000 a year. He was the highest-paid rabbi in the world. That was one way the community had of measuring its greatness. It is interesting to note, in this connection, the tremendous difference in the salaries paid by the orthodox synagogues and the Reform temples. The first Reform con- gregation in America, Emanuel of New York, paid its first rabbi-preacher the then munificent salary of $200 per year, while the first Russian congregation, Beth Ha-Midrash of New York, ten years later, i.e., in 1855, paid its rabbi two dollars a week.1 Apparently the Reform Jews were willing to pay to be represented by a Weltmensch as rabbi. In 1891 Rabbi Hirsch began to publish his weekly Reform Advocate, which gave Reform Jewry in Chicago a unifying organ and an intellectual program. * Wiernik, op. cit.t pp. 177, 190.JEWISH COMMUNITY AND THE GHETTO 187 the late eighties the Chicago community began to take on new characteristics. The lines of division between the various groups became more fixed and clearly defined. The status of each group was rigidly set, and the objectives of each were made articulate through separate organizations, institutions, leadership, and press^ In 1888 the presence of a new element in the community is witnessed by the organi- zation of a Hungarian synagogue on the West Side, on Max- well Street. A more significant symptom of impending change, however, is indicated by the formation of the first Russian congregation on the South Side, and the further southward migration of Kehilath Anshe Ma'ariv. Appar- ently the overflow from the ghetto was drifting in the beaten path of the older settlers. {The impetus which the World's Fair gave to the growth of Chicago is indicated by the growth of the South Side congregations during the nineties and the establishment of several new institutions, especially the Orphans' Home and the Home for Aged Jews, in Woodlawn, a residential section on the far South SicJe^ By 1895 Zion congregation, the first German congregation on the West Side, found that its members had for the most part joined their Landsleute on the South Side, and the con- gregation was reorganized and moved its temple to Forty- fifth Street and Vineennes Avenue, in the neighborhood of the growing Jewish settlement on the South Side. The continuous stream of Russian immigrants resulted in the expansion of the West Side community. New syna- gogues were formed on Paulina and Taylor streets, one of these, Mishna Ugmoro, "barring from membership all who were not well versed in Jewish lore and scrupulously observ- ant of every tradition."1 At the other extreme was Sinai, 1 Meites, op. citp. 190.188 THE GHETTO with its Sunday services, its hatless congregation, whose leader, Dr. Hirsch, was one of the outstanding figures in the World's Parliament of Religions during the World's Fair. The Chicago ghetto, with its centers at Maxwell Street / and Jefferson Street, had by this time developed its colorful atmosphere of tenement houses and street markets, its kosher shops, its basement sweat-shops, and, last but not least, its Christian missions^ A local missionary society made active efforts and spent considerable sums to convert Jews to Christianity, but the converts were few in number. Hull House had by this time become the center of immigrant j life on the West Side, and numbers of Jews flocked to its con^ certs, lectures, and library. The need for a Jewish settle- ment began to be felt by the more intellectual members of the Jewish community, and in 1893 a small group opened the Maxwell Street Settlement, at 183 Maxwell Street. The more independent groups in the ghetto itself rather resented the philanthropic interest of the South Side Germans, and organized a people's institute, which they hoped to keep free from the spirit of "uplift," in the form of the Self- Education Club. Before the nineteenth century closed, Chicago Jewry underwent a number of crises. The World's Fair had focused attention on organization within the community and had given great impetus to the formation of religious bodies on a national scale. A number of Jewish national ^organizations were called into being at about that period^One incident which did much to unite the Jewish community in concerted action was the agitation against the attempted extradition of political prisoners to Russia in 1893, in which the whole community took an active part. Within the community it- self, institutions and organizations had become so numerousJEWISH COMMUNITY AND THE GHETTO 189 that the need for centralization was manifest. In 1900 the philanthropic agencies were united into a single collecting and disbursing agency, which in 1901 developed into the Associated Jewish Charities, with 1,700 subscribers and a fund of $135,000^ The influence of the Zionist movement was also begin- ning to make itself felt, and the Dreyfus case rekindled the self-consciousness of the community, as evidenced by the numerous protest meetings held. In 1900 a Chicago Jew had been nominated for governor of Illinois and had polled over half a million votes, a symptom of the active participation, at least on the part of the older settlers, in the civic life of the community(j3y the opening of the new century the Jews of Chicago numbered approximately 75,000, in a population of i^oojooo.1 The Russian Jews were by far in the majority, with 50,000; the Germans came second, with 20,000; the rest made up the other 5,00a} The community then consisted of fifty congregations, thirty-nine charitable societies, sixty Jewish lodges, thirteen loan associations, eleven social clubs, four Zionist societies, and a number of other organizations/ Although the growth of the professional spirit in social work and community organization tended, ever since the beginning of the twentieth century, especially within the Jewish communal body, to discourage the formation of small independent organizations, these organizations con- stantly reappeared. In spite of well-laid plans for a unified community, the separate parts of that community tended always to split into sections and get out of hand. A dramatic instance will indicate the readiness on the part of the Jews to form an organization to meet a real or supposed need: 1H. Eliassof, "The Jews of Illinois," Reform Advocate, May 4, 1901. a American Jewish Yearbook, Vol. 5662.THE GHETTO A Jewish infant had died, and the mother was too poor to pay for its burial. She did not want it to be buried otherwise than in Jewish surroundings and with Jewish rites. There was no one to help her, and in her desperation the poor woman decided upon a bold step. Taking the dead child in her arms during the night, she carried it to the Mariampol Shut, then on Canal Street, and left it on the steps. In the morning the members of the synagogue arrived and found it there. One may imagine the horror of the sight which met their eyes. Their pity and sympathy were excited, the mother of the infant was found, and a decent burial in a Jewish cemetery was arranged.1 This incident, with its attending publicity, led to the forma- tion, in 1892, of a free burial society on the West Side. In similar fashion, nurseries, charitable associations, and so- cieties of various kinds are constantly being created, only to be merged into others or to pass out of existence. And if one is not fortunate enough to organize a philanthropic or- ganization, one must at least support those that are already in existence^The fashionable ladies of the Gold Coast are not alone in their enthusiasm for "pet charities"; the hum- blest ghetto home has at least one or two collection boxes for some holy cause, and the collectors who make their rounds in the ghetto streets bent on fund-raising for insti- tutions and movements far and near are seldom turned away empty handed. To give is still a mitzvah (a good deed, a religious duty) in the ghetto.^ From 1900 on it becomes difficult to trace all the varied developments in the diverse sections of the Chicago Jewish community. The Kishinev pogroms in 1905 marked another period of crisis when the community locally, and the Jews nationally, organized themselves into various bodies to pro- test against the outrages and to receive the great waves of "refugees." The scenes of 1881-82 were repeated in Chicago, 1 Meites, op. cit., p. 191.JEWISH COMMUNITY AND THE GHETTO 191 with the important difference that this time the Russian Jews were able to take the initiative, and that the commu- nity was much larger and therefore able to absorb the new- comers with less difficulty. The expansion of the community due to this large in- flux, to which was added a substantial Roumanian element, \ showed itself topographically in the migration of the more prosperous West-Siders to the Northwest Side and to Lawn- dale. The latter area was derisively called Deutsckland by the residents of the ghetto, and its new residents, Deitchuks, because the orthodox Jews saw in this movement from the ghetto area also a desertion of the old customs and religious belief, and the aspiration to emulate the German Jews with their goyishe ways. " The period of the first decade of the twentieth century marks also the growth in the prosperity of a substantial number of members of the Jewish community^ This is strikingly indicated by the large individual subscriptions to philanthropic enterprises. The founding of the Chicago Hebrew Institute, a recreational and educational center on the West Side, on Taylor and Lytle streets, preceded by a smaller institution on Blue Island Avenue, again brought together the diverse sections of the Jewish population in a large-scale communal undertaking. By this time (1908) the name of Julius Rosenwald figures as the outstanding con- tributor to the educational and charitable enterprises of the Jews of Chicago. The large increase in orthodox members becomes mani- fest also through the founding of new synagogues in Lawn- dale, and especially on the Northwest Side. The smaller synagogues on the West Side are abandoned largely to the new arrivals, and the movement west, northwest, and south192 THE GHETTO on the part of the older settlers assumes vast proportions. The question as to whether the older institutions are to be conducted on an orthodox or a reformed basis appears in the foreground as an important issue. Separate orthodox orphan homes, homes for the aged, and hospitals organized during this period indicate the emergence of a definite dual organi- zation within the community. The outbreak of the European War, and particularly the organization of Jewish relief work in Europe after its con- clusion, and the political activities of the Jews in the organi- zation of the American Jewish Congress to promote the in- terests of the Jews in the peace conferences, together with the new developments in Zionism, lent to the most recent period of Chicago Jewish history the atmosphere of stirring activity, of practical politics, and business-like methods of large-scale fund raising. A number of million-dollar cam- paigns, of "drives" for various causes, local and national and international, were carried through. The Zionists in the community had won over a large part of the Jewish popula- tion, even of the German and Reform Jews. The issues of immigration laws and anti-Semitism were met by the or- ganization of "anti-defamation" societies. Locally this latest period is marked by the growth of the Jewish com- munity to approximately 300,000 members. The diminu- tion of the European influx, however, became noticeable through the gradual transition of the near West Side into a predominantly non-Jewish area, and the establishment of new Jewish frontiers on the South Shore, in Hyde Park, North Shore, Ravenswood, Albany Park, Humboldt Park, and Columbus Park, all of them high-grade residential neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city. By 1926 the Jewish community of Chicago had come to be the thirdJEWISH COMMUNITY AND THE GHETTO 193 largest in the world, exceeded only by New York and pos- sibly Warsaw, but with a more diversified set of character- istics in its various parts than either of the other two ^ From the standpoint of organization the recent period shows in- creasing centralization and consolidation of communal effort on the one hand, and an increasing rate of mobility and cultural transformation of the various Jewish settlements on the other3 ®he story of the founding and development of the Jewish community of Chicago is fairly typical of what happened in the last one hundred years in every urban center in the United States^jTn its initial stages the Jewish community is scarcely distinguishable from the rest of the city. As the numbers increase, however, the typical communal organiza- tion of the European ghetto gradually emerges. The addi- tion of diverse elements to the population results in diver- sification and differentiation, and finally in disintegration]"Maxwell StreetCHAPTER XI THE CHICAGO GHETTO THE NEAR WEST SIDE West of the Chicago River, in the shadow of the Loop* lies a densely populated rectangle of three- and four-story buildings, containing the greater part of Chicago's immi- grant colonies, among them the area called "the ghetto." This area, two miles wide and three miles long, is hemmed in on all sides by acres of railroad tracks. A wide fringe of factories, warehouses, and commercial establishments of all sorts incloses it. It is the most densely populated district of Chicago,1 and contains what is probably the most varied assortment of people to be found in any similar area of the world. Along the northern edge of this area we find the city's "main stem" of the migratory workers, Hobohemia. This is paralleled on the south by the Italian and Greek settle- ments, interspersed by Turks, Gypsies, Mexicans, and a host of lesser groups. On the west there still linger the Irish and Germans who at one time had this whole area for them- selves. In the remaining area, bounded by Roosevelt Road, Robey Street, Clinton Street, and the railroad embankment south of Fifteenth Street, live most of Chicago's first gener- ation immigrant Jews. A description of the so-called "river wards," which cor- respond closely to the near West Side, centering around Halsted Street, is furnished by Jane Addams in her early 1 In 1900 the population per square mile was 39,600; in 1910, it was 50,900; and in 1920, 39,100 (United States Census reports). i9S196 THE GHETTO impressions in Hull House, located in the heart of this dis- trict. In 1910 she wrote: Halsted Street has grown so familiar during twenty years of residence, that it is difficult to recall its gradual changes—the with- drawal of the more prosperous Irish and Germans, and the slow substitution of Russian Jews, Italians, and Greeks. A description of the street such as I gave in those early addresses still stands in my mind as sympathetic and correct. Halsted Street is thirty-two miles long, and one of the great thor- oughfares of Chicago; Polk Street crosses it midway between the stock- yards to the south, and the ship-building yards on the north branch of the Chicago River. For the six miles between these two industries the street is lined with shops of butchers and grocers, with dingy and gorgeous saloons, and pretentious establishments for the sale of ready- made clothing. Polk Street, running west from Halsted Street, grows rapidly more prosperous; running a mile east to State Street, it grows steadily worse, and crosses a network of vice on the corners of Clark Street and Fifth Avenue. Hull House once stood in the suburbs, but the city has steadily grown up around it and its site now has corners on three or four foreign colonies. Between Halsted Street and the river live about ten thousand Italians—Neapolitans, Sicilians, and Calabrians with an occasional Lombard or Venetian. To the south on Twelfth Street are many Germans, and side streets are given over almost entirely to Polish and Russian Jews. Still farther south, these Jewish colonies merge into a huge Bohemian colony, so vast that Cl&= cago ranks as the third Bohemian city in the world. To the northwest are many Canadian-French, clannish in spite of their long residence in America, and to the north are Irish and first-generation Americans. On the streets directly west and farther north are well-to-do English- speaking families, many of whom own their houses and have lived in the neighborhood for years; one man is still living in his old farm house. The policy of the public authorities of never taking an initiative, and always waiting to be urged to do their duty, is obviously fatal in a neighborhood where there is little initiative among the citizens. The idea underlying self-government breaks down in such a ward. The streets are inexpressibly dirty, the number of schools inadequate, sani- tary legislation unenforced, the street lighting bad, the paving miser-THE CHICAGO GHETTO 197 able, and altogether lacking in the alleys and smaller streets, and the stables foul beyond description. Hundreds of houses are unconnected with the street sewer. The older and richer inhabitants seem anxious to move away as rapidly as they can afford it. They make room for newly arrived immigrants who are densely ignorant of civic duties. This substitution of the older inhabitants is accomplished industrially also, in the south and east quarters of the ward. The Jews and Italians do the finishing for the great clothing manufacturers, formerly done by Americans, Irish, and Germans, who refused to submit to the ex- tremely low prices to which the sweating system has reduced their successors. As the design of the sweating system is the elimination of rent from the manufacture of clothing, the "outside work" is begun after the clothing leaves the cutter. An unscrupulous contractor re- gards no basement as too dark, no stable loft too foul, no rear shanty too provisional, no tenement room too small for his work-room, as these conditions imply low rental. Hence these shops abound in the worst of the foreign districts where the sweater easily finds his cheap basement and his home finishers. The houses of the ward, for the most part wooden, were originally built for one family, and are now occupied by several. They are after the type of the inconvenient frame cottages found in the poorer sub- urbs twenty years ago. Many of them were built where they now stand; others were brought thither on rollers, because their previous sites had been taken for factories. The fewer brick tenement buildings which are three or four stories high are comparatively new, and there are few large tenements. The little wooden houses have a temporary aspect, and for this reason, perhaps, the tenement-house legislation in Chicago is totally inadequate. Rear tenements flourish; many houses have no water supply save the faucet in the back yard; there are no fire escapes; the garbage and ashes are placed in wooden boxes, which are fastened to the street pavements.....x | This description—and there are others that corroborate it— brings out the fact, which holds good for the slum districts of most American cities, namely, Jthat the slum is the out- ^ growth of the transition from a village to an urban com- 1 Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House (New York, 1916), pp. 97-100.198 THE GHETTO j munity. In Chicago this transition took place in a single generation^ Land values rose from the level of farm land to centrally located urban real-estate levels. The streets and the buildings soon became inadequate, and the neighbor- hood rapidly deteriorated. Property owners saw no reason for undertaking improvements, for the rent they could squeeze out of their holdings did not warrant costly repairs, especially since their property was located on the very edge of the central business district, and would therefore, within a few years, be more valuable for industrial sites than res- idential purposes. Meanwhile, however, several generations of immigrants found this area their temporary living quar- ter. ^ The immigrants drifted to the slum because here rents were lowest—a primary consideration. In addition, they found themselves within walking distance of their employ- ment. Finally, here, in neighborhoods owned by absentee landlords, there was very little resistance to the invasion of people with a lower standard of living and an alien culturej The immigrants themselves, being for the most part dis- franchised through non-citizenship, like the hobos, were politically impotent to improve their condition even had they the desire to do so, which generally was not the case, since most of them regarded the slum as merely their tem- porary dwelling place. During the nineties of the last century writers on this district referred to a larger and a smaller ghetto. The greater ghetto included an area of about a square mile, com- prising parts of the old Nineteenth, Seventh, and Eighth wards, bounded by Polk Street on the north, Blue Island Avenue on the west, Fifteenth Street on the south, and Stewart Avenue on the east. Of the 70,000 people thenTHE CHICAGO GHETTO 199 living in this area, 20,000 were estimated to be Jews. This area was practically co-extensive with the "slum district" as defined in the seventh special report of the Commissioner of Labor, on the Slums of Great Cities. The lesser ghetto was found in the Seventh Ward, bounded by Twelfth, Halsted, Fifteenth, and Stewart. Nine-tenths of the popu- lation of about sixteen thousand in this area were Jews.1 In 1895 Charles Zeublin described this area as follows: The physical characteristics of the ghetto do not differ materially from the surrounding districts. The streets may be a trifle narrower; the alleys are no filthier. There is only one saloon to ten in other dis- tricts, but the screens, side-doors, and loafers are of the ubiquitous type; the theatre bills a higher grade of performance than other cheap theatres, but checks are given between the acts, whose users find their way to the bar beneath. The dry-goods stores have, of course, the same Jewish names over them which may be found elsewhere, and the same "cheap and nasty" goods within. The race differences are subtle; they are not too apparent to the casual observer. It is the religious distinction which everyone notices; the synagogues, the Talmud schools, the "Kosher" signs on the meat markets. Among the dwelling-houses of the ghetto are found the three types which curse the Chicago workingman: the small, low, one or two story "pioneer" wooden shanty, erected probably before the street was graded, and hence several feet below the street level; the brick tenement of three or four stories, with insufficient light, bad drainage, no bath, built to obtain the highest possible rent for the smallest possible cubic space; and the third type, the deadly rear tenement, with no light in front, and with the frightful odors of the dirty alley in the rear, too often the workshop of the "sweater" as well as the home of an excessive population. On the narrow pavement of the narrow street in front is found the omnipresent garbage-box, with full measure, pressed down and running over. In all but the severest weather the streets swarm with children, day and night. On bright days groups of adults join the multitude, especially on Saturday and 1 See Philip Davis, "General Aspects of the Population of the Chicago Ghetto," in Bernheimer, op. cit., pp. 57-60.200 THE GHETT0 Sunday, or on the Jewish holidays. In bad weather the steaming windows show the overcrowded rooms within. A morning walk im- presses one with the density of the population, but an evening visit reveals a hive.1 In the thirty years since this description was written, the ghetto has probably changed less than any other part of the city. Here and there the Jewish settlement has been dented in by the invasion of subsequent immigrant groups, railroads, warehouses, and industries, and in a few direc- tions it has spilled over into neighboring territory. But on the whole its outlines and characteristics remain^ as de- scribed. The present area of the Chicago ghetto may be defined by the following boundaries: the railroad tracks and ter- minals on the east, the railroad viaduct on the south, the street-car line at Robey Street on the west, and the main traffic artery of the West Side—Roosevelt Road—on the north. These boundaries are the rough natural barriers that definitely mark off the ghetto from the surrounding natural and cultural areas. The center of this area is located at Maxwell and Halsted streets. Four street-car lines divide the area further into distinct neighborhoods—the Halsted, Fourteenth, Blue Island, and Racine Avenue lines. Roose- velt Road, Halsted, Maxwell, and to some extent Jefferson Street, are the important business thoroughfares. But there is not a street in the whole area that does not have a number of stores and business or industrial establishments. „^Along the business streets building improvements in recent years are noticeable, but there has not been a new residence built in the whole area for the last fifteen years. 1 Charles Zeublin, "The Chicago Ghetto," in Hull House Papers and Maps (Chicago, 1895), pp. 94~95-THE CHICAGO GHETTO 201 The land values of the area have risen phenomenally during this period in the business section, though not so much as in the city generallypftn the zoning regulations of the city the area is designated for light manufacturing. A number of large factories are already operating in the area, among them a piano factory, a picture-frame factory, and a number of clothing and machine shops. Junk yards abound in the ghetto, in Chicago as in every other city of America. In recent years the transfer of the South Water Street fruit and vegetable market, Chicago's large produce center, to the southwestern edge of the ghetto has considerably affected the complexion of the whole area. Considerable land is held for speculative purposes, with a view to the impending invasion of the district by other industrial establishments. As a residential area the near West Side generally, and the ghetto in particular, has declined in recent years. In spite of the immigrant population, whose families may be expected to be large, the number of children has decreased to a point necessitating the closing of several public schools in the last few years. Numbers of buildings are being con- demned for dwelling purposes by the authorities, and since repairs do not offer advantage to the owners, they are al- lowed to go to ruin^The ghetto is a striking instance of a deteriorated neighborhood. Within thirty years the district has been transformed from a substantial residential neigh- borhood into a slum, and finally into a semi-industrial area?) THE GHETTO AS A CULTURAL COMMUNITY Difficult as it is to set forth adequately the physical characteristics of the ghetto as a natural area, its cultural characteristics are unmistakable^ The ghetto is pre-eminent- ly a cultural community} Into itsTeeming, crowded, narrow"202 THE GHETTO streets the main outlines of life of the European ghetto and the Russian pale have been transplanted almost in their en- tirety. The very location of the ghetto is not merely deter- mined by accessibility and low rents, but by tradition. The Jews who have lived in ghettos know the value of nearness to the market place or the commercial center of the city in which they live. The ghetto of Prague was located near the Tandelmarkt; the ghetto of Frankfort, in the immediate vicinity of the fair grounds; and so with every important ghetto in Europe. The New York ghetto, bordering on the East River, the Bowery, and Broadway, and the Philadel- phia ghetto, between the Delaware River and the business section, are notable examples of other American ghettos, similarly situated^Just as the Gypsies generally settle on the outskirts of a town, so the immigrant Jews settle near the business section or on the river and railroad fronts]) Similarly the population density of the ghetto is to be accounted for, not only by the poverty of the immigrants and their inability to pay high rents, but also by the tradi- tions of close community life of crowded ghetto quarters in the Old World. Probably no other people has been able to live under the crowded conditions that the ghetto and the slum impose with a lower mortality rate than the Jews.1 Whether this be due to acquired immunity, or to the ritualis- tically prescribed diet and hygiene, or to the attitude on the part of parents toward children and the nature of Jewish family life, it is certain that the Jews have made some sort of accommodation to urban conditions as presented by the typical slum district. No matter from which side one enters this ghetto, one 1 See Kate Levy, "Health and Sanitation of the Jews in Chicago," in Bernheimer, op. cit.t pp. 318 ff.THE CHICAGO GHETTO cannot fail to be struck by the suddenness of the transition. In describing the New York ghetto, one writer has said: "No walls shut in this ghetto, but once within the Jewish quarter, one is as conscious of having entered a distinct sec- tion of the city, as one would be if the passage had been through massive portals separating this portion of the Lower East Side from the non-Jewish districts of New York."1 Chicago's ghetto is younger than that of New York, just as the New York ghetto is a mere upstart compared with that of Frankfort; but the characteristics of the ghetto are not to be measured by the years that a given area has been inhab- ited by Jews. The ghetto, no matter where it is located, has a long history, and is based upon old traditions of which the American ghetto is a mere continuation—a last scene of the final act.^The Jewish ghetto, at any rate, is rooted in the habits and sentiments of the people who inhabit it, and in all those experiences that go with the ghetto as a historical in- stitution?) The New York ghetto, of course, has a considerable history independent of its European background. In that separate history are to be sought its distinguishing charac- teristics when it is contrasted with the European institution. The Chicago ghetto can boast only of a much shorter independent life, but most of its inhabitants, before arriving in the West, have had a considerable experience on the East Side of New York, which they have brought with them to Chicago. There is also the great weight of numbers. The one and a half million Jews in the city of New York, through their very numbers, constitute more of an independent commun- 1 Milton Reizenstein, "General Aspects of the New York Ghetto," in Bernheimer, op. cit., p. 44.THE GHETTO ity than do the Jews of Chicago. The active and autono- mous life of a community of such size is bound to result in the greater persistence of its cultural traits in the midst of disintegrating influences. The ghetto of New York has been more or less a model for all American Jewish communities. It still exercises a dominating influence over all other cities. It sets the pace through its outstanding personalities and insti- tutions. It is the undisputed center of American Jewry, as the city of New York is the center of the cultural life of America. New York has been the first stop for most Jewish immi- grants; Chicago, a second landing. But since the beginning of the twentieth century the Chicago community has been the source of a great deal of independent, creative life among the Jews. As numbers increased, more and more immi- grants, relatives and Landsleute of those who had settled here, were brought directly to this city without a preliminary initiation into American ghetto existence in another city. With the growth of local institutions and organizations a number of movements of national significance have centered herg^ AThere is one important difference between the ghettos ofttie Old World and those of the New. The former are on the whole homogeneous bodies concentrated in a single sec- tion of a city, with a common city-wide, if not regional, cultural life. The American ghetto, on the other hand, is, as a rule, split up into various sections, containing various national groups of Jews and reflecting the influences of heterogeneous waves of immigration, as well as of successive generations of the same groups^ Qhi the ghetto proper we finci only the first generation of immigrants, and generally those coming from Russia, Poland, and Roumania. The earlier groups of immigrants,THE CHICAGO GHETTO 205 the Spanish-Portuguese, the Germans, and the Austrians, having come from countries in which they had to some ex- tent been out of the ghetto for two or three generations, and having acquired some of the outward characteristics of their neighbors, have, as a rule, scattered over wider areas and never attained the cohesion and solidarity of the Russian and Polish Jewish masses. Moreover, the early German immigrants came from Jewish communities which to the extent that they had a separate existence were not decreed by formal laws and regulations, while the Russians came directly from the compulsory ghetto. Finally, the German immigrants were pre3ominantly an urban people, while the Russians and Poles hailed from the villages and small towns, and were not far removed in their social world from the peasants from whom they kept strictly aloofTl Although they were technically free to settle where they pleased, they crowded close together in the area of de- terioration, where they carried on their life much as they had done in Europe. They felt themselves no more akin to the more prosperous and partially assimilated German Jews than they did to the Gentiles. As one of them put it: When I first put my feet on the soil of Chicago, I was so disgusted that I wished I had stayed at home in Russia. I left the Old Country because you couldn't be a Jew over there and still live, but I would rather be dead than be the kind of German Jew that brings the Jewish name into disgrace by being a Goy. That's what hurts: They parade around as Jews, and down deep in their hearts they are worse than Goyim, they are meshumeds [apostates].1 ^The center of life, in the new ghetto as in the old, was the synagogue. The synagogues of the Polish and Russian Jews were from the beginning of their settlement in Chicago 1 "Autobiography of an Immigrant," manuscript.206 THE GHETTO separate from those of the Germansjln January, 1926, there were forty-three orthodox synagogues on the near West Side. Most of these are small, only a few having over one hundred members. They are made up largely of immi- grants who originate from the same community in Europe. They are open daily, and are frequented by a small group of elderly people who gather for prayer and for a discussion of the Talmud under the leadership either of the regularly ap- pointed rabbi or of one of their most learned members. For the most part these synagogues are either converted Chris- tian churches, or buildings that were once used by congre- gations that have moved to other parts of the city. No new synagogue has been built in the ghetto in recent years, and few of those now there have been kept in repair. As a rule their deterioration proceeds at a pace parallel to that of the neighborhood in which they are located, 'fhey are equipped with a basement, which is used for the daily serv- ices and meetings, while the main floor is occupied only on the Sabbath and on holidays. The services consist partly of silent prayer and partly of chanted responsive readings. Scarcely a detail is left to the whim or desire of the wor- shipers. The siddur, or prayerbook, but more often the age- old law of custom, regulates even the minutest items of the ritual. Although a cantor or reader is the nominal leader, the members of the congregation take an active part in the proceedings, sometimes following their own tempo. As a result there is often a noticeable lack of unison. Those who are engaged in business often finish their daily prayers be- fore the rest, and leave feeling that at least they have done their duty. A Jewish peddler said: I drive my horse and wagon up to the shul every day except on Shabboth, and come back in time for Ma'ariv [evening prayer], ITHE CHICAGO GHETTO have done it for years, and expect to do it for the rest of my life. I couldn't sleep at night nor work during the day if I hadn't dawened [prayed] and layed tphillin [put on the philacteries]. It only takes a little while, but then when you come out you feel you are a man. A half-a-Jew is no Jew at all.1 * Next to his family, the main link of the newly arrived immigrant with the community is his synagogue. There he becomes oriented to the new surroundings and finds the familiar scenes and experiences that bridge the gap between the Old World and the New! A middle-aged Maxwell Street merchant tells of bringing ms aged father over from South- ern Russia: The first chance I had to get a ticket over to him, I did it. While he was on the way I got a little worried. I thought, what will he do when he gets here? I am at work and he will know nobody and he will be very lonesome. And I want to make his last days happy. But when he came he solved the whole problem for me. The first thing he asked was, "Where is the Odessaer Shul?" When he got there he was as happy as a baby. He met a lot of Landsleut, and America and Chi- cago didn't seem so bad. He went to shul morning and night until a week before he died, and he knew more about every chevramanys [member of the congregation] business than I did.® ^The synagogue is the central institution in the whole community. It usually has its rabbi, who visits the homes of the members and advises them in their domestic and busi- ness problems. It generally has a religious school, or cheder, which the children attend after school hours. It has a cir- cumcisor. In most cases it has various mutual aid societies, including a burial society, connected with it^The rav, or rabbi, is an honored person of some learning, who sometimes is called upon to decide issues which ordinarily in America 1 "The Experiences of a Maxwell-Street Chicken Dealer," manuscript. a "From Odessa to Chicago: An account of the Migration and Settlement of a Jewish Family," manuscript.2o8 THE GHETTO are considered secular in nature, but which according to Old World ghetto practice come under the jurisdiction of the rabbi. The following instance shows the extent to which the synagogue is a control organization: Sam, a sixteen-year-old boy, had attacked a little girl and raped her. The father of the girl went to the father of Sam, asking what he would do. Sam's father in turn came to a social agency for advice about the matter. When the social worker called at the home of the girl he was informed that the case was settled. He had taken the mat- ter to the rovy and Sam's father had agreed to abide by the rov's de- cision, which was to pay fifteen hundred dollars damages to the family of the girl.1 ^Through the synagogue the members come into touch with the important events of concern to them, and the syna- gogue still remains the most effective organ of approach to the ghetto community^ The synagogue has throughout the ages been the heart of the Jewish community, and it still is today. In spite of anything which may be said to the contrary, everything of importance in Jewish life is still nurtured and fostered, directly and indirectly, by the synagogue. Very often we hear dirges and lamentations about the dying influence of the synagogue, about the insignificant r61e which it is playing in modern Jewish life. Yet whenever anything goes wrong with us, the blame is almost instinctively placed at the door of the synagogue. The order of the day in American Jewish life is the drive. This institution is our inheritance from the war days; but while other groups in the community are slowly forgetting about the drives, the American Jew continues to drive faster and faster.....Of course the purpose of all these drives is to obtain money, which, it seems to be commonly agreed, can no longer be obtained without "thunderings and light- ning." We do not know how successful these drives are, nor do we know how much money is being wasted in staging them; but at all events we know that the "drivers" come to the synagogue for aid in their work—to that old and decrepit synagogue with which many 1 From a record of the Jewish Social Service Bureau, Chicago.THE CHICAGO GHETTO of our leaders have much profound sympathy. A certain national Jewish institution, for example, decides to have a drive in order to raise, let us say, fifty thousand dollars in Chicago. This figure, the drivers maintain, is a very small one, in view of the importance of the cause, and in view of the fact that there are at least two hundred fifty thousand Jews in Chicago. To get fifty thousand dollars out of two hundred fifty thousand Jews should be a very simple affair, our "driv- ers" argue, since this makes only one dollar for every five heads. Now, the easiest way of reaching Jews is through the synagogue, since the house of worship is the only place where Jews still gather for the culti- vation of the things of the spirit, and where they are still ready to listen to appeals of mercy. In fact, there are very few other places where Jews can be reached outside the synagogue. There are of course Jewish lodges; but here people get together for mutual bene- fit purposes only, and they are not ready to pay attention to anything which does not concern their own "good and welfare." If, then, after the two hundred fifty thousand Jews are approached through the various synagogues, and the money is not raised, then our "drivers" hasten to proclaim from the housetops that the synagogue Jew is stingy, that he is dead to everything Jewish and humane, and that the religion for which the synagogue stands is outworn and anti- quated. Our "drivers," however, in their heated criticism of the synagogue, overlook one minor but very significant detail. They forget that the very large majority of Chicago Jews even do not step into a synagogue, and that those who do frequent synagogues are the only ones who con- tinue to support Jewish causes. If Chicago Jewry had a directory of synagogue members, and if lists of contributors to important Jewish causes would be regularly compiled in this city, it could be easily proved that the most liberal Jews in our midst are synagogue members. Besides, we must remember that after all is said and done, synagogue members are essentially doing the most significant piece of work in the community, even if they should refuse to become interested in anything else. What is keeping the Jewish community alive is the spirit of Judaism generated by the synagogue and disseminated among posterity.(The work of the synagogue itself is of greater importance than anything else undertaken in behalf of any movement or institu-2IO THE GHETTO tion, for without the synagogue all those institutions and movements could not even come into existenceT] e synagogue, as has been felt by its leaders, has been fast losing ground with the rising generation, who have been bored by its ritual and restricted by its regulation of the af- fairs of everyday life. But since it is based upon the iron laws of medieval rabbinism and since it flourishes almost exclusively in the circumscribed world of the ghetto, the synagogue has resisted innovation. The synagogue has been especially hostile to Reformism; it has taken the stand that nothing shall be changed, lest all perish. Even if the syna- gogue Jew has had contact with the secular world he will cling to the ritual if he wishes to remain within the commu- nity^ An editorial in a local orthodox paper reads: Religion and politics: God is the Maker and Lord of the Universe, from the milky way down to Loomis Street in Chicago.....You will agree with me that this omnipotent and omniscient God has plenty to do, .... without looking into my, our, your, chicken soup pot. You will admit with me that such a God cannot be worried over the fact that a knife used for butter is finding its way into a chicken soup pot. Nor can he be worried over the fact that there is no eirev in town, or that the one has his beard clipped, and the other shaved. I think that all that is not God's business, and whoever says it is, is ignorant and blasphemous. But still the question whether a knife used to cut cheese finds its way in a soup-kitchen pot is of importance nevertheless. It is not of importance to the omnipotent God; but is of importance to us J vs. The question of Kosher and Trefa is not a religious question, has nothing to do with God, because he is not a kitchen God, but the God of the Universe. Though seventy years may be like one day in his eyes, he must be so busy with the management of this Universe that he cannot possibly look into a soup-kitchen pot for lack of time. Nor can he be concerned with the question whether you and I take a close * S. Felix Mendelsohn, Sentinel, January 16, 1925.THE CHICAGO GHETTO shave or clip our beards ; whether we have our shoes shined on Sab- bath; whether we carry a walking cane on holidays or not. From the point of view of Jewish life and its forms, however, these questions are all important. They do not concern God in the least, but they may disturb our traffic here, downstairs; may affect our lives and our very existence as a people. All these Rabbinic ordinances, laws, and decrees have been pro- mulgated by our Rabbis with the only object of creating a wall be- tween ourselves and the nations sheltering us, so that we remain a national entity and do not disappear from among the nations of the earth. Orthodoxy thus is not religion, but state, politics, forms of social and political life of the Jewish people..... If a Jew in the Diaspora ceases to observe the Rabbinical laws and ordinances, he is likely to intermarry; is likely to assimilate with Gen- tiles and to disappear as a Jew..... Orthodoxy is motivated by the desire to preserve the forms of Jewish life as a means to an end. The end is the preservation of the Jewish nation in the Diaspora. Reform is a political proposition be- cause it abolishes and destroys the forms of Jewish life with the ob- ject of bringing about the destruction of the Jewish people by ultimate assimilation..... Orthodoxy means, in the final analysis, the will to live as a Jew, while Reform means the will to die as a Goy.1 (_The emphasis that is put upon "form" is central in the con- tinuity of any sect, and orthodox Judaism, in the American milieu, has been reduced to the position of a sect. It is in sharp conflict with all those groups who would deviate from tb" i sanctioned form. It is this sentimental attachment to traditions and sacred values that makes the control on the part of the synagogue over the lives of the individuals so binding and so absolute^ The fact that the Chicago Jewish community spends approximately one million dollars a year for Kosher meats, over and above the cost of ordinary meats, »S. M. Melamed, Chicago Chronicle, February so, 1925.212 THE GHETTO in order to have them slaughtered according to the approved method of cutting their throats by a regularly appointed shochet, or slaughterer; the fact that hundreds of old men and young refuse to work on the Sabbath and thereby disqualify themselves for a great many vocational opportunities; the fact that orthodox Jews will refuse to shave, and that young rabbinical students would rather use a depilatory powder than allow a razor to touch their faces—these and countless other details of ritualistic observance are matters of form, rooted in sentiment and sanctioned by tradition. It is these forms, too, that have given rise to some of the most picturesque ghetto types. The Chassidic Jew with flowing beard and long side-locks and his long black coat is still seen occasionally in the ghetto streets. At funerals one may watch an old lady in front of the undertaking rooms collecting alms in her handkerchief from the mourners and bystanders. This Fatchelyudene, as she is called, is capital- izing the ritualistic form appropriate to the occasion. In and out of the synagogue there is to be found the ubiquitous Kleikodeshnik, or professional pious individual, to whom piousness is merely a form. And there is the Schonerjild, or idle, learned individual, and the Zaddik, whose virtue is held up as a model to the young, and the Gottskossak, whose task it is to supervise the conduct of the community, much against the members' own will. These and other types flourish in the ghetto because of the emphasis put on form, because they are tolerated and developed by the sentiments and practices of old. The orthodox community resents and reacts violently to any attempt to alter or to mock these forms, for they con- stitute the very fabric of its social life. Thus, when the ques- tion as to whether a butcher who professes to sell Kosher meat must really live up to the approved religious ritualTHE CHICAGO GHETTO came before the courts because a Jewish butcher had been selling to his customers as Kosher, meat which really had not been approved by the rabbi, there was an outburst of indignation which resulted in protracted litigation. A Jew- ish writer made the following comment on the Supreme Court's decision in the matter: The decision of the United States Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of the New York State Kosher Law was expected; common sense and legal technicality in this case dictated such a de- cision. Those who fought the law on the ground that it is contarry to the Constitution to involve religion in law did not have a leg to stand on. The Kosher law does not compel anybody to eat or sell kosher meat; the law deals only with honesty in commerce and prohibits a certain form of misrepresentation which affects many people. When a butcher says that he is selling kosher meat, it should be kosher, and he should not mix the product with non-kosher meat, for that is contrary to the Jewish laws. Similar laws exist for quite some time. The pure food laws that were enacted about twenty years ago have abolished another type of misrepresentation. It is prohibited to label margerine as butter, etc. Only recently a law was adopted prohibiting misrepresentation in stamping metals. When gold is stamped 14 k, it must be 14 k. These regulations are framed to maintain honesty in commerce. They are the functions of government, and the kosher law is a legitimate part of such regulations, though it was adopted only a few years ago. The claim of the opponents that it will be difficult to find out what is kosher is ridiculous. There is only one sort of koshruth, that which is guaranteed by orthodox rabbis in accordance with the ancient Jewish law. The reformers have given up koshruth long ago, and have no pretense to it. They admit openly that they do not believe in it; but the hundreds of thousands of Jews who do believe in it should not be deAauded. The fact that the fight against the kosher law was con- ducted by Jewish merchants of non-kosher products for their personal profit is our eternal shame.1 1 J. Fishman, Jewish Morning Journal, January 6, 1925.214 THE GHETTO The observance of the dietary regulations, in the form of the exclusive use of Kosher foods, is so universal a mark of ortho- doxy among Jews that in some Jewish communities the plan has been considered, and employed, of placing a tax on Kosher meat to raise the necessary funds for the upkeep of the communal institutions. It is easy to understand why nothing arouses the resent- ment of the orthodox Jew quite so much as the mockery of his hallowed forms of worship by the Reform rabbis. In an editorial entitled "The Rabbinic Menace" we read: The modern rabbi who is aping the Christian pastor is a real men- ace to the existence and continuation of Judaism in America. .... The modern rabbi, be he conservative or reform, is attempting to Christianize the synagogue or the temple by introducing the so-called religious services on Friday evening or Sunday morning. These reli- gious services are neither religious nor services, but burlesque shows. Whenever I attended such services, I felt that the Americanized Jews are developing into a bunch of hypocrites. These religious services are often attended by Jews who know better, but still they participate in the hokus pokus, and tolerate the reading of a portion of the Bible in English in that oily and priestly tone so strange to the Jewish mind and the Jewish traditions, and tolerate a rabbi who is just aping the Christian pastor, and making a monkey of Judaism, and tolerating a so-called religious performance that is comedy pure and simple. Either one is a religious Jew and attends religious services in the same way as our ancestors did, or as all pious Jews still do, or one does not attend services at all. The so-called "after supper" services are a mockery, and there is as much religion in them as in the Sunday serv- ices of the reform rabbis. Aesthetically, they are disgraceful, and re- ligiously they are contemptible. Only Jews with full pockets and empty minds can participate in such services and be parties to such performances.1 There are occasions, however, when the orthodox Jew, in taking stock of his ghetto organization, finds that he lives 1 S. M. Melamed, Chicago Chronicle, Vol. VIII, No. n.THE CHICAGO GHETTO after all in a puny world. This is particularly true when he compares his humble synagogue with the pretentious tem- ple, and his poverty with the wealth of the "half-goyim," or reformed element. It is no wonder that some of the orthodox rabbis are obliged to deal with "sacramental wine," much as most of them dislike it; they cannot make a decent living on the pitiful salary they receive. The Congregation Knesseth Israel, the biggest and richest orthodox con- gregation in Chicago, with property worth a half million dollars, and a large sum of cash in the treasury, pays its rabbi only $2,500 a year! How can a man raise a family on such a salary? Sinai pays its rabbi $20,000 a year, and he has not one-tenth the responsibility that Rabbi Ephraim Epstein has. Moses Salk, president of Knesseth Israel, who is a prominent business man, should know that a rabbi must not have financial worries, that he must be provided to make a living and be able to raise a family in an honorable fashion. If the rabbi is not satisfactory there is a way to release him and secure the services of one who will be satisfactory. But to pay a rabbi a starving wage is not only sacrilegious but criminal, and all those who permit such an outrage are guilty of both crimes.1 ^Jgut the invidious comparisons between the ghetto and the Jewish community outside are rare. More often the only standard of eminence that the groups within the ghetto apply is that which is found in their own restricted world. Congregations are ranked, not only according to their size, but also on the basis of their reputation for piety and charity-O 1 Chicago Chronicle, January 16, 1925. 3 "An appeal was made on the Sabbath of Chanuka in the various syna- gogues for the Denver Consumptive Relief Sanitorium New Building Fund. Anshe Makarev, the smallest congregation, with a membership of about 30, contributed $90, while Congregation Anshe Knesseth Israel Nusach Sfard, of Independence and Douglas Boulevard, whose president, A. Friedman, claims that it is the biggest congregation in Chicago, where Alderman Jacob Arvey made a fervent appeal, contributed the munificent sum of $12!...." (Chicago Chronicle, February 6, 1926).216 THE GHETTO (The synagogue and the rabbi, as we find them in the ghetto, leave scarcely a single phase of the life of the congre- gation free from their control. This is particularly true of family life) Marriage and divorce, and the adjustment of quarrels between husband and wife and parents and chil- dren, all are legitimate relations for communal control. Recently Rabbi Ezekiel Lipschitz, dean of the orthodox rabbis of Poland, came to the United States and Chicago for the expressed purpose of locating the husbands of 18,000 Russian and Polish Jewish women who had been deserted during the last twenty years. He received the hearty co- operation of the local synagogues and rabbis. The family is one of the chief concerns of the community as a whole. A national organization with headquarters in New York and branches in almost every city in the United States and Canada, the National Desertion Bureau, has the expressed function of locating deserting husbands and wives. In its work this bureau makes full use of the publicity that the Jewish press affords. Some Yiddish newspapers contain a regular column entitled "Gallery of Deserting Husbands," in which pictures and descriptions of the culprits appear. ^Even in the most private affairs of the membership the community takes an active interest. Its criticisms, es- pecially when voiced through the press, generally are a cor- rective for the vices of the community/ A leading politician of the ghetto is scored in the following item: "Sanitary District Trustee Morris Eller Wins Great Victory for Chicago Water Supply," reads a screaming headline in Tuesday's Jewish Courier. And we thought that Michael Rosenberg was also a Trustee of the Sanitary District, and that he, too, had something to do with the water situation. But Morris Eller puts his picture in the paper and claims all the credit for himself. Talk about chutzpaht [nerve].1 1 Chicago Chronicle, January 16, 1925.THE CHICAGO GHETTO 217 The injudicious private act of philanthropy of a member is made the object of an attack in the following item: Herman Iglowitz, who was entrusted to distribute $1,000 to charitable institutions, should take lessons in fairness. Mr. Morris Cohen, of 3841 Adams Street, celebrated his silver wedding anni- versary at Gold's last Sunday evening, and in consideration of that joyful event, he contributed $1,000 to charity. Not being familiar with the existing institutions and their needs, Mr. Cohen delegated his friend Iglowitz to make the distribution. We are convinced that had Mr. Cohen known how unfair Iglowitz would be he would not have en- trusted him with such a delicate mission. Iglowitz gave to the Jewish Charities, $150, which means that the Marks Nathan Orphan Home, the B.M.Z., the Mount Sinai Hospital, and the other affiliated insti- tutions—30 in all— will receive the munificent sum of $5 each, while to the Hachnosas Orchim [an immigrant sheltering home], on Sawyer Avenue, known at best as a superfluous, unworthy, and makeshift institution, Iglowitz gave $100! The Daughters of Zion and Douglas Park Day Nurseries, the Beth Hamedrosh 1/ Torah [orthodox rab- binical college], Denver Sanitorium, and the Haddassah [a Zionistic women's organization] receive only $75 each, and the Keren Hayesod (Palestine Fund), Grenshaw Street Talmud Torah, and Ladies' Aid for Consumptives, receive each $50, but the Sawyer Avenue Hachno- sas Orchim, where "booze" was for a time part of their income, and which certain officers peddled on the streets, to the disgrace of the community, to them Iglowitz gives $100! Gosh, what unfairness rests in the heart of ignorance. . . . ,x ^The well-known type of the Staatsbalbos, or the patriar- chal leader, to whom questions of final judgment on reli- gious and secular matters (however small the realm of the secular is in the ghetto community) are deferred, arises out of this closeness of personal relationships of the members of the community to each other, and the surveillance that the community exercises over the conduct of each of its mem- bersT^For instance, the keeping of the Sabbath and the 1 Ibid., February 6, 1926.2l8 THE GHETTO holidays on the part of each individual is a matter of great concern to the community. A local Jewish organ recently wrote: We are pleased to note that our suggestion to the Rabbinical Association to enlist the services of the local Jewish press to refuse to publish items of social affairs taking place on Friday evenings brought the desired result. The following letter was sent out by the Chicago Rabbinical Association to the Jewish press: "In its desire to impress upon the Jewish people the sanctity of the Sabbath and its importance in Jewish life, the Chicago Rabbinical Association desires to enlist the co-operation of the Jewish press. We would, therefore, appreciate it most sincerely if you would refuse to publish in your paper any announcements of affairs taking place on the Sabbath. Such a stand on the part of the Rabbinate receiving the co-operation of the Jewish press may, it is hoped, encourage a deeper appreciation of the sacredness of the Sabbath and discourage its desecration."1 ^hile the community is of course concerned with the religious observance of its members as a whole, it is particu- larly anxious about the younger generatior^ The wild be- havior of the young people and their frequent violation of the religious taboos, especially non-attendance at the syna- gogue, violation of the dietary laws, failure to put on the philacteries in the mornings, and, most important qf all, the occasional instances of intermarriage, are regarded as serious symptoms of community disintegration. Jewish par- ents frequently will deny themselves the essentials of life in order to send their boys to a religious school. (Tie family's status in the Jewish community depends in considerable measure upon the learning of their children^ In the Old World this training is mainly religious, such as the cheder and the yeshiba offer. But in America secular learning may 1 Ibid., February 13, 1925.THE CHICAGO GHETTO in part compensate for deficiency in religious knowledge. The main concern of the orthodox father, however, is to have a Kaddish, i.e., a son, or other relative, who will mourn for him after his death. A Jewish father appealed to a settle- ment worker for aid in persuading his son to go to cheder, with the plea: "He is^ no son of mine. Why, when his mother died he wouldn't even say Kaddish for her. I suppose when I die it will be the same way. What good is a son like that? I wish he had never been born."1 An aged Jewish peddler came to the office of a social agency asking to be taken to the hospital for the insane, where his only son was confined. He said: "I am getting old, and I feel that I am going to die pretty soon, and when I die I want somebody to say Kaddish for me. If my son Isidor can't do it, I have the trouble and the shame of having to hire somebody else. I want to see if he can say Kaddish."2 The father felt considerably relieved when he had assured himself that his son was able to repeat the prayer after him. The violation of the Sabbath and of other sacred tradi- tions of orthodoxy has increased to such proportions that the organized community is stirred to action. Since the younger generation will not as a rule even attend the Friday evening service, which is held at sundown, many congre- gations have attempted to adapt themselves to the changed conditions of employment in American cities and have post- poned this service till after supper. These congregations, while professing to be orthodox, are generally called "con- servative," to distinguish them from the strictly orthodox on 1 "Culture Conflicts in the Immigrant Family/' manuscript. 2 F^om a social case history in the files of the Jewish Social Service Bureau.220 THE GHETTO the one hand, and from the reformed congregations on the other. The recent editorial which appeared on this page on the frequent and flagrant violations of the Sabbath, by Chicago individuals and organizations, has, we are happy to say, done some good. Many well known members of our faith have applauded our unmistakable stand, admitting that things have gone altogether too far in this direction. The Chicago Rabbinical Association .... has begun to take a de- cided stand on the matter, since it is from the spiritual leaders that the community expects light and counsel in religious matters. In the meantime, however, we wish to point out that our ultra- orthodox brethren are creating conditions which make it conducive to their children to violate the Sabbath. Our good and pious brethren, of course, know very well the significance and importance of the Sab- bath in Jewish life, and they themselves are careful to observe it by taking in an early service Friday evening, and by having a good meal after the service. Their children, however, do not go to services, but they naturally participate in the excellent meal. Services after supper these members of the young generation do not care to attend, because their pious parents convinced them that the late services are conducted by the "trafah" reform and conservative rabbis who are not builders, but destroyers of Judaism. Nevertheless, on Friday evening these young folks do feel in a holiday mood, and they therefore spend their energy of their "extra Sabbath soul" on card playing and similar entertainments of frivolity and joviality, and when some one in the Jewish young people's club says something about the impropriety of desecrating the holy day of Israel, these ladies and gentlemen know immediately that this protest must come from the influence of reform, or conservative rabbis, who have introduced such an un-Jewish idea of holding services Friday evenings after eight o'clock! Why, their very parents and grandparents warned them against listening to the ser- mons of these rabbis, which are given on Friday evenings! It is this form of reasoning which, we are convinced, is contributing materially towards the open violation of the Sabbath, for when one should take the time to analyze the constituency of those organizations which are advertising their public affairs given on the Sabbath, he would easily discover that it is most frequently made up of children of orthodoxTHE CHICAGO GHETTO parents who are opposed to modern Jewish congregations and their teachings. It is this tragic situation which reminds one of the ancient biblical proverb: "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the chil- dren's teeth are set on edge."1 One movement recently inaugurated in an attempt to keep orthodoxy intact, by the Jewish Education Committee, was the organization of a sort of "Jewish Boy Scout" move- ment. The Tzofim Handbook, the manual of these Jewish Boy Scouts, has this to say: The Tzofim are those pupils who look upon the Hebrew school as upon .... a small sanctuary, and upon themselves as its Priests and Levites. Just as the Priests and Levites served the Temple and the people, so are the Tzofim at the service of the Hebrew school and of the Jewish people. Tzofim is a Hebrew word meaning vanguards, watchers or scouts. The Tzofim are the vanguards who lead the way for the rest of the pupils. The Tzofim are scouts ready to serve their people. The Tzofim, like the Boy Scouts, do a good deed a day, have a pledge, and a sign, and a handshake. They have Hebrew songs, and have their daily tasks. Their pledge reads: 1. I promise to be true to the God of Israel, to learn his Torah, and to try to live according to its commands. 2. I promise to be loyal to the Jewish people, and to help my fel- low Jews everywhere. "For all Jews are responsible for each other." 3. I promise to be true to our ancient ideal of rebuilding the Jew- ish homeland in Palestine. 4. I promise to be loyal to America and its ideals of religious liberty to all. 5. I promise to be a good pupil and a good comrade to my fellow students.3 The public appearance of these Tzofim was recently greeted with communal approval. An editorial reads: 1 Sentinel, February 6, 1925. 3 Tzofim Handbook, published by the Board of Jewish Education, Chicago.2 THE GHETTO An event of communal importance was the celebration held last Sunday afternoon at the Kehilath Jacob Hebrew School. Representa- tives of eight of the largest Hebrew schools in the city came together to observe Chamishoh Osor Sishevat, and they did it in fine style. Hebrew speeches and songs and Palestine movies made up the enter- tainment. But the significant feature of the evening was the cele- brants themselves: They were not presidents or directors of the schools; they were not even grown persons, but Tzofim, members of the organization comprised of pupils of the local Hebrew schools. Hatzofim, as the organization is known, had two hundred and fifty of its members at the celebration. Perhaps the most impressive part of the occasion came when, after the powerful address by Dr. Alexander M. Dushkin, wherewith he initiated new Tzofim, the young- sters recited their pledge—a pledge of loyalty to the Jewish people and its ideals, ending with the words the Jews uttered when they received the Ten Commandments: Na-Aseh V'Nishma, "We will do and we will obey." Hatzofim has a splendid idea back of it, that should attract every Jewish lad who is intelligent and devoted to his people.....1 The ghetto community is so closely knit, and its mem- bers are so directly under the control of the community, that the attempts of Christian missions which have established themselves in the ghetto have made no appreciable progress iifi converting any Jews in the ghetto itself. I^The ghetto is a complete world, but it is a small and a narrow world. It has its intellectuals, but their intellectu- ality is of a circumscribed sort. What it lacks in breadth of horizon, the ghetto life makes up in depth of emotion, in strength of familial and communal ties, and in attachment to tradition, form, and s,entiment7^ ) The ties of family, of village-community, and of Lands- mannschaft that bind the ghetto inhabitants into little nuclei of more or lessautonomous units are only partially apparent 1 Chicago Chronicle, February 13,1925.THE CHICAGO GHETTO 223 to the outsider. The ghetto family will survive crises that would tear an ordinary family asunder, and a stranger who is able to call himself a Landsmann, not only loosens the purse-strings of the first individual he meets, but also has access to his home. Not only do the Landsleute belong to the same synagogue, but as a rule they engage in similar voca- tions, become partners in business, live in the same neigh- borhood, and intermarry within their own group. A Lands- mannschaft has its own patriarchal leaders, its lodges and mutual aid associations, and its celebrations and festivities. It has its burial plot in the cemetery. It keeps the memories of the group alive through frequent visits, and maintains a steady liaison with the remnants of the Jewish community in the Old World. Occasionally these organizations join forces with other local clusters of Jews from the same general region in Europe. In the case of Jews who come from the same country, but who are few in number in comparison to the dominant groups, such as the Oriental Jews, the Spanish- Portuguese Jews, the Roumanian Jews, and to some extent the Hungarian Jews, the Landsmannschaft organization may cover a larger territory. The provincial or national ties are generally strengthened by a common dialect, peculiarities in diet, and local customs. In critical situations, particularly crises in the Old Country involving the whole group, they act as a body. Sometimes this requires financial assistance to the community abroad; at others, lodging a protest against the government; or, again,'enlisting the support of other Jewish groups locally and nationally to bring about desired results. Hand in hand with the ties of sympathy between the members of a Landsmannschaft go also the antag- onisms and prejudices between these groups which have224 THE GHETTO been brought over from the Old World. The social distances between Roumanian Jews and Hungarian Jews, between Lithuanians and Poles, between Poles and Russians, and be- tween Russians and Galicians are sometimes so great as to make corporate action within the ghetto impossible. Inter- marriage between some of these groups is almost as rare as intermarriage between ghetto Jews and Gentiles. The description of the ghetto would be incomplete with- out mention of the great number of other characteristic institutions that give it its own peculiar atmosphere and mark it as a distinct culture area. Among them are the Kosher butcher shops, where fresh meats and a variety of sausages are a specialty, and where, besides the butcher, there is to be found a special functionary, the shochet, who kills fresh poultry to order, mumbling a prayer as he cuts the throat of each chicken, duck, or goose with his chalef (ritual- ly approved butcher-knife). There is the basement fish store to gratify the tastes of the connoisseur with a variety of herrings, pike, and carp, which Jewish housewives pur- chase on Thursday in order to serve the famous national dish of gefiUlte fish at the sumptuous Friday evening meal. On the sidewalks in front of butcher shops and fish stores throughout the ghetto, especially on Thursdays and Fridays, there sits the bowed and bearded form of the horse-radish grinder. Often he turns out to be a religious teacher or talmudical scholar from the Old World, who, on account of his years, finds other avenues of making a living closed. There are Kosher bake-shops with rye bread, poppy-seed bread, and pumpernickel daily, and a kind of doughnut known as beigel for Shabboth. And finally there is the bath- rehouse, which contains facilities for Turkish and Russian, plain and fancy, baths, besides being the modern counter-THE CHICAGO GHETTO part of the ritual bath, or tnikveh, which is patronized by the women at certain prescribed occasions. The Russian and Turkish bath serves the ghetto as a hotel, since it is the cus- tom to stay overnight, and since there are no hotels in the ghetto. The ghetto has its own theater, where plays of the Rus- sian dramatists are given in Yiddish, and where Sholom Asch and Peretz Hirschbein appear in the repertoire side by side, with translations from Shakespeare, Ibsen, Shaw, and risque Broadway comedies. But the Chicago Yiddish theater, like the Yiddish press, is for the most part but a sideshow of the New York ghetto. The Yiddish newspapers and the Yid- dish theater draw their talent from New York. And if there happens to be discovered a literary genius or an actorke on the local scene, the wider and more appreciative audience of Second Avenue—the Yiddish Broadway of New York—soon snatches them off. Native to the ghetto are also the basement and second- story bookstores, cafes, and restaurants where the intellec- tuals hold forth on the latest developments in Zionism, socialism, philosophy, art, and politics, while they play a game of chess or pinochle. The Maxwell Street police station, the cigar stores, and the curtained gambling houses are the haunts of the loafers and gangsters of the district. Finally, at the offices of the shyster lawyers, the reatestate- niks, and sacramental wine dealers, one finds the fixers, the ward heelers, and petty politicians of the ghetto. ^But with all these varied activities and personality types, the ghetto nevertheless is a small world. The life with which it throbs is a provincial and sectarian one. Its successes are after all measured on a small scale, and its range of ex- pression is limited. Not until the Jew gets out of the ghetto226 THE GHETTO does he really live a full life. The ghetto community is not capable of collective action on a larger scale. It has its tragedies and its comedies, and what it possesses in depth slave of forms hallowed by tradition and sentiment, but is shallow in content and out of touch with the world. It is the product of sectarianism and isolation, of prejudices and taboos. The ghetto is a closed community, perpetuating it- self and renewing itself with a minimum of infusion of influences from without, biologically as well as culturally. It is almost as completely cut off from the world as if it were still surrounded by a wall and its inhabitants were still locked nightly behind ghetto The near West Side has been the stamping-ground of virtually every immigrant group that has come to Chicago. The occupation of this area by the Jews is, it seems, merely a passing phase of a long process of succession in which one population group has been crowded out by another. There seems to be more regularity in this process, however, than at first sight appears. In describing the foreign quarter of New York City, one writer has pointed out the constancy of the association of certain racial and cultural groups in the transi- tion of the community from one stage to the next. In every great city there is going on a constant silting process in the course of which each racial, national, and cultural group tends to find its habitat in the various natural areas that the city affords. Moreover, it has been pointed out that the various immigrant colonies in New York City seem to as- sume the same geographical pattern that the mother- and intensity it lacks in breadth and in substance^ It is the THE JEWS AND THEIR NEIGHBORSTHE CHICAGO GHETTO countries of the immigrants assume on the map of Europe.1 While not quite the same can be said for Chicago, there is an unmistakable regularity in the association between local im- migrant groups, and particularly between the Jews and their neighbors. The first Jewish settlers on the near West Side were mostly Bohemian Jews. As was to be expected, they settled in that part of the city which was open to immigrants from the point of view of rent, accessibility, and tolerance. But these early Jewish settlers drifted to that particular portion of the city lying beyond the central business district which was occupied by Bohemian immigrants, most likely because they were accustomed in the Old World to live side by side with that people, knew their language, and had developed a modus vivendi, including the attitude of mutual tolerance, and, most important of all, trade relationships. The Jews opened their stores and began to peddle in this Bohemian neighborhood, and prospered. The elevation of the railroad tracks on Fifteenth Street cut this area in two, and the Bohemians moved southwestward as the city expanded and industrial plants arose in that direction, while the Jews re- mained behind and expanded their area of occupation west- ward and northward. ' In the course of the extension of the Jewish settlement they encountered the Irish and the Germans. As these groups moved on, the Jews followed, only to be succeeded by the Italians, the Poles and Lithuanians, the Greeks and Turks, and finally by the Negroes. Such observations as have been made in other large American cities, notably New York and Philadelphia, indicate that a similar order of suc- 1 Konrad Berkovici, Around the World in New York. New York, 1924.228 THE GHETTO cession is to be seen there.1 This phenomenon seems to be due, not merely to the chronological order of immigration of these various groups, but also to the relation of the stand- ards of living of the various nationalities to one another, and to the attraction and tolerance of the successor by the prede- cessor. In the course of this transition the area has become converted from a pioneer residential section into a deterio- rated neighborhood, from the outskirts of an overgrown vil- lage to the slum of a great city. One may also note a certain degree of regularity in the economic relations between the inhabitants of the ghetto. In the early days of Chicago the clothing manufacturing establishments of the city employed largely Irish and Ger- man girls. These girls refused to work side by side with the Russian and Polish immigrants when they began to make their presence felt in the eighties. In part as a result of this, the sweatshop system arose. Work was given out to the Jew- ish immigrants to be done at home. It required but little capital to set up a tailoring establishment. The enterprising Jewish immigrants soon realized the possibilities of contract- ing for the performance of most of the operations required in the needle industry outside of cutting. This in turn re- lieved the manufacturer of the responsibility for factory maintenance, and, besides, lowered the cost of production. In less than two decades the Irish and the Germans had been largely replaced by Jewish labor in the tailoring trades, only to be succeeded in turn by the Italians and Poles, as the changing membership of the trade unions in the needle trades indicates. The immigrants drift to the lowest economic level in the division of labor, and rise to the next rung in the ladder as a 1 Bernheimer, op. cit.THE CHICAGO GHETTO 22^ new wave of immigrants succeeds them. The Jews took to peddling when they came here. This occupation had hither- to been beneath the dignity of any immigrant group. They made it profitable, and in turn were to some extent, es- pecially in the fruit and vegetable branch, displaced by the Italians. The relationship between the Poles and the Jews in Chicago is of especial interest. These two groups detest each other thoroughly, but they live side by side on the West Side, and even more generally on the Northwest Side, They have a profound feeling of disrespect and contempt for each other, bred by their contiguity and by historical friction in the pale; but they trade with each other on Milwaukee Avenue and on Maxwell Street. A study of numerous cases shows that not only do many Jews open their businesses on Milwaukee Avenue and Division Street because they know that the Poles are the predominant population in these neighborhoods, but the Poles come from all over the city to trade on Maxwell Street because they know that there they can find the familiar street-stands owned by Jews. These two immigrant groups, having lived side by side in Poland and Galicia, are used to each other's business methods. They have accommodated themselves one to another, and this accommodation persists in America. The Pole is not ac- customed to a "one-price store." When he goes shopping it is not a satisfactory experience unless he can haggle with the seller and "Jew him down" on prices. One of the most significant signs of the relationship be- tween the Jews and their neighbors in the ghetto is found in the contacts between the members of the younger genera- tion. They mingle not only in school but they are members of the same gangs. The recent outbreaks of gang warfare inTHE GHETTO Chicago show that in many instances the Jews, the Irish, and the Italians are engaged in joint illicit liquor enterprises, or combine their forces in "hi-jacking." In politics, too, while the tendency on the part of Jews has recently been to put their own men into office, it is not uncommon to find the Jews supporting an Italian for alderman, or to find the Italians supporting a Jew for a judgeship or a place on the Sanitary Board. Partnerships in peddling between Jewish and Italian boys on the West Side are frequently formed, and on the whole they seem to be very successful. Each has a special gift to contribute toward the success of the busi- ness. The latest invasion of the ghetto by the Negroes is of more than passing interest. The Negro, like the immigrant, is segregated in the city into a racial colony. Economic con- siderations, race prejudice, and cultural differences combine to set him apart. The Negro has drifted to the near West Side for precisely the same reason that the Jews and the Italians came there. Unlike the white landlords and resi- dents in other sections of the city, the Jews have offered no appreciable resistence to the invasion by the Negroes. As one clothing merchant on Maxwell Street put it, "A dollar is just as good whether a white hand or a black hand hands it over. Anyway, their hands are white on the inside."1 Many of the immigrants in the ghetto have as yet not heard of the color line. The prevailing opinion of the merchants on the near West Side is that the Negro spends his money freely, and usually has some to spend, and therefore is a desirable neighbor. The attitude of a great many Jewish property owners in the district is typified by the following statement by one of them: 1 "Reflections of a Maxwell-Street Merchant," manuscript.THE CHICAGO GHETTO When I rented my two story frame building to a colored family, some fellows came to see me, to tell me that I oughtn't to rent to nig- gers because they brought the value of the property down. I told them it was none of their business whom I rented to. The property in the neighborhood is in such poor shape that if you didn't rent to anybody that comes along, you would have it stand empty and pay your taxes out of your pocket. I asked those fellows whether they would pay my taxes or rent the building themselves, and they took to their heels. We Jews ought to be the last ones to hold a prejudice against another race, after all that we have been through.1 In the ghetto the Negro seems to have found another haven of refuge inv a city where the areas that he occupies are already overcrowded. In this connection it may be noted that the spread of the Negro settlement along fashionable Grand Boulevard on the South Side has also displaced the center of the German-Jewish settlement in that area. The transition and deterioration of the ghetto com- munity has been proceeding at such a speed that the com- plexion of the area changes from day to day. Dilapidated structures that a decade ago were Christian churches have since become synagogues and have now been turned into African Methodist Episcopal or colored Baptist churches. Under the latest coat of paint of a store-front colored mission there are vestiges of signs reading "Kosher Butchershop" and "Deutsche Apotheke." MAXWELL STREET The heart of the ghetto is marked by two great thorough- fares: Halsted Street and Maxwell Street. The former is lined on both sides with imposing emporiums: furniture stores, sausage stores, fur stores, cloak and suit, silk and dry goods, shoe, hat and cap, tobacco, and department stores. 1 "Interviews with a Marooned West-Side Family," manuscript.232 THE GHETTO On Halsted Street business goes on as it would in the Loop. The stores advertise and have one price. Not so with Max- well Street. Maxwell Street is as native to the ghetto as Halsted Street is now foreign to it. On Maxwell Street there is life; on Halsted Street, decorum. Maxwell Street is the Halsted Street of a generation ago. The proprietors of the substantial establishments on Halsted are the graduates of Maxwell, for the most part. The modern business man on Halsted Street represents the ideal of the sons of the push- cart owners on Maxwell Street. Maxwell Street, the ghetto's great outdoor market, is full of color, action, shouts, odors, and dirt. It resembles a medieval European fair more than the market of a great city of today. Its origins are to be sought in the traditions of the Jews, whose occupations in the Old World differed little from what they are here. To these traditions correspond also the traditions of the other national groups who form their clientele. It has been said that the Poles and Galicians seldom patronize a modern department store, but that they prefer the thrill which comes with shopping on Maxwell Street. Buying is an adventure in which one matches his wits against those of an opponent, a Jew. The Jews are versatile; they speak Yiddish among themselves, and Polish, Russian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Bohemian, and what not, to their customers. They know their tastes and their prejudices. They have on hand ginghams in loud, gay colors for one group, and for one occasion; and drab and black mourning wear for others. The noises of crowing roosters and geese, the cooing of pigeons, the barking of dogs, the twittering of canary birds, the smell of garlic and of cheeses, the aroma of onions,THE CHICAGO GHETTO apples, and oranges, and the shouts and curses of sellers and buyers fill the air. Anything can be bought and sold on Max- well Street. On one stand, piled high, are odd sizes of shoes long out of style; on another are copper kettles for brewing beer; on a third are second-hand pants; and one merchant even sells odd, broken pieces of spectacles, watches, and jewelry, together with pocket knives and household tools salvaged from the collections of junk peddlers. Everything has value on Maxwell Street, but the price is not fixed. It is the fixing of the price around which turns the whole plot of the drama enacted daily at the perpetual bazaar of Maxwell Street. The sellers know how to ask ten times the amount that their wares will eventually sell for, and the buyers know how to offer a twentieth. Everybody who pushes his way through the crowd is a potential customer, everybody except sight- seers, and they are spotted immediately by the discerning eyes of the "pullers," who are engaged in perpetual conver- sation with the shifting mass of human beings that pass con- tinuously between the rows of street-stands piled high with wares. The "puller" is a specialist. He has developed a fine technique of blocking the way of passers-by. Before he is aware of it, the unwitting and unsuspecting customer is trying on a suit that is many sizes too large and of a vintage of a decade ago. The seller swears by all that is holy that it fits like a glove, that it is the latest model put out by Hart Schaffner & Marx, and that he needs money so badly that he is willing to sell it at a loss of ten dollars. If the customer is skeptical and is inclined to ask how the dealer can stay in business and lose ten dollars on a suit, he is told confidentially, "You see, we sell so many of 'em."234 THE GHETTO On the sidewalk a puller shouts, "Caps, fifty cents!" In a moment he has a victim by the arm, and the salesman is trying on caps. "Yes, they are fifty cents apiece." He finds one that fits. "Seventy-five cents for that one." "But I thought you said they were fifty cents?" "Yes, but this one fits you!" On a trunk wedged in between a herring stand and a stall piled high with neckties, a middle-aged man with a trim Van Dyke beard, who still goes to Shul on Shabboth while his son runs the stand, is seated, engaged in familiar conversation with his Landsfrau from Lodz, who runs the hardware stand across the row, when he spots a likely cus- tomer some ten paces distant. He interrupts his conversa- tion long enough to shout, "Genuine Solinger razors!" When the customer approaches his stand he grabs him by the arm. "A genuine Solinger razor, worth six dollars, for two and a half!" The customer registers lack of interest, but he is held tightly by the coat-sleeve. "Let me show how it cuts." In a moment the merchant has pulled a straggling lock of hair from his head, and with a deft swish of the razor is demon- strating its superb quality. "How much will you give me? Make me an offer." The customer shakes his head. "Make me an offer; you can't insult me. What will you give me?" The customer offers a quarter. "Do you want to insult me? Do you think I steal them?" The customer tries to get away, but is held tight. The razor merchant, with an air of dis- gust, makes a gesture of putting the article away. "Now, make me a decent offer; and remember, be a gen- tleman." "A quarter is all I'll give you." "Well, give me the quarter." The razor is pushed intoTHE CHICAGO GHETTO the pocket of the customer, who promptly pulls it out and says, "I haven't got my money with me." "Well, of all the chutzpah (nerve)! Why do you bother me, and you let me pull out my hair for you. If I weren't a gentleman, I'd have you arrested." The razor transaction has failed, and the conversation with the Landsfrau is re- sumed. Up until ten years ago all the life and color that is now Maxwell Street was to be found around the corner, on Jefferson Street; but the city has grown and the market has been pushed farther west, until now it extends to Sangamon Street, five blocks distant. Many of the owners of street- stands and shops have grown rich and no longer live in the district, but they still own the property. The attics and basements in which they once lived with their families have now been turned into storerooms and warehouses. The sons and daughters of these former push-cart owners are now conducting fashionable shops in other parts of the city, or are lawyers or doctors, but their parents in many cases still stick to the gold mine on Maxwell Street. Competition is keen. The original Maxwell Street popu- lation closed up shop and went to the synagogue every Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, but today the mar- ket is deserted only on the Day of Atonement and the Jewish New Year. As one veteran put it: "Things aren't as they used to be around here fifteen years ago. We had a better class of Jews then. Everybody was gone on Skabboth. But now everybody is after the money, and you got to get out of business or stay here every day, because Saturday is one of our busiest days.1 In accordance with the tradition of the pale, where the 1 "Observations of a 'Puller/ " manuscript.236 THE GHETTO women conducted the stores while the men spent their time in pious devotion and learning, a number of Jewish women are among the most successful merchants of Maxwell Street. They almost monopolize the fish, herring, and poultry stands. Some years ago the street stands were permanent fix- tures, but recently the city ordinances have prohibited them. At present all the stands are on wheels, and are removed nightly. At five-thirty every morning a mob of men, women, and children may be seen flocking to an empty lot on Thir- teenth and Union streets, where an old man rents push- carts for twenty-five cents per day. He knows each of his carts individually, and whenever anyone hastens away with one of his three-hundred-odd vehicles without paying, the owner of the push-carts comes to the market later and col- lects. He has no difficulty in finding the culprit, for he can identify every one of his vehicles. By six o'clock in the morning the best and largest push-carts have been hauled away. Everyone tries to maneuver for the most favorable position on the street. A corner location, especially on Max- well and Halsted streets, is worth fighting for. Frequently the policeman who patrols the street has to decide who came first and is entitled to squatter rights for the day. After "Charlie the Policeman" has settled all the quarrels, fraternization ensues. When they are all set for business, around ten-thirty in the morn- ing, Mr. Cohen, who sells pop, says to Mr. Goldberg, who sells roasted chestnuts and sunflower seeds, "I'll bet you a dollar it's going to rain." Mr. Goldberg says it won't, and the bet is on. They go to Charlie, and what he says goes. And as the dull morning business goes on, there is a voice yelling every once in a while, "Charley, is it going to rain today?"1 *Ibid.THE CHICAGO GHETTO 237 fThe prosperity of the ghetto fluctuates with the employ- menband the earnings of the immigrant and Negro laborers in the industries of ChicagG^rlt has its weekly routine, cor- responding to the habits of that population. Thursday is "chicken day," when the Jewish customers lay in their sup- plies for the Friday evening meal. Most of the purchasing is done by the men, who take a much more active part in the conduct of the household and the kitchen than is the case among non-Jewish immigrant groups. The man sees that the chicken is properly killed, for if something should go wrong, he, as the responsible head of the household, would have to bear the sin. In front of the butcher shops hang signs: "The shochet will kill your chickens for ten cents apiece." But there are also a number of butcher shops where hams and non-Kosher meats are sold. The keeper of one of these shops expressed himself as follows: "If they want to eat ckasser [pork], I should worry. I can sell it to 'em as well as anybody else. When you are in business you can't be too particular. Don't the Kosher meat markets have to sell the trefah (non- Kosher) parts of their meat to the goyim?"1 This same butcher, however, buys his Kosher meat from another shop, and would not allow his own family to eat trefah. Friday is "fish day" on Maxwell Street. The turnover of some of these street-stands and stores is enormous. Sunday is the busiest day of all. Poles, Russians, Lithu- anians, Bohemians, and Negroes, with a scattering minority of old German and Irish purchasers who in former days lived next to the Jews on the near West Side but now are scattered all over the city, come to supply their wants on Maxwell Street. Many of the stands and stores have their permanent clientele, and are known for the cheapness of their wares. 1 "Reflections of a Maxwell-Street Merchant," manuscript.238 THE GHETTO On Sundays there is bedlam on Maxwell Street. The cus<- tomers are in a holiday mood. Shouts and curses in many- languages mingle with polite and familiar conversation in Yiddish. The Maxwell Street market has been a hotbed of local politics and graft. Rival political leaders vie with each other for control of the administration of the market(^The street venders frequently complain of extortion by politicians. Since it is very difficult to organize the Maxwell Street mer- chants because of the many feuds and factions and the ex- treme individualism of the community and their village atti- tudes, it has been easy for politicians to build up a system of private patronage and "protection.'^ Special police patrolled the Maxwell Street market yesterday, following an assault upon Max Janowsky, new market master, by a score of angry peddlers, who are said to have resented his attempt to eject a woman huckster from her stand. It is alleged that Janowsky, who was recently appointed by Mayor Dever to replace Harry Lapping after a graft scandal, tried to punish the woman for refusing to contribute to the $250,000 jackpot, said to be collected annually by overlords of Maxwell Street. When he started to yank the woman's cart away from the curb, according to Alderman Henry L. Fick (20th), his sponsor, a score of neighboring venders showered him with rocks and other missiles. As a result he is now on crutches, with his head wreathed in bandages. The woman disappeared during the melee. Considerable pressure is being brought to bear upon the mayor and city council to close the market, on the ground that graft is too widespread to check.1 The latest feud developed ten days ago, when the banana cart of Edward Schatz and his son Benjamin was literally "kicked off the street." Among the venders it was whispered that Alderman Fick was squaring accounts with the Schatzes for carrying a "shakedown" 1 Chicago Tribune, July 15, 1926.THE CHICAGO GHETTO complaint to the mayor, which ended in the firing of Lapping. In sworn affidavits the Schatzes charged that for several years they had been compelled to contribute $300 annually, in addition to the dime a day collected by the city, in order to remain undisturbed in business on the street. The money, it was charged, was paid to Victor Cohen, who mas- queraded with Fick's consent as assistant market master. Cohen, it was alleged, represented "certain politicians having influence over market affairs." Another motive for the ousting of Schatz and his son was said to be a desire on the part of these same politicians to remove the principal obstacle to their overlord system of illegal taxation. Pay-day on the market with the Schatzes present could only mean one thing—trouble. It was also felt that their stay on the market, in the face of an open break with the bosses, could not have a healthy financial reaction, as other merchants, who paid because they felt they must, might try to follow the example of the Schatzes. With the mayor absent from the city, Alderman Fick has main- tained a defiant attitude. "No one can come into my ward and defy me," the alderman is quoted as saying. The Schatzes have made their bowl, now they're through peddling bananas on the West Side. And so Maxwell Street awaits the mayor.1 The ghetto, in the opinion of some, has not passed after all. The Jews are still paying tribute to their lords for their right to live and bargain in the ghetto. One of them said: "America isn't so different from Russia. Of course we haven't any pogroms, but we have fishes [prejudice] just the same, and we have to buy our right to make a living from the grafters and the politicians, instead of the Tsar and the bureaucrats."2 The ghetto inhabitants, particularly the most recent arrivals take it more or less for granted that they do not pos- 1 Chicago Daily News, July 15, 1926. 2 "Reflections of a Maxwell-Street Merchant," manuscript.240 THE GHETTO sess equal rights before the law. They feel that they must rely to a large extent upon political pull and fixers to obtain "favors" and achieve their ends, and consequently the ghetto of Chicago, like the East Side of New York, ha? be- come the cradle of powerful political machines. The older settlers soon become conscious of their rights, however, and assert themselves effectively against the oppressions of petty politicians. In spite of its prosperity, the Rialto of the ghetto—Max- well Street—is fast passing away. As the immigrants get into closer touch with the outside world, they see that after all the ghetto offers but limited opportunities for success. They establish themselves in stores and offices in other parts of the city and become large-scale merchants, real estate dealers, manufacturers, and building contractors. Compared again with the world beyond the ghetto, the ghetto world shrinks to a vanishing-point. Not only do the Jewish mer- chants move away from Maxwell Street to more reputable quarters, but in recent years there have been few recruits to fill the vacancies. A few recent immigrants still drift to the push-carts, but generally only for a short time, until they have accumulated sufficient wealth to move elsewhere. (Maxwell Street is declining, and is being left to the rats that haunt its streets at night^)CHAPTER XII THE VANISHING GHETTO THE FLIGHT FROM THE GHETTO "Let us go to America," said a Jew from Kiev to his wife, after he had lost his fortune in a pogrom, "let us leave this hellish place where men are beasts, and let us go to America, where there is no ghetto and no pale, where there ire no pogroms, and where even Jews are men."1 He came, but he landed in the ghetto. It took him some time to find out that it was a ghetto; it took him twenty years to discover that the place on Jefferson Street Bear Roosevelt Road, where he lived a third of his life- time, was near the very heart of the ghetto. He had be- come a citizen, and he had voted at elections; he had a busi- ness on Jefferson Street, and he had accumulated a comforta- ble fortune. He had allowed his beard to grow, and he went to Shul as he did in Kiev. His wife kept a Kosher house, and le had brought up his boy to play chess and to discuss the Talmud. It had never occurred to him that there was a jhetto in America and in Chicago. He discovered the ghetto quite accidentally, and the discovery shocked him beyond description. His whole world sollapsed one evening when his oldest son, after the Friday evening meal, said to him that now, since he was going to itw school and the family was pretty well fixed, and as he lad acquired some friends whom he would like to invite to lb house, they ought to move out of the ghetto. "The 1 "An Immigrant Autobiography," manuscript. 241THE GHETTO ^nrtto!" said the father, "Are you dreaming? What do other people have that we haven't got? Don't you like this flat? Isn't the furniture good enough? Isn't this home swell enough for you?" That night the old man could not sleep, and the next morning in Shut he was a little bewildered by the services. His mind was wandering. A month later they moved to Central Park Avenue, in Lawndale. The son felt happier, but the father didn't go down to hjs store on Roosevelt Road and Jefferson Street on the street car with quite the same zest mornings as he used to when they lived upstairs over the business. Nor did he feel the same way when he went to the synagogue. His Landsleute, he noticed, looked at him with a rather quizzical air; they didn't shake hands with the warmth of days gone by, and they weren't quite as familiar as they used to be. Two years later, when the son had opened a law office, the father sold his store and began to dabble in real estate, using his son's office as his headquarters. He had found that the synagogue on the near West Side was too far away, and had joined a congregation on Douglas Boulevard, three miles farther west. He had trimmed his beard a little, too. He still played chess with his son, but instead of discussing the Talmud they discussed the real estate boom on Craw- ford Avenue. Once in a while he soliloquized, "And I thought I was rich; why, I have made more money in the last year or two than I made during the twenty years be- fore. Yes, I lived in the ghetto and didn't know it." What happened in this family is fairly typical of what has happened in hundreds—yes, thousands—of Jewish fami- lies on the West Side. Their life in the ghetto was so circum- scribed, and they were so integrally a part of it, that theyTHE VANISHING GHETTO 243 were unaware of its existence^ They discovered the ghetto through chance contacts with the world outside; and then they fled. In most instances it is the children who discover the ghetto for their parents. They go to school; they work in the stores and offices in the loop; they make friends; they go to dances, and the girls are seen home by escorts; they are mobile, and the worM of the ghetto begins to shrink, then to bore, and finally to disgust>3^ contrast with the sweep of Michigan Boulevard, the gaudy splendor of the Trianon Ballroom, and the grandeur of the Oriental Theater, the ghetto streets look narrow, dark, and filthy. Sometimes parents, who feel at home because they have never been outside, resist for a time, but then family con- flicts arise that make life intolerable. They eventually yield, and the exodus begins. What ten years ago was a slow west- ward movement has now developed into a veritable stam- pede to get out of the ghetto. There are no accurate statistics available on the num- ber of Jews in any part of the city, since the United States census regards Jews as a religious group and therefore does not enumerate them separately. Since most of the Jews on the West Side are Russian born, and since a fair proporfion of them give Yiddish or Hebrew as their mother-tongue, the census reports on these classes may be of significance in indicating the size of the Jewish population in various areas of the city, and of the movement of the population from one district to another. Comparisons for different census periods are made doubly difficult by the fact that Chicago has under- gone a change in its ward boundaries.1 The school census of the city of Chicago for 1914, for wards 10, 11, 19, and 20, 1 Details for census tracts have been compiled by the Social Research Laboratory of the University of Chicago.244 THE GHETTO when compared with the United States census for 1920, reveals changes in the proportion of Russian-born persons as shown in Table I. It is not an unfair assumption that the majority of the Russian-born persons in these wards were Jews. The emigration of the Jews from the West Side is further indicated by the school principals' reports on the relative proportion of Jewish children enrolled in the public schools of the area. The comparisons for the years 1914 and 1923 are given in Table II.1 TABLE I Ward 1914 1920 No. Decreased Per Cent Decreased 1 0........... 1 1........... 1 9........... 2 0........... Total____ i3,oiS 5,831 7,309 I6,775 7,557 3,628 2,850 6,729 5,459 2,203 4,459 9,996 42 37.7 61 60 42,931 20,814 22,117 50.2 (Average) TABLE I In addition to these, the Jewish Training School, with 650 pupils, 547 of whom were Jewish, located in the heart of the ghetto, has been closed. The flight of the Jewish population from the district has been considerably more noticeable than the general exodus of the population from the near West Side.2 The Michael Reese Dispensary and the Jewish Peoples' 1 Report of "A Study o! the Social and Recreational Needs of the Jewish Community of Chicago," manuscript in files of Jewish Peoples' Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 1923. a The decrease in total number of pupils from 1914 to 1923 was 5,493, or 48 per cent, while the decrease in Jewish pupils was 4,975, or 63 per cent. See ibid., p. 29. A sample study made in connection with our present study in 1925 seems to indicate that the decrease in Jewish pupils has continued steadily during the intervening years.THE VANISHING GHETTO 245 Institute, two of the leading institutions of the Jewish com- munity of Chicago, which were but a decade ago in the midst of the Jewish community, are now drawing an increas- ing number of their clients from Lawndale and the North- west Side.1 The old plant of the Jewish Peoples' Institute is now in the heart of the Italian district. It has a branch on the Northwest Side to accommodate its increasing number of Jewish patrons there, and has just erected a large com- Washburne..... Garfield........ Foster.......... Smythe......... Goodrich....... Dore........... Medill (grade)... Polk........... 1914 i,57S 1,525 2,o75 1,225 1,200 1,093 837 1,250 TABLE II 1923 Closed 1,079 775 1,052 23 25 Closed Closed Per Cent Jewish 1914 1923 93 Closed 92 30 80 57 88 89 65 2 30 3 40 Closed 20 Closed Closed 1,079 775 1,052 23 25 Closed Closed Total Pupils School Jewish Pupils Closed i,35i 1,360 1,176 1,200 850 Closed Closed 1,465 1,400 1,640 1,078 736 329 335 250 munity center in Lawndale, on the assumption that the center of the Jewish population will be in that area for some time to come. ^The mass migration out of the ghetto is not to be ex- ^ plained merely on the basis of the deterioration of the area and its conversion into an industrial zone) Nor is it accu- rate to say that the Jews are being Dressed out by suc- ceeding immigrant groups and NegroesiLA study of the mo- tives of migration reveals that the Jews are not merely 1 From the private files of Mr. Philip L. Seman, general director, Jewish Peoples' Institute. For the Michael Reese Dispensary an investigation made in the course of our study revealed a constantly and rapidly declining number of Jewish patients from the near West Side.246 THE GHETTO fleeing from the ghetto, but that they are also drifting to other areas. The physical deterioration of the near West Side as a residential area and the decay of local culture have gone on pari passu, of course, and have made the area un- desirable as a living quarter for those who have acquired sufficient wealth to afford something better. ^But as a rule the Jew is not so much running away from the area because it is a slum, nor is he fleeing from the Negroes; but he is fleeing from his fellow-Jews who remain in the ghetto. From the ghetto he drifts to Lawndale, where he hopes to acquire status, or where at least his status as a ghetto Jew will be forgotten^? ^ DEUTSCHLAND If the near West Side is the home of the first generation immigrant and of the ghetto, then Lawndale is pre-eminently the area of second settlement, of Deutschland. One of the important adjustments that any immigrant group has to make, it has been observed, is that of finding a suitable habitat corresponding to the habits and attitudes of the individuals. This adjustment to the areas of a large city tends to take the form of distinct areas of settlement. When he first arrives, the immigrant settles in the slum, which is called the area of first settlement. But if the immigrant him- self continues to live in this area for his whole lifetime, his children seldom do. In a fast-growing city a neighborhood has a life of no more than one generation. It changes its local color with the turnover of its inhabitants. fjThe Jews are seldom permanent inmates of the Western ghetto. The influences from without penetrate subtly and slowly, and lure at least the children into the more spacious world around them. In the last stages of his ghetto life the Jew becomes conscious of the narrowness of his world, andTHE VANISHING GHETTO 247 when he has definitely entered into the full realization of his status he migrates to the area of second settlement^ In the concentric zones that surround the core of the city or the central business district, this is generally the second ring— the zone of workingmen's homes.1 The Jews of the ghetto began to migrate toward this region during the first decade of this century. The current in this direction became strong when the wave of Russian immigration following the rev- olution and pogroms of 1905-6 set in and flooded the ghetto. The settlers who arrived during the eighties and the nineties of the last century were gradually displaced by the newcomers. In Lawndale the Jews again came into contact with the Germans and the Irish, whom they had dislodged from the ghetto a generation before. Lawndale, when the Jewish settlers arrived, was a quiet residential zone of lower middle-class standards. It had spacious streets, yards, and parks, many wide open spaces, and substantial duplex apartments. The Germans and the Irish who inhabited it had had some experience with the Jews previously on the near West Side. They had given up Halsted Street without much of a struggle; but on Kedzie Avenue and on Douglas Park Boulevard, where they had built new homes, they determined to make a stand. A few Jewish families got a foothold in the area by buying a home here and there, but when the tide from the ghetto set in, it met determined opposition. As they could not rent, they had to buy—and buy they did. They bought Lawndale in blocks, and by 1915 Lawndale was Jewish. Jews have done to Lawndale in Chicago what they have done to the Bronx in New York: 1 See Ernest W. Burgfess: "The Growth of the City," in Robert E. Park, The City, chap, ii, Chicago, 1925.248 THE GHETTO Crowded northward, the Jews discovered the wilds-of the Bronx. The doctors advised them to go and live there when they had a "touch k of consumption." It was "the country." What they did with these wilds is history. They destroyed beautiful forest estates and built ugly tenement houses, created a new Hester Street where there was a park. But they also created a town where there were only rocks and marshes. Theaters, synagogues, institutions, hospitals, factories, gambling houses, other houses. There is now a generation of Bronx Jews, quite distinct from the East Side Jew^It's the second-generation Jew, with all the outward characteristics minus beard and mustache, playing baseball, great fight fans, commercial travelers, clean-shirted, white-collared, derby-hatted, creased-trouserety The women are stylish and stout, white-skinned, long-nosed, bediamonded; social workers, actresses, stump speakers, jazz dancers, with none of the color and the virtues of their erstwhile bearded, bewigged parents, and a few vices of their own acquisition. But they bathe frequently.1 ^There is a generation of Lawndale Jews. In the ghetto they are called Deitchuks because they affect German ways, aren't quite so particular about Kosher food, don't go to the synagogue quite so often, patronize the Loop for their enter- tainment, and speak Yiddish at home only. That is why the ghetto Jews refer to Lawndale as Deutschiand^) Everything beyond the pale is either the world of goyim or the world of Deitchuks. There is only a step between the one and the other. {The Deitchuk is considered as something worse than the goy. He is a poor imitation of a Jew, and he is not a goy only because the goyim won't have himp The outstanding vocational type of the ghetto is the Sch&cherjude, the push-cart peddler and small-scale mer- chant. Deutschland is inhabited by Menschen, or more often, ~ the AUrightnicks. Both are persons keenly conscious of their superior status, at least economically ; but while the former 1 Konrad Bercovici, "The Greatest Jewish City in the World," Nation (September 12, 1923), p. 261.THE VANISHING GHETTO has achieved his success without sacrificing much of identity as a Jew, the latter, in his opportunism, has thrown overboard most of the cultural baggage of his group, and as i consequence is treated with the disdain befitting an apostate or meshumed. The Allrightnick offends the group because he is no respector of its values, (fn the ghetto, wealth is incon- spicuous; in Deutschland it is displayed. The realestatenick makes hundreds of dollars for every dollar of the peddler, but the former flaunts his wealth before the world as if it were millions!) He is self-satisfied, and in his community he becomes a Macher, a man of affairs. The business traditions of the Jews are so ancient that we should indeed be surprised to find that this vocational type lacked status; but the Allrightnick represents the type of business man to whom success is everything. (Jrhe transformation in the personality types that is wrought by these distinct culture areas is nowhere more ap- parent than in the contrast between the intellectuals in the ghetto and in Deutschland. The ideal of learning which in the ghetto produced the type of student known as the Yeskiba Bochar, or talmudical student, and the Melammed, or rabbinical teacher, persists, though in a somewhat al- tered form. In Europe, and to a large extent in the modern ghetto, learning was religious. In the area of second settle- ment it is likely to be of a secular sort. In the ghetto a poor but learned talmudical student is a desirable candidate for son-in-law of a prosperous merchant, but in Deutschland the young doctors, lawyers, and politicians push him into the background^) Probably nothing has done more to alter the altitude toward the intellectual, and to change the con- ctotion of intelligence itself, than popular secular education; b it the main outlines of the old pattern persist. IntellectualsTHE GHETTO x flourish only in a community that supports them and ^ives them status. If the community consists only of igno- ramuses, if it is narrow and confining, the intellectuals l is transformed. Together they constitute a sort of galaxy of personalities in which the culture of the group finds every expression. . An analysis of the outstanding personality types in any givSh. area shows that they depend for their existence on, and are a direct expression of, characteristic attitudes and sentiments in the group. As the life of the group changes, new types appear, but they are on the whole outgrowths and transformations of earlier types. They are at the same time 1 For the identification of a number of these types I am indebted to Mr. John Landesco.THE VANISHING GHETTO indexes of assimilation of the members of a social group to another, and represent, therefore, various stages in the assimilative process?) These types may also be conceived of as the effect of mobility upon personal behavior. They express the range of contacts of the individuals with other cultures. The isolated person is merely a person of few and superficial contacts. The ghetto Jew is provincial and has a dwarfed personality be- cause he seldom penetrates beyond the pale. His daily routine is confined largely to the narrow area of his imme- diate vicinity. Even when he drives his wagon through the other sections of the city, he does so with his eyes closed to the life that goes on, and open only, as the saying goes, "to business." There is a striking difference between the migrations of the families within and those without the ghetto. Of two hundred families studied, one hundred lived in the ghetto and the other one hundred in Lawndale and on the North- west Side. Of the one hundred ghetto families, forty-five moved in one year (1924). The average distance between their old and their new homes was three blocks. Of the one hundred families on the Northwest Side and in Lawndale, sixty moved in the same year, but the average distance between their old and their new homes was a mile and one- half .^Mobility seems to be cumulative, gaining momentum in the case of the Jews as they leave the ghetto and move to the area of second settlement. The movement becomes more frequent and covers a wider range as the confines of the ghetto are left behind. This movement is a measure of the 1 "A Study of Migration on the West and Northwest Sides of Chicago," manuscript.THE GHETTO restlessness which shows itself on the subjective side in the speed and the degree of the transformation of the attitudes of the groujx^/ Instead of the small, ramshackle synagogues of the ghetto, we find that Deutschland has its modern, pretentious structures. In place of the strictly orthodox ritual of the ghetto, Deutschland has its "conservative" synagogues, mid- way between orthodoxy and reform. Instead of the dingy and crowded dwellings of the near West Side, Lawndale and the Northwest Side have their modern apartment buildings with sun parlors, garages, and baths. As he emerges from the ghetto, the Jew loses his dis- tinctive personal appearance. This change in facial expres- sion and in bearing is most apparent in the young people. The second generation becomes self-assertive, straightens out its spine, and lifts its head. The number of athletes whose parents were ghetto Jews has in recent years been in- creasing at an amazing rate: The gloved fists of Benny Leonard and the rest of the Jewish fighting fraternity should forever put an end to the vicious notion that our race is devoid of physical stamina. Was there ever a pluckier, gamer, astuter lightweight in the entire history of the American ring than Leonard? Joe Gans was a wonderful fighting machine, and Battling Nelson was a marvel; Wolgast, Ritchie, Freddie Walsh, and 1A study is now in progress of the Jewish community of New York, by the Bureau of Jewish Social Research, New York City, which in a prelimi- nary report seems to indicate a similar situation. This study gives the Jewish population of New York City as 1,728,000 (for 1925) or one third of the total population of the city. In one decade (1916-25) Manhattan lost 200,000 Jews. Washington Heights was the only part of the city-proper showing an increase in Jewish population, while Coney Island has become 96.7% Jewish. (.Jewish Communal Survey of Greater New York. First Section: Studies in the New York Jewish population. New York, 1928.) See also "Jews of New York," Survey, 60: 93.THE VANISHING GHETTO Kid Lavigne were worthy lightweight champions; but the Jew Benjamin Liner, son of a Warsaw immigrant, is the greatest of them all! And there is nothing at all the matter with our new Jewish Feath- erweight "Champ," Louis "Kid" Kaplan, late from Bialystok, and now a resident of Meriden, Connecticut. Abe Goldstein, until recently the bantam champion of the world, lost only on points to Eddie Martin in a 15-round bout at Madison Square Garden. There were plenty of fans in the Garden that evening who felt that Goldstein deserved the decision. Have no fear, he will stage a "come-back." As soon as Leonard really lays down his crown a worthy successor will be found in Sid Terris, an East Side boy. He is the sensation of the town. Sid was born twenty-one years ago, on Clinton Street. None of Sid's Gentile antagonists has as yet suggested that the little fellow with the Jewish physiognomy is a physical coward. Old-timers needn't be told about Joe Choynski, who fought the best of the heavyweights twenty-five years ago; Abe Attell, feather- weight champion 1911-22; Leach Cross, a great lightweight in his day; Battling Levinsky, Soldier Bartfield, and Charlie White. These men have made fistic history in this country. When one turns to the younger fellows in the fighting game, there's no dearth of Jewish talent. There's Lew Tendler, still the idol of the Quaker City; Jack Bernstein, Corporal Izzy Schwartz, Charley Rosen- berg, and a host of others. But a lie dies hard. Sometimes I think we shouldn't be annoyed by this sort of loose talk. After all, the people who are certain about the alleged congenital cowardice of the Jewish race are the selfsame upholders of law and order and defenders of the constitution that pass laws to banish Darwin from college textbooks. We can afford to be in the same boat with the author of Origin of Species.1 (The area of second settlement is also pre-eminently an area of conflict—conflict within the family and the com- munity. Families tend to disintegrate under the stress of col iradictions between behavior patterns which result from 1 Jewish Daily Forward, February 25, 1925.254 THE GHETTO the importation of extraneous cultural influences into the home by the children of the immigrants/^ The enlarged world of the area of second settlement re- sults also in a shift of vocational interests, and increased organization. Labor leaders who have had experience in organizing Jewish workers complain of the difficulty of hold- ing organizations of recent immigrants together. This task apparently becomes easier as the children of the immigrants are reached, and as the immigrant removes to the area of second settlement.2 The social organization of the area of second settlement cuts across the lines of family and Landsmannschaft. Village synagogues which were founded in the ghetto are federated into large congregations in which the distinctions between Old World local ties reach the vanishing-point. Hand in hand with the wiping out of the ties of local and familial solidarity goes also a greater amount of disorganization and uncontrolled behavior. As the ghetto becomes depleted and its population be- gins to center in the area of second settlement there appear also a number of conservative influences. The new area becomes predominantly Jewish, although it is not the Jew- ishness of the same intensity as that of the ghetto itself. Its institutions and personalities have undergone a change, but not sufficient to lose their identifying Jewish color. The later migrants from the ghetto are the least assimilated, and they impart to the new area many of the outward characteristics of the ghetto itself. In their attempt to flee from the ghetto, the partially 1 "Culture Conflicts in the Immigrant Family," manuscript. 2 See William M. Leiserson, Adjusting the Immigrant to Industry, New York, 1924.THE VANISHING GHETTO assimilated groups have found that the ghetto has fol- lowed them to their new quarters. This is as true of Lawn- dale as it is of the Northwest Side in the region of Division Street and Humboldt Park. Within fifteen years these areas have become overwhelmingly Jewish, and have reproduced —though in a modified form—the general outlines of the ghetto atmosphere. (jLong before this transition is completed, however, a new exodus has begun. The plans of those who fled from the ghetto in order to obtain status as human beings—as per- sons rather than as Jews—have been frustrated by the simi- lar plans of others. Unwittingly the deserters from the ghetto have become the founders of a new ghetto) Scarcely does this consciousness begin to dawn upon them when the flight is resumed, this time to a new frontier lying several miles from the area of second settlement. The area of third settlement, in Chicago as elsewhere, is located in the outly- ing residential sections of the city—in Rogers Park, Ravens- wood, Albany Park, the North Shore, and the South Shore, and finally the suburban regions. " One of the outstanding characteristics of the local areas in which the Jewish population of the city is to be found is their separateness and discontinuity from one another. The ghetto has changed very little in its main geographical out- lines since it was first settled by the Jews. Its invisible walls have been pushed out and dented in here and there. The frontier of the Jewish settlements, however, is never to be found in an area along the borders of, and contiguous to, the ghetto, but rather in isolated settlements some distance removed from the ghetto proper and from each other.''The movement of the Jews has been in jumps and spurts, not in continuous lines. This is one of the most striking indications256 THE GHETTO of the fundamental motive of local migrations: flight from the familiar, escape into anonymity. The Jew stays in a given area apparently just long enough to become conscious of his status as a Jew. Scarcely does he get a glimpse of the freer world that looms in the distance when he becomes irritated by the presence of his fellow-Jews, more Jewish than himself, and restless because his major wishes are left unsatisfied^ <^he zones of settlement of the Jews correspond roughly to t&e various generations of immigrants. Those who came earliest are now farthest removed from the original ghetto. They are also farthest along in the process of assimilation and in the departure from Old World customs and orthodox ritual. In the frontier regions the Jew plunges into the po- litical and social life of the community with such zest and enthusiasm that he soon makes himself conspicuous as a Jew by his very attempt not to appear strange, and to be a real member of the community Qn the ghetto the synagogue and the religious life of the community is predominantly orthodox; in the area of second settlement it becomes "conservative"; and on the frontier it is "reformed.^ But the change is accomplished neither suddenly nor completely. The ghetto is never quite outlived, especially in the case of the older generation, who, in their own lifetimes, cannot quite accustom themselves to the new ways of life. And then there is the problem of the children. The parents may not have completely forgotten that they were Jews, and may have made their compromises; but the children seem generally to carry the de-Judaization a step farther than their parents—who in their day consid- ered themselves quite rebellious—are willing to tolerate. The sentiments that have held the group together in theTHE VANISHING GHETTO past still assert themselves when the continuity of the group is threatened. Rabbi Saul Silber sounded the keynote of pessimism at the ban- quet which was held by the Anshe Sholom Congregation in celebration of its fifty-fifth anniversary: "What will become of our children?" said he, among other things. "Do we want them to grow up pinochle players and poker sharks, or do we want them to grow up men and women who have an understanding of the problems of life, who know the history of their ancestors, who are proud Jews, and who will be a credit to us? Our children are running away from us because we have nothing to hold them with, to make them worthy of their Jewish heritage. Orthodox Judaism is on the decline and will soon disappear entirely unless we do our duty toward maintaining its traditions. We have fine boys and girls who grow up in fine Jewish homes ignorant of the simplest rudiments of Judaism because we do not give them the opportunity to learn, to know. Let us build houses of worship, social centers and Hebrew schools, and let us provide the means for the com- ing generation to learn and to know; there can not be a better or more profitable investment." Well spoken, Rabbi Silber. It is unfortunate that the Jewish population has the moving spirit and neighborhoods change practically overnight. First it was Douglas and Independence Boulevards, then the North Shore district, then Rogers Park; now it is Wilmette, Winnetka, Glencoe, etc. These newly rich want to be "swell," and to be "swell" is to run away from Jews and Judaism—that's the modern curse.1 The latest avenue of escape from the ghetto is repre- sented by the rapid influx of Jews into the apartment and residential hotels of the city, particularly of Hyde Park and the North Shore. So popular have these hotels become with the Jewish population that a "Jewish Hotel Row," as it is called by real estate men of the district, is rapidly springing up. Many of these hotels, while not advertising Kosher food, are nevertheless catering to the traditional tastes of the 1 Chicago Chronicle, January 16, 1925.THE GHETTO Jews. The middle-class business men among the Jews moved into these hotels originally, not merely because their wives wanted to be free from household duties, nor merely because they had reached a station in life where they could afford the luxuries of hotel life, but rather because they wished to be taken for successful business or professional men—not merely successful Jews. The hotels offered anonymity; they offered freedom from ritual and the close supervision of the intimate community. Here one could be one's self, and, if one spent a little oc- casionally on parties, dinners, and entertainment, and if one "Americanized" one's name and put up a good front by playing golf and being a good sport, one could get to know the best people, and break into gentile society. There was no bar to keep the Jews out at first. A few Jewish residents had lived there for years, and were apparently inoffensive, if not desirable, guests. But when the flood set in, the hotels began to lose their permanent gentile guests. In one hotel the manager joined the Ku Klux Klan. As soon as this fact became known, some Jews moved out, but finally a Jewish corporation bought the hotel and changed the management.1 Not only did most of the Gentiles leave these hotels when the Jewish invasion set in, shortly after the war, but the older settlers among the Jews as well moved to new quar- ters. There is a striking difference between the social strati- fication of the Jewish community in Chicago and that of New York. In New York City, where the earliest Jewish settlers, who are known in the community as the Jewish Mayflower stock, consisted of Spanish-Portuguese Jews, that group has always considered itself the elite and had led 1 "Jewish Hotel Row," manuscript.THE VANISHING GHETTO 259 a separatist existence. The German Jews came almost two centuries later, and occupied a sort of intermediate position between the aristocratic Sephardim and the Russian-Polish group, which came toward the end of the nineteenth cen- tury. The economic position of these various groups has followed the same rank, although the Germans have to a large extent outstripped their predecessors in wealth. In Chicago, on the other hand, the first Jewish settlers were Germans. The Spanish-Portuguese element has come only very recently, and from Turkey and Palestine rather than from Spain. The Spanish Jews in Chicago are, more- over, not of the same cultural and economic stratum as the early American Jewish settlers. They, too, have lived a secluded existence, but largely because of language differ- ences and prejudices on the part of the German and Russian Jews.Qn Chicago the German Jews have been the undis- puted aristocrats, at least until the World War and the Russian revolution. These two events have somewhat shaken the sway of the Germans and given a feeling of^self- confidence and personal expansion to the Russian Jews.; Hyde Park was until recently a stronghold of the Ger- man Jews, but the business successes and growth in numbers of the Russian-Jewish population in recent years has rapidly altered the complexion of the area/The membership lists of some of the Reform congregationslvhich a few years ago were composed solidly of German Jews indicate that the Russian Jews are in larger numbers giving up orthodoxy as they change their residence.1 Even the aristocratic German- Jewish clubs are beginning to open their doors to the more successful and "desirable" members of the Russian grouji) The outposts of the Jewish community at the present 1 "A Study of Membership in Jewish Congregations," manuscript.260 THE GHETTO time are to be sought in the fashionable suburbs of the North Shore: Kenilworth, Winnetka, Glencoe, and Highland Park. The settlement in one of these suburbs of one of the leading German Jews of the city has immensely stimulated the pur- chase of suburban estates by a host of Jews who have found Hyde Park undesirable because of their Russian-Jewish neighbors, or who have accumulated fortunes within a rela- tively short time and now wish to add status to their wealth. The realization that wealth alone does not bring a superior social position has come as a sudden and sad realization to manyr^ It is almost impossible to gather evidence on the extent to which conversion to Christianity and intermarriage with Christians is going on under the changed circumstances brought about by the disintegration of the ghetto. Official records do not give the necessary information, and in the nature of the case such matters are not given publicity by the parties concerned. Such inquiries as have been made indicate that there is probably little conversion to the es- tablished Christian denominations. Intermarriage is on the increase, of course, and the precedents of the early Chicago Jews, in accordance with which persons outside of their faith had to be converted to Judaism upon marrying into the group, are no longer insisted upon. There is, moreover, a strong drift on the part of the Jews in this city and others to the Christian Science churches, to Unitarianism, to Ethical Culture, and Rationalism, and a host of other sects. The middle-class Jew leans in the direction of Christian Science, which, as a famous local rabbi put it, "serves the functions of church and drug store combined, and is a good business proposition." These sects are more attractive to the Jew because the process of transition is not so shocking as con-THE VANISHING GHETTO 261 version from Judaism to Catholicism or Protestantism. To many, Unitarianism and Ethical Culture is but a step re- moved from Reform Judaism. Since Christian Science has proved itself so popular among the Jews, a rival movement known as "Jewish Science" capitalizing some of the features of Christian Science but without the stigma of "Christian" in its name, has been organized and seems to be gaining ad- herents in New York and Los Angeles. ^Ks long as he remains in the ghetto the Jew seldom be- comes conscious of his inferior status. He emerges from the ghetto and finds himself surrounded by a freer but a less comfortable and less homely and familiar world. He flees Jaffrom his people in order to escape from the bonds by which, whether he wills it or not, he is tied to his group. In the proc- ess he changes his character. But the identical desires on the part of many of his co-religionists lead them to adopt the same course that he has taken, and in the end he must either keep on moving or else find the very objective toward which he is moving disappear on the horizon J}Horseradish QrinderCHAPTER XIII THE RETURN TO THE GHETTO CONFLICT AND SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS ^The path that leads out of the ghetto is neither straight nor unobstructed. No sooner does the Jew venture forth from the narrow ghetto streets into the broad cosmopolitan life of the outer world than he encounters external obstacles and experiences inner conflicts. The transition from one culture to another, and from one personality to another, is a process that requires not only time but demands the co-operation of both groups^) The emancipation of the Jews has not taken place without internal struggle and external conflict. Jewry itself has been swept repeatedly by cross-currents of sentiment. When the forward, outward movement of the race has been too rapid, it has invariably provoked a racial re- action in the outer gentile world, and Jewish life has been thrown back upon itself. What, then, happens is that the Jewish community contracts and withdraws into itself. Shadows of the old ghetto walls arise. Jewry returns to the sources of its inspiration and its strength, and becomes conscious of itself as a people set apart, a chosen people, a people with a destiny and a mission.1 The following case is typical of the varied turns in the life history of the thousands of Jews of our modern world whose life begins in the ghetto, and, after moving in a circle, finally ends somewhere not far from its starting-point: During my long residence in New York I have observed the fol- lowing changes in one man: He arrived a bearded talmudical scholar in 1810. Rabbi Glockman was then less than thirty years old. He had a wife and four children, two sons and two daughters. The oldest was 1 Robert E. Park, "Behind Our Masks," Survey Graphic (May, 1926), p. 136. 263264 THE GHETTO twelve years old, which meant that the father had married at eighteen. A year later Rabbi Glockman was still teaching Hebrew in a little afterschool Cheder where the Jewish children were sent by their parents so as not to forget that they were Jews. The school was on Division Street, way down on the East Side. Two years later, with beard a little trimmed, Mr. Glockman owned a Kosher delicatessen store on Second Avenue near Tenth Street. The place closed on Friday evening and remained closed till Saturday after prayers. Mr. Glockman was the president of a congregation. Four years later Mr. Glockman was the partner in a shirt-waist factory where they worked on the Sabbath. The beard was completely gone. They lived in the Bronx. Six years later Mr. Glockman smoked on the Sabbath, ate "unclean" food, and was denounced in a strike as the worst exploiter. He employed only Italian labor, and had changed his name to Bell, George Bell, and had moved from the Bronx to Morristown, because there were no Jews there. Eight years later his daughter had married a Gentile. But then the railroad strike broke out. The great Morris- town plan, by which the wealthiest commuters manned the trains, entered into vogue. Mr. Bell came to the station every morning with his overalls under his arms, ready to take his place as a scab—to help the country. But Mr. T. and Mr. D. and Mr, F., who were at the head, would not have the Jew with them in the cab. He had to ride as a passenger. They would not even give him the privilege of acting as conductor. Today Mr. Bell is again Solomon Glockman. He lives in Harlem, in the heart of the Jewish district, is a member of the congregation, and a fanatical Zionist. Even the beard was allowed to grow back, a little trimmed, to its full length. Until the daughter divorced her husband and married a Jew she was not allowed to enter her parents' home.1 The rebuffs administered by prejudice and exclusion serve to make the Jew keenly conscious of his separateness. He finds that the outer world will not receive him as an individual, but insists upon attaching the obnoxious label "Jew" to him and to his children, not taking cognizance of the fact that he 1 Konrad Bercovici, "The Greatest Jewish City in the World," Nation (September 12,1923), p. 259. _THE RETURN TO THE GHETTO 265 feels himself no more a part of his people than they con- sider him a part of themselves. He stands on the map of two worlds, not at home in either; His self is divided between the world that he has deserted and the world that will have none of him?) Among those Jews who, because they have lived among us all long- er, have departed farthest from the ancient heritage and penetrated deepest into the life of the outer gentile world, these recurring outbursts of racial prejudice and the resulting revulsions of Jewish life inevitably provoke profound moral disturbances. It is not easy—in the long run it is impossible—for those who have once gone out ever to return, even though the ghetto walls are no longer visible. The result is, however, that they are obsessed with a sense of moral isolation; they feel themselves not quite at home either in the gentile or the Jewish world. Life goes on outwardly as it did before, but they are possessed by insatiable restlessness, and a "secret anguish" gnaws at the core of their existence.1 Having been successful in business or in his profession, the Jew who was cradled in the ghetto and has tasted some of the fruits of the gentile world in free association with his more intimate circle of associates, with fellow-students in the university, or with the members of his professional group, at first seems to find the stories of prejudice and ex- clusion either exaggerated or at least not applicable to him- self. His personality expands, and he relaxes somewhat in his studied manners and courtesies, just to be natural and act the part of one who is at home and feels at home. All the time, however, he is conscious of a bit of formality, some- times overcordiality, which puts him on his guard. Stories of the prejudice and rebuffs that others of his faith have suffered reach him. Secretly he hopes that he will be able to put an end to all these unfounded rumors and will be able to 1 Robert E. Park, op. ctt.t p. 136. ^266 THE GHETTO return to his people to tell them that prejudice against the Jew is either a fiction or a justified reaction on the part of the Gentiles to the coarseness, the aggressiveness, and lack of tact of the Jews themselves. And sometimes he succeeds. But more often his hopes are shattered before he has even entered halfway into the outer world. I graduated with the highest honors from the medical school. Of course in my college career I felt somewhat out of the run of things because there were certain fraternities that some friends of mine belonged to that never asked a Jew to join. But I took that grace- fully. I said to myself, "They have a long tradition against admitting Jews, but as individuals they are quite friendly to me, and I'm sure they would ask me to join if it weren't for the rules, for which they are not to blame." Of course I never hid the fact that I was a Jew, although I may say that my appearance would never betray my race. I said to myself, as I looked at all of the ghetto boys in school: "I don't blame them for being prejudiced. Look at them, with their outlandish ways, their mannerisms, their unmitigated nerve and forwardness. Who wouldn't be ashamed to be a Jew? Under circumstances like that, who blames the fraternities for not taking them in? They can't be just an ordinary member of anything. They've got to run the thing or ruin it." Secretly I sympathized with the feeling against the Jews, and I decided that as for myself, while I would never renounce my people, I would try to make myself worthy of the friendship of Gentiles. I sometimes argued with these Russian Jews (I was German myself, American-born), and told them that if they didn't make themselves so conspicuous and obnoxious the rest of the Jews would stand a chance. But they told me that I would find out soon enough that there were no exceptions, that to the Gentiles a Jew was a Jew whether he had blond hair or dark hair, and that they could smell them a mile away. I got into my profession and worked in an office where there was one prominent Jewish specialist who was respected by all ol his col- leagues. There was a model Jew—quiet, dignified, inconspicuous. I would emulate him. a gentile friend in the profession asked me whether I didn't want to join a club he belonged to. I didn't knpwTHE RETURN TO THE GHETTO 267 much about it, but I liked him and wanted to be a good sport. I said I would join. A couple of weeks later he met me rather shamefacedly and said, "You know I'm sorry, old pal, they found out you were a Jew and there is a rule against admitting Jews. It's a disgusting ar- rangement. I've decided to resign my membership." I calmed him and told him not to go to the trouble, that if I had known it would cause him any trouble I would have told him so to begin with, but I didn't know that they excluded Jews. It didn't interfere with my friendship with him, but it caused me a lot of mental anguish. I brooded over the thing, and concluded that you simply couldn't escape it. There are only two ways out: One is to stand up and fight back like a man, and I didn't have the courage to do that single- handed, and didn't like to join the kind of bunch that is doing the fighting, because I think they make the thing worse than it is. The other is to go right on brooding over your lot, and join the B'nai Brith and become a Zionist and join the Jewish clubs and the temple, and let the world take its course. I say I didn't have the courage for the first, and had no inclination for the latter, so here I am—nobody, a dual personality—a man with two souls, a man without a country.1 (' The difficulty is that the Jew, as long as he remains in the ghetto, is of a separate caste, living in a world that is narrow, but warm with the glow of familiar life, full of senti- ment, and with opportunity for self-expression within the limits of the group. But when he emerges from the ghetto he becomes human, which means he has contacts with the outer world, encounters friction and# hostility, as well as familiarity and friendship. But sensitive as he generally is even to the slightest gestures of those of whom he is not yet a part, he has difficulty in acting without restraint and with poise. He shrinks from conflict, and is likely to attribute his failures and rebuffs exclusively to the fact that he is a Jew?) Like Lewisohn,2 he tends to return to the flock and become an 1 "The Autobiography of a Jewish College Man," manuscript. 2 See Ludwig Lewisohn, Up Stream, which i^fe story of a sensitive, intellectual German-Jewish immigrant who findWnmself repelled by the268 THE GHETTO ardent "Jew" and sometimes even a rabid advocate of or- thodoxy and Zionism as the only fitting answer to a world that excludes him and insults him. The social distance between Jew and Gentile manifests itself, not only in exclusion of the Jew from the social life of the Christians, exclusion from clubs and fraternities, but also exclusion from vocational pursuits, such as trade unions, and exclusion from certain residential areas. Not infrequently one finds ads in the newspapers with the post- script, "Only Gentiles need apply." For a time the carpen- ters and cigar-makers' unions of Chicago would not admit Jews; and when a strike came, rather than risk the danger of Jewish strikebreakers, the unions organized the Jews into separate locals. The Hebrew Trade Union Council of Chicago was until recently a going concern. (£he Jew has been in a class with women and with Negroes. In recent years this exclusion has of course been overcome, especially since the president of the American Federation of Labor was himself a Je^> A recent newspaper advertisement reads: "A summer paradise. Gentiles! Buy your summer home- sites now on the north shore of Crystal Lake."1 The result is the following: An encouraging sign of the social life of the Jewish Community in the middle-western states is the enterprise of the Roosevelt Hills Syndicate. Mr. A. S. De Kofsky, president of the syndicate, is well known as a builder of a number of modern apartment buildings in the West Side, and as an enterprising real estate dealer. He saw the need of organizing a summer resort colony on an extensive basis, and se- cured a stretch of fine land between South Haven and Benton Harbor, narrow ghetto, and seeks free expression in the world of letters. Handicapped there, he returns to the fold. See his Israel, and his "The Island Within," for the successive stag^^f the evolution of a pattern of life. x Chicago Daily May 18,1925.THE RETURN TO THE GHETTO 269 Michigan, with an extensive lake frontage. The Roosevelt Hills Syndicate, located in the Roosevelt Building, 179 West Washington Street, has subdivided this land, and offered sites for summer homes to the Jewish public.....x £\Vhere it is merely a question of buying one's way, the Jews have no difficulty; but the effort to break down prejudice in this fashion soon is found to defeat itself, for instead of establishing contact with the Gentiles, the Jews find that they are merely re-establishing contact with fellow-Jews from whom they were fleeing in the first instance^ CMany years ago Nathan Straus went to a Lakewood hotel to pass a few weeks at that rather exclusive winter resort. The manager told him, "No Jews here." So he built a hotel next to it for Jews only. The result was that in a few years hundreds of little and big "Kosher" hotels swamped the place. What happened to the "No Jew" place is history. The natives have not yet regretted the change. Last Christ- mas there was a Jewish flag on top of the community's Christmas tree on Main Street^) THE HOME-COMING Vjt takes an extreme courage to "face the music" of racial hostility as an individual. More often the tendency is to return to one's own people, to the small but human and sympathetic group of the family and the Landsmannschaft, where one is appreciated and understood. The applause is not so loud, but it is more genuine]} That is why a number of large and sumptuously furnished synagogues on Douglas Boulevard are considered merely as branches of the dilap- idated shacks in the ghetto. The older folks find these new buildings with their strange ceremonies cold and uninviting, and on Sabbath and the holidays they return to pray in the familiar, though humble, structures where they find their cousins and Landsleute. 1 Chicago Chronicle, January 16, 1925. * Bercovici, loc. cit.270 THE GHETTO Life in the fashionable hotels is boredom to most of their inhabitants who have come from the ghetto or even from Deutschland. The patent leather slippers fit a little too tight- ly and the tuxedo suit is a little too snug; and most of all, there is nothing to do. Wonder how many of the North Shore Ma Jongg Brigade and Bridge Regiment are members of a literary group or study circle? How many of these overfed, bejeweled, loud-voiced mink-coated women belong to the Council of Jewish Women, or theHadassah? What interest in life have these noveau riche besides cards and parties and rechilos?1 at has held the Jewish community together in spite of aft4:hese disintegrating forces is, not only the return of disappointed Jews who have sought to get out, and, failing, have returned to become apostles of nationalism and racial consciousness, but also the fact that the Jewish community is treated as a community by the world at large. The treat- ment which the Jews receive at the hands of the press and the general public imposes collective responsibility from withoitb^The New York Jewish Community (Kehillah) owes itVformal organization, at least, to such an external stimulus: Beginning with the mass immigration of Eastern European Jews, one generation ago, the problem of organizing the Jewish community in New York City became more acute from year to year. But the formative forces making for such an organization were continually gaining strength, and it required some external impetus to bring these forces into play and to precipitate the formation of a Kehillah, or Jew- ish Community, in this city. This external impetus was supplied by the Bingham incident, in the fall of the year 1908. General Bingham, who was then Police Commissioner of New York, made a statement that the Jews contributed 50 per cent of the criminals of New York City. This statemen^was afterwards retracted as the result of many 1 Chicago Chronicle, February 6, 1925.THE RETURN TO THE GHETTO 27 meetings held by Jewish organizations, which protested vehemently against this unfounded accusation. While probably undue importance was attached to this incident at the time, it is certain that it sufficed to arouse the community consciousness to a degree where the organi- zation of the Kehillah became feasible.1 In Chicago the Jewish community is only in an embry- onic stage of formal organization. There is a Kehillah, but it includes only the orthodox synagogues. But on the other hand, the centralization of fund raising and communal in- stitutions has brought about a degree of unity in recent years which eclipses the solidarity of theN Jewish community in any other large city of the country.CUntil recently the German Jews, i.e., the reform element, and the Russian Jews, or orthodox element, each had its separate set of com- munal institutions. Consolidation for any length of time of the more important communal enterprises invariably was frustrated by the internal dissensions of the factions. Again under the impetus of external pressure the group was welded into a solid mass^ Nothing probably has done more in this direction than the revival of anti-Semitism. The attacks of Henry Ford and the organization of the modern Ku Klux Klan have mobilized the Jewish community into numerous organs for combat. The immigration legislation has called into exist- ence national and local organizations for political action. And the cataclysmic changes in the economic condition of Eastern-European Jewry has produced international Jewish relief organizations which collect millions of dollars annually. Finally, the revival of anti-Semitism on a world-wide scale, with the heightened social consciousness of the Jews, has 1 Harry Sackler, "The Kehillah of New York:^. Brief History," Jewish Communal Register of New York City, New York, 1918.>72 THE GHETTO turned the Utopian Zionism of the nineteenth century into an active nationalistic movement with practical objectives and organized political action^ The alarming rate of intermarriage has turned the Jewish community inward and caused it to scan its social structure with a more critical eye. The un- bounded faith in nostrums so characteristic of the Jew is shown by the promptness with which he turned to a recon- struction of what he considered the weak spots in this struc- ture. The slogan has been, "For God's sake let us do some- thing !" A recent editorial reads: The Jewish community of Berlin, Germany, has recently pub- lished some interesting statistics. In the year 1922 there were regis- tered in that great city 1,422 Jewish marriages, out of which 781 (more than half) represented intermarriages. Leaders of Berlin Jewry are naturally agitated over these figures, and they are now looking for ways and means whereby the tide of intermarriage in that city could be stemmed. The causes of this startling phenomenon are not hard to find. German Jewry has for the past half-century busied itself with com- bating anti-Semitism. In recent years we have been hearing a great deal about a variety of cultural Jewish work of a very high order which has been done in Germany in general, and in Berlin in particular. All this, however, has been carried on primarily by the goodly number of East European Jews who in the last few years moved to Germany, and by the German Zionists. These two elements, however, constitute only a minority. The majority of native-born German Jews who are at all interested in Jewish questions have been concerned about anti- Semitism more than anything else. Of course, since the tide of anti- Semitism is strong in Germany, the Jews of that country naturally had to fight it. But then German Jewry committed a serious error by devoting its best energies toward this negative activity. German Jewry should have realized that propaganda against anti-Semitism does not give its youth anything constructive, and it cannot therefore keep them within the Jewish fold. What the Jewish youth needs is knowledge and inspiration, and this German Jewry has failed to give them. There are, of course, a number of other reasons for the increaseTHE RETURN TO THE GHETTO 273 of intermarriage among German Jewry, but we maintain that the strongest reason is to be found in the absence of a vigorous religious life among our people of that country. When Jewish young men or women marry out of their race, it simply shows that there is nothing in Judaism which they love or care for. Let American Jewry study these facts and learn a much-needed lesson. The Jews of this country are seriously divided on religious questions. All of us, however, are agreed in our opposition to inter- marriage. At present it is no secret to anybody that the number of intermarriages in this country is quite large, and that it is constantly on the increase. This number will undoubtedly grow and multiply if we don't wake up to the seriousness of the situation. The leaders of our communities believe that our greatest problem is charity and re- lief; but while we do not wish to minimize the importance of these activities, we know that the spirit of charity alone is not going to keep our youth interested in Judaism. The panacea for Jewish ailments is Torah v'avodah, study, and practice. If the Chicago Jewish com- munity is not to repeat the unpleasant experience of Berlin, we must impart to our youth Jewish knowledge, and we must train them in the ways of Jewish life.1 Appeals similar to the foregoing have frequently been made in the local community. The result has been a revival of interest in "Jem&i education," the building of additional Hebrew schools of a modern type, conducted along the lines of the latest pedagogical principles. The support for these schools has come not only nor even mainly from the ortho- dox Jews. Even the Reform Jewish section has taken an interest in the revival of religious learning; if not for their own children, then at least for the children of the ghetto. (Apparently there is no limit to the extent to which pres- sure from the outside is able to solidify a groujpThe height- ened group-consciousness of post-war days is seen even in the consolidation of the irreconcilables in the community: 1 Sentinel, January 16,1925.274 THE GHETTO Merging our forces: Last week we ventured to express the predic- tion that the future type of American Judaism will consist of a com- promise between reform and conservatism. We were therefore happy to observe that our views are being corroborated by careful students of the trend of American Jewish life. The Jewish Morning Journal, which is a large and influential Yiddish daily of New York City, in discussing the resolution passed by the convention of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations to call a conference of all the Jewish religious bodies of the United States for the purpose of advancing Judaism, made the following comment: "The boundary lines between reform and conservative Jews are not being effaced by resolutions, but by the forces of life. But the resolutions are symptomatic of the changing conditions. The tendency is undoubtedly toward the right, the majority of Jews leaning towards orthodoxy, even if they are not very pious themselves. And yet it is becoming more and more difficult to distinguish between Polish and Lithuanian Jews who graduate from the Hebrew Union College (a reformed seminary) and their landsleit who are educated at the New York Jewish Theological Seminary. A federation of the United Synagogue, whidh represents orthodoxy, and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, which represents reform Judiasm, is inevitable and will come about sooner or later." We simply wish to add that the Jewish Morning Journal has al- ways been a conservative newspaper, championing orthodoxy, and vehemently opposing reform. That the above words should emanate from so unexpected a source is truly a sign of the times.1 Between 1914 and 1924 the American Jews raised the stupendous sum of sixty-three million dollars for the relief of the Jewish war-sufferers. This sum came from 900,000 con- tributors. Among the most active of the "drivers" were Jews who had hitherto taken little interest in the Jewish community. But .... The touch of common danger made all kin. In the pools of war-blood all Jewish hyphens have been washed away. Jews today 1 Ibid., February 6, 1925.THE RETURN TO THE GHETTO 275 are closer together than ever before. Louis Marshall and Judge Horace Stern are espousing a Jewish agency for Palestine (formerly they were anti-Zionists). Samuel Untermeyer is pleading the cause of Zionism. These examples could be repeated a thousandfold. We are no longer orthodox and reform, conservative and radical— all are becoming united, bound together by that ancient formula, "I am a Jew!" And for this we owe our brethren across the sea an eternal obligation which outweighs our help to them, as fidelity to faith casts the scales of Israel against even the gold of unselfish char- ity.1 In these campaigns the Chicago community stood second only to New York in the size of its contributions. The extent to which the local Jewish community has grown and has become capable of collective action is decisively demon- strated by its local fund-raising campaigns for communal activities. In 1923 the sum of $2,500,000 was raised through official channels in Chicago. In 1925 a "drive" for $4,000,000 was started under the slogan "Are You a Jew?" which was oversubscribed. The chairman of this campaign expressed himself as follows: The United Drive for $4,000,000, of which I have been made chairman, has taken as its slogan this query, "Are You a Jew?" Many of you, understanding the question in its true significance, answered it in the spirit of those who asked.....Of those who could not so accept it, there are three classes. First, there is the Jew who is wise—wise not in the ways of sacrifice nor in the ways of service, but wise in the ways of the world. His are the little wisdoms of the time- server and the menial. He hungers after the aristocracies of wealth and social place. But despite every guile and every circumvention to which that hunger goads him, the doors of all snobbery are forever slammed in his face. He shall not enter them though he deny his father and cast off his mother. Yet for him there is a hope of salvation. Let him remember that, though he has striven in vain for the prizes to be won in Vanity Fair, he may still make for himself a place in the only 1 Henry H. Rosenfelt, This Thing of Giving (New York, 1924), p. 325.276 THE GHETTO aristocracy Jews can ever know. I mean the Aristocracy of Souls. There he will be rated by his impulses, not by his vocation. There he will be judged by what he gives, not by what he has. There he will be ranked as noble or ignoble by the nobility of his own soul, not by the blood that flows in his veins. And second, there is the Jew who is frightened and ashamed. Ashamed of what? And why afraid? Is he not in America, in our Blessed Land of Promise, where he is assured equality and the end of all oppression? Then why does he speak of his Judaism in whispers, and cower if he thinks himself overheard? Because, though his body is safe, his soul is still dark with the shadow of the pogrom. Because though his speech and his manners are American, his heart is still heavy with the dread of persecution. Because some inner sense of shame has made him shameful. Because some inner servility bids him accept exile as his due, and the ghetto as his rightful dwelling place. Through pretense and through denial he seeks escape. But from what? From the shame in his own heart, there is no escape. From his obligation as a Jew, to Jews, there is no escape. There is no escape from his ancestry, there is no refuge from himself. His kinship with his people is deeper than he knows, deeper far than he dares acknowl- edge. He is shackled forever to the past from which he comes. Let him then learn that his personal freedom is forever bound up with the freedom of all Jewry. Let him learn that, as the shame and the fear of the Jew in Russia have become his fear and his shame, so is the oppor- tunity of the Jew in Russia his opportunity. Let him be imbued with the simple courage of the Jew who can accept, without fear and with- out shame, the fact of his Jewishness, as without fear and without shame that same Jew accepts the fact of his Americanism. And third, there remain those who, falling into neither of these categories, were nevertheless troubled by the publication of the slogan. These are my personal friends—generous men, men of warm hearts and wide experience, in the best sense of good Jews, who have come to me with the frank disagreement which is the privilege of intimates. .... Their love for me is as staunch as their loyalty to our cause, but they regret what they describe as my want of dignity.....What they call want of dignity, I call reverence. What they think unseemly, to me is sacred. I wish, no more than they, to cry our ancestry in the market place, nor to flaunt our faith where it is irrelevant. But inTHE RETURN TO THE GHETTO 277 this drive, what we are matters—it cannot be forgotten or hushed over. This is a drive for Jews to carry the burden of Jews. It matters ter- ribly that we should know—that we should ask, one of the other, "Are you a Jew?"1 As the chairman of this drive put it, "there is no escape," for the whole community combined to make escape impos- sible. Here is the essence of the recent membership campaign of the Jewish Charities of Chicago, a campaign so far-reaching in its incep- tion, so thorough in its execution, so amazing in its results, that it challenges every non-Jewish citizen of Chicago to stop, look, and listen; and while listening, respectfully to remove his hat. At the beginning of 1924, this central organization of twenty-six affiliated Jewish Charities, with regular subscriptions amounting to somewhat over $1,090,000, faced a deficit of $200,000.00 for the fiscal year. On November 11 of that year, at the close of a four weeks' mem- bership campaign, 9,000 new names had been added to the list of regular subscribers, making a total membership of 21,000; and the extraordinary momentum of the drive is still bringing in new sub- scriptions, daily, in substantial numbers. Meeting of the deficit was the smallest part of this achievement. Deficits have been met before. This one could easily have been wiped out by laying the figures before a few loyal and generous subscribers. The heart of the business is in those 9,000 new memberships, averag- ing $18 each; in the astonishing fact that practically every Jew in Chicago capable of contributing ten dollars or more to charity was given the opportunity—perhaps several opportunities—to subscribe. "You are not begging. You are offering a privilege," reads the team-workers' manual; and from the beginning to the end of the solicitation this tone was consistently held. The inner workings of such an undertaking have a vital signifi- cance. It will interest you to know that for five years before this census taking an unofficial clipping bureau had blue-penciled and noted the Jewish names mentioned by Chicago newspapers in connection with 1 Jacob M. Loeb, Are You a Jew? Address delivered at Sinai Temple, November 1, 1925, published in pamphlet form.278 THE GHETTO real estate transfers, weddings, parties, robberies of valuable jewels or fur—even in the "Lost and Found" columns. Such prospects were carefully cleared against the subscribers' list of the Jewish Charities, and divided among the volunteer solicitors who took the census.1 Then followed personal calls, often in committees; and when these failed to bring the desired subscription the cul- prit was called upon by some important member of the com- munity whose personal solicitation was considered sufficient pressure. There were rallies and dinners at which oppor- tunity was given for those who had already contributed to win added recognition by increasing their subscription in the presence of the most distinguished members of the com- munity. If the ability to act corporately be the test of a community, then the Jews of Chicago are well on the way to becoming a community. There are at the present time approximately 300,000 Jews in the city.2 Of these, 159,518 gave Yiddish or Hebrew 1 "Taking the Census," Social Service, January, 1925. 2 The exact number of Jews in Chicago has never been determined. In 1902 the Jewish population was estimated by the Jewish Encyclopedia as 80,000. A study made by the Chicago Tribune, based upon the 1910 census, indicated a population of 134,834. The next figures are those taken from the school census of 1914, which showed 166,134 foreign-bora Russians and native-born of Russian fathers. At least 90 per cent of these, or approxi- mately 150,000, may be reasonably estimated to be Jewish, of Russian birth or parentage. The Jewish Yearbook estimated the total Jewish popula- tion of Chicago in 1918 to be 225,000, and in 1922 the school records indi- cated a total Jewish population in the city of 285,000. The distribution of this population is as follows (from "Jewish Social and Recreational Needs of the Jewish Community of Chicago," manuscript): Lawndale.................99,000 Irving Park (Albany Park).. 4,500 Northwest................77,000 Englewood................ 4,000 West Side................. 73>°°° Rogers Park............... 3,000 South Side................30,000 North Side................ 6,500 Incomplete tabulations of the 1920 census indicate a larger Jewish population on the South Side and the North Side than here given, but a considerably smaller number on the near West Side.THE RETURN TO THE GHETTO 279 as their mother-tongue in the United States Census of 1920. This indicates that substantially more than one-half, and probably three-fourths, of the Chicago Jews are Russian or Eastern Jews. The rate of influx of these Jews has prob- ably been somewhat reduced, however, by changed im- migration laws. CWhile the ghetto has been emptying, there have been few new recruits to fill the vacancies. the past it was the influx of a constant stream of orthodox Jews that was relied upon to hold the community together and to perpetuate the faith. Today, however, this force can no longer be depended upon. The revival of race prejudice against the Jew has served as a substitute. It has immensely stimulated group- consciousness and strengthened solidarity. It has turned a great number of Jews who were in the advanced stages of assimilation back to the tribal fold. It has given impetus to the Jewish nationalistic movement and to orthodoxy^ Prejudice from without has revived the ghetto wall, less visible, perhaps, than before, but not less real^The rise and decline of the ghetto seems to be a cyclical movement. As the Jew emerges from the ghetto and takes on the character of humanity in the outside world, the ghetto declines. But as this freedom is restricted, generally as a result of too massed or hasty an advance, distances between Jews and non-Jews arise; and the retreat to the ghetto sets in. The very existence of the ghetto tends to hold the larger Jewish community togethei^ Jews like Lewisohn and Philipson rightly see in the persistence of the modern ghetto the core of the "Jewish problem": The modern ghettos, the Jewish quarters in the large cities of the world .... are another direct result of the officially instituted ghetto of the Middle Ages. The poverty-stricken huddled together in these28o THE GHETTO districts, because here they find companionship and sympathy, and their social instinct is satisfied. But at least they are not forced to stay there, and as soon as they desire, they can remove thence. If such a thing as a Jewish question in any but the religious signification of the term can be spoken of in this country, it is in reference to these Jewish quarters in New York and other large cities, and their inhabit- ants. How to break these up and disperse their denizens over the surface of this broad, fair land, and make them self-supporting, self- respecting citizens, is the great problem now pressing for solution. .... These voluntary ghettos are a constant menace, for they arouse the worst passions of non-Jewish demagogues, and the Jews are re- ferred to as a class, and discriminated against as a separate body. .... These last visible vestiges of ghetto existence must be wiped out. They are fraught with menace.....Away with these ghettos, too. The law cannot order their removal as it did with the officially insti- tuted ghetto. Voluntary effort alone will accomplish it. In the words of the old prayer, "May we see it done quickly in our days."1 ^While the Jews see the modern ghetto as a menace to their status as persons and as citizens, the inhabitants of the ghetto itself are immune to the conflicts that disturb the peace of mind of the rest of Jewry. The "Jewish problem'' is a problem of a divided consciousness that is experienced by the partly assimilated Jews on the frontier of the gentile world, not by the inhabitants of the ghetto itself, who cling to the warmth of the familial and tribal hearth^ ^The modern invisible ghetto wall is no less real than the old, because it is based on the sentiments and prejudices of human beings who are products of distinct cultures, and upon the most fundamental traits of human nature that govern our approach to the familiar and our withdrawal from the strange.\JThe Jews as individuals do not always find the way to assimilation blocked. They make friends as well as enemies. It is not altogether obvious, however, that 1 David Philipson, op. citpp. 217-19.THE RETURN TO THE GHETTO 281 the contacts between cultural groups inevitably produce harmony as well as friction, and that the one cannot be promoted nor the other prevented by any ready-made ad- ministrative devices, 'interaction is life, and life is a growth which defies attempts at direction and control by methods, however rational they may be, that do not take account of this dynamic process. In the struggle to obtain status, per- sonality comes into being. The Jew, like every human be- ing, owes his unique character to this struggle.^CHAPTER XIV THE SOCIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GHETTO NON-JEWISH GHETTOS The ghetto is a chapter in the history of the Jews and of Western civilization worth the telling for its own sake. But the ghetto has a much wider significance which makes it of interest to the student of human nature and society. What we find in the ghetto is essentially the same phenom- enon that we see in the social life of other minority groups who live side by side with one another, or, as often is the case, live side by side without one another. Whether it be the treatment of the Czechs in the Austrian Empire of the Hapsburgs, or Fiume in the Italian Irredenta, or the British in India, or the whites in the cities of China, or the Chinese in San Francisco, fundamentally the problem is the same, because the human nature aspects of the situations are akin to those of the ghetto. The relations between the two groups in such instances^ are usually relations of externality. Problems are settled by rules and laws, not by personal contact and intimate dis- cussion. It is because the contacts between the larger and the smaller, between the dominant and the subordinate groups, are confined to mere externals that they are able to live jsq close to each other at all. In such cases human groif manage to live side by side, much like plants and anim ■, in what is known as symbiosis. The economy that arises persists without consciousness being at all involved. But among human beings consciousness and feelings will 282SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GHETTO 283 arise, and two groups can occupy a given area without losing their separate identity because each side is permitted to live its own inner life, and each somehow fears the other or idealizes the other. ^This relationship has been properly de- scribed as accommodation, to distinguish it from the assim- ilation that takes place when two people succeed in getting under each other's skins, so to speak, and come to share each other's inner life and thus become oneX The Jews drift into the ghetto, as %as already been pointed out, for the same reasons that the Italians live in Little Sicily, the Negroes in the black belt, and the Chinese in Chinatowns. The various areas that compose the urban community attract the type of population whose economic status and cultural tradition is more nearly adapted to the physical and social characteristics to be found in each. As each new increment is added to the population it does not at random locate itself just anywhere, but it brings about a resifting of the whole mass of human beings, resulting finally in the anchoring of each to a milieu that, if not most dear- able, is at any rate least undesirable. (What is important in this connection is, not where each shaft locate, however, but the fact that each seems to find its own separate location without the apparent design of any one. Once in the area, each group tends to reproduce the culture to which it was accustomed in its old habitat as near- ly as the new conditions will permit. It is this tendency which is responsible for the abrupt transition in local atmos- phere as we sometimes pass from one street to anoftfr in the patchwork of little ghettos that constitutes th^jreat immigrant quarters of our large cities/^ Unlike the ghettos of old, these fSCw ghettos do not need a wall or gates to keep the various species of man apart.284 THE GHETTO Each seeks his own habitat much like the plants and animals in the world of nature; each has its own kind of food, of family life, and of amusement. r^Tjie physical distance that separates these immigrant areas from that of the natives is at the same time a measure of the social distance between them and a means by which this social^ distance can be maintained) This does not so much imply mutual hostility as it implies and makes possible mutual tolerance. These segregated areas make it possible for the immigrants to avoid the ancient dictum, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do," and permits them to be them- selves^But the price that is paid for this freedom and re- laxation is the loss of intimate contact with the other grouji^ Here and there an individual bridges the gulf and does fraternize with the stranger, but he does so at the risk of excommunication from his own group, without the assur- ance of a welcome reception in the othef^ And yet it is the occasional adventurer into the camp of the enemy or the stranger who is finally the agent bringing about the fusion of the two. THE GHETTO AND THE SEGREGATED AREA The ghetto illustrates another phenomenon in local com- munity life, a phenomenon which underlies also the segrega- tion of vice areas, of bright light centers, of bohemias and hobohemias in modern cities.(lf we compare the medieval' town with the modern urban community we find that the two structures have something fundamental in common, namely, the segregation of the population into distinct classes and vocational groups) This process is essentially a process of competition. Basically it is akin to the competi-SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GHETTO 285 tive co-operation that underlies the plant community. It differs from the plant community in that human beings are more mobile, and through locomotion can seek those areas in which they can most satisfactorily gratify their fundamen- tal interests and wishes. Just as there was a natural ghetto, a voluntary ghetto, before the ghetto was decreed by law, so vice areas existed before police regulations drove the prostitutes into restricted zones, and just so business centers arose before city planners and zoning ordinances took cognizance of these specializa- tions in the urban economy. And as the ghetto persists long after it has been abolished by law, so the red light district goes on long after a righteously indignant populace assuages its conscience with the conviction that vice has been driven out of town. This specialization of interests and cultural types is at bottom a phase of the elementary process of the division of labor. Each area in the city is suited for some one function better than for any other. Land values, rentals, accessi- bility, and the attitude of its inhabitants and owners determine, in the last analysis, what type of area it shall become. The more fundamental of these factors is probably that of economic values, for the sentiments of the people tend ultimately to bow before this criterion which is the expression of the competitive process. Ultimately a city plan or any artificial regulation will be successful only" to the extent to which it takes account of these factors and to the extent to which it reckons with the fact that these areas are the product of growth rather than of deliberate Not only does each of these areas have its own external286 THE GHETTO characteristics in the form of buildings, institutions, and general appearance, but each also has its own moral code. A population seeks an area in which it is tolerated and in which the wishes of its members can be gratified with the least amount of interferenceJ^The Bohemian drifts to the Latin Quarter because there he can be himself, express himself with the minimum of restraint. The hobo seeks the main stem, not only because its institutions and standards of living are suited to his personal requirements, but also be- cause here he finds himself and makes his home. The immi- grant drifts to the slum without even being aware of the fact that he lives in a slurn.^ The ghetto furthermore demonstrates the extent to which a local culture is a matter of geographical location. The anthropologists have made us familiar with the concept of the culture area by which they refer to the distribution in space of more or less integrated complexes of material or / immaterial cultural traits. The persistence of traditional j Jewish life seems to depend upon the favorable soil of the I ghetto, upon exclusion from the disintegrating and corroding I influences of other cultural areas. Once the individual is / removed from the soil to which he and his institutions have been attached, he is exposed to the possibility; of losing his character and disappearing as a distinct type^His institu- tions, too, can ill afford the strain that comes witli migration to another locality. That is why the synagogue in the ghetto retains its importance in Jewish communal life which it promptly loses as soon as it migrates to Deutschland. Each of these areas has its own distinct types of dominant per- sonalities which change as the local life of the group under- goes transformation. Where the Jew lives is as good an in- dex as any other as to the kind of Jew he is. \SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GHETTO 287 THE GHETTO AS A SOCIAL PHENOMENON If we knew the full life-history of a single individual in his social setting, we would probably know most of what is worth knowing about social life and human nature. If we knew the full story of the ghetto we would have a laboratory specimen for the sociologist that embodies all the concepts and the processes of his professional vocabulary. The in- stitution of the ghetto is not only the record of a historical people; it is a manifestation of human nature and a specific social order. £"The ghetto has been viewed in this study primarily as aneffect of isolation. The isolation of the Jews has not been merely of a physical sort, but it has been pre-eminently of a ^less tangible and less visible character. It has been the type of isolation produced by absence of intercommunication through difference in language, customs, sentiments, tradi- tions, and social forms. The ghetto as we have viewed it is not so much a physical fact as it is a state of mindj (The isolation of the Jew has been akin to the type of isolation of the person who feels lonely though in the midst of a crowd) There was a time when students of human nature as- sumed "that strikingly different customs have been pro- duced by peoples with differing instincts, or with instincts of different degrees of strength or intensity."1 The Jews, it has been argued by some, are living a separate secluded existence because they are haughty and clannish, and not a sociable people. They lack in the instinct of gregariousness. Fortunately, in the case of the Jews we have a long written history, which leads us to believe that there was a time, at least, when they were not clannish, when they were a people 1 Ellsworth Faris, "The Nature of Human Nature," Proceedings of the American Sociological Society, XXXII, 25.288 THE GHETTO of many contacts. The attempt that so many Jews of today are making to break into the gentile world seems to be an- other instance to the contrary. It is probably more correct to say that the Jews became exclusive because at a certain period of their history they were excluded. Another answer would be that they were separate because they had a dif- ferent cultural life from that of their neighbors. If students of human nature have learned to be cautious about any one thing more than another in recent years, it is to be cautious about attributing the character of a people and of an individual to human nature without a scrutiny of the historical experiences of the group or the individualist may be a platitude to say that the Jews are what their his- tory has made them, but it is a platitude worth reiterating (Jlie Jews owe their survival as a separate and distinct ethnic group to their social isolation. The continuity of their particular social life and their survival as a social type depends primarily upon the continuance of this isolation, just as the distinct character of any people depends upon its exclusion from contacts with other peoples. What made the career of the Jews in European ghettos so adventurous and stormy was not the fact that they were so different from the rest of the population, but that they were so much alike?) "Where racial characteristics are marked, and where the social distances that separate the races are great, it some- times happens that the individual is not discovered at all. Under these circumstances, as Shaler points out, the stranger remains strange, a representative of his race, but not a neigh- bor."1 As the Jew leaves the ghetto his type undergoes pro- found transformation. He changes, not merely his dress, his facial expression, and his bearing, but he generally complete- 1 Robert E. Park, ibid., p. 136.SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GHETTO 289 1 y transforms his consciousness: "In the vast tide of cos- mopolitan life the Jewish racial type does not so much dis- appear as become invisiblef^Vhen he is no longer seen, anti-Semitism declines. For race prejudice is a function of visibility. The races of high visibility, to speak in naval parlance, are the natural and inevitable objects of race prej- udice.'^ In quite another way the ghettp is able to throw light on a subtle feature of isolation. (The ghetto is a cultural community that expresses a common heritage, a store of common traditions and sentiments. The attitudes and sen- timents in the consciousness of the Jew, and the institutions and practices in which they find their external expression, have been centered around the religious life of that people. The Jewish culture, to speak in anthropological terms, rep- resents a synagogue complexT)The Jewish community of today, like that of the medieval ghetto period, has much in common with the modern sect. "Free intercourse of oppos- ing parties is always a menace to their morale.....The solidarity of the group, like the integrity of the individual, implies a measure at least of isolation from other groups and persons as a necessary condition of its existence."2 Within the sect, as the ghetto clearly shows, life becomes increasing- ly a matter of form. Finally the form has to be preserved at all costs, though its content has long ago evaporated. When the ghetto walls do finally crumble, at least suf- ficiently to permit the escape of some of the inmates, those that get a taste of the life in the freer world outside and are lured by its color are likely to. be torn by the conflicting 1Ibid. 3 Park and Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology (Chicago, 1924), p. 229.290 THE GHETTO feeling that comes to hybrids generally, physical as well as social. On the one hand there is the strange and fascinating world of man; on the other, the restricted sectarianism of a little group into which he happened to be born, of neither of which he is fully a member. [He oscillates between the two until a decisive incident either throws him headlong into the activities of the outer world, where he forgets his personality and metamorphoses into a new being, or else a rebuff sends him bounding into his old familiar primary group, where life, though puny in scale, is rich and deep and wanfr^ This same problem is not only encountered by the indi- viduals in their own lifetimes, but it is the problem of suc- ceeding generations in any immigrant group. This ac- counts for the fact that the immigrant himself scarcely ever is fully assimilated into the new group in his own lifetime, and at the same time is seldom a criminal, but that his chil- dren do become assimilated and are at the same time giving rise to problems of disorganization and crime.^The ghetto shows that what matters most in social life is not so much the "hard" facts of material existence and external forms as the subtle sentiments, the dreams and the ideals of a peopterr What makes the Jewish community—composed, as u is in otlr metropolitan centers in America, of so many hetero- geneous elements—a community is its ability to act corpo- rately. It has a common set of attitudes and values based upon common traditions, similar experiences, and common problems. In spite of its geographical s£parateness it is welded into a community because of conflict and pressure from without and collective action within. The Jewish com- munity is a ^cultural community. It is as near^an approach to commAnal life as the modern city has to off e/. The anomalous status of the Jew is based upon.theSIGNIFICANCE OF THE GHETTO solidarity of his communal life and his amazing ability to act collectively, (it is his historical isolation—it is the ghetto, voluntary or compulsory, medieval or modern, which not only accounts for his character, but for the fantastic concep- tion that others have of him. The history of the Jews and the history of the ghetto are in essence a history of migra- tions. In the course of these migrations the Jews have de- veloped connections which have crystallized into what seems to be an international organization. As a result the Jew ap- pears to be not merely ubiquitous but something of a mys- tery./ If, therefore, we have not found a solution to the so- called "Jewish problem," is it not possible that in dealing with the ghetto as a natural phenomenon, without offering an apology and without presenting a program, we have made that problem more intelligible?^BIBLIOGRAPHY Abbott, Edith, and Breckinridge, S.P. "Chicago Housing Prob- lems," American Journal of Sociology, XVI, 289. -. "Chicago Housing Conditions," American Journal of So- ciology, XVI, 443; XVII, 1, 145. Abrahams, Israel. Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, New York, 1897. /Addams, Jane. Twenty Years at Hull House. New York, 1916. Adler, Cyrus. "Jews in the Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States," Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, Baltimore, 1906. Adler, Elkan. Auto da Fe and Jew. Philadelphia, 1912. Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums. Berlin. Allison, Thomas W. "Population Movements in Chicago, "Journal of Social Forces, II, 529-33. American Jewish Historical Society, Transactions. 30 vols. New York. American Jewish Yearbook. Philadelphia, 1899-. nderson, Nels. The Hobo. Chicago, 1923. . jndreas, A. T. History of Chicago. Chicago, 1877. Back, Samuel. Rabbi Meir ben Baruch aus Rothenburg. Frankfort, 1895. Baerwald, H. Der alte Friedhof der israelitischen Gemeinde zu Frank- furt am Main. Frankfort, 1883. Balla, Ignatz. Die Rothschilds. 1920. Belloc, Hilaire. The Jews. Boston and New York, 1923. Bercovici, Konrad. "The Greatest Jewish City in the World," Na- tion, September 12, 1923. -. Around the World in New York. New York, 1924. Berghoeffer, Christian Wilhelm. Meyer Atnshel Rothschild: Der Grilnder des Rothschildschen Bankhauses. 1926. Berkson, Isaac B. Americanization: A Critical Study with Special Reference to the Jewish Group. New York, 1920. Berliner, A. Aus den letzten Tagen des romischen Ghetto. Berlin, 1886. -. Geschichte der Juden in Rom. -. Aus dem inner en Leben der deutschen Juden im Mittelalter. 292 ^BIBLIOGRAPHY 293 Bernheimer, Charles S. The Russian Jew in the United States: Studies of Social Conditions in New York and Chicago, with a De- scription of Rural Settlements. Philadelphia, 1915. Besser, Max. Die Juden in der modernen Rassentheorie. Koln und Leipzig, 1911. Bloch, Chayim. The Golem: Legends of the Ghetto of Prague. Vienna, 1925. Boas, Ralph, P. "Problems of American Judaism," Atlantic Monthly, CXIX (February, 1917), 145-52. Bogen, Boris D. Jewish Philanthropy. New York, 1917. Booth, Charles. Life and Labour of the People of Londont section by Beatrice Webb, "The Jews of London." London, 1892-97. Brill, A. A. "The Adjustment of the Jew to the American Environ- ment," Mental Hygiene, II (April, 1918), 219 ff. -, and Karpas, M. J. "Insanity among Jews," Medical Record, LXXXVI, 576-78. Bureau of Jewish Social Research. Jewish Communal Survey of Greater New York. Section I. Studies in the New York Jewish Population, New York, 1928. Cahan, Abraham. The Rise of David Levinsky. New York, 1917. Caro, Georg. Soziale und wirtschaftliche Geschickte der Juden im Mittelalter und Neuzeit. Leipzig, 1924. Chamberlain, Houston Stewart. Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. London, 1912. Chicago Associated Jewish Charities. Reports, 1901-. Chicago Hebrew Mission. The Jewish Era (quarterly), 1892-. Chicago Committee on Race Relations. The Negro in Chicago. Chicago, 1922. Chicago Chronicle (weekly). Chicago, 1918-. Chicago Daily Jewish Forward. Chicago, 1919-. Chicago Israelite (weekly). Chicago, 1853-. Chicago Jewish Community Blue Book. Chicago, 1917-. Cohen, George. The Jews in the Making of America. New York, 1924. Cohen, Israel. "The Jewish Community and Social Isolation," Sociological Review, III (1910), 216-18. -. Jewish Life in Modern Times. London and New York, 1914. Cohen, Rose. Out of the Shadow. New York, 1918.294 THE GHETTO N Comstock, Alzada P. "Chicago Housing Conditions," American Journal of Sociology, XVIII, 241. Conference on the Past, Present, and Future of Israel. Jew and Gentile. New York and Chicago, 1890. Corti, Count Egon. The Rise of the House of Rothschild. New York, 1928. Daily Jewish Courier. Chicago, 1887-. Daly?ii^. P. History of the Settlement of the Jews in North America. New York, 1893. Depping, G. B. Les Juifs dans le Moyen Age: essai historique sur lew Stat civil y commercial, et litter aire, Paris, 1834. Deetz, A. Stammbuch der Frankfurter Juden. Frankfort, 1907. v Dixon, Roland B. The Racial History of Man. New York, 1923. -. "What Is a Jew?" Nation, CXVT, 207-8. Drachsler, Julius. Democracy and Assimilation. New York, 1920. -. Intermarriage in New York City. New York, 1921. Dubnov, S. M. History of the Jews in Russia and Poland from the Earliest Times until the Present Day. Philadelphia, 1916-20. Dushkin, Alexander M. Jewish Education in New York City. New York, 1918. Elbogen, Ismar. History of the Jews after the Fall of the Jewish State. Cincinnati, 1926. Eliassof, H. "The Jews of Chicago," Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, II, 21, 117. -. "The History of the Jews of Illinois," and "The History of the Jews of Chicago," Reform Advocate, May 4, 1901 and Jan. 30, 1909. Faris, Ellsworth, "Remarks on Race Superiority," Social Service Review, I (March, 1927), 36-45. Felsenthal, B. The Beginnings of Chicago Sinai Congregation. Chicago, 1898. Finkelstein, Louis. Jewish Self-Government in the Middle Ages. New York, 1924. ^ Fishberg, Maurice. The Jews: A Study of Race and Environment. New York, 1911. Frank, Mary. Exploring a Neighborhood. Our Jewish People from Eastern Europe and the Orient. New York, 1919.BIBLIOGRAPHY 295 Frederic, Harold. The New Exodus: A Study of Israel in Russia. New York, 1892. ^ Friedlaender, Israel. "The Americanization of the Jewish Immi- grant." Survey, XXXVIII (May 5, 1917), 103-8. Friedman, E. M. Survival or Extinction. New York, 1924. Fromer, J. Vom Ghetto zur modernen Kultur. Berlin, 1906. * Goldblatt, David. "Can the Jewish People Survive the Death of Yiddish?" Jewish Forum, July, 1924. Goodman, Paxil. A History of the Jews. New York, 1919. Gratz, Heinrich Hirsch. History of the Jews. Philadelphia, 1891- 98. GAdemann, M. Geschichte des Erziehungswesens und der Kultur der Juden in Deutschland wahrend des vierzehnten und fiinfzehnten Jahrhunderts. Vienna, 1888. t Hapgood, Hutchins. The Spirit of the Ghetto. Studies of the Jewish Quarter in New York. New York, 1909. -. "The Picturesque Ghetto," Century, XCIV (July, 1917), 469-73- Hendrdc, Burton J. The Jews in America. Garden City, New York, 1923. Herzl, Theodor. Der Judenstaat. Berlin, 1920. htfhner, Leon. "The Jews of New England (Other than Rhode Island) Prior to 1800/' Publications of the American Jewish His- torical Society, 1903. Huidekoper, Frederic. Judaism at Romey B.C. 76 to A.D. 140. New York, 1876. \ Hunter, Robert. Tenement Conditions in Chicago. Chicago, 1901. Husik, Isaak. Medieval Jewish Philosophy. New York, 1916. Hyamson, Albert M. A History of the Jews in England. London, 1908. s- Jacobs, Joseph. Studies in Jewish Statistics: Social, Vital, and An- thropometric. London, 1891. -. An Inquiry into Sources of the History of the Jews in Spain. London, 1894. -. Jewish Contributions to Civilization: An Estimate. Philadel- phia, 1919. -. The Jews of Angevin England. London, 1893.296 THE GHETTO Jewish Biographical Bureau. Who's Who in American Jewry. New York, 1926. Jewish Community of New York City (Kehillah). The Jewish Communal Register of New York City, 1917-18. New York, 1919. Jewish Encyclopedia. New York, 1903. Jewish Qmrterly Review. London, 1899-. Jewish Social Service Quarterly. Philadelphia, 1925-. Joseph, Samuel. Jewish Immigration to the United States from 1881 to 1910. New York, 1914. Jost, I. M. Geschichte des Judenthums und seiner Secten. Leipzig, I8S7-59. Kallen, Horace Meyer. Zionism and World-Politics: A Study in History and Social Psychology, New York, 1921. -. Culture and Democracy in the United States. New York, 1924. Kaplun-Kogan, W. W. Die Judischen Wanderbewegungen in der neuesten Zeit, 1880-1914, Bonn, 1919. Kautsky, Karl. Are the Jews a Race? New York and London, 1926. Kayserling, Meyer. Geschichte der Juden in Portugal. Leipzig, 1867. -. Geschichte der Juden in Spanien und Portugal. Leipzig, 1861- 67. -. "The Colonization of America by the Jews," Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of America, II, 73. Kobrin, Leon. A Lithuanian Village. New York, 1920. -Krakauer, Isidor. Geschichte der Juden in Frankfurt Kreppel, J. Juden und Judentum von Heute. Berlin, 1925. Krout, Maurice H. "A Community in Flux: The Chicago Ghetto Resurveyed," Social Forces, V, 273-82. n Lazare, Bernard. Anti-Semitism: Its History and Causes. New York, 1903. Leroy-Beaulieu, Anatole. UAntisemitisme. Paris, 1887. -—. Israel among the Nations: A Study of the Jews and Anti- Semitism. New York, 1903. Lestschinsky, Jacob. "Die soziale und wirtschaftlische Entwicklung der Ostjuden nach dem Kriege," Weltwirlschaftliches Archivt XXIV (July, 1926), 39-62. Levtnger, Leo J. The Causes of Anti-Semitism in the United States: A Study in Group and Subgroup. Philadelphia, 1925.BIBLIOGRAPHY 297 Lewisohn, Ludwig. Up Stream: An American Chronicle. New York, 1923. -. "The Jew Meditates," Nation, CXVIII, 200-201. -. Israel. New York, 1925. -. The Island Within. New York, 1928. Margolis, Max L., and Marx, Alexander. A History of the Jewish People. Philadelphia, 1927. Markens, Isaac. The Hebrews in America. New York, 1888. May, Max Benjamin. Isaac Mayer Wise, the Founder of American Judaism. New York and London, 1916. Meites, H. L. History of the Jews of Chicago, Chicago, 1924. Menorah Journal (bimonthly). New York, 1915-. Meyerson, Abraham. "The 'Nervousness' of the Jew," Mental Hygiene, IV (January, 1920), 65-72. Miller, Kelly. "Separate Communities for Negroes," Current His- tory, XXV (1927), 827-31. Monatschrift fiir Geschickte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums. Berlin, 1837-. Newman, I. L. Jewish Influences on Christian Reform Movements. New York, 1925. Norton, Grace, P. "Chicago Housing Conditions," American Jour- nal of Sociology, XVIII, 509. Park, Robert E. The Immigrant Press and Its Control. New York, 1922. -. "Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups," Publications of the American Sociological Society, Vol. VIII, 1914. -. "Behind Our Masks," Survey Graphic (May, 1926), pp. 135- 39. -. "Human Migration and the Marginal Man," American Jour- nal of Sociology, XXXIII (May, 1928), 881-93. -, and Miller, H. A. Old-World Traits Transplanted. New York, 1921. -, and Others. The City. Chicago, 1925. Peters, Madison C. The Jews in America. Philadelphia and Chi- cago, 1905. Philipson, David. Old European Jewries. Philadelphia, 1894. -. The Reform Movement in Judaism. New York, 1907. -. The Jew in America. Cincinnati, 1909.298 THE GHETTO Raisin, Jacob S. The Haskalah Movement in Russia. Philadelphia. 1913- Raushenbush, Winifred. "The Great Wall of Chinatown," Survey Graphic (May, 1926), pp. 154-58, 221. -. "Their Place in the Sun," Survey Graphic (May, 1926), pp, 141-45, 203. Reckless, Walter C. "The Distribution of Commercialized Vice in the City: A Sociological Analysis," Publications of the Ameri- can Sociological Society, XX, 164-76. Reform Advocate (weekly). Chicago, 1891-. Reiss, L. S. "Five Ghettos of the Modern Exodus" (illustrated). Survey, LI, 447-52. Report of the Russo-Jewish Committee. The Persecution of the Jews in Russia. London, 1891. Reuter, Edward B. "The Hybrid as a Sociological Type," Publica- tions of the American Sociological Society, XIX (1925), 59-68. Revue des iLtudes Juives. Paris, 1880-. Ripley, W. Z. The Races of Europe. New York, 1899. Robinson, Leonard G. The Agricultural Activities of the Jews in America. New York, 1912. Rodocanachi, E. Le Saint-Siege et les Juifs. Paris, 1891. Rosenau, William. Jewish Ceremonial Institutions and Customs. New York, 1925. Rosenfelt, Henry H. This Thing of Giving. New York, 1924. Ruppin, Arthur. The Jews of Today. New York, 1913. Sacher, Harry. Zionism and the Jewish Future. New York, 1916. Sampter, Jessie E. A Guide to Zionism. New York, 1920. Samuels, Maurice. You Gentiles. New York, 1926. Schapiro, Mary L. "Jewish Dietary Problems," Journal of Home Economics, Vol. XI, February, 1919. Schay, Rudolph. "Die Judischen Intellektuellen," Kolner Viertel- jahrshefte fur Soziologie, HI (Heft 2-3), 124-32. Schechter, Solomon. Studies in Judaism. Philadelphia, 1911. * Seman, Philip L. "Jewish Community Life: A Study in Social Adap- tation," Observer, June, 1924. /-. A Jewish Community Center in Action. Chicago, 1921. y The Sentinel (weekly). Chicago, 1910-. Silver, Abba Htllel. A History of Messianic Speculation in Israel from the First to the Seventeenth Century. New York, 1927.BIBLIOGRAPHY 299 Sokolow, Nahum. History of Zionism, i6oo-iqi8. London and New York, 1919. Snowman, J. "Jewish Eugenics," Jewish Review, IV (1913), 158-74. Sombart, Werner. The Jews and Modem Capitalism. London, 1913. Stobbe, Otto. Die Juden in Deutschland wahrend des Mittelalters in potitischer, sozialer und rechtlicher Beziehung. Braunschweig, 1866. Stranik, Erwin. "Europaische Ghettos," JUdische Presszentrale, Zurich, April 1, 1928. Stratz, Carl Heinrich. Was sind Juden? Eine ethnographisch-anthro- pologische Studie. Wien und Leipzig, 1903. Thomas, William I., and Znaniecki, Florian. The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. New York, 1927. Tibbits, Clark. "A Study of Chicago Settlements and Their Dis- tricts," Social Forces, VI, 430-37. Two Hundred Fiftieth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Jews in the United States. New York, 1906. Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Statistics of the Jews of the United States. Philadelphia, 1880. Von Luschan, F. "Die anthropologische Stellung der Juden," Korres- pondenzblatt fiir Anthropologic, Vol. XXIII (1892). Waetjen H. Das Judentum und die Anfdnge der modernen Kolonisa- Hon. Berlin, 1914. Walker, Natalie. "Chicago Housing Conditions," American Jour- nal of Sociology, XXI, 285. Wechsler, I. S. "Nervousness and the Jew," Menorah Journal, X, 119-32. Weissenberg, S. "Das Judische Rassenproblem," Zeitschrift fUr Demographie und Stalistik des Judentums, Vol. 1,1905. Wengeroff, Pauline. Memoiren einer Grossmutter. Berlin, 1913. Wiernik, Peter. History of the Jews in America. From the Period of the Discovery of the New World to the Present Time. New York, 1912. Wirth, Louis. "Some Jewish Types of Personality," Publications of the American Sociological Society, XXXII, 90-96. -, "The Ghetto," American Journal of Sociology, XXXIII (July, 1927), S7-7I. Yoffie, Leah Rachel. "Yiddish Proverbs, Sayings, etc,, in St. Louis, Missouri," Journal of American Folkloref XXXII (April, 1920), 134-65-3°° THE GHETTO Zangwill, Israel. Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar peo- ple, Philadelphia, 1907, and London, 1892. -. Ghetto Comedies. London and Leipzig, 1907. -. Ghetto Tragedies. Philadelphia, 1899. -. Dreamers of the Ghetto. New York and London, 1898. -. The Voice of Jerusalem. New York, 1921. Zeitschrift fiir Demographie und Statistik der Juden, Berlin, 1905-. Zollschan, Ignatz. Das Rassenproblem unter besonderer Beriicksichti- gung der theoretischen Grundlagen der Jiidischen Rassenfrage, Wien und Leipzig, 1912. Zorbaugh, Harvey. "The Dweller in Furnished Rooms," Publi- cations of the American Sociological Society, XXXII, 83-89. Zueblin, Charles, and Others. Hull House Papers and Maps. Chicago, 1895.INDEX OF AUTHORS Abrahams, Israel, 14,16,18, 19, 23, 30, 33, 36, 52, S3, 55, 57, 65, 79, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87, 88, 102 Addams, Jane, 195-98 Adler, Cyrus, 144 American Jewish Yearbook, 149, 150,189, 278 Andreas, A. T., 153 Belloc, Hilaire, 64 Bercovici, Konrad, 227, 248, 263-64 Berliner, A., 2, 3, 57, 61 Bernheimer, Charles S., 137, 182, 199, 202, 203, 228 Browne, Lewis, 5 Burgess, E. W., 247, 289 Chamberlain, H. S., 63-64 Cohen, Israel, 52, 66-7, 79, 80-1, 88, 104-5, "i» 112-13, "6, 123-24, 125,128-29 Darwin, Charles, 66 Davis, Philip, 199 Depping, G. B., 13 Dixon, Roland B., 63, 70 Drachsler, Julius, 126 Dubnow, S. M., 30, 89, 90, 92, 98- 99,100 Eliassof, H., 153, 189 Encyclopedia Americana, 4 Encyclopedia Britannica, 33 Faris, Ellsworth, 287 Finkelstein, Louis, 57 Fishberg, Maurice, 65, 71-73 Fishman, S., 213 Franzos, Karl Emil, 35 Friedman, E. M., 87 Graetz, H., 2,13,16, 57 Heine, Heinrich, 49 Hendrick, Burton J., 145 Honiger, 20 Huidekoper, Frederic, 11 Husik, I., 86 Jacobs, Joseph, 12-13, 77, 79, 83, 118-19, I27 Jewish Encyclopedia, 2, 34, 153, 278 Kallen, Horace M., 128 Kautsky, Karl, 106 Kish, A., 46 Krakauer, Isidor, 41 Labbe et Cosartii, 12 Landesco, John, 250 Leiserson, W. M., 254 Leroy-Beaulieu, Anatole, 72 Levy, Kate, 202 Lewisohn, Ludwig, 123, 267 Loeb, Jacob M., 275-77 Low, Minnie F., 182 Meites, H. L., 153,iS4~55» 156,160, 161,163,172-73,175,180-81,185, 187,190 Melamed, S. M., 211, 214 Mendelsohn, S. F., 210 Meyerson, Abraham, 69 Park, Robert E., 247, 263, 265, 288, 289 Peters, Madison C., 132 Philipson, David, 2, 3, 4,11, 12, 13, 17, 22, 30, 32, 34, 35, 4i, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 53, 58, 59, 60, 61, 65, 82,114, 122, 130, 279-80 Rashdall, 83 Reizenstein, Milton, 203 301302 THE GHETTO Ripley, W. Z., 66, 69-70 Rosenfelt, Henry H., 275 Ruppin, Arthur, 67, 79, 98, 117,126 Sackler, Harry, 270-71 Seman, P. L., 245 Shaler, Nathaniel, 288 Simmel, Georg, 78 Snowman, J., 68-69 Sombart, Werner, 76-78, 136 Stobbe, Otto, 13, 16, 17, 20, 35 Szold, Henrietta, 137 Taylor, H. O., 83 Waetjen, H., 77 Wechsler, I., 69 White, Andrew D., 83 Wiernik, Peter, 134, 143-44, 186 Zangwill, Israel, 117,118, 119-21 Zueblin, Charles, 200SUBJECT INDEX Accommodation, 4, 18, 24, 29, 38, 62, 78, 202 Adler, Felix, 146 Adler, Liebman, 172 Adler, Samuel, 146 Agriculture, Jews and, 75, 90,103-4, 148, 156, 185; and colonization, 124,144 Alliance Israelite, 104, 124 Allrightnick, 249 Antidefamation League, 192 Anti-Semitism, 44, 106, 192, 291-92 Areas: of settlement, 4,128-29,149, 164,179,195-201, 254-56; natural and segregated, 2, 4, 6, 9-10, 18- 27, 42; natural and cultural, 9,18, 20, 195, 202-3, 231, 256 Ashkenazim, 84, 131, 135, 142, 158 Assimilation, 108, 127, 131, 149 Badchan, 81 Badge, Jewish, 31,38, 61, 64-65,118 Batlanim, 81 Beggars, 81-82,172 Beilis case, 91 Besht, 98 Black Death, 41 Bnai Brith, 161-62,166 Borne, Ludwig, 49 Bund, 107 Burial societies, 61,158, 190, 207 Cabalism, 92, 97, 98,109 Caro, Joseph, 88 Cemetery: importance of, 60, 140- 41; of Frankfort, 48; of Chicago, IS7-58» 160-61 Chajon, Nehemiah, 98 Chassidism, 87, 92, 97, 98, 109 Cheder, 61,91,108,147,168,176, 207 Chicago: Jewish settlement of, 144, 153-70; local Jewish areas in, 155- 56, 164, 166, 169, 172-73; Jewish community organization in, 158- 59, 165; ghetto, 171-93, 195-240; Jewish community growth, 189, *92-93, 198-201 Chinesism, 127 City life, 4, 9, 18-20, 25, 33, 68-69, 72, 75, 90, 93, 95, 142, 146, 148, 202; and Jews, 75-76, 90 Collective action, 37-38, 60, 109, 138, 144, 162, 188-89, 274-78 Commerce, 14, 22, 24,49, 73, 75,134; and trade, contrasted, 78 Community: crises, 45-47, 53, 188; organization, 9, 18, 22-23, 38, 51- 52, 57, 60, 89, 123, 147, 167, 193; disorganization, 38, 62, 148-49, 173, 194-201; problems, 37-38, 140-41, 165-69; life, 9, 18, 19, 26, 60-61,157; closed, 68, 72; cultural 5, 6, 9, 51, 60, 97, 128; solidarity, 27, 37, 50-52, 56-57, 59, 109, 123, 141, 178, 273-74; and primary contacts, 18, 20, 57, 72; non- descript, 128; and collective ac- tion, 290; and personality, 9, 123, 204 Communities, federations of, 56, 91; contacts between, 36, 49, 54, 56, 85-86, 88, 89-90, 93, 99-100, 104, 128, 138, 144, 157 Connections, importance of, 36, 49, 54, 78, 85, 124, 134, 138-40 Contacts, primary and secondary, 18, 20-21, 25-27, 36, 42, 51, 78, 80, 94, 99, hi, 125 Control, social, 5, 20, 23, 37, 57-58, 61-62, 83, 216-20 Conversion: to Judaism, 30, 33, 67, 68, 89, 118, 161; to Christianity, 37, 5o, 58, 59, 68, 100, 103, 118, 137, 145, 222, 260-61 303304 THE GHETTO Converts, treatment of, 81 Crusades, effect on Jews, 13-15, 29, 89 Culture conflict, 8, 42,' 51, 110, 125, 127,172, 263-69; and psychic con- flict, 69, 263-81 Damascus incident, 144 Deutschland, 191, 246-61 Diaspora, 11, 51, 63, 67, 75,101,108 Dietary laws, 60, 68, 158, 224 Division of labor, 9, 38, 55, 228-29; and mentality, 75-82 Dreyfus affair, 149 Ecology, of ghetto, 51, 52; and cul- ture area, 286 Education, 54, 55, 61, 91, 93, 101, 148,176-77, 273 Einhorn, David, 146 Emancipation, 47-48, 88, 108, 115- 16 Enlightenment, 99,100, 102,109 Expulsions, 29, 33, 42, 114-15, 131- 32,136 Extra-territoriality, 56-60 Familiantenrecht, 154 Family life, 26, 37, 109, 141 Felsenthal, Bernard, 146, 166 Fettmilch incident, 45-46 Fires, in ghetto, 35, 41, 47; Chicago, 171-72 Ghetto: Administration of, 5, 20, 22-23, 54, 56-58, 91; autonomy of 22, 23,54-58, 89-91,97,99-100, 124,144, 204; as an institution, 4, 6, 9, 18, 29-39, 5o, "8; as a privilege, 19, 20, 21-23; a state of mind, 8, 49, 69, 118; compulsory, 12, 29-39, 48, 51, 82, 285; disap- pearance of, 74, 97-130, 240-61, 276; effects of, 36, 66-69, 71, 82, 93,122, 252; institutions in, 52,54, 60-62, 123-24; legislation, 12, 15- 16,18, 21-22, 29,40-44, 50-51,65, 93; location of, 30, 35, 36, 42, 50, 51, 192, 202; movement out of, 33, 36, 37, 38, 54, 58, 67, no, 118, 129, 191, 241-61, 279; origin of, 3, 18-27, 50, 123, 125, 203; origin of word, 1-4; non-Jewish, 6, 20, 282-87; return to, *22-23, 263-81; voluntary, 4, 18-27, 41, 50, 122, 130, 285 Goodman, Moses, 164 Gottlieb, J., 153 Greenebaum, Elias and Henry, 161 Guilds, and Jews, 45, 72, 79, 91 Gypsy, and Jew, 51,140 Haskala, 100, 103 Herzl, Theodor, 105 Hess, Moses, 104 Hinter~B erliner, 146, 170 Hirsch, Emil G., 146, 175,186,188 Hirsch, Samuel, 146 Hobo, and Jew, 51,198 Horner, Henry, 157 Hull-House, 188 Immigrant colonies, 4, 20, 124, 150- 51,195-98 Inbreeding, 67-69 Inquisition, 87, 131-32 Insanity, 68 Intellectuality, 76-77,107, no Intermarriage, .50, 65, 67, 112-13, 125-26, 136, 137,145,161 Isolation, 4, 9-10, 20, 27, 33, 38, 62, 64, 65, 73, "8, 142, 287; psychic and social, 71, 73, 82; Jews a product of, 9-10, 34, 38, 62, 66- 69, 75 Jews: as nationality, 64, 101, 104, 108; as religious group, 53,64,108; as cultural group, 64, 94, 108; as hybrids, 66, 70; number of, 127, 136, 149-51; and capitalism, 76- 78, in; as intermediaries, 14, 36, 49, 78, 83; physical traits, 63, 64, . 68-71; as ethnic type, 71,94, 287- 88INDEX 30S Jonas, Joseph, 143-44 Kabbala. See Cabalism Kalisher, Hirsch, 104 Khazars, 67, 89 , 19, 22, 23, 107, 212-14, 237 Landownership, 12, 25, 32, 41, 58, 72, hi, 131 Landsmannschaft, 142, 147, 168-69, 222-23, 254, 269 Lasalle, Ferdinand, 107 Lilienblum, Moses, 104 Lilienthal, Max, 146 Maimonides, 84 Marginal man, 36, 73,110 Marriage, 68, 80, 154 Marrams, 131-32 MarshaUikj 81 Marx, Karl, 106-7 Maskilim, 149 Maxwell Street, 231-40 Mayflower, Jewish, 133 Mendelssohn, Moses, 99, 100, 103 Messianic movement, 92, 98, 102 Migration, 11,13,25,51,89,124,140 Mobility, 13, 14, 25, 36, 51, 78; and personality, 251 Money-lending, 24, 25, 49, 78 Mutual Aid societies, 138, 148, 157, 160-61, 207 Mysticism, 87, 92, 97 Napoleon, 112 Nationalism, 84,101,103 Negro, 6, 20,64,67,118; as successor to Jew, 230-31 Noah, M. M., 104 Nomadism, 76 Pale, 3, 4, 79, 80, 88, 95,147 Peddlers, 78,135,143,148,154,167- 68 Persecution, 15, 44, 87, 91,131, 132, 144; effects of, 69, 71, 82-88, 92, 97; and nationalism, 102, 105-6 Personality, Jewish, 73; a product of ghetto, 71, 122, 252; types, 9, 37, 38, 43, 79, 80-81, 225-26, 248 Pfefferkorn incident, 45 Philanthropy, 37, 54, 57, 61, 79, 80, 81, 136, 148, 149, 162, 166, 188, 192, 217, 274-78 Philo, 84 Pinsker, Leon, 104 Poale Zion party, 107 Pogroms, 89, 91, 93, 115-16, 147, 190-91 Population: density, 43, 51, 128, 146, 195; succession, 4, 146, 164, 191, 226-31; sifting, 5, 20, 51, 180 Press, 145, 148, 162, 178-79 Provincialism, 36, 72, 82, 86, 92, 94, 101,141,168 Rabbi: position of, 54-56, 79, 80, 85; salary of, 186; influence of, 83, 85, 144-45; Meir of Rothen- burg, 48, 85 Rabbinism, 92,100 Race: Jews as, 62-71; disappear- ance of, 125; prejudice, 64, 69, 87 Racial: colonies, 20; uniform, 64 Realestatenick, 225 Reform movement, 107-9, 142-43, 145-46, 150, 161-62,165 Religion, and race, 67, 68, 72; and occupation, 78 Responsa, 48, 85 Reuchlin, John, 45 Riesser, Gabriel, 115 Romantic movement, 49 Rosenwald, Julius, 191 Rothschild: family, 48,49; Edmond de, 104, Lionel de, 115 Sabbatai Zevi, 92, 98 Salvadore, Joseph, 104 Sanhedrin, 1123o6 THE ( Schlemiel, 79 Semites, 63, 66 Sephardim, 84, 131-37, 142 Shadchan, 80 Shamus, 55, 79 Shlakhta, 90 Shochet, 55, 79 Shubert, B., 155 Sicilians, 58 Sinai congregation, 165-66, 174 Slum, 33, 35, 47, 93, 147, 148, 196- 200 Smolenskin, Perez, 104 Social distance, 8, 9, 16, 27, 38, 50, 78, 118, 148-49, 173, 223-24, 268, 284 Social movements, 87,92,94,97-110 ^HaTtype, Jew as, 70-71, 73, 81 Socialism, 101, 106-7, 148,149 Spinoza, 84, 88 Stranger: Jew as, 13-18, 20-22, 25, 26, 78, 111; r61e of, 36, 54; status of, 60-61 Stuyvesant, Peter, 133 Sweatshops, 148, 186 Symbiosis, 21, 24, 282 Synagogue, 19, 23,36,37, 52, 56,87, 107, 147; in New York, 134, 148; in America, 138; in Chicago, 158- 59; and community, 52, 57, 60, 140-41; as community center, 52, 54, 86, 123, 205-10; and temple, 165, 174; functions of, 52-55, 61; influence of, 82-83, 86, 216; com- plex, 289 Talmud: learning, 82, 97-99, 103; culture, 92; students, 80; Torah, 147 Taxation, 17, 21, 24, 33, 54, 56-59, 79, 90 Theater, 225 Toleration, 4,16,18/20, 31, 90, 111, 112, 282-83 Trade, relations, 14, 22, 24, 25, 78, 229; routes, 50-51 Travel, 34, 36, 86 Tzofim, 221-22 Universities, 82, 83, 84, 93, 115, 116 Usury, 78, 99 Vocations, 15-17, 20, 23, 24, 29, 36, 72, 75, 77-79, 90, 93, 146, 153, 181-82, 185-86, 240 Wealth, 37, 57, 78, 79 Weltanschauung, 49, 142 Wise, Isaac, M., 146 Yeshiba, 61, 91, 108; bochar, 80, 249 Yiddish, 89, 100, 102-3, I47, I48, 167, 181; literature, 102; press, 148,180 Zemansky, David, 167 Ziegler, I., 155 Zionism, 101-5, r49 [PRINTED IN U S A-JThis book is a preservation facsimile produced for the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. It is made in compliance with copyright law and produced on acid-free archival 60# book weight paper which meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (permanence of paper). Preservation facsimile printing and binding by Northern Micrographics Brookhaven Bindery La Crosse, Wisconsin 2017