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"The Jews in the next generation will be the foremost to rise in the defense of our American institutions," wrote a popular Brooklyn clubman last year to a Jewish lad whom he was helping through college. There was a reason for the statement. Of all peoples in this country, it is said that to the Jews the democracy and tolerance of America mean most. The Syrian can hope for autonomy, the Pole for freedom, the Irishman for home rule, but the Jew, at the present moment, has no fatherland to which he can look with an inner feeling of affiliation. Of all the countries in the world, America has been kindest to him. The American community has permitted him freely his Sabbath, his synagogue, his business, his social ambitions, for the American community, not like all other communities, believes that these rights belong to him. The Jewish people are justly proud of their great men in Brooklyn. The Jewish people, it might be said, furthermore are nothing if not grateful. The day of the Jewish ghetto and the Jewish patriarchal beard is passing, the dawn of the rising sun sees a posterity of strong-blooded Americans, endowed with a heritage of ability and feeling and enthused in the glorious prospect of a new world with which it was not the fortune of their ancestors to be blessed. The Jews have never, from the first moment of their arrival, been a debit to their community; they have always been a self-supporting community, and today, when they have risen to the pinnacle of wealth and, in some cases, fame, they have not forgotten their brethren whom the Almighty may not have so bountifully cherished. If it is true that there is not a banking institution in the borough with which a Jewish financier is not directly or indirectly connected, it is equally true that there is not a single agency of social welfare of which the same statement might not be true. Jewish People of All Classes The Jewish people in this borough can boast of class of all extremes; there are Jewish capitalists and Jewish socialists; Jewish manufacturers and Jewish social service workers; Jewish orthodox and Jewish radicals; Jewish tradesmen and workingmen and lawyers and doctors and dentists and engineers. Indeed, in the latter connection, it has been jestingly remarked that the Jews of the professional classes are fast outcrowding their brethren of less pretentious, if, sometime, more profitable callings. From their wee little colony down on Grand Street of a half-century ago, the Jewish people have spread until they now thrive in the Williamsburgh, Brownsville, East New York, Borough Park, Bath Beach, Bensonhurst, and parts of the Bedford, Park Slope and Flatbush sections. Nor are their larger settlements characterized by "kosher" signs and pushcarts and Yiddish synagogues alone, for the Jewish race can boast an even distribution, throughout the city, of leading representatives in the professional, commercial and charitable organizations. The remarkable progress of the Jewish people in Brooklyn is a veritable anthem of the prosperity that can come to an able but hitherto oppressed race in a community redolent with the democratic spirit of equal opportunity. The Jewish people is by no means an element of "newcomers" on the soil of Long Island. Local historians have found records of Jewish traders who came over early from New Amsterdam to settle here. During the Revolutionary War Jewish names have been found among the patriotic refugees that fled from Long Island for safety. The daughter of Aaron Isaacs, one of the refugees who fled to Connecticut was later, as the result of a Yankee romance, the mother of John Howard Payne, composer of "Home, Sweet Home." In the early years of the eighteenth century there is evidence of a desultory Jewish immigration. The "colonies" along lower Grand Street and lower Fulton Street, about the middle of the nineteenth century, were not conspicuously different from their neighborhoods. The Jews who lived here in the early years of the century were laborers and small storekeepers; but the middle of the century saw the first spark of the larger cultural community. At that time, the first Hebrew teacher arrived, a M. Bernard, but there were so few children here that in order to make a living, the "mallamid" [sp] opened a store as an evocation. The settlers in the little colony on Grand Street near the East River, like their neighbors of "Dutchtown," came from Germany, and some from Alsace, after the revolution of 1848. In a year or so, they had formed the first congregation of the Temple Beth Elohim. The Hebrew teacher was also rabbi and cantor. When the temple was finally established in a magnificent edifice in 1876, the handful of Jews of 1850 numbered now about 2,000 souls living along Grand, Stagg, Scholes, Ewen and Keap Streets. There were now several large "kosher" slaughtering houses. Other temples were rapidly rising. Eighteen Jewish ladies had already met to form the first Ladies Hebrew Benevolent Society of Brooklyn. During this time another Jewish community had developed in the city of Brooklyn, around the present Borough Hall and lower Fulton Street. A vast field separated Brooklyn from Williamsburgh at the time, with no cars or trains or good roads between, and for this reason these two Jewish communities lived their own lives apart from each other. Although this second community had gathered about Gallatin Place and Fulton Street since the early part of the nineteenth century, there was no movement for a synagogue until 1856, when tea people met to form the Congregation Beth Israel. A private room near the lower end of Atlantic Avenue was the place of worship. A decade later, the first split came in Brooklyn Jewry over the question of ritual, orthodox or reform. In the same manner that certain factionists left Harvard to found a separate Yale, the radical members of the older Temple Beth Elohim seceded to organize the "reformed" congregation of Temple Israel, whose pulpit today is filled by the brilliant rabbi, Nathan Krass.
Temple Beth Elohim (Reform) It was within a decade that the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum was founded, in 1878. Ernst Nathan was the first president. This was the first institution of importance to the Jewish community, in that it began a series of philanthropic activities in which the various elements of Brooklyn Jewry, the orthodox and the "Yehudi," were to mingle. The Educational Alliance, founded in the heart of Brownsville in 1897, was another effort with this cooperating effect. The wives and daughters of the members organized an auxiliary of the asylum, of which Mrs. F. Straus was the first president. The kindergarten was established through the donation of Mrs. Abraham Abraham at the time. This institution has prospered until it has become, under the superintendency of Dr. Gelsmar, a leading model in Brooklyn, and passed unscathed and highly praised through the recent caustic Charity Department investigations. The Refugees From Russian Massacres The influx of Jews from the Eastern nations of Europe began in the early '60s, but became prominent only in the early years of the '80s. They came to escape from Russian massacres. Settling along Ewen, More, Siegel and Cook Streets, they built up a new and typically orthodox life, not omitting even the Old World "Beth Hamedrash Hagodol," for the purpose of discussing Rabbinic doctrine. With three dollars left over from the women's fund to purchase a Scroll, an effort was made to start a free Hebrew school for poor children, in a little room. From this beginning on Leonard Street, the "Talmud Torah" movement spread over Brooklyn unti9l, at the present moment, we can boast, in the imposing Hebrew Free School on Stone Avenue, one of the most modern institutions of its kind in the country. In 1884, a generation ago, a clothing contractor, who ran a large shop in Manhattan, came to Brownsville, bought a home on the road which is now Watkins Street, near Sutter avenue, and opened his shop there. From this little home originated the Jewish community of Brownsville. In the early days this region was none other than the outlying acreage belonging to the Dutch farmers of the towns of New Lots and Flatbush. The Fulton Street elevated stopped short at Rockaway Avenue, and the settlers would trek their way to and from swamps in mud. The only lights at night were lanterns used by well-to-do settlers in front of their houses. The nannygoats of present-day Pigtown are said to trace their pedigree to ancestors who flourished on the rubbish heaps of Brownsville. Brownsville, "Bohemia," Grows Up Over Night on New Lots Farms Brownsville has grown over night. Banks and schools and synagogues and playgrounds of imposing structure are seen everywhere. This "mushroom" growth is due particularly to the real estate "boom" that preceded the panic of 1907. Brownsville today is the teeming center of seething intellectual currents, which entitle its Pitkin Avenue and cafes and Yiddish newspaper offices to be called Brooklyn's East Broadway, or "Bohemia," which are practically the same thing. The Hebrew Educational Society, in its beautiful mansion on Hopkinson Avenue, which was founded by Abraham Abraham, Simon F. Rothschild and other philanthropists, has become, under Dr. Bernheimer, the Jewish sociologist and author, the forum of Brownsville's culture. Of late, the Brownsville Labor Lyceum has been foisting an Old World culture, in the form of Marxism and Russian plays on the foreign-born shop workers in the district, whose numbers are attested in the fact that they recently elected the first Socialist Assemblyman in the history of New York State. The Jews are a migratory people, and their day of expansion has not yet come to an end. From Williamsburg the center of population has moved, with advancing prosperity, into the Bedford section, noticeably along upper Greene Avenue, while a similar element has built its residences in Borough Park and Mapleton, Bath Beach and Bensonhurst. The wealthier citizens are to be found in Flatbush and on the Heights. The lowers peddler has a resistless ambition to advance his children to a plane in life higher than his own, and the Jewish youth of Brooklyn has distinguished itself in the schools and universities of the country. Figures like Abraham Abraham, Simon F. Rothschild, Edward C. Blum, Michael Furst, Jacob Brenner, Benjamin H. Namm, Nathan S. Jonas, Louis Firuski, Sylvan Levy, Meier Steinbrink and other eminent Jews prominent in the walks of Brooklyn life have been emblems of the Jews' success in Brooklyn. The Jew His Brother's Keeper In the Bible of the Jews is a story of a fratricide who cries, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Many men have availed themselves of Cain's pretext. But the Jews themselves have disclaimed it in the organization of their communal life. There are certainly more than 500,000 Jews in this borough; and it would seem as if there were nearly 500,000 charitable organizations. It has been impossible for any single compendium to categorize all the Jewish societies in Brooklyn, for nearly every synagogue on nearly every street will have its women's auxiliaries and free burial society, and maternity relief fund and free loan organization to help along the needy of the immediate neighborhood. To be charitable is the Jew's social distinction; it is, also, a measure of his wealthy for his own edification. The Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities is the fountain source of official charitable activity, cooperating with the Council of Jewish Women, the Jewish Hospital, the Training School for Nurses, the Young Men's Hebrew Association, the Young Men and Women's Social Service Auxiliary, and the other similar institutions prompted by the charitable spirit of the Jewish people. If Brooklyn is the borough of churches, it is also the center of the most beautiful temples, as the Eighth Avenue Temple, of which Rabbi Alexander Lyons is minister, and Temple Israel, on Bedford Avenue, where Rabbi Krass preaches; the Temple Shaari Zedek, on Putnam Avenue, whose pulpit is filled by Rabbi Max Raisin, and the venerable Beth Elohim, on Keap Street, where Rabbi Simon R. Cohen is the witty pastor. Then there is the club life of the Jewish people, from the palatial Unity Club, in the home of the former Union League Club of Brooklyn, where philanthropists and business men gather, and the Sheepskin Club of the university men, to the fraternal orders, like the B'nai Brith and benevolent lodges of the fellow townsmen coming from the same Old World localities, and the workingmen's literary and social clubs. At this moment Brooklyn Jewry is in a process of transition; for the Ghetto, it is frank to say, is passing away. The "mallammad" and his old Hebrew school, where he taught Hebrew with the "strap" in his hand, is giving way to newer and more modern "Talmud Torahs" that cooperate with the public schools in adjusting their curricula. The youth is no longer losing touch with the older generation as the enlightened breath of higher education sweeps away his Yiddish and his quaint home memories, but is coming back with his Zionist and Menorah movements to sit at the table of his fathers, like the "guest" at the Sabbath supper, for the ultimate benefit of himself, Jewry and Brooklyn. |
