Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/268

 EMIL G. HIBSCH 249 every sermon of Dr. Hirsch there echoes the proclamation that , the Jew has been elected by God to inculcate love, mercy, and justice throughout the world and to illustrate it in his own life, that others may be thereby ennobled. The destiny that accrues to the Jew by reason of his his- torical position among the children of men is the key whereby to read the simple annals of the life of Emil G. Hirsch. His career is singularly free from spectacular or romantic ele- ments. It has been a studious life, more the conventional life of a scholar, fond of the cloistered quiet of libraries, than the active life of a propagandist. While not averse to the fray, his fondest satisfaction is the assurance that he has weaponed his allies with motives, ideals, and purposes. In this age when all intellectual concepts, no matter how abstract or intangible, are personified under the guise of a movement, with its battalion of oflScers and committees, meet- ings and conferences. Dr. Hirsch has preferred to study these meetings from printed official reports rather than to be one of the attendants. When the exigency of the case has demanded his presence, however, his leadership has been instantly felt and his recognized ability has told in the effectiveness of the conference. When it was rumored that he was to speak, the hall would be crowded : for he is a keen debater, quick at re- tort, cutting in rebuttal, and always master of the subject under discussion. This disposition to seek the solitude of the study rather than the open arena accounts for his absence in all those manifold activities to which Chicago, more than any other city of our country, is so fully alive. Dr. Hirsch *s name may be listed among the officers as honorary president, but he has never gone forth to attend to the detailed work of the movement at hand. It was due to his influence that the Jewish Manual Training School of Chicago was founded, although the actual working out of this educational regime was the life work of the late Dr. Gabriel Bamberger. He was among the first to advocate the federation of Jewish charities and to systematize the work on a business basis, with recognition of the psycho- logical and economic causes that were operative in the circum-