Page:The International Jew - Volume 2.djvu/179



This series of facts could also be pursued at length. Kosher food for the children of public schools because there were Jewish children in the schools; protest against the Daylight Saving Ordinances because they were prejudicial to Jewish merchants who close their businesses on Saturday and open them after nightfall on that day. This is an illustration of the large number of small points at which Jewish life conflicts with community life. And, of course, each of these divergences is ground for an imperious “demand.”—Harvard University was severely criticized in 1917-1918 for refusing to set aside an entrance examination date that conflicted with a Jewish holiday. Since that time, however, eastern universities have become more pliable. But the whole course of the Christian year would have to be changed and all the traditional seasonal customs of the country broken up if the Jews are to be given the full measure of “liberty” which they demand.

Of course, the work of the Kehillah is claimed to be “educational.” It certainly is that. The best educated members are those who come from the ghettos of Galatia where the Kehillah idea is fully understood and the Jewish community government exercises unrestricted sway.

Whatever other phase of education the Kehillah may be interested in, it certainly stresses most the education to separateness. The New York Times especially likes to emphasize this matter of “education.” It is a convenient description and somewhat aids the effort to minimize Kehillah’s importance when it is under scrutiny. Nevertheless in the New York Times an article appeared about the Kehillah in which Dr. S. Benderly, director of the Bureau of Education, is quoted as describing the objects of the education:


 * “The problem before us was to form a body of young Jews who should be on the one hand true Americans, a part of this Republic, with an intense interest in upbuilding American ideals; and yet, on the other hand, be also Jews in love with the best of their own ideals, and not anxious merely to merge with the rest and disappear among them.


 * “That problem confronts Orthodox and