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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 May 2014
This article examines how communal activists, leaders, intellectuals, and the Yiddish press understood and reacted to charges regarding purported Jewish criminality, which accusers often linked to the need to curtail immigration to America. The Jewish self-image as a nonviolent people proved to be quite resilient, and one of the ways to reconcile the existence of Jewish criminals with that self-perception was to put the blame on the surrounding (American) influence, or to evoke generalized negative images of gentiles as a foil for applauding Jewish qualities. New York Jews construed their relations with the larger non-Jewish society as a continuation of old-world patterns of Jewish-gentile relations rather than a change or reversal of them. The criminal episodes demonstrated how a cultural net of transnational meanings shaped Jews' understanding and reaction to allegations against them.
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24. Hermalin wrote an editorial in Varhayt, January 11, 1912, 4.
25. Kid Twist is quoted in Slonim, “Jewish Gangster,” 37–38.
26. Reminiscences of Jonah J. Goldstein, Columbia University Oral History Research Office Collection, 3: 589–90.
27. Shoenfeld's irreplaceable accounts are in the Judah L. Magnes Papers; the quote is from the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Magnes Papers, P3/1780, account 14: 3 (block letters in the original). See also Goren, Arthur A., Saints and Sinners: The Underside of American Jewish History (Cincinnati: American Jewish Archives, 1988), 16–18Google Scholar.
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54. YT, November 8, 1909, 4.
55. YT, October 29, 1909, 6. Cf. YT, November 2, 1909, 4.
56. Masliansky wrote in YT November 9, 1909, 4. See also Masliansky's attack on those who associated Jews with the white slave trade: The Minutes and Reports of HIAS Meetings and Conventions [11 January 1910], YIVO, HIAS Papers, reel 15.1.
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66. The most detailed account of Rosenthal's murder and its aftermath is in Andy Logan, Against the Evidence. A more recent popular history book that focuses more on Becker's trial is Cohen, Stanley, The Execution of Officer Becker: The Murder of a Gambler, the Trial of a Cop, and the Birth of Organized Crime (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2006)Google Scholar. Henry H. Klein, a press agent for Hearst, who had covered this episode for the New York American, was convinced of Becker's innocence and argued that rival gamblers wanted to prevent Rosenthal from testifying— Klein, Henry H., Sacrificed: The Story of Police Lieutenant Charles Becker (New York: published by author, 1927)Google Scholar. New York American, July 17, 1912, 1, July 18, 1912, 1–2; World, July 13, 1912, 1, July 20, 1912, 1–2; NYT, July 16, 1912, 1; July 17, 1912, 1; Goren, New York Jews, 148–58; Joselit, Our Gang, 75–84; Fried, Rise and Fall, 72–81.
67. NYT, April 14, 1914, 1, July 31, 1915, 1; “The Rosenthal Murder and the System,” Outlook, July 27, 1912, 739; Literary Digest, July 27, 1912, 136; Logan, Against the Evidence, 68–80.
68. The New York Herald and Evening Telegraph are cited in Joselit, Our Gang, 76, 187 n.15. See also, Asbury, Gangs of New York, 340–43. Less than three months after Rosenthal's murder, Big Jack Zelig, whose gang included the three Jewish gunmen, was scheduled to testify before the grand jury that he had furnished the gunmen at Becker's behest. On October 5, 1912, a day before his testimony, a man called “Red Phil” Davidson shot and killed Zelig aboard a streetcar. Davidson was also Jewish—Logan, Against the Evidence, 170–71; Cohen, Execution of Officer Becker, 103–05.
69. World, July 8, 1912, 1, July 17, 1912, 18; NYT, July 8, 1912, 1, July 14, 1912, 9, July 19, 1912, 18; MZ, July 17, 1912, 1; July 19, 1912, 1. Frederic E. Rusch has claimed that Theodore Dreiser based much of the action and characters in his play, The Hand of the Potter, on the Swartz case—in A Theodore Dreiser Encyclopedia, ed. Newlin, Keith (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2003), 177–78Google Scholar.
70. Sulzberger is quoted in Joselit, Our Gang, 77.
71. Varhayt, August 3, 1912, 4.
72. Caplan wrote in MZ, July 19, 1912, 5.
73. Magnes is quoted in American Hebrew, August 2, 1912, 365. See also Bogen, “Jews of Many Lands,” 3–4; James Forbes, “Where the Gunmen Come From,” Outlook, November 30, 1912, 719–22.
74. On the Kehillah's Bureau of Social Morals see the letter from Magnes to journalist Herman Bernstein, 6 August 1912, YIVO, Herman Bernstein Papers, folder 111. Jewish Community of New York, Fourth Annual Report (1913), 16–17. Abe Shoenfeld, NYPL, William Wiener Oral History Library of the American Jewish Committee, 125, 215. On the bureau and the Kehillah's crime fighting see Goren, New York Jews, 159–85. On other private civic organizations that fought vice in New York, see Waterman, Willoughby Cyrus, Prostitution and Its Repression in New York City, 1900–1931 (1932, reprinted New York: AMS, 1968), 80–116Google Scholar.
75. MZ, August 1, 1912, 4. Goren has argued that the Morgen zhurnal's publisher, Jacob Saphirstein, had a jaundiced view of any of the Kehillah's endeavors—New York Jews, 157.
76. Yidisher sotsyalist, March 15, 1914, 3. On the Jewish Socialist Federation, see Frankel, Prophecy and Politics, 506–09, 512–13. On the “khapers” see Stanislawski, Michael, Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews: The Transformation of Jewish Society in Russia, 1825–1855 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1983), 13–34Google Scholar.
77. Forverts, July 27, 1912, 4.
78. Baranov wrote in Forverts, July 24, 1912, 4. See also, Forverts, July 21, 1912, 4.
79. Forverts, July 23, 1912, 4. Cf. Goren, New York Jews, 155–56.
80. MZ, July 18, 1912, 4.
81. MZ, August 1, 1912, 4.
82. MZ, July 22, 1912, 4. See also MZ, July 19, 1912, 1. On Jewish criminality in America as a one-generation phenomenon and its decline in the interwar period see Joselit, Our Gang, 157–67. See also Ellis, Lee, “Religiosity and Criminality: Evidence and Explanations of Complex Relations,” Sociological Perspectives 28 (1985): 509–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
83. MZ, July 19, 1912, 5.
84. MZ, July 19, 1912, 5, Caplan's article and especially the argument about the dangers of physical training were ridiculed by radicals—see Groyser kundes, July 26, 1912, 6. Two years earlier, famous Yiddish poet Morris Rosenfeld criticized what he saw as the Jewish aversion to physical activity—Forverts, July 6, 1910, 4. On conceptions regarding Jews and physical weakness see Whitfield, Stephen J., “Unathletic Department,” in Jews, Sports, and the Rites of Citizenship, ed. Kugelmass, Jack, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 51–71.Google Scholar
85. MZ, August 1, 1912, 4. See also MZ, August 2, 1912, 4.
86. YT, July 15, 1912, 4. See also YT, July 29, 1912, 4, July 30, 1912, 4. The Tageblat's editor, Bublik, Gedaliah, criticized American Jews for considering themselves lower than gentiles—Min ha-meiẓar (New York: published by author, 1923), 22–23Google Scholar. A Brooklyn Yiddish weekly blamed the Jewish press for disseminating negative images of Jews as criminals: Bronzvil un ist nu york progres, November 28, 1913, 4.
87. YT, July 18, 1912, 4.
88. YT, April 13, 1914, 4.
89. YT, July 24, 1912, 4.
90. Varhayt, July 17, 1912, 4. A personal impression of Miller is by Kobrin, Leon, Mayne fuftsik yor in amerike (New York: YKUF, 1966), 108–14.Google Scholar
91. Varhayt, July 22, 1912, 4.
92. Varhayt, July 18, 1912, 4.
93. Varhayt, July 22, 1912, 4.
94. Goren, New York Jews, 155. That argument is cited in later scholarship: see Gertzman, Jay A., Bookleggers and Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica, 1920–1940 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 121–22.Google Scholar
95. Varhayt, July 14, 1912, 4. Hermalin hinted that a powerful newspaper magnate (William Randolph Hearst) was responsible for the libel as a way to “get even” with Jews who supposedly did not support his political aspirations. On New York immigrant Jews and Hearst, see Ribak, Gentile New York, 81; a laudatory letter from Joseph Barondess to Hearst, 20 May 1903, NYPL, Joseph Barondess Papers, letterbook 8; NYT, November 3, 1905, 4; Rischin, Moses, The Promised City: New York Jews 1870–1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 229–33Google Scholar; Swanberg, W.A., Citizen Hearst: A Biography of William Randolph Hearst (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1961), 195–207, 230–38.Google Scholar
96. On the blood libel against Beilis see AJYB 5675 (1914/15), 19–89; Rogger, Hans, “The Beilis Case: Anti-Semitism and Politics in the Reign of Nicholas II,” Slavic Review 25 (1966): 615–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; most recently, Weinberg, Robert, Blood Libel in Late Imperial Russia: The Ritual Murder Trial of Mendel Beilis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013).Google Scholar
97. On the coverage of this case among American Jews, see Berkowitz, Joel, “The ‘Mendel Beilis Epidemic’ on the Yiddish Stage,” Jewish Social Studies 8 (2001): 199–225Google Scholar; Lifshits, Yekhezkel, “Hedei ‘alilat ha-dam ‘al Beilis be-’amerikah,” Zion 28 (1963): 206–22.Google Scholar
98. Varhayt, August 3, 1912, 4.
99. Hermalin, Dovid M., Zhurnalistishe shriftn (New York: Hebrew Publishing, 1912), 72–73.Google Scholar
100. Varhayt, July 17, 1912, 4.
101. Varhayt, July 30, 1912, 4.
102. Varhayt, July 27, 1912, 4.
103. Varhayt, July 22, 1912, 4.
104. NYT, August 2, 1912, 2. See also Thomas, The Mayor Who Mastered New York, 417, 137–42, 424–27; Smith, William Jay Gaynor, 131; Allen, The Tiger, 227–30.
105. Gaynor's explanation was in a letter to B. E. Greenspan (Aug. 1, 1912), in Gaynor, William Jay, Some of Mayor Gaynor's Letters and Speeches (New York: Greaves, 1913), 91–92Google Scholar. In 1910 Gaynor defended Jews and attacked missionaries who tried to convert them—Gaynor, Letters and Speeches, 21.
106. Wise is quoted in Logan, Against the Evidence, 96.
107. MZ, July 29, 1912, 4.
108. YT, August 1, 1912, 4. The Forverts termed Gaynor's words “foolish” but added that Gaynor was not antisemitic —July 28, 1912, 4.
109. Varhayt, July 31, 1912, 4. One historian has argued that the incident did not weaken Jewish support—Pink, Louis Heaton, Gaynor: The Tammany Mayor Who Swallowed the Tiger (New York: International Press, 1931), 220–23Google Scholar. See also Goren, New York Jews, 182–83.
110. The quote is in Filler, Louis, Crusaders for American Liberalism (1939, new edition Yellow Springs, OH: Antioch, 1950), 117–18Google Scholar. For a similar view, see Glanz, Rudolf, “Jewish Social Conditions as Seen by the Muckrakers,” Studies in Judaica Americana (New York: Ktav, 1970), 384–407Google Scholar. Cf. Burton Hendricks, “The Jewish Invasion of New York,” McClure's Magazine 41 (March 1913): 138–41. On the WASP, middle-class proponents of reform see Hofstadter, Age of Reform, 137–40, 177–78.
