-Caveat Lector-
New York Times Book Review
December 12, 1999
______________________________________________________________
From 1880 to 1920, no one in America did more to fight
anti-Semitism than Jacob Schiff.
By DEBORAH E. LIPSTADT
JACOB H. SCHIFF: A Study in American Jewish Leadership.
By Naomi W. Cohen.
320 pp. Hanover, N.H.: Brandeis University Press/ University Press
of New England. $35.
_________________________________________________________________
Modern American Jews generally believe that until the period after
World War II American Jewry was afraid to exert political power.
''Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership,'' by
Naomi W. Cohen, the author of ''Jews in Christian America,'' is a
useful corrective to this mistaken idea.
Surprisingly, Schiff has not been the subject of a serious
biography until now. That makes this book particularly welcome.
A resolute defender of Jewish rights, Schiff was the American
Jewish community's pre-eminent leader from 1880 to 1920. He came
before presidents not as a supplicant but as an advocate, convinced
that in fighting against discrimination he was upholding American
values.
A partner at the New York banking house of Kuhn, Loeb & Company,
Schiff was one of a cadre of German Jews who in the 19th century
created a kinship network of investment houses on Wall Street.
Though many of these men demonstrated intense communal
responsibility, none compared to Schiff in terms of philanthropy,
political activity and unashamed Jewishness.
Affectionately called ''unser Yankele'' (our Jacob) by eastern
European immigrants, Schiff vigorously opposed every attempt to bar
immigrants from this country. Similarly, he spoke out for American
Jews excluded from the country's leading institutions by the WASP
power structure of the time. He gave Barnard College a half-million
dollars for a building for ''social and ethical activities''
because Barnard, unlike Columbia, forbade social groups that
restricted Jews.
But he did more than fight discrimination. He sought to engender
respect for Judaism by financing translations of the Hebrew
Scriptures and other classic Jewish texts, and by donating the seed
money for Harvard's Semitic (that is, Jewish) studies program, the
first of its kind in the country. Harvard's president, Charles W.
Eliot, said he believed Schiff's efforts would help reverse ''the
centuries-long antagonism of the Christian church to the Jews.''
Schiff was not without his contradictions. Although he viewed
anti-Semitism as an irrational sentiment that existed irrespective
of the presence or behavior of Jews, he nonetheless believed that
Jews could take steps to prevent it. Arguing that resentment
against Jews was fostered by their congregating in ethnic
neighborhoods in Northeastern cities, he created the Galveston Plan
to encourage Jewish immigrants to enter the country in the
Southwest. So, too, he thought that if the immigrants Americanized
by abandoning their distinctive dress, language and leftist
politics, anti-Semitism would dissipate.
As an effort in Americanization, Schiff brought Solomon Schechter,
a learned rabbi and Cambridge University Semitics scholar, to New
York to revitalize the Jewish Theological Seminary, then a moribund
institution, and to reach out to the staunchly traditional eastern
European immigrants with a form of Judaism that bridged tradition
and modernity. In this way, Schiff, a resolutely Reform Jew,
secured a foothold for Conservative Judaism in America.
Outside the United States Schiff waged a personal battle against
czarist Russia's brutal anti-Semitism. Failing to persuade Russia
to abandon its persecution, he arranged for substantial loans to
Japan during the Russo-Japanese War. And he assiduously lobbied a
series of presidents -- Harrison, Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson -- to
abrogate the 1832 American-Russian treaty because Russia refused
visas to American Jews. He insisted that Washington could not
countenance a double standard in the treatment of American
citizens.
Unlike contemporary Jewish leaders, Schiff never felt the slightest
obligation to achieve communal consensus. As Cohen so amply
demonstrates in her well-written and well-researched book, he did
what he believed was right and he expected others to follow.
______________________________________________________________
Deborah E. Lipstadt, the author of ''Denying the Holocaust: The
Growing Assault on Truth and Memory,'' teaches Jewish history at
Emory University.
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