Religion: Jewish Problems

Dr. Joseph Herman Hertz, Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, consented to be interviewed. It was a rare event and one for which Journalist Betty Ross, able stylist, took proper pride of accomplishment. Editor David N. Mosessohn of the Jewish Tribune printed her “story” last week. His Eminence, as Journalist Betty Ross likes to term him, received her in his private residence at Hamilton Terrace in the northwest part of London. Few U. S. visitors have had the privilege of entering his cheery reception room, with its large windows, its creamy-tinted walls, etchings, photographs. Journalist Betty Ross made herself comfortable there; found it “a pleasure to listen to the fine flow of phrase, apart from the depth of their content, as they fall from the lips of the Chief Rabbi. His diction is graceful, his voice pleasant as it starts in moderate tones and becomes deeper and more intense as his words gather in force. You are surprised that his are not the precise, clipped accents of the Englishman.”*

She asked him what particular problem confronted Anglo-Jewry today. He answered: “Inter-marriage. This is a serious problem in English Jewry. The Jew here, perhaps more than any other country in the world, is accepted on his own merits. This is especially true among the better classes, where, unlike America, there is no social prejudice, and no social barriers of any sort as between Jews and non-Jews.”The solution lies in the strengthening of Jewish consciousness and of Jewish convictions. When you consider for how many years the wealthier Jews in this country have been living together with non-Jews on more intimate terms than you can possibly imagine in America— the marvel is that there is not more intermarriage. And the only reason why there is not even more intermarriage is because the leading English Jews of former generations deemed it a matter of vital importance to create a distinctly religious atmosphere for their children, giving them a religious education that endowed them with a Jewish consciousness and a self-respect. Both they and their childen had the will to be and to remain Jews.” Another of his observations: “The direct calamity which has befallen Judaism in the recent generations is the attempt of the Communists of Russia to strangulate the Jewish soul.

They are doing this to three million of our brethren in that country by forbidding all religious instruction. The times of the Inquisition have come again, when Jewish teaching must be done secretly, in cellars and lofts—in forests, even. And always the constant danger of denunciation by spies, meaning imprisonment of both the teacher and the parents!” His pride: “I started the first Zionist Society at the College of the City of New York in 1889, seven years before Dr. Theodore Herzl.”

The Chief Rabbi of the British Empire has no counterpart in the U. S. Jews in the U. S. are yet too discrete, too centrifugal in their attitude regarding Judaism to make possible an office comparable to Chief Rabbi of the United States Hebrew Congregations of the British Empire, as the title goes in full. And although in England Chief Rabbi Hertz may be called His Eminence, his position does not resemble a cardinal’s. A cardinal is an officer of his church’s hierarchy; Jews have no similar terraces of theocratic dignities. Rabbi Hertz’s chieftainship laks the authority of the cardinalate. Perhaps the best comparison is to the position of John Gardner Murray as the Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the U. S.

However, Bishop Murray has diligently consolidated his church organization; Chief Rabbi Hertz has as diligently avoided too strict consolidation of the synagogues. The present dispersed condition of world Jewry does not permit that.

*He was born in 1872 at Rebrin, Czechoslovakia (then Austria-Hungary) ; was educated in Manhattan (College of the City of New York, Columbia, Jewish Theological Seminary) ; officiated as rabbi in South Africa; succeeded the late Dr. Hermann Adler (1839-1911) as Chief Rabbi.