Freedom and opportunity for the young make costly demands upon the bewildered elders, who cling tenaciously to their ancient religious observances. The synagogues are everywhere—imposing or shabby-looking buildings—and the chevras, sometimes occupying only a small room where the prescribed number meet for daily prayer. Often through the windows of a dilapidated house the swaying figures of the devout may be seen with prayer-shawl and phylactery and eyes turned to the East. At high festivals every pew and bench are occupied and additional halls are rented where services are held for those men, women, and young people who, indifferent at other times, then meet and pray together.
But though the religious life is abundantly in evidence through the synagogues and the Talmud-Torah schools[15] and the Chedorim, where the boys, confined for many hours, study Hebrew and receive religious instruction, and although the Barmitzvah, or confirmation of the son at thirteen, is still an impressive ceremony and the occasion of family rejoicing, there is lament on the part of the pious that the house of worship and the ritualistic ceremonial of the Jewish faith have lost their hold upon the spiritual life of the younger generation.
For them new appeals take the place of the old religious commands. The modern public-spirited rabbi offers his pulpit for the presentation of current social problems. Zionism with its appeal for a spiritual nationalism, socialism with its call to economic salvation, the extension of democracy through the enfranchisement of women, the plea for service to humanity through social work, stir the younger generation and give expression to a religious spirit.
The Synagogues Are Everywhere—Imposing or Shabby-Looking Buildings
Settlements suffer at times from the criticism of those who sincerely believe that, without definite religious propaganda, their full measure of usefulness cannot be attained. It has seemed to us that something fundamental in the structure of the settlement itself would be lost were our policy altered. All creeds have a common basis for fellowship, and their adherents may work together for humanity with mutual respect and esteem for the conviction of each when these are not brought into controversy. Protestants, Catholics, Jews, an occasional Buddhist, and those who can claim no creed have lived and served together in the Henry Street house contented and happy, with no attempt to impose their theological convictions upon one another or upon the members of the clubs and classes who come in confidence to us.
During any election campaign the swarming, gesticulating, serious-looking street crowds of our neighborhood are multiplied and intensified. Orators, not a few small boys among them, appear on nearly every street corner, and an observer might almost measure the forces that influence the people by the number and character of the orators, the appeals upon which they base their hope of approval at the polls, and the reaction of the crowds that surround them.
Pleas supported by reasonable show of argument are likely to find intelligent response, although, as is but natural, the judgment of a temperamental people is at times not clearly defined. During the recent almost riotous support of a Governor who had been impeached (it was generally believed at the behest of an irritated “boss” to whom he had refused obedience) many New Yorkers who had come to count upon the East Side for insight and understanding were perplexed at what seemed hero-worship of a man against whom charges of misappropriation of funds had been sustained. Those who knew the people discerned an emotional desire for justice mingled with some gratitude to the man who, while in Congress, had kept faith with his constituents on matters vital to them. Stopping at a sidewalk stand on Second Avenue, I asked the owner what it was all about. “Oh,” said he, “Sulzer ain’t being punished now for bein’ bad. Murphy’s hittin’ him for the good he done.”
Our first realization of the dominating influence of political control upon the individual and collective life of the neighborhood came, naturally enough, through the gossip of our new acquaintances when we came to live downtown, and we were not long oblivious to the power invested in quite ordinary men whom we met.