Congregations are continually being organized and synagogues built in localities where none existed before, thus showing a gradual dispersion of Jews to all parts of the country, while new houses of worship in the large cities usually owe their erection to consolidation or to the settlement in new neighborhoods. But only the buildings which are entirely devoted to religious services are apt to be noticed by those making records or gathering statistical material, while the small congregation which worships in a private dwelling is usually overlooked. The statistics about Jewish congregations in the United States are for this reason more defective than the figures about any other phase of Jewish activity, and the total given by the above mentioned Year Book (for 5669, p. 65), i. e., 1745, for the entire country, should be doubled to be nearer the truth, even if the lowest estimate of the number of Jews in the country is accepted as the most probable one.
If it must be admitted that a process of disintegration is going on, in which the pessimist sees something worse than a transformation or re-adjustment to new conditions in a new world, it is, on the other hand, obvious that a strong effort is made to counteract the forces of dissolution. The various elements of the community, representing many countries and different strata of immigration, are coming together in a conciliatory spirit, as if instinctively impelled to co-operate. The widespread activity in the building of synagogues, in which many whose attitude was formerly indifferent, and even hostile, now participate, is only one phase of the attempt to preserve Judaism in this country. Much is done for charity and for Jewish education, the latter receiving more attention than ever before. The public school systems of most of the larger cities, following New York’s example, have taken over the largest part of the work which was done before in Jewish institutions to Americanize the immigrant. Not only the proportion, but the actual number, of the dependents on charity is decreasing, and while the needs of Jewish charitable institutions are still great, more attention can now be paid to specifically Jewish matters than at the time when the problem of the material wants of the immigrants was overshadowing every other communal activity.
The attempts to organize on a more general scale, and to consolidate or federate existing organizations, which are frequently made and are more often successful than in the preceding periods, are the clearest manifestation of the spirit of the times in American Jewry. In most of the large cities outside of New York the important local Jewish charities are now federated, and the plan of federation is continually gaining in favor. The federations, of which there are now more than a dozen, and many other benevolent institutions of large and of smaller communities, are represented in the National Conference of Jewish Charities of the United States (organized 1899).
There is also noticeable in our communal life, as in American public life in general, that tendency to self-criticism which often degenerates into slander—that eternal dissatisfaction with things accomplished and with present conditions, which implies a sincere desire to achieve still better results. While this discontent and the poor opinion which many of us have of the spiritual condition of the Jews in America are of immense value as incentives to improvement, it dims the eye of the foreign observer, especially if he comes from a country where complacency and self-praise are the rule. It may still be too early to summarize the communal activities of the Jews in America, or to attempt to indicate how far we have approached the solution of the most pressing problems. But signs of throbbing life are visible everywhere, and the interest of the individual Jew in Jewish affairs is increasing. There is, therefore, every reason to believe and to hope that the opportunity which is afforded here to set the Jewish house in order—the best, and perhaps the first, in the diaspora—will be utilized to its full extent by the future generations of native American Jews.
We are happy to have no Jewish problem here, in the sense in which the term is understood in the backward countries of the Old World. We need not waste a part of our best energies in repelling attacks from an anti-Semitic press or a Judophobe party, and our usefulness to ourselves as well as to our neighbors is thereby enhanced. Members of strange and hostile races and nationalities get along together in this country much better than anywhere else in the past or the present time, and their native children emerge from the “melting pot” united by a patriotism and a desire for improved conditions and improved relations which characterizes the American. The secularity of the Government and the diversity of religious beliefs preclude the spread of the denominational bigotry which is the real cause of the persecution of the Jews in other countries; while the liberty and equality which are vouchsafed to every citizen must themselves be lost before the unfavorable conditions which prevail elsewhere can confront us here. The Jew can become an American and at the same time preserve his religious distinctiveness, which he can lose only by his own negligence or disloyalty. Let us hope that those who now earnestly work to strengthen and build up Judaism in America will be successful, and that the fate or Divine Providence which has preserved us for thousands of years brought us here to participate under new circumstances in the advancement to a higher civilization in which the injustices of the older one may never reappear.
INDEX.
A
Aaron, Jonas, [76]
Aboab, [51]