Joan S. Friedman - American Jewish...

Joan S. Friedman

volume lxx . 2018 . numbers 1 & 2 69

The Pilgrim Rabbis: Reform Rabbis Behaving Badly in a Lost Satire

Joan S. Friedman

In the papers of the Hebrew Union College (HUC) among faculty‑student correspondence dating mostly to the 1910s, is an anonymous manuscript.1 It is an eleven‑page carbon copy of the typescript of Acts I and III of a three‑act satirical play, The Pilgrim Rabbis, lampooning prominent members of the American Reform rabbinate. The manuscript offers a humorous perspective on the tensions that roiled the Reform rabbinate in those years: Zionism; competition between New York and Cincinnati for leadership of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) and of the movement; tension between radical reformers and those who advocated a return to a more traditional model of practice; and uncertainty for the future of American Judaism in the face of mas‑sive immigration from Eastern Europe. There is no reference to this typescript in the faculty minutes or any indication of how, why, or when it ended up in faculty hands, or which faculty member had it.

Who Wrote the Play?While the evidence is entirely circumstantial and contextual, I believe that James G. Heller (1892–1971) is the likely candidate.2 Heller, son

1 The Pilgrim Rabbis, undated, MS‑5, box B‑6, folder 11, American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, OH (hereafter AJA). This folder of miscellaneous and undated material, ar‑chived with student correspondence, also contains several anonymous letters complaining about rabbinic students’ conduct and/or the state of Reform Judaism; student petitions to add, change, or skip classes; correspondence relating to several disciplinary issues; and sev‑eral inquiries from women or their male sponsors regarding their admission to the rabbinic program.2 For basic biographical information in this article, unless otherwise noted I have relied on Kerry M. Olitzky, Lance J. Sussman, and Malcom H. Stern, eds., Reform Judaism in America:

The Pilgrim Rabbis

The American Jewish Archives Journal70

of Rabbi Max Heller of New Orleans, entered HUC in 1912 after com‑pleting his bachelor’s at Tulane University and was ordained in 1916. Upon ordination he went to Keneseth Israel in Philadelphia as assistant to his father’s friend, Joseph Krauskopf, until he was called to active duty as a military chaplain.3 Discharged in 1919 after less than a year of service, he briefly served a congregation in Little Rock before mov‑ing to Cincinnati’s Isaac M. Wise Temple in 1920 as assistant to Louis Grossman, his former HUC professor and friend of Heller senior. When Grossman passed away suddenly in 1927, Heller succeeded him and remained there until his retirement in 1952.

Heller is the most likely candidate based on four inferences we can draw about the play. First, the author had a wicked sense of humor and a talent for writing satire. Heller is well known as the composer and primary author of “The Quest of the Holy Dagesh,” a musical comedy performed at the HUC annual student banquet of November 1914.4 “The Quest” features a whimsical plot in which the college’s faculty discover that the dagesh has disappeared, set off to find it, and are kidnapped by Jewish pirates. It portrays the foibles and quirks of vari‑ous faculty personalities with affectionate mockery that makes clear its purpose of lighthearted in‑house fun.

The Pilgrim Rabbis demonstrates a similarly clever and playful hand, but with far less whimsy and far more bite. Crucial for linking it to Heller, it also has an obvious editorial perspective. Max Heller’s expe‑riences as a CCAR leader are the background against which the play comes into focus. Though everyone is spoofed, he and his friends within the CCAR are treated more gently, with the same affectionate humor

A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993).3 Heller and Solomon Freehof, the last two Jewish chaplains called to active service, shipped out to France on 12 November 1918. Joan S. Friedman, “Solomon B. Freehof, the ‘Reform Responsa,’ and the Shaping of American Reform Judaism,” doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 2003, 107.4 James G. Heller, Simon Cohen, Edward Davis, and Edward L. Israel, “The Quest for the Holy Dagesh,” MS‑147, box 1, folder 14, AJA. Rabbi Henry J. Berkowitz recollected that “The Quest” originated as the 1913 Purimspiel. Stanley Brav, ed., Telling Tales Out of School (Cincinnati: HUC‑JIR Alumni Association, 1965), 16–17, 75.

Joan S. Friedman


employed throughout “The Quest,” while Heller’s ideological and po‑litical opponents within the CCAR are subjected to stinging mockery. Significantly, the satirist targets Stephen S. Wise, who was Heller’s ally within the CCAR in the cause of Zionism but, for a brief period in 1909, his adversary in CCAR politics.

Second, the author was intimately familiar with CCAR politics and the personalities of many of its leaders. Max and James Heller were pas‑sionate about the same issues, and their correspondence5 shows that they shared the details of their activities. James certainly knew his father’s friends, and he certainly knew his father’s opinion of his enemies.

Third, the author was a Zionist, and James Heller embraced Zionism passionately. He later reminisced that HUC made him into a Zionist. His father, he asserted, had never tried to “pressure” him, and he didn’t really give it much thought, he claimed, until he arrived at HUC as a student in 1912.

There, at the opening session, Dr. Kaufmann Kohler, its President, spoke to the new students. He fulminated against Zionism, with not a little violence. This appeared to me so unfair, so wide of the mark, that I was almost at once driven to the other direction, driven to study and to ponder. During those student years, the longer I considered, the more certain I became that my own sentiments were all upon the side of Zionism. I became embroiled in bitter controversies, even as a student.6

During his student years, virtually all of Heller’s activities placed him on a collision course with President Kaufmann Kohler. He gravitated to the company of the other Zionist sympathizers among the student body and the faculty. In February 1913 he wrote his parents that he had spent an afternoon at the home of Grossman with fellow students Ed Israel and Simon Cohen, listening to Grossman’s new phonograph records of European cantors. (Israel and Cohen would collaborate with Heller on “The Quest.”) A month later he wrote that he had presented a

5 Max Heller kept carbon copies of the letters he wrote to his sons. There is an extensive collection of them in MS‑33, AJA.6 James G. Heller, “How I Became a Zionist,” The New Palestine, 22 January 1943 (pho‑tocopy), MS‑147, box 1, folder 12, AJA.

The Pilgrim Rabbis


well‑received paper, “The Jew in Music,” to the Student Literary Society, but had caused a bit of a stir because he had adopted a Zionist perspec‑tive, meaning that “the Jew has a psychology common to almost all Jews, which may be called Jewish.” He also informed his family that he

went to a meeting of about five boys, all Russians except me, who had asked me to join them in a little circle for reading modern Hebrew. Of course, I did so with pleasure, and last night got real profit out of it. We read an essay of Achad Haam, and I found that I could read almost as well as any of them.7

(The students were reading modern Hebrew on their own because one of the curricular changes Kohler had made when he became president of HUC was eliminating any instruction in modern Hebrew.8)

A month later Heller wrote to his family that he had been invited to join the Yod‑Kaf‑Tav, a secret organization to which some of the students and “many of the more prominent conservative Jews” in Cincinnati be‑longed, “the purpose of which is to promulgate Jewish sentiment and to study and read papers on Jewish subjects.” It would require giving up ham and shellfish, and he thought about it very carefully before assent‑ing. This controversial secret fraternity, Zionist in orientation, existed at the college for perhaps six or seven years, disappearing around 1920. In March 1914 a younger student named Jacob Rader Marcus confided to his diary that he believed James Heller was “the main Macher” in the organization.9 In 1914–1915, Heller was at the center of a controversy that made headlines in the national Jewish press, when Kohler forced him and three other students to rescind their invitation to Horace Kallen to speak on campus (see below).

7 James Heller to Max and Ida Heller, 23 February 1913 and 3 March 1913, MS‑33, box 7, folder 5, AJA. 8 Michael A. Meyer, “A Centennial History,” in Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion at One Hundred Years, ed. Samuel E. Karff (Cincinnati: HUC Press, 1976), 59.9 On the Yod‑Kaf‑Tav organization see Meyer, “Centennial History,” 75, and Joan S. Friedman, “The Making of a Reform Rabbi: Solomon B. Freehof from Childhood to HUC,” American Jewish Archives Journal 58, nos. 1 & 2 (2006): 21–22.

Joan S. Friedman


Finally, the author had some connection to the HUC faculty, since it was found among faculty papers. Family friend Louis Grossman was on the faculty and is a character in the play, and may have received a copy.

An argument from silence is never conclusive, but in the absence of evidence pointing to anyone else as a possible author, I have proceeded on the assumption that James Heller wrote the play.

When Was It Written?[T]he type of subject preferred by satire is always concrete, usually topi‑cal, always personal. It deals with actual cases, mentions real people by name or describes them unmistakably (and often unflatteringly), talks of this moment and this city, and this special, very recent, very fresh deposit of corruption whose stench is still in the satirist’s curling nostrils. This fact involves one of the chief problems the satirist has to face. To write good satire, he must describe, decry, denounce the here and now.10

The “here and now” in this satire spans nearly a decade, perhaps more. Two references argue for its completion no earlier than 23 March 1918 and no later than 30 October 1918. First, Joseph Mandelberg, the former cantor of Cincinnati’s Rockdale Temple, who died on 23 March, is referred to as deceased.11 Second, Moses Gries, rabbi of Tifereth Israel Congregation (The Temple) in Cleveland, died on 30 October, and ap‑pears here as a live character.12

Nevertheless, the summer of 1918 is an unsatisfying answer as a time of composition, because there are several elements that would have had more bite at an earlier date. One of these is the play’s unflattering por‑trait of Stephen S. Wise. Wise and Max Heller had a serious contretemps in 1909, when Wise tried to derail Heller’s accession to the CCAR presi‑dency, but it blew over, and they resumed their friendship as well as their

10 Gilbert Highet, The Anatomy of Satire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), 16–17.11 “Obituary,” The American Israelite (18 April 1918): 7. I am deeply grateful to Professor Jonathan D. Sarna for pointing this out to me.12 “Rabbi Gries Passes,” The American Israelite (6 November 1918): 1.

The Pilgrim Rabbis


cooperation in Zionist affairs.13 Another is the playwright’s skewering of Samuel Schulman’s ambition to lead the CCAR. By 1918 Schulman had succeeded Max Heller and served his term as president and was then completing his time on the Executive Committee.

Furthermore, the play has a juvenile feel to it. Many of the jokes sound like something students would come up with, and some explic‑itly relate to rabbinic students’ experiences in Cincinnati. It requires no stretch of the imagination to envision James Heller as a student, hanging out with his friends, chewing over a pompous remark by David Philipson or the latest anti‑Zionist pronouncement by Kaufmann Kohler, getting the CCAR dirt in his father’s latest letter, and venting his feelings in the form of a vicious satire that could never be performed. It is more difficult to envision Rabbi James Heller—assistant rabbi at a prestigious pulpit, a relative newlywed (married August 1917), an enlisted chaplain waiting to be called up for wartime duty—having the time or the inclination to write it.

Another possibility is that the play had its genesis back in Heller’s student days, and this was merely an updated version, with allusions to events that span nearly a decade. A survey of CCAR doings in the 1910s reveals plenty of fodder for a satirist.

CCAR Politics: Background to The Pilgrim RabbisMaximilian Heller (1860–1929)14 was born in Prague, immigrated to the United States in 1879, and was ordained in 1884 as a member of HUC’s second graduating class. Although Isaac Mayer Wise was his beloved mentor, he found a Zionist mentor in Bernhard Felsenthal, his senior rabbi in Chicago from 1884–1886. Heller became rabbi of

13 During the Kohler‑Kallen controversy at HUC, Max Heller wrote his son that he was “glad to hear that you, James, liked the redoubtable Stephen,… [who,] I think, [is a] sincere [friend] of mine.” Max Heller to James and Isaac Heller, 11 January 1915, MS‑33, box 17, folder 10, AJA.14 Unless otherwise noted, this survey of Heller’s career relies on Gary P. Zola, “Reform Judaism’s Pioneer Zionist: Rabbi Maximilian Heller,” American Jewish History 73, no. 4 (June 1984): 375–397, and Bobbie Malone, Rabbi Max Heller: Reformer, Zionist, Southerner, 1860–1929 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997).

Joan S. Friedman


Temple Sinai in New Orleans in 1887 and remained there for the rest of his life. In the 1890s he and Stephen Wise began a warm correspondence based on their shared commitment to progressive social reform, though they had not yet met.15

In December 1901 Heller went public with his Zionist convictions in an article in the B’nai B’rith national monthly, The Menorah. Over the next few years he became increasingly involved in the leadership of both the Federation of American Zionists (FAZ) and the CCAR, a combina‑tion that raised eyebrows among both sets of colleagues. Additionally, Heller’s disappointment with the state of American Jewish life and what he saw as the emptiness of Reform Judaism led him to increase his commitment to Zionism and to engage with the growing number of American Jews beyond the Reform camp. Within the Reform movement he became increasingly identified with the minority of rabbis who had begun arguing for a return to discarded rituals.

Nevertheless, Heller was one of the most senior members of the CCAR and well respected by his colleagues. In 1907 they chose him as the organization’s vice‑president, although the incoming president was David Philipson (1862–1949), a staunch anti‑Zionist who heartily disapproved of Heller’s views. The unwritten but hitherto uncontested practice of the CCAR was that after serving a two‑year term, the vice‑president would succeed to the presidency.

Philipson, a member of HUC’s first graduating class, served as rabbi of Bene Israel Congregation in Cincinnati from 1888 until his death. He also taught a variety of subjects in the rabbinic program—where the students ridiculed his pomposity—though by 1909 he had given up his part‑time faculty position for what he thought was a more influential position on the Board of Governors.16 He saw himself as the “heir appar‑ent to Wise’s Cincinnati empire,”17 but very few others shared that view.

Philipson persuaded the CCAR Executive Committee to postpone the annual convention by four months and to hold it in New York City

15 Max Heller to Stephen S. Wise, 9 December 1896, MS‑49, box 3, folder 9, AJA.16 Meyer, “Centennial History,” 68.17 Zola, “Pioneer Zionist,” 383.

The Pilgrim Rabbis


for the first time since 1892,18 ostensibly to hold a special commemora‑tion on 10 November, the centennial of the birth of David Einhorn, the premier exponent of radical Reform in the United States. But Philipson’s proposal was undoubtedly a tactical move in his ceaseless quest to be recognized as the leader of American Reform Judaism, as well as to establish the superiority of the claim of Cincinnati’s rabbis to unofficial leadership of the CCAR over that of the New York Reform rabbis.

The dominant figure in the New York Reform establishment was Samuel Schulman (1864–1955). Brought to the United States from Russia as a small child, he received both a public school and a Talmudic education. He earned his bachelor’s degree at City College of New York in 1885 and then went to Berlin, where he studied at the University of Berlin and, in 1889, was ordained at the Hochshule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. He then served congregations in New York City; Helena, Montana; and Kansas City, Missouri, before being chosen as Kohler’s assistant at Beth‑El Congregation in New York in 1899. When Kohler left in 1903 to become president of HUC, Schulman succeeded him as Beth‑El’s rabbi. Schulman was a passion‑ate theist who strenuously opposed all secular definitions of Jewish identity, including Zionism. He was also a leader of the CCAR faction that wanted more ritual, not less. In 1909 he had been a member of the CCAR Executive Committee for four years and was ambitious to obtain the presidency, which meant securing the nomination for vice‑president that year. According to Philipson, Schulman protested against the decision to hold the CCAR convention in New York City on the (mistaken) grounds that postponing it for four months would violate the organization’s constitution by extending the president’s term past its two‑year limit, and insisting that Philipson should therefore not be allowed to preside at the New York sessions. Philipson’s conclusion was that Schulman “wished no strong presentation of liberal Judaism in the metropolis.”19 When Schulman delivered the opening address

18 David Philipson, My Life as an American Jew (Cincinnati: John G. Kidd & Son, Inc., 1941), 205. For additional discussion of the background to this event and the relationship between Philipson and Heller, see Zola, “Pioneer Zionist.”19 Ibid., 205.

Joan S. Friedman


at the 1909 CCAR convention, he used the opportunity to emphasize that New York, and not Cincinnati, was the center of the Jewish world: “For it cannot be denied that, in order to study Judaism completely and exhaustively, one must come to New York, for it is the Jewish world in miniature.”20

All the political maneuvering was not only about large egos. Serious issues were at stake—the very identity and future direction of Reform Judaism in North America. Of the European‑born founders of the Reform movement in the United States, Kaufmann Kohler (1843–1926) was now the last one remaining. His prestigious rabbinic ordination, equally prestigious German university doctorate, and superior erudition had not sufficed to secure for him recognition as the leader of American Reform Judaism until after the death in 1900 of his rival Isaac Mayer Wise. At that point Kohler clearly emerged as the dominant figure within the CCAR. In 1903 he acceded to the presidency of HUC and proceeded to put his stamp upon its curriculum and general atmosphere. But within only a few short years, the “classical” Reform Judaism he epitomized was already becoming outmoded, and ambitious younger men were scheming to succeed him. There was a general feeling of un‑certainty among Reform rabbis in those years as the continuing mass migration from Eastern Europe gradually brought them to the realiza‑tion that their vision of Reform as the inevitable next stage of Judaism was a false one, that in fact they were already a minority in the United States, overwhelmed by Jews—especially in New York—who had not the slightest interest in joining their grand temples. They also struggled to understand why their magnificent temples, eloquent preaching, beau‑tiful choral music, and modernized prayer book were not producing pious, committed Jews. Tensions flared between the Cincinnati and New York establishments over which city held the movement’s “real” leadership; between those who thought Reform had gone too far in discarding ritual observance and those who thought it needed to go still further; between pro‑ and anti‑Zionists.

20 Samuel Schulman, “Address of Welcome,” Central Conference of American Rabbis Yearbook 19 (1909): 23 (hereafter CCARY).

The Pilgrim Rabbis


In the weeks leading up to the 1909 CCAR convention, Stephen S. Wise (1874–1949) was gearing up for a showdown with the organization’s leadership. Born in Hungary into money and a distinguished rabbinic lineage, Wise possessed a great intellect and passion for social justice, matched by equally great ambition and ego. Though admitted to HUC by Isaac Mayer Wise without even an interview, he declined to matriculate, preferring to study privately with a number of rabbis, and ultimately re‑ceived private ordination from Adolph Jelinek of Vienna. By 1909 he had already established himself as the enfant terrible of the Reform rabbinate. In what was probably a calculated move, he had parlayed his rejection as candidate for rabbi of Temple Emanu‑El in late 1905 into a springboard from which to return to New York from Oregon and launch his Free Synagogue, which was formally organized in April 1907.21 He identified with the radical wing of Reform and had little use for ritual; his closest clergy friend and collaborator was the Unitarian minister John Haynes Holmes. Wise’s rejection of ritual was more extreme than the CCAR’s norm even in its classical phase; he was also a Zionist and a champion of the underdog against all establishments. For those reasons he had a highly ambivalent relationship with the organized Reform movement. He and Samuel Schulman maintained an intense rivalry for primacy among New York’s Reform establishment that was both ideological and personal.

Wise laid a plan to have Emil G. Hirsch (1851–1923) of Chicago elected CCAR president. Hirsch was the son of one radical Reformer (Samuel Hirsch) and the son‑in‑law of another (David Einhorn), as well as the brother‑in‑law of Kohler, who had married Einhorn’s other daughter. Uncompromising in his approach to Reform, he was minimally involved in the CCAR. He and Wise bonded over their shared passions for inter‑religious activity and progressive social reform, their dismissal of Jewish ritual and emphasis on ethics, and their ambivalence toward the organized Reform movement.22 Wise preached frequently at Sinai Congregation in the early years of the twentieth century, while Hirsch was an enthusiastic

21 Melvin I. Urofsky, A Voice That Spoke for Justice: The Life and Times of Stephen S. Wise (Albany: SUNY Press, 1981), 56–57.22 Michael A. Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 270ff.

Joan S. Friedman


guest at the organizing meeting for Wise’s Free Synagogue in 1907.23 To make Hirsch the new CCAR president, however, Wise needed

to orchestrate a movement to derail his friend Max Heller’s succession. In late October he and two New York colleagues sent a letter to a select number of Heller’s friends in the CCAR asking them to support Hirsch’s nomination for the presidency by persuading Heller to remain as vice‑president for another term. (Wise did not yet have Hirsch’s agreement to serve, and, in fact, Hirsch subsequently told Wise that he was not interested.) Heller, who had been forced to cancel his trip to the con‑vention because of a critically ill congregant, learned of Wise’s plan in a letter from his friend Louis Grossman:

It will interest you to hear of a little game that was played a week or so ago. About that time I got a letter from Stephen Wise, Fleischer and Harris24 (on a joint circular) in which they propose Hirsch for the Presidency of the Conference and ask me to endorse their undertak‑ing…. They added that they did not mean to affect the present custom of succession in office (that meant you), but that under the circum‑stances the matter could be arranged. What they really had in mind was to put in Hirsch over your head and leave you in the Vice Presidency….

The thing was aimed at Schulman whom the New Yorkers do not want even in the Vice Presidency. I must confess that I myself do not care to see Schulman in office. Well, I replied that I had no objection to Hirsch, but that I would not go in with them, because you were a friend of mine and are entitled to the succession.

A few days after that, I got a second communication from the trio, stat‑ing that they had given up the scheme, because “Hirsch does not want

23 Tobias Brinkmann, Sundays at Sinai: A Jewish Congregation in Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 244; Urofsky, Voice, 63.24 Charles Fleischer was rabbi of Temple Adath Israel in Boston. Born in Breslau in 1871, he was raised and educated in New York and ordained at HUC in 1893. Maurice Harris, rabbi of Temple Israel of Harlem, was born in London in 1859 and held a doctorate from Columbia University. Both men studied at the Emanu‑El Theological Seminary, a short‑lived radical Reform seminary associated with New York’s Temple Emanu‑El from 1877–1885, during the tenure of Samuel Adler. Harris was one of the very few men actually ordained there.

The Pilgrim Rabbis


it.” You can imagine that, now that you are going to be absent … they will work up their scheme afresh. I am very, very sorry that you cannot go to NY. It gives Schulman a chance, and Hirsch, and the anti‑Zionist crowd. Well, if I go, I shall have a talk with Joe Silverman25 and we shall see what we can do. You are entitled to the succession and we shall make a plea on that score. I think you have enough friends, and surely enough of those who respect you, and I think we can carry the day.26

Heller, understandably upset, wrote a very strong letter of protest to Wise, denouncing what he saw as a betrayal of friendship. Wise fired back in an angry, supercilious tone, completely unrepentant: “You have no right to address me as you do, but I shall overlook that and try to answer you as if you had written in the way in which you should have written.” First, he argued that he had acted solely out of concern for the welfare of Reform Judaism:

For several months, a number of men, including…myself, have felt that at this time the Presidency of the Conference should not be lodged in a man who has…chosen to place himself in the forefront of the counter‑reformation movement. That movement is fundamentally opposed to the principles of the Jewish Reformation…

In the next paragraph, however, he asserted that he was not actually blocking Heller’s presidency but only delaying it for a year, to honor Hirsch—who did not want the office, in any case.

You do not deserve the explanation which I am making to you but, I would have you understand, sir, that there was no evasion, no con‑cealment, nothing underhanded in the manner in which we addressed ourselves to this task… We not alone felt that, whatever your personal qualities were, you would not at this time become the President of the Conference but also that the next President of the Conference should be Doctor Hirsch of Chicago. Doctor Harris and Fleischer and I prepared a statement, a copy of which I enclose. That statement was addressed to

25 Joseph Silverman (1860–1940) was an HUC classmate of Max Heller and the long‑serving (1888–1922) rabbi of New York’s Temple Emanu‑El.26 Louis Grossman to Max Heller, n.d., MS‑33, box 2, folder 23, AJA.

Joan S. Friedman


a number of your friends and we asked for a frank expression of their opinion. You will notice that we expressly stipulated in the postscript of that statement that there was to be nothing more than a postponement of your election to the office. Personally, I may say, without finding it necessary to say this by way of explanation, that I felt that Doctor Hirsch was entitled to the titular as his is the real leadership of the American Jewish ministry. The letter, I repeat, was sent to a number of your friends and, if I am not mistaken, in a second communication addressed to Doctor Berkowitz, I suggested that he write to you in order that you might understand that there was no unfriendliness underlying this plan, and in the hope, which I now see I vainly cherished, that you might even be magnanimous enough to nominate for the Presidency the name of him who is facile princes [sic] in our Rabbinate….

The answers we received in response to our inquiry were of such a char‑acter that we felt it might be unwise to press the candidacy of Doctor Hirsch, in justice to whom it should be stated that he said again and again that he did not wish to become the President of the Conference. I shall be so underhanded, ‑‑ to quote your fraternal expression, ‑‑ as to say that I am profoundly disappointed in the failure of the Conference, and of the Conference leaders, to rise to the opportunity of making Hirsch, at this time, its President….

After brazenly insisting that there was nothing “underhanded” about going behind Heller’s back to his friends to ask them to convince him to step aside so that the presidency could go to Hirsch, Wise went on to advise Heller that there was, indeed, a conspiracy afoot to deny him the presidency. The “Cincinnati cabal” (meaning Philipson and his sup‑porters there, who also did not favor the accession of Schulman) was plotting to secure the presidency for one of their allies. “They would not violate the sacred precedent of rotation in office to elect Doctor Hirsch but they seem ready to carry out their plans, if they can, in forgetting this precedent and equating [sic] what they have professed up to this time was your own claim to the office.”27

27 Stephen S. Wise to Max Heller, 12 Nov 1909, MS‑49, box 3, folder 9, AJA.

The Pilgrim Rabbis


While Wise was trying to outmaneuver Schulman, Schulman was attempting to do the same to Wise. It was at the 1909 convention that the CCAR passed its first resolution on mixed marriage, declaring mildly that these marriages were “contrary to the tradition of the Jewish reli‑gion and should therefore be discouraged.”28 Schulman had proposed the original, much more strongly worded draft as a deliberate rebuke of Wise. As Grossman reported to Heller after the convention, “Schulman brought in a resolution against mixed marriages. But his motive was to slap Stephen Wise, who (it happened) had some time ago married a couple whom Schulman had rejected. The Committee on Resolutions made the Schulman resolution tame.” Grossman was smugly amused by the failure of both sets of schemers:

The Hirsch episode was funny. As to Schulman, he strained everything to get the nomination [for president]. He allied himself with the combina‑tion [i.e., the Cincinnati rabbis], so as to get that nomination. Imagine Schulman flirting with, in fact heart‑to‑heart friend with Kohler, and Kohler, on his part, doing the same….

Harris was interested in the campaign only to down Schulman, and so was Stephen Wise, and for that matter every one of the rest. Hirsch did not have a friend. Not even his brother‑in‑law [Kohler], who, as you know, was committed to Schulman.29

Heller, representing the Zionist and traditionalist factions within the CCAR, did succeed to the presidency, but with Schulman—also a traditionalist, but representing the anti‑Zionists and New York’s desire for primacy—as his vice‑president. The Cincinnatians had to be content with getting one of their own, Julian Morgenstern, into the position of recording secretary, rather than Heller’s preferred candidate, Moise Bergman of Congregation Gates of Prayer in New Orleans. As Jacob Kaplan, another of Heller’s friends, wrote him after the convention, “This trick will no doubt complicate matters for you, and possibly lay

28 “Report of the Committee on Resolutions” and discussion, CCARY 19 (1909): 174, 170.29 Louis Grossman to Max Heller, 24 Nov 1909, MS‑33, box 2, folder 23, AJA.

Joan S. Friedman


your plan and work before the omniscient Ohio rabbinate, before your Zionistic tendencies might ‘safely’ be entrusted to the secretary of ‘our’ choice, but I have absolute faith in your ability and sincerity to accom‑plish your work even with all their tricks and obstacles.”30

Having failed to take control of the CCAR, Stephen Wise resigned after the 1909 convention, along with allies Charles Fleischer, Samuel Sale, Isaac Leucht, and Emil G. Hirsch himself. Maurice Harris re‑mained, however, and became an active member of the Executive Committee.31 When Schulman succeeded Heller in the presidency in the summer of 1911, he made a formal gesture of reconciliation by invit‑ing Wise to rejoin. Wise accepted the invitation and the two exchanged cordial notes—but within months of rejoining the CCAR he was hard at work formulating a new rabbinical organization, the Eastern Council of Reform Rabbis (ECCR).32 While the group’s stated purpose (as Harris assured a concerned Heller)33 was to enable the Reform movement in the New York area to function more effectively in the new conditions created by mass immigration from Eastern Europe, Wise obviously in‑tended to use it a platform to enhance his stature vis‑à‑vis both the Cincinnatians and New Yorkers like Schulman. To this end he invited colleagues outside of New York—most notably, Hirsch of Chicago—to join his new group.

This, of course, set off a storm of fury within the CCAR. As CCAR president, Schulman attempted to force the group to disband or at least limit its membership to the New York area and become a genuine

30 Jacob H. Kaplan to Max Heller, 22 November 1909, MS‑33, box 3, folder 16, AJA.31 Sale, a former rabbi of Har Sinai Congregation in Baltimore, was a radical. Isaac L. Leucht of New Orleans’s Touro Synagogue was also, and he had also clashed with Max Heller repeatedly since the latter had been chosen to succeed James Gutheim at Temple Sinai, a position Leucht wanted. Schulman to Wise, 18 September 1911; Wise to Schulman, 21 September 1911; and Schulman to Wise, 29 September 1911, MS‑49, box 1, folder 7, AJA. Also Wise to Isaac L. Leucht, 25 September 1911, Mic 2350, AJA; Malone, Max Heller, 30ff.32 The ECRR was officially organized on 22 April 1912 at a meeting at Wise’s home, barely a week after the conclusion of the 1912 CCAR convention. Stephen S. Wise to I. Edward Kiev, 8 September 1930, MS‑49, box 1, folder 7, AJA.33 Harris to Heller, 20 May 1912, MS‑33, box 3, folder 3, AJA.

The Pilgrim Rabbis


subgroup of the CCAR.34 This move generated a very public controversy, with extensive coverage in the Anglo‑Jewish press in 1912 and 1913. Typical of the passions of the day was an exchange in The American Israelite between Martin A. Meyer of San Francisco and Schulman, with Meyer asserting that the ECRR came into existence because the CCAR leadership was a clique that excluded dissenting voices and Schulman heatedly rebutting the charge.35

Wise was not seriously interested in investing the effort to climb the ladder to leadership within the CCAR ranks. He refused Schulman’s invitation to serve on the Committee on Civil and Religious Marriage Laws because, he claimed, the committee he had served on the previous year had never met. CCAR Corresponding Secretary Solomon Foster replied that he checked with the committee chair, J. Leonard Levy, who said that Wise was the only one who had not responded to his com‑munication about committee work. Foster then snapped, “Considering the help you rendered the Committee last year, I can now understand what you mean by the statement: ‘I prefer in self‑respect not to accept appointment to such committees.’” 36 (Tensions between these two men were already high, since Wise, always an advocate for labor, had torn Foster to shreds over Foster’s milquetoast lecture at the 1909 CCAR convention on “Judaism and the Working Man.”37)

In 1913 Heller again had cause to feel wronged by the CCAR—this time by his successor to the presidency, Samuel Schulman. Schulman tried to prevent him from delivering a scholarly paper at the upcoming convention, critiquing Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s Foundations of

34 Samuel Schulman, “President’s Message,” CCARY 23 (1913): 198ff.; “Report of the Committee on the President’s Message,” CCARY 23 (1913): 113–119. Schulman also vented his feelings in private letters, even turning down an invitation to a dinner honoring Henry Berkowitz and William Rosenau because the honor came from the ECRR. Schulman to Abram Elkus, 15 April 1915, MS‑90, box 6, folder 6, AJA.35 Martin A. Meyer, “Narrow Clique Policy of C.C.A.R.,” 22 Aug 1912, and Samuel Schulman, “Letters from People,” 26 September 1912. 36 Foster to Wise, 15 July 1912; Wise to Foster, 19 July 1912; Foster to Wise, 2 August 1912, Mic 2350, AJA.37 Solomon Foster, “The Working Man and the Synagog,” CCARY 19 (1909): 432–489; Urofsky, Voice, 87ff.

Joan S. Friedman


the Nineteenth Century (1899) and Werner Sombart’s Jews and Modern Capitalism (1911), both of which had recently appeared in English translation.38 Schulman canvassed the CCAR Executive Committee to strike Heller from the program because he worried that critiquing the books at the CCAR convention, which received annual coverage in The New York Times and other mainstream newspapers, would just foster antisemitism by drawing attention to the authors’ ideas. (Schulman himself had published a review of Sombart the previous year, but the book was then only available in German, and the review appeared in The American Hebrew and Jewish Messenger.39) Committee member Harris was outraged, seeing personal animus at work, and wrote to a select number of colleagues to muster support, if need be, to protest and overturn the decision. He pointed out that Solomon Schechter had already critiqued Sombart at length in The New York Times. Sending a copy of Harris’s circular to Heller, Harris scribbled at the bottom, “The works of your well‑wishers Schulman and Philipson again?”40 A flurry of angry correspondence followed; one anonymous committee member wrote to Corresponding Secretary Solomon Foster that when he first received Schulman’s letter asking him to approve the elimination of Heller’s paper, he was ready to go along; but then he saw Heller’s letter to Schulman, “and now I am definitely opposed to eliminating it.” In the end Schulman retreated, but Heller apparently agreed to address only Chamberlain’s work.41

38 Houston Stewart Chamberlain, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols, trans. John Lees (London: John Lane, 1911); Werner Sombart, The Jews and Modern Capitalism (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1913).39 Samuel Schulman, “‘The Jews and the Economic Life’: A Review of Werner Sombart’s Book,” The American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger, 5 April 1912. 40 “German Professor’s Book Stirs Jewish Circles Here: Dr. Solomon Schechter Dissects Some of the Views of Professor Werner Sombart as Expressed in ‘The Jewish in Economic Life.’ Novelty of Deductions by the Author Excites Criticism and Comment,” The New York Times, 3 March 1912 Magazine Section Part Five; Maurice Harris to Max Heller, 26 March 1913, MS‑33, box 3, folder 3, AJA; unsigned carbon to Maurice Harris, 1 April 1913, MS‑33, box 3, folder 1, AJA; Leo Franklin to Max Heller, 4 April 1913, MS‑33, box 2, folder 9, AJA.41 Unsigned copy of letter to Solomon Foster, 7 April 1913, MS‑33, box 2, folder 8, AJA.

The Pilgrim Rabbis


The year after his father’s clash with Schulman, during the 1914–1915 academic year, third‑year rabbinic student James Heller got into a roaring controversy with Kaufmann Kohler that ultimately drew in many of the CCAR’s leading members, the outcome of which was a sig‑nificant defeat for Kohler. The initial skirmish took place in December 1914, when Heller and the leaders of the HUC student Literary Society extended an invitation to Horace Kallen—who was to address a Menorah Association gathering at the University of Cincinnati—to speak at HUC. Kohler detested Kallen’s secularism, his advocacy of a cultural “Hebraism,” and his support for Zionism. He forced the students to rescind the invitation. Kallen then went public with the matter,42 embarrassing and enraging Kohler and other Reform leaders. Four students, including Heller, then wrote a letter of apology to Kallen in defiance of express instructions from Kohler. The four students were censured by the faculty with the “assistance” of a special committee of the Board of Governors. Louis Grossman, who supported the students, kept Max Heller informed and urged him and Stephen Wise to rally the out‑of‑town rabbinic members of the Board of Governors against the proceedings. Again, multiple issues were at stake: Zionists or not, the out‑of‑town rabbis who served on the board saw a chance to loosen Kohler’s rigid ideological control over the school. The resolution that was reached allowed the students to advocate Zionism more explicitly than before, but also allowed Kohler to save face by retaining control over what was said in the college chapel. Almost immediately thereafter, James Heller—clearly testing the limits—clashed with Kohler again over the content of a sermon on Zionism. Faced with conflicting accounts of

Schulman wrote to Philipson that he had decided to let Heller go ahead with his paper under the title, “The Jew and Recent Racial Theories—A Resume.” He wrote that while he would have preferred no discussion—as he knew Philipson and Foster agreed—at least Heller would not talk about Sombart. Samuel Schulman to David Philipson, 9 April 1913, MS‑90, box 6, folder 6, AJA. 42 The Baltimore Jewish Comment published Kallen’s letter containing the text of both student communications and accompanied it with a scathing editorial about the difference between liberal Judaism and the HUC establishment. “Liberal Judaism and Hebrew Union Collegism,” Baltimore Jewish Comment, 20 December 1914, n.p. in Mic 2350, AJA.

Joan S. Friedman


the incident from his son and his colleague, Max preferred to attribute the incident to Kohler’s failing memory.43

Max Heller continued to be the odd man out in the CCAR leader‑ship circle. At the 1917 CCAR convention (which James did not at‑tend), outgoing president William Rosenau strongly urged the CCAR to condemn political Zionism and to renege on its commitment to partici‑pate in the upcoming congress of American Jewish organizations.44 The majority of the Committee on the President’s Message—including Max Heller’s friends Louis Grossman and Joseph Silverman—crafted resolu‑tions tailored to Rosenau’s specifications. Heller was the committee’s lone holdout, vainly proposing minority reports affirming that there was no inherent contradiction between Zionism and Reform Judaism, and that the CCAR had to fulfill its commitment to attend the congress.45 Although Zionist rabbis were numerous enough by 1917 to compel the CCAR to accept a milder version of the anti‑Zionist resolution, the con‑troversy made clear that the fault line between Heller and his colleagues was just as deep as ever.46 In that year, however, Louis Grossman acceded

43 For a concise summary of the whole incident see Meyer, “Centennial History,” 77–78 and notes ad loc.; also Malone, Max Heller, 167ff., and Zola, “Pioneer Zionist,” 391ff. Max Heller’s papers include numerous letters, especially personal ones to James during this period, that bring the issues into sharp relief. While there are too many to list each individually, on the sermon incident see Max Heller to Kaufmann Kohler, 12 March 1915, and Max Heller to Isaac and James Heller, 11 April 1915, MS‑33, box 17, folder 10, AJA.44 “President’s Message,” CCARY 27 (1917): 195–202. On the background to the conven‑ing of the American Jewish Congress see Urofsky, Voice, 123ff.45 The committee’s members were Leo Franklin, David Alexander, Henry Berkowitz, Hyman Enelow, Solomon Foster, Louis Grossman, Max Heller, Joseph Krauskopf, Joseph Kornfeld, Clifton H. Levy, Alexander Lyons, Isaac Landman, Harry Mayer, Morris Newfield, David Philipson, Charles Rubinstein, Marcus Salzman, Samuel Schulman, Joseph Stolz, Joseph Silverman, Samuel Sale, and Abram Simon. “Report of the Committee on the President’s Message,” CCARY 27 (1917): 132ff.46 In reality, Reform rabbis’ views on Zionism were far less monolithic than any resolu‑tions indicated. Many were sympathetic to some version of cultural Zionism; others, at the very least, wanted the new Yishuv to flourish, just as they wanted the best for Jewish com‑munities everywhere. Among those who voted anti‑Zionist but in fact were sympathetic to the idea of a revitalization of Jewish life through the up‑building of Eretz Israel were Max Heller’s friends Louis Grossman and Joseph Silverman. Silverman later publicly supported

The Pilgrim Rabbis


to the CCAR presidency and a year later delivered his first President’s Message, a masterful attempt to reconcile the sides beneath the “big tent” of postwar reconstruction, in which he evinced support for the emerging Yishuv (even while remaining skeptical of political Zionism).47

The summer of 1918 was a time for optimism within the Zionist movement: Britain had issued the Balfour Declaration and its army was firmly in control of Palestine; with the end of the war in sight, it was possible to envision the creation of a Jewish polity in Eretz Israel in the not‑too‑distant future. Grossman—Max Heller’s dear friend and James’s mentor—was at the head of the rabbinical organization to which they were all devoted. But the complex interplay of large egos, feuding with equal intensity whether it concerned a trivial perceived snub or an es‑sential question of Jewish existence, was still going on. So perhaps it was a good time to polish up an old manuscript, just for a laugh.

We turn, therefore, to the two surviving acts of The Pilgrim Rabbis. (Note that the play is transcribed here exactly as written, with no cor‑rection of typos.)

The Pilgrim Rabbis48

Act I Scene 1. The Wharf at Jaffe49

political Zionism. See Jonathan D. Sarna, “Converts to Zionism in the American Reform Movement,” in Zionism and Religion, ed. S. Almog, Jehuda Reinharz, and Anita Shapira (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1998), 188–203; Michael A. Meyer, “American Reform Judaism and Zionism: Early Efforts at Ideological Rapprochement,” Studies in Zionism 7 (1983): 49–64; Richard Keith Harkavy, “Non‑Zionism Within Reform Judaism: 1917–1948,” rabbinic thesis, Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, 1984; Ya’akov Ariel, “Kaufmann Kohler and His Attitude Toward Zionism: A Reexamination” American Jewish Archives 43, no. 2 (1991): 207–223.47 Louis Grossman, “President’s Message,” CCARY 28 (1918): 158–187.48 The premise of the play is that the rabbis are on their way to the annual CCAR conven‑tion, which is being held in Jerusalem. 49 Popular European and American images of Jaffa were shaped by Orientalizing descrip‑tions such as this: “The first view of Jaffa, gained from the deck of the ship, is beautiful and entrancing…. [T]he sandy shore trends away in both directions in a monotonous line; but orange‑groves, palms, and other Oriental trees combine to render the first view of the Holy Land for ever memorable to the European visitor. A disenchantment, however, follows from the very moment of landing. Jaffa is one of the dirtiest and most uncomfortable of all the

Joan S. Friedman


Kohler How good it is to be on land and to stretch ones legs, on the

land of our fathers, where our sacred religion first arose to become the

banner bearer of truth.50

Philipson Be careful doctor. That you do not turn Zionist. I cant see

anything to rave about. The smell is peculiarly oriental and reminds me

of sixth street.51

Enelow52 You should have sat next to that Arab boatman; then you

would have experienced the acme of odors. Now I realize why our

towns of Palestine. The houses are crowded together[;]… the streets are narrow, crooked, and filthy [and] filled with groups of wild Arabs and eager traders…. Although Jaffa itself is dirty and uninteresting, its outskirts are delightful. New and well‑built houses have sprung up amongst the splendid groves of oranges, and there are many signs of increasing wealth.” Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Syria and Palestine (London, 1892), 2, cited in Mark LeVine, Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and the Struggle for Palestine, 1880–1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 284 n189. Furthermore, despite handling extensive commerce and more than eighty thousand visi‑tors annually, Jaffa’s harbor facilities were minimal and rocks offshore made it impossible for large ships to land, requiring cargo and people to be offloaded into small boats and rowed ashore. Lloyd’s of London classed it as “one of the worst harbours in the world.” MacMillan’s Guide to Palestine and Syria, London, 1910, 9, cited in Ibid., 272 n44.50 This is the first of numerous instances where the author mocks the grandiloquent style of the classical Reformers in referring to key elements of classical Reform belief, such as ethical monotheism and the mission of Israel. 51 724 Sixth Street was Hebrew Union College’s address from 1880–1912. The area had been an elegant German Jewish neighborhood, but by the early 1900s it had become a run‑down, semi‑industrial area populated by poor East European Jews and African‑Americans. In 1903 the Board of Governors purchased land for a new campus on Clifton Avenue, near the new University of Cincinnati campus, but fundraising and construction took some years, and the new campus did not open until 1912, Heller’s first year as a student. Friedman, “Making of a Reform Rabbi,” 13 and notes ad loc. 52 Hyman G. Enelow (1877–1934) was ordained in 1898 and served two congrega‑tions in Kentucky before coming to Temple Emanu‑El in Manhattan in 1912 as Joseph Silverman’s associate, filling the position left vacant by Judah Magnes upon his resignation in 1910. Enelow was strenuously opposed to political Zionism. H.G. Enelow, “Does the Jew Assimilate,” The American Israelite, 3 Mar 1904 and “Letters From People,” The American Israelite, 21 February 1907.

The Pilgrim Rabbis


biblical ancestors laid so much stress on Reach Nechoach.53 I tell you that boatman got my goat.

Kohler I didn’t see any goat.

Enelow No Dr. This goat is a psychological animal, a chimera.54 But I tell you that boatman made me itch all over. Ugh I wonder if I caught anything. I dont like this country at all.

Philipson Nor I. Why those Zionists should rave about it gets me. As for me again I affirm, America is my Zion, and Washington my Jerusalem.55

.a pleasing odor,” is the phrase that regularly appears in the Torah (e.g., Lev“ ,חיר חוחינ 531:9) in reference to offerings burnt upon the altar, the scent of which is “a pleasing odor” to God.54 HUC students were exposed to psychology, still a relatively new discipline, in classes on “pedagogics” taught by Louis Grossman. Meyer, “Centennial History,” 60.

This sentence may be an allusion to the conclusion of a particularly abstruse passage in William James’s Principles of Psychology—just the sort of thing a student might find amusing: “Now I do not wish just yet to ‘commit myself ’ about the existence or non‑existence of the ego, but I do contend that we need not invoke it for this particular reason—namely, because the manifold of ideas has to be reduced to unity. There is no manifold of coexisting ideas; the notion of such a thing is a chimera. Whatever things are thought in relation are thought from the outset in a unity, in a single pulse of subjectivity, a single psychosis, feeling, or state of mind.” William James, The Principles of Psychology, Chapter IX: “The Stream of Thought,” 1890, 278, in Classics in the History of Psychology: An internet resource developed by Christopher D. Green, York University, Toronto, Ontario. 55 According to David Philipson, this phrase had its origin in 1898, at the first Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC) convention held after the First Zionist Congress in Basle, issued its call for the establishment of a Jewish state. Philipson chaired the com‑mittee tasked with producing an official Reform response to the Basle declaration. Their draft read:

We are unalterably opposed to political Zionism. The Jews are not a nation, but a religious community. Zion was a precious possession of the past, the early home of our faith, where our prophets uttered their world‑subduing thoughts and our Psalmists sang their world‑enchanting hymns. As such, it is a holy memory, but it is not the hope of the future. America is our Zion. Here, in the home of religious liberty, we have aided in founding this new Zion, the fruition of the beginning laid in the old. The mission of Judaism is spiritual, not political. Its aim is not

Joan S. Friedman


Ever shall I proclaim this watchword. Well I am glad that I am off of the ship. Those Rabbis gave me a pain.

Kohler That’s all right. Lefoom Zaara Agra.56 According to the pain is the reward. You have had your pain you will get your reward.

Philipson Inshallah.

Kohler What means inshallah?

Philipson (proudly): If Allah wills. That’s Arabic. Here in Palestine we should all speak Arabic.

Enelow How wonderful that you should speak Arabic.

Philipson Oh, that’s nothing.

Enelow Do you know, it seemed to me that those fellows in the steamer avoided us. They always seemed to be holding a meeting and when any of us drew near, they immediately adjourned.

Kohler Well anyhow, I am glad I came over on the Americal.57 When

to establish a State, but to spread the truths of religion and humanity throughout the world.

Philipson later explained that in the debate over the resolution a speaker used the phrase, “Washington is our Jerusalem,” which was then picked up and publicized by the Associated Press, and from then on, what he referred to as “the opposition Jewish press” insisted that the resolution had stated, “America is our Zion and Washington our Jerusalem,” though he had often attempted to set the record straight. Nevertheless, Philipson continued, there was, in fact, a rhetorical precedent for the phrase in a Reform context, in the address by Rev. Gustav Poznanski at the dedication of the Charleston temple in 1841. What he meant, explained Philipson, was “his advocacy of the universal interpretation of Judaism as over against the narrow national.” Philipson, My Life, 137..According to the suffering is the reward,” Avot 5:25“ ,ארגא ארעצ םופל 5657 While Americal appears to be a simple typo of no significance, the reference is to the SS Amerika of the Hamburg America Line. When the United States entered the war, the German‑owned ship was in Boston Harbor. It was seized by U.S. authorities, renamed the America, and commissioned by the U.S. Navy for use as a troop ship. On 15 October 1918, while berthed at Hoboken, the ship inexplicably sank. It was salvaged and repaired several months later. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, http://www.hazegray.org/danfs/steamers/ america2.htm (accessed 27 July 2018). What is the satirist’s point? If this

The Pilgrim Rabbis


I heard that the Zion American58 was established, I was glad. When I heard that the conference would meet this year in Jerusalem on Tisha Beav, I was doubly glad.59

Philipson Yes but those other fellows may spoil the whole conference.

Enter Beggar

Enelow Here comes another one of those walking menageries. I am itching all now more than ever.

Beggar Ya Ashabi itaroo, shuwayatan minni.60

Kohler What does he say?

was written prior to April 1917, it is that Kohler is traveling to Zion on one of the ships responsible for bringing large numbers of east European Jews to the United States—an inversion of their journey. If it was written between April 1917 and June 1917, the rather sophomoric joke is that he is traveling on a ship that has been impounded and is stuck in port. If it was written between June 1917 and 15 October 1918, it is the incongruity of this distinguished elderly scholar traveling in the rough quarters of a troop ship. Most unlikely, if it was written between 15 October and 30 October (the day, as noted above, of Moses Gries’s death), then the joke is that he claims to be traveling on a ship that is sitting at the bottom of New York Harbor. 58 Having Kohler state, on his putative journey to Zion, that he was glad that the “Zion American” was established is a mocking reference to the assertion that “America is our Zion” as well as to his flowery preaching and writing style and his non‑native English. 59 A reference to Psalm 122:1–2: “I rejoiced when they said to me, / ‘We are going to the House of the LORD.’ / Our feet stood inside your gates, O Jerusalem, / Jerusalem built up, a city knit together, / to which tribes would make pilgrimage.…” Nineteenth‑century Reformers unanimously rejected Tisha B’Av as a day of fasting and mourning, since they rejected the theology of exile and redemption. Kohler advocated reinterpreting it as the commencement of Israel’s mission: “[T]he commemoration of the destruction of State and Temple, the great turning‑point in the history of the Jew, ought to be given a promi‑nent place in the Reform Synagogue as well, though celebrated in the spirit of progressive Judaism.” Most Reform rabbis, however, simply eliminated it from the calendar, as did Philipson. Kaufmann Kohler, Jewish Theology Systematically and Historically Considered. Introduction by Joseph L. Blau (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1968 [originally pub‑lished 1918]), 469; Philipson, My Life, 125.60 “Hey, my friends, take a look at these things I’ve got!” I thank my Wooster colleague Dr. Sarah Mirza for the translation from Arabic.

Joan S. Friedman


Philipson Oh it’s many years since I studied Arabic under Haupt.61 When Haupt showed himself to be an antisemite, I determined that I would not profit by instruction, so I tried to forget everything that he taught me. Gentlemen, believe me, it is very hard for me to forget anything. I am the original boy with the iron memory. But in this case, I think that I have succeeded.

Enelow (to Kohler) Suppose Dr. you address him in Hebrew.62

Kohler Adoni Mah Tevakesh.63

Beggar Ma Amarta64 I dont get you.

Kohler Shoalti Mah Tevakesh.65

Beggar I don’t follow you. Your accent aint real Hebrew. Lets quit bluff‑ing and talk English.

Philipson What do you speak English?

Beggar Sure didnt I spend most of my lifetime in little old N.Y. How do you do Kohler I remember you when you were at Bethel.66 Howdy Doc Enelow, youre the guy who put the man in Emanuel?67 Aint you.

Enelow You are right. I am the man. What can I do for you. [p. 2]

Beggar (Aside) I knew that that would get him. Now gents Ill sell you a few Jewish trinkets fresh from the soil of Palestine. Echt Genuine They

61 From 1884–1886, while serving as rabbi of Har Sinai Congregation in Baltimore, Philipson studied Arabic and Semitics at Johns Hopkins University with Paul Haupt (1858–1926), a leading nineteenth‑century Assyriologist. Philipson, My Life, 35–36.62 Another joke on the anti‑Zionists: Kohler, who eliminated from the rabbinic curriculum all study of modern Hebrew, must now speak Hebrew. ”?Sir, what do you seek“ שקבת המ ינודא? 63”?What did you say“ תרמא המ? 64 ”?I asked, what do you seek“ שקבת המ יתלאש? 6566 Kohler served as rabbi of Beth El Congregation in Manhattan from 1879–1903.67 Enelow, a lifelong bachelor, was still a relatively recent arrival in New York. The com‑ment, amplified by the following exchange, may imply that he was suspected of being gay, although there is no way to know.

The Pilgrim Rabbis


will please the wife and tease the baby back home. By the way, Doc Enelow, have they got you tied up yet?

Enelow (stiffly) Not yet.

Beggar Well if you like to make a nice shidduch, I have fine Yiddishe Mädel for you. I never made a bad shidduch yet, and all I want is five per cent.

Enelow (more stiffly) Never mind.

Beggar Doc, I’ll tell you what I’ll do, seeing that you are a real rov68, I’ll make it just 4½%. I wouldn’t do as much for my own brother.

Enelow That will do. Let me see your trinkets.

Beggar All right. Here you are. Penholder made from the wing of an eagle of Lebanon. Paperweight from Mount Carmel. Cane from the canes of the Jordan. Buy it if you are able. All echt69 genuine.

Philipson I’ll buy something. But tell me how long you have been here.

Beggar Seven months. But I am going back soon. I have made enuf. (To Enelow) Say Doc how are the Giants doing this year?

Enelow What does he mean? [Of w]hat Giants does he speak?

Kohler Maybe he means the Anakim.70

Rabbi” (Heb. and Yid.). Irony drives the humor here. A Reform rabbi, possessor of a“ בר 68university degree and a thorough grounding in the modern critical study of Judaism, would be insulted to be lumped into the same category as some bearded, impoverished greenhorn who knew only Talmud and halakhah. But the beggar’s comment also grants these Reform rabbis the legitimacy that their traditionalist adversaries regularly denied them. For example, after the CCAR’s 1909 New York convention, a number of Orthodox rabbis held a protest meeting at which they adopted resolutions condemning Reform rabbis as “self‑appointed representatives of American Judaism” who “defied all the laws of Judaism” and “besmirched traditional Judaism,” and labeling them “traitors to the cause of Judaism.” “Protest Against Rabbis’ Conference,” The American Hebrew and Jewish Messenger, 19 Nov 1909. 69 Echt (Ger. Or Yid.): “genuine.”70 Joshua and Caleb, the two spies sent by Moses, reported seeing the Anakim, the “giants,” in the Land of Israel (Num. 13:28).

Joan S. Friedman


Beggar Quit; youse get my goat. You call yourselves Americans and you don’t know who the Giants are.

Philipson He means the Federal League baseball team.71

Beggar That’s right nix. Say don’t you know the difference between Federals and Muggsy’s Giants? You talk like Zionists.72

Philipson Excuse me; we are Americans and we scorn Zionism. (Together) America is our Zion and Washington is our Jerusalem.

Beggar I get youse. Them’s my sentiments too. Only Brownsville73 is more like Jerusalem than Washington. Say what is Benny Kauff’s74 average this year?

71 The Federal League was a short‑lived professional baseball league. It fielded eight teams in the 1913–1914 and 1914–1915 seasons, but resistance by the established American and National Leagues doomed it. The National League’s New York Giants, managed by John “Muggsy” McGraw, were nationally recognized and had an enthusiastic following among the city’s Jews. The team won five National League pennants (1904–1905 and 1911–1913) and a World Series championship (1905), so Enelow, the New York rabbi, comes off as clueless, while Philipson’s attempt to appear knowledgeable makes him appear ridiculous. http://www.baseball‑reference.com/bullpen/Federal_League (accessed 12 January 2017); https://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/History_of_the_New_York_Giants (accessed 12 January 2017). Many scholars and popular writers have addressed the importance of baseball for im‑migrant Jews. See, e.g., Haskell Cohen, “Can Jews Play Baseball?” Jewish Advocate, 6 April 1934, 1; Walter L. Harrison, “Six‑Pointed Diamond: Baseball and American Jews,” The Journal of Popular Culture 15, no. 3 (1981): 112–118; Alan Owen Patterson, “The Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Experience with Baseball in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century,” Modern Judaism: A Journal of Jewish Ideas & Experience 28, no. 1 (February 2008): 79–104.72 This is a dig at the anti‑Zionists’ charge that support for Zionism is inconsistent with integration into the society and culture of the countries where Jews live.73 In 1916 the Jewish population of the Brownsville‑East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn numbered about 225,000, second only to the Lower East Side. By 1925 the population of this “Jerusalem of America” reached 285,000, surpassing that of the Lower East Side. Alter F. Landesman, Brownsville: The Birth, Development, and Passing of a Jewish Community in New York (New York: Bloch Publishing Co., 1971), 3, 96. It “resembled the Lower East Side in its density, poverty, and Jewishness.” Annie Polland and Daniel Soyer, Emerging Metropolis, City of Promises: A History of the Jews of New York, vol. 2, ed. Deborah Dash Moore (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 131.74 Benjamin Michael Kauff (1890–1961), the “Ty Cobb of the Feds,” was not Jewish.

The Pilgrim Rabbis


Kohler Do you mean Benny Kaufman in the 3rd Collegiate Class. His average is 93 and he is a fine student.75

Beggar I give up. I cant get any American news from you. I am going back to America, and find out for myself.

Enelow Are there many of you here?

Beggar: Sure. We’ve organized the trinkets sellers trust. I have all the selling rights on this wharf.

Enelow: But don’t most strangers buy the products of the Bezalel school?76

Beggar: Sure, from us. We own the Bezalel factory, and it is located on the east side of N.Y. Well, I guess I’ll skip along. Ta, ta.

Philipson: We’ll go too. Here are those plotters darn. Hofer Atsasom.77 May their plots fail. They will soon realize that (together) America is our Zion and Washington our Jerusalem.

He was an outstanding player in the Federal League for both years of its existence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny Kauff (accessed 7 January 2014).75 The joke here is that Kohler was notorious for not knowing students’ names, or for mixing them up. There was never any student named Benny Kaufman enrolled at the Hebrew Union College. There was, however, a Harry Kronman enrolled in the preparatory department beginning in 1916. In 1916–1917 he was in D grade (the lowest level) and earned grades of 90 or better in all his classes, including 99 in three different classes taught by Solomon Freehof. His average was high enough to qualify him for a scholarship for the next year. He continued to do well through his four years in the preparatory department and one year at the collegiate level, but then he apparently dropped out. There was also a Max Kaufman ordained in 1919 after an undistinguished career at the college; he would have been in the third collegiate class in 1917–1918, Microfilm #118, AJA; Brav, ed., Telling Tales, 72ff.76 The Bezalel School was founded in Jerusalem in 1906 by Boris Schatz to enhance the cultural life of the nascent Yishuv. Wartime economic hardship and Turkish persecution virtually closed the school down. The Zionist Heller’s ability to refer to it in such a light‑hearted tone supports the thesis that the play was written before war broke out. “Bezalel,” Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 4 (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1972), col. 788. ;Foil their plots,” an allusion to Isaiah 8:10: “Hatch a plot—it shall be foiled“ םתצע רפה 77/ Agree on action—it shall not succeed. / For with us is God!”

Joan S. Friedman


Exeunt.

[p. 3] Act I Scene 2.

Wise Heller Silverman78 Grossman.79 At the Wharf.

Wise: There they go. They got away just in time to give us a chance to settle things.

Silverman: I hope that we don’t have to stop at the same hotel. It was bad enuf to have them on the same ship.

Grossman: Well I know what Ill do. I’m going off to find a private hotel where I can be by myself. I am the president of this conference,80 and I must have time and quiet to mature my plans. Solitude I desire and honors. and freedom from disturbance rather than the joys of office.81

Wise: Why don’t you let someone else preside for you?

Grossman: Good idea. I’ll still have the honors and not the burdens. But whom would you suggest. How about yourself.

78 Joseph Silverman (1860–1930). Born in Cincinnati, Silverman was an 1884 classmate of Max Heller at HUC. He was the rabbi of New York’s Temple Emanu‑El from 1888–1922 and served as president of the CCAR from 1900–1903. 79 Louis Grossman (1863–1927). His last name has also appeared as Grossmann. Together with Joseph Silverman and Max Heller, Grossman was ordained in 1884. He served a Detroit congregation for several years before being chosen by Isaac Mayer Wise to serve as his associate at B’nai Yeshurun Congregation in Cincinnati, where he became rabbi upon Wise’s death. Grossman remained there until his own sudden death in 1927, at which time he was succeeded by his associate, James Heller. While his 1918 CCAR President’s Message includes an endorsement of the CCAR’s opposition to political Zionism, Grossman was clearly sympathetic to the Zionist desire to revitalize the Jewish people. 80 Louis Grossman was appointed a member of the CCAR Executive Committee annually from 1903–1908 but then was rotated off the board. In 1915 he was elected CCAR vice‑president and succeeded to the presidency after a normal two‑year term. 81 This line is in keeping with Joseph Silverman’s description of Grossman’s personality in the memorial tribute to him at the 1927 CCAR convention. CCARY 37 (1927): 259–261.

The Pilgrim Rabbis


Wise: Oh no. I aspire to no office in this conference. Let me be the humblest member just so I appoint its presidents.82 But why don’t you appoint your friend Philipson.83 Don’t look glum. I haven’t lost my senses. When he is in the chair, he cant vote or make speeches. We’ll be stronger on the floor. Let Philipson be chairman.

Heller: An excellent idea. But I remember that when I was president I frequently yielded the chair to the Vice President Schulman and took the floor myself. I considered that that was my duty to the conference.84 I kept Schulman from wasteing time and I gave the conference the benefit of my incisive logic. May I suggest—

Wise: You err Dr. Heller. The conference hasn’t opened and long speech‑es are out of order. So that’s settled. Philipson will be acting president. Remember Grossman you are to appoint the committees. I will tell you

82 The reference, of course, is to the 1909 fiasco, when Wise tried to derail Heller’s being named president. But Wise must have repeated this statement about CCAR offices fre‑quently, which would explain how Heller’s dialogue can bear such a marked resemblance to a passage in Wise’s private correspondence. In November 1914 Wise wrote to J. Leonard Levy of Pittsburgh—a member of the Executive Committees of both the CCAR and the Eastern Council and a mutual friend of Wise and Heller—simultaneously belittling the CCAR and expressing insult that it had not paid him more respect. “I was amused … that I was to be asked … to give some little talky‑talk.… I notice that the really big men of the Conference … are asked to read the important papers … so I shall again go to the Conference as a lowly, not even a high private…. I am very much disturbed about the Conference. I can view the matter with perfect disinterestedness because, as you know, I have resolved never to accept any office, even the most trivial, at its hands.” Wise to J. Leonard Levy, 5 November 1914, AJA Mic 2350; “Jewish National Organizations in the United States,” The American Jewish Year Book 15 (1913): 365. 83 Grossman and Philipson, who occupied Cincinnati’s two most prestigious pulpits and played active roles at HUC, were rivals who detested each other. Jacob H. Schiff’s 1909 donation of funds to establish a Teachers’ Institute at HUC was an occasion for friction between them. Grossman, who already taught pedagogy to the rabbinic students, turned to his friend Max Heller for help in obtaining the appointment to head the new program. “To my misfortune,” he explained, “I have on the Committee Kohler and Philipson and you can imagine how they block my way. They are ransacking the country for someone, no matter how insignificant and no matter what a novice he may be, so long as they might crowd me out.” Grossman to Heller, 17 May 1909, MS‑33, box 2, folder 23, AJA. 84 The joke is that Heller thereby prevented Schulman from speaking.

Joan S. Friedman


how to do that. Perhaps I better take a room at your hotel.

Silverman: I think it is a fine idea to silence Philipson. I wish I could do something to Schulman.85 I tell what would be a fine idea. Bef[ore] I left NY I spoke to Hudson Maxim and he is now at work inventing a Schulman Silencer—he says it is the hardest job he ever tackled.86 Let us leave the whole bunch behind here in Palestine. Then we would have America to ourselves and the conference would be purged of pernicious influence.87

Wise: You leave it to me. I’ll find some way to carry it out.

85 Silverman was the senior rabbi of New York’s Temple Emanu‑El, while Schulman led Temple Beth El. Like Wise Temple and Rockdale Temple in Cincinnati, they were both large, wealthy, and distinguished. Both Silverman and Schulman wanted to be acknowledged as the city’s leading Reform rabbi.86 This sentence is a pencil addition to the typescript. Hudson Maxim (1853–1927) was an inventor of military equipment and technology, best known for inventing a type of high explosive. (His older brother Hiram invented the Maxim machine gun.) Hudson Maxim wrote and spoke widely about his work from about 1895 until his death, so Heller’s audi‑ence would readily appreciate the reference. A contemporary issue of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, for example, carries an article by Maxim titled, “Hudson Maxim’s Gigantic Torpedo Howitzers,” with the subheading, “Hudson Maxim, the Distinguished Inventor, Explains How He Invented Seventeen Years Ago a Howitzer of Greater Range and Power Than the Marvelous Guns of the Germans That Battered Down Liege and Namur.” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 7 February 1915, p. 35.87 In 1904 The American Israelite sought to rally the Anglo‑Jewish press against Zionism with an editorial in which it quoted, with enthusiastic approval, an editorial from the Memphis Jewish Spectator that opened with the declaration, “The pernicious influence of Zionism in its present aspects is becoming a serious matter.” The next issue of the paper carried a scathing rejoinder by Jacob de Haas, secretary of the Federation of American Zionists (FAZ), quoting the “pernicious influence” phrase. A casual Internet search shows that “pernicious influence” was a popular term of disparagement in early‑twentieth‑century prose, so it cannot be said with certainty that this exchange from at least a decade earlier was in Heller’s mind when he was writing. But it is quite likely that it enjoyed a wide cir‑culation, becoming the sort of popular catchphrase that a satirist would gravitate toward. “Opposition to Zionism: Opposition of American Jewish Press Increasing,” The American Israelite, 14 Jan 1904; Jacob de Haas, “Letters from People: The Secretary of the Federation of American Zionists on the Possibilities of Palestine,” The American Israelite, 28 January 1904: 5.

The Pilgrim Rabbis


Heller: How soft and balmy are the breezes wafted from the mountains of Judah. How redolent of orange and grape. My soul thrills within me as my feet press the sacred soil, the land where my fathers—

Wise: Cut that out Heller. I am a Zionist myself Yet I must confess that this smells like a real N.Y. dump.

Heller: Well literally you may be right. On second smell I perceive dif‑ferently. Yet with imagination everything is possible, and imagination is the soul of the Zionist movement.

Wise: Yes yes. But the time for imagination has passed. The moment of realization is at hand. Our Zionist state is established. In my Tisha be’av address I shall outline its policies. and immediately afterwards we shall elect our national officers. Aha our plans shall be fulfilled.

All: How How.

Wise: My friends leave that to me. I must think and plan.

enter Kaplan

Kaplan: Ah my brothers I bid you welcome. to our native land and nation.

Wise: Whose this?

Grossman: Don’t you know? That’s Kaplan our great Zionist leader of Cincinnati.88

88 Jacob H. Kaplan (1874–1957) immigrated to the United States from Germany as a child and was ordained at HUC in 1902. He had to leave his first pulpit, Temple Albert in Albuquerque, after an article he wrote in a magazine he co‑edited with a local minister generated some controversy. The article was about the antisemitism he experienced as a child in the Buffalo, New York, public schools and was apparently quite sarcastic on the topic of Christian attitudes toward Jews and Judaism. After a few years of moving about—in Jackson, Mississippi; Selma, Alabama; and Terre Haute, Indiana—he came to Cincinnati in 1915 as rabbi of Congregation Sh’erith Israel‑Ahavath Achim. Kerry M. Olitzky, The American Synagogue: A Historical Dictionary and Sourcebook (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 1996), 221.

Joan S. Friedman


Wise: How do you do Rabbi Chaplin.89 We are glad to see you.

Kaplan: Thrice welcome to our glorious soil. When I heard that your ship was coming in I hastened down to bid you welcome.

Wise: How long have you been here Dr. Chaplin.

Kaplan: A month. I hurried over here immediately after Shabuoth that I might breathe the air that my father breathed. The atmosphere is Jewish thru and thru.

[p. 4]

Act I Scene 2 continued

Kaplan continued: As G. Stanley Hall90 says –

Silverman: But Dr. Chaplin—

Kaplan: Call me not Dr. I have abjured that title as the product of Christian culture. I have now the Morenu of from the University of Jerusalem.91 I desire no other title than Rav Jacob Hayim Cohen the

89 That Wise cannot bother to get Kaplan’s name right is another dig at Wise’s egotism. “Chaplin” may be a particularly pointed dig, because Kaplan’s replacement in Albuquerque was named Chapman.90 Granville Stanley Hall (1844–1924), the first president of Clark University, studied with William James at Harvard and received the first doctorate in psychology awarded in the United States. In 1887 he founded the American Journal of Psychology and in 1892 became the first president of the American Psychological Association. His approach to education was paradoxical by today’s standards, combining social Darwinism with a commitment to inclusion of hitherto excluded groups. He emphasized the need for education to address the whole child and not only the rational intellect and actively supported graduate education for women, African Americans, Asians, and Jews. Lester F. Goodchild, “G. Stanley Hall and an American Social Darwinist Pedagogy: His Progressive Educational Ideas on Gender and Race,” History of Education Quarterly 52, no. 1 (February 2012): 62–98; G. Stanley Hall, Educational Problems (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1911). 91 The cornerstone of the first building of the Hebrew University was laid on 24 July 1918, but this is not helpful in dating the manuscript. The idea of establishing a university as a part of the revival of Jewish life in Eretz Israel was part of the Zionist conversation going back at least to the 1880s. For example, at the FAZ annual convention in Cincinnati in June 1913, Horace Kallen spoke about the need to establish a Jewish National University

The Pilgrim Rabbis


first of the generation of Amoraim.92

Grossman: Would you not rather call yourself one of the Saboraim?93

Kaplan: No, that title does not fit the modern Rav. We are not of the Saboraim the thinkers, but rather of the Amoraim, the talkers.

Wise: Indeed!!! Come on Grossman, we had better look up your private Hotel. The rest of you stay at the regular Hotel. Keep your eye on our friends there, and you will hear from me later.

Kaplan: Come gentlemen I’ll show you to your rooms. Then I’ll lead you to a nice little Jewish Carmel WineStube.

Heller: But can you stay out that late?

Kaplan: O yes. My wife did not accompany me on this trip and so I no longer have to be in at midnight, I am one of the boys now I tell you. I’ve got the Jewish Spirit.

Grossman: Then let us sing our song and leave.

We’ve been working on the Levy94, All this blissful day.

We’ve been working on the Levy, to put the ring95 out of the way.

in Jerusalem. The fact that the playwright calls it “the University of Jerusalem” rather than “the Hebrew University” might even indicate that the institution had not yet formally come into existence. “Federation of American Zionists,” The American Israelite (26 June 1913): 3; “A Brief History of the Hebrew University,” https://new.huji.ac.il/en/page/452 (accessed 30 July 2018). 92 Aramaic, “speakers.” This is the classic term for the rabbis of the Gemara. The rabbis of the Mishnah are called the Tannaim, “teachers.” 93 The Saboraim, “thinkers” or “reasoners,” is the traditional term for the Babylonian rabbis of the period after the supposed completion of the Talmud and before the emergence of the Geonim.94 J. Leonard Levy was no Zionist, but he was a friend of Max Heller. During the contro‑versy that followed the Kallen invitation, he was among the rabbis Heller considered calling on to intervene at the college. Max Heller to James and Isaac Heller, 12 March 1915, MS‑33, box 17, folder 10, AJA. 95 In private correspondence with Max Heller and Stephen Wise, Louis Grossman used the term “combination” to refer to Kohler and Philipson and their supporters. “Ring” appears

Joan S. Friedman


Don’t you smell the kugel cooking, cooking in the pot?

Weve got to kick the old ring out,

But just how we know not.

Ode Lo ovdo Tikvosaynoo, Hatikvo Hachadosho

Loshuv Le‑eretz Yankee Doodle, Beli Reb Schulman Horosho.96

[All of Act II is missing]

[p. 5]

Act III THE CONVENTION IN JERUSALEM

Meeting Place in the Mosque of Omar

President Grossman: And now that we have just listened to this soul‑stirring and epoch‑making address of our dearly beloved colleague we will proceed to the main business of the day. My friends, life is genuine.97 It emanates from the protoplasmic source and courses through all the

to be a similar derogatory term, but here it includes Schulman, who was allied with Kohler and Philipson in opposition to Zionism, though opposed to them on other issues. Grossman to Heller, 24 November 1909, MS‑33, box 2, folder 23, AJA; Grossman to Wise, 22 April 1915, Mic 2350, AJA. 96 “Our hope is not yet lost, / The new hope / To return to the land of Yankee Doodle / Without the evil Rabbi Schulman.” This is a parody of the original version of Hatikvah:

Our hope is not yet lost ונתוקת הדבע אל דוע

The ancient hope הנשונה הוקתה

To return to the land of our fathers וניתובא ץראל בושל

.To the city where David encamped הנח דוד הב ריעל

An updated version of the original lyrics circulated in the Yishuv from 1905 on, but this version remained the standard one in the Diaspora for several more decades. http://www.timesofisrael.com/how‑an‑unwieldy‑romantic‑poem‑and‑a‑romanian‑folk‑song‑combined‑to‑produce‑hatikva/ (accessed 26 June 2017).97 Grossman’s speech is an obvious parody of his HUC classes in pedagogy.

The Pilgrim Rabbis


phases of anthropomorphic evolution. To live is to exist. To die is to cease to be. Man is mirrored in the amoeba and in the infant brain of the little child. God is above all and in all. The child is by nature a liar and a thief. The teacher, if a real pedagogue with pedagogical instincts, is the acme of eternal civilization. Imagination is the projection of one personality into another, by which the human race is perpetuated. We are in a state of constant flux. I am in flux and you are in flux. The Jew is a human unit and ethnic group. All of which, briefly stated means that life is real, life is genuine. And with these wise thoughts, that may well guide our deliberations today, this day so eventful in Jewish his‑tory and pregnant with Jewish possibilities, I shall call to the chair one who has served the Conference faithfully, loyally, and valuably, without whose tireless labors we may truly say, the Conference would not be what it is. His name occupies more space upon the Conference index than any other. He is such a man, friend and colleague, that I deem it a rare privilege to yield my chair to him. He is one in honoring whom the Conference only honors itself. I gladly yield the chair to David Philipson.

Philipson. Gentlemen, I am amazed, nay astounded by this unexpected honor and from this unexpected source. I know not what to make of it. The words of esteem and affection just spoken, have touched me deeply. Our honored President, beloved by all of us, with accustomed modesty, has professed his unworthiness of this exalted office. He must know best. He has called me to the chair and proclaimed me singularly fit and able to fill it with dignity and dispatch. Again I say, he must know best. Far be it from me to disagree with him or question the meaning or correct‑ness of his cryptic utterances. So be it. I shall rejoice to once more sac‑rifice myself and save the Conference. I would live humbly and quietly, but to the call of duty I must respond. I believe the business before us is the election of the Kohen Godol. Although we have abolished this office and all caste in Judaism, still it has again become a necessary and important office. So let us sink personalities and select the best man.

L. Grossman. Mr. President, you have spoken the right word. The child is father of the man. Man is the moral order of the universe. Eternity is but an atom of the infinite. Therefore ours is the task to select the right

Joan S. Friedman


man for the right place. We have found the right place. Now for the right man. And I know him. I say I know who he is. He is an honored man, a good man, a wise man, a loyal man, a genuine man. He is a man who has been close to me in many associa‑[p.6] tions. At times we have differed on minor matters. Now I humbly confess that he was always right and that I was always wrong. I shall be loathe to lose him. It will be a great sacrifice. Yet I must be reconciled. And so I nominate for this exalted position of Cohen Godol, our honored member and present acting president David Philipson.

Philipson This is so sudden. I don’t quite understand it.

S.S. Wise I second the nomination of the honorable gentleman.

Max Raisin98 I deem it an honor and a privilege to nominate one most fit for this high office. Himself a child of the sunny south, he can most readily adapt himself to our Palestinian climate. This [is] one of the strongest arguments in his favor. The scion of a long race of rabbis him‑self a Kohen and descendant of the High Priest of old, he is traditionally fit for this high office. And not only as a scion but also as a Zionist, a faithful leader in our nationalist movement, a perpetual vice‑President99 I may say, who has ever discharged the duties of a vice‑president most punctiliously, he is preeminently fitted for this job, certainly in every way superior to one who has consistently opposed the reestablishment of our Jewish nation and who has even been heard frequently to declare, “America is our Zion and Washington our Jerusalem.”

98 Max Raisin (1879–1957) was one of the CCAR’s most vocal and fervent advocates for Zionism in the 1910s. See Michael A. Meyer, “Two Anomalous Reform Rabbis: The Brothers Jacob and Max Raisin,” American Jewish Archives Journal 68, no. 2 (2016): 1–33. Here, however, he is made to appear clueless, since he does not pick up on the joke being played on Philipson and thereby almost ruins it. 99 In 1907 Heller was elected vice‑president of the CCAR and honorary vice‑president of the FAZ. Some of his CCAR supporters worried in 1909 that his FAZ role would prevent his election to the CCAR presidency and suggested he resign from it, but he refused. See Malone, Max Heller, 132ff. However, the phrase “perpetual vice‑President” here is a sly allusion to Wise’s attempt to keep Heller in the CCAR vice‑presidency for an additional term while Emil G. Hirsch stepped in as president.

The Pilgrim Rabbis


Chairman But whom do you nominate?

Max Raisin. Oh I was carried away by the fervor of my passion and for‑got. Mr. chairman and gentlemen I nominate Rabbi Maximilian Heller, and move that his first name be changed to Moshe. I admit that a High priest Maximilian would sound strange and unJewish.

M. Heller Gentlemen I am profoundly touched, nay deeply moved by the honor which is mine. All the more do I regret that I must decline the nomination so unsought and unexpected. I feel altogether unequal and unworthy of the high office, particularly since one so able and emi‑nently fit has just been nominated. Beside him my little powers dwindle into insignificance. Gladly do I acknowledge his superiority. Besides I am now loathe to leave New Orleans. In recent years in fact since the advent of Leipziger100 or shortly thereafter, New Orleans has become a peaceful, quiet, and pleasant habitation. As the Talmud says: behold how good and how rare it is when Rabbis dwell together in unity, for there the Lord commandeth blessing, even life Jobs for evermore. And finally brethren I must confess. I have been extolled as a zionist. Sionism [sic] was a beautiful dream. It was based upon imagination and hope. Now our Jewish state is a reality, and imagination and hope no longer function. Thus Zionism ceases to be a dream and a hope; therefore

100 Emil Leipziger (1877–1963), ordained at HUC in 1900, was an anti‑Zionist who also opposed the reintroduction of traditional practices. Articles in New Orleans’ Jewish newspaper, the B’nai B’rith Jewish Ledger, hint at tensions between him and Heller. Leipziger was brought to the city to assist and then succeed the elderly Isaac Leucht, Heller’s long‑time bitter foe, who was not only anti‑Zionist but also a radical who joined Wise’s Eastern Council and quit the CCAR with Wise in 1909. In 1913–1914 the Ledger—whose editor had feuded with Heller fifteen years earlier—prominently featured a number of laudatory articles about Leucht’s and Leipziger’s involvement in local welfare institutions. During the same period it published a long editorial about how rabbis spend their time when not actually ministering to their congregations, praising those who devote themselves to the community and criticizing those who use their “free” time to earn money as lecturers or professors. Max Heller, whose letters to his sons are replete with references to financial worries, lectured around the country on Zionism and taught Hebrew at Tulane. The Jewish Ledger: A Weekly Journal for Jewish Families, 28 November 1913, p. 14, and 6 January 1914, p. 1, microfilm; Malone, Max Heller, passim.

Joan S. Friedman


I being a pure idealist, cease to be a Zionist. Henceforth O proudly proclaim, “America is my Zion and New Orleans my Jerusalem.” I must therefore refuse the nomination and willingly withdraw in fa‑vor of my esteemed colleague and very dear friend, who has already been nominated. Of course I would be glad, should occasion of‑fer, to deliver a course of lectures at our national Jewish University.

[p. 7]

Philipson. You may be sure Dr. Heller that the occasion will soon offer. Upon what subject would you prefer to lecture?

Heller. Oh, any subject. It makes little difference. Meanwhile I move that nominations be closed.

Silverman. I second the motion.

All. Question.

(The motion is carried unanimously.)

Philipson. Friends, my emotion is too deep for words. I am over‑whelmed by the honor you have conferred upon me. I pledge myself to discharge the duties of this office loyally, and efficiently. I have never failed in anything I have undertaken, and I shall not fail in this. I am loathe to leave beloved America, where I spent so many happy and fruitful years. Loyally I upheld its traditions and discharged my duties as citizen. But after all, our sojourn there could only be temporary, a mere “Nachtasyl.”101 This I realized from the first, though loyalty and

101 “Temporary refuge” (German). This is another dig at Philipson’s anti‑Zionism. At the 1903 Zionist Congress, Max Nordau tried to persuade the delegates to support Theodor Herzl in his willingness to accept the British offer of a Zionist home in Uganda by describ‑ing it to the gathering as a “Nachtasyl.” While the details of the Uganda episode are now of concern only to historians of Zionism, this was a massive public controversy at the time, and Nordau’s term became a derisory catchphrase. See, for example, “Uganda Deceased,” The American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger, 2 June 1905: 10; J. Mitchell Rosenberg, The Story of Zionism (NY: Bloch Publishing Co., 1946), 48; and https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/.premium‑1903‑zionist‑leader‑gets‑shot‑at‑1.5301541.

The Pilgrim Rabbis


gratitude bade me be silent. In my youthful enthusiasm and shortsight‑edness I even gave frequent expression to foolish thoughts. Es chattosi ani mazkir,102 which means, I always remember my mistakes. On next Yom Kippur, clad in the sacred high priestly robes, I shall enter the new holy of holies, which shall be patterned after the Rockdale Avenue Temple, of Greek style of architecture, which I still insist is the only pure Jewish architecture, and there I shall make full atonement for my follies. But now that we once more tread the sacred soil of the land of our fathers, now that our eyes behold its rare beauties, our noses inhale its fragrant odors, our lunks103 inhale its invigorating ozone, I have come to see the light. And in the presence of all of you, my erstwhile friends and colleagues, I proudly proclaim, “Zion is our America and Jerusalem our Washington.” Verily the new Messiah has come, a second David sits on the throne of his fathers, and once more shall the law go forth from Zion and the word of God from Jerusalem. My policies I shall state later. Let us now proceed to elect my subordinate officers.

S.S. Wise. Mr. President, the office of S’gan104 is highly important. The duties are, I believe, those of confidential adviser and assistant to the high priest and in general head Shammes.105 Not that the present high priest needs an assistant or would take advice. But a Shammes he might make use of. The etymology of S’gan is dubious. I understand, however, that it is probably an abbreviation of our English honorary title, Son‑of‑a‑gun. I rise to nominate one who has frequently proved himself worthy of this honorary title. I bear him no malice. I have for him and his profound abilities only the deepest admiration. I shall see him leave

.I must make mention of my offenses” (Gen. 41:9)“ : ריכזמ ינא יאטח תא 102103 This could be a typo, or it could be a dig at Philipson, mocking his eagerness to be named as Kohler’s successor at HUC to the extent that he adopts some of the latter’s German‑accented pronunciation. .deputy.” This priestly office came into existence during the Second Temple period“ ,ןגס 104According to the Talmud (B. Yoma 39a), the s’gan substituted for the high priest in the Yom Kippur ritual if the latter was unable to fulfill his duties.105 Shammes (Yiddish), “beadle.” The synagogue shammes (shamash, Hebrew) is a low‑paid, low‑status, but essential employee—and often a figure of levity—in a traditional Jewish community.

Joan S. Friedman


New York with utmost regret. He can never be replaced. Yet we must sacrifice ourselves for the cause. In this sincere spirit of love, admiration and self‑sacrifice I nominate as S’gan, Rabbi Samuel Schulman. And in view of his eminent fitness for this exalted office I move that nomina‑tions be closed.

[p.8]

Silverman. In rising to second both nomination and motion I too wish to pay my sincere and humble mead of tribute to the illustrious rabbi whose name has been put before you. Only a minute fraction of his true praise has been spoken. To do him full justice would require gifts far greater than mine, in fact an oratory such as he alone possesses. I can say only that the gentleman keeps all the Ten Commandments, both ancient and modern,106 and is the real author of the pregnant phrase, “The Melting Pot.”107

Schulman. Mr. Chairman, one moment. Somewhere Virgil says truly, “Timeo Judaeos et dona ferentes.”108 In modern English this means, I have my suspicions when they offer me high office. What would Temple Beth‑el do without me? Furthermore I do not like this land and its antiquated customs. I am still a loyal American, and America is still my Zion and Washington my Jerusalem. I would stifle in this land. And so I refuse the nomination.

Wise. The gentleman misinterprets our motives and our spirit of

106 I am unable to identify the referent for this line.107 Israel Zangwill is credited with coining the phrase “the melting pot,” which was the title of his 1908 play celebrating America’s potential for breaking down barriers of religion and nationality through intermarriage. In a passionately anti‑Zionist sermon in 1907, however, Samuel Schulman referred to America as “the smelting pot of nationalities,” by which he meant a place where everyone, including Jews, could be integrated into a single society, thus obviating the need for Jewish nationalism. Samuel Schulman, “American Judaism: Shall It Surrender Its Ideals?—Excerpt from Passover Sermon Preached in New York Temple Beth El, The American Israelite, 9 May 1907: 1.108 “I fear the Jews even when they bear gifts,” parodying the Aeneid II:49: Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes, “I fear the Greeks even when they bear gifts,” spoken by the Trojan priest Laocoön upon seeing the wooden horse left by the departed Greeks.

The Pilgrim Rabbis


sacrifice. We hate to let him go. He has made life in New York pleasant and interesting. True, his place in Beth‑el can not be filled. Yet possibly some may be willing to try. But here in Palestine the palace of the S’gan can be located at the ancient and real Bethel. Furthermore the gentle‑man underestimates the advantages and privileges of this land and this climate. I almost envy him his glorious opportunity. Let me remind him that among other things, the customs of the country, which he has berated, will permit him keeping a harem,109 and—

Schulman. Enough, enough! I accept. Life in this glorious land of privi‑lege and opportunity will be fair indeed. Solomon, look to your laurels. Henceforth Zion is my America and Bethel my New York”. I move the previous question.

Philipson. Gentlemen, before putting the question, let me state that despite the flattering assurances of Dr. Wise, in my humble opinion the office of S’gan is superfluous. I need no assistant. Since the passing of Mandelberg Selig,110 I have become accustomed to conduct affairs alone and unaided, and I say, in all modesty, that they have not suffered thereby.

Wise. Mr. Chairman, I believe you fail to understand how multifarious are the duties of the high‑priest. There are many tasks of minor impor‑tance and questionable pleasure that might well be entrusted to the

109 Schulman was known as a moralist. 110 Joseph Mandelberg (1876–1918) served as cantor at the Rockdale Temple from 1906–1914, until he was forced to retire due to illness. Upon his retirement, Philipson read the prayers himself, with the choir singing all the liturgical music. Mandelberg passed away in New York on 23 March 1918. I am grateful to Professor Jonathan Sarna for explaining that uttering “selig” after a name is the German equivalent of “God rest his soul.” Email communication to the author, 2 February 2018; “Obituary,” The American Israelite (18 April 1918): 7; “Rev. Joseph Mandelberg Dead,” American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger (12 April 1918): 694; Jonathan D. Sarna and Karla Goldman, “From Synagogue‑Community to Citadel of Reform: The History of K.K. Bene Israel (Rockdale Temple) in Cincinnati, Ohio,” in American Congregations, vol. I, ed. James P. Wind and James W. Lewis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 217, n. 101.

Joan S. Friedman


S’gan. For example, he might be made special emissary to the Falashas.111 For this task he is peculiarly fitted. And I respectfully suggest that in virtue of his new office and duties, his name be Judaized to Dr. Samuel Jacques Schulman Feitlovitch.112 I move the previous question.

(Carried)

Chair. It give me pleasure to announce the election by acclamation S’gan of Dr. Samuel Jacques Schulman Feitlovitch. I hereby bestow upon him my highpriestly blessing.

Silverman. Mr. Chairman I ask the privilege of the floor to present the following ticket.

[p. 9]

Secretary of the treasury Moses J Gries113

111 At the 1915 convention the CCAR formed a special committee to look into assist‑ing the Falashas (then the common name for Ethiopian Jews). Its membership comprised members of the existing Committee on Jews of Other Lands plus Samuel Schulman, who had evinced interest in assisting the Falashas since meeting Jacques Faïtlovitch in 1912. CCARY 25 (1915): 75, 90.112 Jacques Faïtlovitch (1881–1955) was a French Jewish Orientalist who devoted his life to bringing the Falashas of Ethiopia into the larger community of the people of Israel. In December 1912 The American Israelite reported the creation of a committee in New York to assist him in educating the Falashas to return to Judaism. Samuel Schulman was a member, as were Reform rabbis Hyman Enelow, Maurice Harris, Judah Magnes, and Joseph Silverman; Jewish Theological Seminary chancellor Solomon Schechter; Zionist leader Joseph Barondess; and magnates Cyrus Sulzberger, Solomon Sulzberger, and Felix Warburg. “To Aid Falasha Jews,” The American Israelite, 26 December 1912: 7; Max Wurmbrand and Emanuela Trevisan Semi, “Faïtlovitch, Jacques,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, vol. 6 (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), 676–677.113 Moses Gries (1868–1918) was ordained at HUC in 1889 and served as rabbi of Tifereth Israel Congregation (“The Temple”) in Cleveland from 1892–1917, building it into one of the Reform movement’s large and influential congregations. A close friend of David Philipson, he was an anti‑Zionist and served as the CCAR’s treasurer during Max Heller’s presidency. Herbert Parzen and Max Margolis, “The Purge of the Dissidents, Hebrew Union College and Zionism, 1903–1907,” Jewish Social Studies 37, no. 3/4 (1975): 291–322; CCAR Yearbook 23 (1913): 187; David Philipson, “Moses J. Gries,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, no. 28 (1922): 274–76.

The Pilgrim Rabbis


Secretary of Agriculture—Joseph Krauskopf.114

Secretary of the Interior and Exterior—J. Zalel Lauterbach.115

Inspector of Lodging and boarding Houses—Abraham Cronbach.116

Superintendent of Irrigation and Water supply—H. La Fontaine Rosenwasser.117

Inspector of Theatres and Public Amusements—I. Mordecai Blum.118

114 Joseph Krauskopf (1858–1923), one of the first four graduates of HUC, founded the National Farm School in 1896, while serving as rabbi of Philadelphia’s Congregation Keneseth Israel. Krauskopf had been lifted from a life of poverty by a fortuitous encounter that enabled him to prepare for entry to HUC and was passionately committed to improving the lives of the poor by educating and helping them obtain employment. The Farm School was an outgrowth of his idea to train Russian Jewish immigrants for agricultural pursuits, but he did not limit its enrollees to Jews. The Farm School still exists as Delaware Valley University. “History Delaware Valley College,” http://www.delval.edu/about‑delval/history (accessed 27 September 2018)115 Jacob Zallel Lauterbach (1873–1942) began his tenure as professor of Talmud at HUC in 1912, the same autumn that James Heller arrived as a student. Although he was a terrible pedagogue, the rabbinic students loved him. This is an inside joke for which no explanation has survived. Friedman, “Making of a Reform Rabbi,” 16.116 Abraham Cronbach (1882–1965), known for his lifelong commitment to social justice, was ordained at HUC in 1902. The joke here refers to a lengthy article he published in The American Israelite about his extensive tour of the dirty and crowded steerage section of the ship on which he traveled as a comfortable second‑class passenger. He called for improve‑ments to the ship’s sanitary and sleeping arrangements. Abraham Cronbach, “With the Immigrants on Shipboard,” The American Israelite 16 January 1915: 1–2, accessed 18 July 2018.117 Herman Rosenwasser was ordained in 1908. The office is an obvious pun on his name; perhaps the French name, which means “fountain,” was intended as a reference to his days as rabbi of Congregation Bene Israel in Baton Rouge (1908–1914). Oddly, for a Jew, Rosenwasser supported the Temperance Movement: In 1939 he published a pamphlet of fulsome praise for Frances Willard on the centenary of her birth. Herman Rosenwasser, Frances E. Willard: Memorial Message on Her Centenary (Port Huron, MI: Willard Centennial Committee toward Better Living, c. 1939), http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015071650092 (accessed 29 Jul 2017).118 Irving Mortimer Bloom (1899–1956) was ordained in 1913. The allusion remains obscure.

Joan S. Friedman


Editor of the Jewish Funny paper—The Chayim—Wm. H. Greenberg.119

Superintendent of the old folks home—Joseph Stolz.120

Superintendent of the High Priestly Stables—Hyman C. Enelow.121

Secretary of Labor and Capital—Solomon Gompers Foster.122

In nominating Rabbi Foster Secretary of Capital and Labor, permit me to say that it is capital to sentence him to hard labor. But before he presumes to write a report, let him go and get a reputation. I move that nominations be closed.

Grossman I second the motion.

(Motion carried)

Chair. We come now to very important business, viz. making proper provision for the great congregations whose pulpits are thus vacated. It is a great loss for all, my own among them. But we must not let them

119 William H. Greenburg (1868–1951) was ordained by Moses Gaster at Jews’ College in London and held a doctorate from Heidelberg. He served as rabbi of Temple Emanu‑El in Dallas from 1900–1931. There is one very faint possible hint to the point of this joke: Greenburg’s descendants have a family tree posted on Ancestry.com that includes a page from the 1881 British census identifying thirteen‑year‑old William as a musician by pro‑fession. “Biographical Sketches of Rabbis and Cantors Officiating in the United States,” American Jewish Year Book 5 (1903–1904): 59–60.120 Joseph Stolz (1861–1941), a classmate and friend of Max Heller, was rabbi of Isaiah Temple in Chicago and served on the board of Chicago’s Home for Aged Jews. Prior to the 1909 CCAR convention Stolz suggested to Heller as a “compromise” that while he was serving as CCAR president he should forgo any activity related to his position as a vice‑president of FAZ, lest people erroneously conflate Zionism with Reform Judaism. Heller declined the advice. Malone, Max Heller, 133; Zola, “Pioneer Zionist,” 385.121 This is a way to portray Enelow as slavishly subservient to Philipson. 122 Solomon R. Foster (1878–1966) was ordained in 1902 and served Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in Newark until his retirement in 1940. He was among the anti‑Zionists. Giving him the middle name “Gompers” was a reference to Samuel Gompers, the premier Jewish figure in the U.S. labor movement. This is a dig at Foster’s 1909 CCAR paper, “The Working Man and the Synagogue,” which Stephen Wise scathingly criticized as being all talk and no real action. CCARY 19 (1909): 164–166, 432–494.

The Pilgrim Rabbis


suffer. Now gentlemen, what shall we do for them? (All crowd around him and shout.) But gentlemen, please stand back; don’t crowd me too closely. You are too eager to sacrifice yourselves. First let us dispose of my own pulpit.

Grossmann. It would be hard, nay impossible to fill the pulpit left vacant by our illustrious friend. No man of lesser ability should dare desecrate the spot hallowed by his presence. Therefore I propose that my congre‑gation annex the Rockdale Ave. congregation. I am sure that I can fix this. We will then move on the hill,123 and then I will occupy the pulpit.

Philipson There can be no objections to that.

Wise Then may I suggest that following the same principle, that the Temple Bethel be annexed to the Free Synagogue, (Carried.)

Philipson I will not attempt at this time to make a complete announce‑ment of my policies. I will say, however, that not an inconsiderable part of our work this year will be to take the new Bible translation and render it into the New and better Hebrew, creating if necessary the proper vo‑cabulary.124 This will be a noble work worthy of us. Now since the hour is late, the conference will stand adjourned until tomorrow.

[p. 10]

Act IV At The Wharf. Wise Heller Kaplan Kory125, Philipson Shulman et al.

123 Philipson’s congregation was located at the corners of Rockdale and Harvey Streets, up on the heights not far from HUC. Grossman’s congregation, though it had an additional facility on Reading Road, was still in the Plum Street location downtown.124 David Philipson served on the committee that produced the 1917 Jewish Publication Society translation of the Bible. Again, the humor is that the anti‑Zionist plans to engage in a quintessentially Zionist activity, translating something into modern Hebrew. 125 Solomon Kory (1879–1936) was a native of New Orleans and grew up at Temple Sinai, where Max Heller’s influence led him into the rabbinate. He was ordained in 1903 and be‑came rabbi of Temple Anshe Chesed of Vicksburg, Mississippi, where he remained until his untimely death. In February 1904 he was Heller’s guest at Temple Sinai, where he preached a sermon rejecting Zionism. “Rabbi Kory Heard in Native City,” New Orleans Times-Picayune,

Joan S. Friedman


Wise Well it worked.

Kaplan You bet it did. Now they are all staying here. and we are going home to America.

Heller Now at last the conference will pass my motions.126

Kaplan Yes Dr. Heller, we are all one now in mind and heart. In the future whatever you will say, none will disagree with you.

Heller Well that is not so good. What bothers me now, is that we can’t remain Zionists when this bunch is in Zion.

Wise Well what is the use of talking. Let’s go back where we belong. I am sure that Goldstein127 has balled everything up in my absence. Here is the steamer; let’s board it, and Lechodesh Habo B’America.128

Enter Kory

Kory Are Wise Heller and Kaplan here?

All Yes here we are. Talk quick. We have to take this boat.

Kory You will never take that boat.

All What do you mean?

Kory. The conference at a special [session] has granted leave of absence to Philipson and Schulman, and you three are to take their places.

Wise Absurd.

13 February 1904. I am grateful to Rabbi Debra Hachen, Kory’s great‑granddaughter, and to her nephew Ezra Seligsohn, for this information and for the newspaper report of the sermon.126 As noted above, Heller could not get the CCAR to pass either of his resolutions in 1917.127 Sidney E. Goldstein was ordained at HUC in 1905 and served as the director of the social service division of Wise’s Free Synagogue—in effect, as Wise’s assistant rabbi. Urofsky, Voice, 88.128 “Next month in America,” a play on the concluding line of the Passover Seder: “Next year in Jerusalem.”

The Pilgrim Rabbis


Heller We refuse to accept.

Kory You cant refuse. The conference has adjourned, and has left the enforcement of its order in the hands of the new Zion Police Force.

Enter Philipson Schulman et all

Wise Say Philipson you are joking aren’t you about leaving us here and you going away?

Philipson. No indeed. I mean it. Schulman and I and the rest of us are go back. I left my golf clubs in Cincinnati.

Heller. Tell me Rabbi Schulman, how long do you intend to stay. I want to go home to New Orleans.

Schulman Oh I guess I’ll be back in about seven years. You see I am going to stay long enuf to raise a fund for the support of the Falashas. That will take at least seven years. Until then farewell/ . I hope the cli‑mate agrees with you.

Wise and Heller and Kaplan No use trying. You cant get around the ring.

END

Joan S. Friedman is associate professor of History and Religious Studies at the College of Wooster and the author of “Guidance, Not Governance”: Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof and Reform Responsa, a 2012 National Jewish Book Award Finalist.

Date post:	18-Jul-2020
Category:	Documents
Upload:	others
View:	0 times
Download:	0 times

Joan S. Friedman - American Jewish...

Documents