scholarship that the directors envisioned. Schiff did not live to see the
institution’s steady progress, but there is little question that he would have
judged his work for JTS to have been a sound investment.
Uptown/DowntownDowntowners made good use of agencies endowed and run by uptown-
ers—Nathan Straus’s pasteurized milk stations, the United Hebrew Char-
ities, the Henry Street Settlement, or the Educational Alliance. Acculturat-
ing to their new surroundings with or without the stewards’ help, most
newcomers showed that their aspirations did not differ radically from what
the German Jews preached. The Eastsiders also wished to Americanize
rapidly; they too aimed at economic independence, if not affluence; and
they too sought to escape the confines of the ghetto. Bearers of the same
Jewish heritage as the Germans, they also labored to meet their philan-
thropic obligations. Soon after their arrival they organized their own net-
work of charities, thereby challenging the monopoly of the uptowners.
The influential centrist elements within the Jewish quarter (i.e., the middle
class or would-be middle class) were the ones most in accord with the ste-
wards. Even those in the nascent Zionist movement, as Arthur Goren has
cogently observed, chose their leaders “in the patrician image.”^62 When
uptown and downtown later joined forces in other communal endeavors,
like relief drives, the kehillah, and the first American Jewish Congress,
downtown cast its votes for leading uptowners.
To be sure, genuine and profound differences in matters of religious
belief, social and cultural behavior, and Jewish identity separated the im-
migrants and the established Jews, but the wide chasm that developed was
nurtured as well by emotional reactions to the steward/ward relationship.
Downtowners were afraid of their affluent uptown patrons, who, as one
Yiddish article put it, regarded the eastern European as a “schnorrer, a
tramp, a good-for-nothing.” In the offices of the German-run philanthro-
pies, the article continued, the immigrant was “questioned like a criminal.
He trembles like a leaf, as if he were standing before a Russian official.”
Although downtowners expected uptown’s aid and protection, they
smarted under the often humilating treatment dished out by the German
“yahudim,” who ignored immigrant sensitivities and never tired of fault-
ing their “improper” behavior. For their part, uptowners resented the fi-
nancial burdens thrust upon them. While they chided downtown to pull
its weight, they feared the damage their alien brethren might work on the
image of American Jews. Each side had a list of grievances, bluntly sum-
marized by the president of B’nai B’rith, an eminent member of the Jew-
ish establishment:
106 Jacob H. Schiff