the virtues of the new immigrants. Within fifty years, the banker predicted
optimistically before World War I, the amalgamation of the German and
Russian “was destined... to produce the finest Jewish type of all time.”^70
Downtown responded to Schiff’s warmth and reciprocated with loyalty
and affection. Known as “unser Yankele” (literally, “our little Jacob,” a Yid-
dish term of affection)^71 rather than as the heavy-handed patron, Schiff was
able to expand his control over a broad constituency. The theoretical issue
of elitist direction of the Jewish community in a democratic host country
had yet to be tested.
The first test was not long in coming. It was foreshadowed in the 1903 epi-
sodes, and it was abetted by the immigration after the Kishinev pogrom
(1903) of a younger and more radical element of Russian Jews unwilling to
bow to elitist leaders. When a wave of Russian pogroms erupted in 1905,
the stewards organized the National Committee for Relief of Sufferers by
Russian Massacres (NCRSRM), a nationwide relief drive under their di-
rection. Downtown was aroused too; it staged a mass protest march of
more than 125,000 in what the Times called “one of the largest parades this
city has ever seen.”^72 Barely had operations of the NCRSRM begun, when
a clamor for a permanent national Jewish organization arose in different
quarters. Neither the repeated failures of nineteenth-century American
Jews to create a viable union nor the reality of a more fragmented and
heterogeneous group at the beginning of the twentieth century were seen
as insurmountable obstacles. Furthermore, the success of the NCRSRM in
mobilizing the community was totally ignored.
Believing that the 1905 pogroms would probably not be the last, and
swept up by the Progressive faith in the curative powers of democratic or-
ganization, many Jews called for a representative communal agency to han-
dle such emergencies. Under the leadership of the Jewish Self-Defense As-
sociation, a body whose purpose was to arm Russian Jewry in its own
defense, twelve national organizations representing the immigrant stratum
endorsed the idea of an elected congress. The older national bodies, like
B’nai B’rith, which were jealous of their power, resisted the eastern
Europeans’ stab at democratic leadership.
Not just downtowners asked for a representative organization. The
staid and conservative Cyrus Adler offered one such plan. The American
Hebrewtoo, usually the unquestioning supporter of the stewards, insisted
that efficiency was less important than a committee responsible to the
community and able to command undivided support. “Let us once for all
have faith in the rank and file of Jewry,” the paper implored. “The demo-
cratic spirit should prevail, and if there are dangers in free popular discus-
sions, our smothering the voice of protestants will only make matters
The New Immigrants 109