These gentlemen who have started this movement come to us and they say
“here we are; we do not want to have it thrown in our mouths that we are ag-
itators for power; we want to have the guidance of intelligent men, and we
want you to cooperate with us.”... Shall we repel these men and say oh we
do not want any of them? What will be the consequences? It is a mighty
stream which we have an opportunity to keep in these waters, and the boats
are swimming on it, and it is a good opportunity to start them right.^82Negotiations between the two sides led to an arrangement whereby the
kehillah’s executive became the committee’s advisory council for New York.
Its jurisdiction was limited to local matters, leaving all national and inter-
national issues to the committee. Although Schiff at first had cautioned
against hasty action, he cheered on the joint deliberations. At one organ-
izational meeting where his presence was loudly acclaimed by the down-
towners, he moved the adoption of two articles in the proposed constitu-
tion of the kehillah. One defined the purpose of the kehillah in religious
terms—”to further the cause of Judaism” in New York City—and the sec-
ond stipulated that the kehillah would not engage in any political activity.
The motion was adopted unanimously, and since all delegates were re-
quired to be citizens, the banker was assured that the new organization
would not be secularist, nationalistic, or political but eminently American.
When the founding convention proceeded to elections for the kehillah’s
executive, Schiff received most votes, an indicator of downtown’s respect
and appreciation. The AJC won ten places on the twenty-five-man body,
thereby allaying any fears the stewards may have harbored of being cast
aside. Downtown wanted independence in 1909, but it wanted the tried
leadership of the established Jews just as much. In turn, men like Schiff and
Marshall showed an awareness of the inappropriateness of oligarchic rule
in a democratic society and were sufficiently flexible to yield a share of ab-
solute control. Schiff declined to serve on the kehillah’s executive, but he
had great hopes for an organization that would keep communal manage-
ment out of the hands of “disconnected, uncontrollable elements” and
under the AJC’s thumb.^83
Under Magnes’s dedicated leadership, the kehillah created an umbrella-
like structure of bureaus that dealt with education, social morals, philan-
thropy, industrial relations, and religion. Magnes appealed repeatedly to
Schiff to fund kehillah activities, and the banker was usually responsive. In-
deed, donations from Schiff and his son-in-law, Felix Warburg, were
largely responsible for the innovative educational work of the Bureau of
Education under the direction of Dr. Samson Benderly. The banker did
not approve of the Zionist leanings of Benderly’s teachers, but he valued
more the need to revitalize moral values and religious and cultural train-
ing through a modern Jewish education. Contributing also to the kehillah’s
114 Jacob H. Schiff