synagogues, stood the philanthropic, fraternal, and cultural institutions di-
rected by lay volunteers. The Americanized leaders of those organizations,
usually affluent businessmen or professionals of German extraction, ad-
dressed problems within the community as well as those relating to Jewish
rights in the larger society. Their economic status and dedicated commu-
nal service earned them the confidence and respect of their constituents.
Equally important were their associations with prominent Americans that
enabled them to enlist Christian champions for specific Jewish causes.
How steeped they were in the Jewish heritage or even the present-day
needs of their community rarely influenced their acceptance as communal
representatives.
Since the United States never mandated Jewish identification, religious
or otherwise, neither side could claim exclusive authority. Nor were the
lines between the two spheres hard and fast. Rabbis and religious organiza-
tions freely engaged in secular matters. The organization of Reform rab-
bis, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, pioneered on behalf of
church-state separation; and laity, as in the case of Reform’s Union of
American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC), governed the Hebrew Union
College, Reform’s rabbinical seminary. Individuals who served simultane-
ously in both spheres made for some coordination, but overall communal
unity was sporadic, limited usually to times of crisis and taking the form of
parallel rather than joint activities by sectors within the community. After
the 1880s, unity was further diluted when the waves of eastern European
immigrants, in a world separate from the German Jewish establishment,
created their own organizations.^2
The layman’s authority in civil matters, the modern keter malkhutin
Daniel Elazar’s cogent analysis, was self-assumed. “Schiff never claimed
leadership,” a younger associate wrote; “he just naturally exercised it.” A
close friend, Louis Marshall, called him “a natural leader.” The banker
once gave his own definition of an American Jewish leader. “Jews do not
elect their leaders,” he told a mixed group of Jews and Gentiles; “one be-
comes a leader among them.” When asked how that happens, he answered:
“One needs to have God in his heart. An ethical figure before whom the
people stand in awe and to whom they will listen with deference even
though they may not like what he has to say—such a person is naturally a
leader.”^3 (Ethical behavior was the point of a story found in a biography of
Dorothy Schiff, Mortimer’s daughter. It tells of a banker who sat with
Schiff on the board of Mount Sinai hospital. When Schiff learned that the
man had declared bankruptcy, he left a board meeting, announcing that he
wouldn’t work with someone who didn’t honor his debts.)^4
Called a hero worshiper by his friend and biographer, Cyrus Adler,
Schiff admired the position and power that went with leadership. As Ernest
Cassel once told him, dictatorship was not the issue. One can be a dictator,
42 Jacob H. Schiff