The banker disapproved of intermarriage and conversion to Christian-
ity, but his principles affected neither his relations with Zangwill, who
married a non-Jew, nor with Ernest Cassel. The latter, Schiff’s most inti-
mate friend for forty years, not only married a Catholic but at her dying re-
quest in 1881 went “over to the other side” and converted to Catholicism.
The conversion was a carefully guarded secret until Cassel’s death. Baron
Maurice de Hirsch, for one, appeared unaware of the conversion, and he
appointed Cassel a founding director of the Jewish Colonization Associa-
tion and an executor of his will. It is quite possible that Schiff too was ig-
norant of the matter. A loyal Jew who believed apostasy to be the “unpar-
donable deed,” he would very likely have hesitated before sending his son
to be trained by Cassel.^23 In no fashion did Cassel’s private life change the
tenor of the Schiff-Cassel correspondence. The men avoided the subject of
religion, and Schiff continued to detail accounts of his activities on behalf
of “our people.”
Some members of Schiff’s peer group thought differently. Daniel Gug-
genheim approved of his son’s marriage to a Catholic, and Otto Kahn,
Schiff’s partner, was kept from converting only by Nazi anti-Semitism. To
be sure, in his later years, Schiff became more accepting of Jews who had
left the fold. Descendants of Samson Raphael Hirsch, he said, had con-
verted, and who knew what our descendants would do? But the banker at-
tempted to safeguard his own family. He stipulated that his grandchildren
would forfeit the trust funds he created for them if they intermarried.^24
In matters other than religion, Schiff and his associates frowned upon Jew-
ish separatism. At a time when anti-Semitism predicated on racism was
making rapid strides in both Europe and America, the leaders of the Jewish
minority demanded rapid Americanization and unalloyed patriotism for
themselves and their fellow Jews. Logically, the behavior they prescribed
could make no dent in the racist argument, but Jewish stewards optimisti-
cally believed that acceptance would yet result from proper Jewish con-
duct. They never quarreled with the majority’s definition of Americanism
as long as it made room for non-Christians, but they worried constantly
about the image projected by the Jews. Determinedly seeking Christian
approval and respect, they tended to judge Jewish actions through the
prism of “what will the Gentiles say.”
Considerations of image colored manners as well as beliefs. The ste-
wards, for example, like their American counterparts, preached against all
forms of radicalism. Fearful of offending Gentile taste-makers, they, like the
anti-Semites, deplored Jewish ostentation or vulgarity. On those grounds
Schiff was critical of the lavish mansion built by his daughter, Frieda War-
burg.^25 Similar reasons added an urgency to his calls for communal unity.
50 Jacob H. Schiff