terms why the Jewish quarter was blamed for immorality, and it exhorted
voters to vindicate Jewish honor by supporting the reformers. Low and his
ticket won the election, and although some spokesmen for the ghetto
blamed “a few German Jews” for charging that downtown was the source
of immorality, both eastern Europeans and Germans celebrated the Fu-
sionist victory.^35
The election adumbrated significant changes in Jewish behavior and in
communal leadership. Not only did it show cooperation between uptown
and downtown, this time as equals in the polling booth, but it taught up-
town that it could cast off its habitual reluctance to parade Jewish interests
publicly in elections.
Public exposés as well as counterefforts by Jewish agencies increased
during the decade, but prostitution on the Lower East Side persisted. Be-
hind closed doors organizations individually and collectively grappled with
the problem of Jewish vice, now broadened by the charge that Jews ran
international white slavery rings. Quietly, Schiff too continued his personal
efforts, purportedly sanctioning the use of detectives and raids to stamp
out prostitution. In 1906, Therese Schiff made a $10,000 donation ena-
bling the National Council of Jewish Women to support a home for “way-
ward” girls.^36 Again the stewards demonstrated that social issues feeding
anti-Semitism and immigration restrictionism and indirectly besmirching
the name of the established Jews could not be left to the newcomers alone.
Rabbis as MissionariesAmericanization did not stop with the public school or settlement house.
Acculturation was a two-sided process: adoption by the immigrant of
American manners and behavior and, simultaneously, his renunciation of
alien separatistic habits. Since Schiff and his circle viewed the religious cus-
toms of the newcomers as obstacles to full integration, their crusade for
Americanization invaded the synagogue. Undeterred by the religious (or
indeed irreligious) sentiments of the eastern Europeans, the stewards,
many of whom were Reform Jews, had two goals. They sought to reconcile
Jewish traditionalism with American modernity, and they hoped to stem
the inroads of secularization within the community. Their answer to both
problems lay in the reorganization of a Conservative institution, the Jewish
Theologial Seminary (JTS). Here too the leaders had no qualms about
prescribing for the new immigrants, and never did they sound out repre-
sentatives from the ghetto. The fact that the seminary needed eastern Eu-
ropean acceptance for its survival was at best a minor issue.
The support of a Conservative school by wealthy Reform Jews gave rise
to questions that immediately or over time would plague the institution.
96 Jacob H. Schiff