Still seeking public vindication, the banker recounted the Asch episode in
full at the dedication of the Central Jewish Institute in May. There he
lashed out against Jewish separatism, which all understood to be directed
against a congress. Pressing for Americanization, he warned of anti-
Semitism should American Jews, like the Jews of eastern Europe, hold fast
to Yiddish and act as a separate people. In the course of his extemporane-
ous remarks he said: “I feel, my friends, that unless we live our Judaism as
a religion, our posterity may become subjected to great prejudice.” An-
other sentence drew the most criticism: “It has occurred to me... that if
the Jews of Russia and the Jews of Poland would not have been kept as a
separate people by discriminatory laws, the prejudice and persecution to
which they have been subject would not have reached the stage to which
we all regret.”^91
Unfortunately for Schiff, the attempt at rebutting the Yiddish yellow
press boomeranged. When the New York Times reported him as having said
that the eastern European Jews had in large measure brought persecution
on themselves, a storm of protest broke out against Schiff the “traitor” who
delivered “the deadliest blow” ever dealt the Jews. The banker thereupon
produced a stenographic record of his address proving that he had been
misquoted, but the damage could not be undone. Important Yiddish news-
papers stuck by the Times version, while Brandeis and the Zionist journal
Maccabaeanhinted at the inauthenticity of the stenographic report. Some
periodicals delighted in maligning or threatening Schiff. One asked the
masses to “excommunicate” him; another discredited him by way of car-
toons. Among the harshest critics was the American Jewish Chronicle, a
paper funded by the German government. The Chronicle wrote that Schiff
sweetened his attacks on popular Jewish values with large donations. It es-
timated that he had paid a few hundred thousand dollars for his campaign
against Zionism and twenty-five thousand for the defeat of the congress
movement. In Schiff’s mind it all added up to what he termed “terrorism.”^92
Commendation for the banker also came from both Jewish and non-
Jewish friends. While Cyrus Adler suggested that Schiff write out his ad-
dresses, Paul Warburg counseled his partner to treat downtown like chil-
dren who were feeling their strength for the first time. Simon Wolf added
that if God and Moses couldn’t satisfy the children of Israel, Schiff could
hardly expect to do so.^93
Despite his denial to the contrary, the banker was deeply wounded by
what he considered rank ingratitude. A final attempt at “spiking the guns”
(his words) of those who attacked him and the AJC came at a dramatic ses-
sion of the kehillah convention two weeks later. Schiff’s voice trembled, and
there were tears in his eyes as he answered the charges of his critics. Those
charges, he said, would delight the czarist regime, “because you are battering
down the man who has stood between persecution, between anti-Semitism,
The World at War 221