Henry Ford

“ From the dingy windows of the schools the mass of sordid buildings looks to their eyes like the hills of Palestine, and the shriek of the passing elevated trains and the clanging of the car bells and the din of passing traffic disturb them not, for they live in the past.
The alleged Jew of the fashionable uptown lobster palaces—the blatant, pushing type, who is the direct cause of much anti-Semitic feeling—knows and cares nothing for the submerged student of his race. ”

“ The interpretation of a difficult passage from the Talmud, or the coining of an epigram, is as food and wine to the wise old students, and there is not an ill in their lives that cannot be soothed or a blessing that cannot be acknowledged in a quotation from their beloved book. To watch them at their study and devotions undisturbed by the turmoil about them is to marvel at the faith which has enabled some of them to live more than one hundred years with no other interest in life than their God and their books. ”

“ Their Jewish view of death is equally beautiful. For those who die they feel no sorrow. Having once torn aside the veil which parts the known and the unknown, having once entered into the shadow, or rather the sunshine, of the beyond, they are better off in the other life. Whether death means eternal sleep or eternal life, those who have left our side, having passed into the arms of pitiless death, repose in a condition which should give survivors no cause for anxiety on account of their beloved dead. ”

“ In strong contrast to their fathers and grandfathers are the children of these old men. Modern America, with its opportunities for all, has torn them from the religious atmosphere and sent them uptown to become the lawyers, the artists and the actors.
The Jewish comedian of the vaudeville theater who nightly sets the audience shrieking at his Yiddish idioms is in nine cases out of ten the son of a scholar, and though the glamour of Broadway success claims him and he no longer lives home, in his heart of hearts he is a Jew and never forgets the old people. ”

“ I have learned that beneath the ragged coat of a push-cart vender there may beat a heart of gold, and that a poor seller of collar buttons or suspenders may be a student of the Talmud with a mind that is a gift of the gods.
Leaving the seething, modern, fashionable life of upper Broadway to enter the religious atmosphere of the numerous schools of Jewish literature on the East Side entails a violent contrast in conditions. ”

“ The day I arrived in New York I learned that my dearest friend, my father, had passed away, and naturally my first thought was to say the kaddish, a prayer of the Jewish liturgy recited by orphans for the welfare of the souls of their deceased parents, somewhat after the fashion of the Catholic mass. Every male of Jewish blood at some time of his life recites this beautiful prayer. It does not matter how far one strays from the fold or how much one has denied the faith, there comes a time when the Jew in him asserts itself and he says the kaddish. ”

“ In and out of offices presided over by men with Jewish faces I trudged all day. Most of these men, I subsequently learned, belonged to New Thought, Christian Cultist and other up-to-date churches and societies—it was good for their business. They called themselves Christians, but nature’s marks cannot be changed like one’s clothes.
In the great theatrical districts I found thousands of my fellow Jews who had grown rich overnight by coining perhaps a popular song that had pleased the cabaret-mad crowd or by ridiculous impersonations of their race upon the music hall stages. ”

“ The great passion for the dead and gone past reflected in the Rembrandtesque faces of the aged students lends to their lives a religious grandeur which the uptown tourist (hastily passing on a rubber-neck wagon) would never suspect. Behind many a shabby-looking little store, or maybe, above some corner saloon, are the societies for the study of Hebrew literature, where congregate the types of Jewish scholars and philosophers that make the heart of the writer and artist glad. ”

“ But while the former stands out in the world of money and worldly success as a target for much abuse and hatred, the latter lives with books, unknown and unheeded, drawing from the Talmud a joy that riches cannot buy and solacing himself with the love of humanity. ”

“ There is something restful and inspiring when an old man—long past the biblical three score and ten—places his hand on your shoulder and murmurs in Yiddish, “It is God’s will.” I have envied the profound peace of many of these aged students living in the past and undisturbed by thoughts of the future. Their Jewish view of life is as beautiful as it is simple. It disregards neither earth nor heaven. I looks to earth and observes the evil prevailing among men ”

“ I would have them once in a while give up their seats in public conveyances, behave modestly in cafés, dress quietly, and give up the use of assumed Christian names.
There is nothing so pathetic as the man who, with Hebrew face, assumes a Christian name. I never go to a public place without wishing that my fellow Jew would talk less and appear less ostentatious. ”

“ There is absolutely nothing humorous in these old men of Judea. Even in the sordid surroundings where you find them engaged in prayer or study, their attitude is one of quiet dignity—a dignity enhanced by their extreme old age. ”

“ Most of our people, I have found, have aggressive personalities: it is the aggressiveness which has enabled many immigrants to pass through Ellis Island to ownership of fine apartment houses all within a couple of years—but sometimes this aggressiveness becomes absolutely cruel, crushing from the very soul all the tender elements which go to make up a happy life. ”

“ The mothers and fathers stay at home blessing God every hour of the day and night for guiding them to such a country as this, while the sons and daughters are out at the theaters, in the halls and cabarets singing songs of Dixie. Passing by in this great throng are prominent actors, critics and playwrights, many under assumed names, simply because their own names are Jewish. ”

“ Flashing across the horizon as I write is a notorious Jewish doctor with a consumption cure. He could have been famous and honored had he but suppressed himself, instead of which he, with his commercial instinct and his press agent methods, made more enemies for the race. ”