statement made by a government official with reference to the 10 years following 1880—“So many Hebrews have come from that country to the United States, that Torn in Russia’ has come in popular opinion to mean a ‘Russian Jew.’ ” And then the same official goes on to show that during a 10-year period when 666,561 Jews came from Russia, there came also from Russia large numbers of Poles, Finns, Germans and Lithuanians.
Now, to make a census enumeration of these peoples under the heading “Russian” was plainly misleading, and not only misleading but valueless for census pur¬ poses. The racial identity would be lost, and our knowledge of the racial make-up of the nation very HOW JEWS IN U. S. CONCEAL THEIR STRENGTH 13 incomplete. Therefore, the census authorities asked Congress for permission to classify people by “race” as well as by “country of birth.” It seemed perfectly reasonable. Of what possible use is it to classify 3,000,000 Jews as “Russians” when there are very few real Russians in the country, and when the Russian and the Jew are so deeply different one from another?
Senator Simon Guggenheim arose in the committee to object. He used the common formula in such cases. He said:
“Personally I object to it, not because I am a Hebrew, but because it is not in place.”
That is the common Jewish formula of objection. The B’nai B’rith says the same thing when it forces Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice” out of the public schools. That society’s “anti-defamation circular” always includes the thought:—“We do not base our request on the embarrassment which may be caused to the Jewish students in class, nor is our attitude in this regard based on thin-skinned sensitiveness. Our objec¬ tion is made because of the effect upon the non-Jewish children who subconsciously will associate in their minds the Jew as Shakespeare